Economic Development, Technology & City Light Committee 3/22/23

We are recording.

Well, good morning, everyone.

The March 22nd, 2023 meeting of the Economic Development, City Light and Technology Committee will come to order.

It is 9.30 a.m.

I'm Sarah Nelson, chair of the committee.

So let's see.

Council Member Sawant has asked to be excused.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Juarez?

Here.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Herbold.

Chair Nelson.

Present.

Three present, one excused, one absent.

Okay, there are two items on our agenda today.

The first is a small business round table discussion with a panel of small housing providers, which is a segment of our small business community that's identified in the committee's work plan for attention and support.

And the second item is a briefing discussion and possible vote on Council Bill 120532, which would authorize City Light to join the Western Resource Adequacy Program or WRAP.

Let's see, are there any objections to the agenda?

Seeing none, the agenda is approved.

And we will now step into the public comment section of our agenda.

Would you please run the video?

Hello, Seattle.

We are the Emerald City, the city of flowers and the city of goodwill, built on indigenous land, the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.

The Seattle City Council welcomes remote public comment and is eager to hear from residents of our city.

If you would like to be a speaker and provide a verbal public comment, you may register two hours prior to the meeting via the Seattle City Council website.

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As a speaker, you should begin by stating your name and the item that you are addressing.

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Once speakers have completed providing public comment, please disconnect from the public comment line and join us by following the meeting via Seattle Channel broadcast or through the listening line option listed on the agenda.

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Our hope is to provide an opportunity for productive discussions that will assist our orderly consideration of issues before the Council.

The public comment period is now open.

and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six after you hear the prompt of, you have been unmuted.

Thank you, Seattle.

All right, so we will call on the in-person commenter first, and reminder that we are commenting on items on the agenda.

So if you don't plan on speaking to one of the two items, you're welcome to listen or change your mind on what you're gonna talk about, but that's our practice for this committee.

The first person on our list is Angie Gerald, and everyone will have two minutes to speak.

Go ahead, please.

Good morning.

My name is Angie Gerald.

Thank you for hosting this roundtable today and thank you to the three council members who are present.

My husband and I have been small landlords for 20 years and this is the first time I've ever seen city council invite small housing providers to the table.

I'm offering public comment on behalf of a friend who had to work today.

We met three years ago here when we each provided public comment for the first time on rental housing legislation.

Charlotte Thistle is a single mother who teaches music to children and shares space with renters in her South Seattle home.

For years, she has provided affordable housing to a diverse group of people, and the vast majority have been wonderful.

However, she's also had two dire situations where one tenant began harassing or threatening another, and in some cases rising to the level where police were called.

Charlotte has directly experienced the impacts of Seattle passing so-called eviction protections that actually endanger peaceful tenants by making it extremely costly and difficult for a housing provider to end a relationship with a tenant who is harassing others.

For several years, Charlotte tried reaching out to Council in constructive ways, including organizing a video recorded meeting in 2021 with Councilmember Morales to clarify shortcomings in Seattle's Just Cause provisions, along with carefully suggested revisions to municipal code written by an experienced attorney, all to no avail, only brick walls.

She's glad this roundtable is happening, but for her it is too little too late.

Because of Seattle regulations, Charlotte is preparing to sell her little property and move her daughter and pets and business to Portland, where she believes the law offers better protections for owner-occupied rentals.

It's Seattle's loss.

I hope council begins a functional relationship with small housing providers.

We need more Seattleites, not fewer, to be able to safely, stably offer housing to others, but it depends on balanced, collaborative policymaking.

Thank you again for hosting the roundtable.

Thank you very much.

All right, seeing no other in-person commenters, we will move to the remote speakers.

Let's see, we will start with Leslie Hogue, please.

Hi, I'm commenting on the small housing provider roundtable.

Thanks for hearing from me.

My name's Leslie and I live in Ballard.

My husband and I have been housing providers for 35 years.

He's a sculptor with construction background.

I'm a self-employed graphic designer.

For decades, we've worked two full-time jobs on top of the property management, maintenance, and repairs.

Our weeks were long, but we were building towards the future for us and for our son.

We've always been proud of the service we provide, and our apartments are well-maintained and affordable.

We know our tenants.

Most of them are long-term.

We've negotiated payment schedules, offered work for entry for rent, and even a few rent waivers for tenants who've been critically ill.

We've attended weddings, met newborns.

This creates a sense of community, something the city is losing.

We are not unique among small housing providers.

We hope that when we were older, the rents would support us in our retirement.

We had no employer pensions or even health insurance.

I'm a cancer survivor, and I know how scary it is to be on the edge of losing everything.

We're in our late 60s now, we work part-time and rely on our rents to support us.

But the first in time rules and the roommate addendum, which essentially allows anyone remotely connected to the existing tenant to live in our apartment without our having any say, and many other laws combined to make the housing provider too risky for many of us.

We used to own a duplex in addition to two small buildings with one housing unit in each.

My office is in one building, my husband's studios in the other.

We sold our duplex about a year and a half ago, not to make money.

I didn't want to sell a building we'd operated for 25 years.

The tipping point was the avalanche of restrictive landlord tenant laws, which treat landlords as enemies and not allies to work with.

The city could benefit from our experience and knowledge.

Small landlords provide a lot of housing, the city's losing it.

It's a huge unintended consequence and a loss for Seattleites.

Thank you.

Thank you, Leslie.

I will note that Council Member Herbold has joined us, and the next two speakers up are Jennifer Lakish and Aiden Nardone.

Go ahead, Jennifer.

Hi, my name is Jennifer Lakish, and I'm a second-generation housing provider.

I house 17 families in single-family homes and duplexes in the Queen Anne and Capitol Hill neighborhoods and have been a long-term renter myself.

Thank you for hosting Roundtable of Landlords, and I hope this is the first of many wonderful discussions that help bring resolution to our city's housing crisis.

It's gotten really difficult to be a housing provider to the point where I, like many property owners, no longer want to rent our properties.

There's just too much risk that our residents will not pay the rent and there is no consequence when they don't pay.

For example, I had a tenant last month that paid her rent 17 days late.

Had there not been a daily penalty, she may not have ever paid.

And now the city council is considering capping monthly penalties to $10.

Your proposed $10 late fee cap is untested and create the chaotic scenario where rent will go unpaid indefinitely.

The city council is missing the point that housing providers and tenants enter a financial relationship and both parties are obligated to keep up their side of the relationship.

If not, there are penalties for both.

If tenants are upset about paying late fees and they should not pay the late rent, excuse me, they should pay the rent, they should not pay the rent late.

If this is such a problem, then there should be rental assistance programs or an agency that can help tenants who need funds in a pinch.

This additional financial burden should not be put on the housing providers.

Fully funding programs that you already have in place is imperative.

For example, the Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance Program is in shambles.

There is no way for individuals to contact the program and get issues resolved.

For example, The program sent me a letter threatening me with a $30 fine for not registering property, but the property was registered.

I sent a letter back with evidence of registration and followed up with a phone call, but never heard back from anyone.

There will always be outlier scenarios.

The city council needs to base legislative decisions on broad scenarios that affect the majority and not create legislation based on isolated incidents.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you very much.

Next up is Aiden and then followed by Jeff.

Good morning, my name is Aiden Ardon.

I'm a renter in District 6. Thank you, Sarah, for.

Convening this opportunity for mom and pop landlords to address their continue, the problems they continue to encounter from the ever increasing landlord tenant legislation.

As you continue to expand these new laws, regulations and control, we are going to diminish the mom and pop landlords opportunity and take naturally affordable private housing off the market.

I am a senior citizen.

on limited income, and I depend on my healthy relationship with my responsible landlord.

Please stop threatening it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jeff, and then followed by Nalima, please.

Jeff, press star six.

Hi, my name is Jeff Vogel, and I'm calling in regards to the small landlord agenda item.

I'm a small landlord in Seattle and the region, and I want to share that increased regulations and restrictions on my ability to screen tenants, enforce leases, and terminate leases with nonpaying and damaging tenants has led me to vacate and sell one property, rental property, and I'm withholding an accessory dwelling unit from the market.

So just me alone removes two rental housing units from the market, which harms the shortage of housing supply.

It also leaves, the more small landlords leave the market, the more renters are left with only corporate landlords for housing options.

I also want to comment that capping late fees to a meaningless level of $10 removes the tool to encourage regular payment habits.

I've been a small landlord for 23 years.

I've only charged late fees a few times and only after working with tenants to get caught up first.

In one particularly memorable case, I waived a late fee for three months in a row, only to be paid later each month, and finally decided to charge a late fee, and the rent was immediately paid, and subsequently paid on time.

And this supports Jennifer's earlier comment on her experiences with late fees and payment habits.

I think this was a good outcome for me and my renter.

It's a stable, reasonable interaction between two parties to a contract.

I faced severe consequences to missing mortgage payments, property taxes, and other bills.

And so I think it's very asymmetric to let renters off the hook for missing payments.

And finally, I'd like to close by thanking the council for letting small landlords finally come to the table and speak.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our last speaker is Nalima.

There are two other speakers on my list.

They're listed as not present, but wanting to talk about the tree ordinance.

So that's a different committee.

So go ahead, Nalima.

Hi there.

Thank you for including us today.

My name is Nalima Shah.

I'm speaking on the topic of small housing provider.

My husband and I own just one single family rental and we've been renting it for about seven years.

We both work full time jobs and have a daughter in Seattle Public Schools.

We're part of the community.

We volunteer for the city and with nonprofits.

We've been fortunate to have our family of four including two young children rent our Broadview home for several several years.

During this time we have built a relationship with our tenants respond to issues right away and also have made costly capital improvements including a roof gutters paint and more which is pretty tough in Seattle's market.

Still we have kept the rent way below market.

Probably I'd say three day even up to seven hundred dollars a month because we really value these tenants and they're part of the neighborhood and the community.

Unfortunately they've informed us that they're likely moving out this spring.

Due to the vast number of new policies enacted in the city over the past few years and the severe increased risk of being a small landlord, we have two choices.

Either sell the property, which results in one less affordable unit and single-family homes for renters in Seattle, which are hard to come by as it is, or hire a property manager who can navigate Seattle's complicated rental laws, which will result in a significant increase of rent, either of which are good for renters or landlords, really.

We're not corporations that can easily absorb the cost of Seattle's policies and the data shows that Seattle's rental policies have resulted in a significant loss of rental properties.

I implore you to look at this data make informed decisions based on analysis analysis of this data and make changes even exempting small landlords from these prohibitive rental policies that are harmful to renters and small landlords.

We are part of the community.

We are not enemies we're allies.

We treat our tenants really fairly.

We ask for the same respect in return so we can keep doing what we're doing.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

That was our last speaker.

So unless anybody else who's present here in chambers wants to speak, we will close public comment now.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Agenda Item Number One, Small Business Roundtable, Housing Providers, Briefing and Discussion.

Thank you very much.

While I'm providing my opening remarks, you can go ahead and get settled.

So let me cut to the chase in case anyone's wondering why are we having this conversation in my committee.

And it's pretty simple.

It's because small housing providers are a critical component of Seattle's small business community.

And they're critical because 50% of Seattle residents are renters.

And these small businesses supply a significant portion of the below market rate housing options in the city of Seattle and including Most of the large multi bedroom units that are affordable to low income families or students.

So it's, I think that we agree that we want to retain that housing stock, and because that is important to advancing our housing affordability.

and anti-displacement goals and creating generational wealth.

But there is evidence to suggest there may be a problem.

And so that is why we're here today.

The panelists will present evidence showing that, let's see, that small rentals owned by these small businesses represent a decreasing share of Seattle's overall rental market.

And in addition registration in the rental registration and inspection ordinance or Rio program decreased by a combined total of 21% in 2020 and 2021, even though the number of units has remained fairly stable in Seattle.

So, the question is why.

Well, according to the last two Rio annual reports and I'll quote the decline in registered units in registered rentals may be attributed to more rental properties being sold and becoming owner occupied.

Or it may be that some landlords simply decided not to renew their registrations during the pandemic.

So in other words, we don't really know.

And so this conversation today is an opportunity to fill in some of the gaps of our knowledge about this sector of the housing market, and also shed light on some of the challenges that may be impacting these small businesses ability to continue operating in Seattle.

That is why we're having this here.

Last year, we had a roundtable discussion with small businesses to discuss the impacts of crime.

That's what I like to do every now and then is just bring in parts of my constituency to talk about what's going on.

With that, we've got five presenters and I'll give you a second to introduce yourselves in a moment, but we've got a lot of information to cover.

I asked my colleagues to hold their questions, I see you, until the last, the end of the, until all of the panelists have spoken and then we'll go to questions.

Okay, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you chair Nelson, great to hear and see a lot of D six voices out here appreciate the presentation that I see attached to the agenda today.

I'll be taking the rest of the meeting from my office and just want you to know that I'm listening.

I also see that there's the stakeholder report attached to this presentation as well.

I think everyone knows that I sponsored that request and sponsored the follow up request.

I think what's interesting here, there aren't slide numbers on the slides, but I'm seeing it as slide five, which is summarizing the number of laws passed between 2017 and 2023. I think this exemplifies the level of confusion it can provide for somebody that is managing their own rental properties.

For large organizations, they have lawyers on staff, I don't know if these if this summary is also inclusive of what's happened at the state level, but that's another level of what new laws that an individual who isn't maybe not a lawyer.

doesn't have ease of access to understanding.

And I think that's a really important crux here.

Because I do see some important things, important protections within this list that's on slide five.

But the level of confusion is incredibly difficult for somebody who is essentially doing it themselves.

And the other part I really liked about your presentation is all the pictures of the duplexes throughout Seattle.

Non-conforming in some places, I'm sure, but duplexes really provide people the ability to live in one unit, rent the other, and then maybe graduate into their own home that doesn't have a neighbor sharing a wall that's still getting to provide that duplex.

I've had the opportunity to live in a triplex.

I found it very lovely.

I got to live in two other rentals that had probably not legal ADUs attached, which is why they didn't get to rent it separately.

And it's this type of duplex, triplex ADUs that are going to be able to keep Seattleites housed at a reasonable rate.

So looking forward to the presentation.

I wanted to get these comments in before because Chair said I didn't get to talk during the presentation.

So thank you all for being here today.

I would have called on you wherever you are.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Sorry, I can't stay.

Would the presenters please introduce yourselves and then start right in on your presentation.

Thanks.

Certainly.

And we'll go down the list and then I'll begin the presentation.

My name is Marilyn Yim.

I'm a small mom and pop landlord in District 6, your District Council Member Strauss.

And I think it's interesting that you noticed all those pictures because they're mainly for your district.

My name is Jim Yerby.

I'm a small property owner in District 5.

Please be sure to speak more directly into here to give testimony.

Hi, my name is Ida Cotter.

I was a first time landlord in district five.

Hi, my name is Rizwan Samad.

I'm a small property owner in Northgate area.

Good morning.

My name is Christopher Cutting.

I'm a small housing provider and resident of district three.

I'm also a landlord and tenant attorney practicing in this area.

All right.

We'll get started.

Yep.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Thank you.

Council member, uh, Nelson for setting this up.

This is really as many people have noted already.

The first time I think that small housing providers have been invited to speak to the council in a manner like this, on a panel type of a form or to provide any long form comments or expertise that we provide in our housing market.

So we really appreciate this opportunity and we hope that this is the start of more, but this is a really constructive thing that we're doing, thank you.

So this first slide, as I noted, these are photos of existing rental properties that are located mainly in the Ballard area or so, but they really fit into the neighborhood.

And this exemplifies a lot of the types of properties that small landlords own and operate rentals in the city of Seattle.

If we go to the next slide.

So what is unique about small landlords?

Who are we and why are we here?

We generally provide a diversity of housing stock, as you saw in those pictures.

There's a lot of different kinds of homes that are provided there.

A substantial portion of below market rentals are owned and operated by the small housing providers.

We tend to have stable tendencies and less frequent turnover.

And so as you'll notice on a later slide, that means that we have a steep learning curve when only every three years or more, we might have to go back and refresh ourselves on what's changed.

We have fewer opportunities to spread risk and risk can come in the form of financial risk because as a small landlord, this is personal financing.

We are not a corporation.

business entity.

This is based on my personal credit score, whether I'm able to, you know, access financing, get a loan, a default in the mortgage affects me personally.

And as noted on a 2018 survey, a study that was done by the University of Washington, 59% of Seattle landlords reported total income of less than $75,000.

So this really is small scale, and the amount of cost and risk that's being imposed on us really is intimidating and threatening to our ability to continue.

We also have legal and personal risk.

with the extended legal process and delays to resolution dramatically increased cost.

There's no right to counsel for housing providers.

And then in terms of personal risk, we don't have the buffer of a staff to help us.

We're doing this a lot ourselves.

Many of us operate our own rentals, and that means that we are personally exposed.

You know, if there is a problem that arises in our landlord tenant relationship, living on site with people sharing the same home, you know, four walls as I do, can contribute to that.

Go to the next slide.

Many of us live here locally and have a connection to the community.

So we're more directly involved in operating our rentals and selecting our tenants.

We can be more flexible with our screening criteria prior to a lot of these laws passing.

And that means that we're contributing to our local economy and our housing supply.

Many of us use rental housing as a means to afford our own primary home.

And that's part of my story.

Buying a duplex or an ADU, it helps you to be able to access a mortgage and then pay that mortgage over time.

And some of us can become landlords out of circumstances.

So there may be changing circumstances that lead us to rent out our property for a period of time.

You move out of the area, but you're expecting to come back.

For job change, sometimes marriage and divorce can contribute to some of these changes where you may not be living in the same home, but expect to return and so you're not gonna sell.

So renting it out then provides a housing option that would not otherwise be available to renters.

And because of all these risks that really weigh in, weigh on us heavily, we're more likely to exit the residential rental market to sell our property if it gets too risky, unpredictable, and onerous.

and exceeds our capacity and resources to absorb.

So the next slide shows, this was the legal landscape prior to recent times.

Over a period of about 40 years, there were eight significant changes to landlord-tenant law.

And this is encompassing both Washington state and Seattle law.

So that's an average of one new law every five years or two every decade.

If we go to the next slide, this shows what it has been like over the last six years.

I put this together, and I'm pretty sure I may have missed a few things too, but this is a lot of laws.

24 is what I counted in six years.

So every three months, on average, we have faced a change to the legal circumstances that we have to operate in.

That it makes it very difficult to stay on top of things again, as I said, if our turnover is low, we have a very steep learning curve to get on top of what has changed.

You do have Washington laws listed there.

That's right.

I did include some Washington state laws.

I avoided redundancies where Seattle and Washington passed the same type of law, maybe in different years.

So I also avoided county and other cities.

So this is really just Seattle and Washington state.

So there's a pancaking effect.

We have to comply with both levels of law.

And sometimes there are interactions between laws that can make it complicated to comply.

So this shows that we have done a lot for tenant protections.

There's been a significant amount of effort placed on that.

So now we need to look at this from a housing and an economic lens, which is why we're here today.

So if we can go to the next slide.

This is showing data that is pulled from the city of Seattle's rental registration.

And it's showing basically over time a significant loss, a net loss of 14% of Seattle's rental properties.

The time points were chosen is this is simply just data that was made available to us from the city.

So it's about a four year time span.

July 2018 was the earliest data that was available to us and August was the most recent, August of last year.

And then we did a poll of the most recent data prior to this presentation and it is showing that small landlord registrations continue to trend down.

So we have not seen this trend line reverse.

But what you can see is that small rental properties really do represent a significant number of the registrations and a declining share though of the rental market.

So I will go ahead and go to the next slide.

A little bit of explanation.

We've had a lot of construction cranes in Seattle, but all of the new units of housing that have been added by those construction projects have really been canceled out by the loss and the exit of the small rentals.

Seattle really does need to have rentals of all sizes, but we're really losing the missing middle rental registrations.

So there's a lot of effort on trying to increase those.

Seattle has been losing those smaller properties So there's a decreasing share of small rentals while an increasing share of the larger rental properties now what that represents is Larger this the smaller properties tend to be family-sized two or more bedrooms and a lot more diversity in terms of housing types the larger rentals tend to have studios in one bedrooms and so they really are not family-sized and so that really is changing the the character of our housing market, you know, who will be able to find housing, right?

I think families are really going to have a tough time as we lose these smaller rentals.

And there's also a shift in ownership profile.

There's a lot of those larger properties are less likely to be owned by local investors or members of the community.

If we could go to the next slide.

We compiled some obstacles and deterrents, like what are some of the issues that are contributing to this decrease in the small rental providers?

As we kind of touched on, there's a very complex and layered regulatory environment that changes rapidly and has a cumulative effect that's more than each individual piece of legislation and really needs to be taken as a whole.

And then on the next point, there's been a lack of analysis of those impacts.

So there really has not been any formal effort or, you know, any attempt to really assess, you know, what's been the impact of this?

Have we achieved the goals that we wanted to?

And do we need to mitigate for any unintended consequences?

There's a lack of information and support, especially, which is especially hard when things change rapidly.

and we're facing that steep learning curve.

And like a lack of engagement and outreach, sometimes there is a lot of negative rhetoric, very polarized discussion on this, when we really should be working together on housing solutions.

The fines and penalties that have been included in legislation are very steep.

And even if they are not applied often, knowing that there's a $11,000 first time civil penalty for violating the first in time, which is a first in the nation ordinance that we're all learning about right how to apply that.

That is a huge threat that really is a significant, you know, disincentive for a small housing providers to continue.

Court access is very hard to reach.

It's hard to even get a lawyer these days.

And it can be very drawn out, expensive, and totally inconsistent and unpredictable, which means it's very costly and draining on us.

And we provided these slides last week, by the end of last week, and it was before the incident that happened in Ballard.

So the next part about the lack of public safety support, the very first thing we said in here is that in extreme cases, police support is needed to handle dangerous tenant situations.

And I think you heard that come up in some of the public comments as well, that there can be some really difficult things that we have to deal with, and it's hard to secure public safety support.

So we'll move in pretty soon to our roundtable.

And the next slide introduces who's who.

We'll get to everybody to introduce ourselves in a minute, but our final slide is right after this.

Looking forward and so when we get into the discussion, I'm really hoping that we can rest on this a little bit too of what our takeaways are.

Seattle needs to retain the existing housing that we have and we need to build more.

But at the same time, we have been losing the affordable small rentals.

The small scale rentals provide economic benefits and opportunities to everybody involved in the housing equation, renters, owners, the community at large.

This is a win win thing that really is valuable, probably punching above our weight in terms of the value that we provide.

But the barriers and risks and policy approaches that we have right now have been untenable.

to have and maintain a stable and thriving small rental environment.

And so I really encourage anyone who's watching, council members, anyone who's considering rental policy, even outside of Seattle, to look at the Small Landlord Stakeholder Report, which is attached to the agenda.

It is full of great ideas on how we can address these issues.

There might be more great ideas too, but it is just packed 21 pages.

We really do need to work together to solve our housing crisis.

Small housing providers are a valuable part of the housing ecosystem, but we need to act now to keep the housing we have and encourage more.

So with that, I will start the panel.

I'll introduce myself and do my story, and then we'll go down one at a time through the panelists, if that's okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

So you've heard a lot from me.

I'll try to keep it short.

A lot of you have heard from me before too.

So I'm Marilyn Yim.

My husband and I are owner occupants of a triplex in the Phinney neighborhood.

We also have a duplex in Ballard that we also lived in, purchased as owner occupants.

This has been our way of accessing housing for our family to meet our needs over time as well because we found that multifamily gives us flexibility for as our children get older, as our parents get older, different family situations.

We are both government workers and union members and this has been a way to really like help us to be able to manage those costs.

We've been doing it for 20 years.

I'm very motivated to comply with the law, like extremely motivated and do the right thing.

But I have found it to be increasingly overwhelming, even though I've been doing it for so very long.

And I just, you know, it worries me to think what somebody brand new who's never done this before would have to, you know, be able to absorb and learn about and to be able to get on top of all of this.

So even though I'm experienced and motivated, there's very little support and I feel like I'm walking through a minefield and it's just a matter of time that I will step on a landmine because it is so complicated to make sure that we are complying with every little thing.

My husband and I, because we are very enthusiastic about what access to our triplex housing has been meant to our family, we mentor people to become small housing providers.

We're excited about the missing middle housing.

We want to see more of it in Seattle and beyond.

We really look at it as a solution for people who are like just priced out of the housing market.

But it helps you to be able to qualify for a mortgage and then make that mortgage payment over time.

And as I said, it provides flexibility.

But given the changing laws, we have been really encouraging them not to buy in Seattle.

And I really hate to say that because I love this city.

But it is just difficult to work through the regulations that have changed.

And I'll just name a few that have meant a lot to us.

First in time, the criminal background check ban, the roommate ordinance, the extended evictions bans.

There's others as well.

But those are some that as people who live, share the same four walls with my tenants, with my family, with our children on site, it has been very difficult to absorb that risk.

We only have those two rental properties in Seattle.

So we just do not have a lot of flexibility.

And we feel very vulnerable to a bad situation in our own home that there may be no resolution for.

And I was gonna add to every, in addition to us encouraging people not to buy in Seattle, which I hate to say it, but every small landlord that we know in Seattle has an exit strategy to divest and leave the city.

And so, and I think that's reflected in our data.

So with that, I'm gonna turn the presentation, the panel over to Jim Yerby.

Yeah, and we were trying to keep, just as a reminder, a couple, two, three minutes or so, if you can.

So we, go ahead.

Sir.

Oh well first of all thank you all the council very much for inviting us to appear today.

Just a little bit of background about me.

I've lived in Seattle all of my adult life.

I've been a landlord in Seattle for over 25 years starting with the family home that my mom passed on to me.

So I have a little experience and I wanna talk about a couple experiences.

Thank you.

A couple experiences that I would like to share.

Being a small landlord in Seattle is not much different than being any other small business owner.

is revenues and expenses.

And that's really the bottom line.

It's in the landlord's best interest or certainly in my best interest to find and retain good tenants.

Tenants who pay on time and I who deliver in terms of making sure the property is livable, it's clean, and any issues that come up get taken care of.

I want to talk about an experience that I had in partnership with Housing Connector.

A family that was supposed to be a risk.

Turns out this has been one of the most us enjoyable and successful experiences I've had.

This family pays rent on time, keeps up the property, lets me know when there's an issue that I need to address.

And it's just been wonderful.

And were it not for the partnership with Housing Connected, this situation probably would not have been as positive.

So I think landlords, certainly I speak for myself, wanna find a relationship that's successful.

And it doesn't do me any good to impose on tenants or act irresponsibly or do anything else to frustrate that relationship.

Because after all, I'm looking for a positive relationship.

I'm looking for a positive outcome.

On the other hand, I'd like to share an experience that I had.

with and there was no partnership.

I chose the tenants.

And there were three people who lived at the property.

They left on five months back to rent, probably about $10,000.

I don't want to come across too critical, but the house was really trashed.

Left a public utility bill of over $1,000.

The city said, hey, you, the property owner, you got to pay this.

And I'm going to have to pay it.

Left furniture on the property that I had to disposal cost about $1,000 to get that done.

The yard was in a disaster.

I was constantly getting complaints from the neighbors.

The police was there all the time.

And one of the tenants terminated his relationship early but left behind a girlfriend who I didn't have any knowledge of, had no relationship with.

She was not on the lease.

And I struggled to even communicate with this person.

She frankly told me, look, I have legal rights.

You can't force me to leave.

And you know what?

She was right.

I couldn't force her to leave.

Luckily, it turned out that we were able to dissolve that relationship.

But the law that protects roommates is really, really a tough one, because as a property owner, I want to make sure that any person who occupies a residence on a property of mine, that they're responsible, that they treat neighbors with respect, that they treat each other with respect, and that they treat the property with respect.

So I think What the most important thing that I would like to say, I think it's in landlord's best interest to treat tenants with respect and to treat them fairly.

I don't know, I certainly speak for myself, doesn't do me any good to be a irresponsible landlord.

And to assume that all landlords are bad, and all tenants are good is probably not accurate.

So I appreciate this opportunity to be here to share a few words about my experience.

And as I go forward, I have a commitment first to myself and to the city and to tenants.

treat them fairly with respect and not to abide by the laws, but certainly some of the laws are pretty heavy on landlords.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to be here.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Ida Cotter.

I was born and raised in Seattle in District 5, and I have three things that I'd like to share with you today.

One is my experience as a housing provider in Seattle.

Two is the unintended consequences of Seattle's many housing regulations.

And three is about including the perspectives of housing providers moving forward.

For the first item, several years ago I bought a single family home in the Lake City area.

I was thrilled and I poured my life savings into the purchase.

Then I had to move for work a few months before the COVID pandemic began.

I didn't want to sell my home, so I rented it pretty much at cost.

It was very much below market.

My situation was common.

There's lots of situational housing providers, people who take in a tenant to help offset mortgage payments or have a life change.

The tenant I rented to seemed like a good fit, except his credit was poor.

And I gave him a chance.

It felt good to provide housing to another Seattleite, especially at a below market price, because I know our city has a huge lack in affordable rental housing.

But once the Seattle eviction moratorium went into effect, my tenant stopped paying rent and stopped communicating.

Not because he was unable to, but because he simply didn't have to.

The situation went on for two highly stressful years, and during this time I needed to move back into my own home, but because Seattle's eviction moratorium was one of the most restrictive in the nation, it barred me from evictions, even for a homeowner like me, who wanted to live in their own property.

My tenant just refused to cooperate, didn't respond to social services, wellness checks, or mediation.

And ultimately, I had to spend over $20,000 in legal fees and eviction costs.

And because he didn't cooperate, none of the eviction programs would consider my situation or the lost rent.

Eviction Day turned out to be one of the worst days in my life.

Aside from the cost, I was physically afraid, and rightfully so, because it turned out my tenant had barricaded himself inside and had five guns, one at every entrance to the house.

Once I finally had possession of my home, I found $70,000 in property damage.

The walls, the floors, the plumbing, all destroyed.

And mind you, I'm not a corporation.

I'm just a person.

I have another full-time job.

It took me months to get the house to livable condition.

And even though I had done nothing wrong, I had violated no ordinances, none of the fines that have been passed applied to me, I am still facing.

a total of $120,000 loss.

The city has no solutions for me.

I cannot think of a single other business that would be expected to provide their goods and services for free for two years to a completely uncooperative person.

What happened to me and other landlords like me in Seattle is a warning to other potential landlords.

They are choosing not to enter the Seattle housing market, and many existing small landlords are getting out.

They're selling to owner occupants, and those people are high earners who can afford to buy.

It reduces rental stock and that's something the city desperately needs.

My second point is on the consequences of Seattle's explosion in housing regulations.

My tenants seemed normal when I first rented to them and I could not have predicted this outcome.

So when someone is planning to rent a room or a house in Seattle and they hear what happened to me or any of the 24 plus regulations that Seattle has imposed, they either cancel their plans or they increase their rental criteria.

And that's because it is so painful to get a difficult tenant out with all these regulations, even after the pandemic moratorium and you'll hear about that from Rizwan next.

And that means very strict screening, no exceptions is needed for a landlord to minimize their risk.

And this is bad for tenants, too, because it's going to be really hard for them to find housing.

In my life, as I'm sure in yours, the lucky breaks where someone takes a chance on you was exactly the relief that you needed.

And unfortunately, Seattle has made it too risky to take a chance on a tenant.

And that brings me to my last point.

Council members, we really need a functional relationship with small housing providers.

That means hearing from them like today and being included in any proposed housing regulation discussions.

We need to be realistic that there are some opportunists on both sides.

And despite what I went through, I still think most tenants are good.

Seattle's laws have become so imbalanced that it makes bad situations worse.

Before I hand off to the next speaker, I just wanna say I've tried to reach out to council several times and have never received a response.

So thank you for today and thank you for taking the time.

My name is Rizwan Samad and I thought I would keep my emotion and I wrote something in a piece of paper, but I'll express my feelings.

I've been a landlord for 30 years.

As an immigrant in this country, worked very hard, made little money and bought few rental properties.

It was okay.

You know, you meet bad rental, good rent.

I trusted the guy.

I never judge a person when somebody comes to me and say, I have this issue, that issue.

I rent the person.

I rented to this big individual as my Airbnb house for short term, but later on he say he wants to stay and he was paying rent.

The moment the COVID hit, he changed his color because he got the blessing from the city of Seattle council members to do whatever he wants to do.

He's not only stopped paying rent, He converted the whole house into a nightmare.

Parked 20, 30 cars, playing music, doing all kinds of illegal activities.

And there's nothing I could do.

Neighbors wrote letters, affidavit of support.

I took it to the King County prosecutor.

Attorney General Brian Sutherland.

And he says, it's not good enough.

My attorneys keep trying and I never went and asked him for the money.

I just asked him, do not harass the neighbors.

He passed 30, 40 cars.

He cut down my beautiful maple tree and parked the car on the lawn.

They pulled the gun on me.

Suddenly these people became God knows who were.

Four of the immediate neighbors who grew up in that neighborhood, for 50 years, they sold their properties.

The new neighbors came.

Young couples, their lives became nightmare.

They, my, when I start talking, I thought I was activist.

I am activist.

and a well-known activist.

I started meetings, politicians.

I wrote all of you guys letter, but none of the deaf ears replied back to me.

I met the mayor.

I met the attorney general.

I met the King County.

I met every single person.

But basically they said there's nothing they can do because the city of Seattle passed those laws.

And these people just become so violent because they had the blessing.

They had the blessing of you guys so they can terrorize the whole good neighborhood.

The people who wanted to raise their children, they cannot, children cannot play on the front yard or the backyard.

People putting cameras all around their neighborhood.

People were living in fears.

The young couple, Laurel and Kyle, couldn't sleep sometimes more than two hours.

Justin, the priest on the backside of the house, cannot sleep.

When he says, I'm a priest, please, for God's sake, be kind.

And he said, you will get hurt.

I get you.

Finally, they burned down the house.

Police came several times.

Fire department came several times.

No one can do anything.

My water bill went over $15,000 because, blessing of you guys, City of Seattle cannot cut the water bill.

They fraudulently transferred the electric bill on my name, telling in 2020 they moved out.

By the law, they transferred the electric bill in my name.

And the City of Seattle utility bill cannot cut the electricity.

When they cut the electricity, they start using a generator, putting a jumper cable, and then, you know, keeping the neighbors all night long, generators running.

City of Seattle cut down the water.

They put the lock.

They cut down the lock.

They cut down the jack.

They cut down the jack.

There's nothing I can do in my power.

It looks like I'm not living in America.

It looks like I'm not living in Seattle.

It used to be great neighborhood.

People can go and talk.

People are living their lives are in fear just because you guys did not thought about it.

There are a lot of bad actors out there.

They will take a full advantage of the situation and will destroy people's life.

For last three years, I've been hospitalized many times just by the stress.

And I, None of these guys, I wrote every single one of them.

And to thank you, we receive your email, but no reply, no reply.

For God's sake, this is a great city.

Do not let these people destroy the city.

Do not let these people destroy the city.

They get free attorneys.

There is, I see there's a lot of emotion here and I do feel that we should move on to the last.

The emotion is one thing.

I live far from this house.

There are other people living in a fear.

You have no idea what is fear.

You taking away their livelihood.

You know, young people cannot come out.

They have a 24 seven cameras all around the neighborhood.

OK, sir, we're going to stop now.

I will stop.

I can talk for four hours.

I understand.

Just heard so much.

And I can't do anything.

You know, so I hope you can hear my voice for the sake of saving.

Let's let's move on to the next speaker.

Thank you.

My name is Christopher Cutting.

I'm a small housing provider in Seattle, as well as an attorney practicing landlord and tenant relationships.

Thank you, council members, for your attention today.

We heard a bunch of very heartfelt and personal stories from other members of the panel.

I wanted to share a bit of my perspective as one of the vendors that provides services to housing providers like this.

We've seen the large pace of change at both the state and the city level of regulations governing providing housing in Seattle and in Washington.

There's, of course, a cost inherent in any government action.

There's an extra burden, though, placed on housing providers when local jurisdictions like the City of Seattle act and act differently from state-level resources.

This is because of that cost of the difference, keeping track of and complying with differences between state-level and local-level regulations.

For example, the Washington State Attorney, resources to residential landlords and tenants.

Many of those resources are of little or no value to Seattle housing providers because Seattle's large number of local regulations changes how the relationship operates and makes those resources less or of no value to Seattle housing providers.

So they lose access to that free and low cost ability to respond and to be ethical and high quality providers.

They have to seek out individualized or more expensive resources that are dedicated to Seattle specific requirements.

And I asked the council to keep that in mind when considering individual ordinances, but the pace of change as well is that being confronted with constant changes, being confronted with the large number of differences between Washington State, the City of Seattle, specifically other laws and other local jurisdictions around the Seattle area.

This creates a second burden on top of just understanding and complying with any individual ordinance, which for any single ordinance may be large or may be small, but this cumulative impact, this difference takes away an ability to access a lot of those resources and has a doubling of that burden of that cost impact on Seattle housing providers.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Any closing comments?

Thank you very much, everybody, for coming out today and being here in person and sharing your stories.

And I do want to give a shout out to staff Tame and Um, who worked hard to put this all together.

So some of the themes I'm hearing are that, well, what really caught my ear was we need a functional relationship with small housing providers.

I hear that and also that it's not just that that there is good intention behind these these individual regulations and but when when.

been taken cumulatively, and then I hadn't considered the complexity of state laws.

They can be burdensome.

So those are some of the things that I heard you say.

And I will now open it up to some questions from my colleagues.

I do have one, however.

Somebody, I think a couple of you mentioned the legislation in Council Member Sawant's committee to cap late fees and prohibit processing fees.

So could you just, I think you probably would be the best person at the end there, Chris, to address why do landlords, what is the reason for these These late fees and what is what makes up the cost that behind the processing fees, could you just address that briefly.

Of course, a small housing provider thinks of a late fees as forming providing two functions.

One is to encourage on time payment from someone who may. be able to pay and they need that extra sort of push to make their payment in full and on time.

But a second component of that is absorbing the cost that the housing provider incurs from that late payment from having to process a single check or a single payment at a different time from all of the other income that they're handling of possible risks to maybe missing a mortgage payment.

When I became a housing provider, I had just purchased a home for myself and I was moving out of the condo that I now rent.

We had barely one month of cash savings to cover that first month's mortgage and we had to get a resident in before the end of that month.

We had to get income from that resident to pay that second month's rent.

It took me many years to build up through rental income, just one month's cushion should my resident have missed a payment.

So that I'd be able to cover the mortgage with the income coming from that rental property.

If we'd had if my resident had any difficulty along the way, I would have had to find other resources to pay for that.

So the other thing that that a late fee does is it.

It places that burden of that late payment on the person who had the problem, who experienced difficulties, who solved the problem, rather than having to share it amongst all of our residents.

If I have, for example, five rental properties and one of them is in pain, If that one resident, when they're able to get caught back up, if they can pay a reasonable late fee to cover that extra cost to me from the late payment, then they themselves bear the cost of their late payment.

An unreasonably low cap on that sort of fee, however, means I have to spread that cost out among my other customers, my other residents.

If I'm a large company that has hundreds of thousands of units, that's pretty easy to spread and absorb.

But if I'm a small housing provider with one, two, three units, that can become a pretty significant burden for my other residents.

I think it's important to know that probably 99% of residents are great, and they never have problems with their housing provider.

Their housing provider never has problems with them.

And what we do when we place these kind of restrictions broadly on everyone, is we force that small minority of residents where they're having difficulties between resident and housing provider, and we have to spread that cost out to all the great residents who otherwise never have any sort of experience, never have any problem like that.

Thank you.

Let's see, I'm moving my screen.

Are there any, Council Member Juarez, Council President Juarez.

First of all, thank you for the panel.

Christopher, can I ask, would you mind Madam Chair, if I ask one of your panelists a question?

Thank you.

At first, we had these discussions in Council Member Sawant's committee last week.

about the $10 flat fee versus a percentage.

And then we are, and again, thank you for the round table because my problem last week was I wasn't hearing from the small landlords to exactly what happens when you impose, or like Madam Chair said, what is the purpose of a late fee?

And as we know, it's two-sided.

It's an incentive to pay your rent on time so you don't get the fee.

And it can also be punitive.

In fact, if you don't pay your rent on time, then the fee is imposed.

What I wanted to get at is that the two questions that you raised, Christopher, number one, when you said in a reasonably low late rent fee.

So explain to me, or maybe you can share with us, number one, what fee do you currently impose as a late fee?

And what is, I'm guessing, I'm surmising that you believe a $10 flat fee would be unreasonably low.

I personally have a 10% fee for light payment of rent.

In my career as a housing provider, I have literally never charged that fee.

I've always been able to work things out with my resident.

We did have an instance a few months ago where some sort of bank error resulted in her rent not being paid on time, and we worked that out.

I've never personally actually charged that late fee.

Washington law, not in statute, but in case law, says that a presumptive reasonable late fee is 10%, and that's the rule that I have always followed and that I recommend as an attorney to my clients.

Why would you think $10 would be an unreasonably low late fee?

We know what average rents are in the Seattle area, and $10 is going to come nowhere close to covering the cost to the housing provider of a payment that's even 10 or 15 days late.

My late fee for my mortgage, no matter how small my mortgage is, it's never going to be $10.

It's always going to be far greater than that.

I have clients that operate properties that charge five figures per month in rent.

A $10 late fee to someone like that, it costs more to enforce than the cost of that $10.

Right, it costs more to enforce than to collect $10.

You said something that other, I suspected it, but I'm really glad that Madam Chair had you on the panel, not only as an attorney, but as a landlord and a small, how many units did you say you had?

I have one rental unit.

One rental unit.

Because no one has really approached what you brought up about a landlord having to build up a cushion to cover costs when a renter, for whatever reason, because there's mistakes, and if you have a good relationship, you work it out, how long it takes to build a cushion to cover costs if somebody can't make their rent.

And you were saying that for you, it took a bit longer to build a cushion if a renter couldn't pay to cover any costs.

Correct?

That's correct.

After paying my mortgage and I rent out a condo unit, so I have a condo due to pay.

When I started renting out my unit, I apologize, I don't remember the exact number, but I think I was keeping about $30 after between those costs and the rent.

And with that $30, I had to cover my RIO registration fee, any maintenance that came up in the unit, any vendors that I needed to hire to do any work outside the unit, and to try to build that financial cushion should I have a vacancy or should my resident herself have any financial issues.

Then also some of the costs.

Again, I'm not trying to say landlord-tenant, you're right.

This conversation sometimes gets so polarizing.

I don't want to go into tenant behavior or landlord behavior.

Not every tenant is bad and not every landlord is a slumlord.

What we're trying to do, and I'm glad we have this kind of, if you will, safe space to have these discussions.

So if you have a tenant that leaves, doesn't pay their rent, you pick up the cost for the utility bill, the light bill, the garbage bill, you're also still paying taxes on those properties as well, correct?

That's correct.

Yes.

Property insurance.

Yeah.

So those are the costs on that.

And mortgage, any other repairs that might need to be made.

And if you late few days late in King County for property tax, they charge a large amount of interest just for a few days late.

Right.

Thank you.

What about.

What about the processing fees, what The processing fee that lenders charge sometimes to notify of late payment.

Can you address that?

What's behind that fee?

Oh, certainly.

Um, most housing providers will try informally to resolve a payment issue.

Um, so they may, their, their cost is going to be some time to call or text or email a resident.

Uh, when that doesn't work frequently, what they have to do is serve the formal notice of compliance, uh, for non-payment of rent.

A lot of housing providers will hire an attorney like me to do that.

Uh, our office charges a couple hundred dollars to prepare a, notice to pay rent or vacate and the offer of a repayment plan provided for in both city and state law and the offer to participate in the eviction resolution program.

We're one of the, my office is one of the cheaper providers of legal services to residential landlords in the area, but it's still in the neighborhood of $200 for us to prepare and serve those notices.

Madam Chair, if I may ask a follow up.

Thank you.

So you heard some people characterize that renters are being imposed a cost for a piece of paper delivered to them to say your rent is late.

Whether that's true or not, I don't know.

What I'm asking of you in real life, in real time, you're saying that obviously you have to hire a lawyer for a processing fee to serve formal notice for somebody to leave to vacate because they haven't paid their rent, but do you impose a fee when someone is or processing fee to tell somebody your rent is late?

Like you say, that's usually a text or a phone call, a knock on the door.

That's pretty much most of the communication that is incurred, just you just doing it because it makes more sense.

So I guess what I'm asking is, is there an actual notice to pay rent fee?

You're late with the rent.

That is not universal, but it is fairly common, yes.

Potentially, a resident may make a payment, I'm making a hypothetical, that payment is declined for insufficient funds.

A rental agreement will commonly call for three fees as a result of that late payment.

You'll have an NSF check fee, which is usually the charge that the bank is assessing to the housing provider, to process that insufficient funds check.

You'll frequently see the late fee.

The late fee, as we heard, is intended to cover the potentially late fees from the bank for missing a mortgage payment, but also the cost of processing a single payment separate from any other payments you're receiving that month.

And then there's frequently a fee for serving a formal landlord and tenant notice, a formal pre-eviction notice.

You're only going to see all three of those fees assessed in some fairly specific and I think largely uncommon circumstances, but it's very common to see a lease agreement provide for those three fees as each one may or may not be appropriate.

But your first inclination.

I'm sorry.

Sorry.

Sorry, Council Member Juarez.

I was just going to add to this.

I'm sensing from your your question a little bit.

This kind of to me is about the difference between formal and informal communication.

Right.

So most of our communication with our tenants is going to be, as you described, it's going to be text message.

Right.

That's how most people talk person to person.

I think the difference is when it gets into things that could go down a legal road.

for like a legal process.

At that point, you can't do it electronically.

You can't do it by text.

It has to be formal.

It has to be on paper.

And the city of Seattle has very specific requirements about what has to be on that notice, about the font size, about specific wording that is in the SMC that has to be copied and pasted on those notices.

So you have to meet all of that criteria in order for it to be accepted.

If you were to eventually end up in a court situation, to be able to, you know, start that process.

So if you miss any of that stuff, process and paperwork are the first things that get landlord's cases dismissed.

So you have to do it right from the very first time.

And in terms of service, that also does form, that is done in person.

You have to have somebody visit personally.

If you are not located in Seattle, you have to hire someone to do it.

And if they don't actually put the notice in the hand of each person who's on the lease, then they also have to post it and mail it from the same county.

So there's a whole process that has to be done.

And gas is getting very expensive.

And so I'm noticing that processing fees have gone up significantly simply to account for the cost of transport even.

And the person who delivers those notices then has to be able to file a declaration of service that also will be scrutinized in court.

So this is where, you know, I would prefer to operate very informally.

I'm more comfortable in an informal way, but we're forced to do it this legal way and the formal way or else we are setting ourselves up for failure.

So it's unfortunate.

This is kind of how the landlord-tenant relationship, instead of being a friendly cooperative thing, it's becoming adversarial simply because we have to do those things.

And as a tenant receiving that kind of a notice, that feels really threatening.

then it feels like, oh, you're hanging paper on me.

You're threatening legal action.

Even if it's just a simple, like your rent is going up and totally, you know, business as usual type of a notice.

Did you have a follow up?

No, thank you.

No, thank you, Council Member.

Okay.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you.

I really appreciate the discussion today.

I was listening closely from my office.

And I wanted to come back out because a lot of the things that you said resonated with me.

Some things in particular is the inclusion of guns in situations like this.

What I'm about to say does not say gun violence prevention does not stop crime.

it reduces the impact that it has.

We know when guns are involved in situations, it can take an impulse and create a life-changing moment.

We found this through many different studies regarding suicide prevention and suicide that folks who attempt suicide by means other than guns who don't die often come back and say, I've had a second thought.

The same is true when there are guns involved in situations on our streets, especially with youth who don't have good impulse control.

This is exacerbated in situations that have immense tension and like, sir, you're immense.

You got very exercised because this is very meaningful to you.

It's completely impactful.

Chair's already asked you to hang on.

So I'm just going to finish my comments here.

And then if you'd like to respond, that's fine.

What I'm sharing with you is that when we have guns in situations that are just unstable, it can create an impulse can create that life changing impact.

And so I just want to make this again, plug for extreme risk protection orders.

If you know someone who is either a roommate, a relative or a loved one that is in an unstable situation, we have laws on our books today called the extreme risk protection order that can have those firearms removed.

or prohibit them from buying firearms.

And again, this doesn't stop criminal activity.

It doesn't stop unstable situations.

It just reduces the impact that that moment has.

So just reading from SPD's website, extreme risk protection orders prevent individuals at high risk of harming themselves or others from accessing firearms by allowing family, household members, and police to obtain court order when there is a demonstrated evidence that the person poses a significant danger to themselves or others.

And so I just wanted to elevate that moment because, and not to diminish any of the things that you said, but just with that recognition that when firearms are involved, it escalates the situation so rapidly.

And I'm really sorry that that was your situation with your home that you bought, rented, and then beyond the damage that occurred, when firearms are involved, it makes it really scary.

I see your hand Council Member Herbold, but go ahead and you can respond.

I just want to address one thing.

In my case, the tenant's friend pulled a gun on me.

Nobody knows we're living there.

There's a child molester, robber, killer, no one knows.

There's a drug activities going on.

I cannot prove it.

I have two attorneys working around the clock and they cannot even get the hearing date.

It's been gone over three and a half years.

So there has to be some kind of law.

City of Seattle filed three violation notice, and after that, City of Seattle suing me $1,000 per day because I was not able to evict him.

That's a joke.

First, they say all these notices, junk, this and that, and then say it's up to the landlord.

You know, there has to be some kind of law in a civilized society that Anyone just could barge into somebody's house and can terrorize the whole neighborhood.

Police officers, captains, they came to that property hundreds of times and they say, Riz, our hands are tied.

Fire department came and they say, our hands are tied.

Means nobody can do.

The attorneys told me they are moving to Texas because another attorney told me I'm just a paper pusher.

And the other attorney told me that I cannot even get the hearing date.

So please, you guys have to, and these guys get free attorney from King County Justice Department to represent them.

And I'm spending over $20,000 a bill just to protect the neighborhood and I'm unable to do it.

It's a jungle law.

It's a jungle law.

And people don't have to live like that.

Neighbors, children have the right to come out and play outside in their ground.

You know, this is you guys responsibility because you guys are elected official.

This is why we have your salary.

Okay.

This is why we have you at committee today.

Thank you.

Right.

And that's, and the chair's already in your previous comments asked you to come back.

We're here listening to you.

Like I can't share anything more directly.

The city of Seattle attorney can do anything.

Okay, let's move on.

If I could make a comment just to kind of summarize that, you know, Mr. Smart situation is still ongoing.

It's really extreme, but I think it does demonstrate and also I had a situation that there just aren't really easy solutions for situations that I think common sense would say there should be a way to to put a stop to that, right.

And so that's kind of the space that we're in right now.

It's very hard to protect people who are being impacted, vulnerable people even, from a situation where their own home, themselves and their own home are at risk as well.

So yeah, and there's other situations too that maybe are not quite as extreme, but where we would say like, yeah, there should be a solution for this and there just really isn't an easy one.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold.

Thanks so much.

I'm not seeking to do a back and forth about the content of the presentation, Madam Chair, but I do want to really thank you for your comments at the beginning of the presentation that spoke to the language in the the SDCI rental registration inspection ordinance report.

There have been the 2021 report and the more recent 2022 report.

You quoted from one of those reports and in 2021, they reported that they are concerned that drop in registrations is being misrepresented, suggest that Seattle is losing rental stock.

And then in 2022, they go on to say that the Rio program has been careful to state that current Rio registration data cannot complete a picture of rental market characteristics.

And then they go on to say that they're working with the city auditor's office on further examination of the reduction in registrations.

And there is a, what SDCI determined, describes as a permanent rate of non compliance, meaning non compliance with cities requirement for register rental rental units.

And so the work with the city auditor's office will hopefully reduce.

I think it's important for us to be aware of the uncertainty about non-compliant properties and help us get more to the question of the reduction or lack or growth potentially of small and mom-and-pop I did reference the results of a rental market study conducted by true role for OPCB and STCI.

I think this might be the study that council member Strauss sponsored and it showed a small 3% decrease in mom and pop owned units between 2015 and 2021, and that was from about 35,000 units to about 34,000 units.

And it also showed a 40% increase in small landlord-owned units between 2015 and 2021. That increase was from about 4,250 to about 6,000 units.

So both categories indicate that landlords who own fewer than 10 units total, and together that represents actually a net increase of about 500 units owned by small landlords from 2015 to 2021. So real data is definitely something we need to keep our eyes on, but I'm really looking forward to the additional work from the city auditor's office and the continued conversation here.

So thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for that comment.

You wanted to respond?

Yeah, I just wanted to add a comment about the true role study.

So we do have some concerns about some of the information that is in that report.

I just wanted to note that it only covers the period between 2015 and 2020. So it doesn't take into account any impacts of the pandemic.

or the majority of the new municipal regulations which started to go into effect in 2019 to 2020 towards the end of their study period.

But that didn't really fully impact people like us small landlords until 2020 and beyond.

So I think, and they also didn't account for any of the Rio data.

So there's some real disconnect in some of their data and their conclusions.

And I think it really does warrant further study.

Yeah, I think what you're getting at is that And you also, Council Member Herbold, is that we have pieces of information in different locations from different studies, and I do commend that my colleagues have called for the stakeholder process and the true role report.

I believe that there was a study in 2018, so we have bits and pieces.

And the reason why we should have more dialogue with stakeholders is so that we on a more ongoing basis can have more regular communication about this sector of the housing market.

Do you have a follow-up, Council Member Herbold?

I have a separate question, and this might be something that is being discussed in the I'm curious to know whether or not there.

Conventional wisdom, I think is the term, that late fees incentivize timely payment.

But I'm wondering whether or not there is actual data or studies that demonstrate that.

This council recently eliminated late fees for overdue library books because of the not only the belief that late fees penalized people for nonpayment when the nonpayment is based in their inability to pay, not their lack of willingness to pay, and it was also impacting the use of the library by families with small children.

And in doing so, we've seen positive outcomes from making that choice.

So I would really love to know And again, I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, because this isn't where we're deliberating on the late fee legislation, but would really love to know whether or not there is conclusive evidence that late fees actually do incentivize timely payments, particularly when you're looking at people who are truly living paycheck to paycheck.

and may not be making those decisions to pay their rent late because of choice.

Just really quickly, please just answer the question about whether or not there is data.

Yeah.

So I love the library.

And so I know that they have eliminated late fees, but libraries are a nonprofit and they're also controlled by the government.

Small housing providers are individuals and they're also a small business.

If you kind of, I think a closer comparison would be something like car payments where you are incentivized to pay for your car and to make sure that you pay on time or else it could be repossessed or there's going to be costs for the lender.

And those things are just like attorney Christopher Cutting shared are not just kind of coming out of thin air, right?

Like these late fees have an attachment of paying for an attorney to review the paperwork, make sure that includes everything that is legally mandated from the city and from the state to be in there, the servicing of it.

If the landlord misses their mortgage or insurance payments that they are relying on the rental income for, there is a fee attached, right?

So it's more of a chain and more of a process.

And it's also related to the fact that this is a small business at the end of the day.

Just to clarify, I wasn't asking whether or not the entity charging late fees needs the rent or needs the books returned or anything like that.

I was asking, do late fees work?

Do they result in more timely payments?

And whether or not there's data to show that.

I don't know about data.

I'll just answer from experience.

I think that you know what we've experienced is that yeah, it does work because we don't have to apply them very often.

I've usually our practice has been the first time that a tenant is late, we will forgive that first month late fee.

Absolutely.

And we've only applied late fees, very, very rarely.

It really is for the occasional use.

If somebody is chronically, you know, having financial issues, then we would move on to something else.

I don't think that late fees would apply in that situation at all.

And I don't think it's effective in that situation.

But for the majority of the time, which is, you know, most of our tenants are paying, you know, and are consistent.

It does incentivize on-time payment, and I do think that the amount of the late fee should be commensurate with the thing that it applies to.

Otherwise, it implies that on-time payment of rent is trivial because the fee is trivial.

OK, so I know that when they when my parking ticket goes up after not paying it for a while, maybe that would be a good source of data.

But the point is that it's always good to be able to ask the people who are directly charging why they're charging.

And so that's another benefit of having folks here to answer questions.

So I'm going to go out on a limb here.

Thank you very much for because our next item on the agenda, our presenters are here.

I'm just going to go out on a limb and suggest that we all have a shared interest in in helping these small businesses, these small housing providers to stay in business and continue offering housing.

And because if they go out of business that they are likely to either sell, and then that property gets redeveloped for market rate and, or it goes off the market for some other reason.

The result is that a renter loses their home, a small business loses revenue, perhaps somebody who's been living in town, and depending on this income, loses a source of creating generational wealth.

So the main takeaway for me is that the best thing that we can do to support small providers, these small businesses, is to simply listen.

Start a relationship.

Start talking about the pros and cons of future legislation before it's passed.

Just talk through how it will be implemented.

These are That's just basically good governance to me.

And so I believe that we do have to think in the long term about the most vulnerable people here.

And they're not the property owners, they are ultimately the renters.

And so with that, I just want to say that of all the factors that are driving up the costs of housing in Seattle, all the macroeconomics and land values, et cetera, The one thing we do control as policymakers is our regulatory environment.

So it's good to keep everything in mind and just have a relationship and a conversation.

So thank you very much for this initial opportunity.

And I appreciate you coming here today.

So I'll give you a chance to say anything last.

I'm checking my colleagues here.

Yes.

Yes, President worries.

Oh, thank you Council are thank you Madam Chair for providing this opportunity but I just want to leave on this note that number one.

This isn't a courtroom.

Number two, I don't want to see us in a position where we are demonizing landlords or tenants that this isn't a forum to just say.

every tenant is bad and has done A, B and C, nor is it a forum to say that every landlord imposes unnecessary fees.

And there's this unequal relationship that hurts tenants all the time, every day.

What we do know, Madam Chair, is that, and since particularly those of you who do live in District 5, and citywide.

There was a time back in 16 that we had more landowners than renters, and now we have more renters than landowners, which probably explains why we have more laws protecting renters, which is a lot of that is generational.

A lot of young folks don't want to own homes.

They want to be able to move quickly.

They don't want a car.

It's a whole different generation about what wealth is and building wealth.

But I just want to thank you, Madam Chair, for giving us the opportunity to have a discussion about the real impacts about whether or not a $10 late fee is a good thing or a bad thing?

Is it a good policy or a bad policy?

And who does it affect?

What is the upside?

What is the downside?

And how do we intelligently and honestly have a discussion moving forward what that means for renters and landlords?

So thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for your engagement.

All right, thank you very much.

And we'll move on to the next item on the agenda.

Will the clerk please read it into the record?

Agenda Item Number 2, Council Bill 120532, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department, authorizing the department to enter and participate in the Western Resource Adequacy Program, including the ability to execute additional agreements necessary or convenient to participate in the Western Resource Adequacy Program, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

For briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

All right, while people are coming up, I'll just make a couple remarks, which is that WRAP is a new voluntary resource adequacy planning and compliance program in the Western United States, uniting multiple participating utilities.

And its purpose is to ensure we have enough resources to provide electric service under a range of conditions or scenarios with a sufficient degree of reliability.

Or, as Brendan Kylie describes it in a piece published with uncanny good timing today.

This morning actually in the Seattle Times, think of the rap as a kind of neighborhood pact in which each neighbor shows the others, it has enough resources to meet its own needs plus a little extra for anyone in a pinch.

So City Light briefed this committee on January 11th in anticipation of this legislation.

And now that we have the federal approval for the components in the specifics, this is before us now.

So with that, I'll ask the presenters to introduce yourselves.

And I will note that there were memos circulated from City Light and Eric McConaghy of central staff in advance of this meeting.

Go ahead, please.

Thank you, is this working?

Yes, great.

Thank you so much, council members.

My name is Deborah Smith and I'm the general manager CEO of Seattle City Light.

We're super excited to be here.

I'm gonna have the team introduce themselves here just in a moment, but just as a kickoff, it was kind of exciting to see the article that was in the Times today, did a great job explaining.

I don't really know why we're here.

I think they did such a good job, but that's probably, cut to the chase.

But what I wanted to do is just tie a bow on some of what was written in that article today and say that in the West, we are the only part of the country that does not currently participate in in a regional transmission organization.

So there's two acronyms that get thrown around, RTOs, which are regional transmission organizations, and then there's ISO, independent system operators.

They're really the same thing.

The difference is one is within a state and one is regional, implying multi-state.

So for us here in the West, other than part of California that participates in the CAISO, the California Independent System Operator, we have been kind of going in our own way for a very long time.

And things are changing.

And so markets provide, or an RTO provides three primary things.

One, it provides organized planning functions.

Right now we do have work that happens in WECC.

There's other organizations that are also looking at that.

But in terms of a true organized function with decisions being made about where the next transmission path or route might take place, we don't have that.

Number two, an RTO provides resource planning.

And because in the West we don't have resource planning, we are kind of the first to take this on in a different way.

And so that's what we're going to be talking about today.

And then the last piece, of course, is markets.

And so in the article that was in the Times today, they really talked about the interplay between markets and between resource adequacy.

And the point there is that they're both components of a regional transmission organization, but we're not there yet in the West.

So we are putting things together piece by piece.

It's kind of an exciting time.

And the driver, again, as described really well, is the need to integrate additional renewable intermittent resources into the region.

Those are carbon-free resources, and without a true RTO, bringing the market function, bringing the resource adequacy function together in an organized way in the West, it will be the path forward for us to continue to integrate renewable resources.

So with that, I'm going to turn things over to my partner here, Siobhan, and you can introduce yourself and go down the road.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I am Siobhan Doherty.

I'm the Director of Power Management at Seattle City Light.

Good morning, council members.

I'm Jeff Wolf.

I'm the legal affairs advisor for Seattle City Light.

Good morning, council members.

I'm Mecca Agneo.

I'm the energy innovation resources officer at City Light.

And good morning.

I'm Eric McConaghy.

I'm the council central staff and I cover City Light items, issues, legislation.

Take it away, folks.

Ably too.

Thank you.

Okay, so I can get started.

Thank you.

So today we are going to be asking for your approval to execute an agreement to join the Western Resource Adequacy Program.

We provided a memo and a briefing in January about this program, and the program has now received the federal approval that it needs to move to non-binding operational status.

And in order for us to continue participating in this program, we do need to join it officially through the execution of the WRAP agreement.

We can go ahead to the next slide, please.

So to start out, we want to talk about what is resource adequacy.

So resource adequacy is a regulatory construct to ensure there'll be sufficient resources to meet electricity demand under a broad range of conditions and subject to an acceptable standard of reliability.

It incorporates planning around that to ensure we have those resources and to make sure those resources are available when they're needed to serve load.

As mentioned in the introduction, if we had an organized market in the West, resource adequacy would be part of that market.

However, since there is not an organized market, we've been working to develop the Western Resource Adequacy Program, or WRAP, to provide this function.

This program is not a market, and it does not commit us or predispose us to joining a market in the future.

And it was intentionally created to make sure that's clear.

Go ahead to the next slide.

And so the next thing I wanna talk about is why are we doing this now?

What is the urgency?

There've been a recent number of studies that are demonstrating that there's potential for a resource shortfall across the West during the United States coming up in the middle of this decade.

That's being driven by a couple of different things.

One is the retirement of fossil fuel resources as we move towards decarbonization.

Those are being replaced by intermittent resources.

This is being exacerbated by load growth, the additional use of electricity in the data center and agricultural sectors, as well as the acceleration of electrification in buildings and transportation.

And then in addition to that, we're seeing more extreme weather events and more drought events, which is particularly affecting us in a region where we depend on hydroelectric generation.

Next slide, please.

So to get into what is WRAP, This is the first regional reliability program.

It's a voluntary and industry-initiated effort to coordinate across the region to address the challenges we discussed on the previous slide and to ensure we have sufficient resources to meet our demand.

Currently, each utility is planning individually.

We don't know what our neighbors are doing and they don't know what we're doing.

And this can result in over-procurement or under-procurement.

The RAP seeks to change this by creating a coordinated procurement and planning regime.

We've been involved in the development of this program since the beginning a couple of years ago, and we've played an active role in shaping the development of the program.

It's a voluntary program.

We can choose whether to join or not join, but we think there's benefit to joining around reliability.

And we joined this by signing that RAP agreement that we're here to discuss.

Go on to the next slide, please.

So the primary goal and the primary benefit of this program is enhanced grid reliability.

This program is going to enable the integration of renewable energy and a deeper penetration of renewable energy on the grid, thereby enabling decarbonization.

The program's broad geographic footprint supports this.

Different resources are better suited to different regions.

So we have more solar in the Southwest, more hydro in the Northwest.

Having a broad regional footprint allows us to take advantage of that diversity.

And then the coordination across the region allows us to make sure we're not over or under building, leading to a more efficient resource mix and allowing us to meet our decarbonization goals in a more affordable and efficient way.

In the West, we do have some of the most aggressive decarbonization goals and wrap is supporting the meeting of those goals.

And so we think that participating in this program is going to benefit our customers through better planning, better reliability.

By coordinating with our regional counterparts.

You can go to the next slide please.

So the BRAP is a planning and compliance framework.

It was designed based on examining other types, similar types of programs across the country, identifying those best practices, and then tailoring those to what works best for the West.

There's two primary aspects to the program.

There's the forward showing program and the operations program.

In the forward showing program, we're setting a regional reliability metric and identifying a consistent approach to counting resources.

To comply, each participant will be required to demonstrate we have sufficient capacity to meet that planning metric.

And this is going to happen about seven months in advance of when we need the electricity.

And we're going to make sure that we have enough resources to meet our expected peak load and then what's called a planning reserve margin.

So a little bit of margin on top of that.

The second part of the program is the operational program.

This is the part of the program that allows us to pool and share resources if we encounter tight grid conditions.

This happens at a much nearer term basis to when we need electricity, a week ahead or a day ahead.

And so as we get closer, our load might change, our variable resources might produce more or less than we're expecting.

And so under this program, you may have more or less amount of a surplus or a deficit compared to what you need.

Those participants that have a surplus are going to hold back that surplus and share it with other participants in the program.

Any exchanges like this are bilateral.

They're not part of a market.

It would be us coordinating with participants one-on-one.

Next slide, thank you.

So this is just identifying the 19 participants that have signed on to the program to date.

And I think a couple of things to note is this does show a wide diversity of participants, both regionally, as well as type of participant.

So we have Bonneville Power Administration, we have other public utilities, and we have investor-owned utilities.

And again, this diversity is benefiting us and the reliability of the program.

Next slide.

All right, and then we wanted to go through what the timeline looked like.

There's a couple of different phases to the program.

When the tariff was approved in February by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the program entered what's called the operational non-binding phase.

This non-binding phase gives us and the program the opportunity to procure any resources we might need to meet the WRAP requirements, and it also provides the program time to develop metrics, and specific operational parameters for the program.

In 2025, the program is entering the transitional phase, which means some participants will choose to enter the binding program.

Each participant can choose when to enter the binding program, and we have up to three years to make that choice.

In 2028, the program will become fully binding on all participants.

During the non-binding phase, we would participate in the forward showings, identifying what resources we have available.

We would pay WRAP administrative costs, and we'd have the right to vote on stakeholder committees to help continue to shape the program.

The administrative costs have been included in our budget and are estimated at just under $300,000.

We've currently indicated that we plan to enter the binding phase as late as possible in 2028. And again, this gives us the opportunity to develop our resources, make sure we understand how the program affects us.

When we do enter the binding phase, the WRAP obligations become binding, and we could be subject to program charges for not complying with those obligations.

We can also withdraw from the program at any time with two years notice.

And that two-year notice allows the program to make adjustments to account for the exit of a participant.

Can we go to the next slide, please?

So looking at what this ordinance does, it authorizes Seattle City Lights General Manager to execute the RAP agreement and any additional documents that are needed for participation in the RAP.

As we talked about, once we execute that wrap agreement, we gain access to the program benefits, including the ability to participate in and share resources with members.

And more immediately, we have the ability to become involved in the program implementation and the decision making that's occurring during this transitional phase.

And then additionally, we have the, this ordinance gives us the ability to continue participating as long as it is seen prudent by the general manager of Seattle City Light.

Thank you.

Yep, sorry, questions.

There's a slide that says, oh, there we go.

Thank you very much.

Central staff, Eric McConaghy, do you have anything to add?

No, I think the on the last slide there were a couple of bullets there that I think sort of speak for themselves.

I didn't speak to directly.

It's just good to note that this is a sort of a once and for all ordinance that allows the city light.

The general manager or a designated to participate in the governance of rap representing city light, among the other.

Providers that are involved there, so that's that sort of 3rd bullet involving agreements and amendments.

And there's a ratified confirmed clause here because the timing that city light is looking at, excuse me. for beginning participation would be at the end of this month.

So should this pass today and then take final action with council next week, there's a window in there where a city like with that confirmation and that assurance would like to begin to participate in wrap, but that would be before the 30 days pass for the bill to be a real life law.

So that's what the ratify and confirm clause does.

It allows for that activity.

So I didn't mean to steal your thunder, but I just thought I would point those out.

That's it.

That's all I have to add.

Thank you.

And I think reading between the lines there, you might have been explaining why we're doing what I don't like to do, which is have legislation before us and voted out on the same day, hopefully, possibly.

But we are under a timeline that was not set by us.

That's right.

The federal government.

Yep.

City Light has, I think, helped Uh, me and, uh, the, the chair understand, um, the, the dynamic there, the deadline they're looking at and, um, And also just pointing out that there was the, the briefing in January and some, some background work that happened within the Miranda.

And, um, so that, that helps to support that, but I'll say it out loud and in public that the council does like to have two meetings on items of legislation and committee.

It's just sort of, uh, both a custom and a practice that helps things stay open to the public.

So just to underline what you said.

Okay, with that process note, just let me ask a question, which is, what is the downside?

This seems like to use the colloquial, a no brainer, but you're telling me that the West has not had this and that you've had leadership in the formation of this program.

Am I misunderstanding?

Yeah, so the West has not had it yet.

I think because we're running into some of these scarcity items that we identified, that is the reason that this has been coming about over the past couple of years.

as long with our goals for decarbonization.

When we evaluate the downside compared to the upside, we think the upside vastly outweighs any downside risk.

There is an administrative cost to participating in the program.

And if we don't comply with the program's requirements, there are financial fees.

That's obviously not our intention.

And part of the reason why we're taking a long time to join the binding phase is so that we can make sure that we are set up correctly to be able to meet all of those binding requirements.

Thank you.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for your presentation and for briefing me last week.

It really was very helpful.

And Chair, just for the record to state, we did have this in January.

I'm comfortable, personally comfortable also, because I've had two private meetings about this on top of all of my geek level interests.

So I know that it absolutely meets the unsaid rule of having items in committee twice.

really well done.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you so much and Councilmember Strauss, I appreciate you highlighting the the advantages of having briefings prior to a committee meeting.

I appreciate Seattle City Light reaching out to me last Wednesday and offering a briefing and apologize that I did not get it scheduled.

So I'm about to ask a question that might have been covered either in the previous committee briefing or I might ask did I have I just want to make sure that I'm on the same page.

And in office.

Really important to me to a little bit more in depth on.

Authorization of the ordinance.

I What I'm curious about is, one, does that mean that the general manager has the option to withdraw up through 2026 without the need for any additional Council action and.

And I ask that because most agreements the council authorizes are to enter into the agreement only.

And then secondly, would love a little bit more information.

And again, apologize if you delved into this already, but what does it mean to be within the range of prudent utility practices?

Would love to get some sort of maybe real world possible examples of that.

Thank you.

So maybe I'll take a stab at this and then we have our legal affairs advisor as well who may want to opine on the ordinance itself.

But I think to maybe take the questions backwards, Council Member, the range of prudent utility practices sort of encompasses the kinds of things really that that we review from a reliability perspective, from an operational perspective, from a planning perspective, right?

You know, there are practices and standards that are followed by folks in our industry that we sort of evaluate ourselves and benchmark ourselves against.

I think it is worthy of noting as well, again, this tariff, like things like it, has been reviewed and approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

which oversees sort of the justness and reasonableness of these kinds of tariffs.

And they have found it to be within that range of practices.

So that's maybe just a couple of notes on that.

And then to answer your question, I believe you are correct that the sort of the decision to remain or exit the program would be incorporated within the ordinance as it stands.

A follow-up on that, if I may?

Yes.

I guess I'm still struggling with the purpose of that language.

The purpose of the language, as long as the GM believes it is within the range of prudent utility practices.

If the agreement is only to authorize, say, like to participate in the RAP, that suggests that the GM can decide to not participate in the RAP.

what is the purpose of this additional language?

Because it doesn't have to come back to the council to direct the manager to withdraw if the RAP is not within the range of, is not acting within the range of prudent utility practices.

It gives the GM the flexibility so that the GM can make the decision based upon what's going on with the RAP at the time.

And we as an organization will be observing how the RAP is being carried out and administered.

And if we don't have the confidence that it's being administered appropriately, but the GM has the flexibility to make the decision without having to go back to council.

And that's, that's precisely my point.

VM has the flexibility to make the decision without coming back to council without the language.

Because we're only approving, entering into the agreement.

We're not, there's no requirement to come back to council.

So anyways, I'll take my question offline.

I'm satisfied.

with the policy objectives of the agreement.

I think it's important that we move forward, and I don't want to hold us up on questions that I should have asked beforehand.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

If there are no other questions, I must move this legislation.

So I move that the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120532. Is there a second?

Second.

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the council bill.

Any further questions or comments?

Go ahead.

I just want to say hi to Jeff.

Hey, Jeff.

Mr. Wolf, former law partner.

Hi, Debra, how are you?

Yeah, you can see how I'm doing.

Good to see you, buddy.

You too.

I have to note that for the extensive reminders about ideal process, I don't want it to get lost that your leadership is key here as the utility that was an impetus behind what I believe is extremely prudent for utilities across the Western region, because we actually all, we do rely on each other.

And it's better to know what our neighboring jurisdictions are doing so that we don't over or under invest, which end up hurting our rate payers.

So I recognize your efforts and your leadership on this.

And I also, you mentioned this, Deborah, in the beginning, but you did emphasize that this will enable us to better and more efficiently use our renewable sources of energy, integrate, and that can perhaps, that can help with future production also.

So it helps with the renewableness of our portfolio.

Are there any other comments or questions?

Just maybe one council member if I may, because I do want to really appreciate your comment about leadership and we know that that is one of the things that this council in our communities that we serve past the utility to do, and be as a leader in the region in accepting the filing I'll just read really briefly from the, the FERC order.

They say, in accepting the WPP's filing, we acknowledge the efforts of the diverse set of stakeholders involved in developing the WRAP proposal, and we support continued efforts at coordination in the Western interconnection.

And I think it is worthy of note, right, that the leadership, particularly the leadership of our GM CEO, Deborah Smith, in the region and the relationships that were built are incredibly important to the shared energy future that we're all trying to build.

So thank you for that acknowledgement.

Thank you.

Okay, if there are no other questions, clerk, would you please call the roll?

Council President Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Chair Nelson?

Aye.

Four in favor, zero opposing.

Thank you very much, everyone, and thank you very much for the presentation.

The bill passes, and it will be, oh, go ahead.

Excuse me, go ahead.

Oh, you can finish.

I was gonna.

No, I was just fumbling all by myself, so take it away.

Fair enough, fair enough.

I just wanted to take a moment to thank you and the team, and Mecca, it's always a pleasure to get to see you.

CEO Smith, what an honor it is to get to see you this morning.

I wanna take this moment to just I like that when success is occurring and when things are working well, no one notices because everything's functioning as it should.

And success is not by chance.

It is by hard work, collaboration, cooperation.

and serving the public.

And what I've got to witness over the last five years under your leadership, CEO, is a very stable organization that had gone through a fair amount of instability for quite some time.

And in my first term in office, I have had the pleasure of just getting to watch City Light come before us with crisp, clean, clear objectives, presentations, and outcomes that are being achieved.

And this is not by accident.

And it's also, again, when things are working well, no one notices because they're functioning as they should be.

And so I just wanted to take this moment since we're sitting across essentially the table from each other for highlighting that because I think that so often when things are functioning as they should, it gets lost.

And this team sitting before me is one of those teams that is bringing success for the basics of governance for our city.

You're literally keeping our lights on.

Thanks.

Thank you very much.

And thank you for noting that.

Sometimes I say it's like housework.

Nobody notices unless it's not done.

So thank you very much for bringing this forward.

And this concludes the, well, first of all, let me say that this will come before council for final consideration on March 28th.

So Council Member 120532 has been recommended to pass.

So thank you very much and have a good rest of your day.

Thank you.

Okay, if there are, so this concludes the, oh yeah, this concludes the March 22nd meeting of the Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee.

Our next meeting is on April 12th, 2023 at 9.30 a.m.

It is 11.34.

Thank you very much.

I'm requesting to be excused on April 12th.

Thank you very much for letting us know.

Bye, everybody.

Thanks.

Thank you.