Seattle City Council Briefing 1/7/2019

All right, we're on.

Good morning.

Thank you for being here on January 7th for our council briefing.

We have a few council members that are out this morning, so we'll be a little lower number.

Maybe we'll get a couple more.

Let me just start off by saying that we have a A few items up for the governance, equity, and technology committee.

At least one item, I should say, and that is the Council Bill 119-427, which deals with driver representation in the world of TNCs and taxis and for hire automobiles.

You may recall, it's gotten some level of attention, but Basically, what passed out of committee unanimously was just taking out a section of that, of a bill that was passed some time ago that's been caught up in litigation.

The section dealing with the compensation piece, pulling it out may have a positive effect for all the parties in the litigation.

And by pulling it out, which is supported by many advocates, and I think even the TNC companies would be my guess, allows maximum flexibility.

So in other words, we can consider whatever legal options there are.

But then it allows the other parts of the ordinance that we pass to move on through litigation, which seems to be a successful outcome.

So the short of it, again, is we are taking out the compensation piece Of the legislation has passed some time ago and And that's that if councilmember O'Brien is here.

He may want to speak a little more of it, but it shouldn't be a Controversial since we're just amending by deleting a part that we did pass some time ago the other piece is something a resolution will walk on and and vote on today, which is a resolution that just temporarily changed our committee meeting times.

You probably got the memo that I sent out to talk about both the briefing, both basically our morning meetings to delay it at least 30 minutes or so to give staff and those associated with all of our morning meetings a little extra time because of the Viaduct closure.

I think this makes sense.

Of course, this is not mandatory, but we think it's smart to do given the the traffic issues that it may present.

It gives us staff low flexibility.

One other option could be you could start a lot earlier, you know, 6, 6.30 a.m.

if you want, but I didn't know if that was going to get support for that.

I'll be here at 6.30.

Okay, so it's just about some flexibility for the last three weeks in January.

So Council Member Esqueda, I thought she will not be at full council, but I thought she had a labor history proclamation that she was going to introduce.

So maybe someone else will be covering that, I'm not sure.

So I'll do a little digging on that.

Okay, so that's all I have for this morning.

Council Member Bechdel.

Great, thank you.

We have nothing this afternoon for our full committee.

And on the Finance and Neighborhood Committee is coming up, there are no items that we're going to have to vote on today, but on Wednesday, we will be appointing Glenn Lee to the Benaroya Hall Music Center Board, J.J. McKay to the Pike Place Market PDA Governing Council, and we're reappointing Mary McCumber to the Historic Seattle PDA.

And we will have a six-month audit report on the sweetened beverage tax.

So that is it for Wednesday.

Thanks.

Nothing to report on for this afternoon related to the Planning, Land Use, and Zoning Committee.

We do have one item on the Introduction and Referral Calendar that's related to the Uptown Neighborhood Design Guidelines, which we discussed in committee in December and will be back in front of committee in February.

Later on this morning we do have a select committee discussion on mandatory housing affordability where we'll hear an update from the OPCD staff on the work that the environmental consultant has done on the affordability stuff related to historic preservation.

So we've got a good update from folks on that and then also a discussion about issue identification.

MHA is going to be a hot topic for us in the first quarter.

We've got not only today's meeting, but we've got two meetings scheduled next week, one after our city council meeting Monday afternoon and another one next Wednesday.

And at those, we'll start to dig in a little bit more to the individual districts and potential amendments associated with those districts.

So it's going to be hot and heavy on MHA for the next couple of months as we try to get the project across the finish line.

More to come on that at 1030, but that's it for me for this morning.

Very good.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Happy New Year to everybody.

We have no items on today's city council agenda.

However, there's some issues that I want to share with you about what's going on with the lid.

On January 3rd, the mayor transmitted several pieces of legislation related to the central waterfront lid.

As you know, this has a long history.

long before some of us got here.

Some of you were already here beginning in 2011. Now it's 2019, eight years later, and I think we're probably at that threshold where we'll be looking at some major legislation.

There are three pieces to this lid, the local improvement district.

Number one is an operations and maintenance ordinance, which is about 23, 24 pages.

which includes the Freds of the Waterfront contribution schedule, financing plans, the term sheet, guiding principles, et cetera.

Number two is the actual lid formation ordinance itself.

And number three is the protest waiver agreement.

That is where the property owners waive their right to challenge such lid.

And you'll have more detailed briefing as I'll get to the second sheet and explain that.

Briefing requests will be scheduled with each of you through your offices, through the Office of the Waterfront, I understand.

And I welcome everyone, including the public, to visit waterfrontseattle.org for more information.

As you know, the total cost of this project is $712 million.

The lid is now proposed at about $160 million.

The remaining $552 million is to be funded publicly and by philanthropy that would be Friends of the Waterfront.

So next week, January 14th, during our Seattle City Council briefing, we will receive an overview and timeline of legislation and related parts by central staff and Office of the Waterfront.

Then on January 16th, next Wednesday, during our committee meeting, the Office of the Waterfront will provide an extensive briefing and presentation of the Waterfront LID.

I invite all my colleagues and council members and the public to attend this meeting.

And then within our committee as follows, we have two scheduled meetings in January with alternate times to accommodate for the Seattle Squeeze.

And then the first, Civic Development, Public Assets, and Native Communities Committee will be Wednesday, January 16th, 1.30 in Council Chambers.

We will hold a hearing in related to an easement in the Discovery Park, I'm sorry, to an easement in Discovery Park, followed by a briefing and presentation on the Central Waterfront Lid by the Office of the Waterfront.

The second committee meeting will be on Thursday, January 24th at 10 a.m.

for a potential vote on the Waterfront Lid, and from there it'll go to, I want to say General Council, it'll go to Seattle City Council.

thinking tribal.

So with that, that's where we're at.

We have information, central staff has been phenomenal, office of the waterfront and the mayor's office.

And I don't want to bore you with all the details of all the documents.

So I know Councilmember Johnson likes this wonky stuff, but we can talk offline about that.

And so that's all we have.

Very good.

Thank you, Council Member Morris.

Council Member Johnson?

Sorry, I'm just getting some late-breaking requests from other offices' staff members asking me to just report on a couple of additional things.

Sure.

Council Member Gonzalez is on a well-deserved honeymoon, so her regularly scheduled JESNA-Ed meeting on Wednesday is canceled.

And Council Member O'Brien's staff is about to walk through our secret trapdoor to hand me his talking points for later on this afternoon.

I can wing it though and tell you that we have several appointments this afternoon from Councilmember O'Brien's Sustainability and Transportation Committee related to the Seattle Transit Advisory Board and several other boards and an agreement between the city and the Washington State Department of Transportation related to Operation and maintenance of the 520 bridge laid in Montlake.

So those items will be on Up for a full vote at full council this afternoon from sustainability and transportation.

Very good Any other comments before we're gonna take a break?

We'll start at 1030 for MHA discussion and I'm gonna see who's

That's a nice jacket, Council Member O'Brien.

We can see you.

Council Member Johnson gave a brief description on some things happening in your committee, but you could go ahead and, since you didn't hear it, go ahead and share with us if you'd like.

Thank you, Council President.

I want to start by passing out an email, hopefully you received last week, about some work that the Fair Work Center and Working Washington are doing.

to highlight the impacts the Seattle Squeeze may have on hourly workers, low-wage workers, shift workers.

They've asked us to sign on to this, which I'm planning to do.

And it's simply a statement asking employers to really take into consideration the impacts that we've talked a lot about, hey, if you have flexibility, you can work from home, start early, start late.

But if you have a shift doing retail work, there's obviously not a lot of flexibility in there.

And so we're asking the employers try to be flexible as best they can and recognize that some of these workers are going to carry the burden of the impact.

And so if folks are willing to sign on to that, I'd love to touch base with you afterwards.

Good to hear you say that.

Council Member O'Brien, I see that our buddy Josh is in the audience, and thank you for this good work, both you and Jasmine.

Thank you.

I also want to read on behalf of Council Member Mosqueda a statement she's putting forward.

It says, we've heard a lot about the impact the Seattle squeeze is going to have on downtown office workers, but very little so far about the people who make their coffees, their lunches, and clean their offices.

I'd like to thank Working Washington and the Fair Work Center for drafting these common sense recommendations for employers that can make a real difference in their employees' lives as they try to navigate the traffic and balance their family lives, their jobs, and their commute times.

And by reducing the number of trips and granting workers flexibility, these recommendations help make this period accessible for all Seattle workers.

One of the points, I won't read all of them, but one of the points that's highlighted in here is oftentimes folks will work, you know, just two or three hour shifts.

And instead of having multiple people commute during this period, figure out how they can streamline that.

It's a good thing to do broadly in all circumstances, but it's especially important for all of us during these next three weeks.

Know I've loaned you my orange jacket councilmember warrens if you'd like it I want to just talk briefly about some of the things on the agenda today from the sustainability and transportation committee There's a ordinance on a street name change for Seattle Department of Transportation We have an ordinance around Coordination on 520 the next phase of the 520 plan Cuts my johnson if you went into that I can skip over that The Southlander street grade separation project acquisition ordinance seven appointments to the Seattle Transit Advisory Board, one appointment to the levy to move Seattle Oversight Committee, and one appointment to the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board.

Very good.

Thanks for passing this Fair Work Center document out just for the public that can't see what we're looking at.

There's some pretty I think smart bullet points that we're calling on employers to do, and I'll just read a few if you don't mind.

It's about flexibility, so not relying on on-call shifts accommodating workers who may need to modify their ability, their availability to waive discipline for employees who may arrive late due to work late to work due to transportation.

A lot of these may be out of their control, particularly when they're relying on transit.

And even if they're not, because of the possible traffic jams, providing at least two weeks' notice of work schedules, setting a minimum shift length of at least four hours.

Again, I probably read four or five out of 13 or 14 bullet points.

But all, I think, just common sense solutions to be supportive of.

the rights of employees in the situation that employees will find themselves in through no fault of their own.

So thanks for this.

I look forward to signing it.

Okay, so we got MHA at 1030. And with that, we'll stand adjourned and see everyone at 1030.