Good morning.
Thank you for being here.
I'm joined by council member Teresa Mosqueda and our staff.
We have three appointments we would like to have on our agenda today and I will just move right into the public comment section.
We have one speaker signing Mr. Alex Zimmerman and Mr. Alex Zimmerman, you have the floor, you have the microphone, so public comment is open.
Sieg Heil, my Dory Fuhrer.
Nazi garbage trash from animal farm.
My name is Alex Zimmerman.
I want to speak about something that is a point today, Director Office of Herring Examiner.
And I think I'm talking about this for the last 10 years, like a hundred times.
For example, and I spoke with him right now, he's sitting here, nice man.
Her office, her department, don't have every month meeting.
So people cannot come and deliver your opinion about this.
It's exactly what I've been talking about for the last 10 years.
I did it a hundred times, and I demand this.
It's very simple, common business, common sense of buying for the people.
So every department was to have a one-month meeting, including the director, and people, and commissioners, or without commissioners, so people can come and deliver their opinion.
We don't have this.
We act in this government, but as we have here, acting like what I call a Nazi social democratic mafia with pure Gestapo principle.
How is this possible?
For many years, many departments, and I am in consul commissioner meeting all around, many departments never have one month meeting so people can come and talk.
Q&A is best, but when you don't have Q&A, maybe you can speak something in delivery opinion, but this can be totally different than department or director have.
It don't have sense.
I don't understand why these nine consuls who sit here don't understand this very simple and good business principle.
When people come in delivery opinion, it can be totally different.
And I have this experience for all my life.
My head work little bit different.
So sometimes I bring something what has never happened ever in America.
So this exactly what I talk to you.
So I demand right now, clean this dirty chamber from this crook who don't understand what is mean American business.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for your public comment.
We will close public comment session and move to our first agenda item.
Please read it into the record.
Ms. Samuels and Mr. Vancel, come on forward and join us at the table, please.
appointment 0 1 2 7 7 reappointment of Ryan P Vancell as hearing examiner office of the hearing examiner for a term to March 20 2023 okay good morning so you've been to the table before and I want to thank you for sort of opening up your office to
We have gotten feedback from council members and you have responded to all of our questions.
I have a few clarifying questions on some of your written responses.
You will receive a sort of an expectation letter after this hearing, assuming there's an affirmative vote, and we will present to the full council.
So I'm going to turn to this document that is basically a series of questions, and you gave some fairly elaborate answers.
I just want to sort of better understand your thinking.
So on one document, you talked about sort of an integration with the Seattle Fire Department's citation system.
Yes.
I'm not familiar, so what is the end goal there?
Is that your office has access to, on a real-time basis, all of the citations, and so you're able to see them and coordinate schedules, and do you Is this one of the areas that frequently comes to the hearing examiner for appeals?
I'm not familiar with it.
No, this will be an entirely new item similar to now as we have with SDCI and SDOT.
They issue citations either for violations in the right of way or maybe a land use violation through SDCI.
The Seattle Fire Department apparently has not had a citation process in place since the 1960s.
And most jurisdictions in the U.S. and in the state have that capacity through their fire department.
And so the fire department's looking at implementing a new citation process.
And similar to those other citations, if there's a problem with the citation on the part of the individual who's been cited, they have an opportunity to appeal before the hearing examiner's office.
My understanding is that the Seattle Fire Department will be Sort of a reach out or stakeholders process for the next three to four months They're anticipating having council have legislation on this in July and then maybe implementation sometime in October or November They had they were they're very anxious to get it in place that when they first came to us they said January of 2019 so I know that they they feel for example with false alarms and and some other items that essentially the system is somewhat being abused and the citation would be an opportunity to make it a bit more enforcement on their part.
There must be some kind of appeal process in place as we speak.
Well, the citations don't exist yet.
So they can't issue citations, so of course you can't, there's nothing to appeal.
But once they issue citations starting in the fall, then the appeal process would be exactly the same as we have for DCI and SDOT.
where if somebody gets a citation, it's like a traffic ticket.
In fact, I often think of it as small claims court.
Every Thursday we have our citations calendar where we'll hear two or three cases.
Individuals check on the back where they're here for a contested hearing or a mitigation hearing or that they're just going to pay the fee.
And then they come in and make their case in an hour or less.
We would probably the main thing one thing that's in helpful for council to know is it'll certainly affect our caseload right now combined we see S dot and DCI giving us about 750 citations in a year and Seattle Fire Department will add at least 400 and they were trying to be soft on us So it'll it'll add a big load to our caseload.
I see you talk a lot about mediation and the opportunity to increase mediation through some of the some of the matters that come before the hearing examiner.
You talk about getting the I think some of the bar associations are the land use and alternative dispute resolution section of the bar involved.
What does that look like?
Are those volunteer attorneys that would lend themselves to these appeals?
And maybe you could talk about what your thoughts there are.
Absolutely.
So currently I'm a member of the Washington State Bar's Environmental and Land Use Law Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee.
We've formed it specifically to identify areas where in land use and environment law, but my focus is land use, where mediation can be enhanced as an opportunity.
The types of parties that we see in these types of disputes are unique compared to, say, family law or business, where you have a neighborhood group or you have a developer and or the city, there's unique interests in those different parties and why and how they might come to mediation.
and how they can reach resolution.
A lot of the times these individuals are participating in developments or projects where they're going to be neighbors or working with each other for years, even decades.
So there's long-term interests.
There's things that I can't address for them in front of a hearing.
You know, I'm thumbs up, thumbs down on the law.
but they may be able to cater an agreement between each other so long as it agrees with the code that the one tree that they all care about gets saved or something along those lines that the law might not protect for them.
I see it as an opportunity to, and this is similar to what we see in our courts now, it's an opportunity for individuals to come to resolution, to reach that kind of fine-tuned resolution that they would like to see, plus it takes them out of the system to reduce our caseload so there's a judicial efficiency that's achieved.
It's a win-win for everyone.
Everyone still gets their hearing date if the mediation doesn't work.
They get to show up.
We're not looking at anything mandatory.
The group from the Bar Association is made up of land-use professionals from all walks of life, of individuals that I see in front of me as both plaintiffs' representatives and developer representatives and expert mediators from around the state.
Very good.
You seem interested in the possibility of conducting hearings or some matters through video conferencing or Skype or FaceTime or something along those lines.
Have you actually tried that yet or is this something you're interested in getting your office doing in the future?
We've done it a couple times.
We've had, it was really set up, it's an opportunity particularly for these citation cases that I was talking about.
You have an individual who They have a right to appeal.
Maybe even they just want to mitigate and say, here's my situation.
I had my sandwich store on the sidewalk.
I didn't have a permit, but I'll never do it again.
I've got it now.
And they just want to explain that.
And they have to come downtown, find parking, pay almost as much as the ticket just to get there and take a day off from work.
If we can increase and improve the ability to people to come in, particularly as we're looking at decreasing the capacity for individuals to even make it into downtown, I think we provide a better service.
We've done it a couple times.
One in a citation hearing where an individual had reduced mobility and capacity and it worked well.
We also had three, this was a bit more than we were looking for, a case where the city had three witnesses that were in California that they simply wouldn't have a case if those witnesses couldn't come in by Skype.
It was more formal.
We'd see them in a single setting, a law office, I believe it was, and so it was managed on that end very well, and it went okay.
So what I'd suggest is, because I'm interested in trying to assist your office doing that, is, you know, you run sort of a, small five-member officer so independent and autonomous from a lot of what the city does but I'd like to look at as we enter to the into the budget year what getting either our IT group or any of our experts in the within the city, look at how we can increase that capability.
I just think that that's, you make a great point that for so many folks involved in the process, particularly in some of the more routine matters, just to be able to do it through video conferencing, many judicial forums are moving to that for many matters.
And so, It might be hard for you to sort of make it up on the fly, so maybe there could be a scope of work we could look at to see how we could improve that.
It absolutely warrants looking at.
We're doing this dance now of working with technology that's not quite where we want it to be.
I imagine the day will come when somebody can flip open their phone and they can participate in a hearing.
We're just not there yet with connectivity and making sure you can introduce exhibits and be reliable as a witness.
But as you mentioned, courts do it.
Often that's because they have a fixed point, another courtroom or jail at the other end.
But I think there's a lot of opportunity there that I would certainly welcome counsel's attention to.
We asked we try to solicit some information from your office on the use of land use or SEPA appeals where perhaps other motives such as delaying the process might be a concern of ours.
And you talked a little bit about balancing that that while that may be the case you also have to err on the side of giving everyone sort of their day in court so to speak.
Can you talk a little bit about now that you're really doing it for a while And you also talked about changing some of the rules of practice within your office.
Can you talk about our concern about abuse of the process a little bit and how you can perhaps expedite matters when there's an opportunity?
Certainly.
That was my least favorite answer to provide, frankly, because it's not clear, direct, and providing a response that I think my listener wants to hear.
But the fact is that our judicial system and our hearing room is a quasi-judicial system.
does err on the side of allowing appellants to come into the system itself.
I think the best way I can address it, in addition to what I've said in writing, which essentially says that the hearing examiner has rules that can and allow for dismissal of meritless lawsuits, parties can bring, you know, I can initiate that on my own.
other parties can by motion move to dismiss cases.
I think what might help counsel understand the system and how it works now is to give some examples of cases and how I've applied that.
Essentially, as a facilitator for these hearing processes, it's my job to move cases through merit or not, as fast as I can.
And so I'll give you some examples.
In the case, one case, for example, that was mentioned I think was an appeal of a SEPA determination for Fort Lawton, an individual who made the appeal.
The face of the appeal itself was written well, better than And so, at the face of it, I can't say this has no merit, even if everybody else in the community thinks that.
And in fact, that case, that appellant before had had success through our hearing and or court process.
So, it's difficult at the outset simply to say this doesn't work.
If, as that case progresses, and they don't meet deadlines as happened in that case, they didn't submit an exhibit and witness list, which is somewhat extraordinary that I don't see very often, that's when I can say, look, you're not following the rules.
You're just messing up the system.
Now, there's a lot of leeway in some of these things, and what I generally find in a lot of these cases is, No matter how hard I am pushing to get things going, every party wants it slowed down a little bit for their own interests.
MHA is a good example of that.
When I went into the hearing, pre-hearing, first pre-hearing conference out of three that we had for that, we had nine appellant representatives, the city representatives, and I was going to push as hard as I could to get it going.
And I told them in November, okay, we're going to have a hearing in February and it's going to be two weeks.
Nobody could really gainsay me at that moment that that wasn't going to work, but they all wanted more time.
What eventually unfolded really was the city attorney's asking for another three months simply to comply with records requests from the appellants.
And then the appellants genuinely showing that they needed, through the number of witnesses and the city, the number of witnesses they were going to bring.
We needed a three to four week period to do the hearing.
Only then was I willing to extend that for them and to meet that schedule.
But I'm pushing for every opportunity I can to tighten things up.
Gilman Trail case is another good example where we didn't know how that would be managed, and so we tried to restrict it up front.
We dedicated a specific amount of time to the parties for the hearing.
They convinced me even to use a chess clock, which I probably will not do again because I spend all my time doing this with the clock and watching every minute as opposed to really hearing the testimony.
But dividing time, giving equal time, it ended up being a very effective and efficient hearing that we were able to get done in a week for a matter that I think clearly is of great import to the individuals involved in the city.
So it's a tension that I constantly have to simply be aware of as part of my job and my duties.
Another subject, your role as Deputy Hearing Examiner, well let me ask the direct question.
Your predecessor, Sue Tanner, she would write at the end of the year, very good, I want to go back to the annual report, looking at all of the cases, those that were appealed, sort of the disposition of the cases.
Had you had an opportunity to look at the prior year's reports that she produced at all?
Yes.
In fact, I was involved in one, and then this year's report that has been sent out to council was essentially modeled on the same report.
I just wanted you to make sure you had those.
I found those very effective because more times than not the council is somewhat removed from a lot of the cases except for the controversial ones and I just thought one of the best pieces of work she had produced were those annual reports.
It really gave us a good I would like to hear a brief description of what all the activities throughout the course of the year.
I encourage you.
That's helpful to hear and I do hope as this process goes forward whether I'm confirmed or not that I do get a chance to meet with each of the council members to discuss this annual report because it gives me an opportunity I don't get in a committee to hear from each individual council member.
I'd like to look at the report and make sure that it really is giving the information that's needed.
It looks a little heavy on some of the data to me sometimes, but if that's working for the council members, then we'll do that.
It is.
And the cities such as Kirkland or Mercer Island and Tukwila, some of the contract cities that we work with, You mentioned that you're sort of monitoring that to make sure as their caseload increases, we have to monitor whether we have the resources to serve some of those cities.
Now, do we build those cities for our time?
And it's sort of a contractual relationship.
And so, how do you monitor whether that is effective?
Now, do you have our auditor or anyone else, or
I think that is a common sense evaluation.
It has been run essentially entirely at the discretion of the hearing examiner.
The rates we have charged have been in the industry low and we do bill for it and there is a mileage coverage.
I've been careful about not making any move with it.
It's the status quo is that we serve contract cities.
I'm here for a year.
If I go away, somebody needs the opportunity to really examine that.
If I am rehired, I think that it's time for us to move beyond that aspect of our service.
I want to be able to focus on some of these administrative tasks, taking on the Seattle Fire Department and the historic high caseload that we have in Seattle.
And I simply haven't been able to say that to our contract cities.
In fact, I hope they don't hear about this meeting.
But the council needs to know that as part of the hiring.
I think it's time that that's probably really lived its usefulness for the city.
We can always come back to it during low years.
You can always send out a contract.
But the diversity of cases and seeing how it goes is very useful and you get more hearing examiner skills.
I think we get all that through Seattle pretty well right now.
It really does cut down on our case ability to be able to be responsive to the City of Seattle in my opinion at this point.
Thank you, Mr. President.
So one of the issues that I'm interested in is what you described in your last question.
You talked a little bit about this the last time we met, but just the disparity in diversity of the appellants that come forward to your office.
And you talk a little bit about creating a citizen guide for challenging decisions so that, I guess, there could be more diversity in who comes forward.
Is that correct?
I, the Citizen Guide has existed.
It's a tool that's already in place.
It could be cleaned up.
I think there's, I think there are internal things that we could do.
Cleaning up the Citizen Guide, maybe even posting a video on our website, how do you use our processes.
We are, this is a tension.
It goes back to the other question asked about how do you move things along.
There's actually a phrase in the Citizen Guide right now that describes us as user-friendly, which I think is disingenuous.
We are quasi-judicial.
You can represent yourself or a group as a non-attorney.
The rules of evidence are a bit loose.
So to an attorney, it might be user-friendly compared to a court.
I think to an individual off the street, it's anything but user-friendly.
I don't know how much we can go in that direction, frankly, to continue being efficient and holding up our quasi-judicial duties.
So conversely, though...
individuals could be trained and could be informed as to what those processes are, even in being made aware that they're there and so that they can participate in them.
So this is going to be a tension of how we go about doing it.
In my mind, presenting things on our website, making sure that we have a line to get you to a translator, making sure that we have a citizen guide, maybe even a video, is simply not enough to reach certain populations.
And I don't have a plan in place for this yet, because I think it's going to take a lot of networking and a couple of years to put in place.
But essentially, we need to get out of the office and go into those communities that we're not reaching.
and have direct communication interface with them to find out what works for them, what doesn't.
Maybe the Skype connection is a way for us to start letting people come to the hearing more effectively.
I don't want to be speaking to that with pre-formulated answers before I've heard from those communities what they need most.
And that's really what I'm starting now is to start embarking on that networking to hear from those individuals.
Okay, great.
Well, that gets at the kind of heart of the question that I had, which was, how are you planning to revamp this guide?
As you describe it, it would need to undertake a rewrite.
And so my suggestion was to make sure that you're getting community input directly from the folks who are having a hard time accessing your office.
It sounds like that's part of your plan, and we'd love to have you keep us updated on that as you move forward.
Thank you.
I think it's going to be in a couple phases.
Right now, I, with my institutional experience and knowledge of how the office works, can do some cleanup on the guide.
We're proposing to do some rules revisions, too.
But that's an ongoing process.
Once I get feedback from the community, is the guide the place to put that in?
And if that's the message we get, then we revise it again to be responsive to that.
Okay, great.
I appreciate you being open to that.
One other small suggestion is over the years, we've tried to get rid of the word citizen because it's obviously all residents and it's more of a community guide.
So that might be something to take into consideration as you think about who is accessing this.
I'm going to take a few more questions.
You also talked about in response to the Council President's question around ways in which we've seen land use and SEPA appeals be used in maybe malicious ways or ways to try to delay the process that weren't a violation per se, but it was really a delay tactic.
And you mentioned in the middle of your answer to number four, council must be extremely cautious about circumventing the current system on the basis of one or a few bad cases.
You know, when we see kind of serial appellants coming forward on issues related to Fort Lawton, tiny villages, tent villages, bike lanes, having the same individual come forward, appeal after appeal, maybe even using the CEPA review process, which would not ordinarily be applied to certain circumstances, kind of stretching to make it apply.
And then you also couple that with the demands on the city for public records requests and this ongoing kind of cycle that we're in of trying to respond and be responsive to a very system that was intended to make sure that that community voice was being heard.
When you see that level of engagement, is there any sort of mitigation strategies that we can put into place ahead of time so that either an individual or an organization has a better understanding of the type of cases you will and will not take, given the past history on someone coming forward like that?
difficult dance.
We see individuals come in for public comment.
We see individuals file for public records request and come in and utilize our appeal system that if we close them out, we end up closing out in other individuals who have a right to that transparency and openness to process.
Certainly, I can say in the course of acting as hearing examiner if I have the same individuals.
This could be true for specific attorneys that sometimes appear in front of me.
If they misrepresent the law, if they act in bad faith, if they don't present facts that are true, that's something that I'm entitled to remember.
And certainly the same thing could be said of certain appellants.
That said, before I was hearing examiner, I represented a lot of plaintiffs.
Some of them were, you know, by their local jurisdictions considered gadflies.
Sometimes they were right one out of nine, ten times.
And that right is what gets them coming back.
And SEPA, SEPA's a challenging law for all of us.
It really is a full disclosure.
And I think that's a really important piece of law that really gets us into the analysis of the environmental impacts.
And I can only encourage enough that one of the things is to keep in mind your project can get appealed.
So make sure you do the analysis right.
I think MHA is a good example of that.
My decision's out on it.
I've made my decision on it.
You know, not to include the city's storehouse of historic properties is not a good idea when you know people are gonna be gunning for you.
So that's one of the first places it can be dealt with.
City attorneys filing motions quickly and on time is good.
And then of course I can take my own steps within the bounds of the rules to make sure that it isn't being abused.
It's this is as you can see it's a bit of a waffling answer.
It's not a direct response There isn't something where we can say once we identify individuals that can't participate sure We just simply don't have a system that allows for that now But I also heard in your answer that it was an internal looking analysis as well if you see situations in which maybe in hindsight
I'm thinking of the bike share example, where SEPA was used in that case, which would have ordinarily been exempt from SEPA.
I think trying to make sure that we're avoiding slippery slopes and the sort of broadening of the tent in terms of how SEPA was intended to be used use pushed further and further away, I think, from its original intent.
So thank you for your answer because I think it was both internal looking as well as external.
Yeah, it has to be.
You know, one of the other tensions that you see me mention in my response is what do we do when I can see something happen?
Do I deal with it then and there or do I actually let it run its course so that if it goes up on appeal, that's where it's going to end, knowing that it's going to go up on appeal.
That's something we always have to be mindful of is If I rush something through because then and there, that's the appropriate thing to do.
Simply by doing that, I may have created an appeal issue.
So I do tend to approach it with people are going to get a chance to run their course.
And sometimes that's enough to create a record that that's as far as they're going to get is my hearing room.
Great.
And then my last question, I think both of us commented last time about our appreciation for your answer in identifying that there's a need to continue to diversify the office.
You have a very small office, though, relatively, right?
Five people, including myself.
Five people.
And it sounds like you have a legal assistant and administrative assistant role coming up.
appreciate your commitment to increasing both diversity and inclusion in your office, and would strongly encourage you to think about ways in which the community can help identify folks so that we're not just tracking folks of color into administrative assistant positions, and we're thinking about how we lift up folks into higher skilled, higher pay positions as you go forward.
But obviously entry points are important.
I do think that there is a plethora of highly qualified attorneys and individuals of color and diversity who Would benefit from having such an experience in your office So I hope so and I really looking forward as an opportunity not just for diversifying our office but exactly what you you've highlighted councilmember was I
creating as a stepping stone and opportunity.
We've seen two young women come through our legal assistant role.
One was of Taiwanese descent, current one is Caucasian descent.
They were there for two years and then they went on to graduate school.
And we've spent a lot of time mentoring each one of those individuals through the process, it's the public process, and what we offer.
And I think I've seen them grow through that.
I think we can see that same with our administrative role.
And certainly we've seen it.
I can cite Pat Cole as our executive administrative assistant.
Now she's stepped up into a supervisor role.
And I would love to see that be our office, that we're permeable, that it's not a one-stop place.
Very good.
Thank you for the questions.
Good responses.
OK, so I am going to move this.
And I will move for the appointment Ryan Vance was hearing exam an appointment 0 1 2 7 7 All those in favor say aye aye opposed the ayes have it so I will present this to the full council Monday next Monday and I anticipate things go well, and I'll certainly argue your case and You're welcome to of course be there And we'll likely suspend the rules on an affirmative vote and if you want to address the council you really appreciate that okay?
All right.
Thank you.
Thank you very much and bring the next
Appointment 01287 and 01288. Appointment of Tanya C. Wu and reappointment of Sergio Max Ligon Talamony as members of the International Special Review District Board for a term to December 31, 2021 and November 30, 2019. All right, well, we start with introductions.
Good morning, council members.
I'm Rebecca Freestead, and I work for the Department of Neighborhoods Historic Preservation Program.
I coordinate the International Special Review District and the Columbia City Landmark District.
And I'm here with Tony Wu, who's one of our recommended appointees.
Would you like me to start by just giving, I know I've done this before for you, but just a brief overview of the board.
Sure, absolutely.
So the International Special Review District Board is one of eight historic districts or the International Special Review District is one of eight historic districts in the city.
The board is responsible for reviewing any changes to exterior alterations of buildings or sites within the boundaries of the district, as well as any changes of use for businesses or properties that exist within the district as well.
So it's a seven-member board.
Five of the members are elected by the community in an annual election.
and two are appointed by the mayor, and then confirmed by council.
So one of our appointees, Sergio Legentelemoni, is one of the mayoral appointees, and this is a recommendation for his second term.
And then, the seat that Tonya is being considered for is one of the elected seats that became vacant, and in accordance with the rules and procedures for the district, those vacancies are fulfilled by a mayoral appointment.
And so Tanya would, or the appointee would serve through the end of that elected term, which will run through November of this year, and then it would become an elected seat again.
So how does that work?
I know that, and thanks for serving during the interim period.
So the board itself then elects her, or says elected, what does that mean?
Sure.
In the annual election for the other five members, there is, within the land use code, a criteria for who those candidates are, fulfilling to business owner, property owner, employees.
I understand.
Who votes for them?
Who elects them?
Members of the community who are registered voters.
So they actually go through that process.
I thought when I read that on the different boards that it was actually the board members got community input and then they elected it.
So it's actually the vacancies.
In the case of a vacancy, the board will consider anyone who is not elected in a prior
annual election and then anyone else who has been recommended or Considered within the community and the board will have the opportunity to weigh in I see so we'll also put out a public notice for interested parties That's the process I was yes, okay And Tanya you miss will you will no doubt run for the position at the end of the Temporary term or have you made up your mind yet?
I think I will run.
Okay, very good.
So I know your family and your hotel and what you do, but maybe for the viewing public you could describe a little bit about your family and why you're involved in this particular board.
And yourself, I shouldn't say just your family.
Sure, no problem.
My name is Tanya Wu.
I grew up in this community.
Like you said, my great-grandfather helped start Lock Nine Musical Association.
My dad was one of the founding members of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce.
I grew up in this neighborhood in my father's bakery.
So I've been a longtime community member, and I was part of the Chinese Girls' Drill Team.
I did line dancing.
I did a lot of things in this community, and I absolutely love it.
on my father bought a building in the 1960s, the Louisa Hotel.
It caught on fire Christmas Eve in 2013. And so these last five years, we've been very busy trying to navigate building code and renovate the building and try to rebuild and open up to the public.
And we're very excited that the Louisa Hotel will be open mid-May, about May 16th.
We are hoping to bring in eight different businesses, local businesses on the ground floor and open up 84 units in the upper floors.
Very good.
And so I'm sort of following that.
That's exciting.
And talk a little bit about the history of the of the district, Chinatown International District, and sort of your, I guess, your interest or passion for preserving that which you think is important.
I mean, a lot of people, I have just a few years on you, so a lot of people your age would not even care about the history, I would assume, and they just want to put skyscrapers everywhere.
So talk a little bit about what sort of drives your need to preserve cultural history.
Hey man, skyscrapers are cool too.
They are, they absolutely are.
I really love my community and I absolutely love our old buildings.
They tell a story about our past, about all the people who came before us and made us who we are.
And I believe in honoring that past.
and being able to carry that on to our future generations.
And so, just walking through Chinatown, walking through these buildings, there's just so much history.
We have a history of jazz clubs, a history of immigrants, of even the Chinese Exclusion Act, all that history we need to remember.
And I believe that these buildings do tell that story and they're all that's left of this history and being able to educate future generations and preserving that for people to learn and to respect and to honor, I think is very important.
And especially, you know, with construction and with these 100-year-old buildings are, will need to be renovated and will need to be put up to code.
And I think that's one of the biggest challenges facing Chinatown is preserving that history and being able to preserve it for the future.
A lot of these issues with displacement and gentrification and construction and navigating building code will be evident to a lot of these building owners who are owned by families.
And so it's fairly important, and I'm very passionate about saving these buildings and preserving our history and being able to have this story around for future generations.
Very good.
Thank you for that.
And I know you're a Husky too, so you the presumption of doing good works with that.
And I know Sergio's a reappointment, so I'm very familiar with the work he's doing.
And he's also been really just, so council members know, he's also been very active on the Architectural Review Committee, so helping to oversee some of the new construction and the higher rise buildings that are coming in and in filling some of the spaces that are available within the district.
So he's been really actively involved in that process.
I want to thank the mayor for finding some good candidates.
Council Member Muscat, did you have any questions?
Yes, please.
So I was looking online for pictures of Luisa Hotel.
It looks like it's all to be posted soon when you guys open up, at least according to Google Maps.
So looking forward to seeing that.
Do you live here in Seattle?
I do.
I live in Rainier Beach area.
Great, great.
And so lifelong Seattleite.
Yes, I've never left.
One of the things that I'm very interested in is how do we both do preservation and enhancements given the crisis of affordable housing, the need for there to be small women and minority owned business spaces that are usually more likely to be constructed in some of our older buildings than some of the newer buildings, which kind of have the size for the next CVS or the next, you know, Ram bar or something like that.
What we want is smaller spaces to be created and also, I think, preserved.
But as we do preservation, part of what my interest is in how do we layer existing buildings with the opportunity to create new affordable housing on top.
Have you thought much about ways in which we could protect or prevent the demolition of existing buildings and then maybe couple that with additional building height or airspace that could include affordable housing?
Is that something that you've worked on in the past?
I think that's one of the amazing things about the ISRD is that ISRD does protect all their old buildings from those issues that you've mentioned.
And an example that we've had to work with the ISRD, and I really believe in all of their values, is when we lost part of the building because of the fire.
But because of ISRD rules, we had to construct it as it was.
And no one makes a 100-year-old brick anymore.
And so we had to find five different types of brick, mix them up into finding the perfect, not the perfect, but as close a match as we can to the old brick.
And I believe the ISRD sets the tone and the standards for solving all those issues for the future.
And it's something that I really want to be part of.
Great.
If I could just add, I think one thing to be aware of is that the board in its jurisdiction doesn't have authority over affordability levels.
So that is something that's come up quite a bit actually within the design review meetings that we've had and public comment of community members who would like to see the board address those issues, but the code doesn't give them the authority to do that.
So I think it's a bigger policy issue that the historic preservation program would be involved in that discussion, but not something that the board specifically right now has been grappling with.
Could you bring us some ideas for how to address that?
I will definitely talk with the Sarasota Historic Preservation Officer for the city and raise that issue.
Especially as we think about creating not just, you know, preserving old kind of cultural spaces, but preserving old buildings that allow for You know, the creation of successful businesses.
I'm thinking of Gay, who owns Optimism up on Capitol Hill.
And one of the things that she's done is she's renovated this beautiful old building that had to have the windows preserved in it.
And she wanted to do that, but preserving that was quite the challenge.
To find the window replacements for these tiny little panels.
And like you mentioned, trying to find the bricks for the replacement of the one that was destroyed in the hotel is a challenge.
So how are we helping to make sure that business owners can both meet the requirements of the preservation goals, but also then being maybe more flexible in terms of our assistance to help them get there?
As we think about the density needs in the city, having your input about how we can then use airspace above places or even maybe set back so that you don't see it from the street view, but there's clearly housing created above it is something that I'd be very interested in.
And you know, you guys are going to be on the ground level, quite literally.
So let us know when things come up that you're saying, well, I wish I had the tools to take such and such on, and maybe we can together then think about what's not in your purview and how we can continue to expand that.
Very good.
Excellent points.
Okay, so without further ado, I will recommend the appointment of Tanya Wu and Sergio Max Legentalamony.
Appointments 10287 and 10288. Second.
All those in favor, say aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
The ayes have it.
And I'll submit this to the full council.
It's not necessary for you to be there Monday at 2 o'clock, but you're always welcome to be there as well, but it's not necessary.
and I'll be your strongest advocate as will Councilman Mosqueda.
Okay, okay I will move to a point 0 1 2 8 7 and 0 1 2 8 8. Second.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Opposed the ayes have it.
She's my i-daughter and t-crosser so I probably transpose them.
And thank you very much for being here.
Rebecca, thank you for your work too.
Okay, with that we'll stand adjourned.
Thank you.