Seattle City Council Sustainability & Transportation Committee 8/7/19

Good afternoon, everybody.

Welcome to the Sustainability and Transportation Committee.

Thank you all so much for being here.

It's so nice to have big crowds here for the last couple meetings.

I imagine we might for the next few meetings, too.

It is August 6, Tuesday, 2019, 2 p.m.

My name is Mike O'Brien.

I am chair of the Sustainability and Transportation Committee.

We have an exciting agenda today.

These meetings typically run about two hours, but we're kind of changing that, and I imagine we're probably going to run close to three hours again today.

It looks like we have about 25 folks signed up for public comment today.

Joined by Council Member Sawant, thank you so much for being here.

Really quickly, we're going to, in the agenda, we'll have an appointment to the Move Seattle Oversight Committee.

We'll consider a resolution relating to the Green New Deal for Seattle.

We'll also have a possible vote on the resolution.

We'll have a discussion on an ordinance related to the Green New Deal for Seattle, establishing an oversight board, and setting up some financial structures in the city.

That'll just be for discussion, not for vote today, but it'll be back at the committee on Friday for a possible vote.

We'll get an update from the Department of Transportation and the Transportation Equity Program.

We will have an ordinance related to the streetcar.

That is for a possible vote today, potentially authorizing a $9 million Interfund loan to fund ongoing engineering and design work for the streetcar.

We will have a quarterly update on the move Seattle levy oversight committee and finally a briefing on transportation impact fees Really quickly I want to take a second to approve the agenda council members who want or if I don't hear any objection We'll go with that agenda.

Excellent.

So the agenda is approved You may

Thank you, Council Member Bryant.

I just wanted to let you and members of the public know that I may not be able to stay for the whole meeting, and I hate missing the point about the impact fees because of course, and I've long supported that and happy to see a revival of that discussion.

I'm definitely going to be here for public comment and the Green New Deal section, but it's not clear how much longer after that I can be here.

I understand, and I know that I'm putting a lot of things in a lot of committees, and that doesn't fit on everyone's schedule.

But I appreciate you're here for those two items, because those would be great.

For the chair's report, I want to read this thing into the record, just so folks that are tracking our last meeting will know.

At the July 30th Sustainability and Transportation Committee meeting, we discussed what was labeled information item 1476, relating to the annual streetcar operations report and next steps.

The report that was viewed at that meeting has since been updated with corrections and replaces tables 5 and 7, which details the past performance of the South Lake Union and First Hill streetcar lines with correct data.

The updated report has been added to that same information item, information item 1476, for the public to access it.

So just to let folks know, that the report that you'll access online today is slightly different than the report that folks accessed a week ago.

And so there's a slight change there in those two tables we mentioned.

And if someone wants to know what those differences are, we can certainly dig up the old one for record.

But we want to make sure we have the accurate information out there publicly facing.

So with that, let's move into public comment.

We have, let's see if I have this up right, looks like about 25 folks signed up to testify.

Kelly, would you mind doing 90 seconds for folks, so a minute and a half?

trying to get public comment in in about 45 minutes.

Normally we allocate 20 minutes, but I know there's a lot of interesting things on the agenda and I want to give everyone a chance to provide public comment.

So I'll call people's names.

Mr. Erickson, you'll be first in one second.

Jim Erickson will be followed by Carol McRoberts, David Blanford, and then Megan Cruz.

You can come to either microphone.

You'll have a minute and 30 seconds once Kelly figures that out.

And I just ask folks to please track your time on the screen if you don't mind.

I will try to be polite and courteous, but I do need to be fair to everyone and make sure we get everyone in.

So I'll cut you off if you go over a minute 30, but you can do me a favor by monitoring that yourself.

That would be outstanding.

Jim, if you want to start, I'll just time you on my clock and we'll see how it goes.

And once we get the system figured out, we'll let you know, but go for it.

I am Jim Erickson speaking as a resident of First Hill.

It is my opinion that the Center City Connector project should be completed as planned.

According to the KPMG Streetcar Cost Review, the benefit to Seattle will be an increase in potential annual ridership from the current forecast of 2 million to a new higher forecast of 6 million.

This will become the busiest metro line in Seattle.

First Hill is an urban center village that combines growing employment and growing residential housing.

We are a destination in the morning for those heading to work.

and in the afternoon for those returning home.

We recently advocated shifting the new underground light rail station to stop on the east side of I-5 on First Hill.

The idea was rejected.

Our original neighbourhood plan was centred on an underground light rail station at Madison and Minor.

The First Hill underground station was cancelled.

Our senior residents and healthcare visitors appreciate the roll-on, roll-off accessibility offered by streetcar platforms.

If the decision is made to cancel the Center City Connector Project, it will be another large disappointment on First Hill.

Thank you, Jim.

And thank you for keeping it under a minute 30 without even a timer.

I appreciate that.

And it looks like we may have the timer working now.

We'll see how this goes.

Carol, you're next.

Carol McRoberts.

Oh boy, we might be in for a treat, council members, I want.

Good afternoon.

Is that one on?

This one.

Can you hear me?

No.

This is just a reminder for all of us that we are on the right side of history.

Thank you.

Come on, folks.

Let's change the world.

Activists with flags unfurled.

We're on the bright side of history, the Green New Deal.

Coal and oil are toxic fields.

Now it's time to change the rules.

We're on the bright side of history, the Green New Deal.

Wind and solar will pave the way.

The Green New Deal will make the day.

Corporate polluters will have to pay.

Just don't see another way.

We're on the right side of history, the Green New Deal.

We're on the right side of history.

It shouldn't be a mystery, the Green New Deal.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Always a pleasure when we get a visit from the Raging Grannies.

Thank you for being here.

Council Member Pacheco, thank you for joining us.

David Blanford's next.

Sorry, David, you get to follow that act, but we'll see what you do.

I was just going to say, a hard act to follow.

Dave Blanford, I work for Visit Seattle.

Visit Seattle is in the business of getting people here.

Once they get here, we care about how they get around.

Visitors are more likely to choose public transportation options, especially given convenient transportation options like street-level streetcar.

Rail options are more attractive to visitors in general.

We've seen this with Link Light Rail.

We see convention delegates.

We see leisure travellers who come in and voluntarily choose that way in and out of the city and around to city neighbourhoods.

and the Center City Connector will add another compelling option for these visitors.

Connecting visitors, staying in our neighborhoods with the downtown core, and these better transportation connections will mean better connections with downtown businesses, thus increasing the economic impact of tourism.

Council members, we support moving forward on engineering and design work for the Center City Connector.

Thank you.

Megan?

Megan, you're going to be followed by Lincoln Vanderveen, then Tom Graf, and then Don Blakeney.

Thanks.

I'm here to talk about transportation impact fees.

As downtown towers rise up without infrastructure that contains their transportation demands, our congested streets and alleys show that growth is not supporting growth.

Development impact fees may be required to bridge funding for transportation improvements.

Not surprisingly, real estate investors have appealed them.

However, today's presentation includes a chilling compromise.

It suggests that transportation impact fees be used as quote-unquote alternative to SEPA mitigation for systems improvement.

This violates SEPA rules and intent to identify project-specific mitigations and encourage public involvement in decisions.

Seattle has seen how the pay-in-lieu-of model has worked in its bid to include affordable housing in new development, which is to say, not at all.

Developers will choose to pay their way out because it's a better deal for them, but it's not always for the public.

Please don't allow transportation impact fees to be used as a bargaining chip for trading for SEPA mitigation.

It cuts out public input and won't create sustainable development.

Thank you.

Thank you, Megan.

Lincoln.

I'm Lincoln, Chair O'Brien, members of the committee.

I'm Lincoln Vander Veen, External Affairs at Seattle University.

Seattle U is a member and strong supporter of the Seattle Streetcar Coalition and the Center City Connector.

The Firstdale Streetcar is a vital mode of transportation for our Seattle U community.

The streetcar stop at Broadway is our stop right across from our close partner Swedish Medical Center and its stop.

According to the Seattle Department of Transportation, the Seattle U community makes up the second-largest institutional user of the first-tail streetcar, with faculty and staff using it to connect with other transit sources in the city or travel to local retailers and meetings, while many of our students Ride the streetcar to get around Capitol Hill.

To give you some numbers, we have about 2,300 students living on campus right now out of our 7,200 total student population, and more than 1,500 faculty and staff commute to and from our campus every day.

We believe it is vitally important to complete the streetcar line connecting First Hill with South Lake Union.

Seattle is one of the great emerging cities in the world and we want it to continue to be a great place to live, work, and play.

The ongoing Madison Street Bus Rapid Transit Project Combined with completing the streetcar through the city will increase the ability of our students faculty and staff To enjoy Seattle and support the local economy.

We also know that for many of our perspective students Thank you, thank you Lincoln Tom I

Thank you.

I'm Tom Graf.

I'm a member of the Beltone Business Association, and it's a pleasure to speak in front of you.

We are strong supporters of the Streetcar Connector Project, and we endorse the continual funding of the engineering and construction of this connector line.

The two stub lines, as I call them, don't function without connecting, and I think we all saw that with Link Light Rail.

that once you open the Engle Lake and the Capitol Hill and University of Washington stations, the line capacity doubled.

And I believe that is exactly what will happen with the streetcar.

Great cities have great transportation, and it cannot just be on buses.

At 4 to 6 o'clock, our center city is in gridlock.

every day, and it's only going to get worse.

Adding more buses is not going to solve the problem.

We need dedicated lines, and the streetcar is in a dedicated lane in much of its length.

I strongly endorse you proceeding with this, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak.

Thanks, Tom.

Don, you're going to be followed by Paige Mallott and Lisa Howard, and then Doug Holton.

Thank you, Councilmembers.

I'm Don Blakeney.

I work for the Downtown Seattle Association.

I'm here today to speak on behalf of the Center City Connector.

We think that this is an important aspect of Downtown Seattle, not only for the visitors that David Blanford just mentioned, but also for the people who live and work in Downtown Seattle.

As Tom just pointed out, we're getting congested and we need other alternatives to get around our center city.

Conservative estimates show that this line will have about 20,000 riders on day one, once it's connected, the both lines from Capitol Hill all the way through South Lake Union.

That's more than the Portland line currently, the whole Portland network currently carries, and it's more than any existing metro route carries right now.

So it's a big investment, but it's a big outcome that we look forward to.

It also connects, currently our system currently connects hubs that are really critical to First Hill.

You're seeing a lot of riders get off at the regional hub in Jackson Street and then take the streetcar up and get to their jobs or their medical appointments on First Hill.

So this is a critical connection.

And finally, and most importantly, this is a really green project that's providing mass transit to our center city, and we think it's really important.

So thank you for your consideration today.

We look forward to you moving this forward to the full council next week.

Thanks, Don.

Let's see, where am I?

My name is Paige Mallott, and I'm a resident along the First Hill Street car alignment, and I'm here to speak in support of the Center City Connector.

The Center City Connector, once complete, will quickly help absorb the growth in the downtown core that the people who have come before me have spoke about.

The five-mile streetcar route is expected to have more riders per day than King County Metro's busiest bus route.

And since 2010, the area downtown along the streetcar route has had more than 43,000 new residents, which is an increase of 66% and a 27% increase in employment along the route.

The traffic congestion and packed buses along First Avenue signal the need for higher capacity transit, and a streetcar vehicle can carry twice as amount of passengers as an articulated bus.

Five years ago last month, City Council voted 8 to 1 to build the Center City Connector.

It is important to me that city government delivers on promises previously made to the community.

Let's be proactive so we can build it quickly while maintaining the high-quality project that we were promised.

Let's get this streetcar rolling.

Thanks, Pate.

Lisa.

Hi, my name is Lisa Howard, and I'm the director of the Alliance for Pioneer Square.

Please support the Center City Connector with the changing city and changing transportation needs.

Pioneer Square and the surrounding neighborhoods need an efficient, reliable network.

Connecting the existing streetcar lines will give us the zero emission downtown circulator that we're looking for.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lisa.

Doug?

Hi, my name is Doug.

One sec, Doug.

You're going to be followed by Nora Chan and then James Wong.

My name is Doug Holtham, and I work for the First Hill Improvement Association.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts.

As the downtown core continues to add thousands of jobs, residents, and hotel rooms, First Avenue needs the streetcar to accommodate all of this growth.

During the snowstorm in February, the streetcar was the only reliable and safe transportation option to First Hill, of which many regional residents depend on the healthcare provided from First Hill.

We need to continue forward momentum to ensure that our streetcar system is fully connected to keep people moving downtown.

Let's finish what we started.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Nora.

Hi, my name is Nora Chan and I'm from Chinatown.

And I'm the founding president of the senior election in Chinatown.

And my job is, my objective is to help the seniors to vote, you know, teach them how to vote and register them to vote.

So this, what we're doing is very important.

Last week I brought 41 of them here to the meeting and let them understand and see how democracy we have in this country.

And so, you know, I was born and raised in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong, as you know, is the number one city for the economy in the world, right?

And But I really think that actually what make Hong Kong the best is the transportation.

Because I was born and raised there, I can go to one corner of the Hong Kong to go to the other corner within one hour.

And so that's why it make it to be such a vibrant city and it also make it such a good economy city in the world.

And so I'm really glad that I was born in Hong Kong to see that.

And then I'm really glad that I'm getting old in Seattle because Seattle is growing.

And I think it's very important that we learn a few things from other part of the world.

And so I talked to some seniors, you know, and some of these things were talked by them last week.

So one, please keep your promise.

Chinatown small business have been waiting for the Center City Connector since 2012. construction of the First Hill Streetcar.

Number two, the Center City Connector will have its own lane, creating a fast and efficient way to move more people out of their cars and reducing gridlocks.

Norah, your time's up.

If you could just give one more to read, that'd be great.

Okay.

Approximately 20,000 people will ride the new Center City Connector per day.

That is more than any metro bus line can handle in a day.

We, Chinatown, like to welcome anybody to come to Chinatown and make Chinatown to be a better city, better area.

Thank you.

Thank you, Nora, and thanks for your work to talk to community members.

James, you're next.

You're going to be followed by Steve Gelb, then Matt Remley, then Ingrid Elliott.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is James Wong.

I'm the CEO and founder of Vibrant Cities, a locally owned real estate development business based in Seattle's Chinatown.

I'm here to speak in favor of the city center street car project for three reasons.

One, our city needs to continue to invest in reliable, affordable transit.

We're immigrants.

I'm an immigrant, and we came from very humble beginnings growing up.

Our family relied on public transportation, and we needed it, and we need to support that and create that for more citizens.

Second, our city is becoming denser every day, and we need solutions to reduce congestion.

Our city's population increased by 135,000 people from 2010 to 2017. And third, if the city truly values Chinatown International District, We need to have the city connect the city's streetcar that will make CID more accessible to residents.

Here's why.

The Chinatowns in Vancouver and Portland, they're dying.

Portland's Chinatown's pretty much dead.

And the reason is there weren't people going.

The place was not, it was too hard to develop.

It was, you know, too hard for businesses to change there.

And so we need to bring more people to Chinatown, International District, and the streetcar would do that.

So, thank you.

Thank you, James.

Steve.

Good afternoon, Council Members.

Seattle needs a Green New Deal today.

I'm Steve Gelb, Director of Emerald City Seattle, a collaboration of community groups, government, labor, training providers, and businesses.

We face many challenges globally and locally.

Climate crisis, a housing crisis, gentrification and displacement, health disparities, pollution, income inequality, and others.

The Green New Deal can tackle them all and provide a just pathway to the future.

Seattle, with our carbon-free electricity, affluence, and progressive citizenry, must lead the way.

The Green New Deal must center on frontline communities, black, indigenous, other peoples of color, immigrants and refugees, low- and no-income people, houseless and homeless, disabled, LGBTQ, and elders.

By ensuring that we make our city more livable, just, and inclusive for these communities, we will make our city the best city it can be for us all.

The Green New Deal will not be free, and we must be willing to invest in our future.

But as one of the most affluent cities in the world, we have the resources to do this through progressive taxation.

The Green New Deal is a platform for dealing with our challenges in a truly integrated way.

It can deal with energy, health, transit, housing, waste, and jobs.

I urge you to commit to the Green New Deal today and invest in our future.

Thank you.

Thank you, Steve.

Matt, you're next.

My name is Matt Remley and I'm Lakota and live in Beacon Hill, and I'm here today to speak on behalf and support for Seattle Green New Deal.

And we'd like to thank the council members for your support and advocacy on this issue over the years.

What I said in my language is ask that the committee, the council here to have a good heart and good mind.

and put forth those energies and passing a legislation that's bold, that's strong, that sets a target date of 2030 for no fossil fuels to be, or for Seattle to be fossil fuel free by 2030. that incorporates the voices of communities of color, low-income communities, native communities, and workers.

Be bold, not only with the statements, but the actions to follow.

And thank each and every one of you for the good work that you do and your families that be taken care of so our next generation have clean air and clean water to drink.

Thank you.

Miigwetch, Austin.

Thank you, Matt.

Ingrid Elliott.

Ingrid, you're going to be followed by Lucas Vargas, then Emily Hazelton, and then John Beto.

Thank you.

My name's Ingrid Elliott.

I'm a Seattle mom, and I'm here because I want grandchildren.

We know that we have until 2030 to change the trajectory of climate change.

2030 is when Avi, my oldest son, will be 30 years old.

And he says that's when he'll start thinking about whether or not to have children.

But if climate change isn't under control by then, he says he probably won't have kids.

He doesn't want to bring children into an uncertain or dangerous future.

I'm grateful that the City Council has unanimously endorsed the Green New Deal.

Now I ask you to take the first steps towards making a better future for the children and the grandchildren of this city.

The first steps should be to do no new harm.

We must stop our growing emissions.

Seattle must immediately ban all new fossil fuel infrastructure projects and ban fossil fuels in all new Seattle buildings.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Lucas.

I'm a graduate student at the University of Washington.

I'm very lucky to be able to study the physics of our climate every day, and I'm also very lucky to be a member of UAW Local 4121. I'm here to address a common criticism of local climate action, the idea that somehow the crisis is so much bigger than Seattle, so nothing we do really matters.

Aside from the moral imperative to eliminate our carbon emissions, This complaint completely ignores the immediate benefits that reducing emissions will have on communities, particularly those who have borne the brunt of Seattle's rapid industrialization on their health and the health of their children.

The council has the responsibility to take care of its constituents, and I hope that the Transportation Committee will continue to take aggressive carbon reduction seriously moving forward.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lucas.

Emily?

Hi, my name is Emily.

I volunteer with 350 Seattle.

I'm excited and grateful to see the council introduce a green new resolution today.

And I am here to urge you to keep up the momentum by banning natural gas in new buildings.

Just five days ago near Pittsburgh, a natural gas explosion demolished one house, damaged several surrounding houses, and sent five people to the hospital.

In 2016, a PSC natural gas line exploded in Greenwood, Seattle, blowing up three businesses in the wee hours of the morning.

Even without gas leaks and explosions, gas-burning stoves produce nitrogen dioxide, which is a respiratory irritant.

With closed windows, it can lift indoor pollution levels above EPA standards for outside air.

Despite all this, G20 nations spent $147 billion in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry in 2016. Our communities are subsidizing the fossil fuel industry with our health and our future.

Last month, Berkeley became the first city in the U.S. to ban natural gas in new low-rise buildings and homes.

It would actually cost less money to install one type of energy, electricity, in new buildings.

Let's follow Berkeley's lead.

No more government handouts to fossil fuel companies.

It's time we prioritize the health and well-being of our communities.

Thank you.

You're going to be next, followed by Maria Bateola, Alec Conan, and Randy Gustafson.

Hi, I'm John Beto.

I've been living in Seattle for most of the last 20 years.

Until two years ago, I hadn't really experienced smoke in the city.

And until about eight years ago, homelessness was something that was manageable.

I remember when there was a task force that had a plan to eliminate homelessness by like two years ago, because it was doable.

It was something that we believed in.

Now the priorities are totally out of whack.

And we need a Green New Deal that will support those people who've been impacted by the outrageous takeover of our city by large corporations and also the impact of the fossil fuel companies' decision to ignore and suppress science.

I would also urge that this committee not go forward with a plan to build an expensive transportation system that could easily and more cheaply move people with dedicated bus lanes for much less money, at least until we can sort out how to fund the Green New Deal.

Thank you.

Thank you, John.

Maria.

Good afternoon.

Is it on?

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Councilmember O'Brien, Sawant, and Mr. Pacheco.

This is my first time to address you.

So as you know, I come from Beacon Hill, and I represent El Centro de la Raza.

We've been working on the environmental justice issue of air and noise pollution in Beacon Hill.

The green new deal is going to help our community a lot And I invite you to come visit us.

We're six miles long On on the west side of beacon hill is i-5 That has 250 000 cars Traveling on the day on the north side is i-90 On the east side.

We have rainier and mlk i-90 has about 120 000 cars that travel a day overhead are airplanes that use fossil fuels That come over us every 90 seconds So this is going to not only benefit all of Seattle, but really truly help us stop dirtying our own homes, so to speak.

So I know Seattle has been bold.

Seattle is the first city in the United States to adopt a race and social justice policy, a big move, not just from a legal perspective, but from a cultural change perspective.

And I know that we are on.

Our house is on fire.

There's no better way to say it.

So please take bold action, move forward.

And there are so many brilliant brains and so many frontline communities that will help move this forward.

Thank you.

Thanks, Maria.

Afternoon, council members.

Thank you in advance for your support of the Green New Deal resolution.

Hopefully you'll get the chance to vote on that this coming Monday.

And I just wanted to take less than a minute and a half to talk about some of the next steps and to remind you of the overall goal of the Seattle for a Green New Deal campaign.

That overall goal is to eliminate climate pollution by 2030, address current and historical injustices in the process, and also create thousands of jobs.

And in terms of our immediate, it's going to take probably dozens of policies to do that over many years, maybe 12 or 11 until 2030. But immediate next steps when you're in a hole is to stop digging that hole any deeper.

And there are two things that we can do immediately and we can follow the guidance of other jurisdictions in doing those.

In January, we saw that King County passed a moratorium on all new major fossil fuel infrastructure projects, including pipelines and storage facilities.

The city of Seattle can do that both in the city and at the port.

That is an immediate next step that it can take.

And also just a couple of weeks ago, we saw the city of Berkeley moved to keep their citizens and residents safe by prohibiting new fossil fuels from being hooked up to new residential and commercial buildings.

So we've got a lot of work to do to invest in the good, but we've got to make sure we're not investing any more in the bad.

And let's pass policies as quickly as we can to ensure that no new fossil fuels are entering our communities.

Thank you.

Thanks, Alex.

Randy, you're going to be followed by Megan Murphy.

Then we'll have Alex Hudson and I think it's Pauline Vansensis.

Good afternoon.

I'm Randy Gustafson.

I was an operator for 11 years at the Seattle Streetcar at South Lake Union, and I come with the experience of South Lake Union offered a lot of trips for both tourists and commuters, basically.

And the city center connector is basically, or center city connector, is basically developed as an urban circulator.

Now, people have told you what that entails, but there's a new cruise terminal going to come in, and it's going to be, basically, it's basically great for tourists, and for anybody basically downtown Seattle, Capitol Hill, South Lake Union to get around to any spot along the area.

I have two other points.

If this isn't built, I'm reminded of forward thrust.

That has for 50 years been regarded as one of the worst decisions to not be made.

Now, I was looking into it and it turns out that it actually passed, it was more than 50% of the vote.

But because there was a Bellevue developer and General Motors were against it, they mounted a big campaign the last three weeks.

And it went from like 68% passing to just over 50%.

And our city would have been just so much different if that had actually been allowed to go on.

Anyway, third point is about operating.

You need a turn back over there by Westlake and Sixth because you only have one While you have, you don't have any along South Lake Union except a new one will be put in at Terry and Republican.

If you want to have the streetcar downtown running more on time, if you have that turned back, you can guarantee that a lot better.

Thank you, Randy.

Appreciate your expertise in coming out.

Megan?

Hi, thanks for letting me talk.

Is the Transit Riders Union here?

I saw the update on the Transit Riders Union that this meeting was happening, and I am just so excited because it's a union founded on people who ride the transit, which has a distant relation to work.

It's that we're people that like to ride.

So the streetcar is really great, and the Green New Deal is really, really, wow, it's amazing.

And I just don't think it's enough though, and it's because the heat that was over Paris, it was like 110 degrees in Paris, and people are on the edge of the scene, and getting fried from the sun.

It moved over, it moved over Greenland, and now Greenland is melting, by scientific fact, 50 years sooner.

So I don't think we're quitting fossil fuels fast enough.

I think I would hate to see the panic because we're always preparing for the earthquake, the earthquake in Seattle.

I think we should all be preparing for the water levels to rise.

So I think endorsing the Green New Deal is really cool.

And I think the streetcar is really cool and a union of trans, I think transit needs to be free and organized.

And I think massively, like everybody should just give up their cars and like, just share with each other for a while until we figure out what's really going on.

So thank you.

Hello, I'm Alex Hudson.

I'm the Executive Director of Transportation Choices Coalition.

I'm here today to speak on behalf of the Center City Connector Streetcar.

You've heard the numbers around the ridership of this alignment that will connect and amplify and catalyze our existing investments, 20,000 riders a day.

You've also heard about how it leverages other investments that we're making in our waterfront, in places like Yesler Terrace, in our transportation system that is the light rail through downtown, and I'm struck.

to be following people who are talking about the importance and the urgency of the Green New Deal, as we're here to talk about what level of investment and commitment our city is willing to make in a zero-emission form of high-capacity transit through our downtown.

And I would urge us to be thinking about what you've heard from these folks about the extreme urgency of getting zero emissions transportation, matching that with what we know about transportation being the single largest contributor to greenhouse gases in our city.

and ask you to take what you're hearing from these folks and from transit advocates and let that guide your level of willingness to be supportive of and moving this project forward so we can have a car light downtown and a viable planet.

Thank you.

Thank you, Alex.

Pauline?

Pauline, you're going to be followed by Mike McQuaid, then Colleen Bowman, and then Jurgen Oswald.

Hi, my name is Pauline Van Sennis, representing the Interstate Transit Riders Union.

A funny thing happened this morning on the way to a committee meeting.

I had a handful of blackberries, ripe ones.

And I've also noticed on trips to Ballard that there are no salmon to be seen.

The sockeye run was the lowest in 70 years.

Could global warming have something to do with this?

The reason why the blackberries are strange is because they shouldn't be ripe for another month.

I think this is also global warming.

I've noticed that the plants are all out of whack.

They're blooming and flowering and fruiting earlier than they used to.

So I think anything we can do to slow this down and stop it, like more transit, So I'm in favor of completing the streetcar connector, if only because the plans are pretty much set for that.

And that could have been in the completion phase rather than the startup phase by now.

I personally prefer options involving buses.

The buses are more flexible, so they can go where they're needed.

And if the needs change, you can reroute them and change them.

But I think we should really finish this streetcar line.

Seattle does have a bit of a love affair with streetcars going back decades, so there is precedent for it.

Thank you.

Thanks, Pauline.

Mike?

Councilmembers, my name is Mike McQuaid.

I'm the Transportation Chair in South Lake Union, and I'm here today to encourage you to move forward with the Center City Connector funding.

As Transportation Chair in South Lake Union, I have 50,000 people that are living and working in our community that weren't there 15 years ago.

They think about mobility very differently than I do and did at their stage of the game.

Our community and our city relies on diverse mobility choices to fuel that kind of growth and innovation.

As a fourth-generation Seattleite business owner and resident, getting mobility right in our city is critical.

In my view, it's also very progressive.

In this economy, with this project, we're in the right spot at the right time.

While our neighborhoods in each of our seven districts have priorities, important ones, It's downtown that we must keep moving by building out our mobility infrastructure.

With the business tax fueling what our neighborhoods need, the voters understand this clearly.

We're innovative in this city.

We only need to look at bringing the NHL here and the $2 billion investment in our city that was catalyzed around that.

We must apply the same innovation to our infrastructure, mobility and otherwise, wrapping up We've already put a shovel in the ground on connecting our streetcar lines.

This thing is clearly important.

And we now have sound facts to support its merits.

It's time to honor our city's promise and move forward with this federally funded program.

In this economy, in this city, it's reasonable and it's the right thing to do.

I look forward to your vote.

Thank you.

Thanks, Mike.

Colleen?

Colleen Bowman?

Okay, I don't see Colleen.

Jurgen Oswald?

And then I don't know if anyone else has signed up after you, Juergen.

If there's nothing on the signage here, you'll be the last public commenter.

All right.

Thank you, council members.

My name is Juergen Oswald, general manager at the Hilton here in Seattle.

Superheroes.

Everybody loves superheroes.

And this is your opportunity to be one.

We really count on your vision to facilitate a city reliant on public transportation and not cars.

Any public transportation project should get automatic approval.

Fast ferries to the Eastside and Tacoma, a bullet train from Vancouver to Portland, or the connection of our two existing streetcar lines.

Here's what happens if you don't have vision.

You build a viaduct that separates a magnificent waterfront from the heart of the city.

You renege on the subway 50 years ago.

By the way, Atlanta says thank you for the $5 billion in today's dollars in federal grants.

Let's not repeat mistakes of the past.

Show vision, support the streetcar.

Say no to congestion and pollution.

Say yes to affordable transportation for all.

Say yes to something that might be cooler than a superhero, a streetcar.

Thank you, Jergen.

That is the end of our public sign-up sheet.

Thank you all for being here for public comment.

We're going to close public comment and move on to our agenda.

The first item on our agenda, I'll go ahead and read this one in.

Agenda item number one, appointment 01389, appointment of Samuel Ferrara as a member of the Levy to Move Seattle Oversight Committee for a term to December 31st, 2022. I'll invite presenters forward.

Welcome.

We start with just quick introductions.

Rachel McCaffrey.

I am the SDOT staff liaison to the Levee Oversight Committee.

I'm Sam Ferrara.

I work as a project engineer for a general contractor in the city.

Great.

Welcome both.

Rachel, do you want to give us a brief overview of the Oversight Committee and tell us a little bit about the appointment?

The Move Seattle Levy Oversight Committee is an advisory body that monitors revenues, expenditures, and program and project implementation.

They advise City Council, the Mayor, and SDOT on responding to program and project cost savings or overruns.

They review SDOT's program and project priorities, financial plans, and make recommendations to the Mayor and City Council regarding the spending of levy proceeds.

Sam is being appointed, he's a mayoral appointee, to fill the remainder of a vacant term that goes from now until the end of 2022. Great.

Sam, do you want to take a minute and introduce yourself to us?

Tell us a little bit about your background and your interest and willingness to serve on this oversight committee?

Of course.

So, first let me say thank you for having me here today.

It's a great honor.

Thank you for that.

I'm originally from the Washington, D.C.

area.

I moved out to Seattle about three years ago.

I've always had a passion for the built environment, building.

I'm a building nerd.

So I took that passion and I decided to study civil engineering at Virginia Tech.

I got both my bachelor's and master's degree at civil engineering there.

After graduating, I got in the car and headed west.

I moved to Seattle.

In Seattle, I got a job working as a project engineer for a general contractor, W.G.

Clark Construction.

We build primarily mid-rise residential mixed-use buildings, everything from condos to affordable housing to student dorms.

I really like my job.

I find it very fulfilling.

I really see the impact it has on society when people move into their new home.

But I've been looking for opportunities to serve outside of work hours, and when I saw the opportunity, the opening on the Oversight Committee come up, and I thought it would be a great fit.

I have the technical expertise.

I'm a concrete, steel, and asphalt nerd.

I could talk about it all day, but I'll keep it short.

But I also have the real world experience in the construction industry.

I know that sometimes when a project is planned years in advance and an early estimate is done that by the time, you know, by the time it's actually construction time, things have changed and sometimes those assumptions aren't hold true over time.

I hope to take this expertise and be on the levy oversight committee.

I am honored to be here and I'm up for the challenge to be on the committee.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you, Sam.

I appreciate that.

Rachel, are you ready to have another technical building expert wanting to talk about steel and concrete on the Oversight Committee?

Oh, yeah.

We have a mix.

As the chair of this committee, I also sit on the Oversight Committee, but mostly watch the amazing volunteers that show up with their expertise, and there's a nice mix of folks that have construction expertise, folks that have operating expertise of various aspects of our transportation system, and of course folks that have user expertise in the transportation system.

And it's a real asset to me as chair of the Transportation Committee to have this volunteer group helping us provide oversight to this pool of money that the voters of Seattle very gratefully entrusted to us nearly a billion dollars over the course of nine years, which is outstanding.

So I appreciate your willingness to serve and appreciate the expertise you're going to bring, and that's great.

Colleagues, do you have any questions for Sam?

All right.

Abel?

I'll just ask this one question.

I would ask the same question to everybody in the audience.

Did you vote today?

I voted a week or two ago, but.

That's all I need to know.

Thank you for doing that.

We know that some people aren't allowed to vote in our city, and that's something we have to fix, but everyone who is eligible to vote should be voting.

That's great.

Okay, colleagues, if there are no other questions, Sam, do you have any questions for us?

No, thank you.

Great.

I'll go ahead and move agenda item number one.

All in favor, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Great.

Thank you so much for your willingness to serve.

I'm not sure if you're going to be there this evening.

I'll see you briefly.

I will be.

Great.

We'll see you in a few hours.

Thank you very much.

This will be at full council on Monday.

You're welcome to attend, but there's not really an opportunity for you to say much on Monday.

So we'll take care of it in your absence if you don't make it.

Great.

I appreciate it.

Thanks.

Kelly, would you mind reading an agenda item number two?

Sure.

And I'll invite presenters forward for that too.

We have resolution 31895, a resolution relating to a Green New Deal for Seattle, establishing goals, identifying actions necessary to meet these goals, affirming the federal Green New Deal resolution, and calling for the federal government to enact policies to advance a Green New Deal.

Welcome, presenters, as they come forward.

I want to just thank folks.

A lot of organizers did a lot of work to put on a press conference just about an hour before this committee started, including some of the folks who will be speaking here.

So thank you all for that work and the amazing amount of community organizing you've all been doing around the potential for us to do a Green New Deal.

Why don't we start with a quick round of introductions.

Yolanda, do you mind going first?

Yolanda Ho, Council Central staff.

Lavanya Manhusudan, Legislative Aid to Councilmember O'Brien.

Jess Wallach, 350 Seattle.

Debulina Banerjee, Climate Justice Policy Analyst from Puget Sound SAGE.

Ancy Huizar, Climate Justice Organizer with Got Green.

Great.

Thank you all so much for being here and for all your work.

Colleagues, what I hope to do, if it's okay, and Lavanya can correct me if I'm going in the wrong direction, but would be to start with the resolution and have Yolanda walk us through the structure of the resolution.

It's quite a long document.

There's a lot of substance to it.

And so Yolanda, if you might help frame this up a little bit, and then we can ask some questions.

And then I want to turn it over to some of the community members to give us some feedback on what's there and any thoughts they have.

Sure.

So I had drafted up a memo, which was distributed to the council members.

And so kind of framing, pulling back even further from the Green New Deal and looking more generally at what the council has done in terms of recognizing the crisis of global warming and what needed to be done over the years.

And so just kind of giving a general, we're not going to be exhaustive here in terms of all the legislation that has been passed by this body regarding climate change, but highlighting that in 1992, even the council had recognized that.

global warming was a crisis and needed to be addressed.

And so as we have, and I will not go through every single ordinance or resolution listed here, but most recently, you know, the council affirmed the city's commitment to meet or exceed goals in the Paris Climate Agreement with resolution 31757. and which intended to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, recognizing anything above that would be pretty much catastrophic.

So the city has also, you know, over the years, it created the Office of Sustainability and Environment to lead the charge on the city's efforts and also begin to create a baseline inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, That work is ongoing and continues to inform our policy making.

And the city has also implemented a variety of policies to increase municipal building efficiency, encourage developers to construct more green buildings, and has over the years virtually eliminated all greenhouse gas emissions related to electricity generation.

In addition to these measures, the council and mayor had recognized that certain communities have been historically excluded in environmental and climate change discussions and decision making, and that some of these same communities had been disproportionately impacted by environmental hazards.

such as those located in the vicinity of the Duwamish River Superfund site.

To correct this, the city had launched the Equity Environment Initiative and adopted the Resolution 31681, which prioritizes people of color, immigrants, refugees, people with low incomes, youth, and limited English-speaking individuals in all of Seattle's environmental and sustainability work.

And most recently, the city released its 2016 Seattle greenhouse gas emissions inventory and noted that while Seattle has been able to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 5% since the baseline year of 2008, even while experienced tremendous population growth over this same time period, the report concluded that the city would not reach its climate goals, which are to reach zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 at this current pace, and that the pace would need to increase by sevenfold.

So that sets the context for where we are now, and just want to discuss the Green New Deal at the federal level.

Earlier this year, the United States Congress had considered a resolution calling for a Green New Deal, which proposed that the federal government establish policies and make major investments in programs to address climate change and economic inequality.

The goal is to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, facilitate efforts to transition away from reliance on fossil fuels, provide job guarantees and living wages, and prioritize support for communities most affected by climate change, pollution, and other environmental impacts.

So should I hand off to you now, Lavanya?

Yolanda, thank you for walking through that.

I'll just make a few comments and then I'll turn it over to some of the community members that are here at the table.

And colleagues, feel free to chime in if you have questions or comments too.

I've had a hand in drafting this piece of legislation, but I've attempted to really follow the lead of community members who are both most impacted and have worked historically on climate issues.

but more broadly too on other economic justice and environmental justice issues.

And I really appreciate the attention and focus on here, the urgency that I've heard from community about how swiftly we need to move, but also the sensitivity and thoughtfulness with which we're going to need to move.

to make sure that the transition that must happen away from fossil fuels is also a just transition that doesn't do more damage to communities that are already being harmed, and also leverages opportunities to lift those communities up and individuals up with new opportunities and a new green economy.

With that, why don't I stop and see, let you all make some comments on this, and we'd love to hear just your feedback and thoughts on the process so far.

Sure, I can start.

Now we've heard multiple times today that in order to achieve an ideal Green New Deal we need to address current and historic injustices and what we try to do is build some of these components into the resolution as well.

I'm going to read out some of them and then Nancy can take over on accountability systems.

So while we consciously move away from a fossil fuel economy, we have to create energy democracy, which means that people, communities actually can govern how they want their energy going forward, you know, what the energy system looks like 30 years from now.

Local, renewable, supportive, not extractive.

We have no utility fees.

It's all renewable energy, decentralized systems.

Public transit for all, which is equitable, accessible, affordable to everybody, equitable transit-oriented development that does not displace people.

It's free and powered by renewable energy, no fare enforcement.

affordable housing, housing development that is without gentrification or displacement, keeping our communities in place, development that serves the needs of folks facing housing security.

Fair green jobs, which means living wage union jobs for everybody in this new economy as we transition into.

We have a priority hire, ensure the jobs are accessible to undocumented folks as well as people with criminal records and necessary support we lend to everybody.

Healthy food for all, which means lifting up local, just, and carbon-free food system, ensuring food security for everybody, lifting up indigenous food systems, localized food distribution, investments in cooperative models of food production and distribution.

healthcare and childcare for everybody.

That includes universal healthcare, childcare that centers rights and dignity of childcare workers, and ensuring that our working families are supported in this entire transition process.

With this, I'll transfer it to Nancy to talk more about the accountability systems.

So, like Lavanya said, and a lot of other folks mentioned today, that we need to make sure that we're accountable to the folks that are most impacted.

And with this, we want to make sure there's an oversight board that will follow the work and be able to help dictate kind of where this work will go.

And so we need folks who would be on this board who can be accountable to frontline communities and who have an intersectional lens.

Lavanya just listed a whole bunch of things that folks are facing at the same time.

And so we need to make sure that while we're trying to address one thing, it doesn't create some other problems in other areas.

And we need to have a range of folks who have different expertise to address the goals of the resolution, like in-green jobs, housing, and transit.

And we want to make sure that this oversight board would be holding the city and stakeholders accountable.

We've had many plans come out, as Yolanda was listing earlier as well, and when these goals aren't fulfilled and they're not met, our most impacted communities are left behind.

And so it's time to take intentional steps and to start building collective governance with those that are most impacted.

Thanks.

Appreciate the chance to build on that and want to emphasize that we know the most effective climate solutions are the ones that work at the intersection of climate change and addressing existing injustices.

We know that transportation is our region's biggest source of carbon pollution, and when we get people out of their cars, not just by saying, hey, go and buy an electric vehicle, but saying, hey, we got to make sure that your neighborhood has access to clean and affordable public transportation.

We're going to make sure that you can stay in your community, that there's affordable housing, that you don't get pushed out.

We know that not only is that the biggest bang for our buck in terms of climate pollution reduction, but those are also the things that make our communities healthier.

and thrive, and that's what Seattle's Green New Deal is all about, and that's what this legislation is really aimed at, is recognizing that the things that we need to do right now to address the climate crisis, to lead as a city responsible for some of the most significant carbon pollution proportionally of any folks on the planet, the things that we need to do right now also make this city a more beautiful, a more healthy, and a more just place to live.

This resolution is an important first step towards that action, laying out the vision for how Seattle can begin to work at the intersections of climate and existing housing, transportation, health, and economic justice issues, and do that in a way that's accountable to community, driven by the folks on the front line of the crisis, and making sure that the people who have the most experience with these problems, because it's their lived experience, are driving the solutions that we need that make our whole city better for everyone.

Thank you all for your ongoing work on this.

As you touched on, this is a start, but there's a lot of work that will fall out of this.

Colleagues, want to give you a chance if you have any questions or comments for either staff or our community members here today, or myself.

I have several points that I wanted to bring up.

Now would be a good time.

First of all, thank you Council Member Bryan and all the community organizations that have helped bring the question of the Green New Deal forward.

I'm sure this is not necessary to say, but I will say it anyway.

Of course, as you all know, my office and my organization, Socialist Alternative, we completely not only support the effort you're bringing forward, but also we are also on the front lines with you all in fighting for a Green New Deal for working people for Seattle, and I really appreciate I think it was Alec Conin from 350 who said just now in public comment, or maybe it was someone else, regardless, that it's a mistake for people to think, oh, I think it was the UAW member who said that it's a mistake for people, and we have to correct this, to think that, well, this is a global phenomenon, what can we do in Seattle?

No, actually, there is a lot that we could do And concretely, bringing Seattle's carbon emissions to zero is not only going to improve the lives of people, especially the frontline communities that you all talked about, but also it will be an inspiration.

Concretely, what can other cities do?

What can working people and movements in other cities also achieve?

And that will have a global momentum.

So there's no question that this is extremely important.

And I think this is the fantastic step forward.

Of course, I agree with you, Council Member O'Brien, there's a long way to go.

This is stating the intent of where we believe the city's elected leadership should go, but then this has to be followed by the concrete action that the resolution is suggesting that we do.

Just a few things.

I don't have any concrete amendments to bring, but I wanted to just bring some ideas forward just to tell you where we feel like maybe there could be some good additions or amendments and so on.

But I just wanted to state that today and then work with your office and the community members to see if there are things that we can bring forward together.

One is just in the whereas clauses where it says, and Yolanda mentioned this, I think it's, yeah, it's on the bottom of page.

There's a lot of whereas clauses.

There's a lot of whereas clauses.

And actually, I think that's only appropriate.

I mean, this is a major issue.

We're talking about averting climate catastrophe.

So it's only appropriate that the, We trace it out.

At the bottom of page four of, and I don't know if it shows up in the same way in everybody's printout, but there's a whereas clause that talks about the 94 United States Congress members sponsored.

And again, this is the whereas clause, so it's not the most crucial thing, but I wanted to say it anyway.

I think it would be good, especially to point the way forward, if we also included some language in that whereas clause about, how ordinary people's movements and frontline communities on the ground, grassroots movements have really led on this and brought the question of Green New Deal forward.

And also I think we should mention Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who actually, her presence there combined with movements that are leading on this on the ground really put the pressure on Congress to do this.

So I think in terms of explaining how is it that we are able to bring this forward.

I think recognizing the role of movements and how I think would be helpful.

I would love to work with you and community members to put some language in there that's certainly consistent with I think some of the conversations I've had.

So we can work on that in the next few days.

You're right.

And in Section 4C, and Council Member Bryan, you and I have discussed this in your committee very recently.

In Section 4, I'm sorry, this is not...

No, I'm sorry, not Section 4. This is just a note to myself to talk about how I strongly agree with advancing away from an economy based on extraction and exploitation to one on regeneration and cooperation.

But actually in Section 8, I believe, yes, Section 8.I, We talk about the language here says implement a congestion pricing plan that is equitable and creates revenues to support transit expansion to benefit low income historically marginalized and transit disconnected communities first and foremost.

I just wanted to say that I, from my study as an economist, my study on congestion pricing, there's really no example where congestion pricing is equitable.

If it didn't have the word equitable, I would probably want to amend language to remove that entirely.

But since you've put equitable, I'm okay with it.

But I just wanted to state for the record, I don't believe that there is such a plan.

But if there was an equitable way of doing it, of course, I would support it.

But if it's not going to be equitable, that's a tough one.

So just wanted to state that.

One of these committee meetings last month about tolling and congestion pricing was great.

So I think what I'll suggest on this one is maybe ask some of the community members.

I don't know if you have thoughts today.

You're certainly welcome to share those now, or we can talk in the coming days to see if you have thoughts on responding to council members who want.

Now or in the future?

Absolutely.

And please work with Ted Werdon also in my office between now and Monday directly.

And I had several points to bring up, so feel free to interrupt at any point to have a discussion.

Should I keep going just to bring a couple more things?

And then in section six, which is very important, So it's hard to find the numbers.

I skipped section six and went to section eight first, yeah.

So in section six, we're talking about establishing dedicated revenue sources for the Green New Deal, which is That plus the accountability body, I mean, that's the heart of what will make this into a concrete reality, having the funds to do some of the most important things that will make a huge dent towards going to carbon zero one, which is dramatically expanding access to public transit and also the energy retrofitting of buildings because those are the two top sources of carbon emissions.

I think it will be important for us to include some explicit language about taxing big business and the wealthy and other progressive revenue sources because I just concretely I don't see how we will fund a Green New Deal strong enough to achieve our target of 2030 carbon zero unless we generate the kind of revenues that will be needed to do that.

and that we cannot put the burden of the Green New Deal on the same communities that are already impacted and oppressed in different ways.

And plus, mathematically, it simply won't generate the kind of revenues that we would need.

And so, if we can work together on some sort of language to bring that more explicitly forward, that would be great.

I think I'm trying to find it right now.

Is it mentioned in the ordinance that we'll be discussing in a moment?

No, there's no specific mention of that in the ordinance.

Okay.

Okay.

And then I wonder if there's some place maybe where we talk about weatherization.

Maybe we can also have something about City Light.

Like City Light is a public entity.

And if we could put in some language, and I'm not very clear exactly how to do this, but sort of greatly expanding green energy production capacity.

through, because we are lucky enough that already activists from 100 years ago fought to make it a public entity.

So maybe City Light producing more green energy to export to offset natural gas, coal, and other fossil fuels burned by private energy companies like PSE in the region, something along those lines, if we could do that.

And then one, so two more things.

One is on the, in section nine where we talk about transportation, I would like to propose that we, where it says, I think the language it says is more affordable.

Sorry, I'm not able to find section nine.

In section nine, yeah, here it is.

Oh yeah, part A says, make transit more affordable, reliable, and widely accessible.

I wonder if we could say, make it free, make public transportation free, rather than more affordable, because I feel like the need of the hour calls for it.

I certainly would like to see it, and we certainly are capable of doing that.

So I think that's another one.

Let's tee up for a discussion.

It's a direction we're certainly hoping to head.

It's not inconsistent with that, so.

Right.

And then one last point, and I think this is extremely important and it came up in public comment as well.

In the section 10 about anti-displacement, which is absolutely a critical component, as Maria and others were saying.

I wonder if we could arrive at a commonly agreed upon language which, again, more specifically talking about what are the bold public policies that will prevent displacement.

And maybe there's not full agreement and these topics need to be discussed, but at least if we can put in language that says such as rent control without loopholes and expansion of social housing or publicly owned housing which will be affordable.

Because we know that works, we just, we don't have enough of it.

We have, you know, organizations like Capital Housing, Plymouth, and Lehigh.

But there's, it's like a trickle compared to the problem of affordable housing crisis.

And so if we can include what are the public policies that will be part and parcel of winning any Green New Deal.

to move some of the rules.

So I, Council Member Sawant, you've clearly done a lot of homework on this.

I am grateful for that.

I know this is not something you're just thinking about because of the resolution.

It's part of your work ongoing, so I'm grateful for that too.

So why don't we take that list of things and work swiftly in the next few days to get some community feedback.

We'll work with you and your staff.

Council Member Chico, I don't know if you want a chance to comment on any of those points that Council Member Sawant made.

We'd love to take your input here or offline too.

So let me just say what really excites me about the resolution.

The green zones, I think that it's driving investment where investment needs to go, quite frankly.

I would like to work with you, Council Member O'Brien, look into language about limiting single-use plastics as a city and what additional opportunities we can do.

I know I myself try, but I would like to see the city try to pursue additional opportunities.

I've seen examples in my time here on the council of how landmark preservation has been used potentially as a weapon against letting development happen near transit.

So maybe looking for language that might be helpful to help support that.

We know that it's a tool that has not been used proportionally within communities of color and preserving cultures of communities of color throughout the city equitably.

So being mindful of that, so I'd be happy to kind of work with my office and your office, Council Member O'Brien, in terms of some language that might be helpful.

And then lastly, just I'm excited to vote for this, but really look into supporting how we build additional momentum for both what the county can do as well as the state.

You know, to Councilmember Sawant's point about the wealthiest among us, you know, the wealthiest among us are across the lake.

And so, you know, that's where the county can really be able to help us in some capacity.

to provide or get to the overall objective of free transit or making additional investments in transit will need their help too.

So, happy to work with you on some language that would be helpful.

And so, with that said.

appreciate those thoughtful comments to councilmember Chayko and I am generally supportive of the ideas you bring forward also.

I'll mention that in councilmember Herbold's committee we've had some conversations about zero waste and I know some community members have expressed Concerns about some people's desire including myself to ban single-use plastics thinking of situations like Flint, Michigan where communities are relying on water and plastic bottles because they don't have The other options and so I want to I am fully supportive of eliminating these plastics But I want to follow community lead on that and other comments just to make sure that we're being sensitive to to how we move forward and we're not having the adverse impacts on folks.

Along those lines, I want to just share with colleagues in the public, Council Member Bageshaw had suggested an amendment to me that I'm also generally supportive of.

She's suggesting to add some language about tree canopy.

And so in section 13, letter J, Would modify what's in there currently currently it says planting more street trees in low-income neighborhoods and encouraging planning and preservation of more street trees citywide She would change that to say increasing the trees cities tree canopy cover by planting more trees in low-income neighborhoods and encouraging planting and preservation of more trees citywide and I am certainly open to that concept.

I want to make sure community has a chance to give some feedback.

One of the just brief comments I heard was just a fear that we're not pitting trees versus low-income people ability to live in their community.

And so I think there's, I don't think that's Council Member Bakershaw's intent by any stretch of the imagination.

So maybe we can work on that language too to find something that encourages what I believe will be generally believed as a good thing, more tree canopy, but not at the expense of housing options.

And so my suggestion, I guess at this point, I don't think, I'm probably not ready to move Council Member Bagashow's amendment.

I appreciate both of your thoughts on that, and I think some studious notes are being taken, and if not, we have the tape to go back to.

What I'd like to do is work on language on all those fronts, get some feedback from community.

Maybe we'll propose a set of language and get some community feedback.

I'll make sure to share it with you two simultaneously and other colleagues.

with the idea that we could bring a perhaps substitute bill with those pieces where I feel like there's consensus to the full council on Monday.

And if there are places where there's disagreement, then we can have additional single amendments that people could provide.

I just would ask folks that, and I'll commit to this, work through this by the end of this week so that the public will also have a chance to see what's out there so they can provide feedback and public comment.

Alternatively, we could, take another week to do this.

That would actually mean another three weeks because our last full council meeting is next Monday.

But my preference would be to move forward and pass the bill as it is at a committee with the understanding that we'll be working collectively on amendments to bring to full council.

I'm open to that, absolutely.

In fact, I was going to suggest that.

Just one thing, if possible, if it was possible to have some, like maybe a first version of the amended bill that takes into account the discussion today, before Monday, so then if my office can have a chance to look at that and weigh in on that, and then...

A little bit of back and forth if necessary.

Yeah, so my plan would be maybe my office with the Yolanda support will work up a draft trying to address what's shared here in the next day or two.

We'll share that with both of you to give some feedback.

I'd love to get that out to community simultaneously to get their feedback.

Hopefully by the end of day Friday could have something to share.

This is my proposal at the moment so that we all have a chance to look at that final draft and frankly all the folks in the public have a chance to review that to give us feedback either electronically over the phone or in person at the full council on Monday afternoon.

Councilor Pacheco?

Just a clarifying question.

So we're voting on the resolution today and also on the ordinance?

Or is this just the resolution today?

No, we'll discuss the ordinance in a moment and that'll be back in committee on Friday.

Okay, that's what I thought.

I guess an alternative is we could work on the substitute and bring that back to committee on Friday.

Whatever you prefer.

I won't be here on Friday.

I would like to vote on the resolution today.

Yolanda, does that work technically for you?

Well, we will be working together.

I am going on vacation tomorrow.

So we're going to use Yolanda's expertise for the next hour or so, and it's a well-deserved vacation.

I can promise everyone that, so thank you.

But yes, Council Member Pacheco, thanks for your question.

Then my goal will be to go ahead and vote this out of committee today.

The next agenda item is an ordinance, which is directly related to this, and we'll start discussing that in a moment.

I'm not going to have a vote on that today, but hopefully have a vote on Friday, and we'll some community members back at the table on Friday, the ordinance for that discussion.

I want to turn back to community members to see if you have any comments, reaction to any of the things that were put forward here or anything else you'd like to add on the process or thoughts you want to share.

I just wanted to thank everybody for your general support for this work.

Thanks, Debolina.

I'll echo that and say that the process of working together in community to bring forward bold ideas and then be well received from council members and know that folks in positions of power are ready to work in partnership and lift up those solutions has been a really important part of this process.

So I'm excited to see that and excited to keep moving forward together.

I'll add that I am really grateful for this process.

You know, some might look at this and say this is similar to a lot of things that we've done in the city before, a lot of things that I've been part of before.

I will tell you that it's taken a fair amount of restraint on my own part to really step back and allow community to lead on this and not simply just bring my ideas forward and demand that that be what we build everything around.

And I am really impressed with the powerful ideas and the thoughtfulness and the coalition that community members have been building and undoubtedly will need to continue to build to be successful.

And I really think that this reflects a different approach to how we govern.

And I think that's the only way we're going to actually solve these crises we're in.

And so I'm grateful for your commitment and time that you've put into this so far.

So colleagues, with that, what I'll suggest is I will move, thank you Kelly, resolution 31895 with the understanding that we'll likely be bringing amendments to the full council.

Is there a second?

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

Thank you all for your work, but don't go anywhere.

We're gonna move to agenda item number three.

Kelly, do you wanna read that into the record?

Council Bill 119604, an ordinance relating to the Green New Deal for Seattle, establishing a Green New Deal Oversight Board, providing compensation for those who incur financial hardship by their participation on the board, requesting that the Office of Sustainability and Environment create an interdepartmental team to advance the Green New Deal for Seattle, amending Section 3.14.90 of the Seattle Municipal Code, and adding a new section 3.14.979 to the Seattle Municipal Code.

I'm going to skip the introductions and hopefully Seattle Channel is okay with that, but it's all the same people here.

So if you're queuing up this item and you need to get the introductions, you can roll back the tape to agenda item number two.

Yolanda, do you want to start with giving us an overview of this from your memo?

Sure.

So I think the discussion around resolution framed a lot of the ideas around the Green New Deal for Seattle.

And so, and this was already alluded to, but having an accountability body was also a desire to move forward with that resolution to help implementation.

So this Council Bill 119604 creates a Green New Deal Oversight Board that would advise and support city efforts to implement the Green New Deal for Seattle.

Key aspects of the proposed board include that it would be supported by the Office of Sustainability and Environment, would have 16 members comprised of eight community representatives directly impacted by racial, economic, and environmental injustices, including one tribal member and two individuals between the ages of 16 and 25 at the time of their appointment, three representatives of environmental justice organizations, two representatives of labor unions, and three representatives with experience in greenhouse gas production and climate resiliency strategies relevant to cities and their residents.

such as public health, infrastructure, sea level rise, extreme weather events.

Terms would be three years with a limit of two consecutive terms.

and members for whom participating on the board presents a financial hardship would be eligible for compensation at a rate of $50 per hour.

The proposed legislation also requests that the Office of Sustainability, Environment, Farm, and Interdepartmental team to implement the Green New Deal for Seattle and to support development of individual climate plans for all city departments.

The IDT would include representatives from the Department of Parks and Recreation, Seattle Department of Transportation, Office of Planning and Community Development, Office of Housing, Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle City Light, Office of Economic Development, Seattle Department of Human Resources, Office of Emergency Management, Department of Neighborhoods, the Mayor's Office, City Council, City Council Central Staff, and others as needed.

Also noted is that each department's climate plan should include targets and metrics to monitor the city's efforts to achieve decarbonization by 2030. Office of Sustainability and Environment would report on these plans to council by July 1st, 2020, and provide progress reports annually beginning in 2021. The interdepartmental team is also expected to meet quarterly with the Oversight Board on the development of these plans, as well as policies, programs, and projects related to the Green New Deal for Seattle.

Specifically, it does request that any legislation that would be coming to Council be brought to the Oversight Board for consideration prior to transmittal to the Council.

some of the, in terms of the potential impacts of the creation of this new oversight board, as some of us know, the city has many boards and commissions, over 70 at this point, but this one would not be duplicative, as we do not have a board that is dedicated to the issues of climate change and frontline communities impacted by climate change.

these changes, and so that would be unique to this new board.

And noting that where additional expertise is needed, this oversight board may enlist the assistance of non-member experts, so perhaps setting up task force where they include others on specific maybe technical recommendations or other boards and commissions such as the Seattle Planning Commission if there are some land use interests.

In terms of fiscal impact, the Office of Sustainable Environment has currently indicated that it has capacity to support the formation of this board, but may likely need additional staff to facilitate the development and implementation of individual city department climate plans, assuming that not all city departments would have the necessary capacity or expertise.

The financial hardship compensation for BARD members could be up to $34,000 annually, assuming all 16 members meet eligibility requirements.

And as I just mentioned, the proposed interdepartmental team would include representatives from numerous city departments.

And we're not really quite sure at this time whether these departments would have capacity right now to engage in this or absorb this additional work.

And also, depending on what is kind of brought forth in terms of these climate plans, work may need to be reprioritized and additional resources needed.

And finally, just noting that establishing and participating on the interdepartmental team and developing and implementing climate plans and other aspects of the Green New Deal for Seattle would require a shared commitment from the executive for this effort to be successful and ongoing.

So that if this proposal is adopted, the council would likely need to appropriate resources to the Office of Sustainability and Environment during the 2020 budget deliberations for the board member compensation, as noted, and possibly to support the work of the proposed interdepartmental team.

And, you know, future years, there may be other resource needs.

I'm going to turn over to community members once again and see if any of you all would like to provide any comments or feedback to the oversight board and your thoughts that went into creating this.

Again, this proposal is largely driven by community members who've been working with my office.

So I talked about it a little bit earlier, but I also wanted to bring up that I co-chair the Environmental Justice Committee, and Dabalina is also part of the committee, and I just want to lift up that we would like for the committee to be part of or work in partnership with the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

And I also want to bring up that, you know, as part of being on the Environmental Justice Committee, we've seen a lot of miscommunication between city and community and have seen where we have alignment and goals, but then the outcomes turn out different.

So we really want this to be an opportunity to have better relationship between the city and the stakeholders.

Great.

Appreciate that.

If I could add briefly, I think one of the most important functions of this committee will be to make visible the city's climate work and the way that the city is starting to transform how it addresses climate change to be action at the scale of the crisis, action that's rooted in equity and justice, and action that's rooted in the needs of communities most impacted.

By being able to bring together an interdepartmental team, we can start to create new kinds of conversations with the city for moving transformative climate action forward and doing that in a way that's directly fueled by the experiences of community members who are on the task force, on the oversight board, and are representing the experiences of communities both most impacted by the climate crisis and the transition away from dirty fuels is really critical.

So I'm excited to see this move forward as an opportunity to continue creating more transparency and community accountability and to lift up the good work that we will be doing together around Seattle's Green New Deal.

One last thing.

I want to lift up what Jess just said.

I think the interdepartmental team will be a really important piece to this because, again, I think that was part of why the Environmental Justice Committee had struggled in the beginning to be able to work with different city departments because, you know, a lot of things are going on in this city and we don't always know what the opportunities are.

And so it was really hard to filter out what areas we could move on and what wasn't really there for us.

So having both together would be really, really huge.

That's great.

And as Yolanda highlighted, most of those teams work and report ultimately to the mayor.

Through this process, we've been sharing language and drafts with the mayor's office and have had really productive conversations to date.

But she's not here to provide her comments or vote on this, so it'll be important for Continue conversations and I'll commit to doing what I can as a city council members and elected official of the city To work with the mayor's office and obviously community members will want to continue their conversations with the mayor's offices and departments to build you know to build that commitment and accountability so that hopefully we can get the whole city aligned around this and Bring the resources necessary to be really successful.

I Colleagues, do you have any thoughts or comments on the creation?

And just to remind folks, so we would, this would set up, again, we're not voting today, but we'll be back on Friday.

This would set up this oversight board.

This defines, there's more detail about how long the appointments are and who would appoint which positions and all those things.

You can read in the ordinance, but generally, you know, 16 community members representing the broad areas that were discussed.

It also would create a Green New Deal fund that there is not actually going to be revenue in that fund right now, but obviously if we're going to be successful with this, we'll need some funding.

So, oh.

This does not create the fund at this time because we don't.

We decided to do that in the budget.

Thank you for reminding me of that.

It contemplates the idea of creating a Green New Deal fund, which in case you're interested, I might be interested in doing during the budget this year.

Very interested very excited about it you tell more So Anyway, if you have thoughts now you want to share to bring ideas to table a council member I know you're not going to be here on Friday, so If you have any comments on that, and I believe you also have a comment on the resolution We just passed so I'm taking notes.

Nope.

That's great.

I

No, I strongly support the idea of building accountability in a very concrete manner.

I appreciate community organizations coming with that vision.

If I might, sorry, this is the previous agenda item, but appreciate your indulgence.

I forgot to bring up a point that I think is extremely important for us in terms of really building a strong, you know, movement towards winning some many of the things that we hear are components of a Green New Deal.

And that's in section 11. in Part B, and it sort of relates to C and D as well.

So just, again, general idea.

I'm not proposing specific language, but I'd really like to work with you on the specific language and with community organizations.

And that is to, I think, I believe it is important to I mean, stepping away from the resolution language for one second, I think it is extremely important.

In fact, it's an imperative for environmental and community organizations and the labor movement to work together on this.

And we know from our past experience that the points of view are not aligned.

And I believe it's our movements, as I said, a moral and political imperative that we do our best to build that unity.

But I think that requires some work.

And I think the language we put in here will make a difference, and already there's lots of excellent language, but one thing specifically that I wanted to explain my thinking is in B, for example, in 11B, it says investing in job training programs that equip workers with necessary skills to compete in the green economy with the priority for workers whose jobs currently depend on the fossil fuel industry.

I mean, it's great language, I totally support it, but I do think that and, you know, being a member of the labor movement myself and having had many, many conversations with people, workers, and organized labor in the fossil fuel sector, especially, you know, we had many conversations, for example, when we pushed for the no LNG resolution and many of the indigenous leaders who fought for that are here.

During that time, we tried to bring labor and indigenous community members and other environmental organizations together.

And it was clear that there was some work to be done on that.

And so this is an example where I think if we strengthen the language, I think it will help us.

So rather than saying giving the necessary skills to compete in the green economy with the priority for workers, How about saying something along the lines of expanded progressive revenues to expand public sector job training programs and clean energy jobs.

to provide a just transition to workers employed in the fossil fuel industry, rather than saying they're going to have to compete.

Of course, on the basis of capitalism, workers are competing for jobs that are not just in numbers enough.

But I think if we're going to, if we can say that the Green New Deal movement in Seattle is really pushing to bring the labor movement also with us, because I don't think we can win without building that unity, then can we have language that will make it very, very explicitly clear that we're not pitting one section of working people against another section of working people, that we want to bring everyone together.

And that does mean that we are absolutely going to fight for a just transition of jobs concretely so that we don't empower PSC and corporations by allowing them to use workers against workers by saying, well, where are our jobs?

Why should I fight for a Green New Deal if I'm not going to have a job at the end of phasing out fossil fuels?

So, you know, in that sense, I'd really love to work with you on language.

I think that seems extremely consistent with everything I've heard in the ongoing work.

So, let's, why don't we similarly take that language and see what we can draft up or if you or your team come up with language beforehand, let us know too.

So, great.

Back to the ordinance, any other comments on that before we shut down that agenda item?

Okay, great.

I want to thank you all for being here today.

Thanks for all your ongoing work.

We'll see, I don't know, a mix of you all or other community members on Friday, but look forward to that conversation, too, and hope to have you back in Council on Monday.

Yeah, Council Member Pacheco.

Be sure to vote if you haven't voted.

Appreciate that.

Kelly, would you mind reading the next agenda item in, please?

Yes, this is our annual update on the Transportation Equity Program.

And I'll invite presenters forward on this.

Welcome, everyone.

Thank you all for being here.

I'm looking forward to this report.

But why don't we start with a quick round of introductions.

And Naomi, if you don't mind starting, that would be great.

I'm Naomi Dorner, the Transportation Equity Program Manager.

Welcome.

Hi, I'm Anya Pintak.

I'm a Strategic Advisor in the Transportation Equity Program.

Candida Lorenzana, Director of Transit and Mobility.

Sam Zimbabwe, Director at SDOT.

Welcome everyone.

Why don't we just go ahead and jump in and I'll let you guys drive this presentation.

And if it's okay, Council Member Chayko and I will ask questions as we go along.

Sounds good.

We're going to go, I think, along practically back this way.

But since I was here last week talking about our RSJI and equity in contracting, I thought it was important to sort of tie those together with some of the larger equity conversations that we're helping to convene.

And Naomi and Anya have been doing such a great job.

So I'm mostly here just to support them and to show my support for all the work that we're doing in this area.

I'll kick us off, and then I'll hand it over to our wonderful transportation equity team.

As many of you have seen before, the goals, mission, and values are foundational to our work at SDOT, one of those core values being equity, which you'll hear a lot about today.

In the presentation, the team will be providing you an overview of the program, highlighting current pilot programs underway, and discussing our engagement efforts, both internal and external to SDOT.

By means of background, the Transportation Equity Program is in alignment with the city's Race and Social Justice Initiative and is working to ensure affordable, accessible, and sustainable transportation for a variety of communities.

And several legislative actions have led to the growth of this program over the past few years, including Resolution 31773, where council confirmed their support for the Transportation Equity Program and SDOT's approach to that work.

In addition, in the development of the Seattle Transportation Benefit District, we have set aside $2 million on an annual basis that goes to improving low-income access to transportation.

The program is continuing to evolve with Anya and Naomi's work.

And we're becoming more focused on community-centered engagement in building the transportation equity agenda, which will be our framework for transportation equity goals and priorities for SDOT's work.

And I'll hand it over to the team to tell you more about what we're working on.

Great.

So I'll just give a brief overview and then we'll talk about some of the new pilots and work that we're doing.

We'll kind of focus our conversation on that.

But before I do that, I do want to acknowledge and thank members who are sitting here in the front row.

Rizwan Rizwi, who is one of our co-chairs for the Transportation Equity Workgroup.

And we also have Stephen Sawyer, who is walking in.

And he is also our co-chair for the Transportation Equity Workgroup.

So we'll talk a little bit more about that.

And then we would also welcome coming back once the recommendations from the workgroup are solidified.

But we did want to have them come and at least have you introduced to them.

And that work group was formed about two months ago, or?

Well, yes.

We can talk a little bit more about the process, but we have a whole slide that we'll talk about.

Okay, great.

So, yeah, just as a background in terms of the, I guess, genesis and the work that we've been doing within the transportation equity work group, Ultimately, our goal is to provide information as well as resources to low-income communities of color and to refugee immigrants and a whole host of frontline communities that have not traditionally benefited from transportation investments in our city and region.

And ultimately, we want to provide resources for safe, affordable, and accessible an environmentally sustainable transportation option, so very aligned with what we just heard about in the Green New Deal.

We have sort of three areas of work that we've expanded into.

Obviously, we've done a lot of low-income access to transit programming, which we'll talk about in a moment.

But we also, with the capacity that we've been able to add to our team, with Anya Pintak joining last year, we're doing a little bit more policy advisement, and of course, as our Office of Equity and Economic Inclusion fleshes out, we're working closely with them as well.

And then we also have this engagement strategy, which we'll talk about, so that's all new as well.

In terms of the low-income access to transit programming, Oh, there we go.

We have sort of three areas of work that we're continuing to do, although we'll talk about some of the changes to some of that as well.

So we continue to provide resources for transit specifically.

We've done that both through providing ORCA Lift resources as well as now moving into a partnership with Seattle Housing Authority, which we'll talk about.

But basically we're forming partnerships and providing resources to not just the community, but resourcing partners as well to provide direct services.

And we're also, we've been working with a number of community-based organizations and the Department of Neighborhoods to identify community groups and organizations are already talking about transportation but are looking and seeking to be more, I guess, supported so that they can do this work.

And so we've been able to resource those groups and we'll talk a little bit about how that's.

shaping up for this coming year.

And then we continue to do work with the Department of Human Services, and they really administer the vehicle license for your CARTAB rebate program, which for qualifying people, they pay their CARTAB and then can receive a $20 rebate.

So in terms of outcomes, and we have the year three and we're actually working on the year four report, as you know, that ended June 31st.

So our performance year in terms of outcomes from year three, which we have we have aggregated in a report, we basically continue to see OrcaLift enrollment.

We had provided preloaded OrcaLift cards and collectively in year three, we had about 20% of the eligible population.

So that is of all Seattleites that are eligible that have been enrolled.

And I believe for all three years, it is 58% of all eligible people are enrolled.

So that's collectively.

And then in terms of the vehicle license fee rebate, we have so far collectively had 14,247 rebates.

And that's year three, so we'll have new numbers coming out in the year four report.

And then in terms of our pilot, so We, as I mentioned, we've been learning a lot about the work that we've been doing in terms of OrcaLift distribution and enrollment.

And we, through the Seattle Housing Authority, had been working with them and partnered and started in, it was in, We launched in June a new pilot where we are testing, essentially, distribution models for getting 1,500 cards into the hands of residents, and that's a free, unlimited card for a full year.

And so we are, at this point, we're six weeks into the pilot, and we have, the number is actually at 42% distribution as of Monday, so as of yesterday.

And we have a couple more weeks to go for the distribution.

We have one model where it's an in-person event-based, appointment-based approach, and then we have another model where we're mailing the cards.

So more to come on that.

We have not done sort of the full evaluation, but we look forward to sharing that when we have results.

And is that, are we targeting SHA facilities where essentially everyone who lives in the building is eligible or do they have additional eligibility requirements they need to make within the building?

Yeah, so the eligibility is 30% of the area median income.

And so, and it's also pre-selected sites.

So we did an analysis as to where we would start out, like at least phase the distribution for this 1500 cards.

And then it's also 19 to 64, so ages 19 to 64. We kept it in parity, it's not exact, but it's in parity with OrcaLift, so that if in the event the pilot did not continue and was not expanded, there would be an opportunity for OrcaLift eligibility for these residents.

And so, but is it, do we find that most of the residents in the building that are qualified because of their income, or does it just depend?

Do we have to?

Some people, it's not always the case.

Some people are, but SHA, per their eligibility, I would say the majority of residents are 30%, but we do have the 1,500.

That was how much we could afford to fund.

But we are finding that, for sure, SHA has the highest percentage of people who are at 30% and below in the city, part of why we decided to go with that.

And I'm going to turn it over to Anya who's going to talk about a new pilot that we are going to launch that focuses on aging adults.

Yeah, so I'll talk a little bit more about this pilot, but this pilot focuses on a more deeper engagement strategy in terms of working with the senior population.

Last year there was a lot of learnings in terms of through our one-time kind of events at food banks, working with seniors in that way, and we realized we need to do a deeper level of education and enrollment.

And so this year with the City of Seattle Human Services Department, Aging and Disability Services, we are partnering with selected senior center sites to train their social work providers at the site who already have relationships with many of the aging adults being served there.

And our goal is to provide around 200 plus aging adults with a monthly regional reduced fare permit, which is the reduced senior fare program.

which is run by, I believe, 15 to 16 different transit agencies at four senior center sites.

The senior centers we're focusing on, we looked at sites that serve predominantly seniors of color, and we looked at geographic regions.

So two of the larger sites have greater capacity in terms of they have more social workers and counselors on their team.

So that includes Asian Counseling Referral Services and International Drop-In Center.

So ACRS is based on the MLK, the kind of Rainier Valley area, and then IDIC is more in the South Beacon Hill area.

Two of the smaller sites is Lake City Senior Center.

They only have one social worker on staff, and right now we're waiting to hear from South Park Senior Center, who also has only one social worker as well.

And so again, our goal is to provide that education and so that they have the knowledge and are empowered to be able to educate the seniors on not only to enroll folks into the regional reduced fare permit, but also teach seniors too on how to use their permit to ride transit.

And it's really an opportunity for us to learn a little bit more about aging adults' transit needs.

There's not much information that we know regarding how many how seniors learn about the RFP program, how many times they're using transit.

So it's really an opportunity for us to dig in that a little bit deeper.

So timeline-wise, we're planning to launch in the fall of 2019. Right now, I'm firming up the sites and coordinating trainings with them in partnership with Hopelink and King County Metro and the senior center sites as well.

The pilot will end in 2019 and we've built in surveying component as well as a focus group discussion as well with the evaluation happening in early 2020. The other pilot that we're working on is Youth Focus Ambassador Program.

So last year, we had the Ambassador Program as well, where we worked with four small community-based organization in the Seattle area to roll out a transportation equity-related project within their community.

And what works best for them is really their choice.

And so this year, we really thought it was an opportunity to partner more with youth-based organization.

and get an opportunity to learn a little bit more about what youth's transit challenges and needs are.

So this year we will be providing two youth-based organizations with funding to develop their youth-based storytelling engagement and project to learn a little bit more about their experience with transportation.

And it's an opportunity for us to learn a little bit more about the needs of the youth, but also where future investments in programming can go.

And right now we're in the process of confirming this work with Red Eagle Soaring, which is a nonprofit organization focusing on working with Native youth to do performing arts-based work with youth.

And then with WEAP, AP stands for Act, Present, Perform, working with youth to build public speaking engagement skills.

With that, we're looking to also launch MFL 2019. I've been in contact with the organizations and firming that work up.

The pilot will end in 2019, and we'll be planning to do an end-of-the-year event, hopefully in collaboration with the Office of Arts and Culture at the King Street Station, and then evaluation again in early 2020, a bit more about that program.

And so in addition to all the pilot work and the evaluation and how that will inform, you know, the way that we potentially invest in future programming, we are also deeply engaged at this point in an engagement strategy that is both internal and external.

And I'm going to talk a little bit about the internal piece, and then Anya will discuss the external piece.

But all of this, ultimately, is going to culminate into a transportation equity agenda.

So what we learn from the work that we're doing in terms of pilots, and then the engagement strategies, internal and external, will ultimately inform this agenda for the department.

So in terms of the internal engagement strategy, we are, I guess it was in October of last year, so 2018, our executive and senior staff recommended and advised us to form an intra-departmental transportation equity team that would be comprised of SDOT staff from across the division because Anya and I are two people and we don't know everything's happening in the department and we really needed to lean on proxies from other divisions to provide us with content and context.

And as we're having the external conversation with community members, it was a way to create a feedback loop and bring both the concerns as well as, you know, the ideas to the division as well as, you know, as bringing responses back in a timely manner.

So that team was formed in October.

It comprises about 30 folks from across the department.

We meet on a monthly basis.

And their charge is to really support us in terms of the transportation equity staff as we work with the external group, as well as in terms of when we have different pilot ideas or what have you, we can bring that to the group.

They also are very involved in developing actual materials that support the community work group's learning.

So Anya, our coordinator, she really worked closely with each of the division proxies to develop a transportation equity curriculum.

So it was really a 101 in terms of what this department does.

providing a bit of a grounding in foundation of our core work, and then also what our equity goals, priorities, and where there's alignment, and where we might need to do further alignment towards those goals.

And then finally, they provide guidance and review.

They will provide guidance and review on the community-guided recommendations that come out of the Transportation Equity Workgroup, and ultimately will help us really tie the agenda together.

How many members on the IDT?

About 30 people, yeah.

And we, I mean, we get participation as, but I will say it's a very engaged and really robust, robust group, yeah.

That's really awesome.

Yeah.

I know that.

I'm appreciative of the mayor's supporting for, and the department's supporting their people to show up, and it's great to have workers that, who undoubtedly have very full plates already and are showing up to do this work, so nice work, that's great.

Great.

All right, so I'll turn it over to Anya to talk about external.

Yeah, so a little bit more about the Transportation Equity Workgroup.

This is a very new workgroup for SDOT, and it was established in spring 2019, which is one of the events that you had attended.

So we started in April of 2019. as their first kind of onboarding process, which I'll talk a little bit more about.

But our work group includes 10 community members who have both personal and professional affiliation with currently or historically marginalized communities in the Seattle-King County region.

As Naomi mentioned, two of our work group members are here.

They happen to be our co-chairs as well.

They've been providing a lot of great leadership to the group.

We have Stephen Sawyer with POCAN, also known as People of Color Against AIDS Network, and then Rizwan Rizwi with Muslim Housing Authority.

So I just want to thank the both of you for attending, but also for your continued guidance with the work group.

And so we have an amazing group of community members.

In addition to Stephen and Rizwan, two of our work group members also sit on the city's Environmental Justice Committee as well as the Equitable Development Initiative Committee as well.

And a reason for that is we know transportation has come up within those respective committee.

So to ensure alignment and to ensure that their expertise are brought in, we brought them along in the work group as well.

And then the remainder of folks come from a variety of organizations and personal experiences as well.

And actually the link at that bottom over there has a little bit more information about each of our work group members and their bio.

And that image on the right actually is of our little field trip to Chistie Park where we got to hear from local artist Angelina Villalobos talk a little bit more about the intersection of art and public space.

So the charge of the work group, it is a one-year work group.

Their charge is to support the divining of transportation equity.

So as we're having a lot of internal discussion as well, it's key and important that we are also engaging the community with what does transportation equity mean to them and to their community members.

Opportunity for work group members to engage with one another as well as us, and also their charge is to develop community guided suggestions for SDOT's transportation equity agenda.

So that is their main role for the group.

I kind of mentioned that they started in April.

We spent the first two months onboarding our workgroup members, because I think it's really important to ensure, in order to ensure that workgroup members are successful in their role, to have a good onboarding process.

So that is the curriculum that Naomi had mentioned.

So we broke it up, I call it S.school, but we broke it up into two days.

So Councilmember O'Brien attended the first day where we focused on SDOT foundational level information like budget, policy, what's the master plan.

The second day focused more on operations and projects.

And so the work group members got to hear directly and engage with SDOT staff.

We couldn't fit everything, but I think we did the best that we could.

During those professional development summit, we did an exercise where we asked work group members to identify what are equity areas of interest and concerns in the community.

So as they were learning about the things that fall within SDOT's purview, they continued to add on.

into this exercise.

And from that, I pulled out key themes that popped out.

So these are the eight key themes that were identified from these exercises.

So they include safety, transit access, economic development, land use, housing, and displacement, community engagement participation, transparency and decision making, mobility and transportation options, and infrastructure planning and maintenance.

So from that, I shared it with the work group members.

They all came to a consensus that, yes, these are the topics of interest.

And so they've decided to break off into subcommittees.

So we meet monthly, but we also have subcommittees that meet about three to four times before the work group.

And so with the leadership of the co-chairs, we've been having these subcommittees.

So this month we're focusing on transit access.

And I should mention that we are in coordination with King County Metro as well.

They are working on their equity mobility framework.

And so some of the topics are actually very much overlap with theirs and we're working on getting our co-chairs together to meet.

Co-chairs, it sounds like you're quite busy.

So one, thank you for your commitment to this work.

Thanks for being here at committee two.

And I'm really grateful, you know, I had an opportunity to head to the first meeting just briefly, but it sounds like a lot of amazing work happening.

And great to see both the robustness of the departmental team, but all the overlap on the work group too.

You know, so much of the work we do at the city, it's just a big entity with lots of things going on, and it is related, like you both have said.

And making sure we have those kind of individual connections to help bind that work together is really powerful.

It's not easy to pull off just because people are stretched thin, but clearly folks have decided to dedicate their time to this.

So thank you for doing that.

All right, so I think I kind of talked a little bit about what the strategy is, but basically within SDOT, you know, we have the interdepartmental transportation equity team.

We have this external transportation equity workgroup, but together we're going to be working to form the transportation equity agenda.

What isn't also identified on here is that we're also obviously working with our Office of Equity and Economic Inclusion, and then we also have through the transportation equity workgroup connections to the Environmental Justice Committee and the Equitable Development Initiative.

And then, of course, our other stakeholders, such as Metro.

So it is a big circle.

And in terms of next steps, we will continue to convene with our Transportation Equity Work Group, as well as IDT.

The agenda, we are looking to have a draft set of recommendations by December.

And then, you know, working to finalize that internally at the department in the spring of next year.

And then we are and will continue to, you know, move on with our pilot, the ORCA Opportunity Pilot with SHA, and then we are launching, I'm sorry, that is through June of this year, through June of next year, and then this fall, we are launching both the Aging Adult with Human Services Pilot, as well as the Ambassador Program with these organizations that'll run through the end of the year.

So it's a lot of work, a lot of progress in the last year, and more to come in terms of evaluation and what the future holds, but really looking forward to the work and thanks for all of the support.

Any questions?

I'll just, first of all, thank you so much for this work.

Sam, appreciate your leadership.

These types of efforts don't happen and get off the ground without clear direction from the top, so grateful to you, grateful to Mayor Durkan for making that happen.

Also want to just thank both of you for your ongoing work and Candida your role in providing leadership there to Our previous two agenda items.

We're talking about a green new deal for Seattle Transportation is our biggest climate impact and you clearly have highlighted the equity issues around transportation and so I those worlds are going to collide or bump or overlap relatively soon.

And so I want to just keep an open dialogue as we're continuing to do work both this year and beyond to figure out how we integrate that commitment and the transportation side.

There's been so much work happening in transportation that this doesn't really restart it or anything.

It's just how do we keep building on it.

And I think especially with the equity focus and centering the voices on the front line You know, the concept of the green zones, the idea of these communities most impacted being where they get the first investment.

I think it's consistent with a lot of the work you're doing.

I really like your input.

We may tap into some of the resources that you guys have created too, internally and externally, if that's okay.

Great.

You know, I'd just add that, you know, I think, again, that having 30 people from around the agency shows that there is tremendous grassroots hunger within the agency and then in engaging on these issues.

And so I think it's been great work that Naomi and Anya have been able to lead to sort of build the foundation of how we're talking about this and what issues, the link to community and community definition of challenges and solutions that we can build into how we think about it going forward.

So it's really leadership coming from throughout the organization.

That's outstanding.

Thank you.

Councilman Pacheco, any questions or comments?

Just thank you for the work that you do and for the committee members that are participating as well.

And I encourage you to vote if you haven't voted.

I figured that was coming.

Great.

Well, thank you so much for your ongoing work on this.

I really appreciate your work.

I appreciate the opportunity to hear your presentation and look forward to more work together.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Kelly, would you read the next agenda item into the record?

I will.

Council Bill 119602, an ordinance relating to the financing of the Center City Streetcar Connector Project, authorizing the loan of funds in the amount of $9 million for design of the streetcar, amending Ordinance 125724, which adopted the 2018 budget, including the 2019 to 2024 Capital Improvement Program, changing the appropriations to the Seattle Department of Transportation and revising project allocations and spending plans for certain projects in the 2019 to 2024 CIP.

Let's start with introductions.

Calvin Chow with Council Central staff.

Eric Twight, project manager at ESSAT.

Welcome, Eric.

Go ahead, Sam, introduce yourself once again.

I'm still here.

Sam Zimbabwe.

Thank you.

Cover your shoes, Sam.

thank you all so much for being here we had a good discussion last week both looking at the existing operations report back but also this proposal and so we'll take a moment to kind of talk through that Calvin gave you a little direction last week, and then I get a council briefing and some questions came up, so I really appreciate your work on that memo.

Do you want to start in with that?

Sure, yeah.

That'd be great.

Just during last week's meeting, you asked for sort of a collection of information of what we know about the project, and so I have a memo that's attached to the agenda.

to try and summarize the project.

And I won't go through all of it, but I'll just highlight some of the key issues that you asked about.

So in February 2019, SDOT presented the most updated cost estimate for the project.

And so that is the latest information.

The proposal in front of you would authorize $9 million more to further design and sort of flesh out that cost estimate.

It would include addressing the issues that were identified by the KPMG report, but it would also include going back and looking at their procurement strategy, value engineering, other things that might change the actual cost of the project of how they would deliver it.

So we should expect a change in the cost estimate, but the February cost estimate is the best information we have to date.

At the time, SDOT had updated its ridership estimate based on a new model run in 2018, and so Table 1 of my memo shows the projected annual ridership.

It compares the existing standalone South Lake Union and First Hill streetcar system with a consolidated system that has the Center City Streetcar operating as a full citywide, well, downtown network.

The change is from 1.73 million riders modeled for the existing standalone system to 5.7 million riders for a consolidated system, which is about a 230% increase in ridership.

In terms of how that compares to what we see, the observed ridership, last year, SDOT reports a combined ridership of about 1.67 million.

So it's on the same order of the modeled ridership.

And the revised modeling and projection, folks had previously talked about, and we heard a public comment today, about 20,000 riders on the Center City Network.

And these numbers are a little lower than that.

Is that just new model, more data, existing system?

It's a new model, but it also does not include visitor kind of trips.

So, I think that was about 3,000 in the previous modeling.

So, it could explain some of that, but the other part is that it's new.

And so, does it not include that because the FDA doesn't want to see that in their data or is it just something that's hard to model?

I think maybe both.

I think the FDA has been, we've actually shared it with them.

And from my understanding, reading through the history, they've been open to it in terms of including it.

But we just wanted to be clear and clean with this information.

I appreciate that.

I think there's a desire to be more conservative in the numbers.

And it still pencils out as a good project from the FDA grant perspective.

But I'd also note that even with this, this model run is still higher than what we see observed today.

So there is sort of that other.

A bit of a disconnect between the model and reality.

We're aware that models are not always accurate, but they're often the best tool we have for some, at least some analysis.

Sam, do you want to say something?

I was just going to say that, you know, the model run was done last year with a 2019 build year, hypothetically.

Right.

And we predicted that 1.73.

We were at about 1.1 million as of the end of July, just in terms of our ridership this year.

So we are sort of tracking favorably with that.

1.73, we were a little bit below it in 2018, but it seems like we're, you know, it's again in the ballpark with what we're seeing out there and observed.

So as far as models go?

Comparing a model to observed is not, I mean, you should not expect it to match up, but it is on that order of magnitude.

One thing I just wanted to highlight for everyone, I think we talked about it at the last committee meeting as well, is that fair revenue isn't, we shouldn't expect a direct one for one increase in fare revenues, in part because we expect more transfers to be a part of what's driving ridership, which reduces how the fare is split.

So that will affect sort of the operational cost drivers for the project.

The ridership will be strong, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the fare revenue will increase at the same level.

So if we nearly triple ridership, we shouldn't just, in the back of my head, we'll triple fare revenue because a significant amount of that will be transfers where we split it.

Correct.

The modeling that we've seen for the, we could probably get into this, the operational costs, does that make assumptions based on that?

I would have to get back to you about exactly how they calculated the, it's a much higher, I have some numbers that talk about how they get there, but I'm not sure we've really checked it too much against what's observed.

Okay.

The question was about the operating costs.

Correct, or?

Well, sorry, the operating revenue, I should say.

Oh, revenue.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, yeah.

So, in terms of capital costs, the cost estimate, we should remember that this has increased significantly from the initial project proposal of $143 million.

The current project is estimated with utilities to cost $285.8 million.

$208.1 million of that is the transportation element of the project.

And compared to the resources that are identified in the budget, we still have about a $65 million gap for transportation.

The adopted budget did include about $45 million of future bond revenue from commercial parking tax revenues that would be earmarked for this project.

And of course, SDOT has a $75 million FTA small starts grant that's in the works, as well as a $7.3 million congestion mitigation and air quality grant.

So those are the available resources in the budget that were identified for the project, and that leaves a $65.3 million capital funding gap.

So when I, I shouldn't be doing this math on the fly, but when I add up the 7.3, the 75, and the 45, and the 65, I don't get to 208, but is there the expenditures we've already made to date that are already in there too?

There's expenditures to date as well, yeah.

So that's resources that are in the future that could potentially be reallocated to different things or would go away and not come to the cities.

So I was trying to make the distinction between future money and past money.

In terms of past money, SDOT's expended almost $45 million on the project.

So this includes about $12.9 million of project costs that would be eligible for reimbursement from the grant funds.

SDOT essentially expended the, used the appropriation authority to expend the money, but with the expectation that the FTA or the CMAQ grant would pay it back.

So if the project were not to move forward, those costs are still in the books.

We would have to find where in the budget we would offset those costs.

So that's $12.9 million that has already been spent.

In line with that question about what would it take to, if we were to not move forward with the project, what would be the financial impact of that?

There is also termination costs related to the vehicle procurement contract.

We don't know what that cost would be, but it's just useful to know that the cost of data on that project has been about $5.4 million.

I don't want to speculate on what it would cost to end that contract but that's how much has been spent on that contract to date.

So we spend a little over five million dollars to date on I assume those are deposits on vehicles which we have not accepted yet.

I believe there's a stop work order so they've accumulated some parts and they're sitting in a streetcar warehouse somewhere waiting for us to say yes or no but those costs we've already spent and there would likely be additional costs.

We've had legal briefings which not appropriate to discuss here but we understand that there's work being done there.

That's right.

There are some utility portions of the project that are also not fully recognized in the budget.

Because the utilities are in the right of way, they would have to pay the fare utility portion of that project if the transportation project moves ahead.

So there's about $22 or $23 million of utility costs there that are not currently identified.

That's an identified funding gap.

So if the project moves forward, the utilities will have to figure out in a future budget proposal either shifting spending on other utility projects or potentially that could increase rate pressure.

In terms of operating costs, again this is another issue that has changed since the project was initially proposed to Council.

The initial proposal didn't require any city subsidy.

It is estimated that other revenues would be available to offset the full operating costs.

In February 2019, the new estimate showed that there would be a required ongoing annual subsidy of $18.1 million for the first year of operations.

And that is for the entire streetcar system, including the First Hill and South Lake Union streetcars.

Change in the cost estimate was driven largely by reconciling what the operating costs for running the system would be.

You may recall that media reports around the time when the stop work order and the independent review highlighted some discrepancies between King County Metro's operating assumptions and what we had assumed in our project budget.

I do remember that.

So this is largely in, reflects the discussions with King County Metro, our reconciliation for past the past actual performance of the streetcar has really changed the operating cost for the Seoul Center Streetcar Network.

In addition, the new estimate also recognizes that Metro and Sound Transit contributions for the existing lines won't extend to 2023. The biggest one is the $5 million that Sound Transit is paying for the first hill streetcar operations, and that ends in the end of 2023.

So let's see, the termination of the Sound Transit, working through a policy decision here, the termination of the Sound Transit support for the streetcar, that's independent of whether we build the center city or not.

So that is certainly an operational cost that will either need to be negotiated or absorbed by one of these agencies, but that's an ongoing consideration.

But regardless of whether we move forward or not, That.

You know, that's something that will have to happen.

This is the system-wide operation subsidy.

Calvin, do you have a sense of how that compares to just the existing two lines?

Yes.

So, Table 4 does that comparison.

It looks at the difference between the no-build, stand-alone, South of the Union and First Hill estimate.

And that requires a city subsidy in 2024, which is the closest projection that I could find that sort of matches up with the future operations.

of $12.8 million.

So between the two, you'll see it's about a $5.3 million difference in the required city subsidy.

So in terms of, it is an increased operational cost that is offset by a 230% increase in anticipated ridership.

a fair box recovery and this is the point you said maybe you want to do a little more work to see if that number is significantly off based on the

splits with transfers?

Well, I think the estimate is sound in terms of how they get to what the operating cost is.

But in terms of maybe sort of ground checking that a little bit to see what that would mean in terms of fare box recovery, does that sort of line up with what our expectations are?

I would like to do a little more research to understand that.

Right, that's that $8.5 million number there in the right column.

a fair box recovery number.

And I would just add two things.

Well, first of all, it's the sign of a really well-written memo that your question gets answered by the next table in it.

And I think Calvin did a great job of putting all this together.

The second, well, on the operating costs, The other thing that's in here, and Calvin sort of noted it, but the $1.5 million ongoing contribution from King County, we assumed in the February present estimate, did not continue through the negotiations of a new interlocal agreement.

It seems like that will continue at least for the next five year term.

So I think this is all a little bit still in flux.

And some of the work that we'll be doing over the next year would look at operations in a bit more detail and make sure we have a really sound operations plan and understand what those full costs are.

What is the operating subsidy from, the recently negotiated operating subsidy from King County?

It's 1.55 with an escalation, an annual.

And what's the theory behind that and how it How might the city portray itself going forward with an additional streetcar?

It's a legacy of the start-up of the South Lake Union Streetcar, and as I remember it, it was because there was a reallocation of Metro bus service with the opening of the Sound Transit light rail as part of what was going on, so as part of larger route restructuring.

there was a commitment of some King County resources towards the operation of South Lake Union service.

And that service started in 2007, or construction started in 2007, I can't remember when service started, but around that time.

So it's been in the operating contracts with King County Metro since then, and the current contract ends at the end of this year.

So if there is a negotiation to keep that in for another five years, that would extend it.

I think at some time, at some point in the future, you know, larger reconfiguration of service could change what that calculus looks like.

I imagine that if we're to move forward with the San Ysidro connector, that Metro would likely coordinate a restructure of service to not duplicate service.

I imagine that work has not been done since we're not even sure if we're building it, and if we are building it, it's years away.

And so there might be a similar discussion in future years about how we might have some support from them, similar to what sounds like the first conversation.

But obviously, tons of question marks around that.

And I appreciate kind of the conservative approach to say, this assumes that it wouldn't happen when it comes online, and I recognize that Maybe we'd have 1.5 million again, maybe we'd have 3 million because of some other restructuring that happens downtown.

Okay, Calvin proceed, this is great.

The current budget, the current city's budget does include about $4 million of annual operating support for the streetcar.

So we do have sort of a baseline in the budget, but we're looking at significant escalation over time.

So that's going to be really the question is how we're going to fill that operating gap in the long term.

Great.

I think that gets us to the proposal that's in front of you.

SDOT is requesting $9 million of additional resources.

The $9 million is anticipated to come from revenue from the Mercer Megablock sale.

And in order to, because that sale is not likely to close for some time, the proposal is to fund it through an Interfund loan against the Information Technology Fund, which has the resources available to do so.

I note that the South Lake Union Streetcar, when it was constructed and began operations, relied on two inter-fund loans that are still on our books for about $8 million.

There is about a $300,000 a year annual payment that is budgeted to pay down the capital loan.

And the anticipation is that the proceeds from the copiers Northwest Dexter property will pay off the operating loan.

My memo actually incorrectly got the properties mixed up.

that is the property that will pay off the South Canyon Operating Loan.

So in the context of what happens, one of the questions you asked was what resources could potentially get freed up if this project were not to move forward.

It's a little bit of a This is a very high level sort of summation, but if we assume that available property proceeds could take care of the existing $12.9 million of expended funds, as well as whatever amount is necessary to get out of the vehicle procurement contract, you essentially have $45 million of bond capacity to devote to other transportation projects.

All right.

So, Council Member Pacheco, if you have any high-level questions, you're welcome now.

I'm going to go into some math questions here in a second.

Just to your memo, I mean, just wanted to get a little more clarity in terms of the timeline with regards to, you know, specific deliverables associated with the $9 million.

In addition to that, when we can expect potentially a proposed funding plan for both construction and operations.

So, yeah, I'll let Eric get into the details on that.

Okay.

I think, first of all, one of the early deliverables, if you will, we are going to be procuring a new consultant contract this fall.

Negotiating that contract and getting a scope set up will be probably towards the end of the year.

And early next year, we'd be able to give you a better schedule in terms of when some of the major milestones are coming along.

But my, at a high level, Summary would be some of the things we'd be looking for in about the second quarter of 2020 would be results of the structural analysis of the bridges on Jackson Street.

That was one of the higher end costs of the additional work that's needed for the CAF vehicles.

And the other, one of the other things would be the risk assessment and value engineering that we would do early on.

So again, probably the second quarter we'd be able to report back if there's anything that really stands out that really makes a difference in that cost.

And then we really get into towards the, probably the end of the third quarter or even fourth quarter with the 30% plans and those updated cost estimates for the project.

So, you know, Sam, you and I have chatted about this.

We came in similar timelines somewhat.

And, you know, one of the opportunities that I had right before I get in this appointment was actually canvassing about 2,000 doors in my district.

And this was one of those projects that, quite frankly, raised a lot of eyebrows throughout folks and constituents in my district.

Having said that, you know, I think the investments in transportation investments like these are worthwhile.

What I, and I know we had a national search for Sam and thank you for being here, what I would like to be able to do is when I hear the calls from constituents or receive the emails about this project specifically, be able to reference a specific example of where you have been able to in your prior experiences, turn around a project and get things in order, so that I have the confidence in saying, you know, this is a conversation that will continue well after me, but I trust Sam to deliver well for the city, so.

Sure, so I've had similar experience with the DC streetcar, which had its own challenges getting off the ground and getting into service, and then starting to plan for the extensions and moving those projects forward.

And I think that it's not just streetcar projects.

And I think we're actually gonna be talking the next agenda item about our Lebanon Move Seattle delivery, which I think we're getting the house in order there as well.

So I think we're building the capacity to deliver these projects within SDOT.

And I think I said it last week, but say it again, that we wouldn't be here requesting this funding if we didn't think we could deliver on what we're requesting.

All right, so, Calvin, I apologize for not having asked some of these questions earlier, but we're going to do some math on the fly and invite anyone to participate as they feel confident.

I just kind of, based on your memo, Calvin, have kind of answered some of my questions, but I want to walk through them and get some confirmation if I'm at least order of magnitude about right what I'm talking about or not.

So, starting from the top, current projection is about $285 million.

It's the most recent projection, I should say, for the total cost of the project.

Calvin, you mentioned that, obviously, we spend another 9 million design.

We'll learn more about that.

A lot of pressure is upward.

There are also opportunities for maybe that number to come down.

I assume there's some risk built into that.

But for lack of something better, let's stick with the 285 for now.

We know there's about an $88 million gap, if that's right.

That includes both SDOT and utility gap.

So that's money that we'll need to come up with, which leaves that we've either spent or have budget authority already for the remainder of 197. I may have some rounding errors in there.

Of that we've identified the federal sources of 75 million.

I'll come back to some questions on that in a moment.

45 identified budget authority from the SDOT bond, so that's a total of about 120. The CMAQ money is about another 7 million, so that's 127 of the 197, leaving $70 million.

You identified that that SDOT has already spent about $45 million to date.

That leaves an additional $25 million.

Is it safe to assume that we've spent about $25 million in utility money to date?

Is that the math difference there?

It does become a little bit complicated because the money gets spent in the utilities as well as in SDOT.

So it sometimes might be just easier just to focus on the transportation portion of it and sort of let the utility money kind of live separately because some of that flows into this SDOT budget.

So let me switch numbers here then.

So the total SDOT cost of the project based on current estimates is 208. And the gap in SDOT at the moment is 65. So that leaves the expenditure to date of 143 maybe, of which we have Fed and SDOT bonds of 120 and CMAQ of 7.

I'm not sure I'm quite following that.

Maybe you, why don't you do this Calvin and I'll just follow along.

So we have a 208 total project cost.

We have identified current spending, past spending of 44.7, so 45. So that leaves, I'm sorry.

I actually have a calculator right here.

Just do it.

Yeah, Kelly?

Appreciate it.

So 208 minus 45. 163. Is 163. Of that money...

Our kids can all watch us on this, so when we quiz them on the things...

We've identified 75 million from the FTA.

So minus 75 million.

And then minus another seven...

Well, another $7 million for the CMAQ grant.

81.

81. And then we should also remind ourselves that I'm missing another bit of money that has been identified.

So we have the SDOT bond.

45. Which is budgeted.

45, yeah.

So minus another 45. Sorry, I'm doing this on the fly.

No, I think I'm with you here.

So I think we're off by about $10 million, which someone in the press and myself are going to want to know the difference.

But we're at $81 million.

You've got budget authority through the bonding of $45 million, which needs about $35 or $36 million, which should be the sunk cost.

But we have that at $44.

So we did some rounding here.

And so somewhere between a $5 and $10 million.

Eric, you're ahead.

There's a number of, sorry.

I was going to say there's, I don't think we've accounted for the $65 million gap that we, so I think there's a couple places where there may be, when you count the expended money, the 12 million of future reimbursable grant money is in that 45, but then also in the 75. Yeah.

Oh, got it.

It's, right, right.

That would make sense, then we're down to more like rounding errors if that's being double counted.

I think that's what's going on as we're doing that.

That's right, because it would be reimbursed.

Some of that money would be reimbursed.

It would be future reimbursement, but it's already an existing expenditure, so it's got to be on both sides of the ledger.

Got it.

Okay, that's helpful.

The reason I'm going with this exercise is not to impress or scare our kids about math, but rather to help understand where we are today and where we should go moving forward.

So, and I think I appreciate Calvin.

The utility costs are real.

Those do have impacts to rate payers.

The utility as they upgrade the system also gets benefits from those.

And so it's a little complicated to figure that in.

So I appreciate that keeping us focused on SDOT.

I recognize that people may have a different view on some of that.

I would also say some of that's been expended already, and some of that was putting in earthquake-resistant pipe in First Avenue already.

There's betterments along the way.

So we have the $65 million gap.

Let me ask a question about this.

So you're here to ask for authority for an additional $9 million.

Is that 9 million of the 65, or is this 9 million of work that needs to be done so we can tell you if 65 is the right number?

It's $9 million of the $208 million, so the $65 million remains as a gap in the future.

We don't know what the actual project cost is going to be, but it is.

But assuming the project cost doesn't change in this work, is this work that is included in the budget already?

And so we're eating away at that with this $9 million.

And recognize, we might find out that the budget is $9 million more, and then it'll be different.

We might find out it's a few million less, too.

OK, that's helpful.

And so there's about $80 million in grants that we've been awarded.

Talk to me about the federal grant and our level of certainty about the $75 million or the $50 million plus $25 million, recognizing that asking anyone to predict a federal government is a hard job.

But can you walk me through that?

Because I need to make some decision here.

Sure.

It's a complicated answer, so I'll try to be as clear as possible.

So the $75 million is expected to come from the Federal Transit Administration's Small Starts Grant Program, which is a program that's authorized on an annual basis at the federal level.

And the way that that has been administered, so every project that's in that program has to submit an annual status update to the federal government to provide an update on the project and then gets a rating from the FTA on project strength.

So this project has remained as a high rating, a project rating of high, which generally puts it in line for grant funding as money, as the project is ready and as the, there's funding available.

In, I believe it was FY16 appropriations, there was a $50 million sort of placeholder put sort of a box within that federal appropriation for that year that said that because this project was rated high at that point and seemed to be getting ready, that that would be ready for appropriations.

It would sort of hold the place in line for the grant award to be made.

That didn't change the, we still had to go through all the steps to actually receive the grant award and sign a grant agreement.

The FTA is not doing, and Congress are not exactly doing that process in the same way.

So we would anticipate that if we remain high, highly rated, whether or not there's that $50 million box, we would remain eligible for $75 million when we are ready and there are grant funds available.

If there's not, sorry, just one last piece.

If we were ready and rated high and ready to sign an agreement, but there weren't funds available at the federal level, there is a process by which we could continue to advance funds as long as we could point to them.

But that would be a question we would answer down the line if we wanted to keep the project moving while we waited for a final grant agreement to be made.

We might advance costs moving forward with a hope to get reimbursed.

Would it be a hope, not a promise?

There's a process called the letter of no prejudice where we basically get pre-approval to expend the FTA funds with the agreement that they will be reimbursed while we don't have a grant agreement in place.

At that point, and that large of a number, I think we would have a lot of discussion about whether the city was ready to take on that financial risk to move a project forward at that level.

I think there's sort of two, there's sort of the grant administration with FTA that seems to be going in largely the same way it has been.

They're tracking the project and we still have, we're still rated high and anticipate the grant.

There's a separate issue about federal appropriations for that and sort of the minutia of when that becomes available.

It's largely out of our hands and I'm not sure that it, well, I mean, it's speculation about how that might change.

But I think as far as the relationship with FTA and the granting agency, That still seems to be on track.

That's right.

And, you know, we've got two other projects in that small starts queue, the Madison Rapid Ride and the Roosevelt Rapid Ride.

Both of which, the Madison Rapid Ride, we're currently in the grant oversight process to demonstrate our readiness to accept those FTA funds.

Our ability to get through that process the first time will inform our ability to get through that process for future grants as well.

So we'll learn more in the next few months on that.

Great, okay.

Now as far as the policy decision in the past, we can go down from this point forward.

I should ask about the CMAQ money.

That's been awarded.

I believe we do that through PSRC.

Sometimes there's deadlines to commit that money.

Is there a chance that then we will need to give that money back and re-compete for that again, or do we feel like the timeline is still pretty good?

I don't remember the specifics of that, and we can get back to you on that.

I do know that The department chose not to, some of the past expenditures would have been eligible for that grant and the department did not choose to access that grant at this time.

So I think recognizing that we still don't know quite what the path forward is here yet.

At some point, that grant would become, they would want to get the money out to grantors who could use the money if we don't move forward.

Yeah, we've been on the other side of that.

I don't know if it's CMAQ funds, it's probably other funds.

If someone could get back to me on that, I assume this project would still compete, but it would be good to know if we're good on this money for another five years, which would cover it if we go forward or if we would need to reapply.

So in rough numbers, we have about $65 million of uncertainty.

The mayor has not proposed a funding source for that.

Don't know if you want to give me any new information right now.

So that's a gap that we'll have to determine subject to approval moving forward and all those types of things.

If we were to not go forward, we wouldn't have to find that 65, so there's an opportunity cost or benefit there.

In addition, we've already allocated $45 million of budget to the bonds that we haven't spent yet.

the math on the double counting and the reimbursement.

But so we would, you know, what's at play going forward from the city at least is current costs and current expectations around grants is about $110 million in existing budgeting authority and future budgeting authority we need to identify.

As far as if we were to walk away from this, we'd have that for other projects-ish or that's, you know, it's a

If we walk away from this project, we have about the $45 million of future bond revenue.

And we wouldn't have to come up with the 65 that we have to come up with, too.

I think that's correct.

The delta between moving forward and not moving forward is about $110 million, at least in my mind.

So one can say that's what we would get if we don't queue it.

One could say, hey, you can buy a streetcar program, and it's only going to cost you $110 million.

but the capital costs.

I say that facetiously a bit, but.

Okay, I just wanted to go through that exercise publicly so that I make sure that we're on the same page as we talk about moving forward.

Council Member Ticker, do you have any other questions on any of my crazy mathness that we just did?

No, I got it.

Okay, awesome, thank you.

I would just, I would say I think that we still have to count the $12 million that we have expended and would need to reimburse ourselves for, so I think it's a bit more like $100 million.

Okay, I appreciate that.

I'm acting like I've totally got that under control, but I really don't.

But I'm not going to hold up the committee right now.

We'll figure that out between now.

So this is not an easy decision, but I'm supportive of moving forward with the $9 million.

We talked about that before.

And I think making sure that we all understand what we're getting into.

At the council briefing on Monday, questions.

I'll pass it over to you Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

Colleagues councilmember bageshaw in particular said she wanted to move forward and wasn' t going to be here.

I have some questions about some understanding about how future decisions are made.

I don' t know if you' ve had any discussions with her I haven' t specifically seen any language she wanted to add but I committed to work with her on that.

My to send a recommendation to the full council for next Monday.

It may be that Council Member Bankshaw or others have some language in there.

that we'll want to consider at full council.

It's possible that my colleagues will think there's too many questions still and want to hold this.

And if we hold it for a day, it's at least three weeks because it goes into September.

I didn't hear desire to do that.

Although, Councilman Pacheco, if you have any concerns, I certainly want to hear your views on this too.

No, I'm prepared to vote in support of this, at least moving forward.

Again, just highlighting the awareness of what I've heard from constituents directly.

This is one of those projects that I know is very sensitive, but also understanding just the importance of the project itself for both our city as it's growing and for our downtown core, in addition to the commitments we've made to communities who benefit from the streetcar.

So I'm prepared to move forward.

And so in addition to the 100 or 110, we'll figure out the math there, million going forward, some of which has been budgeted, some of which we'll need to come up with.

We also have an operating deficit of a little over $5 million as projected today.

And so if we do commit to that, we'll also need to figure out operating money on an ongoing basis.

And so those are both considerations.

We're not making a commitment to any of this today because we will certainly want to hear what you learn from the $9 million, assuming the full council supports that.

We are going further down the street, which makes it easier or harder to walk back from and easier to want to continue financially.

But obviously, there's still multiple decision points in front of us.

Yep.

Great.

OK.

If there's nothing else, I'm going to go ahead and move Council Bill 119602. Second.

OK.

All in favor of supporting this, you might say an aye.

Aye.

So this will go to the full council, as I mentioned, on Monday.

We'll be in touch on the language.

We'd love your feedback on things that myself or colleagues may want to put in there.

Great.

Thank you.

Thanks for your work on that.

Kelly.

Next agenda item in.

Yes.

We have the Move Seattle Levy Oversight Committee quarterly update.

Still here.

I'm staying.

I'm staying.

Just hang out.

Right.

Sam.

All right.

Which one is this?

Oops.

You know, you should really just work this.

I know, I probably should.

I should figure it out.

All right.

Lorelei, when you're seated, we'll start with a round of introductions.

You can go first.

All right.

I'm Lorelei Williams, Deputy Director of Capital Project Delivery for SDOT.

Welcome.

Rachel McCaffrey, Levee Accountability Manager.

Good to see you back here.

Still Sam Zimbabwe Director.

All right.

Triple header, man.

I'll kick it off.

I may have to, depending on how long the discussion goes, I may have to slip away for a prior commitment as well.

But, and again, I'm going to turn it over to Rachel and Lorelei to get into the details.

This is the second quarterly update that I've been here.

to deliver, and this is just part of our regular reporting and transparency that we are doing with the Move Seattle levy after the reset work that was done last year, just to show our commitment and commitment to transparency in delivering the commitments that we've made.

Despite some of the challenges of snowstorm and viaduct closure and all of the things that we've been managing as an agency.

This year, we've had...

What I refer to as our welcoming party.

Welcome party, yes, exactly.

We've been able to make strong progress here to date on delivering on the levy.

I think the Q2 report demonstrates that and also demonstrates, and you'll hear about some challenges that we are still concerned about, about and making sure that we stay on this trajectory that we're on.

This is the highest expenditure, our highest spend to date through two quarters of the year so far in the levy.

But really what we're concerned about is our delivery of outputs and outcomes that really drive our work.

The expenditure is a key milestone, but it's just one measure of sort of our success overall.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Rachel, and she's going to start walking through the presentation.

So next up, just going to do a quick overview of what we've got this afternoon.

We'll do a quick review of the purpose of the quarterly reports, talk about the performance summary through Q2, including specifically the Neighborhood Street Fund Program.

Then we'll talk about our finances, and then time for questions at the end.

So, quick review of the quarterly reports.

Like Sam mentioned, these are kind of a direct outcome of a new format and approach as a direct outcome of the assessment from last year.

So, they are quarterly and they document the two things we talked about we'll go through today, performance on delivery and finances.

The performance and delivery metrics are communicated against the planned annual accomplishments.

So, in this case, 2019 planned accomplishments.

which is a new approach that we launched earlier this year to really show progress in this one isolated year, how we're doing against that one goal.

The reports are published on a regular schedule, so this is our third or fourth in this format.

And then the quarterly reports roll up into an annual report published the following year.

Questions before I jump into the...

So performance for Q2.

Q2 saw some of the regular ramp up that is traditional for the warming summer months of construction season.

The chart on the right is just a quick by the numbers highlights of some of the key programs that have those widgety deliverable outputs.

We do expect all programs to meet their planned accomplishment for this year at this time.

There are a couple that are a little behind.

The example I'll use is for crosswalks repainted, which is the top on that list.

Typically at this time of year, those have exceeded 1,000.

And they're a little behind this year for weather and some competing priority issues.

But we expect to make up that work through the rest of this year.

And then we had five construction contracts advertised in Q2 and five awarded, which demonstrates really significant progress on some of the big work.

So then some key accomplishments.

This slide highlights a few important projects that we were able to get done and sort of check off the list during second quarter.

The first example is Northeast 65th Street Vision Zero Corridor, which transformed this high-priority collision corridor, including Avenue Protected Bike Lane through the Roosevelt area.

We finished paving 23rd Avenue Phase 2. We turned on the signal at 13th and Holman, which is a neighborhood street fund project from the last time around, which also is a compatible crossing with the North Seattle Neighborhood Greenway, which is the last project on that list that adds 2.7 miles of greenway in North and Northwest Seattle.

So then that was kind of talking about stuff that we got in the ground and completed, and this is a look at some design milestones that we reached on a few of the really big levee projects.

We awarded the construction contract for Fairview Bridge, which is a significant milestone towards starting construction later this year, I believe.

Well, we're already starting the preparatory work before we close the bridge.

We're moving forward now.

And that was awarding the contract was moving beyond the hurdle of re-advertising that project, which was something we encountered earlier in the year.

We also hit 30% design on Delridge, RapidRite H Line, and 90% on Madison.

Quick question.

As these projects advance and we go through design and then I assume with an award, we start to get more and more cost certainty about that, and the risk goes away.

On the Fairview project, which is a big one, or just more broadly, how are we doing?

We tell you to spend more money sooner, of course, because we want the projects done.

But of course, we would love projects to be less expensive than we anticipate to.

So are costs looking like are in line with our expectations, or are we seeing different kind of market fluctuations out there that are trending one way or the other?

Let's see.

So I guess I'll start first with the kind of the first part of your question, and then it will lead into the next part.

But when we enter into the construction phase, we definitely have more of a level of certainty because we received bids and we have actual prices versus just our estimates.

For a project such as the Fairview Bridge, where there's still a lot of, I would say, more involved construction where you're building a bridge over water, there's still a fair amount of risk at the early phases, and as you get out of the ground and you're building just the deck portion of the project, then you're in a much better place in terms of risk and cost certainty.

So basically, as you progress through construction, that gains.

For a paving project, have less risk during construction.

So once you've gotten the bids, you feel more confident than you do on, say, a bridge project.

And then so the second part of your question, remind me one more time, because I got focused on that.

That clarity is helpful on those different types of projects.

At a point, this is a part of the presentation so you don't have to answer this if you're not prepared to, but just are we seeing that costs are in line with our projections in general across the various projects?

I know one of the reasons for the reset was costs because the construction, tight construction market was just we're seeing things a lot more expensive.

We reset our costs.

I'm curious how that feels out there now or if it's too soon to tell.

Well, so I don't have a summary of it, so I can't give you exact numbers, but the majority of the projects we bid recently, our engineer's estimates have been around like the second and third kind of price in there, which means that's right where we want to be, right in the middle of the bids.

So generally, we've been able to award projects for a bid price that's less than our engineer's estimate.

We had an exception to that in our Northgate Bridge project where the costs were more than what our engineer's estimate was, we have a proposal for how to address that.

And sometimes that happens too, particularly on those more complicated projects where it's harder to predict the estimates.

So it sounds like we're through a phase where everything was coming in over and we were And we've made some adjustments on our end.

And our ability to predict the market a little bit seems like we're better there.

And so great.

That's helpful.

I would say the market in general has stabilized a bit.

It's not quite as unpredictable as it was about a year and a half ago.

So that's helpful too.

All right, we'll shift gears just a little bit, talk about the Neighborhood Street Fund Program specifically.

So just to explain the program real quick, the Neighborhood Street Fund Program is funded by the Move Seattle Levy and is a city program that enables the community to propose and help prioritize transportation-related projects that are then built by SDOT.

Each cycle has three years, a year for planning, a year for designing, and a year for building.

And we are in the plan year for the 2019 to 2021 cycle.

This slide just explains or shows the difference between the process used for the last cycle that started in 2016 versus this one.

And over the past several months SDOT has been completing this planning and public engagement phase.

which was developed in partnership with the Department of Neighborhoods to engage the public in developing proposals and voting on projects.

The arrow shows that we are in the last main step of the planning phase, which is actually culminating tonight at the Levee Oversight Committee where the committee will, they have been reviewing the sort of almost final list of projects and they'll be reviewing and selecting the final projects that will be part of this cycle.

public meeting happening in half an hour, so come join us and watch it play out in real time.

Thanks for all your work on that, Rachel, and thanks to the committee members who I know do a lot of work to really understand and interpret the votes in the project.

It's been a big effort for everyone.

So just to quickly show some of the sort of product of the engagement phase for NSF Neighborhood Street Fund, the community vote phase, which is I think the primary means they collected votes produced over 6,000 votes online.

But in addition to that, they did additional targeted outreach in Districts 1, 2, and 5 to reach communities there, hosting events, kind of meeting people where they are, like pop-up events, community dinners, open houses, and voter education events, provided paper ballots in eight languages.

And that effort saw an additional 700 paper ballots through that process with some of the demographics shown on the screen.

It under represents the white population in Seattle, which is unusual, and so I really appreciate the very hard work that folks have targeted to do that.

And we'll pivot back to normal levy business with the finance update.

So this is our Q2 report.

I want to acknowledge that Q1, because of the phasing of our budget cycle, we had the opportunity to match actuals with our predictions.

So though that is right on, it was right on because it was right on.

As for Q2, we actually were pretty successful in estimating what we would spend.

I have a slide.

I have a slide.

Anyway, we were successful in estimating what we would spend in the second quarter.

And pretty darn close.

That's about as good as it gets.

And with that, deliverables also.

So we are trending in the right direction.

It was a successful quarter.

And then I'll just note, too, that we continue to evolve our process for developing our spending plans and analyzing risk.

And so it's nice to see that show up and how the numbers change.

So then here, what we see is where we're at in spending for 2019 compared to previous years.

So we are heading in the direction we had been planning to head and was represented in our work plan process last year.

What's the difference?

Oh, sorry.

Actual through Q2 total.

Got it.

Never mind.

Thank you.

complex graph with two different tables, got to keep me on my toes here.

There's a lot of colors.

Yes.

And then we have yet another one here.

So this is a pie chart that shows you just the relationship between the three different categories in the levy and how those are being, how much has been spent in each of those to date.

So congestion relief is about 44% spent.

The other two are a little further behind that are slightly heavier in our crew project work and just other things that happened during the course of third quarter and the better weather.

So it's a typical trend.

And then last of all, just last week we published the second quarter report that we're talking about today.

So that's online and available for everybody to read and we will share a short presentation with the Levy Oversight Committee tonight.

So we're here talking to you now, we have the committee this evening, and as Rachel said earlier and we talked about, the major focus of this evening's meeting will be the NSF project selection.

I really appreciate, well I really appreciate the report, I really appreciate the work that that you all have done.

I know the Levy Oversight Committee did a lot of work with you all.

I know the mayor has made this a priority, kind of inherited some challenges when she came in.

And it's, you know, for me, it felt like there was a period of learning about a lot of things that were going kind of in the wrong direction, some things beyond our control, some things probably could have done better at internally.

But recognizing that you don't, you know, the second you identify it, it's rare that you just flip a switch and it's fixed.

And so you all made it really clear at the time that like, hey, we can get this righted.

We're making a new plan.

You came out with a new plan.

And yet there's still this question mark.

It's like right now it's just talk and paper and words.

And if you really don't have your act together, we're just gonna keep doing this until the levy's over and it'll be a mess.

But of course, the hope was like, hopefully in a year or two, we'll start to see the results of the work that was done.

And to me, it's still early, but this is a signal at least that the projections, the revisiting, the revising of that, the reset, whatever you wanna call it, seems to be generally on track.

I mean, it's still construction, it's still, there's uncertainty, there's lots of things going on, but it feels really good.

You know, I'm excited to see a couple more quarters of this.

I'm particularly excited about the Center City Bike Network, because I know that's kind of hitting the ground now, and that was another thing that kind of got derailed a bit.

But I think, you know, tentative kudos, because it feels like things are heading in the right direction.

And hopefully a couple more reports like this over the next few quarters really help to build back the credibility.

Again, I don't think that credibility loss is because of individuals.

There's an amazing group of people that work in the team.

But a confluence of circumstances created some challenges.

And I think you all have responded to those challenges really well.

And it looks like we're getting the results.

So keep up the good work.

Thank you.

We appreciate that.

I would say we, too, are cautiously optimistic.

Our team's very focused on delivery of the levy and what it means for our department.

And so hopefully we can continue to showcase that.

And in the future where we have challenges, they're not in the things that we can control.

They're more in the things that we can't, because we still have some of those out there, too.

Councilmember Jaco any any questions or comments on this you should vote done I'll I'll just reiterate earlier conversations around the Green New Deal and You know, we talked a lot about fossil fuels but to and we'll have lots of policy work we're doing there, but obviously People need a transportation system that gives them lots of options to make that work.

Transportation is our biggest carbon pollution sector.

And so, you know, frankly, our success on the Green New Deal or addressing climate change is heavily dependent on success.

at SDOT.

And so it also makes me feel good to see that things are heading in the right direction, because I need you guys to be an awesome team working towards all this.

We need the public to be confident in it, because we're going to need this levy and future levies to fund a lot of the investments we're going to need so that everyone has access to carbon-free transportation in the near future.

Good work, keep it up.

Thank you.

We'll do.

See you in a bit.

I was going to say, I really want to echo that point.

I mean, Council Member O'Brien is spot on in terms of what the city's responsibility and really can be able to lead on with regards to the Green New Deal is so much dependent on the success of you all.

So with that, I mean, I want to You know, we've changed the name of SDOT to the Seattle's Green Department of Transportation, just to really emphasize the Green New Deal.

We had a Green Dot program.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, Council Member Pacheco.

Thanks, everyone.

Sam, you're excused.

Put your shoes back on.

All right, Kelly, we have one final agenda item.

Do you mind reading that into the record?

And I'll invite presenters forward.

We have a briefing on transportation impact fees.

Councilman Pacheco, I asked you to stay here till five.

It's after five.

We're still going.

I'm hoping to not go over three and a half hours like I did a week ago, but that's gonna be somewhat dependent on our presenters here and the questions you and I ask, but I'm really grateful for you sticking around as long as you did.

Thank you.

All can arm wrestle over seats when you're ready.

And we'll start with just a quick round of introductions.

Ketel, do you want to go first?

Sure.

Ketel Freeman, Council Central staff.

Sherry Sue, Burke Consulting.

Kendra Braylon, Ferron Piers.

Kevin Ramsey, Burke Consulting.

Welcome, everyone.

Thank you for your patience and being at the end of the agenda today.

I apologize we're going so long, but I am excited about this presentation.

Keitel, do you have some kind of opening framing you want to jump in with?

Sure.

So, as the committee members know, work on transportation impact fees has kind of gone in fits and starts, and we're at a point now where we may be able to start again, so to speak.

A hearing examiner decision on an appeal of a SEPA threshold determination is expected sometime this month, and so it's a good opportunity to orient the committee to The subject of transportation impact fees and some of the documents that the committee will use in making a decision about a future transportation impact fee program and Farron Peers and Burke are here to talk about two of those documents.

One is a look at capital funding across some peer jurisdictions, which Burke completed back in December of 2018. And another is some work done by Farron Piers on an updated rate study, which will form the basis for an impact fee program.

Great.

And so just to put a point on this for the public, to implement transportation impact fees, we need to update our comprehensive plan with the transportation project list.

Attempted to do that last December, but there was an appeal to environmental review of that document, which is still pending.

And so we're prohibited from taking any action on that until the hearing examiner issues their ruling, which, as you mentioned, should come sometime this month.

So this presentation is in anticipation of hopefully a good ruling.

That's what I'm hoping for, so that we can move forward.

There's obviously a chance that We get a ruling that says, no, we have to do more work, in which case we'll have to do whatever they tell us to do.

But the presentation today is a hope to kind of reground us, frankly, in a lot of information that's been out there today.

And my hope would be to have future discussions in upcoming committee meetings as soon as, I believe, a week from Friday.

Is that accurate?

would be the next conversation, hope possibly by then we would have some certainty.

We can continue to discuss these actions, we just can't take final council action until it's been out of the hearing examiner, but I don't wanna invest too much time until we know for certain what that looks like.

So I will hand it over to you all, and after I had that long preamble, there's 40 slides here, so let's get through them with diligence, but also I'll try not to ask too many more questions.

Great.

Do you want me to start, Ketel?

Sure.

All right.

And I will keep this very brief because I am a believer that too much information sometimes at one point is just too much.

So I've been asked to give some background on transportation impact fees, specifically kind of what state statute allows.

how we structure those programs, and then we'll shift our focus to what it might look like in the city of Seattle.

So just on the screen are just, you know, some of the real basic tidbits about transportation impact fees.

First of all, they're one-time charges paid by New Development.

They were authorized by the Growth Management Act of 1990. And really, state statute provides some parameters in terms of what they can fund.

Specifically, they must fund transportation projects that provide capacity for future growth.

They can't fund kind of purely maintenance projects that are addressing existing deficiencies.

So pot hill filling or projects like transit operations, those are not expenditures that are authorized under state law.

Some other kind of tidbits, projects must be within a community's capital facilities element.

As we mentioned, that is the subject of the appeal at this moment, but hopefully we'll get some good news soon.

And really what has, I think, led the city to be interested in this funding mechanism, because there are, of course, many ways you can fund transportation, is we've seen a trend towards communities using impact fees for more multimodal projects, since we've seen a nice alignment between Seattle's objectives for mobility and what impact fees can help provide.

Impact fees are very common throughout the state.

There are over 70 communities that have transportation impact fees.

We've got just a smattering of kind of Puget Sound jurisdictions and kind of that range of rates on the screen right now.

Highest rates are about 15,000 per what you'd consider a single family home.

That's kind of the rates that are shown here.

All the way down to 1 to 2,000 within the Puget Sound.

per single family home, and when you're looking at what is kind of a typical rate in the Puget Sound, it's probably about $5,000 to $6,000.

So state law prescribes really how we structure these programs.

So we start with a list of eligible projects.

So again, looking to projects that are within your capital facilities element.

Also those projects that are providing capacity and kind of fit there within the right of way of local streets and roads.

the parameters of things that we can spend or we can fund with impact fees.

State law kind of prescribes some of the steps that we then take.

We strip out the cost of existing deficiencies.

So, for example, in the projects in Seattle, we'd be looking to the paving components of those projects.

If it's purely pavement maintenance, it's probably not something that would be allowable under state law.

We also do some modeling procedures to understand the portion of those projects that are serving Seattle's growth versus non-city growth.

And then the last step is really getting at a maximum defensible rate.

kind of taking all those eligible costs and spreading it over the growth in trips anticipated in a jurisdiction over kind of the lifetime of its program.

So that's kind of in a nutshell kind of how you structure an impact fee program.

I want to shift our focus now to Seattle and what a program could look like in this community.

And so in developing kind of this draft rate study, which we'll be bringing forward in a couple of weeks, We looked over kind of all these eligible potential projects in kind of a lot of your adopted plans.

And so you can see on the map here a list of 20 to 30-odd projects, very multimodal in nature, that we could consider funding with impact fees.

So then we ran kind of these projects through the set of calculations that I described in the previous slides.

So first of all, those eligible projects that I showed on the previous slide, that's about 1.7 million in capital projects that the city anticipates delivering somewhere in the next 12 or so years.

The next step is then to look at each of those projects and extract those components of the projects that wouldn't be eligible for impact fees.

So one of those is the existing deficiencies.

So of that 1.7 billion in projects, we identified that about 272 million of those projects are really kind of more oriented towards addressing existing deficiencies.

So kind of stripping out those costs.

The next step is then of that component, then doing some modeling and analysis to understand who's using those trips and really understanding to the extent you've got through trips or trips that aren't related to Seattle land uses, stripping out that component.

And so again, another 451 million of that original list is components of those projects are things that we can't be funding with impact fees.

And so getting down to kind of those eligible costs, we've got about $968 million.

are funds that could be kind of charged impact fees.

And so taking that amount of eligible costs and spreading it over the growth and trips we expect in Seattle, that's what kind of provides the basis for a maximum defensible fee.

Something we recognize is that impact fees at the very heart are about addressing the impacts of transportation.

And we recognize that the impacts of transportation are going to be different in different parts of the city.

So urban centers, urban villages, areas nearby rail stations, those are likely going to generate fewer auto trips given kind of transit availability, walking, biking, uses being closer.

we wanted to recognize that differential impact.

And this is really consistent with the city's comprehensive plan, which set a mode share level of service standard, and really that mode share level of service standard recognizes that single occupant vehicle trips tend to take, have the biggest toll on our constrained urban system, and that when people are using other modes, they're using less space, and that makes more transportation availability and mobility for everyone.

So that's something that we would be taking into account in structuring a program for the city.

This kind of my last slide is just recognizing that, you know, the next step would actually be affixing kind of the cost per trip into actual land uses.

So we have some relationships we can use from the Institute of Traffic Engineers manual and from local PSRC household travel survey data.

to really kind of understand how do different land uses really result in different transportation impacts such that we can set an impact fee program.

And we'd be looking to work closely with council really to establish that in terms of the land uses that would be charged, the different categories, if, you know, kind of our thoughts around having these area adjustments make sense.

Those are kind of the next steps, so.

So thank you so much for that overview, and thanks for your ongoing work on this.

Three years?

Four years?

How long have you been engaged with the city on this?

Since 2015. Four years, good.

Well, I'm actually interested in potentially next Friday I'm in committee coming back with some specifics around some of these programs.

So, my understanding is a lot of that, there's probably a few more questions to be resolved, but are we close enough that that's a possibility?

Yes.

Great.

So, Council Member Chico.

Because I'm recognizing that you've done a lot of work for this, on behalf of this, can you share the developing, the fee schedule that you've probably already developed?

You can send that to me after committee.

Oh, yes, absolutely.

I would appreciate yeah in attached to the agenda is the draft a right study from fair and peers and that actually has a Conceptual fee schedule at the end of it that's based on the maximum supportable fee so not necessarily the fee that the council may consider but Chose a fee schedule based on the maximum fee calculated by fair and peers so

Great, so that's great work.

We, for the folks that are tracking this publicly, you can go to the documents and see what's there in the draft study.

We will do a presentation specifically about that, and I'll likely include what I'll put as my proposal forward, Council Member Pacheco, on, you know, where in that range it'll be less than the maximum and probably somewhere comparable to what the kind of average in Puget Sound cities are doing.

But I'll put that out there forward so people can start to understand what we're talking about, how much money would it generate, how much would it cost for certain projects.

And I think that level of specificity will help us get some more feedback.

So the next presentation, or the continuation of the same presentation.

So the city asked us to do a little bit of background research to understand how Seattle and other comparable jurisdictions are funding their transportation capital projects.

So we are reporting on that work today.

There's a couple of key questions that we're focused on.

One is, again, like how does Seattle fund, what revenue sources does Seattle use to fund its capital?

capital transportation projects now, and what about other comparable jurisdictions around the Puget Sound area?

as well as in other states.

How do they fund their capital improvements?

And then looking at how these different funding strategies, what are the implications for cost burden to individual households at different income levels within those communities?

So, you know, revenue sources are taxes and fees.

Some of those go directly towards are paid directly by households, some of which are indirectly paid by households.

We did some additional analysis to try and understand what is the relative cost burden, how are those costs for those revenue sources distributed among households in the population?

And then finally, looking specifically at communities that rely more on impact fees as a revenue source, how does the cost burden and the distribution of cost burden, how is it different in those communities versus a place like Seattle that does not currently have impact fees?

So the first half of this is looking at the capital funding sources and expenditures.

And Sherry's going to talk more about that work.

Sure.

So our approach to identifying transportation capital funding in Seattle and in other jurisdictions was to review capital improvement programs.

And so we looked at historical actuals over the period of 2013 to 2017, just as a five-year window of time.

to identify the revenue sources being used for transportation.

So some of those common revenue sources are shown on the slide here.

There are both unrestricted sources, so general fund taxes that are not specifically dedicated to transportation, and as well as other sources that are specific to transportation, such as impact fees or a transportation benefit district.

So in order to compare some of these revenue sources across jurisdictions, each of which, you know, categorize their revenue sources differently and have, you know, different types of reporting methods, we grouped these revenue sources into some general buckets.

And the data we received from staff at these jurisdictions and then we grouped them into the following categories.

I'll start with Seattle, as we're most familiar with the Seattle data.

And so this is the total five-year transportation capital revenues from 2013 through 2017. It's about $1.2 billion.

And I'll just walk through these categories generally.

You'll see that we've categorized many different sources into these broad buckets.

So starting on the top, the upper right-hand corner of this donut chart in green, You'll see that debt is about a third of Seattle's transportation capital revenues.

So that's both the limited and unlimited tax general obligation bonds.

Moving down, there's the voted transportation levies, which is the Move Seattle levy.

I'll point out that in that blue grants and intergovernmental transfers section, that's where the motor vehicle fuel tax which is the state gas tax distribution shows up.

We just grouped all of the federal, state, and county funds into that.

Moving on, there is some money coming from REIT, so that's the tax levied on sales of real estate.

And then I'll just also point out that the Transportation Benefit District vehicle license fees are currently showing up in that dark blue in the upper left under system development charges, just because the title's a bit confusing maybe, but that's where that is showing up right now.

So I'll just remind everyone that this is just a window of time.

It's five years, and that's why debt, which is taken on during this period of time, is shown here as a revenue source, because that is financing that becomes available during that period of time, although we're not showing exactly when that is paid off, because it might not be during this five-year period.

And so the debt's an interesting one, because it's how we're It's really a financing tool as opposed to a funding, and so the debt will have to be repaid.

And I assume, I get how when you're doing this for a short period of time, and we're repaying it over 30 years, and you don't know how we're going to repay it.

I mean, I told you that, but does the repayment of existing debt that was repaid during this period show up, or is it just the capital projects that were initiated and funded during this period?

It's just the capital projects, I believe, that were funded during this period.

Yeah, we'll talk a little bit more about that in the cost burden section as well.

A lot of these revenue sources are—some of the debt is paid for by dedicated revenue sources that we've identified and do allocate to households in the cost burden analysis.

Some of the debt, the LTGO, may be paid off in general funds.

We don't have specific information about that.

So there is some portion of debt that may not be fully reflected in the cost burden analysis, and that's a good observation.

Great.

I'll move on to Bellevue next.

So the total five-year transportation capital revenue number here is around $260 million.

And I'll note that about half of this is coming from debt.

And again, based on our discussion just now, that is financing that has become available during that period of time and is being used transportation capital without necessarily accounting for how much or when that is being paid off.

I'll also point out that REIT is being utilized at a similar percentage level as Seattle and that Bellevue also has Bellevue has a transportation impact fee which was established in 1989 and that's bringing in about 5% of funding for transportation capital.

The next slide shows Kent, and similar to Bellevue, it has a transportation impact fee.

Theirs was established in 2010, and it's bringing in 5% of its transportation capital revenue.

Something unique to Kent is that it has a street business and occupation tax.

So typically, B&O is not dedicated toward a specific purpose, but Kent decided to dedicate theirs to to transportation starting in 2013. Next, we have summarized the transportation capital for unincorporated King County.

So most or about half of this funding is coming from the road fund, which is made up of a variety of sources.

But much of that is the property tax levy, which is levied on unincorporated areas of King County.

There's also some county contributions and state gas tax distributions that fall under that category.

I'll also note that King County did have a transportation impact fee, but it is no longer being used as of 2017. So this next slide shows data from Portland and I just wanted to sort of caveat that Portland has a very different system of reporting, transportation data.

They have different categories and we have limited financial information since this is based on publicly available data.

So we don't know necessarily what is included in the same amount of detail as we are familiar with the Washington jurisdictions.

But what I'll point out is that the system development charges, which is shown in red here, is most similar to impact fees.

And that is bringing in about 6% of revenue for Portland.

This table here summarizes the per capita transportation capital spending across the five jurisdictions I've summarized.

So that first column, average annual transportation capital, is just the total divided by five years.

The next column is just an average annual population across that five-year period.

And then that third column on the far right is the average annual per capita transportation capital spending.

So a few observations, Seattle does appear relatively higher, though close to Bellevue's number, and I'll just again point out that we have some uncertainty surrounding Portland's number because we're not as familiar with their reporting systems, and so I would use caution when comparing that number to the others.

On those comparisons, these are just the city of expenditures.

It's not Sound Transit expenditures in Seattle.

It's not King County Metro expenditures.

It's just, okay.

So Portland may, there's their whole structure about which, what local responsibility, what other agencies do could be different down there too.

Yeah, that's absolutely a possibility.

So now we're going to turn to the second question.

We're looking at cost burden.

So this is basically, now we have a little bit more understanding of how different communities raise funds to pay for transportation capital.

And now we're going to be looking at how is the burden of that fundraising distributed across households within a city.

So to do that, we first identified a couple typical household types.

We looked at, we kind of defined three different ones at different income levels and gave them some characteristics that we could then use to help with modeling and estimating what would a typical household of that type be spending in taxes annually or fees annually that are related to each of the different funding sources that are used for transportation capital.

This just shows a kind of a high level, you know, some of the characteristics.

So the upper middle income is a homeowner household.

They own a medium price single family home based in the jurisdiction.

They own two cars.

They have an income of about 150% of area median income, which in the Seattle area is around $100,000.

So it's about $150,000 for the upper middle income household.

And then we have two different renter households, a moderate income and a low income renter household with different assumptions about, you know, the age of the, you know, the apartment that they're living in.

You know, income obviously varies between them as well.

We've also, you know, the model behind this has other characteristics such as how much do they drive a year, what is their annual consumption, you know, the fuel efficiency of vehicles, that's based on the best available real data that can be used to differentiate these different types of households and come up with comparable estimates of what a typical household kind of like that would be spending.

We also looked at all the different revenue sources that Sherry just went through and identified the ones that could arguably be either directly paid by a household, such as a homeowner directly pays property tax.

And so a jurisdiction that uses property tax to pay for capital, transportation capital, that's a more direct line that we can, we know.

in our assumptions what the average house, the value of their home is, we know how much property tax they pay.

We also look into the finances of the jurisdiction to understand what percentage of that property tax goes to transportation capital so that we can kind of discount that property tax payment to just the amount that goes to transportation capital so that we really can zero in on what are those direct costs to these typical households that we've developed.

So we do that for vehicle fees, we do that for gas tax, we do that for sales tax and household consumption for jurisdictions that use those things.

For the renter households, you know, obviously the property tax there is an indirect payment because, you know, they don't directly pay property tax, they pay rent.

You know, with, you know, our assumptions for the study that within this current housing market that the entirety of property taxes are passed on on a per unit basis to renter households.

That's an assumption that we just used to try to understand how these different fees might be passed on to different household types.

So then we look at potential and other indirect costs.

And these, you know, the two main categories we're looking at here are impact fees and REIT, the real estate excise tax.

These, you know, they're both one-time fees.

In the first case, it's, you know, the levied on, you know, on each unit built, as Kendra was describing before.

Excise tax, that's, you know, on every real estate transaction there's a tax on that that's used as a funding source.

So our model looks at how would those potentially be passed on to, or paid directly in some cases, like for homeowners.

You know, some assumptions about how would those be passed on to different household types.

And, you know, so not all households would be paying these, particularly ones that are, you know, living in an older unit and not moving.

So, you know, that's why we categorize these differently as potential indirect costs.

So we treat them differently in the analysis, as you'll see in a second here.

Okay.

There's a number of funding sources that we don't consider in this cost burden, mainly because it's hard to attribute them directly to households, such as grants from the federal government.

We all pay federal taxes.

That's not a state, that's not a city thing.

The motor vehicle excise tax, the sound transit tax that we pay, that's not, you know, Seattle jurisdiction or Bellevue District.

a regional tax, so that's treated separately.

Things like SEPA mitigation, where there's no, like, standard fee schedule and is kind of negotiated on a case-by-case basis, that's not looked at here.

Sales tax and construction, that could be significant, but we don't calculate that here.

And some debt is not, as we mentioned before, some of the debt, because of the way the finances are reported, It's unable, we're unable to isolate what was the, how is that being paid off, the portion that goes to transportation capital.

So there's a lot of that is covered in this analysis, not all of the LTGO debt.

So finally here, this is a look at the direct cost burden.

So the sources that we can more directly attribute to households.

costs, and we're looking just at upper middle income households, and we're comparing four different Puget Sound area jurisdictions, Seattle, Bellevue, Kent, and King County.

As you can see, Seattle and King County have significantly higher direct cost burdens to these upper middle income households compared to Bellevue and Kent.

In the case of Seattle, there's some voter taxes.

The property tax is a big part of this.

The vehicle licensing fee is also a very large part of the Seattle cost burden.

In King County, it is primarily property tax.

You can see the numbers go down for moderate income households.

You know, a large part of that is that, you know, the portion of property tax passed through to an apartment renter is much smaller than a homeowner.

So you'll see those property tax ones shrink considerably.

But still you see that Seattle and King County have a much higher burden for a moderate income renter household than Bellevue and Kent.

Similar for low income, the numbers actually don't shrink all that much, particularly in Seattle, for the lower income household.

Again, this is a household earning about half or 50% of area median income and assumed to be renting.

This is a comparison of the direct costs across these four different jurisdictions.

Again, you'll see that, you know, in terms of direct costs, Seattle is highest, and particularly when it comes to the lowest income households, it's considerably higher than the other jurisdictions.

Unincorporated King County is also high for upper middle income, but it declines more drastically for the lower income households.

And again, Bellevue and Kent are a bit lower in terms of the direct household cost burden.

Quick, so the big driver, at least when I look at Seattle versus King County, seems to be that as the income level decreases, property tax decreases significantly in King County.

Yeah, when you look at, part of the issue there is that assessed values in Seattle are just higher across the board.

We had assumptions about the age of the apartment units that the low-income household and the moderate-income household live in.

We looked at actual assessor data to come up with like the average assessed value of apartments of that type within those jurisdictions and then figured out on a per-unit basis, what is the value of building on a per-unit basis.

So it just happens to be in unincorporated King County, older apartment buildings are quite lower in value than older apartment buildings in Seattle.

So you're seeing a big difference there.

Now we're getting into the potential indirect costs.

So this is the transportation impact fees and REIT.

And here you'll see a bit of a reversal because in Bellevue and Kent, they are more reliant on impact fees as a revenue source.

Again, not all households bear these costs, but we are showing them here as potential costs that could be potentially passed on.

or in some cases paid directly by a household that buys an area for REIT.

So here we're seeing, you know, the main indirect, potential indirect cost in Seattle is REIT.

They do rely on that.

But Bellevue and Kent, this is an annualized, because impact fees and REIT are one-time fees, of course, so this assumes that the homeowner, you know, buys a home that was built and had an impact fee imposed on it.

And that amount of the fee is then annualized across, you know, the mortgage period of, for the homeowner household.

So that's, you know, so it's basically annualized with interest is how we got to these numbers for an annual cost burden.

And you'll see again that Bellevue and Kantar is considerably higher than Seattle and King County for the upper middle income owner household.

For moderate income, it's a similar pattern.

Again, the numbers are not as large because it's spread out among an apartment building as opposed to all on a single family homeowner.

This is assuming that the renter is living in an apartment building that was built after the impact fee was in place and that those impact fees are passed on, the annualized cost of those impact fees were passed on to the renter households.

Here again we're seeing for the low income household, you'll see that Kent zeroes out.

That's because of our assumption that they're in an older apartment unit.

And Kent passed their impact fees more recently, as Sherry mentioned earlier on.

So here, see that Bellevue is the main one there.

There's an indirect cost for a low-income household.

This is just a comparison chart again of the potential indirect costs to households.

Again, you'll see that Bellevue and Kent are significantly higher than King County and Seattle.

So now what we're doing here is looking at at the total cost burden as percentage of household income by household type.

And we're looking at this by jurisdiction.

So right now we're looking at just Seattle and we're comparing these three different household types.

We're stacking both the direct cost burden as well as the indirect cost burden.

the potential indirect cost burden together, and if you combine those and assuming that they do bear those potential indirect costs, what would it be as a percentage of household income?

As you can see, as a percentage of household income, it's pretty low across the board.

You know, .36% is for a low income household.

So it's low compared to your annual income, but this is one way to look at what is it compared you know, what is the relative cost burden, how regressive or progressive is the tax.

So you'll see in Seattle, a low income household does have a higher percentage of their household income potentially burdened by taxes that go to transportation capital than an upper income or a moderate income household.

In Bellevue, you'll see the same pattern.

Again, a low-income household has the highest total potential cost burden.

It's a little bit higher in the case of Bellevue than Seattle for low-income households.

Again, not all low-income households would be bearing out those potential indirect costs of an impact figure rate.

In Kent, you see a little bit of a different pattern, mainly because, as I mentioned before, we're not assuming the impact fee is applying to the low income household, and the costs are lower overall.

In unincorporated King County, we're seeing a different pattern.

Again, the costs are lower overall as a percentage of household income, and the low income households are paying a lower share than the upper middle income households in unincorporated King County.

I'm going to highlight just a couple key findings from what we described here.

Again, Seattle's got a higher direct cost burden across all household types.

Bellevue and Kent have a higher potential indirect cost due to their reliance on impact fees and REIT.

The total potential cost burden, as we saw earlier, for households in Seattle and Bellevue are remarkably similar, actually.

However, again, not all households in Bellevue would bear the potential indirect costs of impact fees.

It depends on a case-by-case basis.

So that kind of begs the question, who could bear the costs of impact fees if they were to be added in a jurisdiction?

You know, an impact fee is a cost that increases the cost of new development if it were to be passed in Seattle or in another jurisdiction.

It's additional cost of development.

And there is some uncertainty regarding how these costs could affect housing production overall.

Of course, if you pass a very high impact fee, that could be a dampener effect on the decision of developers to develop in a jurisdiction.

fees are quite high.

If they're lower, they might have a much less effect.

So there's uncertainty regarding how the market would respond.

But if the market did decrease the amount of total production, then that could decrease supply, and that could increase costs overall for all home buyers and home people that live in rental properties due to increased competition.

But again, there's uncertainty about how the market would respond, and there's uncertainty about how much the fee would be.

Housing developers could potentially pass on the cost of impact fees to renters or home purchasers.

depending on market conditions.

So on a very competitive market, it's more likely that they could pass on those costs to home buyers or renters.

This would more likely occur for households renting or buying new housing would be more likely to see their costs rise due to the passed on cost of impact fees.

So that could be, you know, people moving to Seattle for the first time or people moving to a new residence in Seattle might be more likely to see those passed on costs.

People that rent or buy older housing or just living in older housing and not moving would be less likely to see their costs rise due to impact fees.

But again, there's uncertainty about how the market overall would respond.

Two more slides.

It's like you're typing.

So looking forward to what transportation impact the implementation might look like, it's essentially a three step process.

There is the step of incorporating a project list into the comprehensive plan.

Again, that proposal is currently, or the environmental review for that proposal is currently under review by the hearing examiner.

a decision from him on an appeal, we'll know more about when the council can take up that first step.

A second step is adopting an impact fee schedule and program, and so that's a policy and regulatory decision on fee schedules, exemptions, and other procedural requirements, including credits and things like that.

That would follow or happen concurrently with, a final action would follow or happen concurrently with action on comprehensive plan amendments.

So you can see how the hearing examiner's decision or when he makes his decision affects council timing for that.

And then finally, to act in 2019, the council would invoke an exception to the Growth Management Act limitation on how frequently the comprehensive plan can be amended.

And there is an exception that allows for multiple amendments a year when one amendment happens concurrently with adoption of a budget.

so that if the council were to take up an impact-free program this year, it would happen at least partially during the budget review process.

Can I see the next slide, please?

So, timing for what this might look like.

Again, this is all contingent on the timing of the hearing examiner's decision and what that decision is.

In August and September, the committee could discuss and take action on comprehensive plan amendments and potentially implementing regulations In September and October, the committee would take up a discussion of changes to the mayor's proposed budget associated with an impact fee program.

And then finally in November, all of those pieces of legislation could come together as part of a vote on the budget package.

You all have done quite a bit of research on this.

I really appreciate this, and it's quite helpful.

Again, in a week and a half, we'll be back here talking about some specific proposals to Seattle, but getting us all regrounded in this information is great, so thank you for doing that.

Council Member Pacheco, do you have any final questions?

Nope.

Not even one?

Just for sure to vote.

This is probably the longest committee meeting, so four hours.

We're getting on there, man.

But I appreciate it.

I was actually following along, so I do appreciate the work.

And I was going between studies and obviously been dropped right in the middle of this conversation as well.

So we'll see what happens next with the hearing examiner.

Thank you all.

Look forward to continuing the conversation.

And with that, we will be adjourned.

OK.

Four hours.