Seattle City Council Briefing 1/22/2024

Good to see my colleagues again.

Today is January 22nd, 2024. The council briefing meeting will come to order and the time is 2.01.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Rivera.

Present.

Council Member Saka.

Here.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Council Member Kettle.

Here.

Council Member Moore.

Present.

Council President Nelson.

Present.

Seven present.

Thank you very much.

Our first item is approval of the minutes.

If there's no objection, the minutes of January 8th, 2024 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

Now I'll make my president's report.

First of all, thank you to all my colleagues for your thoughtful questions on the position eight finalists at this morning's special city council meeting.

And I also wanna say thank you very much to all of the finalists who appeared and provided great answers.

At today's briefing, we will again be hearing from our state legislative team from the Seattle Office of Intergovernmental Relations who will provide us with an update on developments at this year's legislative session in Olympia.

I also want to provide an update on tomorrow's regular council meeting where we will be voting on a clerk file and a council bill related to a contract rezone that was postponed from last week's meeting.

And then of course, we'll be holding the vote to select a candidate for Seattle City Council position eight.

And for that, I will be first making a motion on the voting process and we'll vote on that.

And once we vote on approving that motion for how voting on the finalists will go, I will open the floor for council member comments.

and then turn to the vote.

Specific language will be forthcoming a little bit later today, but for high-level purposes, here's how it's going to work if Council approves the procedure.

Council members will state the name of their preferred candidate in roll call order, And if any one finalist gets five votes in the first round, the finalist will be appointed to fill the vacancy.

If no one gets five votes, we will vote again.

Importantly, council members will not be able to change their vote during a voting round, but they can do so at the next round, and council members will have the opportunity to make comments before that round as well.

And we'll repeat that process until a finalist has secured five votes.

A reminder, if the council can't get to five votes tomorrow, by charter, we must meet and vote every business day until the appointment is made.

So once a finalist hits the five vote threshold, the finalist will be asked to accept the position and the clerk will administer the oath of office.

Before we get to council's vote on position eight, we will also go through public comment and other orders of business.

So that part of the agenda will be the same.

And I do want to point out on that note that there are three items that will appear on tomorrow's introduction and referral calendar, and they are referrals to full council of three appointments to Seattle City Light's review panel, a nine-member body that evaluates City Light's strategic plan.

These council appointments were previously referred to the former Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee, which I chaired, late last year, but the committee had no meetings in December, so they remain pending.

And these appointees have already been joining the review panel meetings as observers, and I've opted to re-refer them to full council so they can officially take part in votes.

And for two reasons.

First, the new committee with jurisdiction over City Light, the Sustainability City Light Arts and Culture Committee, won't have a chair until we fill the position vacancy.

And that chair might need some time to get up to speed.

And then two, City Light and my office have vetted all three appointees, one of whom already serves on the panel is moving laterally to a different seat.

And we agree that they're highly qualified and we don't want to delay them any further.

And I'll provide more information about those individuals at a later time.

So that's one item that I just wanted to signal will be on the IRC tomorrow.

And I... I don't have anything else to highlight of tomorrow's council meeting other than the fact that we have all been working very hard toward this goal of voting on the position eight candidate.

And I thank you very much for your fortitude through the last.

So moving on to the state legislative session update, I'll let our director of OIR come to the table here.

And I believe, although I admit that I haven't checked email, that OIR staff have distributed a bulletin of the bills they'll cover today.

Today's presentation will be available to the public on the agenda after the meeting.

Again, these briefings are council members' opportunity to weigh in on live bills and bring attention to legislation that they would like OIR staff to focus on and also learn about other things that are going on in Olympia.

So, Director Tarleton, thank you very much for being here.

Take it away.

Now it is.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Council President Nelson and members of the council.

Appreciate the time you are giving us today, given your very, very busy and critical schedule today and tomorrow.

The OIR team is on the screen and they are in Olympia.

So I'm going to let them kick it off right away on the legislative update in starting week three of the legislative session.

I think Samir...

Janejo, our State Relations Director, is going to start the presentation.

Good afternoon, Councilmembers.

Samir Janejo, State Relations Director at OIR.

On the week three of the legislative session, what we'll do today is give you a talk about a few few bills.

This is a sample of some of the bills that we're tracking at the state.

The full list of bills we had sent over via email in our council bulletin.

And I'm always happy to answer questions offline about those and any other bills.

But we'll just get started with just a few of the ones that we want to call attention to.

Starting with a couple of budget and revenue bills, both the bills I've highlighted are bills that King County is requesting.

The first bill is one regarding restriction, removing a restriction on levy lid lift funds, supplanting existing funds.

This is a restriction that only applies to King County and the jurisdictions within King County in essence would allow a city or the county to use a levy lid lift to pay for existing services.

And several 5770 we've highlighted in a previous briefing, but increases the property tax revenue limit for local property taxes from 1% to 3%.

And both of these bills mentioned are bills that King County has been proposing and is pushing at the state legislature.

All right.

Hey, everyone.

Ana Johnson.

I'm the state legislative liaison in OIR.

Some of the climate environment bills that received hearings in the first two weeks are listed here.

Some of them may be may sound familiar to you because we highlighted them in our last briefing.

But starting with House Bill 2049 and Senate Bill This bill is an extended producer responsibility program for paper and packaging products.

And this bill essentially holds producers responsible for paying for curbside recycling for all of Washington residents.

House Bill 2232 and Senate Bill 6052 is a governor request bill that pertains to transparency in supply, pricing, transportation, and other factors related to the petroleum products and petroleum industry in Washington.

House Bill 2201 and Senate Bill 6058 is the CCA or Climate Commitment Act carbon reduction or carbon cap and trade program linkage bill.

So this bill essentially kick starts a process to try and link Washington's carbon market with California and Quebec's.

And then finally, House Bill 1185, which is from Representative Hackney, is essentially extending a current program that exists at the state level to pay for the disposal of mercury-containing light bulbs.

Moving on to a few bills in the general government category.

House Bill 1932 is a bill that would permit cities to choose to hold their elections in even-numbered years instead of odd-numbered years.

This bill received a hearing a couple weeks ago.

It was passed out of committee last week.

It is now in House rules.

The two following bills relate to artificial intelligence.

First bill, Senate Bill 5838, creates an artificial intelligence task force to assess uses, develop guiding principles, and make recommendations for the regulation of generative AI.

That bill received a hearing and was voted on a committee.

House Bill 1951 prohibits a deployer from using an automated decision tool that results in algorithmic discrimination and permits the Attorney General to bring an action under the Consumer Protection Act.

This bill received a hearing but has not been voted out yet.

Moving on to some healthcare and behavioral health bills, I'll highlight a couple of bills related to opioid use.

The first bill, Senate Bill 5923, sponsored by Senator Wellman, is a governor request bill and requires education to prevent fentanyl and other opioid use to be provided once a year to all students in seventh and ninth grade, and also directs the OSPI to revise the health and physical education learning standards to include knowledge and understanding related to fentanyl and opioid drug use.

Senate Bill 5804, sponsored by Senator Kuderer, requires all school districts to obtain and maintain at least one set of opioid overdose reversal medication, like Narcan, in each of the public schools.

And then lastly, Senate Bill 5986 relates to surprise medical billing for ground ambulance services that prohibits surprise medical billing and establishes a mechanism for payment between the ambulance service and the insurance company.

On housing and homelessness, House Bill 2160, sponsored by Representative Julia Reid, is also known as the TOD bill, Transit Oriented Development, requires cities to allow following density around transit stops, 3.5 floor area ratio within half mile of a rail stop, like light rail, and then a 2.5 floor area ratio within a quarter mile of a bus rapid transit stop.

It was heard and voted out of committee.

Senate Bill 1998 by Representative Gregerson requires local governments to allow co-living housing, also known as single-room occupancy, in any area that allows multifamily housing and prohibits local governments from imposing certain regulations on that type of housing.

And lastly, House Bill 2114, sponsored by Representative Alvarado, relates to housing stability for tenants and does a whole host of things related to landlord-tenant law.

Among those, limits rent and fee increases to 5 percent a year and prohibits increases within the first year.

And it also includes various rent and fee increase notice requirements, tenant lease termination provisions, limits on move-in fees, security deposits, and late fees, and parity between month-to-month and longer-term rental agreements.

In some labor and commerce bills, House Bill 1905, I mentioned this in a previous presentation as well, amends the Equal Pay Act to include all protected classes.

That bill received a hearing and was voted out of committee.

And then Senate Bill 5777, Extent Unemployment Benefits to Employees on Strike, also received a hearing and was voted out of committee.

Senate Bill 6040 relates to prompt pay of subcontractors that are state-certified, small, women, and minority-owned.

to be paid no later than 30 days after the work is accepted by the state or city, regardless of when the prime contractor receives payment.

This bill is similar to a City of Seattle policy and was heard this past week.

All right.

In the public safety and criminal justice category, the first week of the legislative session, they heard House Bill 1062. This bill establishes a presumption of inadmissibility for statements made during an interrogation where the law enforcement officer intentionally engaged in deception.

House Bill 27 requires a background investigation for sheriffs, marshals, police chiefs, and reserve officers in order to obtain certification and maintain certification.

This is similar to the other rank-and-file law enforcement officers.

House Bill 2245 from Representative Bernoski does a number of things, but mainly requires the UW School of Social Work to establish a co-response training academy.

So this would impact Seattle Fire Department and also the care department's co-response teams, and it would establish a training that they could utilize at the UW.

There was also a number of gun violence prevention hearings in the first two weeks of the legislative session.

I've highlighted just three of them here below.

Senate Bill 5444, this bill restricts firearms in sensitive places.

Some of the places included in the bill are public parks and transit centers, areas where children are present, as well as some government buildings.

House Bill 1920 from Representative Barry is a bill that requires a permit to purchase or transfer a firearm.

And then House Bill 2021 from Representative Sen authorizes local government and law enforcement to dispose forfeited firearms either by disposing them or donating them to a museum or historical organization.

In the social programs and education space, this year they took up free school meals again.

This is a bill that was considered last session.

So House Bill 2058 and Senate Bill 5964 establishes that every school district should have free school meals for students who want them, both breakfast and lunch.

Senate Bill 5870, actually the bullets two, three, and four here have to do with childcare.

So Senate Bill 5870 essentially makes streamlining for qualifying for ECAP and Working Connections childcare smoother.

So if you're already on food benefits with the state, that counts towards your eligibility and streamlines your qualification for ECAP and Working Connections childcare.

House Bill 2101 is a bill that eliminates the child care licensing fees, so removing a barrier for child cares to get licensed.

And then Senate Bill 5774 has to do with getting more workforce into the child care space.

by improving essentially the state's fingerprinting and background system, making it more timely and smooth so more employees can join as childcare employees.

And then House Bill 2007 has to do with temporary assistance for needy families.

It essentially extends a time limit extension that already exists to include circumstances where if they terminated the cash assistance from TANF, it would result in financial distress for the recipient's family.

The last category is transportation.

I'll flag Senate Bill 5959 and House Bill 2384. This is a governor request bill related to automated traffic cameras.

What it does, it does a whole host of things.

Among them, it allows cities to place traffic cameras on state routes within city limits.

It makes permanent the block box and transit lane camera authority that exists in Seattle currently and expands that authority to other cities.

It allows any trained public employee to review the violations and issue notices.

All revenue generated by a traffic camera would now remain with the local government, must be used for traffic safety purposes, and allow cities to grant requests for reduced fines and penalties.

Both of these bills were heard this past week and have not yet been voted out of committee.

Relatedly, House Bill 1963 requires that license plates must be uncovered, and part of that reason would be to help enforcement of the traffic cameras.

Happy to answer any questions now.

And also, again, I'm also always available during the week for questions for you on your staff.

Thanks.

Thank you very much for this presentation and for making time for us because I'm sure that you're running all around and it's a short session.

So I appreciate prioritizing talking to us.

So I think that there was some, I would like to know, and I was thinking about this midway through your presentation, I didn't want to interrupt, but it would be helpful to know if there are any of the bills that you just highlighted that the city has weighed in on either side or what we have positions on, because I think that there was some confusion last time.

When you mentioned some bills, there was some maybe thought that that was actually in our legislative agenda as a priority.

So it's hard for us to know when you identify certain bills if you're doing that because they've got a lot of energy behind them or if you have a position or whatever.

And then I have a question about one particular bill, but I will let you answer that question first.

Sure.

Samir and Ana, perhaps you can describe to the council the different options we have for weighing in or not weighing in down in Olympia and a couple of examples of bills where we've taken various positions.

Yeah, so we sometimes we will support a bill and testify.

Sometimes we will support a bill and just sign in, but not testifying.

Oftentimes we also are monitoring bills because of their impact on the city, but not taking a position one way or another.

Or often we are just monitoring what other other cities are doing and then.

also that we have an option of tests to signing in as other if we have more nuanced um takes on the bill so some examples would be um senate bill the traffic's camera traffic camera bill um the city did testify in favor of that bill um other bills like um The bill on odd-numbered years, we're just monitoring, because it would certainly impact the city, but we have no position on it.

And if there's other specific ones, we can always kind of let you know what path we took and kind of what went into that.

I'll just share a couple bills that I mentioned that we're supporting.

The extended producer responsibility for paper and packaging, which allows recycling at curbside for everybody in Washington, we're supporting that bill, along with the light bulb disposal bill, the bill that allows free school meals across the state, and then some of the child care bills as well as some of the gun violence prevention bills we're supporting as well.

Okay, Samir, you touched on one of the bills that, well, the bill that I was most interested in getting more detail on.

I think that, I don't remember what number you called it, but it's different than what I have in my notes.

But I wanted to check on the status of the pair of bills, House Bill 1882 and its companion bill, Senate Bill 5723, which would allow cities and towns to switch their elections from odd to even years.

It looks like the House bill was referred to committee, but otherwise no hearings have been scheduled for either bill.

Is that correct?

Yeah, the bill that I highlighted is a different bill that ended up, what it did initially, what it did was mandate mandates that used to go to odd-numbered years under certain conditions, but then that part was stripped out of the bill to reflect the optional bill that has been introduced by Representative Farivar.

So that bill did have a hearing and was voted out of committee.

The Senate bill is still alive.

I received a hearing last session.

So it is in rules, and it stays in Senate rules.

So are you saying that 1882 is no longer live, it's been replaced by the one that you listed in your presentation?

Okay.

Well, I wanted to take the opportunity in a public forum to express my real strong concern about moving municipal elections to even-numbered years.

I understand that voter turnout is the reason why people are advocating for this, because in even-numbered years, we have the legislature, Congress, and sometimes the president on the ballot, and turnout is greater.

From the perspective of a local government candidate, I believe that greater turnout doesn't necessarily mean a better informed public when it comes to the issues that impact people's daily lives most directly, which is the stuff that comes out of City Hall oftentimes, from public safety to potholes.

Those are issues that...

that we here at the dais have to deal with.

And I am concerned that there will not be time or there will not be interest in hosting all the forums that my colleagues attended last year, what media will be interested in the local candidates, and down-ballot participation hasn't been really examined.

And so for all of these reasons, that is why I'm concerned about moving local elections to even years, and I think that that would be bad for cities across the state.

It's not necessarily something that is specific to Seattle.

So anyway, I just wanted to state that and ask that you continue to pay close attention to that pair of bills going forward.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Thank you for that presentation.

I would echo the comments of Council President.

It would be very helpful in these briefings if you could star or somehow indicate the bills that you're actually testifying in support of, so it's easier for us to follow that.

And then additionally, I had a question about, and I cannot find it in your list, but a developer's choice bill that if the city does not, I've been told if the city does not adopt its current plan, then the developers are free to proceed as they choose.

Is there such a bill?

And if so, where is it in the process?

Thank you.

I believe you're referring to House Bill 2113. which is a bill sponsored by Representative Bateman, which would do a couple of things.

First thing it would do is it would, especially our comp plan, the housing element of the comp plan would have to be approved by the Department of Commerce.

And then the developer's choice essentially would be that if a developer has certain amounts of affordability in their project that they could, even if the zoning was not applicable, that they could still build in that area.

And that bill received a hearing, but I don't believe it's been voted out of committee yet, but it's still alive.

It's still alive.

Thank you.

Council Member Saka.

All right.

Well, thank you, Madam Council President.

Thank you, Director Tarleton, Amirs, Anna, for your very helpful presentation.

First off, I want to echo not necessarily my concern for moving the municipal elections to even years, but I do think if the whole purpose and goal of that would be to ultimately drive voter engagement and turnout, which that's what I'm hearing, I think there's potentially a better way to get there without actually moving them to even years.

even-year elections, and that is last year in 23, as I understand it, there were four elections.

Me and Council Member Strauss, we're just looking it up right now.

And in an off-year or odd-year election, if you will, I think a lot of people were confused.

I think that having multiple elections contributes to voter apathy.

And I think if we reduced the number of elections and force these various initiatives and levy renewals into one of two elections, the August primary or the November election.

I think that would help ultimately have people more engaged in the elections that they do have.

So it might be a creative way to potentially split the baby rather than actually eliminate even your elections entirely at the municipal level.

Thank you for helping me think of that, Council President.

But what I actually really wanted to ask a question about and comment on is House Bill 2058, which is the companion bill by State Senator Nobles for free school meals.

I want to first express my view and ask a question about it.

But I'll say as someone who has overcome the foster care system to eventually rise in the military ranks and achieve success now and be honored to sit at this very dais, as someone who is the proud son of an immigrant, someone who raised me as a single parent, someone who was a frontline warehouse worker in Kent, who unfortunately was unrepresented, wasn't a part of a union, so we didn't have the opportunity to break into the middle class, and also as someone who went to 13 different K through 12 schools growing up, 13 different K through 12 schools, all of them, as far as I can remember, were Title I schools for kids like myself at the time, federally designated Title I schools for kids like myself at the time, free and reduced lunch.

I strongly support the state adopting that House bill to make sure we have free school meals for all.

I think that change would need to come at the state level.

Ideally, it would come at the federal level, but...

and would get some sort of funding from the federal level to implement, but I strongly support that.

And my hope is that our lawmakers in Olympia could figure out a creative way to pass and fund that, because I think it benefits all.

So my question is, what is the likelihood of passage of that particular proposed piece of legislation and sort of where are we at?

Thanks, Councilmember.

The House bill received a hearing, and it was voted out of the Education Committee and actually is now under consideration of the Appropriations Committee.

I think there's a big push this session to revisit this.

I will say the budget conversation is certainly the most contentious part of the bill, and I think that's what budget riders will have to decide this year.

It's hard to say at this point since it's still a little bit early in session of the chance of it passing, but we're hoping it makes it as far as it can and hopefully into the final.

like all the way to the governor's desk.

And so that's my update I have for you for now.

I might add to what Ana just said, Councilmember.

Since Seattle Public Schools are the largest school district in the state of Washington, it would be terrific if you would write a letter to express your support for this legislation.

And Ana and Samir can make sure that the prime sponsors and the chairs of the respective committees get your information.

It's really important.

Thank you.

Okay, Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you, Council President, for the opportunity.

Director Tarleton and team, thank you for coming.

It's really interesting.

I have gone through the entire list and highlighting particularly those that pertain to the Public Safety Committee and also the idea of the public safety, public health combination.

And I was curious because based on my experience in my previous life, there's been times where legislation is either grouped, you know, like merged and or packaged together.

Is there any movement along those lines with the, you know, because, for example, in the public health with either behavioral health or addiction, there's a number of different bills.

Will there be some type of movement to kind of coalesce those kinds of bills?

And same thing on the public safety side.

I think both Samir and Ana could address that because that is the process that they'll probably start seeing unfold within the next few weeks on those very issues.

I'll just add that a lot of that usually happens towards the tail end of session when they sometimes run out of time or need to just for the sake of moving things along, we'll coalesce and create kind of combined bills, especially in a short session.

I definitely expect to see that later on.

Thank you.

Madam President, can I?

Yes, and I just want to, you're welcome to speak and then is that an old hand or a still hand or a new hand?

Okay, sure.

Okay, go ahead and then we'll get back to you.

Thank you.

Well, I want to thank you for this briefing.

I want to make a request if possible and then I want to speak in support of a couple of these bills.

In general, I think it would be helpful to have the PowerPoint ahead of time Because it helps focus on on the bills that that you're looking at that that you're flagging for us and somehow I didn't get that if you did send it.

I don't know if the PowerPoint was shared in advance of today's meeting.

It was not.

Okay.

Samira Nana, I think we can make that happen.

Great.

Thank you.

It might not be the day before, but it may be definitely before.

It's very helpful to have before we enter chambers to be able to review.

And so to that point, I'm not going to get the numbers for the House bills that are related to gun safety.

But I am very much in support of those.

And so please keep me posted on those, particularly as it regards students and children and in the schools.

So thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

All right, thank you.

Go ahead, Councilmember Moore.

Yes, thank you.

I just wanted to echo the comments of my colleague, Councilmember Sacco, regarding the food bill.

And I, too, would be happy to join on that letter.

And also comments of my councilmember colleague, Rivera, that I am also very supportive of all the gun rights legislation, gun protection legislation, clarify.

And if you need a letter from us, we'd be happy to.

I'm volunteering us.

to write a letter on behalf of those bills.

Thank you.

And if it's helpful to testify or helpful, I mean, I'm happy to do that as well.

Thank you both so much, all of you, for your support.

It helps Samir and Ana work with the prime sponsors and the organizers of the committees.

So I just wanted to flag that I'm pleased to see so many bills having to do with substance use prevention and overdose prevention.

And I just wanted to indicate support and then ask you to let me know when I can, I don't know, in person, probably not, but the different ways that I can and when support.

Okay, so there is, let's see, House Bill 14, 1956, Companion Senate Bill 5923. And also, let's see, there's another one for high school.

I mean, for post-secondary education, same thing.

So those are about education.

And then there is also, I believe, oh, I wanted to know what is going on with House Bill 2222, Companion Senate Bill 6109, having to do with substance use endangerment.

Can you give us an update on what's happening with that?

Go ahead.

Senate or House Bill 2222 was introduced, but has not received a hearing.

And I it isn't quite an exact companion.

What was the other bill number you mentioned?

6109.

Is that what you said?

Yeah.

Council President 6109 on a.

So 6109 received a public hearing last week and it's scheduled for executive action out of the policy committee this week.

I don't believe the city has, the city is just monitoring this bill at this point, but I can keep you apprised as it moves through the process.

Okay, I believe that City Attorney Davison and King County Prosecutor Mannion did send a letter regarding what happened last session, and it was directed to the House Committee, you know, asking for action.

So please keep us informed on what's going on with that.

And then the other bills that have to do with this area of policy is Senate Bill 6134, Preventing Overdose and Illicit Use of Opioids in Washington State.

And I believe that's all that's on my list.

So, thanks.

And I think 6 to 134, was that on your tracking?

Was that on your tracker, Anna?

I think it was.

We are tracking this one.

It did receive a hearing.

I don't recall if we took a position, but we might just be monitoring it at this point.

But thank you for raising.

This one is from Senator Gildon.

I can't recall what his district is, but, uh, Republican somewhere in the state.

Okay.

All right.

There was, thank you very much.

Are there any other questions about any of the, about anything going on down there?

Thank you for your time, Council President, members of the Council, and we'll look forward to working with you in the next week as things start rolling out of committees, or don't.

Yeah, and just for future...

Thanks so much.

Right, yeah, I know.

And so when things start getting going, just when you talk, when you come to us next week, let us know what if and what the city's position might be and how we can be most helpful.

Very good.

Okay, thank you again for your time.

Thank you.

And thank you, Anna and Samir down there.

Okay, the next item is the signing of letters and proclamations.

And there are no proclamations or letters to sign today.

So moving on to the preview of city council actions and city council and regional committees.

We'll begin with our next discussion and we'll be going in roll call order.

So feel free to speak about anything that you participated in last week or upcoming meetings that you think that fit into your committee assignment.

portfolio and anything else that you think that we should know.

And this week's roll call rotation begins with Council Member Morales.

So Council Member Morales, please begin and then hand it over to Council Member Rivera.

Great.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

I wanted to share a little bit of information first about the Land Use Committee.

In general, we're working with the Office of Planning and Community Development to set ongoing monthly meetings, to provide updates on projects, to give education on topics that the department engages in, and to make sure that we're giving general department updates as well.

So my office and my staff meet monthly with the department.

We will anticipate that the department will be in front of the land use committee at least once a week to brief on the many different things that the department engages in.

And they're also working on 2 different presentations for committee.

One is sort of a general overview of the department itself.

And one is a sort of comprehensive plan 101. So committee members can expect to get those briefings very soon.

And they are probably also already reaching out to committee members individually to provide this information.

But if you have questions, please do reach out.

The next or first land use committee for 2024 will be Wednesday, February 7th at 2 p.m.

We will be discussing equitable development zoning.

I urge my colleagues to reach out to my staff, Devin Silvernail, to get briefed either by our office or by the department or by central staff.

This is legislation we've been working on for the last couple of years in collaboration with the mayor's office and really looking forward to finally being able to introduce that legislation.

We have a public hearing on the legislation scheduled for February 21st.

So we will have that hearing and then, excuse me, my hope is that we can vote on it at the next committee meeting, the first one in March.

District updates.

Well, before I move on, I do want to say that I attended the Affordable Housing Committee of the Growth Management Policy Committee last week.

Thursday, I think it was.

This is a subcommittee that was established to really start to understand the numbers behind what is needed.

Not in Seattle, this is a cross-county committee.

So jurisdictions are represented from across the county.

And we had an opportunity to talk about some of the benefits of this committee and some of the things that we might need to work on to make sure that across King County, different jurisdictions are getting the kind of information they need to make their housing and land use decisions to accommodate what we know is a huge need for housing across the county.

So it was glad to be able to participate in that.

Last week, my office attended the first Yesler Community Council meeting of the year, as well as the grand opening of Creative Cafe on Martin Luther King Jr.

Day.

This is a cafe that will provide job opportunities for young people on the first floor of Washington Hall.

So I do want to congratulate folks.

That was a really exciting, it's an exciting opportunity and it's an exciting space.

Tomorrow I'll be attending a conversation with the US Census Bureau Director Robert Santos at the Chief Seattle Club regarding opportunities for improvement during the 2023 census, sorry, 2030 census.

And Wednesday I will be speaking at the groundbreaking of a new affordable housing complex in Othello.

And then my team will be working on distributing the new 2024 CID Resource Guide in the neighborhood.

For those of you who don't know, our office works with the Department of Neighborhoods to put together a resource guide that really shares information with neighbors in the CID so that they know where to go for information about service providers, organizations that can support and provide assistance to folks who are experiencing homelessness, provide resources for small businesses who are looking for a handoff for folks who are maybe, you know, sitting in their doorstep, for example.

So it's a really important guide that provides in one place a list of numbers and organizations and resources for folks who requested this information because they didn't want to call the police necessarily.

So it's been very well received.

We translate the CID Resource Guide into six different Asian languages.

And I want to thank the Department of Neighborhoods because they do work with my office on an annual basis to make sure that the information in that guide is regularly updated.

And we are working on the 2024 version.

So that is all I have today, Council President.

If there are no questions.

not seeing any, I will hand it off to Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

My committee meetings, the first meeting will be February 8th.

It's the Library's Education and Neighborhoods Committee, and I have currently met with all the department directors for that committee, and we are in the process of putting together briefings on work plans for each of those departments.

And as a reminder, the families education and education levy is up for renewal next year.

So just as a preview, we will be working on reviewing the information and data for the outcomes for the funding that was passed with this past levy.

in preparation for looking at a possible levy or for levy renewal next year.

And that is my update.

Thank you.

All right.

Pass it to Council Member Saka.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

As chair of the Transportation Committee, I'm working right now with my office and central staff to finalize an agenda for our very first meeting, which will be on February 6th, first and third Tuesday of the month.

But we will likely have...

you know, some overview sessions, a lot going on in transportation for all of us to quickly get up to speed on.

And, you know, there's the big, bold, ambitious type transportation things, and then there's the routine, somewhat mundane tasks that need to get done as part of this.

So we will learn more about all of that.

Meeting with all the important stakeholders across SDOT, Deputy Mayor Emery, Audium or Audium Emory, excuse me, and others to make sure we have a strong partnership and whatever we're doing is in collaboration with, to the full extent possible, with, you know, the executive.

And I also recognize the responsibility.

You know, this is a separately elected branch of government, and I understand that obligation It means a lot to me.

But I'm also looking for opportunities to partner together too.

And I think we're sitting on a great pace to do exactly that.

And yeah, so stay tuned for further details on this, on our first transportation meeting.

Thank you.

There's a question here.

Thank you, Council President.

I just also should have pointed out that the appointee, the council appointee, will be vice chair of my committee, and so we'll be working with that person on the committee agenda.

And I really want it to be noted for the record that it is my intention to work very closely with the vice chair of the committee that I sit on to make sure that we're having robust conversations as a governing body on setting agendas and doing the work moving forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I did set that as sort of a baseline for every committee when I was talking to you about what you wanted and what could be a second choice made the point of saying that it's my hope that chairs and vice chairs work very closely together.

Go on.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Colleagues, I'm going to talk a little bit about my committee, Finance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governance, and then I'll get into the quasi-judicial and the contract rezone, which I know everyone's very excited to hear more about.

So...

Just in general, for me, council briefing is a really great time to share information from the committees in which we sit on, either internally within the city of Seattle or externally on regional committees.

You might hear in the description of council briefing for updates on internal and external committees, right?

Because this is our opportunity to all speak as a group about the bills that we're working on and the bills that are coming through our committee today.

maybe not so much about the other updates within our own lives.

I know we had some exciting updates from this weekend, Rob.

It really gives us an opportunity to weigh in on the legislation and being aware of the legislation going through each other's committees.

And so for the finance, committee.

I'm excited to chair this.

I can't tell you how much I'm excited.

We've got some really big issues to solve this year.

And so chairing the Finance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governance Committee is really important to me.

I believe everyone here knows it, but we're going to have some big decisions to make in the next months, year, and two years regarding our budget.

I've already been getting down to work on the details to help navigate us through these challenging times and make decisions that allow our city to reach our highest potential.

There are three things I'll leave you with today.

I'll probably add on a couple more as we go through this.

One, our budgets are supposed to be biennial.

And this was disrupted in the pandemic.

And what I mean by that is each budget is supposed to be for two years.

In the last four years, in 2020, we had a mid-year budgeting process to deal with reduced tax revenue and increased federal funding combating COVID.

In 2020, we were in the quote-unquote budget season from June until December.

Typically, this only lasts from September to December.

The second year of the biennium is traditionally small changes only, thinking of it like long and short sessions in Olympia.

One year is when we do the two-year budget, the long session.

And then the following year is the short session where we just make tweaks to the plan that we had made the year before.

As we continue to emerge from the pandemic, we've gotten closer and closer to returning to a biennial budgeting.

And I'm really, it's my desire and it's my goal to get us there.

So we're able to create a two-year budget one year and then just make tweaks the next.

We're gonna see how this goes.

I just share with you that that changed four years ago to deal with the pandemic and the changing revenue sources.

It's my goal to get us back to the biennial budgeting.

Second, native communities and tribal governance Well, the finance native communities and tribal governance is the standing committee, which is different than the select budget committee, which every council member is a part of.

So traditionally we only have select budget committees between September and December.

However, because of the issues that are ahead, I am going to start having select budget committees earlier, probably at the end of quarter one or beginning at quarter two and place them throughout the year so that we can begin this budget work earlier, and so there's not as much of a learning ramp right in those last couple months.

So we're able to ease into some pretty tough decisions rather than run head into them.

For this reason, it is my practice, I did this with the Land Use Committee for the last four years, and I will do this with the Finance Committee as well.

If we do not have action to take, I will not be having committee.

So if we have informational items, we will save those for the days that we have committee to take action.

Worry not, I am gonna have you in committee more than you will desire by the end of this year.

For instance, last year we had almost double the number of land use committee meetings.

As is in a typical year, but we canceled the number of them between July and September because we set up our committee meetings to be responding to the work that we had to do rather than just having them every other week.

I will share with you now, I'm likely going to be canceling the February 7th committee meeting.

And again, worry not, I will be occupying enough of your time and be giving you enough information ahead of time.

In the future, you will thank me for the 7th, for those on that committee.

Third, native communities and tribal governance.

This is work that Council President Juarez started when she began her time here at City Council.

It took years to get the momentum rolling regarding the positions in OIR, the Indigenous Advisory Council, and all of this work.

And so that's why she really made a point to me that this work needed to continue.

I'm excited to have this within my committee.

And one of the things that happened for the first time last year was the tribal...

I didn't write it in my notes.

The tribal governance committee forum that we had here where we had intertribal governing members come and present here at City Council.

I look forward to doing that again this year.

That is the overview of my committee.

I'm going to jump into the quasi-judicial and the the rezones now.

Can I address Council Member Strauss?

Sure, you can just ask a question.

Yeah, it's a conversation.

As Vice Chair of the Finance and also Select Budget Committee, I'm really looking forward to working with you on both of those committees.

And I stand at the ready to...

to, you know, sit and chair any committee that you're not able to be at.

And I also feel really strongly that rather than cancel committees, we take the opportunity to find items that we can bring up for review and to get briefings on in preparation.

It is going to be, as you know and as you all said, a tough year in those committees because we have a huge budget shortfall.

So I really look forward to having the conversation about what makes most sense moving forward.

And if there's opportunity to bring some type of briefing action, particularly because so many of us are new on the council, then I think I would recommend moving forward with a committee meeting rather than canceling it so we can discuss that.

I am looking forward to that, Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you.

I will say, though, for the 7th, we will likely be canceling it.

And I am more than happy.

I tell you this now, you will be thanking me in the future.

And I know that we will get you set up with all of the briefings that need to be had.

Well, they also, I have a question about, we're hearing about hiring freeze and things like that.

So I am interested.

I mean, sometimes briefings are a helpful in themselves, especially as we're bringing everybody up to speed.

But I have a question about what you were saying on the standing up the select budget committee.

Yes.

More often than just in the fall or whenever.

So are you saying that you're going to have the select committee at a different hour and day in the week than the finance committee?

Council President, I look forward to working with your office to schedule these meetings.

And it's all, at that point, it's just gonna be coming down to scheduling.

Because a select meeting is, we used to call them committees of the whole, so that's everybody.

And so it could be difficult to schedule schedule those at a time when everybody is free.

So yes, to be continued that discussion.

We will be looking forward to working with your office and the clerks to make sure that there's a mutually agreeable time for everyone to be able to attend.

Yeah, especially with the deficit that we're looking at.

So we'll all be very involved.

Okay.

Wonderful.

I am going to actually get into the substance of my...

Sorry about that.

No problem.

At the end of last year, we began the process of passing a contract rezone within the land use committee in which I chaired.

This is required to be by law to have action taken within a certain timeframe.

And...

So these pieces of legislation need to be voted on by February 15th at the latest.

Information from SDCI about contract rezones, I'm just gonna go through this from their website.

Requesting a rezone designation establishes Seattle's adopted land use map, regulate land use and development on all property in Seattle.

So any property owner that wants to have a rezone has to go through a process which is determined to be quasi-judicial, a quasi-judicial rezone application.

The decision on such applications is made by us, the Seattle City Council, as judges in this situation.

The review and decision process includes a report and recommendation from SDCI and the hearing examiner's office.

And then the hearing examiner conducts a public hearing for the city council, so they're holding the public hearing.

and writes a report which includes a recommendation to the city council.

It is then our job as the city council to ensure that that recommendation is put in place.

The city council then applies rezone criteria to the record established at the public hearing in making a decision on the application.

So when an applicant proposes a specific project or use a contract rezone is most appropriate.

A contract rezone is a request to rezone lots or a lot which have different levels of zoning within the same parcel.

Contract rezones are subject to a property use and development agreement whereby the property owners agree to restrictions on the use and or development of the property compared with what would be allowed by the proposed zoning designation alone.

That is the PUDA, as they call it.

They are specific requirements or include conditions designated to mitigate or address potential adverse impacts.

And this is all included within the hearing examiner's support.

And so I'm going to go through the project overall, each of the steps, and then talk about ex parte communication.

The project overall is currently a split-loan lot with low-rise and neighborhood commercial.

The site is located within the Capitol Hill Urban Village, Urban Center Village.

This proposed rezone would change the zoning on the low-rise portion of the site to neighborhood commercial in order to create a consistent zoning condition across the entire project site.

THE PROJECT WILL PROVIDE 88 NEW RESIDENTIAL UNITS, 12 OF WHICH WOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE WITHOUT THIS REZONE.

WE HAVE TWO ITEMS WE'RE VOTING ON TOMORROW.

THE CLERK FILE.

THE CLERK FILE IS TANGENTIAL TO THE COUNCIL BILL.

THE CLERK FILE ADOPTS THE COUNCIL'S CONDITIONS AND DECISION.

WE ADDED THE CONDITIONS AND DECISION TO THE CLERK FILE ON DECEMBER 8th.

THE BILL WAS HEARD AND PASSED UNANIMOUSLY OUT OF THE LAND USE COMMITTEE ON DECEMBER 8th.

is very simple.

The council bill just implements the rezone, changing the land use map and accepting the applicant's property use and development agreement, which ensures that the council's conditions are met.

Now I'm gonna go into what happened last week.

We must only make determinations on contract rezones based on the information in which we received from the hearing examiner, because the hearing examiner's running that public hearing process.

Communications outside of that are called ex parte.

And in this case, we received ex parte communications last week.

And so I'm just gonna go over the quasi-judicial rules.

While a quasi-judicial action is pending before council, no member of the city council may engage in ex parte communications.

Council staff can take precautions to assist council members in avoiding ex parte communications, And if an ex parte communication does occur, the council members shall either orally or in writing place in the procedural record the substance of any ex parte communication, and the council members shall make a public announcement at each meeting.

In this case, so let's see, quasi-judicial proceedings and communications.

Don't need to read that.

So last week, we inadvertently received ex parte communications during public comment.

The public commenter signed up to speak.

And in the sign-up sheet, they had actually written down a different bill number, which is why we didn't catch it.

And their audio was hard to hear.

Once it became clear, apparent...

that they were here, what they were speaking on.

Council President did her best to redirect the public comment, yet we still received some ex parte communication.

Because of this, I asked to delay the passage of the bill to cure the communication.

We've received the following guidance that Lish Whitson wrote up the...

the the back and forth all of the the information that we received and we've attached it to the clerk file so it is now part of the record we are also going to give the applicants an opportunity to rebut that ex parte communication.

And so they'll have an opportunity to speak for a minute tomorrow.

And then I will speak with Lish and Lauren Henry and central staff to understand if each of us have to go up and say, we received this ex parte communication, or if I can just say it for all of us.

And that is how we will cure that ex parte communication.

Thanks for listening.

I really appreciate your proactiveness last time and realizing that we need to do this first and being really careful.

Thanks.

Nothing further.

Colleagues, any questions?

Otherwise, I'll...

I see a question.

I did not hear the person last week.

I didn't take it in, but I will go through the process as directed from yourself just to make sure all T's are crossed and I's are dotted.

Fair enough.

Love it.

Well, with that, Councilmember Hollingsworth, I'll pass it off to you.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you, Council President.

So our first meeting, I'm chairing Parks, Public Utilities, and also IT, which I'm super excited about.

Our first meeting will be Wednesday, February 14th at 2 p.m.

It will be filled with a bunch of briefings.

I've already met with Director Lee for Seattle Public Utilities to go over briefings from them and also the mayor's office as well with...

Director Lee and all his staff and also our central staff as well to get a briefing about our utilities, which are phenomenal.

And then also we have a meeting coming up with APDS as well for Seattle Parks.

And then we will use our 2 p.m.

meeting on the 14th to kind of go over what some of the priorities are.

From our office, we're talking with constituents.

Obviously, protecting parks is really important.

Growing up in Seattle, Seattle parks are a big piece.

For our Seattle Public Utilities, supporting the work that they're doing, a lot of the technology, a lot of the infrastructure in our city is very old, and so they have been at the forefront of...

updating a lot of our systems in Seattle as well.

And so that's kind of a big piece for us.

And then IT infrastructure as well.

We had a Board of Health meeting last week, which I sat on with Council President Nelson and Council Member Kettle on, which was very informative to get updates on our Board of Health from a regional perspective.

And then also district updates on Thursday, I will be visiting the East Precinct with Council Member Kettle.

We'll be doing the in-between their roll call at 11 o'clock, I believe.

And so really excited about meeting our I know a lot of them, but meeting a lot of the people, our officers for our East Precinct, introduction to the safety chair, and then also their district representative, which is really important to me personally with our East Precinct.

We'll also, I've been attending a ton of public safety meetings in our district from Capitol Hill to our Central District to you know, down by the water.

We have a lot of safety meetings that have been coming up in our district.

And what we are planning on doing are doing district updates, monthly meetings, which are kind of hopefully rolling everything into one, because right now, bouncing around to different places, I can see in the future can kind of get a little time consuming and want to roll everything all into one so people can come get a source of information from a district perspective.

And so those will be rolled out in February, which they will be in person and we'll rotate those around in our district.

We also have, that's really big is the Garfield Superblock.

So I've been working with that group to be able to secure funds from our state level and Representative Street, to close some of the budget gaps that they have, which is important because that will redesign that park.

It's a central location for a lot of the kids from Nova to Garfield to Washington Middle School along that 23rd corridor to create an environment where a lot of the the parks, the grass, the design is updated.

So it's inviting for some of our youth to be able to engage.

It was a project started by Mr. Stevens a long time ago, and now it's kind of in the wheels and moving forward as well.

And that's all of my updates from the district and what we have going on this week.

And I'll pass it to Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Councilmember Hollingsworth.

Our first meeting of the Public Safety Committee will be on February 13th.

working with staff, the clerk of the committee, with the central staff, getting some pieces together.

I also have had, obviously, some conversations with Vice Chair Osaka and other members of the committee, and I will have some documents, some working documents to start socializing ahead of our February 13th committee meeting that we're looking forward to.

I also want to highlight last week that on Thursday, I attended the Arts and Culture event.

at the SAM, at the Seattle Art Museum, which really highlighted a partnership with the Downtown Seattle Association and, you know, in terms of supporting the arts and culture community.

And one piece that came through that, tying back to the community, is how important public safety is to the arts and culture community.

And then after that meeting, I went to the African American Community Advisory Council meeting with SPD, which was the last meeting as chair for Victoria Beach, who's been chairing for quite a while now, and I would like to thank her for her work, which has been instrumental in terms of community relations with SPD, and even broader, not just with people like myself, from other communities and other neighborhoods.

And so I really want to thank her for that.

In addition to at that meeting, I also had an opportunity to meet with OPA Director Betz, which was very good, and also hear a presentation from his team.

And I should add, too, the previous day, I attended the Community Police Commission meeting and introduced myself and my team to the CPC and also got some introductions from them as well.

And so I really appreciated that opportunity.

So, Council President, that's it from me. public safety and from my perspective.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

So I think I mentioned last time the first meeting of the Housing and Human Services Committee will be February 14th.

At the moment, we're going to be starting work on creating a work plan for the committee.

And I will be circulating that to the other members of the committee for feedback to add to that work plan.

It's my intent, as mentioned by Council President and Council Member Rivera, to try to be, keep everybody apprised and engaged and allow issues to come to, for committee members to each be able to bring their particular um, desires and legislative ideas, uh, to the work plan.

So I have met with the office, uh, central staff, uh, who will be, um, staffing that committee, um, had, uh, sort of an orientation to the Office of Housing as well as, um, Human Services Department.

My plan for the first meeting is to basically repeat those orientations so that all of the, committee members have the same information that I have received.

We'll be meeting later on in the month with the directors of each of those departments.

So that's where we're at on that committee.

In terms of what my office has been doing additionally, I did attend with Council President Nelson the governing board, the first governing board meeting of the year for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

And there we did ultimately approve the budget and the distribution of services set forth in that budget so that all of our providers can continue to be working on resolutions to homelessness and keeping people sheltered.

Additionally, we had the cold weather, extreme cold weather.

One of the things that I did through that was met with KHRA to make sure that they were adequately responding.

I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed with their response.

I reached out to the deputy mayor, and we were able to get some clarification, which allowed RHA to actually expand their shelter capacity down at Exhibition Hall.

I did have the pleasure of actually being able to volunteer down there on last Sunday, and they ran a fantastic operation.

People were coming in.

They were very, very grateful to have that opportunity to be there and to be fed and just to have a sense of some security.

So we need to do a better job, but we certainly are doing our very best.

So that's what I've been doing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

So thank you very much for mentioning some of the things that we all, the members over here on this end have participated in meetings together.

So first of all, I just want to note that the governing the regional, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and the Board of Health meetings, those are available on those jurisdictions websites, I can make those available so that people know that what we're doing in some of these regional committees.

So again, I did participate in the governing committee of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and the King County Board of Health.

you can learn more about what happened there.

And thank you very much Council Member Kettle for mentioning the meeting of the African American Community Advisory Council at Garfield Community Center.

I did leave the forum, the public forum for candidates early to attend that because it was Victoria Beach's last meeting.

And I wanna echo my gratitude for her service on that board.

So moving forward, the first meeting of the Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development Committee is scheduled to take place on Thursday, February 8th at 2 p.m.

The agenda is currently under development, but I'm pretty sure that we'll be hearing from the Office of Economic Development about their future of Seattle economy strategic investment plan.

And then there could be other items, and I will, of course, make sure that folks know what's gonna be happening at that meeting in advance.

Unless there are any questions about what I've just talked about, I'd like to close.

by acknowledging the passing last Thursday of Susie Tennant.

Susie, as described in the Seattle Times, was a longtime member of the Seattle music community who helped break Nirvana and many other bands.

She's also the wife of Chris Swenson, a longtime member of the city family who serves in the Office of Economic Development and lead on All Things Film, and I got to know him very well in my work with the department in the establishment of the Seattle Film Commission.

I want Chris and his two children to know that, along with the film and music communities, the city grieves with you and your loss, and we're thinking about you during this very difficult time.

so that's it i have for my comments and if there is no further business before we adjourn i'll go ahead and adjourn us any other anything else all right okay i thought okay that was a thumbs up okay hearing no further business this meeting is adjourned it is 3 14. thank you very much everybody thank you thank you thank you