Committee on Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities 81522

The meeting of the transportation and Seattle public utilities committee will come to order.

The time is 935 a.m.

I'm Alex Peterson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Herbold?

Councilmember Morales?

Here.

Councilmember Sawant?

Councilmember Strauss?

Chair Peterson?

Present.

Three present.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sawant and Strauss are excused.

Approval of the agenda.

If there's no objection, today's proposed agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda's adopted.

Just wanted to take a moment to, this is a complicated agenda.

I wanna thank my committee clerk, Hannah Thorsen, for her hard work on this.

Every agenda is sort of a small miracle to pull it all together, so really appreciate our committee clerks throughout the city council.

Of course, I've got the best one.

All right, so the chair's report.

Good morning and welcome to the Transportation Seattle Public Utilities Committee.

Today we have five items on our agenda, four of which are for a possible vote, and one of which will have a public hearing.

First on the agenda, Councilman 120639 accepts two low-interest loans from the State Department of Ecology for the South Thornton Natural Drainage System Project in Northeast Seattle.

The second item is Clerk File 314496, which sounds boring, but it's actually very exciting.

It would authorize the future vacation of a portion of the alley at Northeast 45th Street between Roosevelt Way Northeast and 11th Avenue Northeast, where the tiny home village, Rosie's Village, currently resides.

By allowing the reconfiguration of a portion of that alley, a future nonprofit developer to be selected by Sound Transit and the city's Office of Housing will be able to build more units of permanent low-income housing.

I hope to see more than enough permanent units serving extremely low income residents to exceed the number of tiny homes that Rosie's Village has been providing.

This item has a technical amendment to correct the title of one of the adjacent streets.

from north to northeast.

This item will also have a public hearing.

As this project is in District 4, my district, and we have a shortage of low-income housing throughout the city, if we have just a few speakers at the public hearing and if committee members are comfortable, we may suspend the rules to vote on this item the same day as its public hearing.

Third, we will hear Council Bill 120625, which is a package of updates to traffic safety automated camera enforcement from the Seattle Department of Transportation, including authorization to issue warnings for the first infractions and confirming the fees for the relatively new enforcement authority from the state.

We first heard this item in our committee on August 1st, and now it's back with a technical amendment and possible vote.

Fourth, we'll hear Council Bill 120638, which relates to the revenues from the new speed zone authority.

Colleagues, as you know, 50% of the automated enforcement revenue for the new authority from the state, that goes to the Cooper Jones fund for statewide bicycle safety.

So this Council Bill 120638 is essentially an amendment to the previous item on our agenda, but it's in the form of a council bill because the fiscal policy is under a different section of the Seattle Municipal Code.

So to reflect an interest we were hearing from committee members at our previous meeting, it would direct the rest of the money from this new authority to vision zero physical street improvements to improve safety.

Again, this would be redirecting the revenues for only the new camera authority from the state.

This does not adjust to anything in the 2023 approved budget or the 2024 endorsed budget.

Fifth and finally, we will hear the annual report on the Seattle transit measure from the team at SDOT and from leadership serving on the volunteer transit advisory board.

All right, colleagues, we'll go to public comment.

Just so you know, we have just one public commenter and they're online for the regular agenda and then we have a public commenter on the public hearing regarding the partial vacation or the alley vacation.

At this time, so I'll give these standard instructions for public comment and they'll apply to both the regular public comment and the public hearing.

I'm not going to talk a lot here, but we'll kill two birds with one stone.

At this time, we'll open the public comment period for the Transpatient Seattle Public Utilities Committee.

For our hybrid meeting, we'll have people sign up to give public comment both online and in person.

Again, so far we just have one online for the regular and one online for the public hearing.

And I will open and close the public hearing later.

Don't worry, I'll do that appropriately.

But here are the instructions for public comment.

Each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I'll call on the speakers one at a time.

If you've not yet registered to sign up to speak but you'd like to, you can do so before the end of this public comment period by going to the council's website at Seattle.gov forward slash council or by using the sign-in sheet near the public comment microphone toward the front of this council chamber.

Remote speakers, once I call a speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt of you have been unmuted, will be the speaker's cue that it's their turn to speak and the speaker must press star six to begin speaking.

For all public commenters, please begin speaking by stating your name and the item you are addressing.

As a reminder, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda or to our committee's oversight responsibilities.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

Once you hear the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comment.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.

If you're providing public comment remotely, once you have completed your comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

The regular public comment period for this committee meeting is now open, and we'll begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six before you begin speaking.

And the first speaker is Gordon Padelford.

Good morning.

Good morning, council members.

My name's Gordon Padelford.

I work for Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, and I'm here to comment on the automated enforcement legislation.

We sent you all a letter last evening Hopefully you've had a chance to review it, but I will hit the highlights now just in case you haven't.

First of all, I just want to thank the committee for moving first-time violations to be a warning.

That'll be really helpful because oftentimes there's not a repeat offense.

And what we really want to do here is change behavior.

And secondly, I want to thank council for the second bill of moving funding from these future speed cameras in Division Zero.

That's really critical and ties back into the other points I want to make.

which is that enforcement really should be a last resort, and SDOT should be pushed to physically change the street design to keep people safe in the most effective and equitable way possible.

And to that end, we'd really like to see, as this moves forward, and we have a year or so before these cameras are actually implemented, council really providing oversight and direction to SDOT that these speed cameras should follow physical speed reduction You know, examples include speed cushions on arterials.

Those are approved by the Federal Highway Administration for use on arterials, even on emergency routes.

Those can be implemented quickly.

There's some questions about how do we bring those to scale, but that's the kind of thing that, you know, Seattle voters and residents really want to see the city doing.

Secondly, making sure that these automated enforcement cameras essentially work themselves into obsolescence.

Because if we're not seeing that, there's an indication that the street is still not safe if they're continuing to generate significant revenue.

And thirdly, there's a number of issues around fairness, transparency, and just making sure that Seattleites feel that these are fair and effective way.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And that concludes our public commenters for the regular agenda.

We will, when we get to agenda item two, we'll call on public commenters who are here for the public hearing.

All right.

Will the clerk please read the full title of the first agenda item into the record?

Agenda item one, council bill 120639, an ordinance relating to acceptance of funding from non-city sources, authorizing the general manager and CEO of Seattle Public Utilities to accept specified loans to partially finance costs related to the construction of the South Thornton Natural Drainage System Project and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

Council Bill 120369 will accept two loans from the State Department of Ecology for the Thornton Natural Drainage System Project.

As I understand it, we'll learn more about this, but as I understand it, the first loan has a below market bargain interest rate of only 1.6%, and the second is a forgivable loan.

And the city could save up to $5.7 million by accepting these loans.

as compared to traditional bond financing that would have otherwise been used.

So, before I turn it over to the presenters from Seattle Public Utilities, I wanted to thank Brian Goodnight from our Council Central staff for his review of the legislation.

While Brian is out of the office today, my office confirmed with him that he has no concerns about this legislation.

And with that, I'll turn it over to our presenters from Seattle Public Utilities.

Welcome.

Thank you, Chair Peterson and members of the committee.

I'll lead off here.

As you know, President Biden almost two years ago signed the bipartisan infrastructure law.

The legislation, among other things, includes $50 billion to strengthen our nation's drinking water, stormwater, and wastewater system.

This is the single largest investment in clean water the federal government has ever made.

SPU and other city departments are making use of these infrastructure funds to offset local costs for our taxpayers and our ratepayers.

And one such project is the South Thornton Natural Drainage Project, which would construct green stormwater systems at four sites in the South Thornton Creek Basin in Northeast Seattle.

This legislation would authorize SPU to accept approximately $11.9 million in federal funding through the Washington Department of Ecology.

With me today is Bob Spencer, who has been instrumental in getting federal funding for multiple projects in Seattle to describe how these funds would be used.

And at this point, I'll hand it off to Bob.

Thank you.

I'll start my presentation.

Can everyone see that?

Yes.

All right.

Is that still displaying correctly?

It's in your presenter mode.

Okay.

How about now?

There we go.

Great.

All right.

Well, my name is Bob Spencer.

I'm the line of business representative with the Green Stormwater Infrastructure Unit of Seattle Public Utilities Drainage and Wastewater Division.

And the purpose of this legislation before you today is to authorize SPU to accept $11.9 million flow and no interest loans from the Washington Department of Ecology to construct our South Thornton Natural Drainage System project.

This is located in the Thornton Creek Watershed, one of the largest watersheds in the city, and it's in the northeast part of the city.

Our project is being constructed in the southern part of the watershed, and you can see we have four sites here.

Three of them are adjacent to elementary schools.

We'll start construction in mid-October of this year.

We'll do 43 bioretention cells.

You may also know of them as roadside rain gardens or natural drainage systems.

We'll be doing that in 12 blocks in the watershed.

We will control 60 acres of impervious area and over 13 acres of effective impervious area.

And this project is part of our consent decree obligations to the federal government under the Clean Water Act and addresses water quality in the receiving water bodies of Thornton Creek, Lake Washington, and Puget Sound.

You're probably familiar with our natural drainage systems work.

You've heard of C Streets, Broadview, Delridge, Pinehurst.

We have them all over the city and we've been installing these since the turn of the century.

These bioretention cells are roadside rain gardens, clean the polluted water flows from the impervious surfaces surrounding them.

into an assemblage of adapted plants and spongy soils, which hold the water and clean it up before releasing it into Thornton Creek, Lake Washington, and eventually Puget Sound.

Details of the loan, we have almost $9 million of our standard loan, which is at the very favorable interest rate of 1.3% with a 3% administrative fee, resulting in 1.6% effective interest over the 30-year term of the loan.

The forgivable principal loan, which is given to us under the Emerging Contaminants Fund, is almost $3 million, and that is money we do not have to pay back.

The estimated total costs for completing this project are $21 million, with our construction costs estimated at $11.6 million.

So this funding should cover our construction costs for the project.

The total savings estimated to the utility versus conventional bond financing are $5.7 million.

Are there any questions?

Thank you for that presentation, and committee members, I did want to let you know, you can see that this project is mainly in District 5, and we did check with the Council President's Office, and they are comfortable moving ahead with this today.

And I do want to thank SPU for Seizing the opportunity, recognizing this opportunity, taking the initiative to apply for these loans to save rate payers so much money with below market and no interest loans and the forgivable loan.

It's very helpful to find these savings.

So appreciate that.

Colleagues, any comments or questions about this, approving these acceptance of these loans?

All right.

All right, well, we'll go ahead and take care of this quickly.

Council members, I'll go ahead and make the motion to approve this.

Council members, I now move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120639, item one on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the Council Bill.

Are there any final comments or questions before we move to a vote?

All right.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to pass the council bill?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Three in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation to pass the council bill will be sent to the September 5 City Council meeting.

Thanks to the SPU crew.

Thank you.

All right, will the clerk please read the full title of the second agenda item into the record?

Agenda item two, clerk file 314496, petition of the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority for the vacation of a portion of the alley in the block bounded by Northeast 45th Street, Roosevelt Way Northeast, Northeast 47th Street, and 11th Avenue North at 1000 Northeast 45th Street for public hearing, briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

Colleagues, we last heard about this item in our committee in July of 2022, and here we are where we can approve this partial, this vacation of a partial part of the alley on Sound Transit lot in my District 4. It's located at Northeast 45th Street between Roosevelt Way Northeast and 11th Avenue Northeast.

That's currently housing Rosie's village tiny home village of 35 tiny homes and this is enabling this reconfiguration of the alley and Sound Transit is back here today for our formal approval of that partial alley vacation and to present the rationale which I fully support It's exciting because just by reconfiguring the alleyway to empty on to 11th Avenue Northeast will enable dozens of more units of permanent low-income housing at this future transit-oriented development.

I really want to see a sufficient number of extremely low-income units to more than offset the 35 tiny homes temporarily being provided on the lot by Rosie's Village.

And we do have a technical amendment to correct the title to say 11th Avenue Northeast instead of 11th Avenue North.

And Lish Whitson from our Council Central staff will walk us through that after the presentation.

In terms of the public hearing that's required, I think we'll go ahead and do that in advance of this, and that way we can be informed by that by any public commenters.

I do want to thank Lish Whitson of our central staff for his memo and his review of this legislation, this package.

Lish, do you have any opening comments before we open the public hearing?

Uh, just very briefly, um, this is an unusual vacation application because you do not have a public benefit package.

Uh, that's coming before you today.

Um, the intent is to vacate the alley in order to facilitate the, the, um.

Uh, request for proposals that would, um, attract.

A, um, strong, affordable housing developer for the site.

And that future developer would come back to Council to present a public benefit package.

So under this one, you're mainly looking at the effects of moving the alley and removing the current location of the alley.

And with the future promise that public benefit package will come with the future developer.

Thank you.

And we will be having a PowerPoint presentation in a moment with several good visuals to show us how the alley would be reconfigured.

Well, let's go ahead and open the public hearing.

The public hearing rules and procedures are similar to our regular public comment period, which I, so I don't need to repeat them in full here.

And looking online, there's nobody here present at city council, but we do have one speaker online.

So, I'll go ahead and open the public hearing on clerk file 314496. It's now open.

The speaker will have two minutes to speak, and we'll go ahead and call on that first speaker.

So Josh Castle, good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Josh Castle, and I'm the Community Engagement Director for the Low-Income Housing Institute.

I'm testifying today in support of the alley vacation.

and in favor of deeply affordable housing proposed at the site for which Rosie's Tiny House Village is located.

I wanted to start off by thanking Council Member Peterson for your support of Rosie's Village, along with our friends at Sound Transit and the City of Seattle for allowing the village at the site.

Also grateful to the neighbors, businesses, volunteers, advocates, reaching other outreach workers, the terrific community advisory council members, and my colleagues at Lehigh for the success of the site in keeping the well-being, support, and empowerment of residents always at the core.

Rosie's Village serves around 40 people experiencing homelessness at any one time in 35 heated and insulated tiny houses that allow privacy, dignity, and safety in a 24-7 staff program with on-site case management.

Case managers work with residents to help them obtain permanent housing, employment, education, treatment and recovery programs, and more.

Since Rosie's opened in late 2021, we have been able to move about 40 people into permanent housing representing close to 50% of all exits, a much higher exit rate than many other shelter programs.

Lehigh supports the alley vacation, and we particularly support the proposal to include deeply affordable units that are 0% to 30% AMI.

It's important to keep in mind that a new low-income housing building at the site would be replacing crucial enhanced shelter capacity, and it's especially essential that these housing units are kept at deeply affordable rents.

The site is also in a terrific location, and ideally located for workers who receive a low wage.

In any facility developed here, therefore should be keeping the facility as ideal as possible for very low cost, stable, permanent housing for these individuals.

Thank you again for your support of this and appreciate your time today.

Thank you.

Colleagues, I'm just going to check the list of speakers one last time here.

Okay, that concludes our speakers for, our list of speakers for this public hearing.

So, the public hearing is now closed for Clerk File 314496. And I do want to, before we turn it over to our presenters, I do want to thank the Many supportive neighbors and organizations who have supported Rosie's Village will continue to support it because they'll still be there for a while here.

This is really early in the process, this partial alley vacation.

And I want to thank those who are also eager to build a permanent low-income housing in the heart of the University District within walking distance to frequent high-capacity public transit.

So let's go ahead and turn it over to our presenters.

We've got sort of the dream team here from SDOT and Sound Transit.

We also have the Design Commission in the house.

And of course, Liz Schwitzen from our Council Central Staff.

Who will be taking the lead on this?

Is that Beverly?

Well, I'll do kind of a quick intro into what we're going to present.

We did think with this unusual project, it might be most helpful if Sound Transit went through the PowerPoint presentation, since it's a little bit different.

And then I will have some comments on the process and recommendation.

and Michael Jenkins will have some comments on what the design commission looked at.

Of course, Lish will add anything whenever I forget something, he always covers it.

But we did think with this, we'd start with, we have Tim, I think is going to do the presentation.

and Thatcher.

Abel is here.

I'm not sure if he's speaking, but let's just go next to Thatcher and Tim, and we'll go through the PowerPoint and then close out with staff comments and committee questions.

Thank you very much, Beverly, for that overview, and welcome, Tim Thatcher and Councilmember Pacheco.

Nice to see you, as always.

Really appreciate.

Colleagues, there's been a lot of work on this concept, not only the creative, collaboration to get Rosie's Village on this site that's been very productive since 2021, but also thinking about the ultimate goal to build permanent affordable housing.

So I want to thank Sound Transit for their patience and creativity and collaboration on this.

Good morning.

Good morning, Chair Peterson and Council Members.

I'm Thatcher M. Bowden, Director of Community Development at Sound Transit.

It's really exciting to be before the committee today to discuss an opportunity for both Sound Transit and the City of Seattle to work together to create affordable housing in the U District.

I also want to thank Council Member Peterson for his efforts over the last few years on opening Rosie's Village and supporting our planning efforts here for the redevelopment of this property.

Sound Transit is a unique entity.

as the state of Washington has not only provided us the opportunity to prioritize affordable housing on our property, but also the ability to reduce the price of land to facilitate affordable housing, which is extremely important in very high priced real estate areas like the U District.

Our agency has approached that with intentionality.

seeking to partner with local jurisdictions to align both policy and resources to these properties.

Our agency has over 3,100 housing units in various stages of production with our development partners, with over 2,300 of those as affordable housing units.

Many of those are located in the city of Seattle, and many have had the past financial support from the Seattle Office of Housing.

And that type of partnership is something that we're working with the Office of Housing on right now for this property, too.

But today we're here to talk about an alley vacation.

Our board has approved us offering this property at a significant discount in order to facilitate affordable housing outcomes.

We have a financial pre-commitment from the Office of Housing to help build it.

And today we're reviewing with you an opportunity for the council to commit to rearranging the alley to increase the amount of affordable housing and improve pedestrian safety.

by pre-committing to this kind of rearrangement, the council can join us and signal the intentionality the council has to increasing affordable housing at the property for the benefit of future proposers who will be looking at, you know, to design and try to move as quickly as possible to deliver affordable housing in the new district.

So with that, I'm joined today by Tim Bates, who's managing our TAB project for Sound Transit, and he's going to walk you through the specifics of our petition.

Thanks.

Thanks, Thatcher, and I will bring up my presentation and walk you through.

All right, so good morning, Chair Peterson and council members.

I'm Tim Bates again, and I'll walk you through, hopefully briefly, this presentation to introduce the site and the context and the impact that we think the alley vacation would have on affordable housing here on the property.

So to give a little bit of context here, as you know, we're seeking this partial alley vacation for a site that's really in the core of the U district.

So we're here, as you can see, illustrated in pink.

Our site is situated between I-5, the Ave, UW.

It's got connections down to the Cut, up to Ravenna.

It's really a very central location and a major crossroads, and has direct connections to lots of other nearby parts of the city.

So it's an exciting, exciting location.

And it also is, as was mentioned, just a few blocks from our U District light rail station.

So a great transit-oriented site, and we're really excited to be able to pursue affordable housing here on this property.

So, to characterize our request here, we're seeking to vacate this portion of the alley.

And realign it to 11th Avenue Northeast.

As is illustrated here, so this graphic shows in pink, the area of the alley would seek to vacate and in yellow.

The area, a conceptual diagram of the area that we'd expect that realignment to 11th to take place.

Now, this is a proof of concept and the final design of that realignment will be subject to approval by a stop, but trying to understand what that space would look like.

That's our, that's our concept there.

And all of this really is to further the goal of affordable housing and to improve the number of units that we can deliver here.

And we do that by consolidating the property into one building site.

So, doing that not only increases the efficiency of the building, but also potentially unlocks the opportunity for for a taller building here and those more units.

It also has some other benefits, including improving the pedestrian environment and eliminating a.

Conflict between pedestrians and automobiles at that current entry point of the alley onto 45th, which, as you know, is 1 of the very busiest corridors here in this in this area.

As Thatcher said, we are working in partnership with the Office of Housing to jointly seek a development partner for the site.

That combines our land with OHS funding resources.

Our overall goal is for this project to be a 100% affordable project, including ground floor commercial and community serving uses.

As was mentioned, we haven't issued an RFP yet or selected a development partner.

So this is early in the process.

But in talking to the affordable housing development community, we really heard loud and clear that achieving this milestone of this conditional vacation would really help in the proposal process.

To facilitate proposals that actually might consider the vacation so that's that's why we've been really eager to get through this process and been working so diligently with all the great staff from and other divisions of the city to find a path to doing this.

So we really appreciate that work.

Phil Kleisler, CoB, ESF-14): As noted, you know, there are a number of things that we would will expect a future developer to do, and those include some additional Community engagement putting together a public benefits package and then ultimately delivering the realigned alley.

Phil Kleisler, CoB, ESF-14): So.

Phil Kleisler, CoB, ESF-14): Thatcher talked a little bit about this, but since our last conversation with this committee in July of last year, we have been working on laying the groundwork for the affordable housing project itself.

Phil Kleisler, CoB, ESF-14): And, as I mentioned, our board has authorized us to offer the site for affordable housing and we are again planning to do that in partnership with oh.

We have defined some goals for the project.

The goals are how we, in our RFP processes, how we tell affordable housing developers what we want to see on the project as part of a competitive proposal.

And we thought we'd give you just a quick high-level overview here of the goals.

So these are goals that we've put together based on Sound Transit's requirements, our community engagement work to date, and, of course, the Office of Housing's policies and priorities.

So again, we're seeking a fully affordable project here.

We're seeking a project that would be affordable to a range of household incomes, including units for those earning less than 30% AMI, area median income.

Uh, and, you know, in addition, we're looking to see a range of unit sizes, including family size units.

And we're hopeful to see proposals that maximize the feasible density of the site.

So, again, having this vacation as an option is 1 of the ways taking advantage of that is 1 of the ways that a proposal might do that.

And, of course, we want to see those community serving uses and retail that would support the vitality of the neighborhood as well as making improvements in the pedestrian realm.

And, of course, meeting a sustainability standard, which is standard for all of our projects as well as projects.

So, again, that's a high level overview, but just to give you a flavor of really what we're hoping to see on this project when we get a developer on board.

So to give you a little more detail on the site itself, this is just under an 18,000 square foot property.

And it's, again, located in that core of the U district and in the core of the rezone, which allows for very dense development, up to potentially 320 feet of height.

So lots of potential there if you can make the other code requirements work.

You can see that the existing uses here is we've got that in different colors.

We've got other residential uses.

We've got office and retail uses.

And we have some auto oriented uses as well in the neighborhood, including some auto dealerships and some strip retail and parking.

So neighborhood very much lots of development activity proposed in the area and that transition from the reason really underway.

I wanted to highlight a few other high-rise projects that are proposed in the area, the immediate vicinity of our site, and most notably is the 1X Towers project, which is located here on the number 1. So that's immediately to the northwest of our property line, and that project proposes two towers on the site, and so that will affect what can be built on our property as we look at going higher on the development.

We'll talk more about that in a minute, but just wanted to give that a little bit extra context there that there's a lot of other development being proposed as this neighborhood really takes advantage of the development capacity.

That's the reason we're allowed.

Now let's move on to just giving you a little bit of visual reference here.

Our site here on the left, you can see this is looking from the corner of 45th and 11th, so looking kind of to the Northwest at our property.

And you can see sort of in the middle is the alley itself.

It's quite narrow today.

It's only 10 feet wide.

And behind, you can see this building bridges at 11th, which is a multifamily building.

And beyond it is the existing Mazda dealership, which is the site of that 1 X towers project that's in the permitting process.

So, again, to give you a little bit more of that context.

And then when we look at these other thumbnails, it gives you a little bit of sense of the development context around the site.

So here, the next sort of in the top middle, we've got a view looking northwest on Roosevelt Way.

You can see our property is just over here on the edge.

And you can see on the west side of the street, some retail frontage, the AMC movie theater, the UW-Comocean Innovation Center behind it.

So again, sort of a mix of densities and a mix of uses.

When we look at the top right photo, that's looking north on 11th.

Our site here is located just on the left side of the screen.

You can see bridges at 11 behind.

Across the street, another commercial and ground floor retail building, some parking behind, and some multifamily residential even behind that as well.

The center bottom photo is looking east on 45th across the 11th intersection.

So again, you can see that same commercial and retail building.

And then on the south side, you can see another commercial and retail building.

So you can see, again, a lot of commercial uses here sort of reflecting the mix that exists and supports all the activity in the area.

The final photo on the bottom right is actually looking from the alley itself, looking south across 45th.

So you can see there's a gas station there, some other commercial buildings, and another UW building behind.

So again, a context that is lots proposed, but it's still in transition, I guess I would say at this point.

So with that, now we're gonna take a look at what we would expect as the impact of the vacation.

What is this gonna do for us?

So first we'll look at buildable area.

And when we take a closer look, we can see that in fact, when you look at the square footages, the vacation versus not vacation scenarios are pretty much the same buildable area.

But it's really in the configuration that we see the greater opportunity with that realignment of the vacation realignment option.

So, when we look at that, no vacation option on the left, you can see an alley that, in fact, would be need to be widened to meet city standards.

So that'd be widened to 20 feet.

And we've noted here sort of two building floor plates to try to illustrate the impact.

So on the left, we've got a floor plate that runs for the whole length of our property, but different portions could achieve different things.

So on the north end, Due to that 1X towers project just across our property line, we'd really only be able to build mid-rise there up to, say, 7 or 8 stories due to the tower separation requirements in code.

On the south end of that, there is a smaller area that could potentially be built taller as a high-rise project.

However, it's quite a small floor plate, and so it wouldn't be an efficient floor plate for a high-rise building.

On the east side, again, because it's such a small floor plate, what's likely there is also a mid rise building and it's overall less efficient because you're duplicating the building cores and the access and you're basically building 2 separate buildings.

So they need all the full suite of elements to make a building work.

When we look over on the right side, you can see that again, with this realignment, there is a fair amount of land that is being used for circulation.

But that consolidated floor plate allows a potential high-rise floor plate on the south end of our property.

That gets us into the range of what might be a physically feasible and efficient high-rise floor plate.

Now, the north end there, you can see at mid-rise, you still have that tower separation requirement, but that south end we think could actually be built as a high-rise.

Again, that's where we see some of the big impact of the vacation and why it's worth considering the vacation with the realignment.

Uh, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, Could could grow worse if the vacation is not approved, because there will be other development on the block, potentially more pressure to use the vacation.

So, eliminating this conflict is a benefit of the vacation.

Now, of course, there's always trade off right in urban environment.

And so that the realignment introduces a new intersection on 11th.

Or a new, a new potential conflict 11th, but just thought it was worth noting that that really busy quarter on 45th would.

Would be streamlined and would eliminate that pedestrian quarter.

So that's the sort of overall buildable area perspective.

Now let's talk about the impact on development yield.

So We've said this before, I've said this before, right?

This is really where we see the potential benefit.

And what we're looking at is some illustrations here.

That are very simple comparisons.

Now, they're not a full zoning code analysis, but they're meant to just give us a sense of what the difference will be.

Of course, a future developer will come on and do that full analysis and do the full design that will be needed to do an actual building.

But when we look at these, this is giving us a bit of a sense.

I also wanted to know, I mentioned unit counts.

The actual unit yield in the project, of course, will depend on what's proposed.

But that, of course, depends on how big are the units, how tall is the building, and other factors.

So again, we're trying to give a sense of what a reasonable range might be.

But ultimately, it will depend on what proposals are received.

When we look at the no vacation option again, this will be familiar.

It looks like a mid rise building on either side of the alley.

And we'd expect somewhere in the range of 80, potentially up to 110 units and depending on size.

We're looking here when we get down to this high rise floor plate.

Really at a quite small floor plate and really not likely to be efficient, right?

A small inefficient floor plate just makes the units more expensive to build.

And so it really kind of.

Kicks into the it's not worth doing phase because they're not efficient for place.

So we've.

We're characterizing this as really not feasible for high rise development.

Whereas, when we look over at the vacation option.

You can see, we're showing that there is a range and even if a mid rise building is built on this project, there is still a benefit for.

Achieving the vacation, because you have a single building for it's more more more efficient and you can get more units even still so it's worth it for that.

But of course, the real value is if a high rise building can be built.

So, when we look at this, we can see we're illustrating here an 18 story building.

The zoning again could allow it to go taller.

But what we've produced this as sort of what we think is a reasonable expectation.

Because that's what we're seeing in other the very few other high rise affordable projects that have been proposed in the recent years.

Or somewhere in the 1617 story range.

So that's what we're trying to oversell this, but sort of get what we think might actually be possible.

And so that's where you see this potentially over 200 units of housing.

So, a really dramatic increase in the number of units that could potentially get built.

And I think we do think that this floor plate, in fact, when we look at the high-rise floor plate, it actually brings you up to the code maximum floor plate of 10,500 square feet potentially.

So all that is to say, we think that there's a real value there in a high-rise configuration.

So.

That's the sort of the overall characterization of the impact.

I did want to quickly touch on the, the several items that we think will need to be pursued in the future.

And we've mentioned them.

Uh, we're early in the process.

We think doing this now will help get good proposals, but we will expect that additional engagement work will need to be done.

And of course the public benefits package will need to be produced.

So sound transit did conduct community engagement, uh, back in 2021, but, uh, That engagement really didn't address a vacation or public benefits in particular.

At that point, we were still trying to understand what does the community want to see more broadly and that engagement really indicated strong support for affordable housing.

Strong support for maximizing the number of units and receptiveness to a high rise building in order to do that.

So I think we heard really good, strong feedback from the community, but that's that there was support for that.

So that's great.

But.

to get to those more particulars on the vacation and the public benefits, more engagement will need to be done.

When we look to putting together that public benefits package, we really think that the right time to do that is when there's an affordable housing developer on board.

They'll have an actual proposal, a much more concrete thing for the community to understand and To sort of understand the trade off between the vacation and what the, what the proposal is, including, and that will inform the public benefits package process.

So, again, the developer will be ultimately in charge of putting that together and delivering the vacation or sorry, the realigned alley and closing out the vacation process.

So.

Really will be important parts and we anticipate that will will be done by the developer later and our people will indicate to them.

That's what they'll be required to do to close out the vacation process.

So, with that, that concludes my presentation and of course, we'd be happy to take questions.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And I think we will have some comments or questions here.

We also may be hearing, Beverly, we're going to hear from the Design Commission and from you and from Lish.

So, but what we can do is break this up into pieces.

So, if we have questions about this PowerPoint presentation, but we'll also, we'll be hearing from the Design Commission, from SDOT, and from central staff.

But go ahead, Council Member Morales, please.

Thank you.

This is an exciting project.

Always happy to see us move toward more use of public land for housing.

So I'm very appreciative of this presentation.

I want to just back up for a minute and ask for a little bit of clarity, particularly for the viewing public.

I know that there is a board policy that Sound Transit offer up to 80% of surplus property for, you know, housing, suitable for housing.

The language, as I understand it, says that Sound Transit would convert property for housing.

I know in 2018, 2019, you were working with Puget Sound SAGE, particularly on some parcels in the Rainier Valley, where I live, particularly for homeownership.

That language said transfer property to the Office of Housing.

So I wonder if you could just clarify in this instance in particular, what is meant by partnering?

Who will own this property?

As I understand it, if you're asking for a vacation, then it is still Sound Transit's property.

And so can you just clarify a little bit what the ownership structure of that will be?

Yeah, I'll take a quick.

I'll take a first pass and then that or you can chime in as needed.

So, when we say partnership with the office of housing, what we really mean is kind of is combining our processes, so that a proposer can apply once.

through this RFP process to eventually obtain a property interest in the property as well as an allocation of OH funding.

The intention would be that once we go through this RFP process and select a developer, We'd, of course, work with them on key terms for this.

Ultimately, I think the expectation would be that we would transfer property interest directly to the affordable housing developer and that OH would make a financial contribution to that project.

That's the mechanism that I think we're envisioning here.

Thatcher, I don't know if you want to add anything onto that.

I'd just say in the Rainier Valley example, it's pretty unusual for us to transfer properties to local jurisdictions.

Then they go into the chain of title.

I think it was a pretty unique situation, given that we were trying to extinguish some federal interest in the property.

And the process that we needed to do that required us to transfer into a local government, and we couldn't directly transfer to a developer.

In this case, we don't have any federal funding in this project.

And it's, like Tim said, intending to kind of co-award resources, i.e., Sound Transit awarding land rights to the developer and OH awarding funding.

And then we'll hold on to the property, so we will have the responsibility at Sound Transit for, you know, O&M, our operation and maintenance costs.

So to the extent that we're using the property or that we're having the property until closing.

Thank you.

Thank you for the clarity.

I appreciate it.

Well, let's go ahead and hear from some of the other experts here on this project, and then that might generate some additional comments or questions.

Beverly, who's next?

So, Lish, do you want to go next or do you want me to start?

Why don't you talk about the city department review?

All right, thank you.

Yeah, this is a little bit different.

So normally with a vacation process, we're working with a very specific development proposal.

So all of our analysis and all of our partners in the city that review vacations are addressing the specifics.

With this proposal, we don't have specifics.

So we've worked with SDOT and SDCI on kind of the possibilities and I think the Sound Transit PowerPoint laid out what we can expect to see in the future.

So what we do know is that vacations are both about the loss of right-of-way and then what happens after the vacation.

So what we could analyze is what happens if that alley goes away.

Since this is a partial alley vacation for the southern portion that leads to Northeast 45th Street, we know that there are other property owners on the block that will be using that for access to their properties.

And for services, such as pickups, so we had to continue the alley function to serve the new building as well as adjacent and coming on buildings.

because the alley still has to function.

So we did look at a few alternatives and KPFF did some analysis for sound transit that the city reviewed.

So we're looking at the dog leg.

That's kind of what we've all been calling it.

There's probably a better term, but that the existing alley would continue down to the sound transit property.

And then make a turn to the east and exit onto 11th.

And so we looked at the size and scale of that and how that would interact then with a busy bike and pedestrian environment.

But that is the.

concept that is contained in this recommendation is that we thought it was really important to establish that for the bid process because some of the other alternatives take considerably more property and if the idea of this is the connectivity and space for housing development.

We wanted one uncertainty to be resolved for the bid process to move forward.

So we're looking at addressing what is the impacts from the loss of the alley vacation.

What we don't know is what's going to be additive in terms of how we might mitigate, what the community might specifically want to see, or what the public benefit proposal is going to be.

So, this action, and I think list will help us through the process.

This action will be to grant the alley vacation conditioned on the alley turnaround and other conditions and conditioned on the.

Winning bidder coming in with some follow up community engagement and a public benefit plan that city and the design commission and the council would review.

So that is kind of coming later with, as Tim described, some.

certainty for the bid process.

So I will say it was a little challenging, but it feels really collaborative.

And I really want to give credit to, you know, this is we all work on these all the time, but the city and staff were really engaged in trying to figure this out.

And SDCI was very engaged with us in providing, looking at alternatives and helping us understand COB, Erika Vandenbrande?

s iPhone 2?

s iPhone 2?

s we can ask that the winning bidder come back and provide the more specific kind of information that the council is used to seeing when you make this original decision.

So I think we kind of covered everything between all of us.

And I think Lish and Michael from the Design Commission will also have additive.

I think the PowerPoint covered a lot.

We do know for certain that, however speculative some of the numbers might be, that with the alley vacation, there are two to three times more affordable housing units that can likely be built on the site, even if we don't know exactly how many in their size.

So I think Lish or Michael, if you want to hop in next.

Just very briefly to expand a little bit about the reconfiguration of the alley.

The study that Sound Transit did identified that there's likely not to be any parking in a future building on the Sound Transit site, which means that the alley would only be used for this future building for garbage and loading activities.

Um, the 2 other, uh, buildings on the site, uh, the 1 on the North.

East section of the block, um, has its own driveway, um, where the parking is primarily accessed and so won't be using the alley for the most part.

Although they still may have some.

alley uses and the building the 1x towers project has their parking access at the north end of their site so also probably it will be more efficient for them for people using that garage to go up to the north end of the block and then travel down south into the alley and use 67th Street as their primary access to the alley.

So we found that there was likely not to be significant impacts from the reconfiguration.

Thank you, Lich.

Go ahead.

Did you want me to?

I'm sorry, Council Member Peterson.

I was just going to ask Lich if he wanted me to go ahead and give an overview of the design commission process.

Thank you.

Good morning, Council Members.

Michael Jenkins, the Executive Director of the Seattle Design Commission.

I want to just briefly mirror comments that you've heard today.

The Commission, in particular, about the diligence of Tim Bates, Abel Pacheco, and the Sound Transit team and their consultants in advancing information on the range of development options that you saw for the site, the implications that these options would have on the public realm.

and how new development can implement urban design outcomes.

And of course, absent, you've heard this absent a specific development proposal.

City staff at STCI and SDOT really did an amazing job helping to vet and envision how the range of the future development options that you saw are affected by a very complex set of land use and zoning requirements for any development on the site.

It became very clear to the commission that there were a number of benefits that could accrue as a result of this vacation on the public realm.

Moving traffic exiting the alley from 45th to 11th would be a significant gain.

While both are arterials, Northeast 45th is really one of the city's busiest east-west arterials.

Moving traffic to 11th has the potential to reduce the kind of automobile conflicts that I think we instinctively know would occur in Northeast 45th.

Having said that, how a new connection on 11th will impact the bicycle infrastructure planned on 11th Avenue as well as potential automobile conflicts does need to be addressed during development.

We didn't necessarily have detailed plans to show what that would be.

Any new structure has the potential to significantly improve the pedestrian nature of Northeast 45th with a continuous structure ground level uses and an enhanced pedestrian environment that I think planning and zoning anticipates here.

Any new development really has the opportunity to create a gateway structure at Northeast 45th and Roosevelt, which was envisioned in the June 2013 U District Urban Design Framework, an important guiding document.

And of course, and I think we've said in a variety of ways, redevelopment of the site really has an opportunity to achieve both city and Sound Transit affordable housing and TOD goals for the university district.

Absent those specific development proposals, there are significant unanswered questions.

I think the commission was very concerned about the precedent, allowing a project to proceed without specific development proposal Very laudable goals by Sound Transit here.

There's no question.

But the commission was concerned about the precedent being established here, that if you do decide to allow another vacation to proceed without specific development proposal, there really should be clear boundaries about what is a qualifying project and expectations on work to be provided.

We saw similar challenges at the Mercer megablock site, where the council also allowed a vacation without specific development.

We can't, I think the commission's biggest concerns is that they can't provide you with as robust of a review.

So there are significant questions that lack scrutiny before your decision.

The commission was also concerned about the lack of specificity about Sound Transit's baseline goals for future development, specifically a baseline number of units, specifics about level of affordability as opposed to a range and how any structure can accomplish those goals.

What was very clear is that in this particular case, the size of the site, its orientation and abutting properties may limit the ability for any new development to exceed the base 85 foot height limit.

Because of that and the tower spacing and zoning requirements, not really understanding what their baseline goals would be, it makes it more challenging to understand what the actual benefit would be It is very difficult to develop high-rise structures for market rate development, let alone for affordable housing on a site with such challenges.

And then finally, how future development here will enhance the public realm on 11th due to structure siting and the attributes of the alley left the commission concerned about what that might look like.

Because of those concerns, the commission is recommending that you adopt four conditions to be integrated in any future RFP.

The conditions are attached to our minutes and are embedded in the report that SDOT provided with you.

The first condition establishes a requirement for commission review and approval of a public benefit package linked to permitting.

The second condition would request that the commission review any proposed alley connection to 11th prior to permitting.

And then the two other conditions really look at trying to give guidance about how any new structure would not only integrate with the new public realm created along Northeast 45th, but also how any new structure would reflect the vision that the community established in the urban design framework.

Because it seems that any development here, if it is affordable housing, would not be subject to the city's design review program.

And so making sure that that policy document provides some guidance for future development.

Once again, I'll close out and just say thank you to everyone involved.

Tim and Abel did a yeoman's job in trying to make this thing develop the scrutiny that the commission really asked for, and they were very much appreciative, as was I.

Thank you, council members.

Thank you, Director Jenkins, and thank you to the whole Design Commission for recognizing the bigger picture here.

I think one of the interesting things about how we define public benefit in the realm of street vacations or alley vacations is that low income housing is not considered a public benefit even though we as policy makers know that it is a public benefit.

It's just not, it doesn't fall under that realm because I think the theory, correct me if I'm wrong, Lish, but the theory is that because currently the alley is available to everybody, to the entire public, but a housing project would not be available to everybody all at once, that it's not considered a public benefit for the purposes of vacating these types of public spaces.

But again, we know that we're in the homelessness emergency.

We need more low-income housing throughout the city.

And so it is a public benefit for many of us.

So really appreciate the design commissions.

Flexibility and also the fact that we're not actually just truncating the alley completely, but we're reconfiguring it So it's still serving that function of flowing through And so that's less of a giveaway counselor herbal, please

Thank you.

Returning to that question of public benefit and deeply affordable housing, I really appreciate that there is a requirement to Provide at least 80% of of the housing be in income restricted for 80%.

Am I or less and that that's required, but within within that requirement, what is desired is that within that 80% of units.

that at least 15% of the units be affordable to less than 30% AMI, and that we average 60% AMI in the building.

So, really appreciate the differentiation between sort of what is a public benefit, what is required by state law, that sort of 80, 80, 80, I think was in the state law, and then what it is that the city desires.

So I just think it's really helpful, you know, outside of sort of public benefit requirements for us to hear from Sound Transit about whether or not there are options that they are considering to address what the City Council identifies as the desired attributes for the housing at this property once it's developed.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Yes, and before Sound Transit responds, I just want to echo your sentiments here that, you know, we, the facts are that we do have a tiny home village on the site right now, so, and there are 35 units there, so, you know, they would fall under the zero to 30% AMI range, and we want to, You know, it's our expectation that whoever the nonprofit housing developer is, that they make it work so that at least that number of units are available to serve extremely low income individuals, housing ready, formerly homeless.

And so, but I know you're also trying to issue a request for proposals.

You're trying to generate excitement and interest about this.

And so you're not being as prescriptive in that, but we're just, we also want to signal our intent that we look forward to those housing developers who are the nonprofit stepping up to provide that deeper subsidy.

But do you want to go ahead and address Councilor Herbold's comments?

Yes.

So you're, you're right in that 808080 just required the state statute required at least 80% of the units being affordable at 80% of area median income or below.

However, in working, you know, both through the community engagement and then working, you know, with the city, you know, the Office of Housing, you know, we're establishing goals that are to exceed that, uh, you know, to restrict all the housing units being affordable at earning no more than 80% of AMI, uh, trying to have a range of incomes that are being served, uh, so that the average is, uh, earning no more than 60% of AMI to be included, you know, 15%, at least 15% of the units affordable households are in zero to 30% of AMI.

And we'll explore the potential of including even more units up to 30% Earning 0 to 30% AMI through discussions of working with operating and service funders and other capital funders.

So, again, we are looking at how we can achieve greater levels of affordability.

We're trying to provide flexibility, as was mentioned, and also recognizing that the deeper the AMI, the more operating support that's typically needed.

And so trying to find the thread that needle of how do we find a project that can maximize the number of affordable units given its high opportunity location, but also recognizing that, yeah, there's a huge need at the deep AMIs, and we want to try to include those units to the extent we can.

Thank you.

And I do want to note that the clerk file, what we would be approving today is the clerk file.

It has several documents in it, one of which is the central staff memo, which does make reference to the zero to 30% AMI units as a desired outcome here from this committee and council, and really appreciate that, and also recognizing that we want to get that request for proposal out the door as soon as possible so that we can get those nonprofit housing developers to respond and start doing their pre-development work and feasibility work and due diligence so that we can break ground as soon as possible, which is still not until 2025 likely.

So colleagues, any other questions before we consider this clerk file?

Yes, Council Member Herbold.

It is a follow-up question.

So since we are looking at approving this street vacation without a specific project.

There's no specific development proposal.

I understand that that means that this is going to potentially come back to council for approval.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Your action on this clerk file would be to approve the vacation, so it would be approved, but a future developer would need to get council approval for.

A public benefit package before they would be able to get permits for development from the Seattle Department of construction inspections.

Is there a way that we could suggest that when.

They come back for the approval of the public benefit package that they.

consider, in addition to the legally required public benefits, but that they consider ways of also, when they come back for the council's approval, that they also consider ways of incorporating the desired attributes of housing as well.

While again, recognizing that they are not technically part of the public benefit package, that is something that council would look favorably upon when the public benefit package is approved.

Uh, so the, the draft conditions, um, that are attachment 3 to my memo, um, do discuss the intended, uh, housing affordability levels, um, as part of the sort of background or context for the council's approval.

Um, yes, I can pull that up if that's helpful.

Um, but, um, thank you.

That's how we addressed it.

Yeah, Councilor Herbold, I had the same questions, and that's why we do have Lish's memo as part of the clerk file that we're approving, and that does signal the desire to have at least 15%.

of the units at zero to 30% AMI as you mentioned at the beginning of your remarks.

So that is baked into the clerk file with the city council document, our memo.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

And, you know, future council should be reviewing this tape in a year or whenever they come back and know that that is clearly our intent that we're serving as many extremely low-income residents as possible.

You and I will come back and remind them if they don't.

That's right.

That's right.

We know the public commenting rules, so we'll be ready for either two-minute or one-minute remarks at that time.

All right, well, colleagues, since we had just one public commenter and they were supportive of this because what we're doing is we're reconfiguring the alley and not just eliminating it, and because Sound Transit's required to have affordable housing on this site, The whole purpose is to get this RFP out the door, to get nonprofits to do this.

And the Office of Housing has been very collaborative in terms of, you know, the fact that they're doing that combined RFP is really helpful from an administrative standpoint, but also from a potential funding standpoint.

So, and we're right here in the heart of this.

urban center of the university district near the new light rail station.

So we want to maximize that.

So for all these reasons, I'm signaling that I would like to move forward today, at least to get this moving on to the full council.

And so then I would need to suspend the rules to vote on the clerk file same day as a public hearing.

And then also we do have one small amendment to change north to northeast.

So if there are no comments, further comments or questions, I can go ahead and advance that parliamentary procedure to get this in front of us appropriately.

All right.

So first, let's go ahead and suspend the rules to take action on this clerk file and move it ahead to city council.

Colleagues, if there are no objections, would like to suspend the rules to vote on the clerk file the same day as its public hearing.

Are there any objections?

Okay, hearing no objections, we have suspended the rules to vote on the clerk file the same day as a public hearing, and I'll continue with parliamentary procedure to move the clerk file, and then we'll do the amendment.

So, council members, I now move that the committee recommend approval of clerk file 314496, item two on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Thank you, it's been moved and seconded, recommend approval of clerk file 314496. I now would like to move, I now move the committee adopt amendment one as presented on page five of the central staff memo, which simply changes the word north to NE for Northeast.

Is there a second?

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend the amendment.

List, do you want to just confirm that's what the amendment does?

Yeah, there's a typo in the title of the clerk file, and because it's a clerk file, the committee can amend it.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Changing north to NE, which stands for Northeast.

All right.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 1?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Three in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and amendment one is adopted.

Any final comments on the base clerk file or as amended, which is authorizing this vacation of the partial alley?

Yes, Lish, please.

Sorry, so the next step would be to add the conditions that are included as attachment three to my memo.

That's the document that will actually grant the vacation.

And did you say attachment three of your memo?

Yes, OK.

So colleagues, I now move to attach to the clerk file attachment three of the central staff memo, which contains conditions.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to attach attachment three of central staff memo to the clerk file.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Herboldt.

Yes.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Chair Peterson.

Yes.

Three in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and that is attached.

Just want to double check something here.

Yes, okay.

All right, that is correct.

All right, well, thank you, Lish, for jumping in there to do that for us.

Will the clerk please, any final comments or questions now that we have the amended clerk file in front of us with those conditions?

All right, will the clerk please call the roll on the amended clerk file?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Chair Peterson.

Yes.

Three in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation to approve the clerk file as amended will be sent to the September 5 City Council meeting.

I really want to thank everybody for all the hard work that's gone in to put this clerk file together, to reconfigure the alley, to maximize low-income housing in the future on this site.

Thank you, Sound Transit.

Thanks, Central Staff, Design Commission.

office of housing, my staff, Hannah Thorsen, and many others who have been involved in this and also want to thank the folks at Rosie's who have been running the Tiny Home Villagers since 2021 and will continue to do so.

And we look forward to getting a lot of applicants with strong proposals, especially those that maximize the extremely low-income housing options for the future here.

All right, thank you.

Well, will the clerk please read the full title of the third agenda item into the record?

Agenda Item 3, Council Bill 120625, an ordinance establishing additional uses for automated traffic safety cameras to increase safety, amending sections 113190, 1131121, and 115570 of the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

Colleagues, as we heard previously, our Seattle Department of Transportation joined us at our last committee to present their legislation to implement additional new state law authority for additional uses of automated camera enforcement for traffic safety.

The city council already took care of a big section of the new state authority by designating where we can place cameras to discourage reckless drag racing.

We did that with Council Bill 120600, which was led by Councilor Herbold, and I was happy to co-sponsor that.

This legislation today, Council Bill 120625, implements additional authority from the state and confirms the specific fees for each type of new traffic infraction.

We already have several of these infractions on the books.

This council also authorizes the issuing of a warning notice for the first infraction.

We do have a technical amendment for this item that adds the recitals, removes outdated language, corrects a typo, and better organizes and clarifies the current infraction descriptions.

After we briefly review our presentation from last committee, I'll ask Calvin Chow from central staff to walk us through that technical amendment.

And before we turn it over to our presenters, I do want to thank Calvin Chow from Central Staff for his review of this legislation and his succinct memo that was reposted on this morning's agenda.

I also want to just give you the big picture that the policy to have 50 percent of some of the new funding authority go toward traffic safety improvements.

You know, we could have, in theory, we could have amended this bill, but it was a different section of the Seattle Municipal Code, so we had to create a new council bill, which is item four on our agenda, which is the one that has that money go toward traffic, physical improvements that we all wanna see.

But we're gonna go ahead and focus zero in on this, current council 120625. Calvin did you have any opening comments or remarks before we turn it over to our presenters?

No council member I'll stand by for the amendment discussion.

Thank you.

Good morning SDOT.

Good morning.

I'm Bill Ward with the Seattle Department of Transportation, and I also have Francisca Stephan, our Deputy Director, and Andy Merkley from our Transportation Operations Group here to join me.

To respond to any questions that might come up, but in the meantime, I'll just quickly go through the presentation we delivered 2 weeks ago and just recap that real fast.

And essentially, as, as you stated, council member Peterson, the.

Intent of this bill is to implement in the Seattle municipal code, the new grants of speed enforcement authority.

Provided by the state in the move ahead, Washington act, there are 2 principal categories of.

New cameras that are authorized, they are all intended to be full time speed enforcement.

The 1st is various designated zones in the, including school walk zones.

Public park speed zones and hospital speed zones.

And then another sort of catch all category that allows additional cameras 1 per 10,000 population in locations that meet 1 of the following criteria.

That it's the location is identified in a local road safety plan that's filed with the state.

or that it's in a location where there's a significantly higher rate of collisions in the city average over a course of 3 years and other measures have proven infeasible or insufficient for enforcement or the racing zones designated by local ordinance, which you did indeed do in 120600. And I'm moving on to the next slide, which really just talks about how the 2 bills complement each other 120600 and and this bill, they both.

enact that authority in 1150.570 of the FSMC year bill 120.600 designated the race zones.

This one also designates the new forms of auto or authorizes new forms of auto enforcement in enforcement sections of the traffic code.

And it includes, especially along with the amendment, they'll be considering addresses some points that were vague in the existing code about about fine citation amounts.

They're essentially scattered between the code, court rules and reference to the RCWs.

This provides some clarity.

On the citation amounts in the same section of the code that we authorize enforcement by traffic camera and then, as you mentioned earlier, also the.

This does require a.

Warning for the 1st violation for the new forms of full time speed enforcement.

And this bill does not address neither bill addresses appropriations or spending authority, but the bill that you mentioned that will follow this presentation.

macro level policy for how proceeds, net proceeds that stay with the city should be allocated.

And then I won't go into the slide very much, but this was just to point out how the technology works.

And really the new camera authority is going to work very much the same as existing school zone speed cameras, school speed zone cameras work today.

It's just that instead of being turned on for 40 minutes or so in the morning and afternoon during school days, the new forms of enforcement allow 24 seven use of speed cameras.

And that's my presentation.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

And as I mentioned, we have a couple other folks from the department here who can answer those questions you might have.

Thank you.

And colleagues, in listening to comments that were made, emails we've received from people interested in this topic, a couple things we're doing today that are important.

One is to have the first infraction, it would be a warning.

And that starts to address several concerns raised.

The second is, in the next bill that we'll be hopefully approving today, that will keep that, of the new spending authority that we have, it'll keep those funds going toward improved safety, physical structure safety improvements.

And so, I know there was a big, we heard, it seemed to be a consensus for wanting to do more of that, not just having it go into the general fund.

Now, that doesn't take, it doesn't, we don't change the policy on how current cameras are handled.

That could be discussed later in the budget, but we didn't want to.

do something to unwind what's already in the 2023 budget or 2024 endorsed budget, but this is the new funding that will be coming in.

So, colleagues, any comments or questions about this base legislation from SDOT, which is just fleshing out all the authority that we got from the state?

you know, the previous bill that Councilor Herbold and I did just zeroed in on the drag racing designation zones, but this fleshes out and incorporates the rest of the state authority, new state authority.

And then we can talk about the amendment that Calvin can walk us through.

Why don't we go ahead and hear Calvin about the amendment, and then there might be additional comments or questions.

Okay, bear with me just one moment while I get this on the screen.

There we go.

So this is Amendment 1. It really is a number of technical amendments that don't change the underlying policy at all, but just clarify elements of the legislation.

The first section adds three whereas clauses.

The first one just to acknowledge the Council Bill 120600, which passed previously.

Then just to describe that we do have existing fees in place and that the intent is to establish the new fee for the speed enforcement cameras.

The next section just removes some language that is now outdated, is no longer in process.

This is from the start of the pilot program.

There was a designation from November 2nd, 2020 to December 31st, 2020, so that's no longer operative.

So we're just striking it from the code.

The next section just corrects a typo, literally just missing the word in for in excess.

And then the last more substantive change is to be more explicit in the.

The fee schedule about all the specific infractions that are that are subject to camera enforcement.

And this is as as Bill mentioned, the authority behind this is scattered in a lot of different places.

So, because we are establishing it in this particular part of the code, we wanted to make sure we were exhaustive in explaining all the existing fees as well as the new fee.

And that's the entirety of the amendment.

Thank you.

And just to clarify or put a finer point on this.

So we're not actually inventing or approving these fee amounts except for, I believe, one of them, but they're really already in existence.

We're just pulling them all together into the same section of the code because otherwise they were really hard to find.

It didn't make sense to people.

Is that correct?

From a purely technical perspective, one could argue that all of these fees are existing in code, but this is putting them all in one place so it is easy to identify and doesn't, you know, we avoid sort of the piecemealing piece and we're just very clear that these are the fees that are in place.

Just a little bit confused between the 1152-040 and the 1152-100.

They both include speed violations.

Am I correct in that 1152-100 are only speed violations in school zones?

School crossing zones, that is correct.

Super.

Thank you.

This is super helpful.

In a previous committee meeting, I think I remember hearing somebody say something that suggested that some folks believe that all of the violations are upwards of $200.

And so having this information is very, very helpful.

I appreciate that.

And Calvin, could you clarify on the drag racing zones where that falls under here?

That would be a speeding traffic camera violation.

That would be $139.

It is speed enforcement for all of the new authority that we're talking about this summer.

And the $139 for that, does that come from the state or is that something that we decided?

It is sort of a continuation of existing authority.

Okay, thank you.

I would have to go into a bit more detail with Estad about sort of, and law, frankly, about exactly the providence of it.

That's, and that's what I was presuming is that, right, that that's just a continuation and clarification of what that is.

We're not making new policy on that.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

I also really appreciate having all of this in one place.

I do want to make sure I'm understanding this.

I'm thinking about some of the comments that were made in public comment about you know, all of this ideally would be leading towards obsolescence if we were increasing safety in our school zones or on, you know, arterials that people are speeding down, bus lanes.

The goal really is to eliminate all of that behavior.

And so that's one thing.

I wonder if you could just make sure I'm understanding correctly, Calvin, that the sliding scale and that the first warning, do those two things apply to all of these?

Yeah, so those are governed by the municipal court's processes and procedures.

There is a separate section that talks about authority to do the first warning allowance that is included in the base bill.

There is a separate body of work that municipal court has to provide alternative ways of dealing with those who have difficulty paying.

It's not covered in this legislation, but it is separate authority in the code.

Okay.

And then the last thing I'll say about all of this is also agreeing with the public commenter that, you know, the real solution to these problems is for us to make sure that we are installing traffic calming, speed cushions, road diets, you know, that we are really addressing the design of our streets to make sure that it is safe for elders and students and all of us to navigate our neighborhood safely so that we don't need these cameras anymore.

I'm hopeful that that is the ultimate goal for the department and I know that there's a lot of conversation about moving that direction.

I hope sooner or later we're able to eliminate all of this and just know that everybody is going to be safe in our city.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Councilor Morales.

Yes, I concur with with you on that too.

Bill aboard.

Yeah, I just wanted to clarify that the warning requirement for the 1st violation is required under state law for the pilot enforcements that block the box and transit lane enforcement.

And then we're applying that to the new forms of enforcement that are authorized by this bill, the full time speed enforcement.

However, we weren't, there was no question about whether we could, we had the authority to retroactively apply that first warning to school zone camera violations and to red light camera violations.

So the warning requirement wouldn't apply to those two types of violation at this point.

Thank you for that clarification.

Well, colleagues, I can go ahead and start the parliamentary procedure on this to get the bill in front of us and also to amend it with the technical amendment that Calvin walked through with us.

All right.

And then the next item on the agenda, we'll take care of the funding policy.

All right.

I now move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120625. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

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

I now move that the committee adopt amendment one as presented on today's agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend adoption of the amendment.

And Calvin, thank you for walking us through that amendment already.

Um, colleagues, any comments or questions about the amendment?

All right, will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 1?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Three in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and Amendment 1 is adopted.

Any comments or questions on the amended legislation before we vote on it?

Excellent.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to pass Council Bill 120625 as amended.

Council Member Herboldt.

Yes.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Chair Peterson.

Yes.

Three in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation to pass the council as amended will be sent to the September 5 City Council meeting.

All right, will the clerk please read the full title of the fourth agenda item.

Agenda item four, council bill 120638, an ordinance relating to financial policies for automated traffic safety camera revenue, amending section 58210 of the Seattle Municipal Code and repealing chapter 581 of the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

Colleagues, as I mentioned before, we heard some interest to direct the funding that's left over after the statewide bike fund, Cooper Jones fund, and the installation and operation of the cameras, the net revenue, where would that go?

There seemed to be consensus.

We want that to go toward the physical improvements to make our streets safer.

And so that will help address concerns we even heard during public comment today.

So why don't we go ahead and Calvin, do you have a presentation on this?

I do.

I have a short presentation.

That's right.

Thank you.

Thank you, council members.

This is Council Bill 120638, and it deals with financial policies as part of your discussion that you had at the last committee meeting.

So just very quickly, this legislation will consolidate the existing traffic camera finance policies into a single section of the code, and it will establish the new financial policy for the speed enforcement cameras, diverting the local revenue to traffic safety, bicycle safety, and pedestrian safety, which is essentially our Vision Zero programs.

So, just, you know, we've talked about this before, but Seattle has used automatics cameras for red light enforcement since 2006 for school zone enforcement in 2012 and then more recently have started lock the box and transit only lane enforcement.

We do have existing financial policies governing red light cameras and the school zone cameras.

And the state law governs the spending of the block the box and traffic only lane enforcement cameras.

And then earlier this year, obviously, we heard legislation on camera enforcement for the speed enforcement.

So as a reminder, our existing financial policies and state law do allow us to pay for the installation and administration of camera enforcement.

For the schools on cameras, our financial policies direct 100% of that revenue to go to the school traffic and pedestrian safety projects.

For red light cameras, our policy directs 20% of those revenues to school traffic and pedestrian safety projects.

And then as I mentioned before, state law directs half of the revenues for the block the box and restricted lane cameras to the Washington State Cooper Jones active transportation account.

And then the remainder has to be used for transportation improvements that support equitable access and mobility for persons with disabilities.

And that is the state requirement.

So the legislation for you really does these 2 things it establishes a new financial policy for the speed enforcement cameras.

This is the, this is distinct from speed enforcement in schools, school crossings.

This is, this is the new authority we're talking about.

The code, excuse me, the state law requires that again, half of the revenue goes to the Cooper Jones account.

And then the proposed policy directs all the remaining funds to transportation improvements that support traffic safety, bicycle safety and pedestrian safety or vision zero programs.

And then lastly, the legislation takes the two different sections and condenses them into one chapter 581 that details all the existing policies as well as the new policy.

And that's the conclusion of my presentation.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any comments or questions about this policy for the new authority that we have and the new funding that would come our way?

Great.

Well, I take that as a good sign that people have been providing very thoughtful feedback and really appreciate SDOT's work, as well as council members, consulting constituents, And Calvin Chow, central staff, thank you for solving some of these issues for us, getting this legislation in front of us so we could vote on it on the same day and get a comprehensive look at things.

Councilmember Herbold.

I'm sorry, I'm a little slow on the update this morning.

I just want to Stay back, but I think I understood, uh, Calvin, uh, the, the new policy.

So, um, half of the revenue have to go in, has to go into.

I can't remember the name of it, but something Cooper state requires.

And then so the idea is now of the other half, half of those funds will go to pedestrian and bike structure safety?

No, the proposal before you is that 100% all the remaining local funds would go to essentially Vision Zero safety projects.

Got it.

Even better.

Thanks.

That's really great to hear.

And that is for which cameras?

That is for all the new authority that you're talking about for, for speed enforcement.

So that is the, the, if it's speed enforcement in restricted racing zones or speed enforcement under the other 3. Categories that states authorized us, it's, it's for speed enforcement.

Aside from the speed enforcement in the school crosswalks.

Got it.

So it's not going to it doesn't.

As you just said, it doesn't handle either the speed enforcement or other types of school zone enforcement, nor red light.

That's correct.

Those have their own financial policies, and I think it's something like maybe 25% go to the pedestrian and bike safety projects.

Is that right?

100% of the school zone cameras goes to school safety projects essentially.

And 20% of the red light cameras also goes to school zone safety projects.

And that is by existing city policy.

And this legislation puts all that existing policy in the same section of code just so that we're not, so it's easier to find.

And so it seems to me like the outlier is the red light cameras.

Can we look at increasing the revenue from red light cameras for these purposes?

That is a policy choice that can be made.

There's no restriction on what those can be used from.

So our current city code restricts ourselves and puts 20% to those purposes.

In drafting this, it seemed Well, because we have an existing 2023 adopted budget, and we have the 2024 endorsed budget, making changes to that policy that would affect those budget years should be appropriately dealt with in the budget process.

But that is something that we could take up next month.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Any other comments or questions before we vote on this Council Bill, which is 120638, Item 4 on our agenda?

All right, just checking something here.

All right, well, Council Members, I'll go ahead and move this Council Bill.

Council Members, I now move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120638, item four on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Thank you, it's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the Council Bill.

Any final comments or questions before we vote?

All right, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to pass the council, bill.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Chair Peterson.

Yes.

Three in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation to pass the council bill will be sent to the September 5 City Council meeting.

Thank you, everybody, for your good work on this, these one tool in our tool belt to deal with this problem.

All right.

Well, last item on the agenda.

Will the clerk please read the full title of the final agenda item?

Agenda item five, Seattle Transit Measure 2022 Annual Report for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

Today we have with us the Seattle Department of Transportation and the Seattle Transit Advisory Board to present to us the annual report for the Seattle Transit Measure.

As we know, the Seattle Transit Measure also known as the voter-approved portion of the Seattle Transportation Benefit District.

It's funded with a 0.15% sales tax that invests in transit and related capital improvements and subsidies for low-income riders.

So I'll hand it over to our presenters.

Good morning.

Good morning, Council Member Peterson.

Let's start with introductions.

My name is Jen Malik Crawford.

I'm the Transit Service and Strategy Manager, and I use she, her pronouns.

I'll pass it off to Candida.

Good morning, Council Members.

Candida Lorenzana, Director of Transit Mobility at SDOT.

Matt?

I'm Matt Yarrow.

I'm the STM Program Manager at SDOT.

I use he, him pronouns, and I'll pass it off to Laura Lee.

Thanks, and good morning.

Laura Lee Sturm, she, her pronouns.

I'm the transportation access program manager.

I'll pass it to Art.

Hi, good morning.

Art Kunuki, I'm the TAB co-chair.

I use he, him, and I'll pass it to Ashwin.

Hi, my name is Ashwin Pumbla.

I'm a member of the Transit Advisory Board.

I use he, him pronouns.

Great, thanks so much for having us here this morning.

Uh, as we should outcomes from the Seattle transit measures, year 2 annual report Bill, I can't see the screen the deck and everyone else see it.

Okay, yes.

Are you able to see it?

Well, not yet.

No.

Guys, for that, let me try again.

Still not seeing it?

No.

Are others seeing it?

No, I can pull it up and support it if you like.

Just a moment, please.

Yeah, that'd be great.

Thank you.

While we're pulling that up, I did want to give a shout out to the Transit Advisory Board, to the volunteers on the tab, and we have with us Arden Ashwin.

Thank you for taking time to be with us today.

Appreciate it.

Thanks so much.

Can you go to the next slide, please, Bill?

So this is just centering our mission, vision, values, and goals for today's presentation.

Next slide, please.

So here's a high-level overview of what we're going to be talking about today.

We're going to provide a little background and history since we typically only come once a year to this committee and want to be sure you have the context for the 22 program outcomes we'll be discussing.

We're going to give you an overview of what STM funds and what was specifically achieved in each of these program areas We'll talk briefly about what's next programmatically and the STM spend plan.

Then Art and Ashwin are here to provide that report from the Transit Advisory Board.

Next slide, please.

So Seattle voters approved the Seattle Transit Measure in November 2020 with 80% voter approval.

It replaced a similar measure passed in November 2014, which expired at the end of 2020. The new measure continues much the same programming that was put into place through that first measure.

Just to note that the original measure was funded by a 0.1% sales tax and a $60 vehicle license fee, while the renewed measure levies just a 0.15% sales and use tax.

So revenue collection began in April of 2021 and will continue until the end of March 27 when the measure expires.

On average, this 0.15% sales tax raises roughly $50 million per year to fund additional transit service and access improvements that we'll go into more detail about in the rest of this presentation.

And STM oversight is provided by the Transit Advisory Board.

Next slide, please.

This high-level budget snapshot just shows how the revenue collected through STM is spent in a typical year on the program categories that are the focus of this presentation.

So in this dollar bill graphic, which is based on the average projected expenditures by category between 2021 and 26, you can see that 55 cents of every dollar is spent on purchasing additional bus service from King County Metro.

And this is a reflection of both voter intent to fund additional transit service from Metro to improve the frequency of an access to transit in Seattle and the language of the enabling STM ordinance, which specifies that at least 50% of annual STM expenditures be spent to purchase transit service from Metro.

And the other 50% of expenditures can be spent on the other program areas shown here.

Next slide, please.

And I'll pass the presentation over to my colleague, Matt Yarrow.

Thanks, Jen, and good morning, council members.

It's good to be with you today.

So next slide.

We'll talk through a little bit of information about transit service in Seattle in general, and what STM's investments have been in 2022. So this slide, we're just kind of painting a picture of what the transit landscape is like in the city.

As you all know, most bus services operate by King County Metro.

There's additional bus service, primarily commuter service through Sound Transit and Community Transit, light rail and commuter rail operate by Sound Transit, and a variety of other modes such as ferries, water taxi, the Seattle monorail, streetcar, et cetera.

The role of STM is to primarily purchase additional bus trips on existing King County Metro routes.

And this work is very compatible and compliments SDOT's other transit related programming, such as subsidy programs, transit access, transit and transit capital projects.

Next slide.

Okay, so in this slide, I wanted to give folks a kind of a sense of how ridership is responding post covid pandemic.

I'll just note at the outset that in 2022 invested a hundred and thirty five thousand annual hours on Metro system.

And this comprises about seven percent of the total amount of Metro service operated in the city of Seattle.

Transit ridership in Seattle has followed national trends from 2020 through 2022, and it's essentially a slow, steady increase from about 30% to about 60% of pre-COVID ridership levels, which you can see on the chart in the lower right.

Um, 1 pattern that is of.

Great importance to us is that there are seemingly permanent changes.

Or at least long lasting changes and when people ride transit.

So for example, pre-COVID in the pie chart on the lower left, there was a 40-60 split between off-peak and peak times.

And currently, and this has been persistent for going on two years, that split is about 50-50.

So about 50% of rides occur off-peak, not during peak commute times.

Next slide, please.

STM works to invest in the frequent transit network.

The frequent transit network comes out of the 2012 and 2016 transit master plans, and it envisions a network of frequent and reliable routes that provide robust mobility options and transfer opportunities at all times of day and all days of the week.

In 2022, the STM team and the transit advisory board collaborated on an equity centered investment priority methodology.

And in the map on the right, you can see 1 component of that methodology, the equity priority areas.

Overlaid by where STM is funding service.

Over half of STM funded routes are meeting FTN targets as of 2022. And close to three quarters of routes are at 95% plus of FTN targets.

So STM funding is improving movement towards those frequent transit network targets.

Next slide.

Where did STM invest in service by time of day and day of week in 2022?

Basically, we've kind of in line with the mandate from the FTN to invest.

you know, all day long and on weekends, as well as some of the trends that we're seeing in post COVID ridership, 80% of our investments have been made in trips occurring off peak.

So that's midday on weekdays, evening nights and weekends.

And the graphs on the right kind of show that breakdown.

And next slide, please.

All right, I'll pass it off to Laura Lee.

Awesome.

Thanks, Matt.

Hi, all.

Laura Lee Sturm.

She, her pronouns, like I said before, I'm the Transportation Access Program Manager.

Next slide, please.

So I'll just briefly move through this.

In 2022, we had the pleasure of operating nine programs that really fall into two different buckets.

One is this fair subsidy work where we pay for the cost.

We remove the cost burden of transit for underrepresented and low income folks.

And then we do community engagement and education to help improve writer confidence.

Next slide, please.

So this slide really dives into the bucket of our fair subsidy work.

You'll see our recovery card program, which is our most successful fair subsidy program to date.

And it supports small business, essential workers who work in food service and grocery industries within the neighborhoods of Pioneer Square, Chinatown, International District, Othello, and Rainier Beach.

You'll also see quite a small number of cards for the Seattle Housing Authority program that was still operating in our pilot.

As you may know, that program has since expanded to be open to serving almost 11,000 Seattle Housing Authority residents, but that didn't take effect until 2023, and this, of course, is our 2022 report, which also explains the numbers for our Orca Opportunity Youth Performance.

You'll see almost 18,000 youth were served through our program, supporting fully subsidized orca cards for Seattle public middle and high school students up through August, which, of course, is when Move Ahead Washington came into effect to support for youth transit across the state.

Next slide please.

So this is a snapshot of our community engagement work.

We have a new partnership that started in 2022 with the Human Services Department Seattle Youth Employment Program to launch a youth ambassador cohort of about nine students, nine high school students across the city.

We also provide senior access to transit field trips.

We partner with Hopelink and several senior centers across the city to improve rider confidence.

And then we have a new program that started in 2022. it's actually a 3 year research project that we are calling UC, Uplift Seattle's Equitable Access to Transit.

And that is, like I said, a 3 year research with the University of Notre Dame, as well as a local nonprofit, Uplift Northwest.

And we're studying the effect of free transit on low income workers employment outcomes.

And then finally, we have our downtown circulator, which is a fixed route, free shuttle that replaced the free ride area in Seattle back in 2012 that helps connect low and no income writers to health and social service agencies.

Next slide please.

Great, and so I'm not going to read out these quotes, but just really want to drive home that our programs have so much more value than just the quantitative outputs that we have.

Our work is really positively impacting folks' quality of life.

And really at its core, the transportation access programs that STM funds, it's a form of poverty intervention.

And these programs are really critical to supporting individuals' access to financial autonomy.

I will pass it back to Matt.

Thanks, all.

Excellent, thank you.

Okay, so moving on emerging needs is a new category in the S.

T. M.

ordinance that allows to spend up to nine million dollars annually to support emerging mobility needs related to the covet nineteen response and recovery as well as the closure of the West Seattle high bridge.

Next slide.

So in 2022, STM spending under this category focused on the response to the West Seattle bridge closure.

STM funded about 25,000 annual hours of transit service on routes 50, 60, 120, which is now Rapid Ride H, as well as Rapid Ride C line.

And we also funded some additional hours on Water Taxi and Water Taxi Shuttle.

Flip Your Trip was a multifaceted travel options program focused on West Seattle.

It included financial incentives, informative communications, educational workshops, and fun events designed to make it easier for people to travel to and from West Seattle without a car.

The program participation in Flip Your Trip exceeded expectations by 40% with over 11,000 participants.

STM funded the travel incentives associated with Flip Your Trip, and it also funded transit go ticket rewards, where users, it's basically a platform for your smartphone, and users can earn points that can be used towards trips on transit and microbobility.

Next slide please.

Okay, now we'll talk about transit capital projects.

In 2022, STM funded capital improvements to improve efficiency of transit operations, passenger amenities, and transit reliability.

Spending cap was 3Million dollars in 2022. So next slide.

In 2021, as a part of an S.Y.

COVID recovery efforts, SCM embarked on 3 new projects to improve transit, travel time, and reliability in key areas that had been hit the hardest by the pandemic.

So this includes Rainier Ave South, And in 2022, phase 1 of this project was completed with a total of 1.25, a mile and a quarter of new red bus lanes.

Phase 2 will build bus lanes north towards I-90 on Rainier Ave.

And we'll feature some new signals and 10,000 square feet of sidewalk repairs to improve access to transit.

Together, phase 1 and phase 2 are estimated to save bus riders 6 minutes at peak times and 2 minutes at other times.

The 15th Ave West and Elliott Ave West project basically expands the travel lanes for transit from just peak direction at peak times to both directions, peak and off peak at peak times.

So it was primarily a signage change.

And that new signage was completed in January of this year.

Aurora have North there's continuing work with wash dot for approval to install northbound bus lanes between Roy street and holiday street.

Next slide.

Please.

Transit spot improvements are quick, tactical transit supportive projects.

And most of these are funded by the Move Seattle levy.

STM has, at least in the past few years, funded several of these projects annually.

And in 2022, four of them were delivered.

and these four had a positive impact on 15 routes in Seattle and close to 3,000 people daily.

The exact location of these are listed in the bullets below.

And next slide.

And finally, I wanted to touch on transit corridor planning and design.

So, As that undertakes large transit corridor projects, such as transit, plus multimodal corridors, TPMC projects.

These are complex projects.

Sometimes it's not clear from the outset what the scope is going to be.

So, I'm working with our colleagues in the transit and mobility division.

We've discovered that there really is a role for STM during these initial stages planning and design.

Local funds, STM funding can help initiate new projects.

And because it's local, it can also be used to leverage grants at the state and federal level.

So in 2022, STM funding went towards three corridor projects.

And again, these are listed below on the slide.

Next slide, please.

All right, I'll pass it back over to Jen.

Thanks, Matt.

So taking a moment to talk a little bit about what's next, can you go to the next slide, please?

Well, this presentation has been focused on the investments and outcomes from 2022. We are more than halfway through 2023. So here's a bit about what we've been working on.

So on the transit service side, we've been working closely with Metro on two significant transit service restructures this year, both of which will go into effect in fall of 2024. The first is a service restructure in the Capitol Hill area associated with the new rapid ride G line on Madison.

The second is a restructure associated with the new Linwood Link extension that will create new east-west route-serving link stations, especially at the future Northeast 130th Street infill station, which you saw in the previous slide.

Beyond Metro, bus service restructures will also be evaluating the past transit service purchase investments that STM has made using the same equity-based investment prioritization methodology that Matt spoke about earlier and that was developed in conjunction with the Transit Advisory Board.

In addition, due to STM's limited ability to invest in additional fixed route Metro transit service due to the labor shortages and vehicle supply chain issues that that agency is dealing with.

Similar to many agencies across the nation, we are exploring a range of potential service investment opportunities with Metro that go beyond fixed route transit service.

In terms of our transportation access program activities, we're evaluating possible future iterations of the highly successful recovery program that Loralee spoke about.

We're also in the process of implementing the expansion of the fully subsidized transit pass to all residents of SHA properties, which Laura mentioned launched at the beginning of this year.

In terms of the STM capital program, we're in the process of developing a long-term plan for transit supportive capital improvements that reflects the increase to the annual STM capital spending cap from 3 million per year to 15 million per year that was passed by council as part of the 2023 budget process.

Next slide, please.

So this slide shows the STM spend plan that was included in the 2022 annual report and is from a specific snapshot in time.

The expenditures by year are shown in the colored bars and the actual or planned sales tax revenues are shown in the gray bars.

And we've broken the table into three categories with boxes around them, actuals for 2020 and 2021, budgeted for 2023 and high level plan spending for 2024 to 2026. And this was as of 2022. You can see that the actual annual expenditures in 21 and 22 are significantly lower than the revenues collected.

This expenditure revenue mismatch is primarily due to significant COVID era federal funds that were credited to STM investments, as well as that limited ability to invest in additional Metro transit fixed route service during and since the pandemic due to operator and mechanic shortages and vehicle supply chain issues that Metro's experiencing.

ISTM team's strategy to address this imbalance is to increase program spending in future years on transit-supported programs and projects.

As these plans develop, we'll be working with the Executive and then Council to discuss these proposals.

And now I'd like to pass it to Art and Ashwin with the Transit Advisory Board.

Thank you.

My name is Art Kunuki.

I'm the co-chair of the TAB, and I'm joined today by a fellow member, Ashwin, and the two of us will be sharing excerpts from our annual review.

It's a little bit long, so we can't share it all, but we did send it out yesterday, and I hope you've been able to read it.

I will also apologize that we noticed there was a typo on one of the years.

It's listed as 34 instead of 24, and I will be getting out a new copy after today's meeting.

So the Seattle Transit Advisory Board, or the TAB, is submitting its annual review of the Seattle Transit Measure, STM, for the period January through December 2022. One of the TAB's duties is to function as the public oversight committee of revenues collected under Seattle Transit Benefit Transportation District Proposition 1, now known as the Seattle Transit Measure.

The board takes this responsibility very seriously and is pleased to provide our comments below.

In general, the STM spending in a typical year by usage is King County Metro Transit Service, 55%, Capital Projects Spot Improvements, 18%, Transportation Access Program, 13%, Emerging Mobility Needs, 12%, and Planning and Analysis, 2%.

Now in its second year, the 2020 Seattle transit measure continues to provide an average of $50 billion annually to assist with transit needs in the Seattle King County area.

Last year, we were discussing the effects of COVID on ridership, and today we are happy to see transit ridership levels increasing throughout the system.

Overall, the TAB continues to endorse the use of STM funds by SDOT in supporting Metro Transit services and improving the Frequent Transit Network, known as FTN.

Last year's report highlighted a few uses of the Transportation Access Program, or TAP, funding uses, and the return on that investment.

And the TAP was also fully supportive of the expenses and results.

In 2022, as was previously mentioned, the TAP has expanded into four major programs with up to $10 million in funding that can be expensed annually.

As the report mentions, the value and return on investment cannot always be captured in numbers, but in the changes in writers' lives and the continuing progress in equity and social justice that STM programs and services help provide.

The emerging needs expenses were much needed after March 2020 with the closure of the West Seattle High Bridge until its reopening on September 17, 2022. During 2022, STM funds were needed to purchase additional service hours on numerous Metro Transit routes, water taxi, shuttle hours, and the innovative Flip Your Trip campaign.

For STM capital projects, up to $3 million may be spent annually in 2022 on projects to support infrastructure maintenance and capital improvements to increase efficiency of transit operations.

To support the F10 vision, the COVID recovery bus lane projects were continuing in 2022 and designed to install red lanes in the high ridership areas that maintain these levels during the pandemic.

And now I'll turn to Ashwin to read more portions.

Thank you, Eric.

The TAB has received a presentation by SDOT on how the Transit Spot Improvement Program, funded by the Levy to Move Seattle, is able to quickly and efficiently take care of small projects.

We fully support the creative uses by the TSIP staff and the expenses that go along with it.

STM funds are also used to seed monies for the design and development phase of transit plus multimodal corridor large scale projects.

And the tab does receive updates on the progress on these planning and design projects and looks forward to updates in the future.

We all await the release of the Seattle transportation plan and the tab will issue its comments on that report to the transit and mobility division and work with all modal boards to fully implement the transportation issues addressed in it.

The TAB knows that the majority of funding in the STM is for purchasing service hours and keeping transit services adequate to meet the needs of the community.

However, we do have concerns that post-COVID, there have been ongoing operator shortages, canceled runs, and items that funding alone cannot solve.

Therefore, the TAB welcomes the opportunity for updates in 2023 on increased service hours and runs, or a realistic assessment of what can be accomplished with the workforce and usable buses available.

For example, if there is a shortage of operators, could existing service hours purchased be optimized through the further development of transit infrastructure, such as dedicated bus lane or intersections with transit signal priority technologies implemented?

The tab encourages SDOT to look further into actions that can be taken to help immediately address these issues for transit riders, as we believe the current situation does merit urgency.

Finally, we'd like to thank the STM staff for recapping the financial realities at the end of their report.

COVID-19 had a major impact on transit services, riders and fare collection.

Federal relief funds assist in offsetting operational and STM service investment costs and maintaining service levels.

Metro capacity constraints are well known, operator and maintenance worker and park shortages.

STM reserves, a 20M dollar reserve balance in this fund is necessary to weather future changes and uncertainties.

STM budget changes, in which the City Council approves a budget in November for the next year, and decisions made at that time that impact transportation services fall into SDOT to resolve and report back its solutions to the City Council, as well as the TAB, as the oversight agency for STM expenses.

Thank you for your work on all of this, and thank you all for listening, and we welcome any questions in our report.

Excellent, thank you.

Again, appreciate the Transit Advisory Board, the volunteer hours that you put in, and the expertise that you provide to the city.

And wanted to see if we could put that PowerPoint back up in case you've got questions about, I've got questions on a couple of slides.

And I know we're getting almost to the noon hour here, so speak quickly.

If you could go to slide 23. Could you tell us a little bit more about what you're doing regarding the G line?

I thought the sources of funding for the G line were not STBD.

Yeah, good question.

This is service related to that restructure.

So basically Metro is, and I can let Matt, if Matt wants to talk more specifically about this, but we're not funding the G line, we're funding the service restructure that Helping to and that we're investing in some of the service change that's happening because of lines.

That makes sense.

Got it.

Thank you very much.

And then could you go to the next slide?

The bar graph.

Thanks for doing this.

And I know that those out years are subject to substantial change, but wanted to address emerging needs and also reserves.

Let me start with the reserves.

This graph, this bar graph does not show the amount of money sitting in the reserves, correct?

Correct.

Okay.

So just for the viewing public, there are millions of dollars in the reserves now.

And I think one of the purposes for that is to, if for whatever reason, STBD is not, if some form of it is not re-approved by voters in 2026 to start in 2027, then there'd be a way to sort of taper off the various subsidies and investments.

But there is that money available in the reserves now.

So it really is a policy decision on how to use those reserves.

And we can talk more about that, you know, when you come up with your spend plan for 2024. But the emerging needs category, I know we were in a crisis situation with the West Seattle Bridge, West Seattle High Bridge closed, and then there were some needs on the Low Bridge, West Seattle Low Bridge had some needs as well, but with that, essentially resolved I'm just you know, I think we'd the City Council would probably want more details on What your what your thoughts are on the emerging needs?

category and would want to provide our input on what how the money is invested.

So I guess what I'm saying is, you know, before you put something in stone on a spend plan for 2024, you know, the more consultation you can have with council members, I think the better.

There are lots of needs in the various districts and we get feedback from transit riders too.

So just want to encourage ESTA to, you know, I think it's important to.

Consult in advance with the council members on how you're thinking about spending those especially dollars in that category since that's one the original purpose is the circumstances of change substantially since the original purpose of of those dollars so.

to the point that Ashwin was making about the fact that we do have a significant operator shortage at King County Metro.

We have a lot of buses that are needing maintenance issues that are unresolved.

And so we're seeing a serious, a dramatic reduction in service from our From King County Metro, and it's having a really dire impact on the ability of our neighbors to get to work to get to medical appointments to just sort of do the things that they need to do.

And so I am interested in understanding better.

Given that the county is trying to resolve their issues as best they can, and we know that that will be a challenge for some time.

How can we use these resources to fill the gaps in the meantime and to really make sure that our Seattle residents can benefit from this resource and get access to services so that they can do the things they need to do?

I'd be really interested in hearing from all of you about your suggestions for what we could do as a city to fill that gap while we're waiting for King County Metro to resolve the issues they're having.

Thanks for that, those comments, Council Members, and I agree that that was a great discussion to have and will be part of the 2024 budget process as we talk about future spending at that time.

Thank you.

Thank you for putting together this 2022 annual report on Seattle's Transit Measure.

And colleagues, this was our final item.

Are there any final comments or questions for the SDOT team or the Transit Advisory Board leadership?

All right.

Well, thank you very much for this presentation.

People watching, you know, it is online.

Please take a look at it online on our agenda.

Okay, colleagues, I'll go ahead and end the meeting.

The time is 11.57 a.m.

This concludes the August 15, 2023 meeting of the Transportation Seattle Public Utilities Committee.

The next committee meeting of the Transportation Seattle Public Utilities Committee will be on Tuesday, September 5, at 9.30 in the morning, directly after Labor Day weekend.

So we'll see you then.

Thank you, and we are adjourned.