Good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you again for joining the Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee.
The Select Budget Committee will come back to order.
We were in recess.
This is October 28, 2020, and the time is 2.02 p.m.
Will the clerk please call the roll?
Strauss.
Present.
Gonzales.
Here.
Herbold.
Here.
Juarez.
Here.
Lewis.
Present.
Morales.
Here.
Peterson.
Here.
Sawant.
Here.
Chair Mosqueda.
Present.
Nye present.
Thank you very much, Madam Clerk, and thanks again, colleagues.
I hope you enjoyed your lunch break.
Thanks again to our team of folks who are making these meetings possible.
We appreciate you all joining us again.
We left off on Office of Housing Items.
There are two more.
These are the walk-on late amendments that were approved for today's agenda this morning, both of them sponsored by Council Member Sawant.
We'll take amendment number one and then amendment number two.
And these will be first described by Tracy Rascliffe from Central Staff and then Council Member Swatt.
I'll give you a chance to talk to them as we've done before.
Anything else to start us off with, Central Staff?
Okay, let's go ahead and dive into it.
Thanks again, Tracy, for joining us again.
You betcha, Tracy Ratzliff, Council of Central Staff.
So we have in front of us OH Walk-On 1 amendment sponsored by council members.
So what?
Lots of frenzied activity around this particular CBA the last couple of days.
This one would add $13.8 million to the Office of Housing to purchase property in the central area for a short-term use as a non-congregate shelter with a long-term planned use for redevelopment as low-income housing.
This involves a property that was formerly a nursing home in the central area that is available to be purchased most immediately, I believe.
Thank you, Tracy.
Council Member Szilagyi, please go ahead.
Thank you.
As I mentioned earlier today, this outstanding proposal was brought to our attention by the Africatown Community Land Trust after the Thursday deadline.
And I appreciate council members this morning agreeing to put this important community proposal on the agenda.
Africatown is advocating for an affordable housing development in the site of the former Cairo Center, which used to be a Japanese retirement center.
at 1601 Yesler Way in the Central District in District 3. This is a rare opportunity to use a full square block in the very heart of the Central District, which has been gentrifying so that we can develop affordable housing as a measure to prevent displacement.
Many of the community members rallied last year against the sale of the site to a corporate developer.
And that did go ahead, but the protest actions did have an impact.
And now in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, Africatown believes they have a very crucial opportunity to acquire it and then convert it to affordable housing, to house populations earning 30 to 50% of the area median income, which is through current data in the income range between $30,750,000 to $51,250.
And I mentioned that because it's really good context for why this is so crucial, because as reported by the Seattle Times just last month, from the American Community Survey data from last year, which as everybody knows is part of the U.S.
Census data collection.
For households, and this is Seattle data, for households headed by a Black person, the median income is $43,500, which is far lower than the overall median income, which is over $102,000.
And of course, we similarly see problematic numbers, lower numbers for the Native American community as well.
So these are communities that will disproportionately benefit from increasing affordable housing.
And then also the proposed interim use for the site will be non-congregate housing for community members experiencing homelessness in the current 275 beds spread out over 70,000 square feet of building space.
So there's no question this affordable housing is needed urgently.
We have Africatown ready to develop this project at this former Cairo site, and it will be an important step forward against racist gentrification, and it will be part of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Are there any questions, colleagues?
Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.
person capacity location and suggesting that that's the number of people there now and that will be the number of people that will be able to be there in the future.
And I have been told that that is not accurate, let's just say.
And I'm wondering if council central staff can speak to that.
So I've been trying to confirm that number myself because I've heard the range from 200 to 275. And I don't know if that is rooms.
I don't know if that is beds.
Since it's a nursing home, it could be beds versus rooms.
I'm just not sure.
So I am trying to get confirmation of just exactly how many rooms there would be and then what that could accommodate in terms of a short-term shelter structure.
Thank you.
Council Member Sawant, thanks again.
I've also heard something similar about the concern around the number, so that would be helpful to get.
Thank you, Tracy.
You bet.
Any other questions?
Council Member Sawant, did you have anything to add?
And then Council Member Morales?
Just on the question that came up, we, yeah, I mean, we would be happy to the number.
We have been able to independently verify the number, but we have not been able to because we worked on this over the weekend.
The number we have used is something we have heard from community advocates and they say that many rooms, not beds.
I would really appreciate staff verifying it.
Thank you.
So I am.
is the kind of project that would obviously fall right in line with the principles that I've talked about over and over again.
I do have some questions about, this is, I know we've got lots of projects that are community folks who are interested in getting the city's support with acquisition in order to stop displacement that's happening in our communities.
This is a bigger number than I've seen from some other communities.
community organizations.
And so I'm just curious, I don't know if this is a question for Council Member Sawant or for Tracy, but I'm interested in understanding if the funding is strictly for acquisition of the land or of the entire property.
And also if there's any, if Africatown is seeking funding from other governmental entities to help offset the acquisition costs.
So is this 13, is this scalable?
I guess is my question.
Are we able to bubble together some funding from different sources?
So my understanding is, I'll tell you what I know, which is my understanding is the $13.8 million is the purchase price of the property.
And Council Member Sumwalt can confirm that, but that's what I have understood.
I do not know if they're seeking other sources of acquisition funding.
I know that there are other sources of acquisition funding that do exist from the Housing Finance Commission to state commerce may also have some money.
And then the city also has its limited acquisition programs that might come into play with this property as well.
A question Council Member Morales.
Thank you.
Council Member Peterson.
Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.
So questions similar to Council Member Morales.
Tracy, can you walk us through the In terms of other sources of funding, can you walk us through the office of housing housing levy process, how many times they do a request for proposals and do they have a different category for acquisition and then and then.
secondarily interested in you know it doesn't have to be for this budget process but maybe maybe next year um having a sort of a standard like because there are all these these great projects that we're that we're learning about and people are asking us about and to have sort of a standard way of of looking at them where we kind of have other sources of funding they're thinking about and how they're planning to operate it and sort of the long-term plan.
But that's a secondary thing for the future.
I know that would help us quickly evaluate stuff.
But just in terms of the housing levy process, how groups do apply for those funds, is it something that's even applicable in this case?
So, the housing has a couple of different programs that could come into play, particularly on the acquisition side.
The levy has the acquisition and opportunity fund, which allows to essentially use existing cash that's been committed to projects that are not yet needed for the projects as it takes them a while to get their construction going and draw down those funds.
to do short term loans for acquiring property for long term development of housing.
They have $30 million worth of that authority.
And I think that last count they had somewhere around 16 million.
I'm trying to get an update actually on what their existing acquisition and opportunity authority is, how many projects they've actually made commitments to versus not.
That program is an open-door program.
That means that people can come in throughout the year to request funds.
The second program, not dissimilar, is the bridge lending program, which is providing bridge lending for a similar kind of thing, acquisition of property.
It's a little bit shorter timeline, usually around two years or so, and that authority is about $7 million a year, and I think that they have not used any of that authority in 2020, if I remember correctly.
So that's on the short term and that bridge lending program is also an open door process for people to seek funding.
The other parts that they have, the other programs that the Office of Housing has that come into play is obviously the housing levy, rental production, NOFA process, and that's where people are coming in to actually get funding to construct.
It can sometimes be acquisition as well, but the project is much further along in terms of concept and understanding of what it is that they might be doing on the site.
They come in sometimes on just an annual basis in the fall.
This past year, they've actually done two or three different NOFAs because of the availability of funds and some opportunities to actually do some innovative projects like the permanent supportive housing pilot program that they did this summer.
But typically, it's one or two times a year that developers are invited to submit their proposals for specific projects.
And then they are reviewed by the Office of Housing Staff, by an outside credit committee that looks at those projects and then confirms selection of projects based on the amount of money that might be available in that particular NOFA.
Thank you.
Good question, Sponsor Member Peterson.
Tracy, can you also remind me, there was conversations that we were, can you hear me okay?
I've got a competing husband doing some work, so sorry if you hear a little background noise, that's him.
No, no, we can't hear it.
So we had also been working on trying to evaluate the opportunity to lift that $30 million cap so that there was more opportunities.
Can you remind me what fund that specifically ties to and how that could potentially fold into efforts like this in the future?
So that authority is is included in the levy administrative and finance plan policies that the council adopts by ordinance.
So, if it turned out that there was more need for more authority, we would that's above the 30Million dollars, then we would probably need to go in and modify that administrative and finance plan to give them greater authority than the 30Million dollars that they have now.
So that would be what we'd have to do if we felt like they needed some more authority to take advantage of some of these strategic acquisition opportunities.
I don't know that you'll need that at this point.
That's why I'm asking for kind of an update on where they are in terms of their authority and what they have in terms of known asks for some of those funds.
Great, thank you.
And that is part of the conversations that we hope folks do have with the departments.
And as Office of Housing gets back to you, we'll look forward to learning more.
Folks may remember that we did amend the ANF plan last year to help provide a greater flexibility to the Office of Housing for situations just like this and continuing to look for ways to improve that so that they have the flexibility to act quickly when there's properties that really are great sort of public benefit to the community.
So this is an example of I think where Tracy's trying to find out more information on how it dovetails in.
Yeah.
I guess I would be remiss to also mention that there's obviously the equitable development initiative funds that depending on what the nature of this development might be, if it was a mixed use, a mixed income project, that would be a potential another source of funding to help with an eventual project.
Again, that's probably not on the acquisition side, but I think that is a potential source to assist with development of the site.
I would not want to not mention that as another potential source to assist with development of the site.
13.8 million at this point just the acquisition?
Sure.
So yeah, this is the funding for acquisition.
And, you know, let's keep in mind that this is the Africatown Community Land Trust, who have already proven tremendous success to the Liberty Bank building project, which has already provided affordable housing to many of our Black neighbors, you know, Black working people who have been able to come back.
I know some of them personally.
And So we are talking about community organizations that are very serious about this project.
I mean, this is a very new thing.
It's new for them too, and it's newer still for my office.
So I know that they are going to be looking to seeking other sources of funds, but right now there is nothing Um, nothing that that's, um, that I can point to concretely because it's so new.
And I'm sure that we could find, uh, different, uh, permutations combinations in terms of how much the city should fund.
And, uh, how much we should leverage other available funds.
I mean, of course, I completely agree that we should make the most efficient use of whatever other sources of funds are available.
I also don't think there's any problem with the city funding all of it because it's compared to the amount of profits that big corporations are making that can be taxed even further, the pandemic profit years, the bloated police department, this is a very small amount of money.
And just to put the number in context in response to some of the questions about why is this a big number?
I mean, let's remember this is a full block.
And it's a very prime location.
It's on a very prominent space on Yesler.
And this is the, as I said this morning, it's the epicenter of the gentrifying neighborhood.
So we're talking about putting some real value on the right of poor people to not be shoved to the outskirts of the city and have the right to live in the center of the city, in beautiful neighborhoods.
Everybody, regardless of income, should have the right to live there and so you know certainly my office has every intention of continuing to fine-tune the details and make sure that we have all the latest information as we go forward but for today I would really urge council members to co-sponsor if they agree that this project is worth moving forward and then we can proceed from there.
Okay, thank you.
I just want to offer a clarification as well.
I think the vote earlier today was a helpful way to make sure that the conversation could happen so that nothing was held up for process reasons.
I want to thank your office for sending the amendment around before 5 p.m.
yesterday.
That helps to make sure that folks have additional time to look at it.
Again, interested in any co-sponsors for the record, but we know at this point that indication of co-sponsor is not an indication of whether or not the program itself has the support or the proposal itself has support.
So I just want to make sure folks know, I'm happy to take your co-signing or your co-sponsorship.
It will not appear as an image here just because of the late nature of this amendment, but we will make sure to record it for the record.
Customer Morales?
Uh, um, uh, sorry.
I think maybe I'm getting allergies.
I do just want to say that, as I said before, this kind of a project falls completely in line with the principles and the goals that our office has set for how we make decisions about this.
So I'm in support of funding this project in concept.
I am definitely interested in getting a little bit more information to make sure that we can move it forward and move the conversation forward about how we how we support these kinds of requests that are coming from community.
And my hope is that through this continued work with our central staff and with the executive, that the executive will find some creative solutions to how we address this issue of strategic acquisition of properties so that we can stem the displacement that's happening in our community.
Thank you very much.
Okay, I don't see any additional questions or comments.
We have Council Member Sawant as a prime sponsor.
Co-sponsor, did I hear you correctly, Council Member Morales, that you would like to add your name at this point?
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
And I don't have my feature up here to see all of the hands.
I do see your hand.
Thank you, Council Member Morales.
So we will make sure to record that for the record.
And Council Member Sawant, thanks so much for walking us through this.
Let's go on to your next item.
Tracy, do you want to pass through Amendment No. 2?
You bet.
That would be OH Walk-On Amendment No. 2, sponsored by Councilmember Swant.
This proposal would add $20 million to the Office of Housing to increase resources for converting homes from gas or oil heating to electric and to expand OH's weatherization program.
OH's weatherization program, just for folks' information, provides grants to increase energy efficiency and lower utility costs for low-income residents in both single-family and multifamily properties.
The current 2021 proposed budget for that program is $5.8 million.
Thank you.
Council Member Sawant.
Thank you.
This is the budget amendment, as was just said, to invest $20 million in Green New Deal building weatherization and electrification retrofits.
Thank you again to Council Members Morales and Herbold for co-sponsoring this.
This is undoubtedly an essential part of combating climate change and over time will create many good jobs which are going to be especially necessary in this recession.
Council members may remember that the Amazon tax movement fought for the big business taxes to fund the Green New Deal and housing starting in 2021. What eventually passed did not make the investments until 2022. This budget amendment would begin the program in 2021 as community organizers have been demanding that the council do.
It is a key demand of the people's budget movement, including indigenous and environmental activists.
It's also a key demand of the solidarity budget.
Many council members have heard from activists associated with 350 and other organizations about how important this amendment is, both at the public hearing last night, and also many emails that have come in from community members.
We know the reality is climate change cannot be stopped with just targets and resolutions alone, it will require actual, real public investment.
And Seattle City Light, for example, has been able to provide emission-free hydroelectric power throughout Seattle because 80 years ago, the New Deal hired people who lost their jobs during the Great Depression to build massive hydroelectric public works like Bonneville.
So, you know, we have a live example from many decades ago that this actually works.
And here we are, we are in a climate crisis, and we are in a deep recession.
And so now we need a Green New Deal to substantially rebuild the infrastructure of our society.
We need to create good jobs, renovating homes, to stop using oil and natural gas, to have good insulation, and to install electric heating.
And I should also mention, you know, we're talking about union jobs, no less.
So this is $20 million and council members may ask how it could be funded.
The reality is there are many ways to fund it.
In my view, it is a question of political will.
We could increase the big business tax rate as my office has been proposing and from the people's budget, or we could fund it through a small part of defunding the police by 50%, which is, and this amount would be 5.5% of the police budget, the $20 million.
or if council members prefer another way to fund this central green new deal project, I would support that also as long as it's a progressive measure.
It's not a mechanism that is using a robbing Peter to pay Paul approach by pitting community need versus community need.
So I think there are various options.
I feel the city council needs to make a real commitment here and deliver on it and I'm really thankful to Council Members Morales and Herbold and I welcome other Council Members to co-sponsor this as well.
Thank you very much, Council Member Sawant.
You noted Council Member Morales and Herbold.
So for the record, we are repeating that to make sure that that gets reported on the forums.
And we will have a nice sheet that summarizes those co-sponsors just like we have with the other ones for the next iteration.
Are there any additional questions or comments on this?
Okay.
Tracy, I have one question.
So did I understand correctly that this is mirroring what was included in the Jump Start spend plan for 2022, but just initiating it at least one year earlier?
I believe that's right.
I think the activities that could have been funded with that $20 million were just a little bit broader to include like some worker retraining and I think the staffing for the New Deal Task Force.
It may have been just a little broader than what this is specifically talking about, but pretty close.
And it was 20 million.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Sawant, thanks for the summary there and thanks as well for summarizing the co-sponsors so far.
I don't see any additional comments.
So that will conclude our Office of Housing walkthrough.
Colleagues, thanks as well for your participation in reviewing walk-on amendments, and I think that that was a helpful summary to have the document in front of us, and I really appreciate Tracy's work on that to make sure that we had a summary in front of us.
Council Member Swat, please go ahead.
Thank you.
Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, Chair Mosqueda.
I just wanted to note for my colleagues and to the members of the public that I will have to leave the meeting very soon because of unavoidable commitments, and wanted to convey my apologies.
Really noted, thank you.
We are going to move on to Office of Immigrant and Refugee, I'm sorry, Office of Intergovernmental Relations.
And then we have Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, OPCD, and our public utilities coming up.
Gosh, I'll turn it back over to you.
The next item is OIR 1A1.
It would add $118,000 of general fund to OIR for state lobbying contracts.
The 2021 proposed budget cuts these funds and restoring the funds would allow OIR to maintain the lobbying contracts at the current level of service, excuse me, at the 2020 levels of service and avoid the frenzy of cutting several contracts that the current city currently holds.
Sponsored by Council Member Gonzalez and co-sponsored by Council Members Herbold and Strauss.
Thank you very much, Council President.
Would you like to add anything?
Just really quickly, this is a modest amount of $118,000 in order to prevent the cutting of our state lobbying contracts.
Um, which are currently administered by the office of, um, intergovernmental relations.
Um, and, you know, I recognize that we have a lot of competing needs in this budget and in this cycle.
And I just want to acknowledge that, that we have enjoyed a very strong and, um, productive relationship with our third party lobbyists who have been instrumental, frankly, in helping us achieve some very significant.
legislative wins at the state legislature.
And we know that there is a very robust and voluminous lobbying agenda that we'll be hearing more about on this Monday during council briefing.
And I really think that now is the time to make sure that OIR is well resourced in order to achieve some really significant wins that we're looking for at the state legislature through these lobbying contracts.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And colleagues, any additional questions or comments?
Okay, I see Council Member Gonzalez.
and Councilmember Herbold and Strauss as co-sponsors.
Okay, excellent.
Thank you so much.
Let's move on to the next item.
Hello, Amy.
Good afternoon.
As you mentioned, this is Amy Gore from Council Central Staff.
The next agenda item is number 23, which is Council Budget Action OIRA 1A1.
The primary sponsor is Council President Gonzalez with Councilmembers Morales and Strauss as additional sponsors.
This action would add $190,000 to the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs for the Legal Defense Network, which would restore the city's contribution to the network to its 2020 level of $1 million.
As a reminder, the Legal Defense Network was established in 2017 by both Seattle and King County to provide legal support to immigrants and refugees impacted by changes to federal laws.
In 2020, funding for the network was a total of $1 $1,810,000 with $1 million from the city and $810,000 from the county.
The 2021 proposed budget reduces the city's contribution to $810,000 in 2021, which would decrease the total funding to $1.6 million in 2021. With this budget action, total funding would be restored to $1.8 million in 2021. With that, I will turn it over to Council President Gonzalez.
Excellent.
Thank you, Council President Gonzalez, anything to add?
Yes, just really quickly here before Nadia tells me I'm out of time.
This item is one of my top priorities in this budget cycle.
I feel very strongly about restoring the funding of the expanded legal defense fund by $190,000 for a total of $1 million for 2021. This would be consistent with our commitment to funding deportation legal defense and what we have committed to since I introduced legislation to create the Legal Defense Fund in 2017. Yesterday, we heard from constituents and advocates about how important it is to maintain the funding for this program.
And as Jorge Barón of Northwest Immigrant Rights Project said, while our Constitution guarantees the right to a lawyer, for immigrants and deportation proceedings, a lawyer is not provided, which means there are significant language and legal barriers to navigate for individuals to face off with the US government, who 100% of the time has legal representation about why an individual should be able to stay with their families in this country.
and not be deported without fair and due process.
This morning, the Guardian reported that senior Trump administration officials have, quote, extreme executive orders for an immigration blitz, close quote.
They have this executive order ready for consideration to further target immigrants and refugees and their children.
It is clear that deportations will continue to be not just a desired outcome, but a tactic by this administration to target and incite fear in immigrant communities and to continue to use the legal system to tear apart our immigrant families and to rip moms and dads and brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles who are rooted in their communities for the sole purpose of forwarding his xenophobic policies across our country.
And Seattle is no exception.
Having legal representation in these deportation proceedings means that an immigrant or refugee is four times more likely to be released from detention.
And our work thus far in this area has shown many individuals facing deportation are actually eligible to apply for asylum.
So colleagues, I hope you will join me in supporting the restoration of the Expanded Legal Defense Fund for the benefit of our immigrant refugee relatives.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Council President.
Are there any additional comments or questions?
Okay.
Seeing none, thank you very much to the Council President for her sponsorship of this item.
We see already a few additional co-sponsors originally, Council Member Morales and Council Member Strauss, also being joined by Council Members Herbold and Peterson.
Thank you very much.
Let's move on to the next item.
Madam Chair, I raised my hand as well.
Sorry, just before we move on.
I see you there.
Thank you very much, Council Member Lewis.
Sorry for the omission, and we'll get that up on the screen just so that there's a visual representation before we move on.
Thank you.
Yes, thank you for flagging it.
Council Members Herbold, Morales, Peterson, Strauss, and Lewis as co-sponsors with Council President Gonzalez.
Excellent.
Thanks so much.
Let's go on.
Right.
Good afternoon.
For OPCD, we have two closely related provisos, both sponsored by Terra Mesquita.
The first would proviso $30,000 in OPCD's budget that's intended to be used to contract with environmental review consultants to develop the comprehensive plan environmental impact statement for the next major update to the comprehensive plan.
The city needs to adopt its next update to the comprehensive plan by June of 2024. OPCD intends to kick off that work next year and so this money would, this proviso would ensure that any environmental impact statement that is, if one is required, studies changes to land use in single family areas and other strategies to address and hopefully stem displacement.
And it's sponsored by Terramosqueda with Council Member Strauss and Council President Gonzalez as co-sponsors.
Thank you very much, Lish.
Colleagues, you may remember that I had previously submitted a form A that covered both this item and the next item, number 25, in one budget action.
Since then, OPCD has requested that we break these two items into two actions.
so that the funding for the comprehensive plan community engagement can get out the door as the department begins the community engagement process, whereas the EIS funding is likely to be spent after the community engagement starts.
For historical context, since our addition in the 2018 budget process for the 2019 calendar year budget required a racial equity toolkit on Seattle's exclusionary zoning, stay on path towards creating more equitable growth strategy.
We then last year secured two equitable growth ads passed by the council during last year's budget for this year, for fiscal year 2020. This included a proviso on the Comprehensive Plan Environmental Impact Study, or EIS, funding to require the EIS to include a study of housing diversity across the city, including duplexes and triplexes and fourplexes, along with anti-displacement measures in the upcoming Comprehensive Plan to be passed in the 2023 plan codifying our 20-year vision for growth in Seattle.
It also included a proviso on the community engagement funds for the racial equity toolkit on Seattle's growth strategy requiring presentation of a community engagement plan to ensure culturally responsive and inclusive engagement with a focus on addressing the historic and present-day zoning and land use inequities.
These measures help to continue to lay the groundwork to right historic wrongs related to past policies like racist redlining, race restrictive covenants, and increasingly exclusionary zoning policies so that we can create a more inclusive zoning policy and create a more equitable city as we grow.
In the 2020 rebalance budget, the comprehensive plan, EIS, and the community engagement funding was cut.
Anticipating the comprehensive plan will be adopted in 2024 based on the one-year extension granted by the state legislature.
Now, we want to make sure funds for the EIS and the community engagement are reinstated in this year's budget.
And therefore, from the process standpoint, we need to reinstate this proviso as well.
This proviso on $30,000 allocated for the EIS would require the contract with an EIS consultant for the comp plan update provided for, number one, an analysis of growth alternatives addressing additional housing capacity and diversity including duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and row houses in areas of the city that are currently exclusively zoned for single-family houses.
And number two, to develop a strategy to minimize displacement of low-income residents and communities of color.
And finally, an analysis of an alternative name for single-family areas and single-family zones such as What I like is the neighborhood residential zoning.
If an alternative name has not already been adopted.
Thank you very much to Council Member Strauss, who is the Chair of Land Use, and our Council President Gonzalez for their co-sponsorship on this effort.
Are there any questions on that 30 million?
Council Member Strauss, please go ahead.
Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.
I just wanted to thank you for bringing this forward to renew the work your office has done in previous years around this issue.
I just wanted to let the record reflect that as the land use chair, I am glad to co-sponsor this proviso and the one that is following because I think that this is important work that needs to be done.
And I look forward to working with you in future years to make sure this work is completed correctly.
So I just really wanna thank you for bringing this forward.
And as land use chair, you have my full support.
Thank you.
Madam chair, it's Council Member Juarez.
Hello, Council Member Juarez.
Hi, this was also one of our shared, that we were supporting you on this one.
I think we sent you and Sejal a list of which ones that came in where we were going to offer support.
So again, I just wanna share that I would be offering support on this proviso for 30,000 that you and Council Member Strauss and Gonzalez are supporting, thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Juarez.
And I'll foreshadow as well, we did receive your note for number 25, just to tee that up.
Thank you for your support.
Additional comments or questions?
Okay, I want to thank all of you.
Additional co-sponsors with me include Council President Gonzalez, Council Member Juarez, if we can get her photo up there for the viewing public as well.
Council, thank you.
Council members Morales, Straus, and Lewis as well.
Thank you very much, colleagues.
All right.
So OPCD.
Oh, just want to make sure on that last one.
Can we go back one slide real quick?
OK, great.
Summarizing council members Morales, Juarez, Strauss, Gonzalez and Lewis.
Perfect.
Thank you.
So as mentioned, there will be a outreach and engagement program for the conference plan update that we'll be starting next year.
OPCD 02A1 places a proviso on funds that are intended to be used to conduct that outreach and engagement, and basically requires that the department come and present their outreach and engagement plan to the council before spending money.
Chair Mosqueda is the sponsor with Council Member Strauss and Council President Gonzalez.
This is the second of these two provisos related to the comprehensive plan, OPCD, department of neighborhoods and OCR are in the process of conducting the racial equity toolkit on Seattle's growth strategy and initiating community engagement for the comprehensive plan update.
but proposed budget for outreach and engagement work to be lifted after OPCD presents its work plan for the racial equity toolkit and community engagement to the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee.
Thank you, Council Member Strauss for your leadership there.
This proviso would ensure the council is able to track the process of the racial equity toolkit and equitable community engagement from the beginning, rather than waiting until 2024 when the proposal to the comp plan comes to council for deliberation.
Given that the racial equity toolkit was a council-driven addition to the comp plan update, this will enable us to continue to be involved and informed in the process as it moves forward.
Thanks again to the co-sponsors, Council Member Gonzalez and Strauss for co-sponsorship, as well as Council Member Juarez and Council Member Morales.
Today?
Excellent.
Any questions?
Okay.
Seeing none, thank you very much.
Lish, let's continue.
Item 26 is Budget Action RAT1A1, which is sponsored by Councilmember Peterson with co-sponsorship of Councilmembers Herbold and Juarez.
This is a statement of legislative intent that requests the Seattle Employees Retirement System, or CSRS, to provide a report showing the 10-year history of the sources and uses of city retirement funds, and also to report on the performance of the CSRS 2 plan for purposes of increasing transparency.
In addition to the report on the service to plan is a requirement to explore measures, but that could either achieve 100% funding ratio for the retirement plan sooner than 2042 or and or decrease the city retirement costs.
The report is due by April 21st of next year to the finance and housing committee.
Councilmember Peterson, please go ahead.
Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.
Thank you, Tom, for that summary and thanks to my co-sponsors.
The budget document that we receive from the executive is very vague about the costs and benefits of our retirement system for city employees.
So this statement of legislative intent will simply quantify the sources of funds and the uses of funds of that system in a user-friendly format for the general public with graphs so we can see the trends and learn more about the system.
I believe we all want a sustainable retirement system for our employees, and this basic report is likely to provide useful information.
We can't change current pensions, but we might learn something, whether it might make sense to consider additional options in the future for the next generation of younger, new employees who often have a more mobile and versatile career path.
A new pension structure for new city government employees was introduced in 2017, CSRS 2. So this report would include sort of an update on how that one is performing to increase sustainability for the system as originally anticipated.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Council Member Peterson.
Additional questions or comments on this?
Okay, thank you so much.
Just a quick question on the due date for the report.
Ideally reporting back to us on April 1st next year, correct?
Correct.
Okay, great.
And then at that point, would this sort of 10-year historic look back be able to do an analysis of how 2020's investments or the market has affected the strategies that CSRS uses?
You would see basically what happened in the full 2020 year.
And so it wouldn't capture that, which would, data available right now wouldn't capture the activity in 2020. So yeah, it would, and get you up-to-date to current performance of the investments.
Excellent.
Anything else, Council Member Peterson?
Nothing else.
Okay.
Thank you very much for the explanation on this one.
Again, Council Member Peterson is a prime sponsor, and co-sponsors include Council Member Herbold and Council Member Juarez.
Thank you so much, colleagues.
Let's move on to the next one.
item is SLY SPL 1A1.
It is a statement of legislative intent that requests that the public library open curbside pickup and return at all branches.
It is sponsored by Council Member Lewis and co-sponsored by Council Members Morales and Juarez.
Thank you very much, Council Member Lewis.
Please go ahead.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
This is just something that I continue to be interested in as we go through the budget process and figuring out how to expand the ability for people to access physical collections through curbside pickup at more locations throughout the city and ways that we can potentially do that within existing resources.
or figuring out how to work with the library to facilitate ways to accomplish this goal.
You know, especially in times of this pandemic, I've just spoken to lots of community members and neighbors who really, really depend on their ability to access the collections of the Seattle Public Library as part of their daily routine.
And it's just a big part of their life that they're missing is they have to, you know, hunker down.
even more than usual at home and not have access to that.
And just being able to make sure that we can potentially expand the number of locations for people to engage in curbside pickup.
I know that King County's library district has been doing a lot of work on this throughout the spring and the early summer and has a very robust program in place.
And it would be really, just be really good to look into how we can try to expand the service.
Thank you very much, Council Member Lewis.
Are there any questions?
Okay.
Not seeing any questions.
I do see one hand raised, so we'll summarize here.
Council Member Lewis is prime sponsor, including Council Members Morales and Juarez, and added in Council Member Herbold.
Excellent.
Thank you so much.
Oh, I keep doing this.
I'm having questions after I go through the process, but Council Member Lewis or for central staff, a quick question about the associated costs.
Are there any additional associated costs or funding needed to implement curbside services for all libraries?
I don't believe it would require additional funding.
The library is just working on what the plan is for the next year or so, whether it's a combination of reopening or curbside pickup or just curbside pickup at some particular branches.
But at this, there doesn't seem to be any additional need for funding on that piece.
Thank you very much.
Let's keep going.
Thank you, Councilmembers.
Just for the record again, Brian Goodnight, Council Central staff.
The last four items on the agenda today are related to Seattle Public Utilities, or SPU as it's known.
The first item is SPU 1A1, and this is a statement of legislative intent that would have SPU begin an effort to evaluate the regional wastewater treatment system that serves Seattle, including operations, improvement plans, and governance structure.
Since this would be a large body of work, the slide requests that SPU report back to the council by the end of June with a proposed scope of work for evaluating the recommendations of King County's clean water plan and for analyzing alternative approaches for treating the city's wastewater.
The slide lays out the minimum requirements for what should be included in the scope of work.
and some of those items are a third-party assessment of King County's planning approach and technical work, an assessment of the impacts that the Clean Water Plan recommendations would have on historically disadvantaged communities, and an analysis of the feasibility, costs, and benefits of governance changes for the regional treatment system.
This item is sponsored by Councilmember Peterson and is co-sponsored by Councilmembers Herbold and Lewis.
Excellent, thank you.
Councilmember Peterson, please go ahead.
Thank you, chairman skater.
And thank you, Brian, for that summary and thanks to my co sponsors as well.
So Seattle Public Utilities is in my committee and we know that King County is able to pass rates through to us.
We have no control over these rates.
Utility rates, you know, as our city faces an affordability crisis, utility rates are regressive.
Utility discount program only covers part of those bills.
So we need to really manage costs that are coming from other sources that we don't have control over.
So this slide will look at other options, look at the history of ownership of the wastewater treatment that we can get a better handle on how we can control costs that are coming from other parties such as King County.
Thank you very much Councilmember Peterson.
Questions colleagues?
OK, I'm not seeing additional questions.
I do see some hands, so in addition to Councilmembers Herbold and Lewis, we have Councilmember Strauss adding their name as well.
Thank you so much Council Member Peterson.
Let's go to the next one.
Okay, thank you.
So the next item is SPU 2A1, and this is also a statement of legislative intent.
And it would request that SPU provide a report to council that evaluates an expansion of the Tree Ambassador Program.
SPU manages the Tree Ambassador Program in partnership with the Seattle Department of Transportation and the nonprofit organization, Forterra.
The program engages volunteers to develop and lead neighborhood tree walks and encourages tree stewardship through work parties to help care for trees and landscapes in the public right of way.
Some of the items that the report should address are training volunteers to become resident arborists who can perform basic tree maintenance, enlisting volunteers to help inventory trees in their neighborhoods, and increasing the number of sites that can be supported by the Tree Ambassador Program.
The slide requests that SPU provide the report back to Council by March 15th, and the item is sponsored by Council Member Strauss and co-sponsored by Council Members Morales and Lewis.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Strauss, please go ahead.
Thank you, Chair.
This statement of legislative intent originated with an idea that was suggested to me for the city to start a citizen or resident arborist program to be able to recruit volunteers to help in the management of the city's urban forest.
Our tree ambassador program is an already existing city program run by Seattle Public Utilities, as Mr. Goodnight noted, in partnership with Forterra.
And so as these tree ambassadors lead tree walks, host work parties, Um, to encourage good tree stewardship.
This slide would request a report from SPU on opportunities to expand this tree ambassador program in such ways as by establishing resident arborists who could conduct basic tree maintenance, such as pruning trees or trees for neighbors.
For instance, uh, street trees.
Currently you, you need to, I believe you need to get a permit.
for providing further education about trees and tree protections and using volunteers to inventory trees in the neighborhood, similar to the program called The Last 60,000 Project, as well as this report would request information to better prioritize racial equity and environmental justice in the program's expansion.
So thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mr. Goodnight, for assisting me with this council budget action.
Your assistance was very helpful.
Thank you very much, Councilmember Strauss.
Are there any additional questions?
I'm not seeing additional questions, but I am seeing some hand raises.
So in addition to Councilmember Strauss' prime sponsor, we have Morales and Lewis and adding Councilmember Peterson.
Excellent.
We are getting close, folks.
Let's keep going.
Okay, thank you.
So the next item is SPU 3A1, and this budget action would add $286,000 of general fund to SPU to expand the Encampment Trash Program, which is also known as the Purple Bag Program, to 13 additional sites with the request that the expansion begin by adding unserved encampments in South Seattle.
For context, the 2021 proposed budget includes a little more than $388,000 for the program to provide weekly services to 17 sites.
The funding for this budget action includes $17,000 per additional site to cover the cost of supplies, as well as for collecting and disposing of the waste.
It also includes $65,000 for a halftime temporary position for program administration and contract oversight.
This item is sponsored by Council Member Morales and is co-sponsored by Council Members Herbold and Sawant.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Morales, please go ahead.
Thank you, so folks, we've got the opportunity to nearly double our trash pickup for encampment residents through this budget action.
1 thing I know all of us have heard from our housed constituents is a concern over garbage near encampments and the purple bag program is a solution to that concern.
So we know that encampments are regularly served.
They need to have a way to keep their living areas clean and this program would allow for that to happen.
After listening to, I think it was five hours of testimony last night, we heard a lot of comments from folks who unfortunately associate people living outside with trash.
I've sadly heard the comparison made even more directly sometimes.
So I think it's important that we acknowledge that folks who are living unhoused don't get weekly trash pickup the way those of us who have the privilege of living in a home do.
So this would address those concerns, but also restore some dignity to our unhoused folks who are living in a campus.
So, you know, I've spoken directly to encampment residents in my district and I've seen that very often the way that they deal with their trash is to build piles near their encampments.
They don't want to live like that.
We don't want them to have to live like that.
And I think providing regular pickup for them is a solution to the problem for them, but also for the surrounding community and surrounding neighbors who would also like to have areas a little more tidy.
So this is one step in providing that service for our unhoused neighbors.
And I hope my colleagues will support it.
Thank you very much Council Member Morales.
Are there any additional comments or questions on this?
So I just want to double check on the site numbers here.
17 sites currently, correct?
That's correct.
Okay, and then this would add 13 more sites?
Yep, you have correct.
Okay, so we'd be up to 30 sites.
You've done the math correctly, that's right.
Excellent.
And we would start in South Seattle.
Is there any concern on that issue coming from the department?
I've not heard any concerns from the department about this request.
Okay, great.
And also, I'm pleased to see that there's the position authority already at the department.
That's correct.
They don't need position authority for the temporary.
Great.
Are there any additional questions?
Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.
Thank you, and thank you, Councilmember Morales, for proposing this.
I've signed on as a co-sponsor.
I did want to understand better the starting in South Seattle.
I mean, doesn't it, could one argue, I mean, we're adding money to the program, so it will help the whole city indirectly?
It's true.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Great.
So, as Councilmember Peterson noted, there are folks adding their names here.
Councilmember Morales is prime sponsor.
In addition to that, Councilmember Herbold and Sawant have been signed on.
We are now joined by Councilmember Peterson, Councilmember Lewis, and Council President Gonzalez.
Excellent.
We are to our last item on our regular agenda.
Let's go to the last item here.
Okay, thank you.
As you said, the last item is SPU 4A1, and this budget action would add $58,000 of general funds to SPU for the provision of publicly accessible street sink style hand washing stations.
The funding is anticipated to provide for the construction, installation, and one year of maintenance for 63 sinks based on the prototypes that have been developed by the Clean Hands Collective.
To increase access to hygiene and handwashing services throughout the city, the request specifies the deployment of nine sinks in each council district.
And this item is sponsored by Council Member Morales, with co-sponsors by Council Members Herbold and Swatt.
Excellent.
Council Member Morales, please go ahead.
Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.
I do first want to thank members of the Clean Hands Collective for coming up with such an interesting model for handwashing and for access to water.
I think sometimes we get bogged down in policy discussions and it's refreshing to hear some really great ideas from folks who are outside of this established hall or Zoom, whatever we want to call it these days.
Colleagues, we have the opportunity to add 63 public sinks to the Seattle landscape.
The idea here is to make sure that there are nine sinks in each district.
And this is just a big win for unhoused folks, especially in COVID, where we know that some really important preventive measures include things as basic as being able to wash your hands.
So, you know, we can take pick up and access to water for granted, but I've heard firsthand how important these things could be in helping folks manage their daily lives.
You know, no more walking.
long distances to get access to water or having to tap into neighbors water sources just to get a drink.
So I think this would be a really dramatic contribution to people's lives.
And just like with the Purple Bag expansion, folks that I've talked to could really benefit from this.
So our neighbors want to see that their city cares about them.
Our unhoused neighbors want opportunity for better living conditions, and this would certainly play an important role in getting them there.
So we are, as I said, eager to get a program like this started, which would set up 63 sinks across the city and make sure that we're giving our neighbors a little bit of hope to keep going for one more day.
Thank you, Council Member Morales.
I appreciate this.
I'm just struck by how small the dollar amount is.
Just for historical context, central staff, can you remind us, we added hand-washing facilities, right?
I think I started to ask this question before, but we added hand-washing facilities last year in the budget.
I think there was some frustration earlier this year that those dollars hadn't been spent.
But can you remind us, if you have on hand, because I don't have it in front of me, what the WHO's recommendation is for hand-washing facilities per per cap in cities.
I'm sorry, Council Member, I don't have that on hand either.
I used to have it memorized.
Well, I can tell you, it's not for hand washing, it's for public bathrooms, but we should have something like 200 or 225 in the city.
So we have a lot of work to do.
Thank you so much.
But bringing this up to nine in each district is a helpful number.
So Council Member Hurdle, do you have any comments on this?
I was going to say just what you did, Madam Chair, which is this has a potential for a big impact for a small number of dollars.
Really appreciative of the community coalition that has come forward with this really imaginative proposal.
I know they've been working on it for a while.
and really hoping that we can forward it, and really also just wanting to, as the person who kind of considered herself the hygiene maven in past years, I'm really happy that Council Member Morales has taken on championing the Purple Bag Program and this expansion of hygiene facilities as well.
Thank you so much for that, Council Member Morales.
Well, thank you very much, Hygiene Mavens.
I appreciate you bringing all this forward today.
Council Member Morales is prime and Council Member Herbold and so on.
Joined by Council Members Strauss and Lewis and Council President Gonzales.
Just double check in here.
Okay.
I think that is it for our forum discussions today.
This has been a pretty fast-paced conversation overall, but I want to warn you that tomorrow is almost twice as intense, so we're going to need to keep our comments really short.
Tomorrow, I may, depending on the length of our discussions, I may try to ask you again to use that two-minute I'll come off of mute so you can see me do that.
And that will allow for folks to ask questions as well.
But we are ahead of schedule, and that's in the large part thanks to all of your good work with central staff.
And really, thanks again to Joseph, who created the screen, Patty for managing the screen so you could all see who was co-sponsors.
I think that worked really well and really appreciate their work along with Sage O'Briek in my office who had been working with them on the model.
Thanks again to Freddy de Cuevas for staffing us throughout the day.
Ali, I'm going to turn it over to you before we adjourn today, maybe for a preview of anything coming tomorrow?
Any heads up on anything?
Thank you.
Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, committee members.
As Chair Mosqueda said, we do have more items on the agenda for tomorrow.
and into topics where there's been more interest in specific departments, and then Friday has the most items on the agenda.
So as the chair noted, to stay on schedule, we may need to keep the conversation moving.
I believe there'll be one walk-on amendment that I'm aware of right now for discussion tomorrow that was just distributed to all of you, and we will let you know if there are any others identified.
Thank you.
Thank you, Allie.
And folks should be able to see the full list of departments that we will be discussing tomorrow and Friday, both on the agenda, but also in that Monday memo that I sent around.
Council Member Peterson, thank you for distributing your walk-on amendment before the 5 p.m.
deadline as well.
That is very helpful, as you saw from today, which helps it require not a supermajority vote, just a majority vote in order to be considered based on the agenda.
And we also know that you did get your summary in for the criteria, which we will be turning into a cover sheet and sending around shortly.
I want to make sure that if anybody had any additional forms that they didn't get the chance to raise their hand on, you are welcome to signal that now.
We will record it for the record and make sure that that name is appropriately noted.
I'm not seeing any actual hands or virtual hands.
With that I want to thank again everybody who's making these meetings possible.
We will give you an extra hour actually two hours of your time today back to do all your good work and we will see you again tomorrow morning at 9 30 a.m.
public comment option for sign up starts at 7 30 a.m.
a 30-minute window will be allocated so if there's more than 30 folks we will have to cut off at 30 minutes but appreciate everybody who continues to call in and thanks again i see no further comments today's meeting is adjourned thanks to everyone from central staff for all of your presentations today it's been very informative thank you