Good morning.
Thank you for being here for our council briefing.
We're joined by council members Sawant, Mosqueda, and Pacheco.
And if there's no objection, the minutes of the June 17th, 2019 meeting will be approved.
Hearing no objection, the minutes are being approved.
From the, we have a few special meetings today, just for the viewing public at 1030, we'll have the Select Committee on Homelessness and Housing Affordability.
And of course, follow the briefing, we may have a short intermission.
And then after our full council meeting this afternoon, we'll have a Parks District Council meeting.
It'll be about 2.30 or community time after our 2 o'clock meeting.
On the full council agenda today from the Governance, Equity, and Technology Committee, we have three CTAB, Community Technology Advisory Board appointments, Renee Peters, Jr., Target Madison, and Stephen Moschwary.
And we look forward to that.
And I'll go around the table now, and we'll go over our full council action.
So Council Member Sawant.
Thank you, President Harrell.
Good morning, everyone.
There are no items on today's council meeting agenda from the Human Services Equitable Development and Renters Rights Committee.
The next meeting of the committee is scheduled for its regular time tomorrow, June 25th at 2 p.m., where we will discuss with renters who live just south of Seattle who are facing a no-cause eviction.
As far as we understand, if they, obviously we know that if they had lived in Seattle, this would not have been legal because of the just-cause eviction ordinance.
So we will be discussing the importance of extending that beyond Seattle, and we will also be urging their landlord to renew their lease.
Later in the meeting, we will be discussing with representatives from all home who will present the results from this year's point-in-time count.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Schwan.
Council Member Herbold.
Thank you.
On this full council agenda today, we have a proclamation honoring the Seattle Channel for winning five regional Emmys.
And...
I have a proclamation here to give to them.
If we can get a sign, that'd be fantastic.
And then as far as my committee meeting, which meets tomorrow, the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, and Arts Committee meets tomorrow morning at 9.30.
And we have a pretty small agenda.
We have the reappointment to the LGBTQ Commission, but also a navigation team second quarter proviso report.
This is the proviso that the council on the navigation team funds and is requiring regular reporting on data associated with the navigation team.
And it also includes some reporting required under the city auditor's checkpoints.
So I hope folks can, if they can't join us, I hope folks can follow along.
We have no regional committee meetings this week.
I am in office hours this Friday between 2 and 7 o'clock at the Senior Center of West Seattle.
Office hours are drop-in or if people prefer they can make an appointment.
Either is acceptable.
As far as major events coming up, or last week and coming up, last week I spoke on a panel at the Women's Center, Aileen Morris, New Leadership Institute, along with Cindy Domingo and Sharon Tomiko Santos.
It was a really, really great opportunity to speak to young women who are considering careers in public policy.
Coming up this week, Council Member Muscat, I'm sure will talk a little bit about the labor management leadership retreat that we have coming up.
And then on Saturday and Sunday, the Delridge neighborhood Development Association is having their annual Arts in Nature Festival out at Camp Long.
And it's a really neat, interactive event, both promoting arts actually in nature, really experiential way of enjoying art.
And there's also a lot of music.
And also just wanted to make a quick plug.
You may have noticed, last Thursday, myself and Mami Hara, the director of Seattle Public Utilities, went out to Recology and took a little spin on the electric garbage truck.
It's the first in the nation, Class 8 electric garbage truck.
It was pretty cool.
Thank you, Council Member Herbold.
Council Member Juarez.
Hi, I apologize for being late.
It's Council Member Bagshaw's fault.
It'll just be in the minutes, that's okay, don't worry about it.
I know.
So I'm glad to be back.
I love you people, but a week was not enough.
So I'm just going to say that.
It's the first vacation I had since last August.
So I, yeah, it was good.
Thank you.
Okay.
So last week, Councilor Baggio chaired the Civic Development, Public Assets and Native Communities Committee for me.
Thank you very much.
I understood it went really well.
I was out of the office.
I love how my staff wrote a family commitment.
No, I was on the Oregon beach enjoying some time alone.
Thank you.
So, thank you for chairing the meeting and I'm happy to be back.
The SIPNA committee held two 2018 reports on the race and social justice initiative.
One from Parks and Rec, I understand, and one from the Sales Center, and I saw the PowerPoints, they look great.
Our next meeting is Wednesday, July 17th at 2 p.m.
In regards to District 5 on May 29th, This has been going on a long time.
On May 29, 2019, Seattle Parks and Recreation finalized the acquisition of Lake Washington waterfront property.
If you all remember, it was called Save the Beach.
It started like, I think, 2013, and it finally settled.
This is in North Seattle and Lake Washington.
The site has been a public small street and beach property used by the community as a public park and an access point to Lake Washington since the early 1900s.
In 2013, it became clear that the land was not in fact publicly owned.
However, after strong advocacy from neighboring community members and leadership from our city attorney and parks office, we reached a settlement and finalized the purchase of this property.
The property totals about 13,000 square feet, mostly water with a small shoreline.
This acquisition will produce many benefits for the surrounding neighborhood and every DeFi resident, of course, all of Seattle.
who enjoy recreation in Lake Washington.
And the beach is accessible by foot or by bike and is most easily reached on the Burke-Gilman Trail.
Now, this is a sad note, and because those of us who live up in District 5, we know Jesse Gurnett.
Jesse used to work at Value Village, and we know his mom because she works at the Starbucks on Lake City Way.
But on Saturday, June 22nd, there was a memorial walk for Jesse, a lifelong Lake City resident, to honor and celebrate his life.
Unfortunately, he was hit by a car on Lake City Way on March 29th.
The driver later called up police and is identified, but the case is still unclear and under investigation.
And I should point out that he was in the crosswalk and he was not walking against the light.
And we all know who Jesse is because we see him all around Lake City and we know his mom.
So with that, pedestrian safety is serious and so are speed limit signs.
Pedestrian safety remains vital not only to those who build our streets, but also to those who use them.
And so we are committed to keeping safety the priority, not only in Lake City Way or Aurora or any of the, it should be obviously for our whole city.
Jesse, I went to the memorial, and his family has described him as a beautiful soul among the many positive attributes.
It's kind of sad.
They've had a memorial up for him for over a month, well, since March, with his picture.
And I was really proud of our community that came together and put together the memorial.
And just on a lighter note, I want to apologize for eating the taco at the Lake City Library, which I understood you could eat a taco there.
It was renovated.
Okay, I just have to say this.
The Lake City Library was newly renovated.
One of the things that we asked besides getting the ADA and the bathrooms redone and the new conference rooms, Yes, we had, there's a floor space with tables so people could sit there with their children and have a snack that isn't carpeted so it's safe to eat there and then plug in your phone.
And so I, at the market, went in there and ate a taco and apparently that has caused another uproar.
Uproar.
I'm so sorry.
Yes, so just like when I made the joke about thank you for forgiving me for my library fines, which I don't have any, it was just a joke.
I want to apologize for eating that taco at the Lake City Library in the area where you're allowed to eat a taco.
Don't you know who I am?
No.
Oh, yeah.
Right.
I say that everywhere I go.
So I just want to say that.
Welcome.
Welcome back.
I'll tell you, you are missed when you are gone.
Thank you.
And I and I and we have our meeting this afternoon at Park District Council at three.
OK, very good.
Thank you.
Nothing on the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee for this afternoon, but we've got a couple of major important things happening today.
First, immediately after our council briefing and after the executive session, we have the Select Committee on Homelessness and Housing Affordability.
That's the committee that Council President Harrell created.
a year ago.
The briefing is going to be by Tess Colby from the mayor's office, updating us on the regional homelessness governance work.
Important message for all of you sitting at this table, we need a quorum of five members.
So as soon as the executive session is over, the five-minute break, but ask that people get back so we can get going on that.
We're also going to have an update on the region's youth and young adult homelessness efforts.
Melinda Giavengo from Youth Care will be here, also discussions from All Home and our Human Services Department.
I ask that our department come forward and give us some wins because we are criticized so much about spending money and that nothing is happening.
And I cannot say how many times people say, well, if you only just did.
But of course we're doing that.
So I'm hopeful today that we can begin to have these opportunities where people can say what is going right in the community.
Obviously we need to do more.
Obviously we need a whole lot more housing.
We need more money for mental health and drug addiction purposes, but this is moving forward.
So I am hopeful that you will all be there.
We'll go just immediately after executive session, five-minute break, and we'll get started.
Also, tonight I am leaving to go to Spokane.
We have the Association of Washington Cities meeting.
I continue to be the large city representative on that board and will be At least through this meeting and possibly through the end of December, we'll see where that goes.
But I'm also supporting the woman from Spokane and our friend from Tacoma if either one of them want to step up for that.
This coming Wednesday is our next Finance and Neighborhoods Committee, and it's a really full committee.
So I know Council Member, I think Gonzales is backed by them, but I don't know Council President Hero.
We've got the Yesler Crescent Proviso on our Seattle Parks and Recreation vote, which we have to raise so that we can begin to spend the money.
on City Hall Park and Yesler Crescent.
We'll have the vote, continued discussion and vote on Bobby Humes, who is our new Human Resources Director.
We will also have a briefing and discussion on the sweetened beverage tax, creating the dedicated fund for revenue.
And I want you to know, Council Member Juarez, that I have been steadfastly working to make sure that not only are we spending money on the things that we have said we would, but to make sure that your focus on food banks has been and will be included in this.
And we've invited not only the members of the CAB and Got Green, but also the North Helpline.
So, Kelly, we've reached out to Kelly Brown to invite her.
Just I wanted to make sure you knew that.
And the second item, of course, is we're creating the dedicated fund for revenue on our retail and short-term rental tax.
And that includes a number of folks who were the awardees from last year.
Colleen Echo-Hawk will be here.
We will have African Women's Business Association as well.
So I want to thank people for coming to that.
This is this Wednesday.
A couple of briefings, as I said, and also a landmark legislation for the Old Spaghetti House.
All right.
Very good.
Thank you, Council Member Bakeshaw.
Council Member Mosqueda.
Thank you, Mr. President.
There is one item from the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee on today's full council agenda, and that's a big piece of policy that we've been working on over the last year in partnership with community members regarding how the city uses its funds for affordable housing.
This is the ANF plan or the Administration and Financial Plan for the Office of Housing Dollars made available in 2019 and 2020. I like to refer to this as the moral compass document for the Office of Housing in terms of how they spend levy funds, incentive zoning payments, mandatory housing affordability payments, as well as other funding sources that the city administers for the creation of affordable housing.
I want to highlight a few elements here, Mr. President, before we get out on full council today, just so folks know.
First, I want to acknowledge and thank Council Member Herbold for your work with us as we tried to elevate and harmonize some of our labor standards and priorities in the building of new affordable housing.
We want to make sure that those who are building affordable housing are not also eligible for the same housing that they're building.
And we know that the city has done quite a bit in partnership with Seattle Housing Authority, but we wanted to explicitly include language in the ANF plan to make sure that we're looking holistically across the city about how we create a comprehensive approach to including higher labor standards within our housing policies and funding those projects.
So really excited about the future work that will come from this harmonization effort and want to thank you.
Over the last several months we've also been meeting with various stakeholders in the community from this community housing roundtable that we've been convening who are individuals who assist those with getting into housing, individuals who need housing themselves, folks who do the building of affordable housing, especially those who are new to the housing development world who work directly with those who are at the highest risk of displacement and making sure that new organizations who are working with those at the highest risk of displacement do have access to housing affordability dollars.
And so we've included some key provisions based on their feedback.
One of the things that you all remember last year that we did was we said, please stop selling off surplus land that the city owns to plug budget holes.
And we want to preserve public land for the highest and best public use, which is housing, affordable housing.
And our community partners at the time said, yes, thank you, this is a good first step.
But the other concern that we have is that we're not able to access the dollars to actually build the housing.
So what we've done now with the ANF plan is we have created a complementary piece of guiding document that will tell the Office of Housing, please prioritize those developers, those nonprofit developers, those developers who are in the nonprofit world who work specifically with our communities of color and those who are at most risk of displacement and get them to the front of the line so that we can make sure that there's affordable housing that's being built to ensure that those who are at highest risk of displacement have an opportunity to stay and live.
In place where they work or age in place.
This is a really important complement to the surplus land disposition Proposal that we passed last year with the council's full support.
So this is really important and it helps us to create additional housing for those who've been at risk of highest risk of displacement by supporting the and enhancing the community preference policies affirmative marketing policies and Those have been I guess put on steroids in this document to make sure that we're prioritizing community members with historic ties to neighborhoods for the new affordable housing that is going in in areas of highest risk of displacement.
And we've also done another thing directly from the nonprofit community organizations that we've been talking with and that is create additional funding for acquisition of existing buildings.
You can imagine that with the cost of land in this city, the cost of labor, the cost of materials continuing to go up.
If we don't have the resources to build brand new buildings, what we should be doing is acquiring existing buildings that are affordable, updating those, and making sure that they're healthy, affordable places to live, and getting those in the cities.
hands so that we can get access to our community members.
So we're really excited about this.
We think this is a comprehensive approach.
I want to thank the Office of Housing specifically, Director Walker and his team, Emily Alvarado and others, the Mayor's Office for sending us down the proposal, and especially our colleagues here in my committee who worked to amplify and I think strengthen the proposal as it came down.
Very excited about that.
So that will be on full council agenda.
The Housing, Health, Energy and Workers' Rights Committee will have a special committee meeting this Thursday on June 27th from noon to 1.30.
We will be discussing one thing and that is protections for hotel workers.
There will be four pieces of legislation.
You may have already had a chance to see that in your robust reading over the weekend.
We did post the four pieces of legislation online Thanks to many of your offices for already engaging with us Councilmember Gonzalez and I have been working to try to get some of those details Right with all of you and we now have the four pieces of legislation ready to go We will have a public hearing on the hotel worker legislation next Tuesday.
That's July 2nd at 5 p.m here in council chambers in the evening hopefully make it more available and accessible for folks and child care again will be provided.
Anybody who wants child care, please let us know.
It will be complimentary.
Email my office or ashleyharrison at seattle.gov and we will make sure to get you checked in.
Parking is also going to be subsidized for those who can't get here on public transit.
$5 beginning at 4 30 p.m.
And we will make sure that you get those tickets in hand if you need to come and park.
I want to emphasize that we're doing this on the evening of July 2nd.
We will be canceling the July 4th Housing Health Energy and Workers' Rights Committee, obviously, because it's a holiday and my birthday.
And so we will make sure to make that up on July 11th.
And at July 11th, we will have a hearing at 930 a.m.
We'll have the Office of Labor Standards raise in social justice presentation, possible vote on the provider wage inflation adjustment, the hotel worker industry standards where we will be discussing amendments at that point, and as a follow-up to our last meeting, a conversation and possible vote on the notice of intent to sell legislation that helps to get more tenants and nonprofit developers in line to potentially purchase properties that are going up for sale that have at least one unit that is at 80% AMI and below.
and to try to expand the scope of that legislation that you all passed a few years ago with Councilmember Clark and Burgess, I believe.
Later this week, I'll be attending the AWC board meeting in Spokane on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Look forward to seeing Councilmember Bagshaw there and all of our other council colleagues.
that we work with across the state.
And we'll be talking, I think, about last legislative session and how we can make sure that the city's priorities are better reflected in future years.
On Thursday, I'll be attending the Fair Work Center's legal clinic to celebrate their new legal clinic at Tin Table.
As Councilmember Herbold mentioned, on Friday, a number of us, including Councilmember Herbold, Council President Harrell, myself, members of the labor community, the coalition of labor co-chairs and members, in addition to the executive's office, will be convening for an all-day retreat to talk about the Labor Management Leadership Committee.
Many of you have been on that for a very, you know, numbers of years and various iterations.
We are reaffirming our commitment to use this body as an opportunity for us to bring together workers, management, council, budget office, and to talk proactively about issues that we should be able to address before they end up on the bargaining table so that we can continue to lead by example as a good, strong, union-supporting city as an employer.
In the evening, I'll be attending two things.
One, the Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation Development Authority, SCIPTA, PDA, BASH, and also the Seattle Housing Authority Yesler Terrace Open House.
That's in the evening.
Really excited about that.
And I'll see many of you on Sunday at Pride.
I do have a quick addendum to this.
Councilmember Gonzalez wanted me to do a report for her, if I may.
Please.
Okay, sorry Council Colleagues.
I want to add to this for Council Member Gonzalez who has asked us to report out.
Happy to do so.
Thank you for asking us.
On the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, and New Americans Education Committee, there will be one item from the JESNA-Ed Committee I would like to call the meeting to order.
For today's full Council agenda that is Council Bill 119539 which relates to the King County wide emergency medical service EMS levy.
on behalf of the city of Seattle to enter into an interlocal cooperation agreement with King County regarding the use of the revenue from this levy.
This bill would further authorize King County to place this levy proposal on the ballot for general election on the November 5th, 2019 election.
If approved by King County voters, the renewed levy would provide an estimated $436 million in total revenues during a six-year period from 2020 to 2025 to the Seattle Fire Department for emergency medical services.
This bill was held over last Monday because the county was reassessing the tax levy rate in light of changes to their financial forecasting.
However, the decision was made to not adjust the rate currently in the legislation, which is 26.5 cents per $1,000 in assessed value.
Therefore, no amendatory work on this legislation is necessary, and it is now ready to proceed with a vote by the full city council.
So the levy proposal can be placed on the ballot for the general election in November 5th, 2019. That's all I have, Mr. President.
Very good.
Thank you, Council Member Esqueda.
Council Member Chayko.
Good morning.
So there are two PLUS related items on the full council agenda today.
Council Bill 119546, which updates the rental registration and inspection ordinance, and Clerk File 314413, which approves a temporary expansion of the North Seattle Precinct to add four portables and parking.
The next PLUS meeting is on Wednesday, July 3rd.
And I just want to thank everybody, thank the folks who were able to join me on Saturday at the district open house, the organizations that were able to attend and help talk to me.
I appreciate it.
Thank the scooter companies as well for participating.
And if you'd like to schedule some office hours, please do so by contacting my office as I am there on Fridays.
This week I will be at the Lower Hearst Community Center Advisory Council meeting on Wednesday.
We will be hosting a roundtable with the District 4 Council Presidents on Wednesday as well.
I'll be doing an impact, I'll be at the United Ways Emerging Leaders Impact Bash on Thursday.
On Saturday, the Wedgwood Park Open House and I'll be with all of you or those that will be participating at the Seattle Pride Parade on Sunday.
And Councilmember Juarez, if you are going to get tacos again, we need to talk about it.
So...
Thank you very much, Councilmember Chico.
Councilmember O'Brien.
Thank you.
The Sustainability and Transportation Committee has one item on this afternoon's agenda.
It's an appointment for the Levy to Move Seattle Oversight Committee.
The committee does not meet this week.
I am passing around a letter that you should have received in the last week that I'll be circulating for signatures at full council this afternoon.
This is a letter, well, it's a letter about a letter.
So there's a letter for us to sign.
that essentially supports the Seattle for a Green New Deal, which has been put forward by a number of groups, but being led by Got Green and 350 Seattle.
I know a couple of my colleagues have already signed on to this, but I want to give everyone an opportunity.
And so we have, I'm circulating a city council letter and letterhead that folks can sign on to.
If you have concerns about it, just let me know and I'll strike the name from it.
I will be at a press conference in a couple hours with City Attorney Pete Holmes about Seattle Green New Deal.
And I believe there will be a few folks that are coming after the press conference to full council to say a few words about their efforts.
Do we have a list of actions that I've read through the letter quickly look like principles that are pretty strong and I certainly agree with.
Are there specific actions at this point we're asking people to take?
It's a great question, Council Member Bakeshaw, and I appreciate you always cutting to the chase of, like, what are we actually going to do?
What I can tell you is that there are some ideas around actions.
There aren't specific actions at this time.
Part of, at least my understanding of the work that's being done, not just locally, but nationally on the Green New Deal, Because of the state of affairs in Washington, D.C., it's a lot about building momentum and energy for a future opportunity to do something at the national level.
But here at the local level, there are opportunities, obviously, to do things already.
There are conversations that are happening with community members.
Part of the framework of the Green New Deal is to really center the voices of communities most impacted by climate change, so low-income communities and communities of color, around really driving the changes.
And those conversations are happening right now.
There's a recognition of course that we need to radically reduce our carbon emissions.
How do we do that is a tricky question.
So the models that a lot of traditional environmental and economic economists have been trying to use for the last decade have been about how do we increase the price of carbon emissions to try to use a market mechanism to shift people away.
And what we hear from a lot of these frontline communities is even a modest price shift can be really challenging for us and force us out of our communities.
But we also are more committed than anyone to moving away from carbon emissions.
We just need some help doing it.
And so what those packages look like and how they might move forward, I think there's ongoing work to be done.
I suspect that in the next even few weeks we'll probably see some actions that they'll be asking us to take this year.
And I think they'll also be laying out a groundwork for how they move forward.
Because a lot of this work, for example, if you want to convert from a natural gas or an oil furnace to electric heat, which is 100% carbon neutral in Seattle, it's an expensive capital cost.
And so we will need some revenues for at least some households to help them make that transition.
Where do those revenues come from?
How would they raise those revenues?
How would they do that in a progressive way?
are all conversations that are happening.
So at the moment, this letter is more about concepts and ideas.
But I suspect that before summer is over, and maybe even sooner, we will hear some very specific things within the framework that folks are going to be asking us to do, city, county, state, eventually the federal government.
Very good.
Thank you.
One quick thing is I would love it if we could find some quick wins.
Let's identify some things that we as a city can do that's going to make progress over the next, whether it's 60 days, 90 days, 120, and then also have a schedule for looking forward for the next decade.
Because I think once people get excited about, hey, these are some things we can do that can really make a difference, then that builds its own momentum.
I totally agree.
In my mind, I have a really bright focus on the next six months for some reason.
I'm not sure why.
But I think doing a lot of things in the next six months really excites me and then laying some groundwork going forward.
So I am with you, Council Member Bakeshot.
Thanks for that.
Very good.
Before we move into executive session, I do want to thank many of the departments for the City of Seattle for putting together a magnificent celebration for Juneteenth.
I want to give a special shout out to the mayor and the mayor's office for organizing this day.
In the birthday night last Thursday Councilmember Pacheco and I attended that great event.
I want to give a special shout out to Marta and Anita white and others who put that program together.
I'm sure there are many others that played such a huge role in organizing that but it was very well attended and the mayor attended as well and they were gracious enough to let me share a few words.
So as presiding officer, I'm announcing that the city council will now convene in an executive session.
The purpose of the executive session is to discuss pending potential or actual litigation.
It's an opportunity for us to discuss confidential legal matters with our city attorneys as authorized by law, but we always reserve questions of public policy for public open sessions and a monitor from the city attorney's office is always present during these sessions to ensure that we reserve those questions of policy for our open sessions.
I expect this executive session to last about 30 minutes, so that'll be 10.32 a.m.
And if it goes beyond that, I'll announce its extension and the expected duration.
And with that, we will move into executive session.
The End