Seattle City Council Briefing 4/20/2020

Council Member Mosqueda.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Here.

Council Member Peterson.

Here.

Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

Council Member Juarez.

Here.

Council Member Lewis.

Here.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council President Gonzalez.

Here.

Eight present.

Thank you so much.

If there's no objection, the minutes of the April 13th, 2020 meeting will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

Really quickly, although through the President's report, I am really excited to announce that today marks the return of public comment to the City Council meeting agenda.

And this afternoon at 2 p.m., we will test out our new virtual public comment system for the very first time.

So, in order to participate in public comment, people will need to sign up in advance.

So, I want to repeat that.

If you want to give public testimony this afternoon at 2 o'clock, you must register in advance of the meeting.

That registration page is available on the City Council's website.

This registration page will go live today at 12 p.m.

noon.

So don't bother going there to the website now to pre-register.

You cannot register until noon.

That's 12 p.m.

today.

That's exactly two hours before the start of our full council meeting at 2 o'clock p.m.

You can find the link to this page via the meeting agenda or through one of the city council's social media channels that will be actively pushing out this information to the general public today.

So I will provide more detailed description of how this public comment, virtual public comment process will work at 2 p.m.

But if you have any questions about public comment before the meeting begins today at 2 o'clock, I ask that you contact me, my staff, or one of my, excuse me, the staff or one of the many legislative department employees that were busy at work over the last couple of weeks and this weekend to make virtual public comment possible.

And I just want to take a moment to thank those legislative department employees.

Eric Depusoy, Ian Smith, Elizabeth Atkinson, and Joseph Piha all played an important role in making sure that we were going to be ready for this afternoon's virtual public comment.

tool deployment.

So I'm grateful for all of their hard work to make it possible and available to the council and to the public.

I do want to just take a moment to note that this public comment tool is important and I remain committed to reintegrating public comment into our our meetings, but I'll note that I'm going to ask for everybody to be really patient because this is the first time we're going to use it.

So it's a bit of a live test run of this new and optional system.

And so there may be some hiccups as we roll it out.

And so again, while I remain, well, it remains my intent to have public comment regularly included on future meeting agendas, I also want to make sure that folks understand that if the tool is abused or not used for its intended purpose, then we will end or eliminate the public comment periods for meetings, either full council or committee meetings in the future.

So we are using a Zoom platform and we've heard some stories about how zoom can be hacked or otherwise misused by the projection or plane of everything from pornographic material to other sort of inappropriate materials and substance and matters and so that that's not going to be tolerated.

So of course, this is again a new tool.

It is still optional and we're going to do the best to make it work well for us and for the public.

But we do expect that the public will respect the tool and use the tool as it is intended.

Otherwise we will have to make the difficult decision of terminating the program.

So that is my president's report and I will go ahead and leave it there so that we can go ahead and transition into presentation.

This presentation is allotted to go from 935 a.m.

until 1015 a.m.

It's now 938 a.m.

So I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Councilmember Herbold and Peterson to give us some introductory remarks.

And then we're going to hand it over to the folks over at SDOT to kick off the presentation.

And again, we will end this presentation at about 10, 15 a.m.

this morning.

Councilmember Herbold or Peterson.

Thank you.

Excuse me.

Good morning.

I want to thank SDOT for coming and joining us this morning with another of what will be regular updates to the council.

I know the future of the West Seattle Bridge is one of the concerns about the future of the bridge are concerns that my colleagues share.

I want to also thank SDOT for their The time that they spent with Councilmember Peterson and I last week to a visit of the bridge that helped us visualize some of the problems, in particular, the problem of the locked bearing in a sort of big picture.

My concerns are, of course, always first and foremost safety, but also I feel that we really need to stay laser focused on the need to maximize mobility for West Seattle residents.

We often joke that West Seattle, which is a peninsula, feels more like an island sometimes, and that has never been more true than now.

and I really hope that Councilmember Peterson with his chairing of the Transportation Committee and my efforts as the representative representing District 1 and West Seattle residents that we can bring a real sense of urgency to the need to, again, to identify not just real-time traffic mobility plans for this moment, but also as we move into next stages and also work together to come up with a plan that represents, you know, the best thought out options as it relates to budget.

and mobility.

The presentation that we're going to hear from SDOT is going to cover the issues related to safety prioritization, the future of the bridge, stabilization, ensuring the schedule for both of those things.

that we are looking at.

The creation of a technical advisory panel.

The need, again, as I mentioned earlier for traffic mitigation, both as it relates to the low bridge, to the detour routes, and to transit.

And then finally, the budget moving forward and beyond.

I also want to announce that this Wednesday from 5 to 6.30 we are going to have a District 1 Town Hall.

Presenters from SDOT are being confirmed and Brian Callahan has graciously agreed to moderate.

And with that I turn it over to Councilmember Pedersen.

Thank you Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you Council President Gonzalez.

Good morning everybody.

Just want to reinforce what Councillor Herbold was saying that we'll be really focused on safety, urgency, mobility.

with a general oversight role that we have as a city council.

And this also brings up the importance in terms of mobility and transportation options for residents of West Seattle that are having a really tough time right now because of this closure.

Just so you know, top of mind for me is renewing the Seattle Transportation Benefit District.

to provide additional bus service to West Seattle residents.

We'll talk more about that in the coming weeks.

But I intend to work very closely with Council Member Herbold, support her leadership for her constituents, and also work closely with Seattle Department of Transportation, and very happy that they're here to give us another report.

We really appreciate this frequent communication with them and their transparency.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you, council members.

Really appreciate that.

We're going to hear now from the Seattle Department of Transportation.

I imagine that Director Zimbabwe is going to kick us off.

Again, colleagues, as a reminder, if you have questions, you can use the chat function to just tell me that you have a question.

And if you, in using the chat function, can let me know at what point you want to ask the question, that would be helpful.

However, do not use the chat function for anything that is substantive.

In other words, don't put your questions in the chat function.

Just use it for the transitory purpose of letting me know that you're raising your hand.

And then Council Member Juarez, since you are not If you have a have a question, just feel free to ping me on my phone and let me know that you have a question.

So with that, I'm going to hand it over to directors and probably.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

And I'll say that I'm going to walk through most of the presentation, and I'm going to turn it over to Heather Marks, who's joined me as well, to talk about some of the mitigation aspects that we're putting in place now.

So let me just start by saying there's never a good time to close a bridge.

And I just want to briefly thank everyone at SDOT who, in the midst of the public health crisis that we are in the middle of, to be out there taking the safety of the traveling public first in mind and identified accelerating cracking of the West Seattle Bridge.

And that led us to the difficult decision to close it back on March 23rd.

We know that this has been a major impact to people throughout Seattle, but particularly those in West Seattle.

And I just want to say, as we start this presentation, as we continue to be clear and transparent in our communications, that we and I share your share your frustration about where we are right now.

I am a West Seattle resident myself, many other people throughout SDOT are West Seattle residents, and we feel this closure ourselves personally, but we also feel it professionally.

We know that this is something that is adding stress and frustration to people at an already difficult time for all of us.

So I just want to make very clear as we go through what is still very challenging information and a lot of things where we still need more information to be able to provide the public with clarity on where things will go from here.

Please know that everybody at SDOT, the mayor, all of our partners at all levels of government will continue to work together to identify the best possible path forward and to mitigate the impacts of this closure on the way there.

So I know we only have about a half an hour left.

I will go through quickly a presentation and we can go on to the next slide.

Just showing Councilmember Herbold laid out exactly what we'll be talking about Um, uh, but just what has changed in the last few weeks, where we are in the process, uh, and then where we are going a little bit.

So I will jump into, um, just the, the background, what has changed.

And I know that some people are sort of.

joining this process a little bit down the line.

We were here a week after we closed the bridge on March 30th talking with you.

We're now back a few weeks later giving some updates.

But, you know, we When we presented on March 30th, we talked a lot about what got us here.

We also have been updating and continue to update our dedicated website to the bridge.

And that's www.Seattle.gov slash transportation slash West Seattle Bridge, all one word.

And if people are just catching up, there's a lot of information there that I would encourage people to go and take a look at.

We want to be very clear that during our frequent inspections of the West Seattle Bridge, there was no indication that the bridge was unsafe for ordinary use or that preventative maintenance plans would impact the normal use of the bridge until very, very recently.

And that really started and accelerated over the course of February and March.

We've been inspecting the bridge every year since 2013, and that it really wasn't clear until very, very recently that it would impact the normal use of the bridge and do so in such a dramatic way.

We can move on to the next slide.

And just to reiterate, and I think we've all said it so far, that safety remains our number one priority.

We have, it is still our assessment, and we've seen cracks continue to grow since we closed the bridge to live load traffic, live traffic load, but they have grown at a decelerating rate.

They have not continued to accelerate in the same way that we were seeing while there was still traffic on the bridge.

It's still our assessment.

our assessment that the bridge is not at an imminent risk of failure.

But before anybody of SDOT goes up on the bridge, before we do daily inspections, we make sure that it is safe to continue to do so.

And we also know that we need to plan for every contingency with this bridge.

And so we are working now to model those potential cracking scenarios and preparing our contingency plans in the event that we do think that the bridge is at an imminent risk of failure, we know how we will proceed in an orderly fashion.

We're also installing and have crews up on the bridge right now intelligent monitoring systems that can track the bridge in real time.

We've been inspecting the bridge every day in person, but That is a moment in time and we started last week and over the course of the next few weeks we will be installing sensors throughout the bridge that help us understand in real time what is happening.

provide a lot more information into what is going on with the deterioration of the bridge.

And that both informs our emergency planning, but also our future planning and helps us have the information necessary to know what type of repair is possible and whether the bridge is deteriorating more quickly than we think right now.

Our safety management is based on a worst case scenario.

So we will always plan for the worst case, hoping that we don't get there, but being prepared in the event that we do.

And we continue, and this information that we're gonna get from the real-time monitoring systems will help us understand and then have as much lead time as possible if things start to go towards failure.

Part of that is also outreach to other local stakeholders, the port, the Coast Guard, adjacent property owners that is also beginning now understanding what potential failure scenarios would look like and how we keep the public safe overall.

We can move on.

And I want to reiterate, again, that the future of the bridge right now remains uncertain.

Hold on a minute.

OK.

A customer has a question.

Thank you.

I just want to, I think it's less of a question and more of a raising of an issue.

I appreciate Director Zimbabwe, again, the focus on safety and the development of plans contingency plans to address the worst case scenario of bridge collapse.

One of the messages that you sent out over the weekend relates specifically to the plans that you are developing in case areas around the high bridge become off-limits.

And you say in that email that you're prepared to remove traffic from the low bridge and surrounding areas underneath the bridge for some period of time in the event that the high ridge bridge becomes unstable.

Of course, as you rightly know, this affects everybody traveling on and around the bridges, those who live and work near the structures, and our teams who work on the bridge itself.

I appreciate that this is a necessary part of contingency planning.

I want to also flag that I really appreciate that Chief Scoggins will be delivering a report on first responder capability to address fire needs in this time.

And I just want to flag that I think it's really important that The impacts on Fire Station 36, which is near the bridge at Delridge, be a part of this contingency planning as well, should there be a need in a worst-case scenario to close the lower-level bridge?

Absolutely.

I think those are great points, and Chief Scoggins and I are in regular conversation about the bridge and about our work on it.

And we have already started talking about what some of those challenges are that they face.

And the fire department is highly involved in our contingency planning.

And there's both not only for the area immediately around the bridge, but some of the other detour routes and uh areas where that'll see some increased traffic as a result of the uh high bridge closure also impact other stations beyond just 36 but that is uh very very close very very tightly uh being coordinated between s dot and fire and i appreciate that i um i'm adding a request um that i and i understand because i've had communications with chief scoggins that they are doing that work as it relates to the current

situation on the ground and doing an assessment of the fire department's ability to address emergencies.

What I'm asking is that work also be done as it relates to this worst case scenario if the bridge closes.

Yes, it is.

The lower level bridge closes.

Yep, it is.

And we will continue to do that.

Okay, so I think we were just starting on the future of the bridge remaining uncertain.

And I think this is a really important point here.

And again, we've made it very clear that we're committed to consistent communication, even when we don't have all the information we need to provide the full range of answers that people are looking for.

We do not yet know if the repair of the bridge is feasible from a technical or a financial perspective.

If the repair is feasible, we think it could provide up to 10 years of additional life to the bridge.

But in either case, we think we need to replace the West Seattle High-Rise Bridge much sooner than anticipated when it was opened in 1984. And then this was information that we shared last week, but we think it's very important to reiterate.

We don't anticipate traffic returning to the bridge in 2020 or 2021 at this point.

There's a few stages of what it will take to extend the life of the bridge and bring traffic back onto the bridge.

And I want to talk a little bit about each of those, because I think it's important for the public to understand the complexity of some of this work, but also what we are doing over the course of the next weeks, months, and next couple of years.

So no matter what is decided about the future of the West Seattle High Bridge, shoring and stabilization of the bridge have to happen to preserve the integrity of the bridge and protect public safety.

We need to address the continued growth of cracks and those cracks have continued to grow even as after we have removed vehicle live load from the bridge and stabilize it to provide us the opportunity to make good decisions.

None of the work that we are doing now precludes any choice that we make in terms of how we think about the future of the bridge.

But for public safety purposes, we need to continue with stabilization and shoring of the bridge.

So right now, I mentioned we've been doing field, we continue field inspection, we're installing that instrumentation hardware, provides us real-time monitoring and alerts.

Immediately, we are working on something that I'll talk about in a second, about the release of the tension in a bearing at pier 18, and we'll talk a little bit about exactly what that means.

Then we'll begin on repair of shoring and repair.

and bring together, as Councilmember Herbold said earlier, a technical advisory panel for peer review.

Some outside experts on the technical side that can help us, help all of us understand what is going on and think through the best ways to move forward.

And then assuming that we are on the path that we currently are on, later this summer we would begin our, we would address the bearing issue at Pier 18 and begin procurement of shoring materials.

We anticipate that to be some long lead time items.

And then after that, and everything that we're talking about here is through the shoring period.

At the same time as we are doing some more of the shoring work, we'll have a better understanding of what repair is possible, what our pathway towards repair would look like, but also be considering what the long-term future of the bridge is and whether early replacement is a more prudent path.

Great.

Before you move on, before you move on, Director Zimbabwe, Council Member Herbold has a question about slide six.

You're still on mute, Council Member.

Thank you, Council Member.

What I hear you saying, Director, is that all of the items on this schedule up through early spring 2021 must be completed regardless of whether or not we are going to repair this bridge or rebuild it.

Is that correct?

That is that is correct.

I think we need to move on the pathway that all of these things need to happen at the same time as we are doing some of the design work around shoring and design this spring, we will have a better understanding of whether and if.

repair is possible and understand what our, also be thinking about what our long-term future is and whether early replacement, whether passing over a repair step and just thinking about replacement is a more prudent path.

So this is not a fixed set of activities.

It will continue to evolve, but this is our current best thinking about how we bring vehicular traffic back to the bridge in the shortest possible time frame.

Thank you.

So spring for having a better idea of whether or not repair or replacement is the path.

Although it sounds to me like you are still saying that we need to deal with the lock bearing and the shoring, it's the activities beyond that as it relates to repair that are in question.

And the reason why I raise this is I'm really surprised that the number of constituents who have been contacting me and say, don't spend the $33 million, Let's move towards rebuilding the bridge now.

But what I hear you say is that we have to spend that $33 million either way.

I think, so this is a very complicated set of issues and decisions that I don't think we want to rush into while we're moving.

Do we have to do the shoring construction or not?

We have to make sure that the bridge is stable.

and it's a public safety issue.

So we will do everything that we need to do to make sure that the bridge is stable.

If we decide, if we determine as we go through that process that it is not technically feasible or financially feasible to stabilize the bridge or to repair the bridge, we can evolve that thinking about where we go and what we do.

I also want to be very clear, we do not have, and the the budget that we'll talk about towards the end of this presentation does not currently anticipate any demolition of the bridge.

And so if we were to go in a path where we didn't do stabilization of the bridge because we were working towards an early replacement, there are a lot of potential budgetary implications of going in a different path.

We are currently showing what our the best path forward is right now to bring traffic back to the bridge as soon as possible.

But those are, as we have more information, we will update that thinking and update the public and the council about what those decisions are.

Thank you.

Okay.

Starting to run a little bit low on time.

I would like to just I will try to go through as as quickly as I can some of the The technical information and I think it is important for people to understand a little bit about the the condition of the bridge, because I have heard some of the same concerns about why we are doing the work now to stabilize it.

I think some of what we can talk about helps explain that.

Like I said, our first step is to slow or halt the bridge deterioration.

And there's more information here.

We still see cracks growing.

I'm gonna move on to talking about one thing that we think is affecting the condition of the bridge, which is on slide eight.

And that is a lateral bearing that is on the east side of the bridge.

And the bridge has four sets of columns that carry three spans.

And this is at the eastern side that we have a lateral bearing that is a, piece of the bridge that sits between the roadway and the support piers, the columns that hold up the bridge, and it allows the bridge to move in response to thermal expansion, to traffic, to normal changes in concrete.

called creep and shrinkage over the course of time.

And what we've seen is that one of the bearings, and there's a picture here on the slide, is compressed and is bulging out and is creating additional pressure that affects the whole of the bridge.

So our first step here is to unlock that pressure that's on the bridge.

And this column and pier's cap is pier 18. And that is on the eastern side, as I mentioned, of the four sets of columns and piers, the pieces of the bridge that sit on top of the columns.

And this is on the east side of the Duwamish.

The two piers in the center, 16 and 17, are the ones that hold the high span, the centerpiece of the high span.

And where we've seen cracking primarily on the high bridges and in the middle of that, where we have area C on this slide.

but some of that tension seems to be generated through the bearing that's in pier 18. So our first step is to replace that bearing and that in and of itself, we need to make sure the bridge is stable enough to do that.

That involves jacking the bridge up slightly so that the bearing can be replaced.

And that is some technically challenging work that needs to be done.

Piers 18 and 15 are the two pieces that also connect the high bridge to the rest of the structure, the sort of viaduct structure that goes along Spokane on the east side and the West Seattle Freeway, Fauntleroy Expressway that goes up to Fauntleroy on the west side.

So these are still important pieces of the bridge and they're where the load is transferred and form part of the unit that also supports that center span area as well.

Once that work is done, then we will begin the process of shoring the bridge to further stabilize it.

And again, I'll just reiterate, we're still at the very early stages of this, working to gather more information.

That's why we have more instrumentation being installed here to be able to answer these questions about whether and how we think about proceeding.

This is our current best understanding and best case scenario of how we work.

on the bridge.

Shoring means adding temporary support that preserves the integrity of the bridge.

And we think that by the middle of this year, we should be able to design how this would work and procure the materials for how to make the stabilization repairs to the whole of the bridge and begin those repairs later this year.

Once we have that shoring in place, we would begin the process of repair construction.

I wanna also make sure that we're again clear that there are a lot of elements of uncertainty here.

And this goes to Council Member Herbold's questions about whether stabilization, whether and how we think about stabilization, but we need to make sure that the bridge can be stabilized before it makes further repair infeasible.

We don't know yet whether repair will require permits that impact on the navigation channel.

We need to design the process of how to do the construction.

And we don't know exactly what special fabrication or equipment shoring and repair will require, whether there are what the lead times on those are.

And we don't still know whether repair is feasible technically or financially.

And again, we share everyone's frustration and concern about not knowing all the information that we need to know at this point.

And I can assure everybody that we are working as quickly as we can to be able to answer these questions.

We still don't know whether repair is possible.

We are at very early stages.

We're at 0% of design and each step will impact what is feasible and how long it will take.

And again, we think that if repair is possible, it could add another 10 years of life to the bridge.

But there's a lot that is still unknown.

We don't know whether, you know, that tenure is a sort of a guideline.

The details of how we think about stabilization and repair will affect that additional life that we could provide for the bridge.

Briefly, and then I'll turn it over to Heather a little bit to talk about what we're doing from a non bridge perspective to mitigate impacts on the surrounding community as part of this.

This is a very.

complicated bridge.

We have a great team of experts at SDOT and as part of our design team, but we think that there's additional expertise that we can bring to bear from a technical perspective that can help make sure that we are looking down every possible avenue for how to think about stabilization, repair, replacement of the bridge that can help us and help inform both our own and the public's understanding of where we go with with the bridge.

So we're working to get a technical advisory panel formed that will be made up of experts from across the country focused on bridge design, geotechnical expertise, maritime work, all aspects of what the structural aspects of the bridge will take that can help continue to inform our thinking going forward.

So with that, I will turn it over to Heather Marks to talk a little bit about where we are on traffic mitigations.

Before you do that, Directors in Bobway, Councilmember Herbold has another question about slide 13. Thank you.

Yes, real quickly, as it relates to the technical advisory panel and the scope of their advisory authority, are they going to be making recommendations about whether or not it makes sense to proceed with shoring and or with repair, just trying to figure out where their advice is going to be sought, at what stage, and what we can expect there?

Sure, so we have not sent out invitations to the technical advisory panel as of now.

I think some of that scope of exactly where they will be providing input is to be determined.

I think in Our sense is really additional expertise that can help us make sure that we are looking down every possible avenue.

I don't anticipate that they will have that.

I think there'll be more of a sounding board than a recommending body, but really giving us – I think we'd rather have them be able to give us input, advice, give us ideas of creative solutions, make sure that when – if we think – we're thinking of every possible challenge or issue that we need to be thinking of early so that we don't go down a pathway that then we realize is not sustainable or feasible.

Good morning, everyone.

Thanks, Sam.

And I am Heather Marks, and I work at SDOT normally as the director of downtown mobility.

So also, I just want to note that I live in West Seattle, so I'm intimately familiar with the difficulties that this closure is causing.

Closing the West Seattle High Bridge has a similar level of complexity as closing the Viaduct.

It's similar levels of traffic each and every day.

But with a lot fewer reroute choices and we have had a lot less time to plan.

Right now, the low bridge is restricted to people who are driving emergency vehicles, freight and public transit, as well as folks who are riding their bike or walking along the public path.

Seattle Police Department is helping with our enforcement.

Anybody who needs to get to Harbor Island can access that through across the East Channel Bridge.

So approaching Harbor Island from the east.

I think we can move on to the next slide, please.

As I think we've mentioned a few times, we have installed a signal at Highland Parkway and Holden to help mitigate some of the issues of using Highland Parkway as a detour.

We've also added detour route signage to the First Avenue Bridge, and we've improved that.

In fact, we're improving all of those detour signages continually as we receive input and see how things are working.

The signals at the five-way intersection down near Terminal have been connected to our citywide system so that we can adjust signal timing as needed remotely.

In addition, next weekend, we're going to repave that intersection and add some additional amenities so that it operates a little bit better.

Just for the public's knowledge, when we repave that intersection next weekend, it's going to limit access.

people should plan around that.

In addition, we have plans to smooth, you know, fix potholes, smooth stripe, and sign the alternative routes so that those alternatives can operate as well as they can.

In addition, we're identifying more measures.

It's important to note, I think, here that The current detour and alternate routes cannot support the level of traffic that we had before the stay-at-home order.

And so as we continue to communicate with the public, we are going to help folks understand that we really do need to change some ways about how we get in and out of West Seattle.

And to that end, we are working with our partners at King County Metro to keep buses moving in and out of Seattle as quickly as possible.

Yeah.

Can you go back to the last, the previous slide, slide 15?

Council Member Herbold wanted to ask a quick question about this slide.

Thank you.

And this is this, I think, is both slide 14 and 15 as it relates to the lower level bridge, understanding that that bridge cannot support all of the traffic, even with these reduced traffic volumes that used to be held by the West Seattle Bridge.

The high numbers that the lower level bridge was carrying was around 16,000.

The last set of numbers I have from April 8th and 9th, and that was right when SPD, I think the 8th is the day before SPD started enforcement, and the 9th they began sort of an educational enforcement.

and that was 8,000.

I'd really like to know, that was nearly two weeks ago now, I'd like to know what the traffic counts are on the lower bridge now that there's been some sustained enforcement by SPD.

Yeah, thank you Council Member Herbold.

We are seeing those same numbers, but observationally we also see that as the the police department is out there enforcing Generally, during the peak times, they slide it around a little bit to keep it real.

But when there isn't enforcement, the violations of that request are substantial.

And so we really need to impress upon people the importance of keeping that bridge open and available, particularly for emergency services, particularly during this public health crisis.

So folks who are using the low bridge, please, I understand, believe me, I understand how inconvenient this is, but please do consider using alternative routes at all times because we need to make sure that ambulances can get in and out of the of the peninsula.

Yeah, and I would say it's stronger.

Don't just consider using alternative routes.

Don't use the lower level bridge, right?

Right.

You can get a ticket right now.

You can.

You certainly can.

I have committed to continuing to advocate for some relaxation of those restrictions for emergency workers and for off-time commutes, like at night.

But I can only do so if you guys at SDOT see drastically reduced volumes of traffic on the lower level bridge.

So if anybody's listening, stop using the lower level bridge.

You can be more direct.

You can be more direct than I can.

Yes, stop it.

It's not helping.

Thank you so much for for that line of questioning.

I do think it's important to remind folks just to that it's not just a a soft suggestion to avoid using the the low bridge.

It is it is. you know, absolute need to avoid using the lower bridge.

And while we appreciate that that creates an inconvenience, I am also a West Seattle resident.

I think we have a very strong quorum just on this Zoom call of West Seattleites.

But I do think it's important for us to, for the sake of the integrity of our citywide public safety system and for the public safety system as a whole of District 1 to make sure that folks stay off the low bridge until we're able to come up with some safer alternatives for, as Council Member Herbold has described, perhaps some categories of exemptions for certain individuals.

But I want to echo the forcefulness of Council Member Herbold's point around avoiding the use of the low bridge until further notice.

I know that Councilmember Mosqueda also has a question or comment on this slide, so I will cede the floor to her.

Thank you, Council President.

I want to, again, thank Director Zimbabwe.

I know you and I had a chance to chat briefly, but it does seem like there has been a dramatic reduction in the flow of traffic down there.

As folks may know, I live just around the corner, so this is part of my walking route and running route to go on the Lower Bridge often, and just seeing it even this morning, the police officers who are down there redirecting traffic is greatly appreciated, and I could see commerce emergency vehicles moving freely so that's really appreciated and a drastic difference from two Mondays ago.

I do want to just put a pin or ping you all again about where we are at in considering whether or not healthcare providers and human services providers like folks who work at DESC might be able to get a special okay to go on that lower bridge and perhaps that weaves into Council Member Herbold's comment about needing to see a reduction in individuals trying to get on that bridge.

I noticed that the signage to get onto the lower bridge now says do not enter for bus and commerce vehicles only, which I think is a direct sign and a direct mandate to people to not get onto that lower bridge.

But can you remind us of what the process is and the timeframe for allowing health care providers and homeless services or human service providers to have an acceptance to climb that bridge?

So thank you very much, council members.

I do appreciate your support as we try to minimize traffic on the low bridge.

We are working closely right now with the Port of Seattle and businesses that, essential businesses that operate down in the vicinity of the low bridge and trying to ascertain whether or not there are time periods when we can relax our restrictions.

The difficulty is, of course, one of numbers.

So as we relax restrictions, it becomes more and more difficult to explain why this kind of worker is more essential than that kind of worker.

And I think one of the things that we've learned from this public health crisis is that we got a lot of essential people.

And so we are actively engaged in those conversations, Council Member Mosqueda.

And I think one of the difficulties for healthcare workers and for human services workers is just figuring out the numbers.

Because we do have actual real limitations about how much traffic that low bridge can handle.

We can identify, to the extent that we can identify workers and sort of do the arithmetic to figure out how many we can fit.

That's one thing, but just trying to speculate about who in West Seattle is a doctor, a nurse, or a social worker is a difficult calculus.

Does that make sense, Council President?

One quick follow-up.

Sure.

I just want to make note of the time as well.

It is 1022 a.m., and we have a we're going to have a rather robust conversation in terms of committee reports related to full council this afternoon.

So I'm going to encourage us to move along after Council Member Mosqueda's question so that we can avoid being here until close to one.

Go ahead, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you so much and thanks Heather and Director Zimbabwe for that report back.

Appreciate the updates as you consider what the numbers may or may not be.

Just a quick PSA though I want to remind folks and please tell me if you heard otherwise or if I'm incorrect.

There is no document that essential workers need to have on them at this point.

We have heard reports and I will be following up with Chief Best and Councilmember Herbold as chair of this Public Safety Committee and Council President Gonzalez as well.

We have heard reports of police officers pulling people over and asking for their essential worker permit.

And we want to make sure that that is not something that people are being asked for.

And I don't think that it relates to the lower bridge, as people have been pulled over there for incorrectly accessing that bridge.

But as you consider whether or not we can have healthcare providers and others access that lower bridge, we would love to work with you all about what kind of documentation that may or may not be, because I don't want that to be used as an excuse for folks to get pulled over.

On that front, we'll be following up with more information, but that was just a quick PSA.

There is not a document needed, correct?

So let me, this is a very good question.

And there, yes, there is a very small number, a very small number of ILWU workers who are dispatched from their union hall on East Marginal Way.

And because of the speed with which they have to, arrive at Terminal 5, they are allowed right now, and I know that this is problematic, so we're going to move through that for just a second.

They have a – it's more of a placard that just says that they're an ILWU worker who's been dispatched and headed for Terminal 5. SDOT shares your concern.

both direct and indirect about requiring people to have any kind of pass.

And not just for human rights reasons, but also because there's no place to pull people over and check.

So right now, it's just a tiny number of ILWU workers who are using that.

It's not a pass, it's a placard that should indicate Kate to policemen at a glance that they are authorized to use the bridge.

Does that clarify?

Yes, thank you.

You're very welcome.

Let me just say that we're working with King County Metro very thoroughly.

So just in the interest of time, I'll hand it back to Sam so that he can talk about our order of magnitude budget.

Yeah, and I'll just reiterate that we're working with all sorts of transit partners on developing contingency plans.

And transit has been one of the places that the public health crisis has also hit the hardest in terms of making day-to-day decisions based on the health of their workforce and made it very challenging, I think, to think about it.

you know how we move into recovery and how we move forward from transit throughout the region knowing that it is still essential to our to our success as a city and as a region but it's some of those plans will continue to emerge as we work with our partners at a time when they're also really trying to manage the day-to-day as well.

So we did want to spend a very brief time on what our order of magnitude budget is through shoring, especially Council Member Herbold and hearing the questions that you've gotten and that we've gotten about Is this money worth it?

And I want to say that this dollar figure that we are showing here is still very early in our understanding of exactly what needs to be done through stabilization, and repair and potential replacement as well.

And some of these costs, so the costs related to shoring construction as we know it now is on the order of $15 million there.

Most of the other costs here that we're showing in terms of order of magnitude costs need to be done sort of regardless of what our path forward is.

We think still that shoring is necessary and certainly necessary on the repair pathway.

But there's both the installation of monitoring equipment, the design of our approach going forward structurally, construction work related to Pier 18, but then also some of what we've talked about in terms of traffic control mitigation, our communications efforts, and then something I think we want to highlight too is our need to continue to take care and in some places accelerate the maintenance of the swing bridge to make sure it remains a viable and robust transportation asset as well.

So Those figures are our, again, order of magnitude estimates of what our program is sort of over the next year or so.

The repair line is TBD, and that is a place where, as we continue to have more information about the condition of the bridge and our path forward, we'll continue to update these figures and these estimates.

And again, our commitment and our approach is to have regular, clear, and transparent communication.

And that means that as our understanding changes, we will be sharing that with you and with the public as a whole.

And so just to talk a little bit about what we're doing to continue to bring the community together, we've worked to share email updates with over 1,000 people that have already signed up for our email updates.

We continue to post information on that website I mentioned earlier that update people as we have more information, as we do activities.

We're working with D.O.N., Office of Economic Development, make sure that we're communicating from a neighborhood, a community perspective, also from a business perspective as well.

So we know there's a lot more work here.

Council Member Herbold, you mentioned the town hall on Wednesday evening.

Heather and I will be joining you there as well.

So we are very, very committed to clear, consistent, and transparent communication throughout the life of this project.

And with that, I'll stop.

I know we've had a lot of discussion.

I'm happy to answer any other questions or take any other feedback you've got.

Thank you, Director Zimbabwe.

And Heather, really appreciate your willingness to be with us this morning, almost exactly four weeks after our first briefing in council briefing.

Kind of hard to believe that it's been four weeks already.

I want to thank you for your ongoing cooperation with us as a council and certainly with your continued endeavor to be transparent and direct as possible with the public and folks who use the West Seattle Bridge, whether they're residents or workers of District 1. I have really appreciated your all's willingness to give us weekly reports on the work that you all are doing on this important infrastructure issue, and I really appreciated the leadership of our Transportation Chair, Councilmember Peterson, and District 1 representative, Councilmember Herbold, in making sure that this issue stays on the front burner and that we are asking all of the appropriate questions to make sure that we understand not just what's at stake, but also what some mitigation strategies are or can be in order to adequately meet the needs of folks who need to get in and out of West Seattle, so appreciate that.

Any other questions or comments from my colleagues before we close this portion of the agenda out?

Great.

Seeing none, of course, SDOT and the good folks over at SDOT are always available to us offline.

So I strongly encourage any of you who have additional questions or concerns or need more information to please reach out to Director Zimbabwe or Shana Larson over at SDOT who is our contact there to help get us additional information.

So with that being said we'll conclude this part of today's council briefing.

Thank you to Heather and Sam again for being with us this morning.

You are welcome to go ahead and disconnect at this point and we will continue through our items of business.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, next item is a discussion on our preview of today's City Council Actions Council and Regional Committees.

So we'll go ahead and begin that report out.

I will call on council members as established by the rotated roll call for city council meetings, which is designated alphabetically by last name, with the council president going last.

So this week's roll call rotation begins with Council Member Mosqueda, then Peterson, Sawant, Strauss, Herbold, Juarez, Lewis, Morales, and then I will conclude the agenda discussion.

So that is the order that I will call you all in.

And we will go ahead and begin with Council Member Mosqueda.

Good morning.

Can you hear me okay?

We can hear you.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Council President, for initiating the public testimony at this afternoon's meeting.

I look forward to engaging with you all as we figure out how to make that work as well for Wednesday.

So appreciate the work that central staff and the IT folks worked on, as you mentioned in your opening comments, Council President.

And as we have conversations on Wednesday at the full council budget committee of the whole, we will be looking forward to folks providing feedback as well on that Wednesday meeting to make sure that the public comment is working well for everyone.

So thanks for piloting it.

this week so that we can make sure to have a robust discussion going forward in those budget committee meetings as well.

For today's full council, I wanna thank Council Member Strauss for his work on Council Bill 119796. This is the bill to make sure that we're establishing interim permitting processes during the civil emergency while we are under a stay-at-home order.

We wanna make sure that we're keeping the permitting process moving forward, especially for housing projects.

So I wanna extend a huge amount of appreciation to Council Member Strauss for his work with our office.

as he's come up with a substitute bill that will be in front of us this afternoon.

There's a few additions in the substitute bill that I'm sure Council Member Strauss will go over.

If you don't mind, Council Member Strauss, I'll just mention a few of those.

Number one, we have worked with his office to add in a request that SDCI and Office of Labor Standards promulgate a rule related to construction worker safety and clarifying that early outreach can be done and conducted using digital methods and outlining the options for satisfying the requirements.

In addition, I'm really pleased to be able to sponsor an amendment that you all see in front of you from the materials that were sent yesterday that creates more certainty that the process, that the progress on projects made in the permitting process is not lost after the emergency order is lifted or the legislation expires.

So this amendment creates consistency by indicating that projects that enter administrative review are able to stay on track if they have progressed beyond early design guidance or the SCCI director determines that switching to full design review would cause undue delays in the process.

I want to thank the folks at the departments as well for working with us to provide this feedback and sort of clarity in the amendment that we have offered.

Thanks again to Council Member Strauss, Central Staff, and Law for your work as well on this amendment.

I think that this legislation is really critical to making sure that housing projects are able to retain their financial backing and to move through the permitting process during this crisis.

I'm hoping that with this legislation, this will aid the much-needed housing, jobs created through the projects, and economic recovery as we face unprecedented impacts of COVID on our local community, including public health and housing.

The Finance and Housing Committee, there is a meeting that was scheduled on April 21st.

That Finance and Housing Committee has been canceled.

As you all know, we have the Budget Committee, the Select Committee of the Budget, which is all of us, on Wednesday, April 22nd at 10 a.m.

The agenda, I believe, has been previewed in the material sent around by central staff, and thanks to Patty for sending that around.

The agenda will be published today, broader, and it includes an economic review forecast from the CBO.

Thanks to the director for providing us with an in-depth overview of what we can anticipate or what we are able to plan for right now as we already see the impacts of COVID.

affecting our current budget and potential revenue in the future.

We will then spend the rest of the time focused on the proposals put forward by Councilmember Sawant and Councilmember Morales.

Again, thanks to them for working to have some legislation for us to review early.

We will start with the spending plan bill overview.

We'll also have the tax revenue bill and the inter-fund loan bill.

Our intent is to try to spend about 30 minutes each on those bills, but we do want to know that we will have a number of questions and we also want to build in time for public comment.

We're having ongoing conversations right now about how that public comment will work based on today's public comment during full council and so more information is going to be published soon about participating in Wednesday's public comment period as well.

So I wanna note that it's really, the bills that have been put forward are really appreciated.

They're very dense.

If you do have questions in advance, we'd love to hear those.

We might not get through all three bills on this Wednesday, depending on how the conversation goes and how the questions proceed.

But we do have a commitment to all of you, including to the sponsors, that if we don't get through all three bills on Wednesday, we will revisit the in-depth bill discussion next Wednesday when the Select Budget Committee is scheduled to convene again.

Again, we're really looking forward to having public comment and making sure that we hear from the public on Wednesday.

Thanks again to the Council President, the City Clerk, our IT Department, Law, and Freddy de Cuevas and Cody from the Council President's Office for helping to figure out how that comment process will work.

and we want to make sure that if you also are not able to call in and participate through public comment, as always, you can send a message.

If you do record a message on our normal line, those will be transcribed at this moment and also sent around to the council members.

Lastly, council colleagues, I want to make sure that if we do have any follow-up questions from the legislation that is discussed on Wednesday, that we have the opportunity to do a robust discussion on the following Wednesday.

So I'm going to preview for you right now.

Any follow-up questions from council members after this Wednesday's meeting, we're going to ask for folks to get back to us with questions by Friday at 5 p.m.

So central staff have robust amount of time to provide feedback to all of I think that's it for my updates today.

I'm saying that from memory so hopefully I didn't mess it up.

saying that at the top of my transition to this section of the agenda, but I think just for ease of helping us and the public track what we're talking about, it would be, I think, ideal to just sort of wait until Councilmember Strauss has addressed the bill before we launch into a conversation around amendments.

So if those comments are currently in your script or in your notes, I'd ask you to sort of hold on those and sit on those until we've had an opportunity to hear from Councilmember Strauss as a primary sponsor of that bill.

Okay, we're gonna go ahead and move along to, I'm sorry, are there any questions or comments with regard to Councilmember Mosqueda's report on items that are not related to Council Bill 119769?

Thank you.

Hearing and seeing none, we will move to Councilmember Peterson.

Thank you, Council President.

Good morning, colleagues.

I'm really happy that SDOT was here to give their presentation.

I want to thank Councilmember Herbold for her leadership on the West Seattle Bridge issue.

I look forward to continuing our work together.

On this afternoon's full City Council agenda, there are no items from our Transportation and Utilities Committee.

I know we are focused on responding to COVID-19 and big issues like West Seattle Bridge, but this Wednesday's Earth Day, maybe some of you will be talking about that.

What I'm doing on Earth Day in District 4 is visiting the North Transfer Station in Wallingford.

So as we all know, we're fortunate to own and operate two utility operations, so electricity, but also waste and water with Seattle Public Utilities.

So I'll be going on a tour of the transfer station where There's a lot of recycling activity that goes on there in Wallingford and that's of course important for the health and sustainability of our planet.

This past week I had a virtual meeting with a boy scout troop from northeast Seattle.

They were trying to earn their merit badge for citizenship in the community.

They asked some very tough questions.

Usually the toughest questions I get are often from children in the district.

And was happy to answer those.

happy to report they've earned their merit badge.

This weekend, I also visited the farmer's market in the university district, which as we know, the mayor had opened up two farmer's markets this past weekend.

I just observed that district four residents were doing their best to adhere to social distancing requirements, and they were waiting in line six feet apart before they shopped for fresh food at the farmer's market.

I anticipate it'll be open again next Saturday as well.

We continue for District 4 to have our office hours over the phone or for Skype, so please just sign up on my website at seattle.gov forward slash council.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

Any questions or comments on Councilmember Peterson's report?

Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and move to the next report.

Councilmember Sawant, the floor is yours.

Thank you, President Gonzalez.

Good morning, everyone.

There are no items on today's city council agenda from the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee.

As was mentioned by Council Member Mosqueda, there will be a budget committee meeting this Wednesday, which will discuss for the first time the legislation developed by my office alongside Council Member Morales' office to tax Amazon and other 2% of largest corporations in Seattle.

to fund COVID-19 relief for working people, ensuring that the burden does not fall on small business or medium-sized business owners, and also the legislation ensures that all nonprofits, grocery stores, and public employers are exempted from the tax.

And in addition to the COVID-19 relief that is immediately needed, The legislation will also, the tax will also fund a public jobs program for building social housing and the Green New Deal.

And I believe that, and I'm joined by thousands in our city, tens of thousands who agree that We are in a triple emergency right now for most working people, including small businesses.

There's a danger to life and health.

There's also the ongoing housing affordability crisis, which is only going to get exacerbated.

And there is now a crisis of jobs, which is now going to get worse in the coming weeks and months.

In the last week, the Seattle Times, which is itself a big business that would have to pay this tax, has published – the Seattle Times editorial board has published three editorials opposing it.

They are not even pretending to have journalistic integrity about their own financial interests on this issue.

But most importantly, this reflects that big business will use predictably all their political power, their clout.

to prevent having to pay their fair share of taxes.

They talk about shared sacrifice, but we know that this is not a shared sacrifice.

The crisis is not landing on everyone's shoulders equally.

It's working people who are bearing the brunt of this crisis right now.

Many small businesses, especially owned by immigrant and people of color community members have been wiped out while corporate executives are getting not only you know they are not only able to weather this storm because of massive cash reserves but also on top of that they are getting bailouts from the Trump administration which far outweighs the amount of federal stimulus checks that is going to working people throughout the country, which is important, but it is, you know, just gravely inadequate.

We've also seen the petition that the Chamber of Commerce is circulating, which is falsely We have seen economic evidence that this is not tax on jobs.

It is a tax on big businesses, not on the workers.

And in fact, the workers in many of the industry that will be taxed are also supporting this tax.

I appreciate the discussion I've been able to have.

with Council Member Mosqueda as chair of the committee about various issues.

And I have highlighted to her that we need to include community voices to, and we need, as a council, need to make a huge effort to include community voices in various ways.

Of course, public comment is part of that.

Appreciate President Gonzalez and the staff of the city council really making an effort towards this.

I've also, as I've mentioned to Chair Mosqueda, you know, stated my preference and the preference of the public that we have public comment at the start of the meeting, or at least part of the comment at the start of the meeting, because it's hard for people, working people, you know, people, many people who are even at home are working, and other essential workers are still actually at work, physically at work.

We need to make sure that public comment is, one, the timing is predictable, so part of the problem with keeping it at the end is, that people don't know when to come in.

And also, I think the council's work and discussion in the committee should be informed by public comment.

So I appreciate the ongoing conversation to be able to make sure that we facilitate that in the best way possible.

I also wanted to say for the record that contrary to any idea that there might be floating out there that the Samant Morales legislation is not the result of some narrow stakeholder group.

Hundreds of community members, workers, union members, and non-unionized workers, housing and tenants' rights advocates, progressive small business owners, faith activists were involved through a debate and discussion, and lively discussion and voting were involved in crafting many aspects of this legislation.

Dozens of community organizations, including progressive union leaders, have been involved.

So I just want to make sure that we understand that this is something that is, you know, it's a product of democratic discussion and debate.

I just wanted to quickly also share what I've already shared with Chair Mosqueda, and this is something that Council Member Morales' office and my office together developed, which is recommendations for committee panelists.

for TaxAmazon, and I'm hoping that at 22nd, or at least at the 29th committee, we hear from these community members and leaders, because they've been involved in the discussions around this legislation.

One of them is David Parsons, who is the president of UAW 4121, which is the union that represents 6,000 academic student employees and postdocs at the University of Washington.

or somebody from that union, because that union has been active in organizing for progressive taxation.

I think it would also be good to have somebody from Unite Here Local Aid, because 90% of the hotel workers are out of work and need immediate aid, disproportionately women and people of color.

Somebody like Violet Levati, who is the executive director of the Tenants Union of Washington, Amanda Sorrell from 350 or someone from God Green.

And also we need spokespeople who will explain to us why we need the new union jobs, good-paying union jobs that will be created as a result of this tax, because it's always welcome, you know, good jobs are always welcome, but especially as we head into a deep recession where we are going to have joblessness.

And while this legislation will not create enough jobs, it will make a dent in the joblessness that we will be facing.

I would also urge that we include Katie Wilson or Kirsten Harris-Talley from the 2018 Progressive Revenue Task Force and we should include frontline workers like UFCW grocery workers or nurses on the front lines like Emily Barnes who's spoken at many of our town halls who's a COVID-19 I see you nurse at a community hospital here to testify on the crisis of underfunded services.

And we should also have small business owners who have spoken up in favor of taxing big business like Shirley Henderson from Squirrel Shop.

So I'm looking forward to this discussion.

I really urge the council to pay heed to the needs of the most vulnerable in our society and pass this tax as soon as possible without watering down.

Okay, thank you.

Any comments or questions for Council Member Salant on her report?

All right, hearing none, we'll go ahead and move to Council Member Strauss's report.

So once again, I understand he will be addressing Council Bill 119769. Ketil Freeman and Lish Whitson, both from our Council Central staff, are on the call with us today and are going to be here to address questions.

Council Member Strauss, before we begin, I'd like to ask if you would like Council Central staff to run through any of the portions of the memo that they circulated to us previously, along with amendments, or if you intend to address the substance of the bill first and leave questions only to Council Central staff.

Great.

Thank you, Council President.

If we could proceed with, I'll provide my committee update and what I've been doing in community this week, then we'll have Central staff present an overview of the bill and questions that they've received.

If I could then present the information that I have received and collected that may or may not help our colleagues understand some of the nuances of this bill.

I have staffed land use issues for over two years at this time, and there are still things that I had to be rebriefed about regarding this because land use is such a technical and nuanced type of legislation, and so that is not Inferring anyone's knowledge base upon land use, rather that land use can be very complicated.

And then from there, take questions from our colleagues.

How does that sound to you, Council President?

Great.

So we will go ahead and have you give your report.

on things unrelated to the council bill, then you will transition into the council bill, then we'll hear from Ketel and Lish, and then we'll open it up for questions and answers.

That's how I've heard the proposal.

So why don't we go ahead and start with your report, Council Member Strauss, and we will go from there.

Great, thank you so much.

Last week, I joined the Licton Springs Community Council at their virtual meeting.

I also held district hours over the phone.

completely full district hours, and I really appreciate everyone taking the time to call in.

Regarding Ballard Commons and the hepatitis A spikes, initial steps have been taken.

My call for urgency remains, and I will issue updates as I receive them.

I do want to take a moment to speak in honor of Senator John McCoy, who this last week announced that he will be retiring from the Washington State Legislature.

He served for 17 years and most recently as the chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

He served for 20 years in the U.S.

Air Force, served as a White House computer technician in the 1990s, and the general manager for Qolseda Village.

The Tulalip tribe has been the second largest economic engine in Snohomish County, only behind Boeing.

And I just wanted to take this moment because I am grateful to have learned from Senator McCoy, and I want to honor his leadership.

Thank you, Senator McCoy, for all you've done for our state.

This week, my office continues to prioritize assisting D6 small businesses and people navigating resources.

And then finally, speaking about committee, there are three items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's agenda.

Clerk File 3144-28 and Council Bill 119-776 are final plat approvals for the Verona Roy plat in the Crown Hill Urban Village.

The plat divides one parcel into 21 parcels to facilitate the sale of individual townhomes, which have already been constructed.

This has already been before the hearing examiner, and it is Council's duty to act on this within 30 days of receiving clearance from the hearing examiner.

So that will be before us.

SDCI and SDOT have confirmed that this plat meets all conditions and recommended approvals.

Oh, and they recommend approval.

Excuse me.

Getting caught up because we do have a large bill today.

Council Bill 119769 is the emergency legislation which we have discussed for several weeks now relating to permitting and design review, which is intended to allow projects to continue moving forward during the COVID-19 emergency.

There are seven proposed amendments to the legislation, seven that we know of at this time, and central staff is with us to walk us through the bill and those amendments.

Overall, I want to thank Ketel, Allie, Lish, Noah, Council Member Mosqueda's office and her staff, Council Member Herbold, and Council President Ewen, your staff for all of your work over the last week.

There has been a lot of, and for central staff specifically over the weekend to see this bill through.

At this time, turn it either back to the Council President or to central staff.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Let's go ahead and Ketel and Lisch, who wants to go first?

Ketel, do you want to go first?

Sure, I'll go ahead and start.

Maybe I'll just tee things up.

As Council Member Mosqueda mentioned earlier on, Council Bill 119769 at a high level would allow both the Department of Neighborhoods and the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections to process administratively some types of reviews that otherwise would require in-person meetings.

And the purpose of the shift to administrative review is to avoid in-person meetings, which, of course, can't occur due to the COVID-19 emergency.

The bill would be enacted on an emergency basis, and under the terms of the bill, the shift to administrative review would last for only 180 days.

There are some nuance which we've discussed previously.

If you have questions about that nuance, we can go into it.

But what might be useful for you all is if we just walk through the amendments that we know of that may be proposed today at full council.

I think that would be best.

So let me, before we get into the amendments, let me ask my colleagues if, again, setting aside the amendments, are there any questions about the underlying bill and what it would accomplish that you have for either Ketel or Lish or Council Member Strauss as the prime sponsor?

Okay, I'm not seeing, okay, so Council Member Lewis, it looks like you have a question about just the underlying bill setting aside amendments.

So I will go ahead and yield the floor to you for questions.

I just have a quick question for Ketel, just to clarify something, and I want to make sure, because there's been misconceptions, I think, part of this bill in the public.

My understanding is if there was a big decision, say, building, putting in a new building, right, like new construction, that, that, would be subject, like that could go forward without having the board review and that could be approved administratively for the next 60 days, but that hopefully at some point over that timeframe, the ability to have those meetings remotely would be created.

And at that point, the board review would come back and it would come back in sort of a virtual format.

But we're not, just so I can clarify, we're not, under this, for the next 60 days, freezing the approvals of big decisions like construction of a new building, but allowing administrator review only for some of the smaller preservation decisions and smaller approvals.

Is that...

Sure.

Yeah.

I'll elaborate on that a little bit.

There are kind of two...

You're asking about two things and the bill treats their treats different reviews differently.

So for design review, which is would be construction of a brand new building and may not require any kind of approvals from any kind of landmarks review or historic preservation body.

Projects would shift to administrative design review, which is a process that some projects concurrently avail themselves of and under administrative design review, there are no in-person meetings for a period of time.

And that period of time is either the earlier of 180 days, which is the term of the bill, a time at which SDCI can set up virtual meetings, which comply with the governor's order about the OPMA, or a time at which boards begin meeting again in person, subject to whatever requirements King County Public Health has to protect public health, safety, and welfare.

So that is the design review side of things.

On the historic preservation side of things and programs administered by D.O.N., meetings of boards are suspended for 60 days under the bill as introduced.

For the full 180 day length of the bill, the historic preservation officer or the D.O.N. director, depending, would have some authority to make specified decisions that, at least in the estimation of the mayor, are relatively modest in scope.

And those are attachment, we've listed them in attachment B to the memorandum from a week or so ago.

Yep.

Thanks, and that was the only question I had.

Okay.

And Council President, if I may address the underlying bill before we move to amendments.

Sure, Councilmember Strauss, please feel free to address the underlying underlying bill.

Great, thank you so much.

And like all of you, all of you as my colleagues, I have asked many, many questions over the last month or so.

Some of the questions that you have asked, I have asked and amendments that you have drafted, I initially was going to draft and found the reasons why.

that it might not be the best pathway forward.

So I want to call back attention to the memo that we received last week, because I asked all the departments to very clearly explain to me so that we could clearly explain to everyone here at Council and to the public why these meetings are different than other types of meetings.

what the barriers to creating virtual meetings are, what is the timeline for bringing these virtual meetings online, and what is the public engagement strategy to allow people to know how they may participate.

The time sensitivity regarding this is that more than 20 proposed residential projects representing 3,500 housing units in an assisted living facility are currently on hold because their design review meetings have been indefinitely canceled.

Another 20 projects are expected to be delayed each month creating additional backlog for the design review boards that could outlast our current emergency.

It typically takes about one year to move through the design review process and so allowing these projects to continue moving is very important.

Master use permits are only able to be created after the design review process and furthermore there is additional staff work required between master use permits and building permits being issued.

And so I call attention that if we stall the design review process, then we are backlogging all of our staff's ability to work on both master use permits and then the work that must occur between master use permits to building permits.

If we aren't able to create this pathway, we limit our staff's ability to continue working during this emergency.

I do want to highlight that jobs are created and housing dollars are received by the city only at the issuance of building permits.

So this would be the third step, design review board, master use permits, and then building permits.

And so if we are stopping our input of projects, we are delaying our ability to have jobs ready and project shovel ready, and we are also delaying our ability to receive housing dollars.

Additionally, another 30 projects, including four affordable housing projects, are currently unable to proceed because they cannot complete their early community outreach.

This legislation clarifies and requires early community outreach.

There's also a minor landmarks recommendation that the key arena project or the Coliseum project needs that has already been delayed for several weeks and would become a pinch point this next May.

And so I highlight this as there is serious time sensitivity to passing legislation today on an emergency basis.

Now, I also asked why our design review board meetings challenging to have virtually.

We here at our council have been able to have virtual meetings as many other, for instance, the design commission has also been able to have virtual meetings.

And while departments have been taking steps to hold design review meetings virtually, there are several barriers that still need to address.

This includes the size of design review program, which involves 20 to 30 meetings each month and over 100 staff members who would need to be trained.

There are more than 70 volunteer board members with varying abilities and technological access.

So the difference between a design review board and, for instance, our board, our city council, is that design review boards are volunteer.

whereas this is our job here at Council.

There are challenges that they facilitating with public comment and sign-in meetings that involve complex technical documents and graphic rich presentations.

And so public comment in these meetings is beyond even what we experience here at City Council with public comment.

there is actually back and there's a facilitation of conversation about these very complex technical documents.

So it's more than just a one directional, here's what I'm thinking it is, here's what I'm thinking, and then the board has to come back and they have to continue these conversations.

We are also able to be together on this call today because this is our primary job, whereas, again, these Design Review Board members are volunteer.

The Design Commission has been able to hold a virtual meeting, which is promising and I think a good study, but Design Review Boards are much more complex and interactive.

I think that's really the key part of this is that this is an interactive process.

Whereas the Design Commission is 11 members.

One of my amendments today would require reporting in 60 days on the executive's progress towards starting these virtual meetings.

And public engagement also will, we are requiring a plan to be presented by May 15th for at the time that virtual meetings are able to start and or how is the public being engaged to know and interact with the public comment options that are available in administrative design review.

When you compare administrative design review to the full design review, there is only one fewer opportunities for public comment.

However, it is very paramount to me and my understanding that if the public does not know that they have that opportunity, then that opportunity In essence doesn't exist.

And so that's why we are calling to require this this plan to be presented to us.

The legislation is written to virtually mirror public public engagement opportunities that count community members would have if they were using a typical process.

And the memo that we received additionally commits to providing us this plan.

Regarding affordable housing specifically, since affordable housing projects are already allowed to move through administrative design review, because the city has a, we are focused and committed to getting affordable housing through our permitting processes, because we don't want to be the delay for affordable housing projects coming online.

This legislation allows them to bypass the design review temporarily for six months.

Because during this public emergency and ongoing housing crisis, this is an opportunity to deliver the affordable housing.

Because as SDCI prioritizes other projects at other levels of administrative design review, there becomes increased amount of staff work for our planners in SDCI, meaning each work that typically would happen at full design review is now happening administratively, which means that there is a larger body of work for them to accomplish, which means that if we want to continue prioritizing affordable housing, we need to also move that up a tranche.

Affordable housing is also one of the only types of construction that is currently permitted under the governor's orders, which makes it additionally important.

Those are my comments on the base of the bill.

And I welcome central staffs presentation on on our amendments.

Great.

Any other questions on the underlying base bill before we have Council Central staff walk us through the substitute bills of which there are a couple different versions.

I guess I would call it 2.5 versions.

And then we have several amendments to go through.

Council Member Lewis.

I just have a couple of questions, and I appreciate Councilmember Strauss's presentation just now around the virtual meeting challenges that were enumerated by SDCI, and they're very comprehensive to us.

And I just wanted to ask you if you have any additional clarifying information on a few of their points.

where I don't think I have all the information yet necessarily.

So it says that they're gonna have to train over a hundred staff members.

And I guess my first question would be, like, do you generally know the profile of those staff members and do you know exactly what they need to be trained to do?

Like, is it trained to use Zoom?

Do those city staff include volunteer board and commissioners?

Just clarifying that would be good to know.

And Council Member Lewis, I believe that my notes may have incorrectly identified them as staff.

I believe that they are volunteers as there are about a hundred volunteers on design review boards because we have eight design review boards.

So it's more, this is more complex than just one design review board.

There are actually different design review boards for different sections of the city and central staff, please correct me if I'm incorrect on that point.

This is Ketel here.

I'm trying to recall the content of that memo.

100 seems large for a design review board, so I suspect that that 100 number is probably both design review boards and also landmarks boards as well.

There are multiple design review boards, as Council Member Strauss mentioned, but I'm guessing that that number is probably design review and landmarks boards and other historic preservation review boards.

Right, so I guess and that's my assumption as well, but I guess that my question is more.

like, what the extent of the training the department perceives to be required is.

Like, are some people just being trained to participate the way we participate as council members in a meeting?

And that seems pretty simple.

Or is there background staff work that is going to be more training intensive that might require a bigger contribution of resources?

And what is that number, right?

Because I think it's one thing to say, you know, if it's over 100 staff, which is what SDCI has told us in the memo, you know what percentage of them are the board members that will be participating in the meetings and just have to learn how to use zoom what's the percentage that are it staff that have to set up the meetings uh which i agree we're getting increasingly good at um you know as a city council uh you know i had a town hall meeting last week uh with a large number of participants where there was a considerable amount of interaction and, you know, pictures were shared.

That seems to be the hurdles that SDCI is saying they have that make it difficult to run these particular meetings in a virtual manner.

So I guess that my question is just the extent of the training and what kind of barrier that is, that's not very clearly enumerated in their memo.

um and and how that differs based on the personnel the second question would be and can i just answer that question right straight away just so we don't get lost which is that uh there are a hundred volunteers who whereas this is our formal and primary job these are folks that are already working another job that may also have additional health care or child care or other you know, competing priorities.

So it is, from my understanding, yes, it is a Zoom-type training.

There is the additional complexity that there is a conversation.

So it's not a one-directional presentation.

There are complex technical documents of plans.

As many of you have seen, plans are, you know, usually come rolled up in a large roll and then have to be rolled out over the entire table.

And so usually there's quite a lot of interaction on very nuanced information.

And the last point that I would make is that it has taken us as city council quite some time just to get to the point where we are today, even with public comment.

And so that is why there are aspects of the bill that would nullify the bill if and when virtual meetings are able to be taken place.

The barriers to public, to virtual meetings are not barriers to virtual meetings for six months, they are barriers for the hearing now, because at this date and time where we sit, we are unable to create a virtual meeting that is able to digest the complexity of the nature of these meetings.

And so it is my hope, as it sounds like with you as well, that we get these virtual meetings up and running as soon as possible, and that will be my commitment.

Thank you for letting me answer that question.

I'm happy to take the next one.

Right.

I mean, the second question was more and this one I find more compelling.

I mean, I'm I'm frankly not there yet on how insurmountable it is to have these virtual meetings.

My but my next question, I could see why there might be like a due process reason this wouldn't be able to happen.

But whether there is a way, and this is, I guess, related to the virtual meetings, the extensive agendas of the design review boards and the number of projects that they process, I understand how that could be difficult to do in a virtual meeting with a long agenda.

So I wonder to what extent the department and those boards can triage projects, maybe based on the category or nature of projects, or other things to lower the amount of projects that are considered on a temporary basis.

If there was a transition to virtual meetings, if that's another factor that could potentially reduce it, or what problems something like that might present.

So that was the second question for clarification before we jump into amendments.

I'm sorry, could you focus the question narrowly?

Right.

So there's a large number of actions that are on the agenda for a lot of these meetings, like typically over, you know, in the SDCI memo, they said typically over 30 potential actions that they're requesting action from a design review board on.

If there's a way that that number of actions, 30 could be reduced.

So maybe they consider between 10 and 20 instead of over 30. That might be another limiting way to get us through the COVID crisis, keep the pipeline open for a lot of projects, but maybe not as many as we were doing in the pre-COVID.

This is all assuming we transition to virtual meetings, right?

I'm saying that one of the hurdles that has been presented by SDCI is the volume of proposals.

So I just wanted to throw that out there if there's a way to.

Thank you for that clarification, I would say it's it's a volume and complexity issue again with so building permits master use permits design and then before that design review process is taking into consideration all this very nuanced information and requiring feedback.

So I guess I would take our experience here at City Council over the last two weeks, and I believe I've been calling some of our colleagues, I started calling about three weeks ago, to have conversations about very nuanced information that really, we here on City Council, we are generalists.

And the subject matter experts in these departments are the correct individuals to know when and how much and how projects should shift, because Ketel and Lish here know more about land use than any of us sitting on the council.

And that is why it is important to, until virtual meetings are able to be stood up, which I believe should be able to happen in short order, which is why we have that 60 day threshold for reporting, because if they aren't able to stand them up within 60 days.

I think that's when additional questions are coming.

And so I bring back to, I don't disagree with your point, Council Member Lewis, about maybe being able to reduce those numbers of agenda items.

I share with you that standing up a virtual meeting where you're having feedback about complex documents is even more complex than the conversations that we as council have been trying to have around the subject matter of this bill, which is complex and yet less complex than the design review meeting.

So I'm going to move us along, because it is 1120 AM.

Council Member Lewis, I think if you have additional questions about the representations made by the department, it would be appropriate for you to reach out directly to the department to get follow-up on those questions before 2 o'clock today, which is when we will be considering legislative action on this particular council bill.

I will note that all of the possibilities that you have proposed in your line of questioning, Council Member Lewis, are not possible unless we take some kind of action to provide temporary permitting process changes in this context.

So it will be all for naught in terms of those potential opportunities if we don't address the realities of the governor's order and proclamation to not convene in public and the realities of the ticking clock that we have before us as it relates to some of these permits and specific projects during this period of the emergency.

I think that's why this legislation is time sensitive and why we are considering it today and why it's important for us to make sure that we have a clear sense of what these amendments will do in the context of providing some temporary permitting process changes to make sure we don't inadvertently clog up the system.

Okay, so let's go ahead and hear from Ketel and Lisch on the various amendments that will come before Council at two o'clock, and I'll go ahead and do some light lobbying now, colleagues, that to the extent that you all can work with a primary sponsor on collapsing some of these amendments into the underlying bill, the smoother I think this afternoon will go.

So I just want to encourage you to work with a prime sponsor.

on resolving any outstanding issues before 2 o'clock so that we can make this afternoon go as smoothly as possible.

I know that that's a wish that I'm putting out there.

And if it's not feasible, I totally understand why it might not be.

But my hope is that through the conversation today, we can coalesce around some potential solutions and have a smooth meeting this afternoon at 2 o'clock.

So Petal and Lish, please walk us through the amendments as proposed by individual council members.

Okay, so thank you, Council President.

Yesterday we sent out a table with a list of amendments and a proposed sequence for making those amendments as was noted earlier, there are five standalone amendments, and there are two substitute bills.

We recommend that the two substitute bills be taken up at the top of the agenda this afternoon, or when this agenda item comes up, because they represent very different approaches and have implications for other amendments that council members are proposing.

So, Lucian, I'll walk through those that he and I have each individually prepared, and I believe the first one is Council Member Morales's substitute bill.

So this substitute bill would remove most of the provisions in the bill related to the Department of Neighborhoods.

It would remove portions of the bill that allow the City Historic Preservation Officer to administratively approve changes to landmarks and structures in historic districts.

It would remove an authority granted to SDCI and the Department of Neighborhoods to approve changes to Seattle Public Schools, and it would remove provisions in the bill relayed that would cancel meetings of the Landmarks Board, Special Review Boards, and other historic boards and commissions.

It also, it does retain a provision that allows timelines for department and neighborhoods to be told.

And it states that those timelines and deadlines related to historic landmark review are put on hold for the earlier of 60 days or when meetings can be restarted, including providing language access to people who don't have English as a spoken language.

Any questions?

So Lish, I see a lot of things that have been removed.

So there's the chart, there's a chart that describes all the different changes including citations to the page in line of the proposed amendment substitute.

So I see a lot of things that have been removed.

So I'd like to sort of hear from you a description of what this substitute amendment does in the positive as opposed to the negative so that we have a clear sense of, you know, sort of, although there are these, the substitute proposes removal of many of these things, what does that leave?

So it leaves all the provisions related to the design review program.

So the bill would continue to shift design review projects, which are managed by the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections, to an administrative process where meetings don't occur.

for landmarks projects and projects in historic and special review districts.

Once meetings are able to occur, they will occur.

The agendas will probably be very heavy.

The underlying bill does propose to triage the types of reviews that those boards use.

And so, But the boards would be back to reviewing both large changes, new construction, major modifications to buildings, as well as minor changes to structures within historic districts and to landmarks.

OK.

So really, the distinction here is that it truly is just a complete cutting out of any review work that would be conducted by the Department of Neighborhoods that would fall into the landmark preservation category or the historic preservation context.

And also a provision related to the Seattle School District that allows for some administrative review of changes to schools.

OK.

And if if this substitute were to be adopted and we've created that bifurcated system of having things related to I'm wondering what is the impact of that bifurcation, particularly to those projects

Basically all of the landmark and historic district boards would start having their meetings.

They would have a heavy workload because the last two months they haven't been meeting.

And their meetings would, I mean, the intent of the department would be to be able to provide translation and digital access to meetings, but I'm not sure that that will be the case for all members of the community.

But if the governor's proclamation is still in place and it prohibits the gathering of people, then how is the work plan you just described going to occur if those processes are exempted from the underlying bill?

So they, well, they probably will not meet until the OPMA governor's order has been met, or they can provide an alternative that I mean, a lot of their work is normal and routine and necessary to allow people to maintain their structures.

And so they can continue to meet on those sorts of issues under the OPMA order.

Okay.

Council Member Strauss.

President, would Council Member Morales like to speak to this?

I do have comments on this substitute, but would like to

You just took the words right out of my mouth.

I was headed in that direction.

So I was going to hand it over to Councilmember Morales to address her proposed substitute, and then we'll open it back up to questions.

You are on mute, Councilmember Morales, so you will need to unmute yourself.

You're still muted.

Okay.

Is that better?

We can hear you now.

Okay.

Technology.

Okay.

Um, thank you.

Thank you, Lish, for, uh, for working with us on this amendment.

Um, and I do want to thank council member Strauss for the work he's done, um, to address these issues.

Um, I have to say, I do think it would have been better for the mayor to submit two separate bills to address, uh, what, what this bill is trying to do.

Um, The bill as transmitted in my mind really conflates and confuses the need for affordable housing work with community engagement in neighborhood development.

That is what we're trying to address with this substitute, is to highlight that we do have a real need to prioritize affordable housing.

And we need to make sure that we continue to have equitable community input, especially in communities whose primary language isn't English.

We shouldn't be sacrificing that during the civil emergency.

So that's what we're trying to do here.

We're removing the emergency shift.

of decision-making from the special review districts, from the public school development committee, the landmark district board.

And as Lish said, suspending the DON approvals to the earlier of 60 days or the date that boards and commissions can meet virtually with language access.

or until the emergency is over and we can just begin meeting in person again.

So the intent here is not to impact the design review process so that that work can continue.

As Council Member Strauss just mentioned, it is important for that to continue so that we can complete affordable housing projects.

But the real intent is to separate that work from the other work that really allows community to have an input in how their neighborhoods function.

OK.

Any questions for Council Member Morales or any additional information from Council Central staff on that proposed substitute?

Council Member Strauss, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales and Council President.

Councilmember Morales, I appreciate the intent in which you are bringing this amendment forward.

I do believe at this time it is too broad based to receive my support because there are some special review districts that have inconsequential projects, whereas I understand that there are some special review districts that have contested projects.

And so I welcome any amendments to pull any special review districts out of this bill or any particular projects which you do not believe should go through an administrative design review.

I welcome those exemptions because the The priority with this bill is not to remove public input from contested or consequential decisions.

The purpose and intent of this bill is to move the city forward and being able to accomplish staff work and pass routine decisions.

For instance, if there is a shop owner in the Ballard Special Review District that needs to make an adjustment to their exterior sign or their lighting or their door, I don't believe that that should be held because we have made a decision that all Special Review Districts should stop meeting at this time.

Additionally, one of the amendments that we will speak of later is regarding the designation of historic, the historic designation, which has a process for public input.

We have drafted an amendment to allow for the controls and incentives work to be done by staff, even without that designation being made, so that we can continue having our staff working while our while we're in this state of civil emergency, and so that when these meetings or a virtual meeting is able to take place, that that final designation is able to occur, and then the controls and incentive work has already been done.

So again, I welcome more of a scalpel approach rather than taking out an entire department's worth of this ordinance.

Thank you.

I think that's all I have to say.

I'm hoping Councilmember Morales, there's a handful of either districts or projects that you have in mind that perhaps between now and this afternoon, the sponsor and you might be able to come back.

I appreciate his comment about needing a little bit more of a directed or targeted approach and also know that there's a small handful of either areas or projects that you had in mind.

So look forward to hopefully having a more narrow I would like to support the amendment for our consideration this afternoon, if that's at all possible.

And just wanted to flag my support for that concept.

I saw for the first time yesterday at about 2.30 p.m., so I'm just now, like many of my colleagues, absorbing the content of the proposed substitute bill by Councilmember Morales, and while I appreciate the intent, I think it's important for us to recognize that not all special review districts are created equal, and that while I agree that we need to make sure that we are centering equity in how these systems are or processes are accessed.

It's important for us to recognize that not all of these special review districts are created equal in terms of those equity issues.

And thus, I think the tools that are needed to address equity issues that are being flagged by Council Member Morales and others need to be specifically catered as opposed to brushing a broad stroke here and treating all of these districts the same.

So I still have some questions before I feel like I can support this direction, but I wanted to put that out for consideration.

Council President, can I ask for a clarification?

Sure.

So this is actually, I guess, for central staff, but I have a question about the certificate of approval process and its impact for permitting affordable housing.

My understanding is that historic districts provide certificates of approval mostly for projects that don't require permits.

Can I get a little more clarity?

Yeah, go ahead.

No, they sometimes do require approval for projects that don't require other types of land use permits.

For example, you don't need to get a permit for a new sign from the Department of Construction Inspections, but that is reviewed by the Landmarks Board or the Special Review District Boards.

But many projects that are reviewed by those boards and commissions, including in particular new construction within a historic district, the landmarks approval is just one part of the total permitting package.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

I would be happy to talk with y'all before two o'clock, see what we can do.

Great.

Okay.

If there are no other questions or comments on that bill, let's move to the next proposed amendment, which is, I believe, a substitute bill being proposed by Councilmember Strauss.

This is Ketel here.

So there's a cover sheet that goes along with the substitute that was transmitted to you all.

Councilmember Strauss's substitute incorporates clarifying amendments and modifications to the Historic Preservation Officers Authority and also makes a couple of requests to SDCI and ON for reports to the council.

The Strauss substitute has amendments that were initiated both from the Strauss office, the Mosqueda office, and the Councilmember Herbold's office.

So I'll just walk through each of these.

The first two are largely clarifications related to modifications to the design review program.

The first clarifies that the Seattle Housing Authority, SHK Project, and Yesler Terrace could avail themselves of the affordable housing exemption that is proposed in the bill that was transmitted.

That exemption would exempt affordable housing projects from design review but allow them to receive departures administratively from the SDCI director.

Affordable housing project is defined.

It has to meet certain criteria, including at least 40% of the units being affordable to households earning no more than 60% of median income for a period of 40 years, and to also qualify those projects have to make an application to SDCI while the ordinance is in effect, so within six months.

The second amendment clarifies the type of qualifying digital or electronic outreach for designer view.

Prior to early design guidance, there is a requirement that an applicant solicit input through community outreach.

There's a director's rule that prescribes kinds of qualifying community outreach.

And so this is largely a clarification that points to qualifying digital and electronic outreach that would be community outreach in this time when in-person meetings can't occur.

The next four amendments modify the authority of the D.O.N. or D.O.N. Director or the Historic Preservation Officer to make certain administrative decisions.

Among those decisions that the mayor proposed that the Historic Preservation Officer could make would be decisions about removal of hazard trees.

This would take that authority out of the bill.

It would also authorize the historic preservation officer to make decisions about door and window replacements.

This is sometimes called storefront treatments by historic preservationists.

It would also authorize the historic preservation officer to administratively approve penthouse installations where there are standards for those penthouse installations in the code or in Secretary of Interior guidance.

And there's only one actually historic district where that is true, and that's Pioneer Square.

It would also authorize the Historic Preservation Officer to administratively approve certificates of approval when the final design subject to that certificate of approval has already gotten preliminary approval from the Landmarks Board, and it doesn't deviate significantly from that preliminary approval.

Finally, there are a couple of non-codified sections.

So these are just requests to the executive side of the shop, one request that SDCI and the Office of Labor Standards promulgate a rule related to construction industry workplace safety in this time of COVID.

Council Member Mosqueda spoke to that one earlier.

And finally, it would request a report from STCI and DON on progress towards standing up virtual meetings within 60 days.

And Council Member Strauss mentioned May 15th as sort of the general timeframe in which that report would be delivered to the council.

So that is the Strauss substitute.

Councilmember Strauss, before we open it up to questions and comments, I want to provide you an opportunity to speak to your substitute bill.

Thank you, Council President.

This substitute bill is a direct product of your request to merge as many of the amendments as possible to create a smooth council meeting for this afternoon.

And I could not have done this without Councilmember Herbold, without Councilmember Mosqueda, Your input into this has been critical, and I must give both of you the majority of the credit for being able to have this substitute ready for this afternoon.

What I can say is that, again, the idea is that we allow staff to continue working as much as possible and permit or approve things that have only been already before the full body If there are, again, nuances or narrowing within this substitute, I welcome it because the passage of the overall bill is most important to me.

I do believe that the elements regarding special review districts are important and welcome any questions.

Colleagues, any questions or comments?

All right, seeing none, we will go ahead and move to the next amendment, which would be amendment number, it would be a substitute to council member Strauss's substitute.

I'm assuming and council, I'm sorry, and council central staff should let us know that if Councilmember Morales' substitute bill fails, and I'm assuming this would be an alternative version.

Lish, Ketel?

Yes, if Councilmember Morales' substitute fails, then you can move forward with Council Member Strauss's.

There may be provisions within Council Member Strauss's substitute that could still move forward, but not all of the provisions in his substitute could.

Okay, well then can we go through the Morales substitute to the Strauss substitute version?

Yeah, and we would, so, I think we are recommending pulling that version because once, if you act on Council Member Morales' substitute either way, then you've considered that.

And so there's not the alternative to review Council Member Strauss' or, sorry.

So once you've considered Council Member Morales' substitute once, I don't think that there's the opportunity to come back and consider it again.

Okay, so the item listed as sequence number three needs to be stricken.

Yes.

Okay, so we will go ahead and move on.

So let's address then the the next item, which would be Council Member Mosqueda's Amendment 1.

Sure.

So, Ketel here, and this is one that Council Member Mosqueda described earlier.

This is an amendment that is primarily related to continuity of review.

It would allow projects that elect to go through administrative design review pursuant to the terms of the ordinance to stay and administrative design review if two circumstances are met.

They could stay in administrative design review if they have completed the early design guidance phase of design review.

Or if the SDCI director determines that a return to full design review will push them past the 120 day time limit for mass use permit reviews that set out in the code.

This is about half of the projects could probably avail themselves of this.

STCI indicated that there are about 30 projects currently in design review that are in the early design guidance phase.

Those are likely the projects that could avail themselves of this.

If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

Thank you, Keetle.

Looks like Council Member Hurdle has a question, but before I open it up to questions, Council Member Mosqueda, you addressed this particular amendment in your comments during your report.

Is there anything else you wanted to add?

Yes, thank you so much very briefly.

So I don't have much to add in terms of the details that you just heard from central staff.

I will say that this amendment is an intent to make sure that we're hitting the crux of the legislation, which is to create certainty and continuity while also adhering to the legal guidelines for the emergency legislation.

So the intent here is to make sure that the progress that's been made and the work that's done during this time is not lost when there's a change.

And where we're able to hold in-person meetings or virtual meetings again, we go ahead and do that.

But we don't want to lose the good work that's been done during this period.

I think it's an effort to make sure that we're also not wasting time and resources by restarting a permitting process.

That is not the intent of this legislation.

And this amendment provides clarity and a set of guidelines on when a project may continue on the administrative design review track.

So I hope that's helpful.

And thanks again to Ketel and central staff for your helpful work on this and the summary that you've provided to council.

Appreciate it.

Okay, Council Member Herbold, I saw your hand go up with a question or comment.

Yes, thank you.

As far as the timing when this decision might be made to allow these affordable housing projects to, I'm sorry, for any project that elects to go through administrative design review to stay in that track, when, is the sort of brackets for when the director would make that permissive decision to allow those projects to continue through administrative design review.

Would those decisions be made at a time that we are no longer in a crisis where meetings can't occur?

Or is it just restricted to that period of time, this period of time when we're unable to have meetings?

Yeah, there we go.

This change would only be in effect for the period during which the bill is in effect, so 180 days, unless that's modified by the council later this afternoon.

So as the bill as proposed requires that projects electing an administrative design review switch back at the earlier three points.

One is when the bill is no longer effective, which is 180 days.

when virtual meetings recommence or when in-person meetings start that comply with public health guidance.

So if you are a project now that received an early design guidance decision from the board, and you availed yourself of administrative design review, and virtual meetings were stood up by STCI before the bill expires, you wouldn't be able to take advantage of Council Member Muscata's proposed amendment.

However, if you have not completed early design guidance and you go through early design guidance, or you have already gone through early design guidance, so you've either gotten early design guidance from a land use planner under administrative design review or a board, if you're lucky enough to have gotten that already, then you could avail yourself of this amendment and get a decision through administrative design review without board input.

I'm not sure if that answers your question, Council Member Herbold.

I think it does.

So the bill as drafted, the authority for it lasts for six months.

But if we're able, if folks are able to resume in-person meetings in three months, but the project has already received its early design review guidance in two months, it's able to continue along the administrative design review path.

Correct.

Thank you.

Okay, any other questions or comments about Council Member Mosqueda's amendment?

I have one, and it's more process-oriented.

So is this particular amendment in conflict with something in Councilmember Strauss's substitute, or is it just not seen as a friendly amendment, or was it a standalone?

As a sponsor of the bill.

This is a very friendly amendment so friendly.

I almost co sponsored it or sponsored it myself.

I sharing the wealth in our ability to make this a better bill.

Okay, so it's so central staff.

There's nothing in this bill that would conflict with the substitute bill.

does not conflict with the substitute bill.

It's just sort of a question for council members about whether or not it is a big enough change that it rises to a policy choice that should be made on its own.

Great.

OK, thank you.

I appreciate that clarification from a process point of view.

And if there are no other questions or comments, we'll move on to the next amendment.

OK, seeing and hearing none, let's move to Herbold Amendment 1.

OK, so Herbold Amendment 1 would delete the proposed provision that exempts affordable housing projects that meet certain requirements from design review.

Affordable housing projects are currently subject to administrative design review, so there are no in-person meetings required for those projects.

So this is just a choice about the policy choice put in front of the council.

OK, and so I'm going to translate what I think I heard you say, Ketola, in terms of the policy choice.

Herbal Amendment 1 conflicts with Mosqueda Amendment 1.

It does not.

They could both be acted on together.

This is in a separate section of Chapter 2341 of the SMC, so they're not in conflict with each other.

The mayor has invited the council to make a policy choice here about affordable housing projects and exempting them from design review on an emergency basis.

And so Council Member Herbold's amendment would not afford affordable housing projects the opportunity to be exempt from design review.

It would not exempt them from design review.

Is that what I'm hearing?

Correct.

correct, they would still go through administrative design review.

Okay, got it.

Okay, Councilmember Herbold, would you like to speak to your proposed amendment?

Thank you so much.

And thank you, Kito, for the clarity that it is not in conflict with Mosqueda Amendment 1, which I'm inclined to support.

So my amendment proposes to delete the provision that exempts affordable housing projects from meeting certain requirements as required by Administrative Design Review.

Administrative Design Review has been in place only since July of 2018. Revisiting Administrative Design Review for affordable housing projects might be a good policy discussion.

I believe strongly it does not fall within the corners of the Governor's Proclamation 2028. Issued in February.

Again, as we know, affordable housing projects are currently subject to administrative design review.

This does not require in-person meetings.

And so the fact that these bills are really focused on the current emergency associated with the inability to have in-person meetings, I believe this is out of the scope of the legislation that we are permitted to hear at this particular time.

The findings in the bill itself say that the ordinance provides an exemption from design review.

And it goes on to say, exempting these projects from design review and allowing the limited departures to be granted outside of the design review process will shorten the time required for these projects to be complete.

to complete the permitting process, advancing the date by which they can be constructed, and the allowed departures seek to increase the number of affordable housing units.

All worthy goals, but this is, as the term that central staff use, this is a temporal shift.

This finding is related to recovery.

It's not related to addressing the public health challenge posed by in-person meeting requirements on the role of boards and commissions.

And finally, there might be some real-time savings realized here, but the delivery of units associated with those permits would be a year or more away.

I take the guidance from the state attorney general and the governor very seriously.

We have two paths.

We can hear legislation or receive reports and briefings on issues that are necessary and routine.

or legislation that is necessary to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak and public health emergency.

I believe this section of the bill does neither.

I've checked with Director Torkelson.

He has confirmed for me that all affordable housing projects are currently expedited, prioritized in the design review process, as well as throughout the entire permitting process.

They will continue to be prioritized through the administrative design review and entire permitting process.

And I've also confirmed with Director Torgelson that the four affordable housing projects mentioned in Director Torgelson's memo from last week, located in Lake City, Bitter Lake, Columbia City, and Rainier Beach.

These projects not only have priority in the administrative design review process, but all of them will be able to complete the early community engagement process as required.

So again, I really feel that this amendment is not about whether or not It might be good public policy to exempt affordable housing projects from administrative design review, but it's coming from a place where I strongly believe that we need to adhere to the spirit and the letter of the proclamation issued by the governor, as well as the accompanying guidance from the state attorney general.

Thank you.

Councilmember Strauss, I see that you have raised your hand, so I will yield the floor to you.

Council President, thank you.

And Councilmember Herbold, I really appreciate your comments.

I also started in the same place as you because I do not want to see items that are extraneous to this bill being included.

I agree that these are smart policy discussions that we should take up for a non-emergency matter at a different time.

The reason, the intersection that you did not discuss that I see as being central to the reason that this is included in this bill is if we are taking a tranche of work that is usually done by volunteers and shifting that onto staff, then that staff has a larger amount of work with the same amount of people.

And so while Director Torgalson's email says that SDCI gives permit, and I'm reading, Council President, I don't know if I need permission to read from the email, SDCI gives priority permitting for affordable housing projects when 100% of the units are affordable and for the entire permitting process.

I agree that this is the policy choice and position of the City of Seattle.

I believe that if we, again, continue to require, if we've moved a tranche of volunteer work into staff work and have not given the staff any relief, then we have really siloed and funneled a lot of pressure onto those staff.

And I think that it is important for us to walk our talk and again, in this place, again, prioritize affordable housing to continue moving forward.

Can I respond to that, please?

Yeah.

And my final comment is, again, my overall goal for today is that this bill passes.

I think that this is a smart policy choice to make during this during this bill for the reasons that I outlined just previously.

And again, I'll just reiterate my overall goal for today is for this bill to pass.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, you'd like to respond, please.

Absolutely, I just want to reiterate that the findings in the bill that support our action on this section of the bill Are really focused on time savings associated with the the design review process time savings that are translated into as councilmember Strauss says Translated into staff time and so is absolutely correct that the same number of staff reviewing more projects is going to create a potentially a bottleneck.

We know affordable housing units will be prioritized in that bottleneck.

But again, Our findings in our bill talks about delivery of units for people who need housing, and the delivery of those units will be a year or more away.

These are the findings that we are using to justify acting on this section of the bill.

of the bill.

If there are findings that are about, and I quote, responding to the COVID-19 outbreak and current public health emergency, we have to, our findings have to reflect that the legislation that we're voting on is addressing things that are happening right now.

And as it stands now, the legislation does not do that.

Council Member Herbold, are you suggesting that your amendment addresses that gap in the legislation?

By striking the part of the legislation that is not necessary to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak and current public health emergency, yes.

Okay, thank you.

I appreciate that clarification.

So Council Member Mosqueda, I saw that you raised your hand.

The floor is yours.

Thank you so much.

And Council Member Herbold, I appreciate where you're coming from this as well.

I think that our goal is the same, to make sure that we're doing everything that we can to respond to the public health crisis, and to, as the Council President has asked us to do, be very narrow in our interpretation of that, in addition to what law and the governor have offered.

I think it's just a matter of perspective here as the, you know, Chair of Housing, and also coming from a public health background, I think that the intent that I would love to see us remember in this discussion is to make sure that we have all resources available to respond to the crisis and I think that the point that affordable housing and housing in general.

is a public health solution to the crisis of COVID is slightly being lost.

I understand where you're coming from.

I think my concern though with the amendment as has been outlined is that is precisely because we know that housing projects take a year or more.

Because of that, we need to meet the need now.

And because of the trajectory that it takes to erect and approve affordable housing, I'm concerned that any sort of bottleneck that results in delays a year from now could also impact our ability to house and treat and isolate people who may be affected by COVID.

In my opinion, having affordable housing as part of this package here is critical for our respo those housing units might we still don't know if we in 18 months.

We still do who have been affected by or may not see remission.

on top of that as you hav we had a housing crisis before this.

So I think that our region has a compounding need to make sure that we're moving forward, including affordable housing in everything we can to expedite the process.

And because of the other provisions that are included in the legislation, I feel confident that public input will be included and that we can make sure that we get these projects up and going, especially given the long nature in which we have seen housing projects go forward.

I hear what you're saying.

I understand that we want to be very specific to the current public health crisis that's in front of us.

In my perspective, including affordable housing is responding to the current public health crisis by creating additional housing.

Just wanted to weigh in on where I was coming from with my concerns about the amendment.

And then I just want to say that Council Member Herbold, I think you're points in general around the governor's proclamation and the order are well made and I think accepted in the spirit that they are being offered.

And I think it's really important for us to make sure that as we advance this bill, that we make sure that we are communicating very clearly to the agencies that it is our absolute expectation and requirement that the issues related to virtual public meetings of the Design Review Board and the Historic Boards be addressed within a reasonable period of time after passage.

And I think that there are now portions in the bill that give me confidence that that will occur.

And more importantly, I think we've received a strong representation from the executive that they will dig into identifying ways to stand up and set up virtual public meetings.

within a reasonable period of time.

But I absolutely agree with you that it's important for us to make sure that we are transparent and narrow in our application of the governor's order.

Now, I will say that I appreciated for the first time last week on Friday that the governor's proclamation is only in effect until April 23rd.

which for those of you who are following the calendar, that's in three days, the proclamation expires.

I've had conversations with the governor's office about whether or not that proclamation and its directives will be extended beyond the 23rd.

I've not received a firm response as to whether or not it will be extended beyond the 23rd of April.

My understanding is that it requires bipartisan support and approval in order to extend those types of proclamations.

And so if that is not obtained by the 23rd, then we could find ourselves in a situation, colleagues, where the provisions that we are debating right now become even a little bit more complex and more nuanced in terms of how to move forward.

So just be aware that there is an open question that is a massive variable that is not within our control related to the ongoing applicability of the governor's order and proclamation as it relates to public gatherings in public facilities like ours that is set to expire in the 23rd of April and we are waiting to see if it will be extended.

I know that I've made a request that it be extended to be consistent with the current shelter-in-place order issued by Governor Inslee and I know that the county King County has also issued a similar request but but it does require bipartisan support and as we saw over the weekend There are members of, at least on the Republican side, who are now protesting ongoing shelter in place orders, including right here in our own state.

So it is unclear to me how the politics will bleed into what should otherwise be an apolitical conversation around public gatherings and our public health response to the emergency response.

I just wanted to flag that and make sure that folks understood that there is a variable that is floating out there that could impact the conversation that we're currently having.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Council President.

Council Member Herbold, I do just want to circle back to reiterating I was in the same place as you about a week ago because I do not want to expand this bill beyond our directly responding to the crisis.

The reason that we did not include this information or I did not request this information to be included in the findings of the bill or in the memos regarding design review is because that's where I thought the majority of the questions were still in place.

And so I was not swayed until I had a firm, a more firm understanding of the impact on our staff time as a response to the COVID crisis.

And that is what changed my opinion from where you are today.

And again, looking to see passage of the overall bill as most important.

Thank you for your time.

Okay, colleagues, it is 12 11pm.

I know we're gonna lose lose start losing some council members here.

And we are only halfway through our preview of of what to expect this afternoon and on council member reports.

So I'm going to have us move along through the list.

We have three more amendments to discuss on this particular council bill.

So we, I'm going to ask that we move to the Herbold and Straus Amendment 6.

So this amendment is related to the historic preservation part of the bill.

The landmarking process for a structure or site involves a multi-step process.

A project is nominated to be considered as a landmark.

If it meets the criteria, the Landmarks Board designates it as a landmark.

And only once that designation has been approved does the staff start to negotiate the specific elements of the landmark that need to be preserved.

This amendment allows for that negotiation to start happening for those five or six potential landmarks that have gone through the nomination stage, but not yet been actually designated landmarks.

So hopefully it will shorten some time at the back end once the landmarks board is up and running to allow them to quickly consider the designation and then control some incentives agreement.

Thank you, Lish.

Council Member Herbold or Strauss, would you like to address this amendment?

Yeah, I just wanna say I appreciated working with Council Member Strauss on this amendment.

This was a proposal that was brought forward from an affordable housing provider.

And I also worked with Historic Seattle in trying to address any concerns that they had with the concept.

And Lish, in his infinite wisdom, came up with another approach that the affordable housing provider, as it relates to their project, and Historic Seattle.

And I am anticipating, Council President Gonzalez, that since this is co-sponsored by myself and Council Member Strauss, that you might want to roll it in to the substitute, and I have no objections to doing so.

Thank you, great.

Really, really appreciate that.

Council Member Strauss, would you like to address this amendment?

Just to say that I had an initial amendment drafted that would get at the intent of this, and that Council Member Herbold's input made this a more nuanced and better amendment overall, and this would not be in the place it is today without Council Member Herbold.

Great, thank you so much.

Any questions or comments from my colleagues about the Herbold and Strauss Amendment 6?

Okay, seeing and hearing none, we'll move to the Herbold Amendment 2. Who from Council Central staff is going to address that?

And it might make sense just to talk to, since we're pressed for time, and since they work together, maybe talk about 2 and 3 together.

Perfect.

Why don't we do that?

Okay, sure.

Let's address 2 and 3 together, and Ketel, is that you?

It is, yeah.

Happy to do it.

Amendment two would reduce the term of the temporary changes made by the bill from 180 days to 60 days.

Amendment three, in some ways, may be an alternative to amendment two.

I'll let Council Member Herbold speak to what our intention is here.

This amendment would make changes to the aspects of the bill that are administered by the Department of Neighborhoods such that they were near some of the provisions for design review.

So specifically, the authority grant to the boards or the suspension of board meetings would be for 60 days, would it be for the earlier of 60 days when virtual meetings are possible or when in-person meetings resume that need public health guidance.

Great, thank you, Ketil.

Council Member Herbold, would you like to address these two amendments?

Yes, I think again that the intent is really the same, but being made in different parts of the bill.

Amendment two would reduce the term of the temporary changes made by the bill from six months to two months, and amendment three would modify the suspension of meetings.

to the earlier of 60 days when virtual meetings are possible or when in-person meetings resume.

The intent of both of these amendments is to recognize that the Council feels urgency on the part of encouraging SDCI and DON to stand up virtual meetings to take public comment on both administrative design review and the landmarks process.

And if for some reason in two months, we have found that that wasn't enough time to stand up these virtual meetings, which I really find it hard to believe, we could revisit this ordinance at that time.

Thank you.

Any questions or comments for Council Member Herbold?

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I will say that amendment number two, reducing the time from six months to two months is not something that I support.

The amendment number three, I do support.

So understanding that there is that difference.

And the reason that I can't at this time support a reduction of down to two months in part was Much like the amendment we were discussing just a moment ago, I started in the same place as Councilmember Herbold.

And I know that Councilmember Lewis brought up these concerns as well, where when I took a first blush at this bill, I said, well, why don't we reduce the time to two months or to three months?

And I was reminded that as part of land use code, we must have public hearings as part with 30 day notice.

And so this is going to be the only emergency bill that we will be passing regarding these land use decisions.

The length of time that land use that these decisions need to be made for is six months.

And the reason for that is with design review processes usually taking about a year, this covers half of that lifespan It provides us the ability to know that if this cannot be resolved by the time that our council budget process begins, that there will not be an opportunity to bring this back up for additional discussion.

And so it really puts, again, the onus on these departments to create the avenues of virtual meetings and the other avenues that we have discussed in the bill.

I need much more than two months to feel this being a good use of our time.

And my request is six months.

Again, amendment number three, I'm in full support of.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments on these amendments?

Okay, I'm not seeing any.

So colleagues, we have some work that needs to get done on some of these amendments before two o'clock today.

I appreciate all of the work being done by council members and the prime sponsor on this particular bill to address the realities of land use issues that are present for us.

regardless of the public health crisis and because of the public health crisis, we need to be really conscientious of these processes which have historically required and depended on a lot of public engagement and public input in person.

And because that is limited, that is prohibited currently, it makes this body of work complicated.

And so I think at the end of the day, this council bill is identified by council member stress is intended to address that reality, that conflict in in the body of work that we're doing and in the public health orders that we are navigating through.

So I hope that we are able to come to a resolution before two o'clock today that will allow us to meet that true intent and to do so in a way that is the most reasonable and rational way to do it in a narrow sense.

So I think we have some thinking to do on this complex bill, and hopefully we'll be able to find some resolution by this afternoon.

So I'm going to go ahead and move us along.

I think that concludes Councilmember Strauss's report on his committee work.

So I'm going to move over to Councilmember Herbold.

The floor is yours.

And thank you to Lish and Ketel for joining us this morning.

You're free to hang up and leave the meeting if you wish.

You will not be required to attend full council unless you hear otherwise from me.

But for now, thank you so much for being available to answer our questions.

Council Member Herbold, the floor is yours.

You're on mute, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much.

Just a couple things I want to mention as far as activities coming up and over the last week.

Just a heads up to everybody here that next week, working with the Seattle Women's Commission will be presenting A proclamation on sexual assault awareness month and denim day for council signatures.

So that'll be next Monday.

Um, and then, um, also, uh, last week, uh, I want to share with folks that I had, um, a call with.

about a dozen district one service providers representing food banks, community-based organizations, human services, health care, housing providers, senior centers, and more.

We discuss the changes that they're seeing in the communities that they serve.

changes that they're making in operations and programming, impacts of those changes on their staff, and the needs and gaps that they are identifying in this very difficult time.

One of the common concerns that I have heard from folks and I know we all continue to hear this out in the community, but there is a need for continued support in purchasing and attempting to connect to centralized purchasing at the city as it relates specifically to PPE and masks.

And some of the providers were aware of that combined purchasing that FAS and HSD are facilitating.

Some are not.

But even those who were availing themselves of that sort of citywide purchasing power, we're still feeling that the orders that they've been putting in for PPE have been coming up short as far as what their needs are.

And then one of the other big issues that was identified in the call was the need for outreach in Spanish-speaking communities.

about the importance of using masks and gloves as it relates specifically to markets.

The observation was made that both customers and workers in some of the ethnic markets in South Park, you don't see as prevalent of a use of masks.

of masks as you would, for instance, in the QFC in West Seattle.

So just wanting to identify that.

And as we mentioned earlier, I hope folks can join us at the electronic town hall on the West Seattle Bridge on Wednesday from 5 to 6.30 p.m.

And that's it for me.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Any questions or comments on that report?

Okay, seeing and hearing none, we're gonna move swiftly along.

So Council Member Juarez, unfortunately, had to leave the call since we're going so long, so she will provide her report next week.

I really appreciate her hanging on for as long as she could, and we will go ahead and move on now to Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Madam President.

I will be brief as well given the later hour this afternoon.

So first I want to report Council Member Herbold, in response to some of your remarks in your report, it was really great having you on a call that I had with several Seattle service providers regarding follow-up from my committee meeting now a week and a half ago regarding the city's efforts to stand up hygiene investments.

It was really good to have that conversation with service providers and ongoing needs and the things that have been provided since that committee meeting.

I did just want to flag for the general public and for council colleagues who may be unaware that there were six new hygiene stations announced last week by the executive.

One in Georgetown at the St. Vincent DePaul Food Bank, one at Victor Steinberg Park, one at the Waterfront Park, one at 45th and I-5, one at the University Heights Center, and one at Bell Street Park.

These new investments are obviously very welcome.

They're still not sufficient to provide a response to the level of demand that we are seeing based on the reports I've heard from service providers and community members.

I've been working closely with Council Member Strauss on trying to get a bigger commitment of resources to the ongoing hygiene challenges at Ballard Commons Park, continuing to work on one of the big takeaways from that committee meeting, which was to focus on figuring out strategies to open some of our public buildings, including libraries that have bathrooms with running water in them.

Those efforts are ongoing.

I'm going to continue to follow-up on some of the key takeaways from that council meeting, and I did just want to flag the progress that has been made in terms of the hygiene stations that have been secured, and hopefully there will be more updates this week and going into next week.

Just wanted to briefly mention on the introduction referral calendar, there's a number of appointments to the auditing group that's going to be meeting remotely.

I believe their resumes have been circulated, and it's a really good group of folks, including former auditors from King County, as well as the city of Portland, members of organized labor, academics at the Evans School, and community members.

So really appreciate having that conversation next week, and just looking forward to Councilmember Buscaino's hearing on Wednesday, committee meeting.

and looking forward to what another week of council action during this public health crisis brings.

So thank you so much.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

Any questions or comments for Councilmember Lewis?

Okay, hearing none, we'll move to Councilmember Morales, your report.

The floor is yours.

Okay, good morning, everybody.

Our afternoon at this point.

I'll be brief.

There are no items on today's calendar from the Community Economic Development Committee.

I do want to flag that in the next couple weeks, we'll begin the process of reauthorizing the U District Business Improvement Area.

Council Member Peterson and I have been working to ensure that we can stay on track before this authorization expires.

and still comply with the public hearing requirements.

So we will begin that process in the next week or two.

As Council Member Somos mentioned, I look forward to our budget meeting this Wednesday to discuss the importance of raising revenue to provide immediate cash assistance to our low-income community members, and also to address the underlying emergency that we have around homelessness and housing affordability.

Um, we've already discussed our substitute for this afternoon.

So, um, I just want to say quickly that, um, we do continue virtual office hours, uh, in the district from Fridays on Fridays from 10 to noon.

Um, and tomorrow evening we'll be participating in a D2 tenant town hall, uh, where we'll be discussing the statewide and the nationwide fight for a mortgage and rent moratorium, as well as the governor's tenant protection order.

and legislation that my office is working on with council members on progressive revenue.

Yeah, I think I'll leave it there.

Great.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

So that leaves me.

I don't have anything on this afternoon's agenda.

Our committee meetings are canceled until further notice.

There was an intention by my office to bring forward Council Bills 119761 and 119762, which are the two bills related to creating a new eviction defense in our Just Cause ordinance for residential landlord-tenant agreements.

So this was sort of similar to the legislation that we took action on last week that was sponsored by Council Member Herbold related to commercial tenancies.

But we, of course, saw great news coming out of Governor Inslee's office, extending the rent moratorium period and implementing the new policy of rent payment plans statewide.

That's a conversation I had with the governor's office last Friday, so was really appreciative of the opportunity to be able to share a copy of our proposed bill and have conversation with them and then see the governor and his folks implement that important policy statewide was really an important step forward in responding to the realities of the needs of people who are having a hard time figuring out how they're going to pay the rent when they can't work as a result of the closures statewide.

We will be taking next steps on those bills.

I still intend to bring them forward and it's just that the extension of the rent moratorium and.

other aspects of the governor's order give us a little bit more time.

And I think it's important for us to do a crosswalk between what we just saw come out of the governor's order and what is included in my proposed council bills before we take any final action on that.

So my hope is that we'll continue to evaluate what the impacts of those orders are on our policy, still intend to move them forward.

but we'll make sure that we are fully evaluating those bills to identify any gaps or further opportunities in terms of the policy direction of those two bills.

So hopefully we'll be able to have something in the next couple of weeks as soon as we have an opportunity to absorb the particular details of the governor's order on issues that are touched on in these council bills.

So that's it from me.

I'm happy to answer any questions or have any additional comments.

Okay, hearing none, is there anything else for the good of the order?

Okay, seeing none, colleagues, this has been a very long meeting.

I really appreciate your patience and your cooperation.

know, sometimes these meetings can go a little bit longer because of the remote nature of how we are meeting, but I really do appreciate you all hanging in there and continuing to be engaged and in allowing me the opportunity to think of council briefings in a little bit more of a creative way so that we can have these substantive policy conversations.

I think it's important for us to have those substantive policy conversations in this less formal setting in order to vet some of these important policy issues, especially since we're not having committee meetings.

So thank you all for your patience and for your hard work.

I look forward to I've seen you all again at two o'clock for our full council meeting.

This concludes our business for this morning.

So we are adjourned.

Thank you, everybody.