Sustainability, City Light, Arts & Culture Committee 4/5/2024

April 5th, 2024 meeting of the Sustainability City Light Arts and Culture Committee will come to order.

It is now 9.31 a.m.

I'm Tanya Wu, chair of the committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Moore?

Present.

Councilmember Morales?

Here.

Councilmember Saka?

Here.

Councilmember Strauss?

Present.

Chair Wu?

Present.

Chair, there are five members present.

Thank you.

If there are no objections, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objections, the agenda is adopted.

So we will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda and within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Currently, we have no public comment speakers signed up.

Great, well, we will now proceed to our items of business.

Members of the public are encouraged to either submit written public comments on the signup cards available at the podium, or they can also email the council at council at seattle.gov.

Great, we will now move on to our next item of business.

Will the clerk please read items one through nine into the record?

Agenda items one through nine, appointments 2809 through appointments 2817. The appointments of Susan Ballas, Elizabeth Baskerville, Camille Guipaia, Rachel Heaton, Nancy Huizar, Hannah Lindell-Smith, Stephanie Ung, Matt Remley as members of the Green New Deal Oversight Board for terms to April 30th, 2026. And the appointment of Emily Pickney as a member of the Green New Deal Oversight Board for a term to April 30th, 2025.

Thank you.

All nine items have been read into the record.

We will first consider a vote on the nine Green Deal Oversight Board appointments.

Will the department coordinators and nominees for the Green New Deal Oversight Board please come to the community table?

And once ready, please introduce yourselves, your commission, and then we'll learn more about our nominees.

Perfect.

Can you join?

recording in progress

It's great to see so many of you here today.

I wanna thank you for your willingness to serve.

A quick thing on the mics, you have to draw the mic up to your face and make sure the green light is on.

And it's best if it's like right near your mouth because sometimes we have problems hearing.

Well, thank you.

Good morning.

Recording stopped.

Good morning.

Great.

OK.

Good morning.

For the record, my name is Jessen Farrell.

I'm the director of the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for having us today.

We are going to do a very short presentation, just kind of creating some foundation for the Green New Deal Oversight Board nominees.

And then we will pass it over to them to introduce themselves.

So I'm joined.

yourselves as well.

Hi, I'm Sarah Cavieos, Climate Justice Advisor at the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

And I'm Elise Rasmussen.

I am the Climate and Environmental Justice Associate at the Office of Sustainability and Environment, and I am the liaison for the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

So we're going to do just a few short slides.

And we may need a little help.

Just next?

Or share screen?

Murphy, I can share screen if you want.

Yeah.

Please stand.

I know that's right.

Man of many talents.

Okay, great.

And we can probably...

Okay, great, thank you, everyone.

All right, so we were here a couple of weeks ago to give an overview of the Office of Sustainability and Environment, and I shared this iconic picture of wonderful things about the environment in the city of Seattle and how much that is a part of our identity, a part of our international brand, and how much it really is one of those things that draw us to this place and keep us here.

And I also showed this picture of wildfire smoke, the climate crisis, and of course that is upon us.

We are all feeling the effects of that.

But the real theme that we're going to focus in on today is the fact that there are members of our community who feel the burden and impacts of the climate crisis and environmental injustice more than other people in our community, particularly black, indigenous, people of color, low-income people.

And so the environmental justice and climate justice part of our work is what we're really going to emphasize today and the programmatic pieces that we do to address that.

And so, of course, our mission to create healthy environment for everyone.

And again, I just want to pull out that focus on how we do this work around really emphasizing how we're rectifying both past and current harms to members of our community who face that.

And I would also like to just acknowledge Council Member Morales for all of your work and leadership over the years and partnering with us on this work.

And so again, this is a slide that we showed a couple of weeks ago of our core services.

And the one that is highlighted is that piece around climate and environmental injustice.

And I know we'll get to come back and talk about other elements of our work.

And so before I turn it over to Sarah and Elise, who will really dive into the programmatic pieces, I thought I'd just share a couple of really concrete examples of how people experience the environment differently in our city.

One example is related to air quality.

If you live in a port-adjacent neighborhood like South Park or a neighborhood that's adjacent to I-5 or another big transportation corridor like Lake City Way, so CID and Beacon Hill, those are neighborhoods that have markedly worse air quality.

And the people who live in them have experiences of chronic health that is impacted by the increased particulate matter.

So we design policies in part to address that.

So that's one example.

Another example is water quality and the impacts of flooding.

Thornton Creek, I grew up in Meadowbrook.

That's a place where there's been a lot of improvement around flooding.

There's now a natural area.

There's recreation opportunities.

And that's a wonderful investment that we've made.

But there are other parts of our community.

Again, South Park is an example where the impacts of flooding, and as they're getting worse, are really, really profoundly impacting that community.

So those are some really specific examples of, how and why we engage with this framework.

And then the final one is a real piece of our work is related to bringing economic prosperity into the environmental conversation.

So we're going through this huge transformation with the green economy.

And how are we making sure that those benefits are felt broadly?

And of course, the classic example where we didn't do that is the Spotted Owl regulations and those impacts on workers on the peninsula.

And so that's an example of how we're really trying to do things differently as we're moving into this big economic transformation.

So with that, Sarah's gonna dive into some example, a little more deeply into our work.

Thank you.

Thank you, Justin.

Thank you, council members.

I wanna begin by sharing that environmental justice work has been done by grassroots community organizations for many decades, but today I'll focus on how environmental justice work started within OSC.

As Justin mentioned, OSC's mission, we know environmental hazards and climate change affect us all, but especially harms low-income communities and communities of color, first and worst.

Nationally, race is one of the most significant indicators of living near contaminated air, water, and soil.

This is true here in Seattle as well.

We can see how these impacts are localized in overburdened communities, largely due to historic redlining, one example being the 13-year life expectancy between South Park and Laurelhurst.

Recognizing the history and the existing challenges, in 2015, OSCE began the Equity and Environment Initiative, which brought together organizations and partners either serving or deeply connected to black and indigenous communities of color.

They co-developed the city's and the nation's first equity and environment agenda.

The agenda outlined overarching goals where the city can work at the intersection of racial justice and environmental justice.

One of the key programs that came from the equity in the environment agenda is the Environmental Justice Fund.

The fund resources community-based organizations leading their own solutions to mitigate climate and environmental justice impacts in their communities and neighborhoods.

While resourcing community-led work is vital, we also believe the work of the fund is to center relationships, build and deepen trust with community partners, and increase the capacity of our partners.

The grant fund is celebrating its five-year anniversary this year, and we'll be announcing the latest slate of awardees next week.

You'll all receive communication about the awardees and the amazing work they'll complete.

As the equity environment agenda brought about programs like the Environmental Justice Fund and the Drummish Valley program, it was also a catalyst for the Green New Deal for Seattle.

In 2019, as the Green New Deal was garnering attention at the federal level, Seattle communities came together to co-develop the legislation for a Green New Deal in Seattle.

Today, you'll get to meet a couple of the people that were integral to that Green New Deal legislation who are also prospective appointees.

The Green New Deal for Seattle is growing the city's climate justice work.

Where the equity and environment agenda set broad goals, the Green New Deal is working to expand on and develop new and innovative solutions that respond to our city's current and future climate challenges.

So what does this look like?

Well, Seattle's Green New Deal has three areas of focus.

First, focusing on strategies that reduce Seattle's emissions while ensuring those benefits are felt in highly impacted areas of the city?

Second, as we reduce emissions, how are we also creating opportunities for overburdened communities to participate in and benefit from a low carbon economy?

Finally, as we're working to find ways to ensure all of the strategies are not only focusing on reducing emissions, but are also focused on adapting to a changing climate and providing multiple benefits like improving environmental health outcomes and fostering resilient and safe communities.

I won't cover all of the investments listed here, but wanted to give you an idea of what does these focus areas look like in action.

For building an inclusive, low-carbon economy as a city, we're supporting contractors to create opportunities for apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeships.

We're investing in young leaders and small businesses in the Duwamish Valley.

When we talk about reducing emissions and transitioning from fossil fuels, we're investing in programs like the Oil to Electric Home heating conversions through our Clean Heat Program, offering full rebates to low-income homeowners.

It also is things like the Building Accelerator Program, which is a part of our Building Emissions Performance Standard that is supporting under-resourced buildings, especially those owned by or supporting black and indigenous communities of color.

And finally, when we talk about improving our environmental health outcomes and fostering resilient communities, we are thinking of adaptive solutions like resilience hubs, which are trusted community-serving facilities that support communities during their everyday life, as well as before, during, and after an emergency event.

This also includes things like investing in equitably increasing our Seattle tree canopy cover and continuing to support things like the Environmental Justice Fund that is centering community-led projects.

The brief summary of investments I just named are happening not only in OSE but are partnerships across multiple city departments and are directly connected to recommendations put forth by the Oversight Board.

I'll pass it to Elise to talk about the Oversight Board, their work, and the prospective appointees today.

Thanks so much, Sarah.

So the picture that we have on the screen here highlights the partnerships that exist across this body of work that Sarah and Director Farrell just went over.

This is a picture of Green New Deal Oversight Board members, other community partners, many of whom are EJ Fund grantees or connected to the EJ Fund in some way, and city government staff all coming together to celebrate the work that they all did to advance climate and environmental justice for Seattle.

The Green New Deal Oversight Board ensures that the implementation of Seattle's Green New Deal is carried out as it was intended, which is to improve environmental, community, economic, and health outcomes by uplifting the voices and perspectives of communities and workers who are most overburdened by the climate crisis and environmental injustices.

The Green New Deal Oversight Board is a board of experts through their lived and professional experiences.

They are deeply rooted and connected to their communities that they serve, and they come together to advocate for community and worker-generated solutions to tackle the climate crisis.

The Green New Deal Oversight Board is made up of 19 members who represent...

Can you go back one slide?

Thank you.

Who represent communities who are most overburdened by racial, environmental, and economic injustice, tribal members, environmental justice organizations, workforce development organizations and labor unions, technical climate and greenhouse gas reduction specialists, as well as youth.

The board appoints three members, and then there are eight mayoral appointed seats and eight city council appointed seats.

Next slide.

So the board has several functions, which I'll go over in a second, but first I just want to share that this board has open public meetings every third Monday of the month, and they have three active committees who meet in between those monthly public meetings.

So those three committees are the Executive Committee, which is made up of two co-chairs and an at-large member, and a committee that identifies and supports and tracks Green New Deal-related projects, programs, and policies, as well as a committee that leads the board's own community engagement work to make sure that the board's priorities remain closely connected to communities' needs and priorities.

In terms of the board's functions, the oversight board provides guidance to support the long-term success of the Green New Deal by strategizing on how to advance those three key tenants that Sarah just went over.

They also support the collaboration across city departments.

So we're always getting, as staff, we're always getting new ideas and great questions from the board who see opportunities to improve and de-silo city government's work.

Secondly, they create climate-related budget recommendations.

So Sarah just highlighted a few of those Green New Deal investments to date, and I just want to note that those investments originated from the board's budget recommendations in previous budget cycles.

Next, the board engages and collaborates with overburdened communities to support the alignment of community priorities and the Green New Deal implementation.

This year, the board is partnering with the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle and MLK Labor to host community assembly sessions to identify possible future board and Green New Deal priorities.

And last part, the board partners with city departments very closely to ensure the equitable implementation of the Green New Deal.

For example, through that committee that identifies policies, projects, and programs for the Green New Deal, they work really closely with the city departments who are also working on those policies and projects and programs.

So with that, I will just say that to kind of wrap up here that the board is one major reason why Seattle continues to lead in this climate space.

And this will become even more apparent once you get to hear from the appointees themselves who are each incredibly impressive.

So with that, we're happy to either take questions or proceed directly to appointee introductions.

Thank you.

Council Member Strauss, did you have a question?

Thank you, Chair.

My question was a number of slides back.

I didn't want to interrupt because you were on a really good roll.

I'll say just generally about OSE.

I think it was slide...

Oh, there's not numbers.

Slide five-ish.

You're showing all of these different programs, and as you were giving the overview of OSC, what really strikes me, colleagues, last year we had discussed, and we did actually set up a select committee on the climate crisis for a moment, because when we're addressing the climate crisis, which is imminently before us, we are currently in it, it touches so many different departments, and I bring up...

building efficiency performance standards, which is something that is both in SDCI, it's in climate resiliency, it's in OPCD for some ways, it's through City Light in many ways because of electricity.

It touches all of these different things.

And without the Office of Sustainability and Environment, we wouldn't have this focus across cities.

typical jurisdictions across typical silos.

And it's just, you know, it was really helpful for us to have that select committee briefly.

It's something that we could talk about again in the future.

And the reason that I didn't feel as it was as necessary is because we have a department leading this work.

So I'm gonna save some of my comments.

I'm reading through this PowerPoint.

This is more in-depth than we usually get for appointments, so I'm probably not gonna ask as many follow-up questions to elicit some of the information that I see in your resumes, but I just wanna thank you all for being volunteers in this work.

It's an impressive group of people.

Thank you for your service.

Great, let's meet the appointees.

Where is it?

It's on the, yep, there you are.

Oh, I'm already on.

Hi, my name is Emily Pinkney.

I use she, her, they, them pronouns.

Thank you so much, council members, for having us and for this honor to be able to serve in this capacity.

A little bit about myself.

So I'm actually a former member of the Environmental Justice Task Force for Washington State.

I was a community representative representing the Urban League.

Currently, I serve on the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency as a community representative, as well as on the board of Sustainable Seattle, which is a frontline environmental justice organization that is largely run by BIPOC communities.

I'm really excited to be here with you all today.

My work that I'm currently focusing on is decarbonization, but demystifying that process for community members.

As a lot of us know, there's a lot of funding that's becoming available and a lot of strategies for decarbonization.

However, every single time we see any sort of innovation in environmental spaces, it's BIPOC communities, low-income communities, immigrant communities that are underserved and don't get what they need.

So I work on a program called Breaking Barriers Collaborative with five nonprofits that have done over 25 years of work in policy spaces for the environment and working with them to try to help the community understand the implementation process and to get them connected to government, getting them connected to resources, technical support, what have you.

But all the elements that are involved, because you can't just decarbonize overnight.

It takes a planning process.

And so we help people build those plans, particularly focusing on small businesses, BIPOC-owned businesses, and immigrant businesses.

So thank you for having me.

That's me.

Kind of hard to talk when you're looking this way.

Hi, good morning.

Thank you for having us.

Can you hear me okay?

Yeah.

I'm Susan Balbous.

I'm the Executive Director of Naa Ilihi Fund, which means Mother Earth in the Chinook language.

My family moved us here to the Seattle area.

many decades ago.

Okay, five, five decades ago.

And during this time, I've been very, very involved in environmental justice movements.

I've served in lots of different roles and committees with the county, with the city, and was an early grantee of the Environmental Justice Fund and then served as a reviewer.

And, you know, we've worked quite a bit with parks.

We have implemented the Native American Advisory Board through Daybreak Star out at Discovery Park and have done lots of work to...

really just work on the environment and making sure we have our open spaces as our region grows.

I'm really honored to be, you know, a part of this board and just really want to say that I'm very committed to this work.

We did green jobs before it was a thing, and I'm just really excited to be here, and thank you so much.

Hello, thank you for having me.

My name's Lizzie Baskerville, and I'm a born and raised Seattleite and a Garfield grad, and I used to manage the Danny Woo Community Garden.

And back in 2020, my friend, Joycelyn Choi, approached me and said, a lot of the restaurants here are, you know, going through a hard time in the Chinatown International District.

Can we take our food waste and compost it in the Danewood Community Garden?

And so we co-founded Restaurant to Garden, where we support restaurant owners and we create compost for the elders in the Danewood Community Garden.

And we are...

just trying to improve the circular economy in the neighborhood.

And our dream is to have green jobs, support all the restaurants, and just really support this neighborhood that we love so much.

And so, yeah, I'm really pleased to be on this board and working with all of you to forward the Green New Deal.

Thank you.

Hello.

My name is Camille Guipaia.

I use she and her pronouns.

And I am honored to be a part of the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

As part of the younger generation inheriting the issues of the climate crisis, I enter into this work with so much hope that my generation can truly experience change.

Along with hope, I have anger, anger that people of my generation and those who come after me will have to face the severe consequences of the delayed response and inaction.

I also recognize that that anger, which I share with many of the younger generation, has brought me here today.

So, I'm in front of this council to say we are here.

The young generation will continue to fight for a just nutrition and will continue to envision an equitable planet where everyone can live in a safe and healthy environment.

I believe that one of the most powerful tools for building power is storytelling.

So I would like to share my story briefly.

I come from farmers and fishermen in an archipelago, the Philippines.

I grew up close to food systems and the agriculture sector where the environment was not a backdrop, but life itself.

And that's among the many reasons that have brought me to environmental justice.

I thank you for the space and for this opportunity.

Ingat, take care.

And I have the honor of sharing about Rachel Heaton, who's seeking reappointment.

She was not able to join today.

So Rachel is a member of the Muckleshoot tribe and lives in Auburn, Washington, and is also a descendant of the Duwamish tribe.

And in 2017, she, along with many other natives and allies, helped the city of Seattle to divest the city of Seattle's $3 billion from Wells Fargo, in part because of the funding of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

This victory prompted Rachel and Matt Remley, who you'll hear from in a second, to co-found Masauska Talks, an indigenous developed tool to help other communities divest their cities and organizations from banks contributing to the desecration of Mother Earth.

She's also a lead culture educator for the Muckleshoot tribe.

And there she learns about traditional indigenous plants, how to harvest them, and develops ways to incorporate them into everyday foods.

She shares the importance in our ancestors' teachings of those medicines to her tribal community.

And additionally, she works with youth and adults to learn to use our Earth Gym as a way to apply culture and healing as our basis for health and wellness.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Nancy Guizar and I use they, them pronouns.

I grew up in Beacon Hill and I still live here.

I graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in aquatic and fisheries.

And in my early career, I saw gaps in environmental programs and initiatives in South Seattle, specifically in BIPOC neighborhoods.

And so after a couple of years, I decided to transition to do community organizing and I supported the adoption of the Green New Deal resolution back in 2019 and while the resolution was adopted in 2019 it was built on decades of community organizing and I'm looking forward to serving on this board to continue advancing the work of our elders and to advance the community priorities of our folks that are present here living today and well thank you for your time and I'm really looking forward to serving and seeing you all in person next time

Hello, I believe this is on, yes.

My name is Hannah Lindell-Smith.

I am a community and political organizer, and right now I am coalition's lead at Zero Hour, and working with several different youth coalitions across the US, and especially here in the Seattle area, my home.

My work is focused on accountability, connection, and building a more just and beautiful world in the face of the climate crisis, keeping our communities safe in heat waves, making sure young people are heard.

I want us to do all of this and more.

The Green New Deal Oversight Board is not the only tool to achieve this, but it is one, and I want us to make the most of it.

I am also a dancer and aerialist.

I do that at Sanka in Georgetown and I attend Summit Atlas High School where I will be graduating this year.

And it is nice to meet you all.

Good morning.

My name is Stephanie Ung.

Any pronouns are good.

And I am the co-executive director for Khmer community of Seattle King County.

And we're a direct service organization that's been around since 1984, established by Khmer refugees coming to Seattle after the Khmer Rouge genocide.

And we focus on programs for elders, youth, and families, specifically Khmer.

And Khmer is the name of the culture, the language, and the people of Cambodia.

I'm here as a newly appointed board member for representing frontline communities.

My background professionally and in education is on urban and multicultural environmental education.

I used to work for the city as a naturalist, creating community-based programs in Southeast Seattle.

And now I work for my own community, helping to bridge the gap that much of our community experiences in recreation, outdoors, as well as connecting our young people to our elders.

Our community's been here again since at least 1979 with the end of the Khmer Rouge.

And many of our elders are survivors who were villagers because the Khmer Rouge focused mostly on people who were formally educated and professionals.

So a lot of our elders have deep connections to land and healing practices.

However, the Khmer Rouge really really scared them into keeping those in hiding.

And so being resettled into the US and into Seattle, many of them were not afforded the opportunity to continue those practices.

Being resettled into public housing, not having access to green spaces, a lot of agricultural practices were lost or maybe not able to be practiced so much.

So KCSKC really focuses on supporting these elders having space to reclaim that and pass that on to the younger generation.

The Environmental Justice Fund supported us creating the first intergenerational gardening program in West Seattle where we brought Khmer elders and Khmer youth together.

For the first time, it was very awkward for all the generations because the temple is normally where young people and elders come together, and it's a very...

elders-dominated space that our young people don't know how to navigate.

So having a third space in the garden was such a special thing.

The other reason why being a part of the Green New Deal Oversight Board was important to our community is because during December of 2022, with the King Tide floods, flooding South Park, there were nine Khmer families who were severely impacted who were not on the city's outreach map regarding sewage backup as well as information about flooding threats.

So because not many people know about Khmer language or realize that our community's here because much of our community members are afraid of authority and afraid of speaking out because of the Khmer Rouge, many of our community members have gone under the radar and that we saw that really clearly, that that has really devastating impact.

So we are really grateful and so were the families to have the flood because it connected us to them.

And I bring those relationships and those stories forward in my role here.

Thank you for your time.

I'm Dr. Kippy.

Good morning, everybody.

My English name is Matt Remy.

My Lakota name is .

I'm from Standing Rock, but I'm a longtime resident of Beacon Hill in the uh holly park neighborhood new holly neighborhood and um very honored to to be here today a long time worker and advocate on issues of treaty rights tribal sovereignty and environmental justice i've been working on issues of environmental justice in the seattle area since the 90s when i was involved with the former community coalition for environmental justice I had the honor of working with Nancy and others with Councilmember O'Brien on the drafting of the Green New Deal resolution and subsequent bills that followed, as well as with Councilmember Muscata on the jumpstart funding, which we know is a large part of funding a lot of the work that we're talking about here today.

So very happy to be here, very happy to continue doing the work here.

And I also want to thank Councilmember Morales for her long-time support on this work.

And thank you.

Thank you.

That is all of the appointments.

Thank you so much.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

And it's amazing to hear about your accomplishments, individual accomplishments, and coming together as a board.

You're going to do amazing things.

I'm very excited.

And so, colleagues, any questions or comments?

I don't have questions, but I wanna thank all of you.

I will remark that so far with the exception of Matt, it is women who are here today.

And I really wanna thank all of you for your leadership and showing up to represent your communities.

and the really important work as it relates to climate change.

I think the array of issues that you talked about really helps us understand how all of this work is connected, right?

Whether it's...

Organizing to get communities connected to local government to understand how all of this works or, you know, compost and food systems work, you know, workforce development, working on behalf of young people and, you know, working for immigrant communities to understand how to navigate the systems that we have here and how to make sure that they are recognized and that their needs are also met.

it's really important work that you're all doing on your own.

And then to bring all of those experiences into serving on this particular board to help all of us understand how things are connected is really important.

So just want to thank you for your willingness to be here and to share your journeys with us and to help us make good decisions around how to manage or deal with the climate change issues.

So thank you.

Thank you, chair.

Okay, I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointments 02809-02817.

Second.

It is moved and seconded to confirm the appointments.

Are there any further comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the confirmation of the appointments?

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Wu?

Yes.

Chair, five in favor, zero opposed.

Motion carries and the recommendation that the appointments be confirmed will be sent to this city council.

So thank you so much for coming in.

It's great to meet all of you and thank you for your service and thank you for all that you've done.

Thank you.

Thanks everyone.

So we will now move to our next item of business.

Will the clerk please read the short title of item 10 into the record?

Agenda item number 10, resolution 32133 relating to the City Light Department approving the proposed budget framework of the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission for Canada fiscal year 2024-2025 through 2028-2029 for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

Will the department presenters please join us at the table, and once ready, please introduce yourselves and begin your presentation.

I really quickly want to comment that Councilmember Strauss and I had the honor of taking a field trip over to the Ross Dam, meeting the Upper Skagit Tribe, as well as the Soxwaddle Tribe.

We got to take a boat and go along the...

Upper Skagit River, and it was an amazing experience to be able to meet people and go to the Environmental Learning Center, learn about their programs, and hear about the preservation work that was done in that area.

And so, Council Member Strauss, do you have anything to add?

Yeah, Chair, it was an amazing experience, as always.

I love that every time I go up there or meet with you, I learn something new about our Skagit Hydro facility.

You know, it produces 25% of Seattle's electricity, and this is our first relicensing process that we're going through right now since the mid-'90s.

In the mid-'90s, we had a lot of...

It was really the first time that we'd worked with the tribes in off-license agreements so that we could make sure that we are stewarding the land and recognizing the impact that our hydro facilities have had on indigenous people in the area.

And it was really an amazing experience to get to meet with the upper Skagit Indian tribe, Scott Schuller and his mom, Doreen, who is a powerhouse, no pun intended.

If you ever wonder where Council President Wara's got it, from Doreen, who set up the tribal courts for Western Washington.

And so, she was really amazing.

It was wonderful to have that coming together of agreement with Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, and then to really restart the conversation with Sauk Seattle.

We've just resolved some of the lawsuits, and so we're really getting into negotiations.

And so I think it was very clear to everyone that the chair of this committee, you, Chair Wu, were in attendance at such an early, you know, you've been in office for, three months, five days, no one, actually a little less, sorry.

But you know, it's just, it's amazing to see so quickly on the ground here, you're already up there engaging with our infrastructure, as well as the people who are most important in this work, and that's the indigenous tribes up there.

So really great to have you up there, Council Member Wu.

It was great to follow your lead.

Thank you for all that you've done.

You're the committee chair of the Governance and Tribal Relations Committee, and so all the relationships that you bring and you developed over the years is amazing.

I asked if I could have a slideshow of all the pictures we took during our trip, but unfortunately there's no time for that.

So thank you for being here, and I look forward to hearing your presentation.

Thanks, Council Member.

Mike Haines, Seattle City Light Chief Operating Officer.

I was gonna do a whole setup, but you guys just covered it.

So that was beautiful.

So thanks for having us.

I'm Rob Smith.

You're on.

I'm on, okay.

Rob Smith, I'm a U.S.

Commissioner on the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission.

Thanks for hearing us today.

And I'm Kate Engel.

I'm the Science Policy Manager at Seattle City Light, and I serve as the U.S.

Secretary for the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission, which is a requirement under our treaty for the city to provide that role.

Maura Brugger, Director of Government and Legislative Affairs at Seattle City Light.

Good morning.

Andrew Strong, Interim Officer for Environmental Engineering and Project Delivery Efforts.

Thank you.

Okay, well, good morning.

What great timing for us to be here today on the heels of the tour that you just took last Friday and on some of the comments you just made.

So the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission and the High Ross Treaty that we're going to be talking about today is an extension of some of the policy framework up in the Skagit watershed that governs among other things, environmental stewardship.

So today, what we're here to talk about is the five-year budget framework for the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission.

So who is the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission, and what do we mean by the framework?

What are we doing here today?

So first of all, I thought I'd start off with a bit of context.

on the HI-RAS treaty and agreement that formed the Skagit Environmental Endowment Fund and the commission that administers it, then talk about the endowment fund itself and some of the activities that it's supported over the years, especially the last five years.

Then we'll move on to having Rob, our commissioner, present the budget framework, which is the plan that SEEK has created to govern what they're going to spend over the next five years, how they're going to invest that money.

And then I'll circle back on the purpose of the council resolution.

So I just wanted to make clear today to start things off on the right foot.

We're not, and SEEK's not asking for funding here today.

The funding that is in this endowment fund is built into our budget.

It was something that we're required to do.

It's non-discretionary funding that goes into our budget.

So what this is about is about how SEEK spends the funding, how they're planning to spend it over the next five years.

And that is part of this review process that we're going to go through here today.

And your approval is something that is required of the treaty.

The same requirement follows the process.

BC government as well.

They need to do the same thing.

Chair, may I?

Go ahead.

Thank you.

I think this is a fine slide to sit on.

I wanted to take us back to a higher level before we get into some of these details.

Our briefing ahead of this committee was very helpful for me, even though I'm a geek and in the weeds all the time, this was something new to me.

Actually, the next slide with those years is really helpful.

So colleagues, I know Kate is about to share some of this, but I'll also say it, which is as the dam was built in three different stages, we flooded Canada.

And so when we flooded Canada beyond just the FERC and the off-license agreements with our tribes, we have an international agreement.

And at that time, there was a pot of money set aside, which created an endowment.

Is that correct?

Yes, endowment fund was formed, yes.

And so from that endowment fund, there's a little bit of money that BC and the city of Seattle puts in every year to the endowment fund.

But that endowment fund, much like CERS, our retirement system, is an investment body that self-perpetuates.

And so I kind of, I came at Kate a little hot in our briefing.

I said, well, then what are we doing here?

Why is this before our committee?

And your response was really helpful, which is that this is a self-sustaining fund that is an agreement between BC and the city of Seattle.

That self-sustaining fund still needs accountability.

So on the BC side, they're doing the same thing that we're doing here to make sure that they're using this money for the intended purposes and not buying cars or buying planes or going on trips.

And so I had a hard time grasping.

And so I just wanted to level set because it took me an hour to get to that point, so I figured it would be helpful to share off the bat.

Thank you, Kate.

Sorry for editorializing.

Yes, no, and thank you for that.

I really appreciated the pre-meeting that we got to have together, that kind of time to kind of explain this, because it's a little bit different beast, a little bit different type of decision that you'll be making here.

So just building on what Councilmember Strauss said, so the Ross Dam is the largest dam on the Skagit system.

It's the northernmost dam in the system, and it is closest to the border.

And it was designed in a manner to be raised in a couple of phases.

Actually, it's three phases.

There's the initial phase that started construction back in 1937. And then it was increased to a height of 1,600 feet in 1949. This was all part of the plan and part of what was agreed to between US and Canada.

And when it came time to raise it a third time, the last time, phase three in 1970, over the 40-year period of time since the idea was hatched to create this dam and the time that third phase was to go up, there was a change of heart.

about that situation.

There was a lot of concern about the environmental damage that that would cause because it would cause an additional flooding of 5,000 acres up into British Columbia.

And over that period of time, there was a lot of recognition over the environmental values of the Skagit watershed on both sides of the border as well as the recreational values and other appreciation that the public had of the area.

So there's a lot of concern, a lot of outcry about that.

Can we move to the next slide?

So I've got some examples and some newspaper articles there to get the point across.

There's a lot of attention paid to the situation at that time, and it was all settled with a treaty between the US and Canada signed by Ronald Reagan, which kind of dates it back in 1984. And so this treaty has been in existence for 40 years, and there's an agreement between Canada and the province of BC that's annexed to it as part of the whole treaty and agreement package that we're talking about here today.

So as part of this package, there was an endowment fund established.

And this endowment fund, there was seed money put in by both governments to establish it.

And it was intended to be invested in the environmental integrity, maintain the environmental integrity of the watershed.

This is a great example of transparent stewardship, I just might point out.

the spirit and intent of the treaty.

This part of the treaty is about transboundary stewardship and how to facilitate that.

So when we talk about the environmental integrity of the watershed, I might point out we have visitors that come to that watershed from all over the world every year, hundreds and hundreds, probably thousands, I haven't counted them myself, of visitors that come to that watershed to appreciate the environmental aspects of this area.

So here's some highlights of it.

It provides 30% of the fresh water that goes into Puget Sound, so what we do in there matters.

It has the largest, healthiest populations of steelhead and chinook, which are threatened species.

It has the largest run of chum salmon in the lower 48 states.

The chinook salmon, and I point out, make up about 80% of the food source of orcas, which are a threatened species, endangered species.

And most of the chinook that they eat actually comes from the Skagit.

The largest and most diverse population of bull trout, which is a threatened species, lives in the watershed.

99% of them spawn above Ross Dam, and the upper reaches of the watershed clear up into Canada.

It's a critical area for an introduction of grizzly bears.

You might have read something about this in the news recently.

There's energy being kind of reinvigorated into that effort right now.

It's got old-growth forest on both sides of the border that supports spotted owls and other old-growth associate species.

And lastly, I just wanted to point out that the area is protected for the most part by parks on both sides of the border.

It's got Manning and Skagit Valley Park on the B.C.

side, and on the U.S. side above Ross Dam, we have...

Ross Lake National Recreation Area, and North Cascades National Park.

So moving on, the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission administers this endowment fund.

It consists of 16 commissioners, eight that are appointed by the mayor and eight that are appointed by the premier of British Columbia.

They each serve a four-year term.

They can be reappointed for multiple terms, and some of them have.

The appointments are staggered so that we constantly have an influx of new commissioners that come through each year.

And then we're required by the treaty and agreement to provide what they call administrative support or staff.

And that takes the form of two secretaries.

And as I mentioned previously, I am the U.S.

Secretary.

City Light has been delegated the responsibility of providing the secretary for the city and the other administrative support that's provided to the commission.

So the purposes of the endowment fund and of the commission were outlined in the treaty, and they're here.

This is word for word what comes from the treaty and agreement.

And they're all around environmental integrity, support for recreation and education.

So the first is to conserve and protect wilderness and wildlife habitat, enhance recreational opportunities in Skagit Valley, acquire mineral and timber rights consistent with conservation and recreation purposes, and I'm going to circle back on that purpose again shortly, conduct studies of need and feasibility of projects, and to plan for and construct hiking trails, foot bridges, interpretive displays, and the like.

So SEEK now, with its responsibility to administer these funds and to meet these purposes, has organized itself into five main programs or priorities.

These include, they're listed here, they're ecosystem science, indigenous peoples engagement, which is a newer program and priority they developed in the last five years, environmental education, watershed integrity, and recreation.

So I mentioned that I was going to circle back on the mineral and timber rights point.

I wanted to point out that when I mentioned most of the areas protected, over the years, there's been one area that's been 14,000 acres in size that sits between Manning and Skagit Valley Park that could not be incorporated into the adjacent park lands because of underlying timber rights.

I mean, mineral rights that were most recently owned by Imperial Metals.

And so it took 38 years or so until sea could get everything together that it needed to end up extinguishing those mineral rights.

So it's a huge win for not only for the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission, but for the BC province and for Seattle, US and Canada to have these mineral rights extinguished.

It was an effort that was supported by funding and know-how from the state government here, the provincial government, and from the city of Seattle, among other people that kind of all pulled together to figure out how to do this and get the funding in place so that we could pay for the extinguishment of these mineral tenures.

So this 14,000 acre of land, now that those mineral tenures are gone, can be incorporated into the parks, but it's currently in a protected status and getting reviewed by BC through a process that they need to go through in consultation with First Nations to establish its permanent, what I'd call land use designation.

In the meantime, it is in a protected status.

and SEEK is monitoring the situation to ensure that its permanent status ends up being consistent with the intent of extinguishing those mineral tenures in the first place.

So moving on, now we'll talk about the budget.

And I'll have Rob take over from here.

But I wanted to point out again, we're not asking for funding here today.

SEEK's not asking for funding.

This is a high-level review of the framework, which is their plan for how they want to spend the budget over the next five years.

They have all the flexibility to move money around within these different bins over the next five years.

So what you're getting is what their intents are and how they've kind of organized the way that they want to spend their money over the next five years into the various programs that I mentioned earlier.

Rob, you want to take it from here?

Thanks, Kate.

As I mentioned, Rob Smith.

I've been a conservation advocate for 40 plus years.

The last 10 here with the National Park Citizen NGO.

It made sense to me to be focused on the North Cascades ecosystem.

Exciting because it was one of the unique opportunities to look at the watershed trans boundary instead of being limited by jurisdictions.

And I've been on the commission since 2016. One of the roles, I want to thank you for the role that the city played, in particular, both in policy, advocacy, as well as money, to partner with the state of Washington, the province of BC, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, and SEEK tapped its own endowment fund in order to put together the funds necessary to buy the mining claims a few years back up in British Columbia.

water quality downstream into Washington for the salmon, for the people, for the people from here that go up and recreate there for the long term.

And that's exactly what the treaty is supposed to do.

When I was first asked to be on the treaty, I said, oh, no, this isn't going to be one of those things where you have to raise money or you have to fight for resources.

And they said, no, actually, it comes with it's a mandate, but it's funded.

It comes with an opportunity to simply do good deeds to live into the goals of the treaty, as outlined.

So I said, that sounds exciting.

Let's do that.

And you get to work with people across the line that we otherwise wouldn't meet.

I wanted to give you a little bit of flavor of that.

But first, I think that's reflected in the budget pie charts.

You can see the one on the left, the prior year.

We have made a direction to the partners that apply for support to be sure and include an appreciation and the stories of indigenous people so their presence and their ongoing presence and importance in this landscape is included.

That wasn't specifically in the treaty from 1984, because at the time, no one thought of that.

We're thinking of it now.

The new budget, looking forward, though, takes the next step.

And you'll notice that there is a whole carve-out for just indigenous-led programs.

So that does not get everyone else off the hook from mentioning it, and they don't want to be.

Some of our partners still mention in their curriculum and their interpretation those stories, but we really wanted to put money where the talk was and say, we want to have a fund that's going to be indigenous, meaning tribal or First Nations led and developed.

And the commission does reflect that in its makeup too, where there are two members of First Nations and two members associated with tribes in the U.S. as commissioners as well to help develop and guide that program.

So that's a major change in the budget, which meant that some of the money for other programs was cut back to allow room for that.

I chair the Education Committee, which is the largest single...

piece of the budget.

And some of the examples of programs that we fund through that are North Cascades Institute.

If you were up there in the Upper Skagit, you might have seen the Environmental Learning Center.

That is, in order to keep that going, we contribute towards that.

Lots of school kids come through and their families.

It's also available for other uses as well.

up there, all in appreciation of the Upper Skagit.

We also fund a pretty unique program, which is BC Parks and the National Park Service share the very tip of the reservoir on the border at a place called Hozmi, and it's the International Interpretive Program.

So a ranger from BC and a ranger from National Park Service jointly present programs in the evening, greet campers and recreationists, and are there for the summer season and see thousands of people there.

And we want to keep that going, and that would not have happened except for seek support.

So that was very important to us.

Chairman, Jim, at the Hozemine Interpretive Center, is there a void, and how do you fill it?

At Hozemine?

Yes.

For many years, SEEK approached both park entities, the agencies, and said, we would like to support this.

And they said, that's great.

We'll provide the rangers if you can provide the funding.

And now, like many agencies that are in budget crisis, that sort of support is even more critical in order to make that happen.

So there are people from both countries that come there.

This is one of the few places on the border where there's not a big wall or checkpoint, so people go back and forth.

But it's all about recreation, and it's very seasonal.

It's been closed off.

Sometimes weather events close the road.

And, Chair, if I may, again, sorry, Jim.

I was trying to make a remark about Jack Kerouac calling Mount Hozimine the void.

I should not try to be funny.

My wife has told me I'm not supposed to try to be funny.

This is that place.

This is where you can find and you can hike up to that lookout that he wrote that.

Yes.

He's still the king of dad jokes.

The Indigenous Program funds, has funded a gathering of both tribes and First Nations at Hozemene that they led specifically to talk about the traditional use of that land and the back and forth trade that they had.

We will also be funding a survey of cultural sites led by one of the First Nations in Canada.

We've funded water quality monitoring on both sides of the border and most recently granted some money to the Woodland Park Zoo to buy tracking equipment for a long-term partnership study on carnivores there, grizzly bears, wolverines, mountain lions, all kinds of things that still live up there.

In recreation, one of our major partners has been the Student Conservation Association.

When I talk to park rangers or other environmental professionals or people that are active in the outdoors, they say, oh yeah, I had a summer program with SCA.

They build trails.

They also do butterfly collecting, which more than a lark, is actually a long-term monitoring effort to look at the impacts of climate change.

uh in the upper mountain watershed so it feeds into the research that the park agencies are doing we also are in advance launching a program to jointly map the resources using lidar and trying to coordinate the data from bc and the data on the us which is not always collected the same way into something that will be consistent at least within the watershed for all kinds of uses And I'd just like to close by saying thank you for the history that the city has shown for 40 years of support of doing good deeds in the watershed for mutual benefit.

Thank you very much.

Kathy, do you have a question?

I'm sorry, Council Member Moore.

Yes, thank you.

I just, thank you very much for this presentation.

I'm just curious what, in looking at the budget, I noticed that the watershed integrity piece had gone from 4% to 3%, and then the amount of money designated was $107,000.

I'm just curious about the change in the funding for the watershed integrity piece.

You know, there's a body of money that is given to SEEK.

And within that, similar to perhaps the city council's organized, we kind of divide it up so not everybody has to attend all the same subcommittee meetings.

But there's some great flexibility within that.

There's an overall budget.

Within that, we try to anticipate over a multi-year budget.

in this case, five-year framework, how it will be used, and then adjust it as it goes along.

That said, we do want to make a significant commitment to ongoing education projects as well as carve out has yet to develop an indigenous program, but then there are occasionally, such as the Woodland Park Zoo project or water monitoring that comes in, and maybe it's a year at a time or a special project, and we have that flexibility to move money around like that in order to fund those things.

So those are not hard numbers and percentages, but I think a statement of...

If you're applying, this gives those committees a chance to say, okay, what's most important?

What's going to meet the need?

And if we need more, then we go back and say, well, maybe you haven't spent as much over here, so we can apply that there.

So it's meant more of guidance as opposed to boundaries.

I'm just curious, though, in terms of you've got your SEC funding priorities and you've got watershed integrity, let's say done one, two, three, four, and yet the amount of money that's been set aside, even if it's more, what's the word I'm looking for?

A model and hard fast is less and it doesn't seem to be a significant amount when you look at other appropriations for other programs.

communications and outreach is significantly more money.

And also notice that the budget amount for your investment management's gone up from 9% to 15%, so just curious about that.

Some of these are ongoing programs, like education.

There are four partners there.

I know that one best as the chair of that group, but it's the North Cascades Institute, the Hope Mountain Center for Outdoor Learning, the National Park Service, BC Parks.

I'd mentioned the International Ranger Program.

That's really what that is.

In order for them to plan ahead multiple years and have a robust program, they have been very consistent partners to deliver on the education piece, and so it's not a one-year, episodic, you know, one shot.

For them, it's ongoing program commitments, and I would say the same for Student Conservation Association and Recreation.

On other programs, though, for instance, the Woodland Park Zoo, that was one time request for special equipment needed to start their monitoring program.

It's, you know, just a fraction of what they'll need over the multiple years, but as the foundational piece, if they have the equipment, they can then find the people and go out and do it.

So that was more in response to a proposal that came in.

So I would say the science side is more of those as opposed to ongoing commitments to organizations.

So it's a mix, and we try to even that out.

We also have reduced funding after this coming fiscal year to some of those education and recreation partners so that there is significant funding for indigenous programs, which have yet to be developed, but we really want to provide opportunity and significant opportunity for that to First Nations and tribes.

As far as the...

The investment management, that was, for the previous five years, and I talked to, we have an investment guy on the board who's been a professional with NGO management for a long time.

The financial management includes not only paying an investment manager to make sure we get optimum return, but also going through views to make sure that they are responsive to environmental, social, and corporate governance goals.

And that was...

we under budgeted last cycle we want to make sure we make up for that that also includes audits and reviews so that we can be assured that the money is being spent well is not investing in things that are counter to our goals it's supporting those and that we can be fully transparent so it takes it takes some money in order to manage the money well and that's that's reflected here

Yeah, thank you.

I appreciate that clarification.

And to the extent we have any ability to have voice in this, I would just encourage greater attention to the watershed integrity budgeting.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, so noted.

I wanted to add and just mention a couple of points here, is that SEEK doesn't typically come up with its own projects.

So what they do is they solicit proposals.

We have an online solicitation process that's been established for SEEK.

And so they're trying to be responsive to the types of proposals that come in.

So some of this is a reflection of work that they know they're going to be doing over the next five years to continue something that was done the last five years.

And some of it is to leave room for new opportunities that may come in that they can't foresee.

So some of this pie gets adjusted over time as the opportunities come in from different entities.

They propose projects that SEEK's really interested in that might fill a great gap.

in protection in the watershed at the time, or that might leverage work that's being done on the US side opportunistically.

There's a lot of work being done on the US side, studies that are supporting like relicensing that City Light is doing right now, and SEEK is taking advantage of the opportunity to expand some of what we're learning and the ways that we're doing that up into Canada.

So there's a number of different variables that go into how they plan to distribute that funding that doesn't have to do with necessarily what they think is most important.

Like the slices of the pie don't necessarily indicate what's most important.

It's about how to respond to the proposals coming in, the opportunities available to them to support the overall effort.

And then the totals under each of these pies are different too.

So these pies don't show, we put them up there for comparative purposes, just so you could have a sense of place a little bit.

But the total under the pie for the last five years was more than what they have available to them these five years moving forward.

So what they project they're going to have, that they've forecasted that they're going to have available income, as shown in the table that you see that's up right now, that $3.3 million, there was more money last time, more income last time that they had to work with.

So when you see a smaller slice of the pie, it doesn't necessarily reflect a lot less money.

It's relative to the total amount available that goes into that pie.

Thank you.

Chair?

I hope that's helpful.

Chair Wu?

Or do you have more questions?

Did you have more in your presentation?

What's that?

Did you have more in the presentation?

Yeah, we'll just finish up.

Yep.

And then entertain the yes, please.

So we just wanted to circle back on the purpose of this resolution.

So it's about fulfilling our obligations to the treaty, which has a word in there, approval.

that the City of Seattle and the BC Province need to approve of the budget framework, the plan that CCAS for spending their money over the next five years.

This is consistent with Resolution 31568, which changed the review period from annually to every five years.

So we're on a five-year cycle of reviewing the budgets now.

That's why you're...

seeing five years ahead, so just one year ahead at a time.

And this is consistent with previous resolutions that allows budget expenditures to be carried forward into subsequent fiscal years.

So they have the flexibility, if there's money left over from one year that they plan to spend, they can fund something else the next year with that money.

They have flexibility to do that.

They also have the flexibility to come back to council if something changes in the total amount of money they forecast to spend in a given five-year period.

They can come back to council and talk about it, communicate about that.

And that's the end of our presentation.

If you have any more questions, we're here to answer them.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

Mine were along the same lines of Council Member Moore.

If we could go back to slide 10. I understand these buckets are large and that there's, you know, grants that are driving how the spending is deployed.

Can you help me understand when I see watershed integrity and ecosystem science, I could probably take a program and fit it into either or maybe into indigenous...

Can you help me understand what's in each of these pies?

And we don't have to go into a programmatic level because I understand you have grants that you're applying for, but especially watershed integrity and ecosystem science, what's the difference there?

You know, you could put some things in either bucket.

The way it's based on what's been spent, watershed integrity has included paying attention to the FERC relicense to make sure that, say, native fish are protected or those issues and that Canada is considered and other issues like that.

but in particular mapping and also looking at additional opportunities to retire mining claims as the treaty requires because there is some unprotected land in the U.S., still some more in Crown land in British Columbia.

And a big piece that is not reflected in this pie here is the $1.5 to $2 million that SEEK put into and held aside from this pie.

in anticipation for decades that we would be contributing towards purchasing mining claims in Canada.

So that, you would say, would be watershed integrity big time there.

In terms of ecosystem science, that's probably more of the hard science, water quality monitoring, both in Canada and the U.S. on streams to make sure that the streams are suitable for native fish and are not being impacted by mining in particular and the upstream in both the US and Canada.

So that would be, and that's where Woodland Park Zoo's carnivore research would go to.

So these are sort of categories as they come in, they're sort of assigned saying, well, this kind of sounds a little more sciency.

This sounds a little bit more land use management.

And so they'll go there, but it's, when the commission meets quarterly, it looks at each of these and says, well, maybe we need a little bit more support over here.

So that's why these are sort of guidance, but also flexible.

Thank you, Jim.

That was very helpful.

I just wanted to add on to what Rob's saying is that you can go to the SEEK website, just search on Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission.

It has a lot of information there available to the public, including their strategic plan.

Here's a hard copy of a draft one.

They're not ready to post this online, but you can see they have a strategic plan.

It provides the definitions that each year they update their definitions of these different programs, and they commit to different priorities of these different programs or priorities that they've established.

And no category is mutually exclusive.

Again, it's a way to kind of organize themselves, but there's projects that come in that are indigenous, they're educational and they're recreation and everything.

So they just kind of make decisions as things come in to put them into one pot or the other, depending on how it fits the priorities and what the funding available is.

Councilmember Moore has a question.

Okay.

Well, again, not a question.

I appreciate that these categories are somewhat flexible, and I also appreciate the information that there was additional money put aside to continue to buy mineral rights.

I guess, though, that we do You know, we do look at pies.

We do look at how money is allocated, and watershed integrity is incredibly important, and it is listed as an SCEC funding priority, and yet I don't see it.

You know, recreation has its own category as well, and it's a significant percentage.

So, I see the percentage of watershed integrity going down.

rather than going up.

I understand that the work is potentially encapsulated in other areas, but again, my emphasis is watershed integrity is critically important.

I know you're doing great work around it.

You've announced it as a priority, so I'm just a voice to make sure it is, in fact, a priority and perhaps a growing priority in terms of budgeting in its own category.

I think that's a good point.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Do you, by any chance, have the numbers from the past prior five-year budgets compared to the current five-year?

SEC has the numbers.

We don't have them with us today, the past five-year budget framework.

We just brought the pies to compare them at a high level.

But the total last time was about...

$4 million.

So that's part of the reduced forecast, income forecast.

It has to do with the fact that the endowment was reduced.

The principal of the endowment was reduced for purchase of the donut hole mineral tenures that they set aside.

So it reduced the total amount in the endowment fund that needs to get replenished over time.

Colleagues, any additional questions or comments?

I just want to point out really quickly that there is, the plan does prioritize education, indigenous engagement, and also that the fund is separate from the city budget.

So if we are okay, I would like to move that the committee recommend adoption of resolution 32133. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's moved and seconded to adopt the resolution.

Are there any further comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of resolution 32133. Council Member Moore.

Aye.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Council Member Saka.

Aye.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Chair Wu.

Yes.

Chair, that is five in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries and the committee recommends that the council adopt resolution 32133 we sent to the April 16th city council meeting.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Great.

We have reached the end of today's meeting agenda.

Is there any further business to come before the committee before we adjourn?

Great.

Hearing no further business to come before the committee, we are adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.