Select Committee on 2024 Transportation Levy Public Hearing 6/18/24

so

All right, good morning.

The June 18th, 2024 meeting of the Select Committee on the 2024 Transportation Levy will come to order.

It is 9.32 a.m.

I am Rob Sacca, chair of the Select Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Kettle.

Here.

Councilmember Moore.

Present.

Councilmember Morales.

Here.

Council President Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Rivera.

Present.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Wu.

Present.

Vice Chair Hollingsworth.

Here.

Chair Saka.

Here.

Chair, there are nine members present.

All right.

I want to thank council members Strauss and Morales for joining us remotely and finding a way to join us for this very important meeting and up against a very important conversation representing us on behalf of, I think, the Association of Washington Cities.

So thank you all for being here.

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

Hearing no objections, the agenda is adopted.

All right.

Well, welcome, colleagues and those of us who chose to join in person, those watching remotely, including a few constituents of mine, Ray Thompson and others.

I don't think I say it every single time, but it's absolutely true.

I'm fired up and ready to go.

And I'm very optimistic.

And I'm not just, you know, given lip service and just being passionate about my brand of authenticity on a lot of important topics, but it is, I'm not understating either that it just feels like we've been at this levy conversations considering this important levy for a while now.

It seems like a very long time in fact.

And so I feel good about the prospects of where we're headed directionally.

We are in also, I think the home stretch.

Great place to be as we put together, all of us together, a transportation levy package proposal that we can all be proud of and know that the public's broadest interests are being well served.

It's been very exciting and impactful work so far, and again, optimistic about the road ahead to finalize this important work.

I want to thank each and every one of you for your willingness to dive deep into the weeds given the many demands of this very busy council.

For my colleagues in the viewing public, to reiterate a few important points, my proposed chair's amendment from a few weeks ago represents an increase of $100 million over the mayor's final proposal to total $1.55 billion.

My new investments are centered on four themes.

Number one, road and pedestrian safety.

Number two, accelerating economic growth.

Three, climate and sustainability initiatives.

And fourth and finally, good old fashioned, good governance, transparency and accountability provisions.

With these new investments, this levy proposal is shaping up to be the most accountable and transparent in Seattle levy history.

A key takeaway in my last newsletter from dated Friday, June 7th, which by the way, includes a very detailed explanation of everything you'll need to know about this levy and includes kind of a technical deep dive on some of the thoughts and considerations underlying the levy, the chairs package.

Key takeaways that this levy is critical, never more critical due to our deteriorating state of our roads and bridges.

Never more critical to address the city's growth.

Never more critical to build and fix our sidewalks.

And to make better, more urgent progress on our Vision Zero traffic safety goals.

I could go on and on.

This is no exaggeration or hyperbole.

This current levy, the levy to move Seattle, funds approximately 30% of SDOT's budget and leverages millions of dollars in other grants and funds.

In 2023, the expiring levy accounted for roughly 12% of SDOT's vital operations and maintenance budget.

The stakes for this essential government service that provides vital transportation infrastructure investments across our city are very high.

That is why it is critically important that we get this right.

Our ability to deliver essential government services are directly on the line here, colleagues.

Public trust and confidence in the city to deliver the basics in a transformative new way is on the line here, colleagues.

People's jobs are on the line.

Again, that's why it's really important that we work together, roll up our sleeves, finalize these last mile important details and get this right.

Now, my newsletter included a very detailed explanation, again, of my proposed chairs package and the basic features of this levy package, along with helpful FAQs.

And I encourage anyone to go to my council's web page and view it, or better yet, subscribe to future newsletters.

And you can view an archived version of the newsletter or subscribe to my newsletter list at seattle.gov slash council slash Saka, S-A-K-A.

Today, time doesn't allow me to restate all the vitally important points called out in that newsletter, but at today's meeting, it is our opportunity to hear from each and every one of us on our respective priorities for this levy in our own words, and I look forward to hearing from each of you.

A few other points.

First, one to note is that SDOT has an updated summary and fiscal note which contains only one new addition, which is their racial equity toolkit, which was not finished yet when the original summary and fiscal note was published.

So you'll see that attached to our next meeting, July 2nd.

Second, to my constituents or those who may have concerns about the Vision Zero plan and the levy package, specifically the chair's proposed package, I want to reiterate and emphasize that in my proposed chair's package, I have not made any recommended reductions in funding for the mayor's proposal for Vision Zero investments and actually have increased funding for key subcategories, including safe routes to school.

Vision Zero remains a top priority of mine, and we must continue to aggressively move the needle to reach our goal of zero traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries.

As we move through each individual council member's proposed amendments, as chair, I view my job to bring forth a levy proposal that addresses several imperatives.

A consensus-type document, one that can accommodate as many of the items that you have all raised based on district needs, but also one that can meet the broadest priorities that voters can support.

And that, most importantly, the city is best positioned to deliver upon.

So these same principles will guide the creation of a proposed omnibus package for our July 2nd meeting when we vote.

So we're not voting on 100 different features of different amendments in our respective proposals.

So today's process will be to hear and discuss the amendments.

And then I will carefully review and discuss with each of you this week to see what items might align well to incorporate into a revised chair's package or omnibus type package.

Other amendments can be revised into the final ones to be presented for voting again at the next and final committee meeting on July 2nd.

A few other quick housekeeping items to note.

If there are new items added into the levy and no additional dollars added in that category, then it will be considered somewhat of an unfunded mandate.

That poses a concern as SDOT has guesstimated costs, and these candidate projects in the list is what voters will vote upon and expect delivery upon.

We all understand that unexpected situations may and can often do arise during the context of an eight-year levy or time frame.

So, God forbid, we have another pandemic or closure of a key critical bridge like the West Seattle Bridge.

But while voters expect delivery on what they have voted on, And indeed, there are many such candidate projects specifically listed in the larger asset categories.

There are also certain categories without specifically identified projects.

As intended, such flexibility was found to be very important during the past levies and was specifically raised and recommended by the Levee Oversight Committee.

Some proposed projects also, some proposed projects can and will be considered as part of the annual budget process as council approves and adopts SDOT's annual budget.

There can be adjustments within broad categories of up to 10% with a three-quarters vote of the council.

And recall on my chair's amendment, I've strengthened the reporting of SDOT's project implementation plans to council and not just during the annual budget process.

And finally, a friendly reminder that there will be no voting today.

The voting on all the chair's amendments and other amendments will be done at our final select committee meeting on July 2nd And so, colleagues, again, today, please share and present on your individual amendments at the appropriate times.

And importantly, please also share your initial observations and reactions about the proposed amendments from our colleagues as well, with the goal of working collaboratively to finalize and vote at the next meeting on a compromised final levy package to go before voters in the November 2024 general election.

Time to roll up our sleeves to get to work on this next phase.

And I couldn't be more energized at the prospect that we have to work together collaboratively and do this together.

So let's go, let's do this.

Vice Chair Hollingsworth, anything else to add from your perspective?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This time you warned me that you were going to call on me.

So I appreciate that.

So thank you.

Just wanted to thank you for, I know you have done a lot of hard work on this and just being accessible and transparent during the process and allowing us to have conversation and just staying engaged.

And I know how important this is to the community and listening to everyone.

So looking forward to hearing the rest of my colleagues and working through the move levy.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair.

All right.

That said, we will now open the hybrid public comment period.

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

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Currently, we have 18 in-person speakers signed up and there are 18 remote speakers.

All right.

Each speaker will have one minute.

We'll start with the in-person speakers first.

Clerk, can you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they registered.

Speakers will alternate between sets of 10 in person and 10 remote speakers until the public comment period has ended.

Speakers will hear chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call the next speaker.

and the public comment period is now open, and we will begin with the first in-person speaker on the list.

So our first in-person speaker is Lee Bruch, and followed by that will be Kirk Hovenkotter.

I'm Lee Bresch, a homeowner for 35 years near the intersection of districts four, five, and six.

Stephen Willis was a medical technologist walking on a sidewalk on Aurora on his way to work when a speeding car jumped the curb and killed him.

A couple weeks ago, a few weeks ago, when six people were killed on Seattle streets.

Deaths get attention.

But for every death, there are hundreds of traffic injuries ranging from minor injuries through life threatening events.

These are not accidents.

They are correct results of the city's choices, your decisions.

Prioritizing driver's convenience over all other.

Thank you.

Sir, your time has expired.

Thank you.

If you have written comments, you can submit those for the record.

We'd appreciate that.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Kirk Hovincotter, and following that will be Parker Dawson.

Hi, President Nelson, Chair Saka, members of the Select Committee.

I'm Kirk Hovincotter.

I'm the Executive Director of Transportation Choices Coalition.

I want to thank you all for your hard work and thoughtful amendments that you've added to this levy proposal.

We hope you had the opportunity to connect with the SDOT equity team to learn more about their work and what is meant in particular to the Neighborhood Initiative Safety Program.

We're asking you to support Councilmember Morales' amendment to restore full funding to this critical program.

As you know, this program is an evolution of the popular Neighborhood Street Fund program that's been crafted to ensure communities of all kinds have better access to the process and support of SDOT.

Also, generally, we support the amendments that increase funding for sidewalks, Vision Zero, Safe Routes to School, and key equity programs at SDOT.

I wanna thank you for your time, and we look forward to continue working with you on shaping this and working on the finishing touches.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker is Parker Dawson, and followed by that will be Tyler Blackwell.

Good morning, Council.

Thank you very much for considering so many amendments and such an important package for transportation.

My name is Parker Dawson here on behalf of the Master Builders Association.

I'm here to impress, I hope, a core value to help carry through the remainder of this process, and that is really hoping to invest boldly in the building maintenance and replacement of basic infrastructure like sidewalks and not be investigating new outside funding sources in their place.

If current policies hold, construction of new housing will continue to bear an outsized role on building new pedestrian infrastructure, while SDOT works to build sporadic and temporary fixes.

And while builders have proudly in the past stepped up and delivered on this critical need, I do hope that this council can recognize the clear nexus between housing affordability and responsibility of public infrastructure costs.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker is Tyler Blackwell, and followed by that will be Brittany Brost.

Good morning.

My name is Tyler Blackwell, and I'm the transportation planner for the Soto Business Improvement Area.

I am here to reiterate our support for the development of a freight program.

Currently, Estat only has two employees serving the freight department, one focused solely on rail, the other focused on making freight spot improvements throughout the city.

That means that there are only two people to oversee a complex network that underpins our economy and our city operations when it comes to the freight elements.

That means that there are only two people to usher in the STP goals and implement them.

And we are just here to, again, reiterate our support in the development, and if you need ideas for what those programs could be funded within the freight element, we have many ideas, and please come talk to us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker is Brittany Brose, and followed by that will be Chris Pohl.

Good morning, my name is Brittany.

I am a District 7 resident and I am a non-driver.

I hate that term because it still focuses around cars.

I prefer to be considered a permanent pedestrian.

And in order for this levy to work, we need to prioritize walking, rolling, biking, and transit.

That is the only way we're gonna meet Vision Zero.

To keep focusing this city around cars and people in cars, driving cars, is gonna keep making people that are outside of cars at risk.

I like the amendments that put focuses on sidewalks, sidewalk repair, focusing on transit and bike lanes, but some of the amendments getting rid of the greenways and other amendments that focus on putting more money towards paving projects without looking at the things around the projects, the sidewalks, the bike lanes, and the transit in the area fail to take into account.

what is going to happen to the people that aren't in the cars in that area.

Please consider this as you move forward with this levy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker is Chris Pohl, and followed by that will be Nick Citelli.

Good morning.

My name is Chris Pohl, and I live in Central Seattle in District 3. I'm a nurse practitioner working in primary care here in community health.

And I regularly counsel my patients with chronic disease to be more active.

That means biking to the grocery store, walking to the bus stop, or walking their kids to school.

That is, I encourage my patients to treat their chronic disease by engaging in a healthy lifestyle, not just relying on medication alone.

However, when I read that eight people have died on our streets in the past month, I have an ethical obligation to question if my recommendation to walk, bike, or take transit is truly doing the best for my patients.

We see from research that people who live in walkable neighborhoods are 1.5 times more likely to engage in adequate levels of physical activity and 0.75 less likely to have a chronic illness related to a sedentary lifestyle.

I'm a voter and would vote for a $7 billion levy that invests even more heavily in sidewalks and safety.

Thank you for your support in making Seattle a safer city to thrive in, not just to drive.

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker will be Nick Citelli followed by that will be Bre Cookwood.

Hi my name is Nick I'm a District 3 resident and I support a larger one point seven billion dollar levy and it's obvious from polling that the majority of Seattle also supports a much larger levy.

That means with the proposed levy we're leaving a lot of money on the table that we could be using for all of these improvements for biking walking and rolling.

This is at a time when two thirds of our emissions in Seattle come from transportation.

We have the ability to radically transform the way that we get around.

make it more sustainable, and achieve our Vision Zero goals.

But unfortunately, this levy, even with Chair's amendments, represents a 13 percent reduction in annual transit spending.

Last levy, we were promised full upgrades to rapid-ride corridors.

We were promised radical transformation in the way we get around, but that's not happening with this levy.

We're cutting our transit budget.

That's bad for our climate goals, that's bad for our livability goals, and that's bad for Vision Zero.

Please vote for amendments to increase the amount of funding going to biking, walking, and transit.

Please help us achieve our Vision Zero goals.

Please help us achieve our climate goals, which we're making no progress on.

And please .

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker is Bri Coakley, and our following that will be Cecilia Black.

Hi, I'm Bree Geinkeld.

I live in District 3. I want to specifically thank Councilmember Hollingsworth for including 12th Avenue in the list of projects in an amendment.

You may remember that a few weeks ago I came up here and I asked you all to tax me more as a homeowner.

And I'm a little disappointed that you're not doing that.

The amendments that I've seen, while they emphasize many of the things that we care about, Vision Zero, neighborhood inspired improvements, safe routes to school, they seem to be pitting those really important programs against each other.

And the truth is we shouldn't have to choose.

We shouldn't have to choose between repairing sidewalks and building sidewalks.

There's no ceiling.

1.55 is not a ceiling on this levy, and we know that Seattle voters will support more.

So we ask you to add money to the levy to fund the things we care about instead of trying to pick and choose among these really important priorities.

So thank you.

Text me more.

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker is Cecilia Black, and following that will be Carlo Alcantara.

Hello, my name is Cecilia Black, and I am a community organizer with Disability Rights Washington.

You have called for a once-in-a-generation investment in sidewalks, but even with doubling sidewalk investments, we are on a 200-year timeline to complete our sidewalk network.

We need a bigger levy voters are asking for.

We also know that our sidewalk program, like our bridges, needs billions of dollars that the levy can't provide.

GRW worked with the mayor's office on the task force proposal.

We were under the impression that the majority of the $5 million would also be allocated to full-time staff for a much needed sidewalk compliance program.

We are asking you to restore the task force program to the original proposal under pedestrian safety to focus solely on bridges and sidewalks.

The task force was not intended to solve the budget for the entire transportation system.

This is what the levy process is for.

Repurposing the $5 million for a task force focusing on broader transportation needs will recreate the levy process where many programs are fighting for limited funds and sidewalks and bridges will once again be put on the back burner.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Our last in-person speaker for this set is Carlo Alcantara.

Hi, I'm Carlo.

I'm a D5 resident.

I volunteer with the Aurora Reimagine Coalition.

I'm here to ask for a bigger levy.

We know polling has shown that voters support a $1.7 billion levy.

And at the moment, including the proposed $100 million add to bump it up to $1.55 billion, that's still only 44% of the levy that is currently allocated to fund transportation by rolling, biking, walking, and taking transit.

That's still 56 percent that's prioritizing cars.

It's a reflection basically of this priority to continue to invest in equitably in car infrastructure and getting around by cars and not in the safety of those who are walking, rolling, biking or taking public transit.

At the moment, we have investments slated for EV chargers.

We need those for bikes as well.

Instead of cops on buses and more police policing our transit and rails, we need more secure parking for bikes at things like Northgate Station rather than on our buses.

So again, a bigger levy is supported by the voters.

Thank you.

We are now moving to remote speakers for a set of 10. So our first remote speaker for this set is Chris Woodward.

Remote speakers, a reminder, please press star six once you hear the message that you have been unmuted.

So Chris Woodward.

Good morning, Council Members.

My name is Chris Woodward.

I represent the Alliance for Pioneer Square located in District 1. Providing comment today as it relates to allocation of funding of $3 million to address the critical need of street wall repairs within Pioneer Square.

As y'all move towards a final levy proposal package, the Alliance urges you to consider increasing the funding to $10 million to adequately plan and implement a long-term remediation of the historic street walls under the city's jurisdiction.

The city has recognized the importance of a systemic approach to address these structural vulnerabilities for decades, yet has not designated sufficient resources to its program to ensure an adequate response.

This infrastructure is critical for life and safety and must be addressed.

It's a complex infrastructure issue that requires a nuanced approach to funding, monitoring, maintenance, and repair.

As you consider this the next eight years, we urge you to prioritize and invest in long-term health of historic basis.

Thank you.

Our next remote speaker is BJ Last, and followed by that will be Enaki Longa.

Good morning.

My name is BJ Last.

I'm a Ballard homeowner, and I support a bigger levy of $1.7 billion that invests more in sidewalks and safety.

Honestly, I don't really support this current small levy that prioritizes car funding as the majority of it.

I'm a non-driver, like many people in Seattle, and investing this much in car infrastructure actually makes us all less safe.

Cars are actually the biggest public safety one.

Look at traffic fatality numbers.

They're extremely high.

Focusing on safety for people walking, biking, and rolling around the city.

Also, speaking of transit, I want to address transit safety.

The issue with safety on transit is getting a bus stop.

Currently, for me to get to one of my bus stops, I have to either make it across a fairly busy street or I have to go at least a half mile out of the way to get to the other side.

Safety is actually getting crossings there.

Safety is getting lighting so I can see where the sidewalk is uneven because, of course, our sidewalks are also in terrible condition.

Thank you.

The next remote speaker is Inake Longa, and following that will be Reed Hampton.

You were unmuted.

Try pressing star six again.

Oh, I think now.

Can you hear me now?

Yep.

Sorry for that.

Hi.

My name is Miyake Long and I'm a resident of District 3. I'm calling to express my support for a larger transportation levy.

As a voter, I would advocate for at least a $1.7 billion levy that significantly invests in sidewalks, transit safety, and other street amenities.

I frequently hear from other fellow Seattleites that they would use transit more often if it were better and more reliable, that they would bike more often if biking were not as dangerous in the area, and that they would walk more often if our streets were more welcoming and livable.

These sentiments reflect the broader support among voters.

I urge the Council today to endorse a larger transportation levy to meet these goals, aligning with the interests and desires of the voters.

Thank you for your time and for your support.

City Council Chambers, Our next remote speaker is read Hampton and followed by that will be Julia buck.

City Council Chambers, hi Council members, my name is we have been i'm a resident in district six.

City Council Chambers, The opportunity by public comment i'm coming in today to show support for Council members jobs with amendments with one caveat.

Council Member Scouse's amendments prioritizes some of our most productive assets in the city.

I'm specifically supportive of improvements to Ballard Ave., 14th Avenue, and targets for pedestrian improvements to the Ballard Bridge.

My only caveat is that these amendments should not come at the expense of other levy priorities, like sidewalks and state streets.

Polling has shown support for a larger levy, and I encourage this council to rise to the occasion and tackle this generational problem that we have.

Please support Councilmember Strauss' amendments and other Safe Streets amendments without sacrificing our other levy priorities by increasing the size of this levy.

This is one more voter who will vote for a $1.7 to $1.9 billion levy.

Thank you so much for your time, and I look forward to your amazing work on this levy proposal.

Our next remote speaker is Julia Buck, and followed by that is Ankur Dutt.

Good morning, Council.

My name is Julia Buck and I'm a homeowner and consistent voter in District 6 and I would vote for an up to $1.7 billion left for sidewalks and pedestrian safety.

if at least 50% of it goes to not cars.

I am also concerned about Council Member Saka's redirection.

I understand he doesn't want to brand it as a cut, but it is a reduction for the $15.5 million on equity-focused neighborhood projects.

This concerns me because 50% of our biking and walking desks in the past two years are in District 2, and I don't think we should have to choose between safe routes to school for kids and safe routes for people going somewhere other than school.

Six people were killed in Seattle in the last week of May, and three of them were walking, probably not to school since they were all adults.

But we should not accept pedestrian deaths.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next remote speaker is Ankur Dude, and followed by that is Robin Shader.

Good morning.

My name is Ankur, and I live and work in D7 and D6.

We've witnessed eight people killed in traffic violence on our streets in a two-week period.

These fatalities were not accidents nor outliers.

They happened on the arterials we already know to be the most dangerous for vulnerable road users.

I urge the council to increase the levy funding and ensure at least 50% from the current 44% of the levy is allocated to making walking, biking, and taking transit the safest and most convenient options for getting around.

budget is a reflection of our city's priorities and vision zero and our climate goals must be reflected in the budget i also encourage the council to ensure multimodal crossings of the ship canal are addressed in the upcoming levy specifically the ballard bridge needs to be made safe for people walking and biking as a growing regional center ballard needs to be connected across the ship canal with safe options for walking and biking thank you for working to ensure we have a budget which reflects our commission division zero and sets us up for a climate friendly future where two-thirds of trips are made by walking, biking, or transit.

Our next remote speaker is Robin Shader, and followed by that will be Joy Shigaki.

good morning my name is robin schachter resident in district 6 and i'm calling on behalf of a group of more than a thousand local residents school and college administrators and local businesses who support saving the king county metro metro bus line number 20 which is currently slated to be discontinued in september of this year this goes To Chairman Saka's comments earlier this morning about not eroding public trust and confidence, please don't allow Metro to create a transit desert where the system is currently working as designed.

Our request to not discontinue this bus route 20 is relevant to today's agenda because if it is discontinued, we need to ask request funding to add it back in and it's directly relevant to the Transit Corridor Connections concern.

This route connects the north-south corridor west of I-5 from the University District Light Rail Station.

Thank you.

Our next remote speaker is Joy Shigaki and followed by that will be Sharon Sobers-Outlaw.

Good morning, Council Members.

I'm Joy Shigaki, CEO of Friends of Waterfront Park.

We really appreciate your work on this transportation levy, and I'm calling to support Council Member Nelson's amendment of $700,000 to be directed to the Central Waterfront Project landscape maintenance needs.

Friends is a nonprofit organization providing leadership to manage programs, fundraising, community partnerships, park experience, and stewardship of this new civic space now and for generations to come.

And after 15 years in the making, Waterfront Park is preparing for its grand opening early next year.

But part of this historic project for all of the residents of Seattle and regional visitors is its care to be put to the highest standard.

We are pleased to be partnering with the Seattle Center, who is leading maintenance and public safety, and us providing the funding to ensure a very positive park experience.

But there are elements of the park that parallel the space that are managed under SDOT that we believe and support responsibilities to the Seattle Center.

But we also really support Councilmember Nelson's amendment of dollars of $700,000 to be directed to the central waterfront project to ensure.

Thank you.

Our next remote speaker is Sharon Soper's outlaw.

And then our final remote speaker for this set is Ethan Campbell.

So Sharon.

Good day.

City Council members, my name is Sharon Sobers-Outlaw and I'm a community member with Escott Transportation Equity Workgroup, TEW.

We support the $41 million investment on the Neighborhood Initiative Safety Partnership Program and the Mayor's Levy proposal, and there can be some improvements with recent Council amendments.

We would like to thank Council Member Tammy Morales for her proposed amendment to reinstate the original $41 million.

as well as thank Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth for taking the time to meet with TEW members.

The more we partner, the more we can improve community partnerships.

The TEW works to ensure transportation strategies and decisions reflect the diverse needs and values of communities of color.

After expressing our concerns at the previous two City Council meetings through public commitment and two letters, we are disappointed in their lack of commitment to the City of Seattle's race and social justice initiatives.

through cuts to equitable investments to center the low income BIPOC, immigrants and aging communities.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our final remote speaker for this set is Ethan Campbell.

Hi, my name is Ethan Campbell and I live in D3.

First, please fully fund the neighborhood initiated safety partnership program in the levee.

Communities deserve a voice in directing new crosswalks and other improvements to where they're needed most.

Predecessor programs have had long backlogs of amazing projects that were never funded.

This program would use a safety and equity lens to prioritize proposals, and it will be worth every penny.

Second, please support amendments to fill gaps in the bike network, including 12th Ave from Madison to the Jose Rizal Bridge by adding $20 million.

I would also urge an amendment adding bike lanes on 10th Ave from Broadway to Roanoke.

These are vital connections.

Lastly, I hope you'll add language to ensure the levy's transit safety funding neither goes towards armed enforcement on transit nor goes to waste by duplicating metro or sound transit programs.

In summary, please support amendments from Councilmembers Morales and Hollingsworth, increase the levy, and don't cut funding for neighborhood-initiated safety projects.

Thank you for your time.

Okay, switching back to in-person speakers.

Our first in-person speaker for this set is Steve Rubestello.

And followed by that will be Holden R. Again, I'm going to remind you that Aurora is a state highway and Cutting the lanes is going to affect all the folks around.

You may have fewer accidents on Aurora.

You can just spread them around.

And with the vision of this so-called maintenance program, I think you may be in a little trouble with a lot of people.

I again was on Madison since I last was with you, and I have seen the results of the greatness.

Now, Vision Zero, I don't think was misnamed, because what is Vision Zero?

I think it's blindness.

And I do remember in logic class, they taught us that if you accept my givens, you accept my conclusions.

And I think that this is not just a maintenance proposal.

This is a redo Seattle in a image.

I am not.

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker is hold an R and followed by that will be a modelistic.

Holden Ringer.

I'm living with a friend of mine in Queen Anne while I find housing in the city of Seattle.

I recently just finished walking across America.

I started out in Seattle on March 31st of 2023. Over the course of my walk, the most dangerous thing I dealt with was dealing with cars and car-centric infrastructure.

Once I heard about the levy and its priorities for funding walkable, bikeable, and transit-friendly places, I had to come out and support it.

So I encourage all of you to support the levy that supports walking, biking, and transit, especially as it relates to safety.

One of the most, anytime I would go to the city, always the place that would be the most dangerous would be high-speed arterial highways.

And just like in Seattle, some of our most dangerous places are high-speed arterial highways, such as MLK, Rainier, Aurora.

I hope that we prioritize safety along these places.

I think Seattle is a safer and more affordable place for everybody outside of Illinois.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker is Maude Lustig, and followed by that is Katie Garo.

born and raised in District 6, and currently living in District 3, working in District 4. I do not drive or own a car and rely on transit, biking, and walking to get around the city.

I am a voter, and I would vote for a $1.7 billion levy that invests more in sidewalks and safety.

This levy will have huge impacts on my mobility, safety, and quality of life in the coming years.

I join the call of those asking for at least 50% of levy funding to be dedicated toward multimodal transit investments rather than investing further in our car-centric city.

I commend the Chair's amendment adding funding to this package, and I want to voice my support for Council Member Morales' amendment providing additional funding for bike lanes, and I support other amendments that increase funding in walking, biking, and transit infrastructure.

Finally, I'd like to say that in addition to the very practical needs of getting around a city without a car, to building and maintaining roads, never mind, thank you.

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker is Katie Garrow and followed by that is Clara Kanter.

Good morning council members and council chair and council president.

Thank you for the opportunity.

My name is Katie Garrow.

I lead MLK Labor.

We are an umbrella organization of workers and unions here in King County.

And I'm here to express our support for a $1.7 billion levy.

We got to participate in the mayor's stakeholder process and very much appreciated the opportunity to weigh in to his proposal.

I want to elevate here today that we are particularly appreciative of Chair Saka's amendment to add $10 million for EV charging infrastructure.

As you all know, by 2035, there will be a mandate of no more gas-powered vehicles, and we are woefully unprepared for that transition We need to begin making those upgrades now.

Our members also support improvements to bridges, to sidewalks, to transit infrastructure, and to repaving our roads so that we can get to work and do our jobs and serve this great city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker is Clara Cantor and followed by that is Lee Lambert.

Hello, my name is Clara Cantor.

I've spoken to you before in my capacity as an organizer with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

I'm also a member of Whose Streets Are Streets and the Solidarity Budget.

I'd like to speak to you today specifically about community safety and ask you to please support Council Member Moore's amendment moving funding from the police on transit to Vision Zero.

As a regular transit rider, by far the most dangerous part of any trip that I'm taking is crossing the street to get to the bus stop every single time.

Whose streets are streets released an extensive report last year on BIPOC community safety and overwhelmingly our community is not interested in reactive solutions.

We want proactive solutions such as vision zero and street safety.

I'd also like to speak specifically about the austerity budgeting in this proposal and ask you to please make your amendments additive.

We shouldn't choose between our equity focused safety programs and safe routes for kids walking to school or between bike routes, keeping people safe when biking and public space.

We can have all of those things and pulling.

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker is Lee Lambert and followed by that will be Gordon Paddleford.

Good morning, Chair Saucott and council members.

My name is Lee Lambert.

I'm the exec director of Cascade Bicycle Club.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to provide some feedback on the council members' amendments and Chair Saucott's package.

This lovely proposal is big, but not flashy.

It provides basics for Seattleites to get around a little easier and a little safer and a little more affordably eight years from now.

We specifically appreciate the following amendments.

The amendment to increase, for $20 million to increase bike safety programs in South Seattle specifically.

The amendment to improve Leary Way and Market through the Ballard neighborhood.

The $7 million for safe routes to school and the 12th Avenue bike lane in Central Seattle.

We understand that you are responsible for investments in your respective districts.

At the same time, our transportation system connects all districts and some districts, especially districts historically underserved.

The levy works towards making equitable investments in these neighborhoods and building trust in these communities.

We are supportive of amendments that increase safety and we have...

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker is Gordon Padelford, and followed by that will be Kat Munson.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Gordon Padelford.

I'm the executive director of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

I want to thank Chair Saka for talking about Vision Zero at the top, I think it's a great quote.

We need to aggressively move the needle to get vision zero, traffic fatalities and serious injuries down.

And just in the last five days, there have been five hospitalizations that we know about.

There may have been more.

The data is very preliminary at this point.

Two of those people were walking.

One of those persons was riding a motorcycle.

One was riding a scooter.

One was driving.

In the end, it doesn't really matter what mode they were taking.

We all have a sacred duty to make sure everyone gets home safely to their loved ones, appreciate some of the initial amendments on safety, As other commenters have said, we really need to make sure these are additive amendments.

There is an appetite, I think, from Seattle voters to go bigger.

In fact, there's more risk to being meek than being bold, as I emailed you all about.

So please, as you're thinking about all these different great ideas, think about being additive, think about getting Vision Zero back on track.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Our final in-person speaker is Kat Munson.

Hello, greetings, Council.

My name is Kat Munson.

I'm the Policy and Campaigns Associate at Real Change, and I'm actually here on behalf of one of our vendors, Austin Ellis, who could not be here today.

Austin is currently unhoused with all of the incredible challenges that that implies with public transportation, on which he depends for his life and livelihood.

So I'll do my best to tell his compelling sidewalk story that he has shared with me and with Cecilia from DRW.

Earlier this year, he was on his way to a bus stop when he tripped on a broken sidewalk and broke his foot.

Not even a month later, in a different spot downtown, he tripped on a different broken sidewalk, broke the same foot in a different place.

And as you all can imagine, a broken foot is detrimental to his life and livelihood as a street...

So this story I think so vividly illustrates how critical it is to prioritize our city's broken sidewalk network.

And we urge you to do that and increase the levy to 1.7 billion overall.

Thank you.

Moving back to remote speakers.

Our first remote speaker is Kevin Trout and followed by that is Eliana Horn.

Okay, it doesn't look like Kevin is online.

So Eliana Horn is our next remote speaker, and followed by that will be Maria Ramirez.

So Eliana.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Eliana Horn.

I'm a policy analyst at Puget Soundstage, and I'm here to express our overwhelming support for Councilmember Morales' walk-on amendment for $5 million in community-led planning for light rail expansion in neighborhoods at high risk of displacement.

Graham Street and CID are two of the neighborhoods at highest risk of displacement in Seattle, and in the coming decade, long-awaited light rail stations will be built in both neighborhoods.

And while these investments are needed and should vastly improve residents' lives, increase ridership, and create more connectivity, it won't if those residents won't be able to afford to stay in their neighborhoods.

Communities need to be at the helm of planning and strategies to plan for expansion and ensure that they won't be displaced as a result of this expansion.

And Council Member Morales' amendment will make that possible.

Gramsci has already begun that process and a key infrastructure transit connection and land acquisition needed to stabilize the community, but there is far more to be done.

Sidewalk communities have the solutions.

They just need the resources to pursue them.

We also want to express support for a levy that will build as many sidewalks as we possibly

Thank you.

Our next remote speaker is Maria Ramirez, and followed by that will be Jonathan Gonzalez.

Maria, you unmuted briefly.

Try pressing star six again.

How's that?

We can hear you now.

Hello.

Good morning.

Thank you.

This is Maria Guadalupe Ramirez, District 1. I wanted to step back and give a big picture context for why so many of us are on this call.

We're all worried about the climate global disaster that we're facing.

Transportation contributes to 60% of climate change.

We're not getting on our bikes.

and walking just for the heck of it.

We're doing it because we know there's an option to get it in our car.

We've got to get out of this culture where car is king.

People are king.

We deserve to be able to walk our streets and not worry about getting asthma or COPD from inhaling the pollutants.

We need to find a better way for Seattle to survive climate change.

Some roads may not need freight moving on it.

I'd like you to consider that.

We need to look for the future for our children and grandchildren.

What kind of world are we leaving them?

Thank you.

Our next remote speaker is Jonathan Gonzalez and followed by that will be Paige Clifton-Steele.

Hello my name is Jonathan Gonzalez a homeowner and resident of District 6. I want to thank Council Member Strauss for his amendments to the transportation levy though I believe we should be able to accomplish those amendments without redirecting funds from other projects.

Polls show that voters are prepared to go for a larger levy and now time to invest in safe streets and ensuring everyone can get around our city not just drivers.

So I support a larger levy and I City Council Chambers, Thank you, thank you Council for the time to let us get up a comment and I look forward to your more more work on this project, thank you.

City Council Chambers, Okay, our final remote speaker and I believe final public commenter is page clifton's deal.

Good morning, Council.

My name is Paige Clifton-Steele.

I'm here to say that I would vote for a $1.7 billion levy that prioritizes sidewalks and safety.

I'm a D3 resident, one of the 40% of Seattle sites who rely on transit and bicycles.

And though in my neighborhood, I'm lucky to have an extensive sidewalk network, many neighborhoods of Seattle are not.

We need more investments in sidewalks and safety.

With eight traffic deaths in the last six weeks, we face an unacknowledged state of emergency.

We need more sidewalks, bike lanes, lower speeds, and urgent safety measures on Seattle's five most dangerous streets, Aurora Ave, MLK, Rainier, 4th Ave South, and Lake City Way.

Seattle must shift from short-term car-centric spending to long-term planning that aligns with our climate goals.

At least 50% of the levy should fund walking, biking, and transit, including $20 million for the bike safety programs.

Cross-transit reliability.

Also critical.

Please support a $1.7 billion levy.

Thank you.

Chair, that was our final public commenter.

All right.

Thank you, everyone.

There are no additional registered speakers, it sounds like, so we will now proceed to our other items of business.

So moving specifically to our first item of business, will the clerk please read the title of item number one into the record.

Agenda item one, council bill 120788, an ordinance relating to transportation for briefing and discussion.

All right.

Well, thank you.

For purposes of today's discussion, we will first take up the council member amendments, beginning with the chair's amendment proposal, followed by the vice chair's amendment.

And then we'll proceed to individual amendments by council members in district numerical order.

Our central staff, Calvin Chow, has joined us.

Thank you.

Welcome, Cal.

And he's going to walk through each of your draft amendments individually, and each council members will then be given the opportunity to speak to it.

So all that said is...

You know, I would like Cal to describe the council members proposals before handing the mic off to each individual council member to speak to their own proposals and their own words.

So Cal, thank you again for joining us at the table.

Please share your presentation if you have one and once ready, just introduce yourself and let's get started.

Good morning, council members.

Calvin Chow with Council Central staff.

And as the chair mentioned, I will be going through the council member amendments starting with the chair's package.

And I will be just briefly summarizing the effect of the proposal and then turning it over to the sponsor to speak to the amendment.

The Chair's Amendment is largely the same as was presented in committee two weeks ago.

The Chair's Amendment would increase the size of the levy by $100 million to $1.55 billion.

It also makes a number of spending breakdown revisions, including adding $7 million for Safe Routes to Schools, $7 million for the District Project Fund.

It reduces $15.5 million from the Neighborhood Initiated Safety Partnership Program.

It adds $6 million for passenger safety and adds $63 million for new sidewalks.

It adds $10 million for electric vehicle charging and $20 million for freight.

It also adds $1 million for auditing for the oversight committee and professional services, and then it adds $1.5 million for property tax relief outreach and education.

And lastly, it makes some clarifications in terms of how the levy is structured for sidewalk solutions and durable infrastructure solutions.

One item that is new from last week is establishing eight year levy appropriations for the levy proceeds.

This is similar to what Move Seattle did.

And this is a new proposal in this version of the chair's package.

This does reestablish the chair of the Transportation Committee as a member of the Levy Oversight Committee and as the aspirational goal for two members to have auditing experience.

And then it calls out evaluation of levy programs and auditing as the scope of the Levy Oversight Committee.

It also requires dashboard reporting of levy programs that is similar to what is done for Levy to Move Seattle.

And then it amends a number of the recitals.

With that, I'll turn it over to the chair.

Thank you, Cal.

And just for clarity, particularly for members of the public that might be following along, what we are talking about now, Agenda Item 1, is the underlying levy legislation, which will be the basis of the package that is going to go before voters.

There is a separate...

guidance type resolution, companion resolution, which is item number two on the agenda, we'll talk about shortly, the commitments and direction contained in that legislative instrument is not going to go before voters, but is going to 100% guide implementation of what this levy is intended to look like from the council's perspective.

And so we have two separate but related Legislative instruments that comprise collectively.

You know what's colloquially known as the quote unquote chairs amendment or chairs package.

And each and every, and again, this is, uh, the, the first component of which is, is going to be the basis of what the package that's going to go before voters.

And so right now we're talking about the underlying levy legislation and each and every one of our individual, uh, uh, proposed amendments to that, to that important legislative instruments.

Um, so, The only thing that's sort of worth calling out and flagging specifically here, there are a number of changes made to the items contained in the chair's summary before we had words committed to paper and the actual legislative language and text.

Recall during our last committee meeting, all we had at the time was a very comprehensive and thoughtful, thank you, Cal, a summary memo that called out and summarized what it is intended to capture, what the chair's package is intended to capture, but because of all the complex and nuanced features and terrific ideas contained in the chair's proposed package, we needed some time to finalize it.

to finalize the words, which we have now.

And again, now we're talking about the underlying base legislation that's going to go before voters.

The sort of key delta between what was presented in the summary memo versus what's in this case, the underlying levy legislation is the, as Cal noted, The chair's amendment now includes proposed spending requirements for all 11 categories, rather than just the four categories or subcategories of required spending included in the original chair's amendment summary.

The rationale for this change is that it now more directly comports with what was in the last move levy, the 2015 levy, i.e. spending requirements in that levy for the three broad categories were set.

So this basically matches that.

And this approach is also strongly supported by the Levee Oversight Committee.

And it assures that voters that we're gonna deliver what they voted for.

Again, key purpose, goal, intent with this tweak is accountability to voters.

And so, which leads me to another point.

A few of our colleagues' colleagues did not specifically add their own custom bespoke individual amendment.

which personally, selfishly, I appreciate to help us move along, but regardless, The reason why there is because their feedback was included in the broader chairs amendment.

People like council member Wu, for example, pushed me hard to make sure that we, and fought hard to make sure we have stronger sustainability initiatives and investments in the chairs package and better money, more money for sidewalks.

And Councilmember Kettle, for example, pushed hard on freight and cargo investments and also good old fashioned good governance.

I haven't heard anyone talk about good governance more than my esteemed colleagues, Councilmember Kettle, with the exception of maybe Council President.

But regardless, and then of course, through some thoughtful conversations with Councilmember Rivera, That's actually some of those offline conversations that you and I directly had are the reason why that I added that, because it allows for more transparency and a more accountability, which you're absolutely right, voters expect.

And so anyways, I appreciate the thoughtful collaboration and engagement so far.

We have some individual amendments.

This is the chair's package.

I think it speaks for itself.

And I called out the key differences between this, the underlying texts representing in this underlying legislation versus what was called out in the summary memo.

We'll have some more details to share and context to share with respect to item number two on the agenda, the companion resolution.

But I guess, For now, I welcome any comments or questions from any of you all colleagues on what was in this chair's package for the base legislation.

All right.

Yeah, go ahead, Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to mention because I have not offered any amendments that I appreciate the collaboration And I know that you included the accountability piece because I wanted to make sure that we really have the transparency, as you said, the good governance and the accountability as part of this levy package.

And so I want to thank you for your leadership and for your collaboration and for including my recommendation as part of your chair's amendment.

Very much appreciate that.

Thank you.

And then I forgot safe routes to school.

You helped champion that too.

All right, Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

And I just wanted to echo the statements of colleagues that I have just really appreciated working with you so far and have found it to be very collaborative and very transparent and very thoughtful.

So thank you for that.

I did have one question of clarification under sidewalks, our favorite topic.

in looking at page 43, you note that you want 500 blocks of new sidewalks and alternate walkways complete or in construction by 2029. And I'm just confirming that that is the request versus I think in my proposal and some of the others, it was 250 in construction by 2029.

Yeah, so great question, thank you.

So what we did was we just made reasonable adjustments.

If I'm recalling correctly, Cal, because we essentially doubled the number of, well, the funding for sidewalks we made and added a, at least, you know, X amount of new sidewalks and sidewalk alternatives or alternative walkways, whatever we're calling it.

And that was, you know, intended to be the floor, not the ceiling, but made some reasonable assumptions there on the number and didn't tinker with the executive proposed date or goal, which was 2029, as you aptly pointed out.

If I may, Chair, I think that's one of those ones where it is a bit of a guesstimate at this point.

I think to the extent that specific locations are identified, then know real locations have different amounts of money that it costs to deal with the problems of a specific location so um you know to the extent that there are proposals that identify more specific locations um that may have an impact on how far the budget goes so i think that's something that we would want to check with the executive as we get to final amendments to just understand what is the actual package the council is looking at and then what are the actual deliverables that we'll get from that because it will be dependent on if we are more programmatic or if we are more specific.

Yeah, no, that makes sense.

And whatever the investment, The final investment amount in total for each of these sort of subcategories, we will wanna partner closely with the executive to figure out a reasonable number.

We made some reasonable assumptions in the interest of time and expediency, but because this document, including attachment A here, is gonna be the basis of the commitments that we're making to voters, if they approve this thing, we'll wanna have reasonable and appropriate, a stronger basis for what those investments look like based off of the final investment total.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair Osaka.

Thank you for your comments too.

And I really do appreciate the conversations that we've had.

by the way, not just with you, but other members here on the dais on the transportation levies, very important.

And as I stated before, I definitely support the sidewalks piece.

I definitely support Division Zero and the various pieces to that.

But I do want to highlight, as you mentioned, my support for the freight program and generally for arterials too, because These roads are used for transit.

You know, bumpy pothold, sorry, roads wreak havoc on our Metro buses.

I see this all the time.

In addition to our fire engines and our ladder trucks and other first responder vehicles, So this has an impact.

So it's not just in isolation.

Nothing is in isolation.

So these arterials and these freight programs really help public transit and also helps our public safety responses.

And it's key to walkable cities, too.

You know, it's really important for goods and services to get there.

You know, we talk about food deserts, you know, with grocery stores disappearing.

Well, if they're there but there's nothing on their shelves, you still have a food desert.

And so we have to ensure that 15-minute walkable city.

We have to ensure that freight and goods and services can make it to those stores so then people can walk to the stores as opposed to getting into their vehicles and going to a big box or some other type of thing farther away.

So I just wanted to highlight that because there seems to be this kind of or piece where these pieces need to work together.

And I think our friends in SDOT understand that as well.

Also, I really appreciate our discussions on bridges.

So key, and we've been talking about the complete bridge approach.

So, you know, I look to the amendments that don't necessarily have dollar signs that, you know, speak to the pedestrian walkways along bridges.

And again, the public safety element is key because, you know, what happens if our first responders can't respond?

You know, if they can't get there, does that count it as a death?

You know, in addition to maybe an individual that was struck by a vehicle, if somebody's in need but the fire engine or the ambulance or whatever it is can't get to that person, is that counted as a Vision Zero death?

Again, all these things play together.

On that point, by the way, the district funds for me, my priority will be for pedestrian safety.

I just want to make that clear too.

And lastly, I really appreciate your points on good governance.

We have to have this oversight.

We need to work with SDOT, but we need to do it in such a way that the oversight committee is strengthened and has that ability to engage and really provide that oversight.

So thank you so much for that.

Thank you.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you, Councilmember Kettle, for helping us draw the connection between freight and arterials and the 15-minute city and walkable city.

I do appreciate the linking up there.

I think it's important that we keep in mind the walkability of our community.

And so much of what we're striving toward is to make it safer for all of us to do that.

So I actually kind of have a question for Cal.

So much of the energy here is around sidewalks and there's several different buckets of sidewalk that refer to sidewalks so Cal I'm wondering if you could just for us and for the viewing public sort of help us differentiate between new sidewalks and alternative walkways the sidewalk safety repair line item and the sidewalk and infrastructure solutions line items like how are those different and what does it mean to be moving money between those categories rather than creating, say, one category for this work.

Council member, the new sidewalks and alternative walkways proposal at 126 million is for facilities where they're the missing sidewalks, the missing blocks where sidewalks do not currently exist.

The sidewalk safety repair line item for 19 million is the line item to repair existing sidewalk deficiencies.

And then the $5 million that was identified in the executive proposal for sidewalk, I'm sorry, I forget the name exactly, but it has been revised in the chair's package to be durable infrastructure solutions.

It is a little bit of a programmatic spending, $5 million.

It is intended to support the work of the financial task force to look at future funding opportunities for sidewalks and bridges, and in this case, additionally, roads in the chair's package.

It would also fund some programmatic sidewalk policy analysis for SDOT, potentially leading into other ways of dealing with enforcement or other issues, but it's not intended to actually deliver capital projects itself.

And then can you talk just a little bit about, I think we've all heard a projection that it would take 400 years or something to build all the missing sidewalks in the city.

And so there's several amendments that aim to, I don't know if it's to complete that process or just to accelerate the pace of production.

But it does make me wonder, you know, if we're going to complete 500 blocks in the next four years, How is that different from the pace we're doing now?

And what does it mean?

Really, my fundamental question is, what does it mean for the need for staffing and resources in the department in order to increase the pace of production there?

Well, it's a...

It is a higher rate of sidewalk delivery than we have done over the life of the Move Seattle levy, but that is a low bar for folks who are looking to complete 11,000 missing sidewalks.

I think that that is part of the reason why there is the idea of having a financial task force to look for bigger financial opportunities to bring to bear.

As it comes to delivery of sidewalks, I think there's an opportunity to change the focus where We are required to bid out public works.

When these projects get large enough, we go to the contracting community and hire out the work as required by state law.

Delivering this amount of sidewalks is going to require us to identify projects that can be delivered by a contractor to get to scale.

Otherwise, we're not going to have the staff to be able to do these one-offs, and we won't be efficient in doing one-offs here and there.

So there will have to be some type of prioritization and sort of focus in creating basically a project management view of this, of how are we going to deliver this through our project delivery.

Okay, thank you.

I'll have more questions on future amendments, but this is helpful.

Thank you.

And I'll just comment, great question.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

I'll comment, you know, from my own perspective, directly from the horse's mouth, so to speak on, at least address, you know, part of your question there.

You know, we intentionally moved the task force over to a new standalone category.

It's currently called Good Governance and Equitable Implementation Initiative, could easily be called Good Governance, Sustainable Solutions, and Equitable Implement.

It's a branding, just like every last one of these category names is a branding and framing intended to encapsulate and summarize the items in there in the subcategories, but it's fundamentally a branding thing.

But the idea there is that You know, we need a new path.

We need to chart a new path for a more sustainable one.

And this task force is an important, not the only body of work, their deliverables and their body of work is not the only, but an important, in helping us identify more sustainable solutions to fund very urgent and important needs to avoid a scenario where the next, in part, not solely, but in part to avoid a scenario where the next, if voters pass this one and it expires and it's up for renewal, to avoid a scenario where we're talking about a $10 or $15 billion to meet the need.

So to put us, again, on a more sustainable funding path with a variety of diverse funding options, not just levies, again, to help meet the very, very urgent need in all these three categories called out, so.

All right, Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I did have a couple questions related to the sidewalks delivery, Cal.

I just want to make sure I understood correctly.

I mean, part of the sidewalk issue is the ability to actually physically build them.

And if we don't have the capacity at the department, we contract out with private.

All of that said, though, I thought I heard you say there is difficulty in actually physically building those sidewalks in the timeframe we would like to build them just because of the constraints of actually hiring folks.

I mean, like the number of workers that we have to actually, whether it's public or private, to actually do the work, correct?

They are somewhat different issues, but they're related.

If we look at how we've delivered sidewalks, you know, there is the ability to use S.Crews to do small, smaller improvements.

If that is the approach we were to take, you know, we do not have the staff, we do not have the resources, and we would be inefficient because we'd be doing it here and there.

When a project gets over a certain size, we're required to go out and bid it out.

And so that's where we take advantage of our contractor community.

And, you know, I don't know the state of our, you know, who's available to do the work or we would have to see who would respond.

But if we could make that a hopefully that is attractive work for the contracting community.

And if we can package those so that it makes sense, so that it's something that a contractor can deliver.

then that's probably the best opportunity we have to deliver on this scale.

Thank you for clarifying, Cal.

And I just want to say in general, colleagues, while we're on the subject of sidewalks, that I support sidewalks, especially in Wedgwood and the D4.

There's a lack of new sidewalks.

And also sidewalk repair.

I know we've heard from folks that have come from public comment.

Disability Rights Washington, I know, has come out to talk about sidewalk repair.

And I know when I went out with the The kids at Samford Elementary in Wallingford, we walked by and we saw the condition of sidewalks in our city, definitely in need of repair across the city.

So I really appreciate the members and the organizations that came out to talk about new sidewalks, sidewalk repairs, and to give feedback generally on the levy.

And while I'm on that subject, I also want to say full transparency.

My spouse is a volunteer, a board member with Transportation Choices Coalition, who was out here giving testimony as well.

It's no secret.

I've always said my family's really supportive of public transit and transportation options.

And so I wanted to state that for the record as well.

And then Cal, if you'll indulge one more question, not related to sidewalks, but just in the chair's package related to unexpended and unencumbered funds from one project to another.

Is it that, I just want clarity on the language Unexpended and unencumbered funds, does the department have the ability to designate how those funds get redirected or does council have?

Is it a three-quarter vote in the same way that the in-between projects in general get allocated?

I just want to make sure I am understanding the language because it sounded a little different from the language that chair included on the accountability piece.

Yes.

And so I think just a reminder that the legislation that is being put forth today or that we're going to be taking action on is about what we are asking the voters permission to do.

So this is actually asking for permission for the city in general to be able to move things around.

Beyond that, the chair is proposing to have eight year appropriation limits that specify, you know, the voters are getting what you're getting.

And if there is a change, then we'll bring it to council for a change.

Every budget year, SDOT has to come to council to get their budget approved and cannot spend money that council has not appropriated.

That is bedrock.

That's how we do our budgeting.

In this case, this is talking to the voters and saying, we have the ability to do it.

That is largely council's approval of where the money will be moved.

So this language does require them to get approval for unencumbered and unexpended funds from council directly.

Sorry.

This is acknowledging to the voters that we have, we will be able to move the city in general.

We'll be able to move this around in practice.

That means council has to do it because council is the only one who can improve the budget.

Unencumbered funds, especially as part of the budget process.

basically carry forward?

Is that what that means?

There is a capital funds can automatically carry forward if they're encumbered.

Operation funds, we have a carry forward ordinance that we do, but it's through our regular budget process.

And SDOT is very good about being transparent with us about what those are.

Okay.

Thank you, Chair.

That's it for now.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Thank you for the call-out on sidewalks and the emphasis on the importance of sidewalks from your perspective.

We'll talk a little bit more about this in terms of some of the individual amendments that have been proposed, but...

regardless of wherever we finally land in the final vote, if you like and appreciate and value sidewalks in Seattle, directionally, I think there's a lot.

Again, wherever we land with the final vote, but however you slice it, directionally, we're teeing up to be the biggest, boldest, most transformative investment in sidewalks, whether it's new sidewalks, existing, repair, whatever it is in the history of Seattle.

So more to come, but go ahead, Council President.

I just ask that people put a pin in this conversation because it's relevant to one of my amendments.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

If there are no other questions, comments, we will now move on to, I guess, the individual council member amendments, starting with me.

Thank you, council member.

Yes, we'll go to individual council members' proposals.

I just wanted to reiterate something from the chair's comments that I think the intent is to identify if there are specific items that have broad support and that he would consider that as part of a revised chair's package.

So I think hearing what council members think would be helpful for those types of deliberations.

And then always I'm happy to work with you for whatever other elements that you want to continue to propose as individual amendments when we get to that for final vote.

The first one we're going to talk about is Council Member Saka's proposed amendments.

He has two changes.

They are both revising essentially the project list shown in attachment A.

He would essentially change the reach of the...

Sorry, the...

I forget exactly which project this is, I'm sorry.

Holden Street, sorry.

Holden Street from Alaska to Morgan, as opposed to...

I realize I have not quite drafted this correctly, but it's 35th Avenue Southwest, and it would change it from Morgan Street to Holden to Alaska to Morgan.

And then it would also add Fonterey Southwest back to the project list.

Yeah.

So thank you, Cal.

And, uh, I'll emphasize the comment that you made a moment ago before describing my proposed D one specific amendment is in that the goal, that's why I would encourage you all to, to share your initial reactions to some of these, uh, proposed amendments with the goal that of course, you know, plenty more work to do in the, in the two weeks ahead, tick tock, but, uh, But the goal is to create an omnibus type package of the consensus items.

Not the items that we love and give us warm fuzzies and feel good about.

In fact, we might not love everything, every individual feature contained in the broader kind of omnibus type package, but that we can consolidate and vote on in a singular vote and then take up individually some of the things that items that receive generally less consensus or broader support.

So yeah, that's why kind of sharing out your initial reaction and continuing to collaborate offline as well is gonna be critically important.

So on my proposed district one specific amendments, so I am restoring the candidate projects in the district one arterial roadway maintenance package in the mayor's original April So basically from 35th Avenue Southwest, we're going, so that arterial going from Southwest Morgan Street to, or went from Southwest Morgan to Southwest Holden.

And so we're restoring it back to Southwest Alaska to Morgan and also restoring a very specific project related to Fauntleroy and the junction there.

Goal there is to keep the roadway functional during light rail station construction.

And because my proposal, my D1 specific amendment is specifically intended to be budget neutral, budget neutral doesn't add, I don't intend to add an unfunded mandate.

So it's intended to be budget neutral.

I made the difficult decision of deleting a specific portion of the broader East Marginal Way project that was funded in this.

So Corson Avenue South, which was a major road rehabilitation project, basically going digging down to the dirt, going from the bottom up.

And so on a narrow portion of that broader East Marginal Way project, My, by adding the Fauntleroy project, which is not intended to be a sort of major rehabilitation project more along the line, it's also not intended to be a spot repair type project.

Maybe a good way to frame that one is sort of like a mill and overlay kind of intermediate level to make, ensure that the, that stretch of the roadway is serviceable and good condition looks good and is ready for, during the construction of light rail stations.

So again, the specific goal and intent that I had there with my district one specific amendment is intended to be budget neutral.

That's why reallocated some projects.

And my goal is to look to the budget specifically on a going forward basis to find ways to fund to fully accommodate the needs.

So, let's see.

Yeah, I will pause there.

Do any of my colleagues have any comments or questions?

Council Member Kettle.

Chair Saka, thank you.

That was me not lowering my hand.

Oh, all good.

Okay, cool, anyone else?

All right, well, hearing none, I'm gonna call an audible here.

Vice Chair, if you'll bear with me just a moment, I'm going to allow our colleague Council Member Strauss to go ahead and present his portion next, because I understand he has a, a hard stop to accommodate a specific AWC commitment.

So just to make sure that he's able to speak personally on his own, rather than having Cal speak to it, we'll go to council member Strauss, followed by vice chair, Hollingsworth, and then in the district numerical order, if that works.

Council member Strauss.

Do you have time for me to speak through or do you need to speak to them directly?

Go for it.

Councilmember Strauss has a number of amendments proposed.

They are making the following revisions to the spending breakdown.

It adds a new $20 million for the Gilman Trail extension from the arterial roadway maintenance program.

It adds the 14th Avenue Northwest market to the ship canal to the list of estimated investments for paving in the arterial roadway maintenance program.

It adds Sixth Avenue, Northwest 58th to Carkeek Park to the list of investments for neighborhood greenways.

It expands on the description of the Ballard Bridge to identify potential pedestrian improvements as part of that scope.

It expands the description of the Magnolia Bridge item to include work on type size location for replacement seismic improvements and for improving emergency access to Magnolia.

It creates a new category of funding for the Leary Way industrial zone safety improvements and adds $10 million for this from the freight program.

It adds access improvements to Sound Transit three light rail stations as part of the transit improvement and access to light rail program.

It merges the new sidewalks and alternatives walkways with the sidewalk safety repair program into a single category.

It creates a new category for Ballard Avenue curbless streets and adds $10 million taking that from 5 million from the new sidewalks category and 5 million from the climate electrification category.

It creates a new category for developing a private funding strategy for living I-5 and it uses 500,000 from protected bike streets that were intended for additional study for that purpose.

And that is the list of his proposals.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Kyle, and thank you, Chair.

And I believe Council Member Morales has the same time commitment issues as I do.

I will try to be brief and really focus on try because I usually have a little bit too much to say.

And I know that I have a long list.

I WANT TO SHARE BROADLY THAT MY AMENDMENTS, TO BALANCE MY AMENDMENTS, I LOOKED BEYOND JUST THE BROAD FUNDING CATEGORIES.

I LOOKED INTO THE LINE ITEMS OF EACH OF THESE CATEGORIES.

AND SO FOR EACH AMENDMENT, I WILL SHARE WHERE I'VE LOOKED these funding categories.

As I said yesterday, high level, I'd love to earn your support, colleagues, open to changing or tweaking these amendments if it means earning your support.

I also want to take a moment to raise up what Tyler Blackwell of SOTO BIA testified about today and building off of what Jeremy Goodman shared yesterday as part of the BIA presentation.

SOTO, the industrial maritime zones, and our port are what are booing our economy, not in a future state today.

Our most recent economic forecast showed all sectors of our economy are underperforming compared to national average except for manufacturing port activities, including our maritime economy.

Having people at SDOT to move freight programs forward is not enough because, colleagues, without the steadfast performance of our manufacturing maritime and port, we would have a larger structural budget hole.

Like Councilmember Kettle, I like to make every meeting about the budget.

Beyond that, you will hear me discuss the industrial maritime theme throughout in part because of the revenue this sector provides our economy.

In addition to like the upcoming comprehensive plan last year, We updated the maritime and industrial zoning across our city.

We previously had two zones, strict industrial and then a buffer.

We now have multiple industrial zones, some that allow more flexibility of use, adding housing or office space, and one zone that increases protection in industrial and maritime zoning by closing loopholes along with increasing restrictions of what is allowed.

now back to my amendments um the first one is about completing the missing link along market and leary this and the next amendment about 14th avenue utilized a grant match project readiness line within the arterial roadway maintenance this funding does not cut any projects what this funding does do is it completes the missing link of the burke-dilman trail uh personally my first meeting about the brook gilman trail was in 1994. here we are in 2024 30 years ago, and over these three decades, I have witnessed inextricable conflict.

In my time in office, I proposed a new way of completing the missing link that has broad support.

You heard Cascade Bicycle Club today supporting this amendment, as well as the industrial stakeholders.

Apparently, some commercial businesses still have some concerns, and SDOT is working directly with tenants and property owners to meet their needs.

In last year's maritime industrial zoning changes, we added flexibility to Leary Way, removing it from the buffer, and increased protections for maritime activity on Schiltschul Avenue.

My amendment here is a more expensive option than Schiltschul because on Schiltschul it is an eight-foot-wide strip of asphalt through a busy industrial corridor.

And my proposal connects the Brooklyn Trail to downtown Ballard, where people live, work, and play, which does require more infrastructure than shoehorning a narrow strip of asphalt through one of our neighborhoods' busiest blocks of maritime activity and industrial activity.

Supporting this amendment gives you an opportunity to help put a three-decade argument to rest.

I realize I started jumping in.

Do you want me to pause at the end of each of these amendments to see if there are questions?

I think it's probably best if you frame this conversation however you want, and then we'll jump in the questions.

And I should also note, unless Vice Chair Hollingsworth or any of you object, I am open and amenable to allowing Council Member Morales to go next because she's under the same constraints.

So why don't you just go ahead and finish up, Council Member Strauss?

All right.

Just keep rolling.

So my next amendment, adding 14th Avenue from Northwest Market Street to the ship canal to the list of investments.

And this is actually using that same project readiness grant match line item within the arterial roadway maintenance.

This is another street that received increased flexibility for office space within the industrial zone as well as it's adjacent to the future light rail station.

If you go out to 14th Avenue Northwest, you will find a street last updated in the 1930s.

And I know that because I was just looking at the aerial photo of King County from 1936 before we started this meeting.

The train bridge that 14th Avenue was built to serve has been removed since that photo in 1936, yet there are still train tracks running along the medians, sidewalks, driving lanes, and crisscrossing intersections.

The medians are dirt, rocks, and filled with potholes the size of large rocks.

The median also creates eight points of conflict in each intersection.

My proposal removes the 100-year-old railroad tracks, puts the travel lane down the center of the right-of-way, reducing the points of conflict from eight to four, like most standard intersections, and resumes parking by moving the parking off the median and back in parking along the edges of the street.

In summary, my proposal removes the points of conflict for people walking, biking, driving, and moving freight.

It updates the roadways so that we don't have errant 100-year-old railroad tracks and prepares us for the incoming light rail station.

I'm gonna move on to my next amendment, adding Sixth Avenue Greenway from Northwest 58th Street to Carkeek Park in the list of neighborhood greenways.

This amendment does not alter funding levels.

It simply adds it to the list of greenways to be completed.

Sixth Avenue Greenway has been a long-time community-generated proposal.

Currently, it is funded from the Burke-Gilman Trail to 58th Street, which is also a greenway.

This proposal completes the greenway from the Burke-Gilman Trail to Carkeek Park.

And friends, in my heart of hearts, I'm a geek.

And so what I can tell you is that Sixth Avenue is a rare and interesting street because it is the lowest north-south grade increase-decrease west of Finney Ridge.

This is a unique opportunity to leverage the work underway, a street ready to receive these updates and links the east-west greenways to a north-south corridor and makes it easy for people to ride so they don't have to go up big hills.

I'm going to move on to my next amendment.

which is expanding the description of the Ballard Bridge in project readiness to include pedestrianization.

This amendment does not require funding.

It adds pedestrianization to the Ballard Bridge funding conversation.

If I ask you to walk across the Ballard Bridge, it's unsafe, it feels unsafe.

Try to pass somebody walking in the opposite direction, it feels like you have to lean into the driving lane.

People riding the bikes, when I ride my bike, it feels like my handlebars are going to get caught in the guardrails, and when two bikes meet, they have to actually dismount to get past each other.

If we wonder why the Elliott Bay Trail is underutilized, it's because there's not a northern connection because folks either have to walk their bikes across the sometimes closed Ballard Locks or tempt fate on the Ballard Bridge.

The solution is simple, yet expensive.

It's less expensive than replacing the bridge.

It is to either replace the causeways leading to the basketball section of the bridge, to widen it for cars, buses, freight, bikes, and people, or adding a cantilever to the existing causeway to extend the pedestrian area of the bridge to larger than one person wide.

I'll put it this way, Ballard FC's home field is an inner bay and rather than walking the 1.1 miles from Ballard to the field, I take the bus, I take it to the stop because the bridge is not safe for walking or biking.

This amendment simply adds this to the conversation as we move forward, doesn't require or restrict anything.

I'm going to move on to the expanding the description for the Magnolia Bridge project readiness.

Similar, but not change funding levels.

And I realize, I think Councilmember Kettle and I might have co-sponsored this.

I don't exactly know, but I know that we worked on it together because we were a partner on this project.

It simply adds the description of this funding to be more flexible to help move the replacement of the Magnolia Bridge along the Magnolia Bridge as a failing bridge.

This is just a change in definition.

I'm going to move on to my next amendment, creating a new category for Leary Way Industrial Zone safety improvements under, I don't know, we might be changing which category it goes into, but using the $10 million from, Chair, your freight program increase, I want to just state that this is a freight program.

I see this more, and Chair, I appreciate your investment in the freight corridors.

I share that this is more of an earmark than it is a reduction or movement.

leary way is another industrial zone that recruit that received increased flexibility for housing it is a street that has intersections that are not squared up uh it's a it's a street that feels dead dark and underutilized and so this amendment would square up the intersections ensure that freight is able to move through the area uh as these zoning changes are implemented because we changed the zoning and then everything gets built up over the next 10 years.

So it really is to modernize our industrial zone in the Leary area post the zoning changes.

I'm going to move on to my next amendment.

Sorry, colleagues, I have so many.

I think about transportation when I sleep.

Adding access improvements to Sound Transit 3 light rail stations.

This is, again, just changing definitions to including the ability to study past ST3.

Currently, all of our conversations are focused on ST3, but we need to be ready to start going past ST3.

And so this doesn't require or restrict any funds to be used in any certain ways.

It simply broadens the definition so that if we are, as we should be, getting ready to plan past Sound Transit 3 for ST4, that we're ready and able to do so.

My merging the new sidewalks and alternative walkways category and sidewalk, Chair, I love that you're adding more sidewalks through this package, what stands out to me is this is simply a good governance amendment because in the future state, it is hard for us to know which, will we get these contractors?

Will SDOT finally, after I begged them for four years, to start using more alternatives?

Or do we need to fix some of the sidewalks?

My amendment just puts all of the funding into one category so that we are able to be nimble and flexible as we move forward.

Two more amendments and then I'm done.

The create a new category for Ballard Avenue, curbless street under the people streets and public space.

I did use $5 million from the new sidewalks and $5 million from EV charging.

to fund this.

What we've been doing over the last four years on Ballard Avenue is creating a cafe street.

Since the beginning, there's always been a desire to have the cafe structures up against the buildings of Ballard Avenue rather than in the street.

It will create a much more welcoming...

It just creates a fabric because when you have a sidewalk going through your cafe, it feels different than if you imagine a Parisian cafe that is up against the building where people are walking in the street.

I want to be really clear about this.

We're not removing cars from Ballard Avenue.

Cars and freight delivery always have a space on the street.

But the reason that we need to make this a curbless street is because If there's a curb, you can't have the cafe against the building because then people have to go off the sidewalk and then back on the sidewalk, which creates a, we have to put in all these lips and it doesn't look right.

And so the proposal here is just to create a curbless street.

I'll be a little silly to say that while we have two sidewalks there, using the sidewalk funding adds one big sidewalk to Ballard Avenue.

that allows these cafes to be up against the building.

Lastly, finally, creating a new category of funding for, uh, living I five currently.

So going back to my time with council member Peterson, he and I were locked at the hip about the need to expand and 45th Street across I five because it is too narrow limits at writing and people access to sound transit.

Um, s dot has told us no. and instead said that we should do a bike ped bridge across 47th.

I think that we need to be bigger about this.

If you look at Washington, DC, DC Capital Crossings is a project that was privately funded.

It lidded 395 in downtown DC.

No public dollars.

restitch the network of streets, the street grid.

And I would like us to study doing something similar between 45th and 65th, rather than having just one narrow bike ped bridge.

Thank you, Chair.

That was a lot, and I took a lot of time.

I appreciate your, I appreciate your flexibility.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

We'll open it up to comments and questions from our colleagues, starting first with Council Member Kettle.

THANK YOU, CHAIR OSAKA.

FIRST, I WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE COUNCILMEMBER STRAUSS' LONG COMMITMENT TO ADVOCACY, STARTING IN THE THIRD GRADE, NO DOUBT.

HE WAS A KINDERGARTNER ORGANIZING HIS KINDERGARTNER CLASS ON ISSUES OF FACING BALLARD.

SO I APPRECIATE HIS CONTINUED EFFORTS EVEN TO TODAY IN 2024. THOSE EFFORTS INCLUDE WORKING BRIDGES.

I SUPPORT, YOU KNOW, THESE DEFENSES ON BRIDGES, BOTH THE BALLARD AND THE MAGNOLIA BRIDGES.

And as I've noted in other instances, D7 is essentially a peninsula.

So these bridges are important for connections to D6 in this case, but also East Lake to D4 and 5, and then the I-5 bridges to D3.

These are very important connections.

And so I appreciate that.

And particularly, you know, the points regarding the pedestrians on Ballard and then the need to, you know, Finally, once and for all, let's figure out Magnolia Bridge.

I will say, I understand his point on the freight program, but we need to take a big look at that in terms of how it compares to other freight projects.

So just saying that we should look at it in the context of the overall freight issue.

I definitely support the maritime industrial pieces, but okay.

That's it, thank you.

Thank you.

Council President.

Building off of that, I do need to understand the trade-offs between moving...

I'm just putting on my city white hat, moving that much freight to Leary Way.

Leary Way is the North End's most functional freight corridor, so I'm all for making sure that it works well.

At the same time, there's work to revise that...

The lane usage there, so I will be looking for information about what are the trade-offs, what doesn't get funded.

You invoked, Council Member Strauss, Aaron Goodman, and the freight projects in the south.

I'm wondering about possible impacts to that, and also with what will decreasing the arterial maintenance program due for the Soto area.

But back to the, but I really wanted to ask, I had never, I would like to talk to you perhaps offline, Council Member Strauss, about lumping new sidewalks and the new sidewalk and alternative walkway category with sidewalk safety repair.

To me, those are two very different bodies of work, which is why I am, well...

People have already invoked my amendment right now, but I do believe that we need to be very clear about what we can accomplish in new sidewalks and also the imperative to ensure that our existing sidewalks are usable for everybody, as we've heard in public comment over and over.

So my point is that I think it's...

Will the ability to track that work be compromised?

And when we're talking about how the durable infrastructure body of work, which is to think about new sidewalks going forward and also repair, how will those parallel tracks missions, new versus fixing existing, be impacted by lumping the bodies of work together?

And I'm thinking about transparency and accountability so that our constituents can track our progress in both.

Thank you.

And I'll say that within the major repaving, it is the Grant Match and Project Readiness Fund, so it doesn't cut any projects.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Chair.

In the interest of time, I'll just ask about two amendments.

Council Member Strauss The first is about the Burke Gilman Trail, which, as you noted, has been locked up in lawsuits for 30 years.

So I know that you've been proposing a new route through there, and my question is really about, you know, if we allocate funding to this particular project, is there evidence that it will be moving forward?

So can you speak a little bit to that?

Then my second question is about the Ballard Avenue curbless street.

I really appreciate that as a city, we seem to be moving forward on kind of people streets.

And I think I would love to see us have a plan for at least one kind of pedestrianized street in all of our commercial nodes.

I think that would be a smart path for the city to take.

I don't think creating a separate category for Ballard Avenue is appropriate, but I would fully support including it in the list of people's streets that we want to create.

So I'm happy to talk to you about that offline.

I want to flag that.

So really, my question is just about the Gilman trial.

Yeah, I feel.

Thank you, Councilmember.

I feel very confident about this.

This compromise moving forward.

SDOT is breaking the mold of what multimodal trails can and should be.

It is running through the heart of Ballard, which is what makes it so expensive as compared to ripping up some train tracks and throwing down some asphalt or shoehorning the asphalt eight foot section between existing railroad tracks and a busy industrial corridor.

So that's what makes it more expensive because you have to move light poles, you have to move bus stops, but it does create, it does break the mold of what multimodal projects can and should be in our city.

So I feel very confident and I can share more with you when I see it this next meeting in a couple of minutes.

All right.

Well, Just a few kind of comments and reflections from the cheap seats.

From my perspective, Council Member Strauss, on your very thoughtful amendments, I really appreciate these.

15, 20, how many amendments are there?

Nine, I think I got nine.

All right, I'm gonna remember that during budget time, Mr. Chair.

Yes, sir.

Regardless, I do appreciate the thoughtfulness that went into your amendments.

And I'm already seeing some kind of low hanging fruit here.

Previously, before I actually saw the words on Friday of your proposed amendments, You and I had talked mostly at the principal level offline, kind of what's gonna be included and kind of what's important to you.

So I already see some, now that the words are here before us, I see some items that are sort of ripe for consolidation, assuming it makes sense from our colleagues' perspectives as well, in terms of crafting an omnibus type package, including the emphasis on bridges.

Greenways to the extent, I mean, there are currently on the table some competing visions for Greenways at the dais here, but you do add and specifically call out a project.

So to the extent we're able to harmonize that, that seems right for inclusion.

And then I will express my, I guess, hesitation on one item in your, one specific item in your proposed package here, and that is the reallocation of freight investments to a new purportedly unrelated category.

You aptly pointed out, and that's actually one of the questions I asked our central staff when we kind of debriefed and had an initial conversation offline about like, what do all these amendments do?

And can we reasonably like conclude that that Leary Avenue is, is, is a like revisions to that would be a freight project.

If so, you know, I'm, I'm absolutely open to that.

And, but because it's moved completely upended and moved outside of that, that freight investment, you know, and, and if you were transforming a specific that kind of unrestricted programmatic level of funding and adding a specific project within freight, you know, I think that'd be one conversation, but like, I guess where I'm going is I think framing and branding and organization kind of matters here in this context.

And in addition, I share some of the council president's observations about is that investment amount for that project the best?

I don't know, it might be, but it warrants further conversation.

But you have your hand up in response, so we'd love to hear your comments as well.

thank you chair i just want to say that al has been doing so much work in such short amount of time and usually you know just like 10 second conversations here and there and so i'll just be honest i didn't expect it to go to that category i think that um let's work it out cal you're doing a really great job and i can't believe you did all this work so fast that's official statement all right well uh thank you

Unless there are no questions or comments, no further questions or comments, let's pivot to Council Member Morales' amendment.

Council Member Morales provided a walk-on amendment this morning, so I'll be speaking to that.

It is different from what is on the agenda, but I'll speak to the differences as I present it.

So Council Member Morales is proposing five items.

She is adding $5 million for community-based planning and improvements around Graham and Chinatown ID light rail stations, using $5 million from the freight program.

This was shown on the version one on the agenda as 15 million, so it is a decrease from the previous proposal.

It would add 20 million for protected bike lanes, focusing on South Seattle, reducing 20 million from the arterial roadway maintenance program.

It would restore the neighborhood initiated safety partnership program to 41 million by adding 15.5 million back.

This would be coming from the district project fund from 14 million and the new sidewalks and alternative walkways program by 1.5 million.

Previously, this also used, instead of 14 million from the district project fund, it used 7 million from Safe Routes to Schools.

It adds Rainier Avenue to the estimated investments list for Vision Zero program, and it adds language on the estimated investments for transit passenger safety to focus on coordination with the transit agencies.

And I'll turn it over to Councilmember Morales.

Unmuted?

We can hear you.

Okay, great.

Okay.

Thank you, Cal, and thanks for updating the amendment.

Colleagues, I do want to say before I address my amendments, I want to respond to some of what we heard in public comment.

I have to say that I really take exception to the notion that Vision Zero is blindness or somehow misguided.

As we've heard over and over again, as I've experienced for the last four and a half years, people are dying or hospitalized every day in our city for trying to cross the streets or walk to school or bike to work.

There was another commenter who said that these collisions are their direct result of previous choices that these city leaders, we and previous city leaders have made, prioritize driver convenience over every other need in the city.

So I know that this is serious work, and I really appreciate that my colleagues are working hard to keep our neighbors safe, even when there are some who are dismissing these efforts.

So, as Cal mentioned, I made a few changes to my amendment.

The new amendment would add $5 million to support the community-based planning.

The Graham Street light rail station was originally included in the plan to the original Rainier Valley light rail planning, but was taken out for budgetary reasons.

And so it is back on the plan for Sound Transit to add that station back in.

And there's been a lot of planning that the neighbors around there are trying to do.

There's a community action team and other folks who are working to design what they would like to see when that station goes back in.

and are also closely tracking and advocating for anti displacement measures around new station locations.

So this is requesting $5 million from the transportation levy to go towards that transit oriented development, community based planning around Graham Street Station and as well around the light rail stations that will be going in in the CID.

I do support Sound Transit's efforts in expanding rail access in my district, but I want to avoid making the same mistake we made in the past, allowed residents and businesses to be displaced during the process.

Expanding light rail shouldn't come at the cost of losing our residents or our businesses who call those areas home because of the increase in unaffordability that might come with living near a transit hub.

We know that the CID has been a community at high risk of displacement.

They've experienced segregation, gentrification, the imposition of massive infrastructure projects through the neighborhood.

And the new light rail station will present an opportunity for the city to kind of stabilize the CID, supporting community-led planning, identify key development possibilities.

So as Cal mentioned, the original proposal I had sent had $15 million for this work, but advocates are interested in acquisition of land, particularly around the light rail stations.

And after working with central staff and with our law department, we realized that it makes more sense to use this funding for the community-based planning and look for other sources for site acquisition.

So that's why we made that change.

In terms of the protected bike lanes, we are hoping to complete our bicycle network.

It is a major priority.

Residents should be able to bike from South Seattle to North Seattle with little or no disruption in their network.

And this is also really about safety.

When I ride my bike to work, I have to go I counted last year it takes me 34 turns to get from my house to City Hall because there are there is no direct path that is safe if I want to avoid traffic if I want to try to stay on a greenway or some sort of protected area I really have to navigate and and so anyway this this is an effort to try to increase the availability of safe access for folks who are who are biking And we know that when we invest in our bicycle infrastructure, we make cyclists and drivers feel safer because protected bike lanes create less opportunity for collision.

The next amendment is around the Neighborhood Initiated Safety Partnership Program.

I've heard from lots of community advocates about the need to protect this program.

This program allows our neighbors to work directly with SDOT on solving issues that are in their neighborhood.

And I've updated the amendment to take funds from the district project fund rather than Safe Routes to School because obviously Safe Routes to School is critically important to make sure our kids can get around.

And I know that as district council members, we know our districts best, but the truth is we can't know every corner of our neighborhood because we don't live on every corner of our neighborhood and see how traffic moves around.

So this funding would allow residents to work directly with SDOT to implement transportation solutions that directly affect them.

And I'm asking for your support on that as well.

Adding Rainier Avenue, which is one of the most dangerous roads in my district to the list of Vision Zero for Vision Zero safety analysis is important.

And finally, we have adding the language to ensure that agency partners, King County Metro and Sound Transit are accountable for transit passenger safety as we are.

and asking to make sure that there is good coordination between all of those efforts.

I am happy to take questions.

Council Member Wu.

Hi, thank you for this amendment.

I agree with you on most everything.

I just have a question regarding your first amendment for the $5 million to support community-based planning improvements, especially with the setting of the light rail station.

The community is just so divided.

So how do we, with that money, making sure it's community-based, fighting gentrification displacement, I'm just wondering what your thoughts are regarding how this money is going to support the advocates who are on both sides of a very divided site discussion?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I know that Sound Transit is already engaged with neighbors, and I don't have a specific answer, but I think that the additional resource can help with additional meetings, with translation of materials.

with ensuring that people are engaged in and aware of the decisions that are forthcoming you know there is additional work to be done um for those two stations that are identified as the current alternate preferred alternatives um there will be more discussion uh as more um analysis is done so i think just making sure that there are resources available so that community can engage in an authentic way is going to be an important part of that discussion.

So it sounds like this money is going towards SDOT, not necessarily directly to these groups.

Yeah, but there will be the two agencies, you know, coordinate well together and will obviously be impacted.

One will be impacted by the other.

So there is a coordinated effort that's needed.

And you're right.

You know, Sound Transit will have their resources that are available.

So I think it's important that the city contribute to that engagement process as well.

Thank you.

All right.

I guess A couple questions, I guess, on my end.

First and foremost, thank you, Council Member Morales for your very thoughtful amendment here.

I guess I'm not clear because I hadn't seen, wasn't aware of the walk-on before, frankly, just now.

So, but I have reviewed your original proposed amendment Can you help me understand the key delta, I guess, both for Cal and Council Member Morales?

What is the delta between the original amendment, what's included in the original amendment, versus the walk-on this morning?

So the two changes offered by Council Member Morales, I've put on what's attached to the agenda on the screen.

Originally it was $15 million to support Graham and Chinatown ID planning activities.

And that has now been changed to 5 million.

And then in the restoration of the neighborhood initiated a traffic safety partnership program.

It originally had used $7 million from Safe Routes to Schools.

Instead, it has increased the contribution from the Neighborhood District Program Fund to $14 million.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'll definitely want to look more closely at some of those specific spending allocations and how they kind of stack up and how they compare to the original proposal.

But high level, that makes sense.

I guess...

From my perspective, the allocations on adding new transit investments, high level and adding new transit.

Well, first off, same opportunity as Council Member Strauss in terms of like, I already see some kind of low hanging fruit here that we can consolidate potentially for like alignment into a broader omnibus type package, which is great.

And with respect to some of the specific allocations, again, we'll wanna do a deeper dive personally, but adding new transit investments, and then adding, and then specifically, I guess, reallocating from roads and freight as well.

I'll just note that none of these modes exist in sort of a silo and they're all interrelated and indeed interdependent on each other.

Some of the biggest strains on our roads are buses.

We're gonna initiate an uncomfortable conversation to acknowledge that some of the biggest strains on our roads are buses and freight.

And so, when we reallocate critical investments in those key areas, it impacts the whole system.

And I think we do need to look at this from a system-wide view and perspective.

And some would argue that at a high level, I think that the package, represents a strong sort of back to basics approach, whether in the executive's final proposal or the proposed chair's package.

And I'm...

Glad it does exactly that.

But because all these systems and modes are so interdependent on each other, and again, I am aware that some people have argued, and they're not too far off base, that the overall state of our roads is either just as bad or marginally even worse, some would argue, than the overall state of our bridges.

And we know the opportunity that we have here with our bridges, and so you know, when we reallocate funds for those critically important investments that, again, buses benefit from and cargo freight mobility benefits from, it just, I do think we just need to look at this from a system-wide perspective as well.

So- Yeah, I appreciate that, Chair.

And I think, you know, what I- to to that point and to the point that councilmember kettle made um uh in his earlier remarks and to the point that lots of our commenters made um i had contemplated uh bringing an amendment that would in fact raise the um the total revenue of the levy to 1.7 and decided not to do that.

But I am starting to think that if there is still room to have that conversation, given that there are so many priorities for safety, for walkability, for freight mobility, for basic infrastructure repair and maintenance that's needed, I would certainly be interested in doing that.

having the conversation with colleagues about whether it does make sense to boost what we are doing here so that we can not pit projects against one another or districts against one another or priorities, because we need to make sure that our community is able to be safe when they're navigating their neighborhoods.

And we need to make sure that our economy is able to continue rebounding.

And so anyway, all that to say, I'm happy to continue having the conversation with you.

Thank you.

Council Member Kittle.

Thank you, Chair Saka.

Thank you, Council Member Morales, for the insight on the issues impacting South Seattle from the transportation levy perspective.

And also, Council Member Wu, for your insight, bringing that additional piece in there was very helpful.

My points regarding, as Councilmember Morales alluded to, the arterials and freight are still germane and something that we need to address.

And I know we keep saying arterials, but many would say, too, our neighborhood streets are in dire shape.

But I just wanted to make that point.

The earlier arterial freight comments are still germane.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Moore.

Thank you very much, Chair.

I am actually not going to be making comments.

I have a 12 o'clock appointment that I cannot miss, and so I just wanted to make a few brief comments, but we went out of order.

So I just want to note I have heard the messages from the commenters and also from colleagues about making this, expanding it, making it so we're not really competing against one another.

share that perspective.

I just want to be clear that my piece about Greenwood neighbor, Greenways, was to put all that money in protective bike lanes, bike maintenance, and creating, finishing the network, and that there's other bike money and other buckets.

But none of this is set in stone.

I'm certainly willing to...

engage in additional conversations.

And I have a lot to say here, so I'll be happy to engage with my colleagues.

But for the most part, I'm in agreement with what I'm hearing, and I think that there can be alignment with what I'm recommending as well.

But we've got to keep those sidewalks.

But anyway, thank you very much.

I just wanted to make those few comments before I leave.

Thank you.

And yeah, very, very important.

CONVERSATION WE'RE HAVING HERE AND, YOU KNOW, PROBABLY ONE OF THE LONGER ONES THAT WE'LL HAVE GIVEN WHAT WE'RE CONSIDERING.

SO, YEAH, LET US CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION ON COUNCILMEMBER MOORE'S AMENDMENTS, I GUESS, OFFLINE.

BUT ANY OTHER COMMENTS, QUESTIONS, COLLEAGUES, ON COUNCILMEMBER MORALES'S AMENDMENTS?

NO?

ALL RIGHT.

MOVING ON.

VICE CHAIR HOLLINGSWORTH.

So Councilmember Hollingsworth has proposed two amendments.

One would add 12th Avenue from Madison to the Jose Rizal Bridge to the list of investments for protected bike lanes.

And a second amendment would shift $15 million from the new sidewalks and alternative walkways program to the sidewalk safety repair, essentially focusing on the existing sidewalk deficiencies.

Thank you, Cal.

I'll be brief because I know that timing is of the essence.

Thank you, Cal, for all your help.

So the first one, and I think Council President Nelson had brought this up, and I think Council Member Strauss about the sidewalks and that conversation.

I was trying to reintroduce something that would...

be able to maintain the balance between new sidewalks and also the repair of sidewalks.

You know, District 3, we have a ton of repairs that need to happen.

So just wanted to restore that balance of what the executive had initially sent down, but willing to open talk with our colleagues about what that potentially looks like as well.

Just understanding that repairing our sidewalks is incredibly important to continue the accessibility, particularly in everyone's district.

The second one that I thought was incredibly important, the 12th Avenue bike improvements from the Dr. Jose Rizal Bridge all the way to Madison.

What's particularly important in our district, Jutkins Light Rail, spring 2025 is going to be opening up and just north of I-90.

Okay.

from Rainier.

We have 200 apart, I think 300, excuse me, 300 units coming on board.

We also have another thousand units just south of that of market rate units from private developers.

We also have the Urban League that purchased with their funding where the Burger King that burnt down next to the old Baskin and Robbins, that's gonna be their new headquarters where we're gonna have a ton of family housing.

So there's a bunch of new housing developments that are going around Juckins and wanting to create a safe pathway from people that are going from that area, Jutkins, and then also heading down 12th, which connects Seattle U, Bailey-Gatzert, Seattle Academy.

There's just a ton of apartments and units that are on there, and so wanted that to be a safe connector, particularly also to Capitol Hill, because now you're being able, I'm going through my head as I'm on my bike, and then you're able to go through Pike Pine, those investments of protected bike paths that feed into downtown.

So it's just a great way to connect our South End, District 2 to District 3 into District 7. So that piece, that's my Second Amendment.

My third one, resolution text, it's a project resolution, which basically, I added it in section E, and I will be updating a draft with slightly different text and language.

This asks SDOT to do retrospectives on their larger projects.

Vice Chair Hollingsworth?

Yeah.

You're absolutely right about that amendment that you added.

That was for our companion resolution, which is item number two on the agenda.

Oh, my apologies.

Thank you.

I didn't see that.

If I may ask you to kindly hold your fire there until, or your comments on that really important and thoughtful amendment until that next item of business.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate that.

I will save that for the next item.

I didn't realize there was another item on there.

Also, so those are my two amendments.

More than happy to take questions and I will keep it moving.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council President Nelson.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate the spirit of your second amendment, the $15 million for the reducing for new sidewalks to sidewalk safety repair.

My amendment that would reduce the new sidewalks by 20 and put it into sidewalk safety repair is the same thing.

What I'm motivated by is a reality check on whether or not the city can actually do the work doubling the amount of sidewalks that the mayor put in.

Do we have enough contractors?

Do we have enough...

designers and planners to figure out where those sidewalks to go, what kinds of materials, et cetera.

That is very important work, and having underspends in a category doesn't do us any good.

We, at the same time, have to maintain our existing infrastructure.

So I am fine supporting your amendment or my amendment or whatever, but I think that we're trying to get at the same thing, that there are broken sidewalks all over the city.

And we have to make sure that we can facilitate people getting...

where they need to go, especially if the sidewalk damage is impeding their ability to do that.

So in any case, I just wanted to note my support for this.

I would say support mine for five more or whatever, but the point is if we cannot do the work to build that much new sidewalks in a short amount of time, then we need to think about making sure that we can actually fix our existing.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Council President.

More than happy to work with you.

I think we're saying the same thing on our amendments.

We just have different calculators, but absolutely.

Yeah.

So thank you.

Another item, right, for final deliberations, I guess.

But again, regardless of how you slice it, you know, there's a lot of energy and excitement for sidewalks in the city.

Okay.

Okay.

Moving on to whoever's next.

One on order.

Perhaps I should go to council member Nelson's amendment.

And then at the end, I can just very briefly summarize council member Moore's amendment.

So council member Nelson is offering four amendments.

It would reduce 7 million for the district project fund and add 7 million to bring back the neighborhood street fund program.

It would reduce 700,000 for the durable infrastructure line item and add 700,000 to support landscape maintenance for the central waterfront project.

It would reduce 20 million for the new sidewalks and add 20 million for sidewalk safety repair.

And then it would reduce 1 million from the property tax relief outreach and education program, which would reduce the size of the levy by 1 million.

Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

So just as a preamble, this is, I believe, the first transportation levy renewal since district elections have been in effect.

And what we're seeing in my colleagues' amendments is the tension between the desire, the...

a desire that I applaud, the desire to fund projects in one's own district and the imperative to consider the trade-offs between them.

So I bring my role as a city-wide, and what I hear from constituents across the city is concern about increasing housing and affordability and increasing property taxes, but also a demand that we...

that we really think about the policy trade-offs and deliver results for the money that we're spending.

And so that is, I've said from the beginning, and that is what I am bringing forward now.

The first...

So that's my general...

And when I talk about that we are delivering what they are demanding, they want to see improvements in the transportation system in their daily lives.

And so what I am proposing here, the First Amendment...

I listened to the public comment, and there was concern about the neighborhood...

the neighborhood, let's see, I'm down here, the Neighborhood Matching Fund.

That was a project that was working very well, and so I am putting this forward as a way to bring that back.

I am open to conversation about this.

I'm not completely wed to this.

I would like to understand more what the new program will do versus what the old program did.

But I'm just saying that that seemed to be something that was working well, so let's see about that.

And what I am doing by taking it from the district project fund, it's basically the same thing.

It's neighborhood driven, and that would be a way to preserve a project, I mean a program that works.

Regarding the 700 from the durable infrastructure, the $5 million that was allocated for the task force, which is now, I think, called durable infrastructure, but it's planning for another transportation funding source.

Until that funding, a blanket $5 million, is not really well defined what it will go for.

We understand it's to pay for outreach and consultants and some analysis.

But in the meantime, we know that we do have a contractual obligation per the terms of the lid for the waterfront that we have to maintain the...

the improvements that are along a narrow strip of Alaskan Way and then continuing into some arterials that come off the waterfront.

And so we received a letter from the chair of the Central Waterfront Oversight Committee and asking for a source of funding to ensure that we can do our part to maintain those improvements.

And that's what the $700,000 would fund.

And where it comes from, I don't really...

I'm not super-wed to.

I just want to make sure that that is actually funded.

And then again, the reduced by $20 million for new sidewalks.

I've already said that this chairs package does take a bold step in doubling the mayor's $63 million for new sidewalks.

Like I said, it's unclear to me that we will be able to actually spend that money year to year.

And at the same time, we know that we have a whole city full of sidewalks that need repair.

We also incur $4 to $6 million a year in settlements from cases of, from claims of people getting hurt on our sidewalks.

And so we have a responsibility to maintain our existing infrastructure.

And then finally, the reduced, You'll notice that now the levy is $300 million.

It's reduced by $1 million.

In principle, I'm uneasy about raising taxes to do outreach to mitigate the impacts of raising taxes.

But the bottom line is that $1.5 million is a lot of money for an ongoing campaign, which will have diminishing returns because, presumably, Over time, people will be aware already of these programs.

It's very important that we get people to know that they can have some property tax relief if they are eligible.

At the same time, I have been told that the barrier to that program is its staffing capacity.

I believe at the county, correct me if I'm wrong.

I think a better use for that money would be either an ILA with the county to fund a staff position so that we can move those applications through or simply reallocate that money or decrease the size of the levy.

But I do have a figure that I'm not sure how that 1.5 would be spent.

I'm fine leaving 500 in there.

A million dollars would be, you know, that's about 77,000 ad placements on cable TV, just according to a consultant.

But again, I don't know how that money would be spent.

I just think that we need to be careful with asking for money and then spending it wisely.

Thank you.

All right.

Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair Saka.

Thank you, Council President.

I appreciate the citywide look, and we have to have that balance as we move forward, because that plays into good governance pieces, too.

So thank you for that.

Also, thank you for highlighting.

Your second one really highlights how we, as a council, working with the executive to ensure the waterfront is done right.

It's been so fantastic, but we have to...

press through the tape, if you will.

And with Seattle Center coming into it, we need to work with SDOT and the Seattle Center relationship, make sure everything is good regarding the waterfront to ensure, again, that we press through the front.

So much work has been done so far.

We have to ensure that the maintenance pieces, whether it's, as mentioned here, landscaping, but also the connecting pieces that come into the waterfront are squared away, and then that they're also being, you know, kept free from, you know, the litter and other things like that.

So I appreciate this because, for one, like I said, it really highlights that we have to have a good relationship between SDOT and Seattle Center moving forward on the waterfront.

And I also support yourself and Councilmember Hollingsworth on the...

Sidewalk safety repair, as I've noted before, maybe not on the dais, that for nine months, I was driving my wife when she was pregnant to work and avoiding the potholes.

And then when I became a stay-at-home dad, when our daughter was born, I had to get a Bob stroller no pun intended, to navigate the really poor sidewalks in Queen Anne.

So we definitely have to hit the sidewalk repair piece too.

You know, we shouldn't have to use bob strollers to navigate sidewalks.

Thank you.

And let's see, Council Member Rivera.

Yes, thank you, Chair, and I appreciate both Councilmember Nelson's and Councilmember Hollingsworth's amendments to support sidewalks and sidewalk repair for the reasons I mentioned earlier.

I know that our folks who are in wheelchairs have a hard time navigating sidewalks that need repairs on them.

This is really critical.

And I also wanna echo the sentiments of council member Nelson and what I also said previously in terms of, we want to make this sidewalk investment as robust as possible and also ensure that money is not spent because we don't have the ability to deliver on it.

So we need to make sure that It's not just on paper an investment.

We need to make sure that whatever investment we make, we're actually able to deliver on it.

So looking forward to continuing that conversation because that is really critical.

It goes to accountability and it goes to making sure we're able to deliver on the services and not just talk, but do.

And so I want to make sure that that is a part of this conversation as well, because if we support it, but we're not actually able to deliver it, people can't benefit from it, which is what we really need for our residents across the city.

And just one final note.

My comments in this amendment could be framed as a lack of support for new sidewalks.

That is not the case.

The mayor's proposal has a strong sidewalk investment.

Yours does as well.

Even that isn't going to get us there, what we need, but we cannot...

We need to be careful not to promise more than we can deliver because that generates cynicism in the minds of our voters that we cannot actually produce the infrastructure that we're saying that they are paying for.

Thank you.

And any other questions?

Oh, go ahead.

Can I add one more thing too about sidewalk repair is also, well, and new sidewalks for our kids and our older individuals, also safety and sidewalk repairs also for our older individuals and residents in town who, you know, these are trip hazards and safety hazards for our older folks.

And I just really wanted to call that out as well.

Well, and a new sidewalk in the expiring levy is now, perhaps a sidewalk in need of repair.

Well, thank you.

And again, emphasizing, I think high level we're kind of rallying, coalescing around sidewalks and we need to finalize some decisions on how we slice that exactly, but I think So already seeing some areas for alignment and commonality here in your proposal, Council Member Nelson.

So thank you for this.

One thing is, so we all have kind of somewhat competing visions for what, certain projects should look like, and more specifically, who should decide.

And what I'm talking about now is, you can call it neighborhood streets, call it neighborhood initiated safety.

I mean, that's functionally the same thing as I understand it, but just a kind of rebranding.

You can call it district project funds, in which case the seven individual council members would decide, but you know, that high level, it's intended for smaller scale capital projects.

So there's alignment and consensus, not one person here, gotta look double, like double check the allocations, but not one person here has proposed cutting in any way, like, funding for smaller-scale capital projects.

We have, again, competing visions right now currently for what that looks like and who specifically decides.

On the neighborhood-initiated safety, neighborhood street fund thing, I'll note that Members of the Levee Oversight Committee and other folks have asked for more legislative clarity around the criteria and project selection and prioritization projects, because some of them, members of the Levee Oversight Committee has been tasked with among other things, deciding which of these neighborhood street fund projects were going to be funded and selected.

And so they have asked for more legislative clarity on that.

And that's why in the companion resolution, we call out need for more clarity on that upfront legislatively.

But again, high level, we all agree, smaller scale capital projects need or non-large capital projects CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS, SO SMALLER SCALE STUFF, NEEDS INVESTMENTS.

AND THEN THE OTHER THING IS I'LL NOTE HERE IS THE PROPOSAL FOR THE WATERFRONT A hundred percent agree.

And you know, that is my understanding as well.

That is a city commitment that we need to fund that.

And it is a city obligation, you know, and along the same lines that is going to survive a levy or not, it's going to, so I don't know if the levy is the best like basis for that.

It might be, it might not, I don't know.

But if it's an existing city funding obligation, which I think it is, and I would agree on that principle, YOU KNOW, WE'LL HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THE APPROPRIATE INVESTMENT AND THE INVESTMENT AMOUNT AND THE SOURCE OF THAT INVESTMENT.

SO IN ANY EVENT, ALL GOODNESS HERE.

LET'S SEE.

COUNCILMEMBER KETTLE, IS THAT A STALE HAND?

THAT'S WHERE I LOWERED IT.

OKAY, OKAY.

ALL GOOD.

GREAT.

Council President, you have your hand up still?

You have any other?

That's old, but I will say that please don't take offense at anything that I took money away from.

I was trying to keep the cost the same instead of adding, so I don't want you to.

No, no.

Okay.

No offense taken.

Look, I appreciate you, very thoughtful amendment, and the collaboration that people don't see behind the scenes, offline, and the thought that you put into all this partnership.

And I know you mentioned it yourself, but I know you are the only one of us proposed lowering the total size of the levy by $1 million.

I think it equates to 0.00064 something.

I don't know.

But hat tip, kudos to you.

So thank you.

All right, moving on to last but not least.

So just to make sure that we speak to the record, Council Member Moore has also offered a series of amendments.

Just very briefly go through them.

She's proposing to rename the new sidewalks and alternative walkways category to new sidewalks and sidewalk alternatives.

Intends to add expectation that a minimum of 36% of the new sidewalks are delivered in District 5. 70% in District 2 and 22% in District 1, as the expectation that sidewalks and sidewalk alternatives will be focused around the one miles walk shed of schools and local transit stops as the organizing principle.

It identifies a number of specific locations for new sidewalks to be implemented, as well as a location for the crossing improvements category.

And then it adds the development of a sidewalk master plan as part of the durable infrastructure solutions.

This plan is intended to develop a funding plan for completing the sidewalk network by 2044 to coordinate a work plan between SDOT and Seattle Public Utilities to create a plan for implementing transportation impact fees and to have that work completed by January 2026. The proposal also reduces $25.5 million for the Neighborhood Initiated Safety Partnership Program, adds $21 million to the District Project Fund.

It reduces $9 million for transit passenger safety, eliminating that levy program, reduces $4 million for stairways, eliminating that program, and then adds $17.5 million to Vision Zero.

It reduces $20 million for neighborhood greenways, eliminating that levy program, and then adding $10 million for protected bike lanes, $5 million for upgraded bike lanes, and $5 million for bike spot improvements.

And then it revises the definitions for the Aurora Avenue North safety project to include installation of sidewalks and planting street trees.

It would also add three recitals to the legislation.

Thank you.

All right, couple comments, at least one from Council Member Kettle, go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Saka.

I just wanted to highlight, again, my commitment to sidewalks, but I also want to highlight that stairways are sidewalks that go up and down.

And I realize a trip on a broken sidewalk is one thing, but tumbling down stairs is a whole lot worse.

I note the line item regarding stairways, and I just wanted to make that point, those two points very clear.

Thank you for making that point.

I had a similar thought.

Yeah, and it's very important.

I definitely support sidewalks D5, 1, and 2. I recognize the need and the prioritization, but stairways are important for like D7 and D3, and so we need to ensure that our up and down sidewalks are also covered.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

There are stuck stairways also in the D4.

And between D4 and D5, there's a set of stair, there's a stairwell that I've heard from constituents about that is in need of serious repairs.

So thank you for raising that.

Thank you.

Council Member Wu.

Well, I have questions for Council Member Moore regarding a couple of these items.

But maybe, Calvin, you might know the answer to them.

Do you know the minimum sidewalk percentage for each district.

Do you know how she came to that number?

I believe those came from the SDOT's estimation of where those missing sidewalks are.

So it is proportional to what the estimated need is.

Please come back to me if someone else has a question.

I do.

Yeah, go ahead, Council President.

Do you know what the rationale is for reducing the transit passenger safety item or eliminating that?

I don't know that I could speak for the council member for her intention, just that she's proposing to shift that money to Vision Zero.

I had, in one of our first discussions, I had raised, I had just observed that we don't want to let our transit agency partners off the hook for doing their responsibility to keep passengers, or to try to keep passengers safe on public transit, because we do hear that that is a big reason why it's, some people aren't coming back to the office, but I just, I didn't know if this was a signal that, I can ask it later, that...

she doesn't want those individuals paid for by city money on those, or anyway, I'll get back to her.

I just thought that you might understand.

Yeah.

So I guess on that, just I have some comments on this from my perspective, but I want to kind of revisit briefly Council Member Morales' proposed clarification tweaks on top of the chair's package for, with respect to the transit safety and security investments, and I fully support her language.

It's, I mean, basically requiring us to collaborate with transit operators, King County Metro, Sound Transit, whoever, which, you know, I think we would do anyway, or at least that would be my hope.

So it's directly in line with kind of what I was thinking.

So definitely support that.

And good point about the transit.

I, yeah, curious to, we're gonna have to better understand the thinking of council member Moore on that.

Also on the, so to council member Wu's questions about the 36% of new sidewalks going to D5 and a proportional share of base, essentially just allocating and ensuring minimum investment amounts to three of the most vulnerable, most glaringly obvious in terms of need districts.

Is the idea there from your understanding, Cal, is the idea there that like any, so those are like the minimum amount.

So any other amount outside of that could be made pursuant to the minimum amount prioritization framework and criteria that we approved recently in the Seattle Transportation Plan, which includes like equity and safe routes to school, any number of other things?

It is an expectation, I believe, of it's reflecting the proportional needs across the city.

I think that the STP identifies a hierarchy of how projects, how sidewalks would be evaluated.

There was a tier listing that influences that.

SDOT wouldn't just go out and actually just take that first tier list.

They're going to have to come up with programs and projects that would actually deliver.

That is a big part of this whole conversation is how is SDOT going to actually get this work out the door and under construction.

It provides more direction to them to look for proportionality, if you will, across these districts.

I would say it's an expectation.

So it's more of a direction setting than a requirement.

But beyond that, I think I don't know that I can speak more than that.

Thank you.

I have some other final comments, but I see my colleagues have some questions as well.

So go ahead, Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

Related to the transit passenger safety, Cal, and again, we don't know what Council Member Moore was contemplating, but I do know that there's Two types of safety.

There's safety on the actual light rail and buses, which we've all talked about here, making it safer for folks so that they will actually take public transit.

But then there's safety related to right-of-way things at the bus stops.

So is there clarity around, is this meant to...

And then it says personnel services.

So was this money originally included to address public safety on...

light rail on the buses, or was it related to the public safety improvements that could happen at the bus stops and light rail stations?

And the right-of-way, let me say, because I know the light rail stations are Sound Transit, Metro operates the buses, but there's some right-of-way things that we're responsible, that SDOT's responsible for.

I do know that.

So would you mind clarifying when that was originally contemplated?

I think the mayor's original proposal was deliberately giving a bit more flexibility for just address this issue with this bucket of money.

And then the chair has proposed adding more money to that to that fund.

I will say that in this year's budget, Councilmember Strauss had included $1 million to help support Metro's Transit Ambassador Program, which is a program that deals with these types of issues.

It puts people out in the field to help.

It's both eyes on the service and also customer service to help transit riders.

That was $1 million in support of a much larger King County program.

One way you could look at this is $9 million over eight years could be an extension of that program.

That might be one way that the funds could be used, or perhaps there are other physical improvements that might be contemplated.

want to suggest that there's something in mind, but there's sort of flexibility to consider all those types of things that support transit passenger safety.

Thank you, Cal.

And then I'll just say, I mean, to Council Member Nelson's point, and maybe even Council Member Moore was thinking about this, I don't know, but because I know she's very thoughtful about these things.

Just with our partners, you know, there's a lot of talk about not letting our partners, so to speak, off the hook.

I mean, these are their responsibilities.

I know that the city works with the partners.

And so I, that's another question I would have did in the original proposal proposed by the mayor, was it that they worked with the partners and there's like some kind of collaboration.

And if so, that needs to be more transparent, I think so that we're clear, right.

That the partners need that type of support to support our residents.

I mean, I get that as well.

So I think more information on, on this, would be welcomed at least from my part and maybe some of my other colleagues.

Yeah, that would be, I would appreciate that.

And Bob, you can, Council Member Kettle, you can back me up, but last night at the safety, at the Healthy Streets for All, we did have the Chief of Safety from Metro on the, you know, on the panel and saying that he's most concerned about assaults on drivers and passengers on buses.

And also the union representing Metro drivers two years ago made this a major demand that the agencies operating the Metro, at least, really focus on driver safety.

Definitely.

So, look, this is a really important investment, and I 100% agree, at least from a, I don't know, I can't speak to Council Member Moore's intent, can't speak to the executive's intent with adding it originally, but certainly from a legislative perspective, I think the intent is that it's not intended to replace, or as you all might aptly put it, let anyone off the hook.

you know, for their contractual obligations to provide a safe and secure environment for all on transit, but instead intended to be additive of those existing and supplement those existing efforts.

And guardians are, you know, an absolute guardian program, ambassador program, whatever it's called.

Pardon me, I don't know the exact nomenclature, but...

Anyone interested in learning more about what security personnel services looks like, it's a broad range of options.

Check out the King County Metro Transit Regional Committee, I think, Vice Chair Hollingsworth, that we had a month or two ago, where we got a great briefing on this, on this exact topic, and it includes guardians and ambassadors or whatever, it includes transit security, it includes King County Metro Police, it includes a new behavioral health crisis intervention specialist, Look, it includes a number of people options.

These are people challenges that we're experiencing on transit, and we need a people-centered approach, and that's what this is intended to reflect, not intended to let anyone off the hook, but a variety of options, a diverse array of options of people, including ambassadors or whatever they're called, and that's just for Metro, and I'm sure Sound Transit has comparable or equivalent positions to accommodate and fulfill substantially similar roles.

But in any event, go ahead Council Member Wu.

I have an additional question.

What's the feasibility of creating development of sidewalk master plan?

And where are we with, it says here, can create a plan for implementing transportation impact fees?

I feel like I need a briefing on where we are when it comes to transportation impact fees and the possibility of developing a master plan by 2026 and how would we be able to incorporate that and this is something that would go into the levy.

uh i think that um uh possibly council member moore should speak to her proposal i think that uh the issue of a sidewalk master plan does get into the uh the work of the financial task force uh some of the ideas there being to come up with funding solutions um it i think it is a bit of a question of you know which work has to come first can you actually have a plan to develop the entire sidewalk plan without real funding options in front of you.

So there may be a bit of a chicken and egg decision here, but I think this is bringing that information into that work.

But beyond that, I think Council Member Moore should speak to her amendment.

And then I also wanted to ask her if she had done any stakeholder regarding, I guess, moving funds around in the bicycle safety Spear or that whole category.

And so I guess I'll have some discussions with her offline.

So question on impact fees quickly.

As I understand it, they are very limited and narrow in terms of the specific types of transportation investments and improvements they can fund and which those they can't.

because the proposal does specifically call it impact fees as an option to potentially help close the gap, in this case over 20 years, is that a viable path to rely solely or substantially on impact fees from your assessment?

So the council has looked at impact fees over the past several years, and there have been a number of cost estimates that have been floated.

I have in my head something like 400 million over 20 years as some recent conceptual idea of what it might generate.

That's not a lot of money for the scale of sidewalk investment that we're talking about.

So it may be additive and help support, but it's unlikely to be a significant funding source to really deal with the backlog.

Thank you.

And could it be used to build Could those impact fees be used towards building new sidewalks?

Impact fees have to be used for new capacity.

They can't deal with the existing deficiencies or maintenance.

New sidewalks would be new capacity, so it would seem to fit that.

There may be some other technical relationships about how that works, but on the face of it, it is new capacity.

Got it.

Thank you.

And Council Member Rivera.

Just one last point about the transit piece and safety is that I do support working with our partners at Metro and Sound Transit because, you know, we have public safety pieces at the city.

And at the end of the day, we want to make sure that residents are riding safely and that they're riding.

And so support working with everyone on that piece.

And this almost sounds a little bit like what we do with business improvement areas where we do support ambassadors for safety reasons.

So it's meant to supplement, not to take the place of our public safety officers, our police officers, but we do provide ambassadors.

We help support that program.

So this sounds like perhaps it's another iteration of that type of investment, but again, we just need more information.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And some of it we can specifically define here and some of it we can intentionally not define here because once we lock ourselves in and add it as a firm requirement, particularly at the underlying legislation level, it locks us.

So I do see value in having some level of flexibility on that point, but open to continuing what that kind of looks like in terms of how it shows up in the words.

A couple final comments.

So I love and appreciate Council Member Moore's amendment here and like with everyone, see a lot of attractive features and things that I think we can all collectively rally around and others it's clear, warrants further conversation here in this case offline.

But like one thing I do love is like, hey, she calls out on the pedestrian safety that the focus should be on building new sidewalks and sidewalk alternatives within one mile walk shed network of any school, K through 12 and or local transit stops that runs every half hour.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's a great way to help prioritize and makes a lot of sense.

And I think this is a form over substance distinction, arguably at least, but you know, she calls out sidewalk alternatives as opposed to alternative walkways.

The original alternative walkways language I proposed was, was it might be a slightly more technical term that I directly pulled from some documentation and from SDOT and how they've described similar things in the past.

But like, I think we're talking about, we're speaking the same language, alternative walkways, sidewalk alternatives.

I love that.

And then, you know, the only thing we'll have to wanna be very clear on is does it make sense to have a, I want to set the task force up for success and I want to set future policymakers up for success as well.

And I want to set voters up for success and knowing that they're going to have the comfort and knowing that we're prepared to deliver on whatever commitments we make in this document.

And I don't know if...

I'm not today convinced that a commitment to build out and close out our 27% missing sidewalk gap in the city by 2044 in 20 years.

I'm not sure that's doable.

I'd be curious to better understand from council member Moore herself, like what is the basis that kind of like, what is the rationale that went into that?

But you know, our goals should be smart, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

And I think that goal hits all of those characteristics with the exception of achievable.

I don't know if it's achievable, especially, you know, we heard and want to better understand, we should all want to better understand what, What does a total investment in new sidewalks, how much more progress does it help give us and allow us to make on building out new sidewalks in the city?

Because we know that under the current pace of construction, it would take 500 plus years, which is unsatisfactory, unacceptable.

And I think there's shared understanding and alignment amongst this body that we're prepared to make policy decisions that help quickly accelerate and hasten the pace of new construction.

I don't know if making a commitment to do it in 20 years, especially amongst the context of roads and bridges that this task force, I don't know if we would be setting them up for success.

I don't know if, I don't wanna just cut and run and create a flashy goal that, you know, my successors are going to have to try and solve and not be well set up for success.

And so I want to make sure we're...

So with that, you know, we'll want to all carefully think about what the best goal for that might mean.

And also...

If we're specifically calling out sidewalks, again, some would argue that overall state of our roads are in a horrible state of disrepair, equal or worse than our bridges.

If we're going to call out a specific goal for sidewalks, maybe it makes sense to call out in parallel specific goals to help arrest the state of our horrible road condition.

And maybe we do that through assets sustainability ratio.

Maybe we do that through calling out composite PCI scores or at least scores on arterials, which are the most urgent, important, I don't know.

But I think we'll wanna think about what is the best and most appropriate way to approach that?

Because it's good to have goals.

I also wanna make sure they're, In any event, moving on.

Unless anyone else has anything?

Okay, moving on.

So council member, I think we're ready to move on to the second agenda item and do a brief summary of the companion resolution.

If we could go to item number two.

Yeah, so great.

I'll formally see it off.

We'll now move on to the second item of business.

Will the clerk please read the title of item two into the record?

Agenda item two, draft levy companion resolution for briefing and discussion.

All right, thank you, presenters.

Looks like we had another presenter join us, welcome.

Please introduce yourself and begin your presentation.

Hello, council members, Yolanda Ho, council central staff.

I will do a very quick overview of the companion resolution.

Also noting there are a couple of edits that I have heard from, sounds like council member Hollingsworth and council member Morales to flag for the chair as the sponsor of this legislation.

So the draft resolution before you is organized as described in Cal's June 4th memo.

So he kind of at a high level described the chair's priorities.

And it is organized into three buckets.

The first is establishing council direction on how the Seattle Department of Transportation and other departments as appropriate implement the programs and activities funded by the levy.

The second is to establish council direction for levy oversight and monitoring.

And the third is to identify issues for future council consideration.

Using the chair's priorities as a starting point, we drafted the initial version of the resolution and then subsequently incorporated requests from other council offices as those came in.

These additions were reviewed and all were approved by the chair and can be seen in the draft before you.

And so the plan is for us to introduce this resolution at next week's city council meeting.

so that the committee can vote on it at its July 2nd meeting.

So this will require a rush for introduction.

So I could describe the resolution, but I know the meeting's gone quite long.

So just your preference chair.

Yeah, I actually think this one is fairly straightforward and self-explanatory.

There are no material changes to what's contained in this final chair's package.

aside from what was presented in the summary memo with the few minor exceptions and I'll let, and Councilor Hollingsworth started to comment on her amendment.

So I'll give her the opportunity to finish her thoughts there.

And then also just so we know like, This package is truly intended to, or the companion resolution instrument is truly intended to reflect not just, you know, sort of my ideas shaped by all of your ideas, colleagues, but also your individual comments and suggestions.

So it is truly a consolidated document.

Everything I reviewed and approved everything to be all of your edits, to this instrument, and I reviewed and approved all of it to be included here, including Council President's proposal to the effect of this is supplemental and additive on transit security and safety measures and any number of things.

Council Member Kettle had some edits.

Vice Chair Hollingsworth, go ahead and...

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate that.

I'll be brief.

It's pretty straightforward.

And I want to thank Yolanda and Calvin and Brian for their help in crafting this.

And I know that we'll be coming with some more improvements for updated language.

But this basically just asks SDOT to do retrospectives on the larger projects after completion to evaluate how it's impacted residents, local businesses, and how they feel after the project is completed.

We have had a number of projects in our district.

We have our extensive work to Pike Pine Corridor, where we have changed directions of, you know, east-west and of traffic flows.

We also have our G Line that's been three years of...

construction and then we are also gearing up for our J line.

And just want ESSAT to go back to the residents, the people that live along those corridors to find out how is it flowing?

Are there any improvements that need to be made?

And just kind of improvement like what we can do better as we are learning from the construction and projects that we're going along with the district and how they're impacting people.

and just wanting them to be as successful as possible.

So it's pretty straightforward.

Just wanting follow up with folks along the corridors that live in those neighborhoods that have been impacted by construction for over a year minimum.

Great call out there.

And I think that codifies a kind of growth mindset.

And what I think all of us should be striving for is incorporating learnings and best practices as we make similar decisions going forward.

So yeah, thank you for the thoughtful amendment there.

May I speak to that?

100%.

As chair of economic development, this is one of the most common concerns that are brought to my office.

How to make up for the loss of revenue during major road work if customers and sometimes even staff or the business owners can't access the business itself.

And so Washington is, I think, one of eight states.

I could be wrong, but we lack the tool that other states have, which is to We prohibit the use of public funds for private uses, right?

And so we have no way of helping out neighborhood business districts when major work is happening.

And so there's not a good answer for it in this context, but I do appreciate you calling it out.

So thank you very much.

All right.

Awesome.

Chair, if I may, Council Member Morales also requested a few changes to her language regarding a Litting I-5.

So she, just for transparency's sake, just want to let you all know, she was interested in a reference to Resolution 32100 that was passed last year regarding kind of next steps shared with the mayor's office on some of that work.

So they had requested some additions to that.

So just letting everyone know.

And if Council Member Hollingsworth, if you could get that language to me, if you had some revisions, I understand by noon on Thursday, I'd appreciate it because we're trying to rush this for introduction next week, Council President.

Understood.

Got you.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

And colleagues, a good reminder on amendments and walk-on amendments from here on out.

They are strongly frowned upon in terms of walk-on amendments.

You know, at our next meeting, we are going to be voting on the final package.

There's a lot of work that needs to be done between now and then to align, consolidate on consensus items.

And then, you know, like a lot of work on central staff, to be honest.

This is complex.

This is like...

I remember in law school, I took the LSAT, and this is like a crazy logic game problem.

You got to figure out which works here and there.

Like, oh my gosh.

So we've been at this for a while.

It's not going to, like, I feel great about where we're at and the progress and the path to finalizing a legislative package for a levy to put before voters.

But yeah, like...

Please let us avoid walk-ons during the next committee meeting, colleagues.

Please, no walk-ons.

All right, so let's see.

All right, so I do, because we do have the benefit of our colleague, Council Member Moore here.

Unfortunately, she had to leave for a meeting right when we got to her amendments, which totally understand.

But now we have the benefit of...

I do want to just...

I don't want to bombard her with any questions because we have a hard stop by one.

But I do want her to...

to give her the opportunity to speak directly from her own perspective to her amendments on Item 1 on the agenda.

You know, Council Member Moore, just so for your benefit, some of our colleagues had questions about your thinking and rationale on the transit security reductions, the goals of 2040 by completing the sidewalk network, kind of how you approach high level, the allocation of, you know, 34%.

D5 and those three kind of targeted districts.

We got some initial clarity from Cal on that.

And just, I guess, anything that you wanted to speak on in the next few minutes.

Hi, thank you, Chair.

Yeah, my apologies.

I had a meeting that I absolutely could not reschedule.

So thank you for this opportunity.

And I will not be long because I know everybody is tired.

I'll just answer a couple of questions that I think were asked

So sorry, Council Member Moore.

I just want to make sure I'm getting on the fly Robert's Rules guidance directly from our experts, and I want to make sure you do this right.

If there are no objections, I would like us to go back to item number one on the agenda to allow our colleague the opportunity to speak.

So hearing none.

Council member Moore, please go ahead.

And I'm sorry for.

Oh, no, no, thank you.

I want to make sure I'm not out of order.

Thank you.

So quick question.

How did I come to the percentages?

I think Calvin answered those, but, and I did want to just say, thank you very much, Calvin.

I know we had a lot of back and forth.

I appreciate.

working well with me on this.

It was a long slog, so I appreciate your patience.

Anyway, that was based on the percentages of need and missing sidewalks that have been identified by SDOT, so that's why, D5 has, I can't remember, was it 36%?

And that's how we came with the percentage.

And also, my understanding is that that's sort of been the de facto as to how SDOT has been putting in the sidewalks in the move Seattle levy.

And just trying to keep the focus on where the equitable need is and setting forth those kind of baseline figures.

I think another question that was asked was, why did I take money from transit security?

And there was another place I pulled money from.

My thinking is not that we need less security on transit, but I really do believe that that's a role for Metro and that Metro should be, we should be putting pressure on Metro through our contracts with them to do a better job of providing transit security.

And I do support Council Member Morales and other council members' view that Vision Zero is critically important, and it seemed to me an appropriate way to transfer money from something that should really be a different jurisdiction's responsibility to Vision Zero, which I think is our responsibility.

And there was something else I transferred money from, I can't remember what it is now, to bump up that Vision Zero.

And then to the issue of why the creating a standard criteria to build new sidewalks and sidewalk alternatives within the one mile walk shed network of any school and or local transit stop.

Basically, any elementary or middle school student doesn't get access to school transport if they're within a mile of the school.

And the data out there also shows that people are healthiest when they walk a mile.

And so it seemed and the survey that I did in my district showed tremendous support for locating sidewalks around schools and really creating a walk shed network around schools that makes it safe for people to get there from a distance, and particularly when they're not being provided transport by the district.

Mindful of the fact that there's potentially 20 elementary schools are going to be closed, I expanded it through K through 12. And then I also added and or transit, because it is critically important that people be able to walk to transit.

And if we want to encourage people to ride the bus or to ride the light rail, they need to be able to actually walk there safely.

So I do support the increased money on sidewalk repair.

I also support keeping that as a separate category, though, because it is so critically important that I think we want to have money designated to that and to the point of being able to keep track of where it's being and have the governance piece of, oversight piece of that.

I think it's important.

So, that is really the framework in which I've listed the various projects further, and also the framework that I would ask, or that I would, that this legislation have passed would direct SDOT to look at when they are deciding where they're gonna put in sidewalks.

And that's a pretty standard criteria used in discussing sidewalk implementation.

So that's how I got to that.

I'm happy to answer any other questions.

I am sort of going on again, so.

Yeah, yeah, no, thank you so much, Council Member Moore, very helpful.

I think the only other thing, if you wouldn't mind just commenting on briefly is like the basis for the master plan goal of completing the sidewalk network by 2044. like your thinking and kind of like the basis that you use to create that goal?

Yeah, so let me get to that.

So right now SDOT is in the process and they have been for a while of looking at sidewalk alternatives and a significant percentage of the move Seattle levy sidewalks were built and put into place that were alternative walkways.

So we had both the traditional sidewalks and then we had the alternative walkways.

At the rate that we're going, we're gonna be looking at, even with 500 sidewalks, I think it's gonna be 188 years before we get to the 11,000 that are missing.

This is more of an aspiration that the goal is to get either sidewalks or alternative, I'm calling them sidewalk alternatives, they're alternative walkways.

It's really how do we do our space needle thinking, our once in a lifetime thinking here of sitting, bringing everybody together, S.SPU, everybody who's interested in this and thinking we have these, We have limited resources, but we do have, and we have this one way of approaching sidewalks, which is traditional, and then we have alternative ways which we have the record that they are very effective and have been working and are at least twice as, they're half as expensive, if not less.

And so, just using it as kind of a moonshot to bring people together.

Obviously, we're not going to get one through five between now and 2044, but we can be ambitious and I think we ought to have at least a plan in place that sets those steps forward.

And in terms of looking at transportation impact fees, you know, the funding mechanism for most of the places that have sidewalks was local improvement districts.

Those require that they are part of your property tax.

It increases the tax burden on those communities.

D5 does not have a lot of money in most of its pockets.

And transit impact fees are something that many other jurisdictions use.

I'm not saying we should necessarily adopt it, but it's certainly an important funding mechanism that should be at least considered considered, given due and serious consideration.

And I believe that the Levy Oversight Committee itself also recommend looking at transportation impact fees.

So not tying our hands, but requiring them to come forward with a viable plan as another funding source.

No, thank you for that and those clarifications there.

And I will be honest, when I first read your proposal in the goal section in particular, that's exactly the comment that came to my mind.

This is space needle thinking.

This is what I think the mayor envisions when he's talking about space needle thinking.

Very, very ambitious.

And I will just want to work with you to make sure it is ambitious, but also achievable and doable and implementable.

And so we're setting our...

the future folks that are gonna be doing the work on the task force up for success.

We're aligned with reasonable expectations from members of the public, and then also setting our future successors in this, policy makers up for success as well.

And not to mention the experts at SDOT as well.

But in any event, thank you, very helpful.

Look, long meeting guys.

So any final questions?

Colleagues.

I would just like to know offline if you have added up the amount of new funding that if all of these new proposals, additions.

I have not.

I believe they all, with the exception of your amendment, they all move existing money around.

So it's net neutral to what the chair has proposed.

It's net neutral?

Okay.

Thank you.

And just final comment from my perspective that I heard it so many times and I wanted to mention it, there's so many other like great comments came up, but I hear a concern, a theme concern wise that on our city's ability to implement some of these projects, particularly sidewalks.

And I hear that concern and that's why in the chair's package proposal, we are calling upon and asking SDOT to come up with an initial readiness assessment and action plan to kind of lay out before voters even vote on this thing, high level, based on what you know now, like what is your plan to staff up, to get contracting systems in place, to be able to start to deliver effectively on this levy.

And then there's an annual reporting requirement thereafter that obviously the expectation there is be, more detailed, more granular level plans and concrete steps that they are taking and have taken to effectively deliver on this.

So it's a great question.

I think we're all thinking about it.

We're all mindful of those concerns.

And I welcome any other specific ideas to make that language even better or add, in other areas to address the underlying concern there.

So that said, we have reached the end of today's agenda.

Our next meeting will be where we vote on the amendments and the underlying legislation.

That's on, again, Tuesday, July 2nd at 9.30 a.m.

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

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

It is 12.56 p.m.