Thank you very much.
Good morning.
We're getting a little bit of a late start, but this is the February 10th, 2023 regularly scheduled meeting of the Neighborhoods Education, Civil Rights and Culture Committee.
I'm Tammy Morales, chair of the committee.
Will the clerk please call the roll?
Council Member Lewis.
Present.
Council Member Nelson.
Present.
Vice Chair Sawant.
Chair Morales.
Here.
or present, one absent, one excused.
Thank you.
If there's no objection, today's agenda would be adopted.
Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.
So we have several appointments on today's committee agenda, and then we'll have a community panel presentation on mobility issues and its impact on the health of our neighborhoods.
So at this time, we will open the general in-person and hybrid public comment.
Do we have anybody in person?
Okay.
We've got several folks who are signed up.
the public comment period.
And I know that there are a lot of folks.
Sorry We're signed up virtually for public comment, so I will remind folks that you need to address things that are on today's agenda.
Um so we do.
It does remain the strong intent of council to have public comment during our regularly scheduled meetings.
If in the council reserves the right to modify the public I will moderate the public comment period in the following manner.
This comment period will be for up to 20 minutes.
Each speaker will be given two minutes.
Let's say one minute because it does look like there are several folks signed up.
I'll call on two speakers at a time in the order in which you registered on the council's website.
If you've not yet registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of the comment period by going to the council's website at seattle.gov slash council.
Once I call your name, please unmute, and you will receive a prompt if you have been unmuted.
At that point, press star six to begin speaking.
You will hear a chime when you have 10 seconds left.
Once you hear the chime, please wrap up your comments so we can move to the next speaker.
And when you've completed your public comment, we ask that you disconnect, and if you would like to continue following the meeting, that you do so via Seattle Channel.
Okay, so the public comment period is now open.
and I will call the first person.
As I said, we don't have anybody signed up in person.
The first person I see is Sri Ravi.
Yes, can you hear me?
Yes, Sri, please go ahead.
You have one minute.
Thank you.
I just wanted to say that I'm requesting all the Seattle City Council members to vote no on the caste ordinance because it disproportionately impacts Indian children in the U.S. and leads to harassment, assault, and discrimination on a community that's a victim of centuries of horrendous colonial atrocities.
It is recorded that the British actually introduced caste as a part of the divide and rule policy.
And when they asked Indians about their caste, a lot of Indians did not know about their caste.
And this is all documented by the British themselves.
Excuse me.
And it's also noted that Solomon and Hickel looked at a 40-year period during colonialism, and they found that 165 million Indians perished during this period.
So anyway, please consider the socioeconomic problems that are created by colonialism and don't blame it on caste.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Sri C. And you will be followed by Dimitri Potemkin.
Hi, this is Sri.
Can you all hear me?
Yes.
Hi.
I'd like to express my serious concerns regarding the caste discrimination ordinance that's being introduced by Council Member Shama Sawant.
The premise for introducing this ordinance is not grounded in fact, and all that we have been hearing are anecdotal evidence.
For instance, the equality lab study that was quoted in support of this ordinance has been severely debunked by Carnegie Endowment Research.
It said that the survey is not based on a representative sample and raised serious concerns about questions about the generalizability of its findings.
Along similar lines, one of the key findings of the Pew research is that large majorities of people who identify themselves with lower caste do not think they face discrimination based on caste.
So I sincerely request all the council members to vote no on this ordinance, proposed ordinance.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Dimitri Potemkin, followed by Pita Prasad.
Good morning.
I wanted to say that with this cast ordinance, the Seattle City Council is inviting lawsuits, just like with what happened with Cal State University.
In their lawsuit, professors Sunil Kumar and Praveen Sinha claim that Cal State's new caste discrimination policy, quote, seeks to define the Hindu religion as including caste and an alleged oppressive and discriminatory caste system as foundational religious tenets, and that it singles out students and staff who are Indian and Hindu.
Kumar and Sinha don't identify as being members of any caste, and they said they fear CSU will assign a caste to them under the policy.
Both professors were born in India and are followers of Hinduism.
I will add that my Indian wife's family never had caste identity in their community.
She has no caste.
This is kind of a law to refrain from meddling in lives and histories and cultures that it doesn't understand.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Peeta Prasad, followed by Ashwin Arab.
Got it.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Okay, so I'm calling to really ask our council members to vote no on the caste ordinance.
You have already been contacted by several Dalit and Bahujan folks, the ones you are claiming to protect and represent, and all of those Dalit Bahujan folks have urged you to not fall for this racist trope.
They do not need representation from the likes of Equality Lab, which is an open hate group dedicated to demolishing Hinduism.
That is their right.
Seattle should not mainstream such hate and such racist groups.
As previous scholars have said, those opposing it are not for discrimination, but they want to warn you not to set up a commission or a law that will start to discriminate against yet another minority.
Most bad acts start with very good intentions.
So while most of you are acting with good intentions, please be aware of the ramifications of what you are doing.
Thank you.
Vote no.
The next speaker is Ashwin Arab.
Hi my name is Ashwin and I'm calling in to urge the Seattle City Council to vote no on the caste ordinance.
Caste in South Asian communities is far removed from the American cultural context and not easy to legislate morally.
One of my main concerns is how this law will actually be enforced.
There are no universally applicable ways to determine someone's caste.
I don't even know my caste.
As a South Asian-American is the Seattle City Council going to assign me one.
If so, how would they determine my caste?
Will you force South Asians to identify as one if they choose not to identify that way?
And lastly, how will this apply to ethnically mixed people?
If the council has not considered these questions, I would urge them to table it until more studies have been conducted as it may have possible ramifications for the very people it claims to help.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Rajeshwari G.
Namaste.
My name is Rajeshwari and I'm against the caste ordinance.
To our respected council members, I ask, if you are tired of hearing the cause, think of what happens if this ordinance is passed.
A huge number of lawsuits and counter lawsuits are sure to follow.
How do we resolve them?
How do we determine someone's caste?
And who decides if a person is higher or lower caste?
To my Hindu friends, I have the same questions.
Caste is a foreign word.
and in its insidiousness, attempts to malign an ideology that is inherently universal, inclusive, while being beautifully diverse at the same time.
All discrimination comes from a place of arrogance and ignorance.
While there's little we can do about the former, there is a lot we can do about the latter.
So please educate yourself and those around you.
Please do not let a few bad words of ignorant individuals cloud your thinking.
Tamaso maa jyotir gamaya.
May we all go from the darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Chetana Wilson.
Hi, my name is Chetana and I strongly urge the Seattle Council to vote no on the CAST resolution, again, as it is founded on faulty data.
There are several well-documented problems with the Equality Lab survey as laid out in various articles.
The quality and data of this report were challenged comprehensively back in 2018 when it was first distributed.
More recently, the 2020 survey on Indian Americans by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace called out the survey's flaws and footnote 29 indicating the following.
The study relied on a non-representative snowball sampling method to recruit respondents.
Furthermore, respondents who did not disclose a caste identity were dropped from the data set.
Therefore, it is likely that the sample did not fully represent the South Asian American population.
Equality Labs, Political Director Sharman Hossain went on Twitter and tweeted that CAST has informed every social, political, and economic structure in the diaspora.
Arguing to salvage Hinduism is a dominant CAST rhetoric.
CAST is rooted in the Hindu scriptures.
She is seeking to dismantle Hinduism.
And I just want to know if Seattle supports dismantling Hinduism as well.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Srinivas Goodlava Ledi.
Srinivas, are you with us?
Apologies if I'm mispronouncing your name.
Okay, I've got three folks listed next who are not present.
So Venky Ram.
Hello.
Hello, this is Srinivas here.
Yes, please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you.
I was pressing the wrong button for unmute.
Okay.
Good evening, council members, Seattle City Council members.
Yeah, I would like to say, just make it short and simple.
Please vote no to the cast ordinance which Seattle City is planning to do it.
This is a very, it's very much like CRT thing, which is coming in the US schools, which is going to invite more lawsuits, more discrimination, which is going to create more bad blood among the American citizens.
Most of us are coming from immigrants like myself.
We are now Americanized.
My kids are Americanized.
They have been educated in the US.
All their education has been in, nobody asked their caste.
Now with this, there'll be caste tag.
And that's going to be a problem for the future generations.
or we are doing more, this ordinance is going to pump up more hatred among the Americans who are born here with different backgrounds.
Yes, this is absolutely a no.
It's going to invite more trouble for Americans going down the future.
Yep.
That's my take.
And there are already enough discriminatory laws to protect every citizen.
Thank you.
Your time is ended.
Thank you very much.
So the next three folks I have are not listed as not present.
Venky Ram, Atul Jandale, I'm sure Spanish accent is not how you pronounce it.
My apologies.
And Rachel Gotham, if you are interested still, you still have time to call in.
So the next speaker will be Vidula Vajramushti.
Good morning.
My name is Vidula Vajramushti.
I'm calling here to request you to vote no on the caste-based ordinance.
So I am directly impacted by this as an ex-Microsoft employee and a spouse who currently works for Amazon.
So this caste-based ordinance would single not only Hindu Americans, but the entire South Asian community.
I urge city council members to vote no on such an ordinance simply because this will invite a number of financial lawsuits to cities, to businesses, And this may, in fact, result in businesses not hiring people of South Asian background simply because they don't want to get into caste-based discrimination issues as they might lose their license.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Suta Janganathan.
Yeah.
Hi, this is Sudha.
Can you hear me?
Yes, please go ahead.
Yeah, yeah.
I am urging the city council to vote no on the caste ordinance.
I am a Hindu American.
I've lived in America for 40 years.
Never had the question of caste come up in any of my interactions.
I was discriminated at workplace, one of the biggest companies in the world, by my Christian white managers.
This is the experience of most Indian Americans and also proven by the Carnegie Endowment Survey that pointed this out.
So I am very worried about the impact of this caste policing by a city on my children and grandchildren who live in the Seattle area and have no idea of what their caste is.
Who are you to decide my identity by, you know, depending on really, really crazy people like the Equality Labs.
discriminatory to me.
And so this ordinance is going to cause my family to be harassed, ostracized and profiled just because they are Hindus.
And you cannot be cross policing.
You cannot be the abuser and oppressor as a city.
So please vote no on this ordinance.
Thank you very much.
The next speaker is Geeta Nath.
Gita, are you here?
Press star six.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Good morning, council members and Chair Morales.
I urge you all to vote no on the proposed CAF ordinance.
The people of the Emerald City have voted you to solve their problems.
The acute homelessness crisis, the severe shortage of affordable housing, drug overdose deaths, roads so dangerous they're unsafe to walk, the consolidation closure of schools, lack of access to mental health care in a timely manner, I can go on and on.
The problems of Seattle are far too many.
Parts of it look worse than the third world countries from which we are supposedly coming from.
The problems are far too many for the council to waste its precious time, money, and resources, like you're doing now, in chasing after non-existing problems or creating new problems to solve.
This ill-advised and ill-fated ordinance proposed by Council Member Sawant is a Pandora's box that will mire the city into needless litigation and expensive lawsuits.
I'll give you a statement, too.
This ill-advised and ill-fate ordinance that you're proposing, how are you going to pigeonhole me into one of the tens of thousands of cases that are announced by the government?
I will be more than happy to email that to you.
Thank you.
Your time has expired.
Thanks very much.
OK, our next speaker is Shobha Swamy.
Hello, this is Shobha Swamy, and I urge the Seattle City Council to vote no for the proposed caste ordinance.
I would urge the SEC to listen to Dalit and Bahujan South Asians who oppose this ordinance.
And this ordinance disproportionately targets minority Hindu Americans, including our Hindu children.
I have never been asked about my caste in the 30 years I've lived in the U.S., nor have my children been.
And how do you plan to determine each person's cast?
So please vote no.
City Council, thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Jason Rock.
Jason, press star six if you're here.
Hello, thank you.
I'd like to thank Chairman Alex for hosting today's panel and discussion on mobility.
I live in Columbia city and while I can drive, I mostly get around by walking, biking, or taking transit.
Unfortunately, nearly every time I choose not to drive, I'm reminded that while I live in an urban village, the planning of the neighborhood and the South end in general prioritizes drivers.
Long signal timings on Rainier and MLK prioritize drivers heading North and South, almost a mile away over people already waiting to cross the street.
As a result, at both MLK and Rainier, I frequently see people who are forced to choose between jaywalking or watching a bus or link train pull away without them.
I hope that we can have a productive discussion today about how transportation policy is frequently the elephant in the room when we talk about what is possible in our neighborhoods.
Thank you.
Thanks for your time.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Deborah Dada Dash.
Deba Dutta Dash, are you on?
Press star six if you're available.
Yes, can you hear me?
Yes, please go ahead.
Can you hear me?
My name is, I go by my last name Dash.
I have been living in Seattle since 2001 and moved from Alabama in 1996. I have never been asked about my past during all this day.
My daughter went to Olympic View Elementary, then Eckstein Middle School, then Nathaniel High School, Nobody asked about our caste.
As far as I know, caste was banned in India in 1950. And now we are talking in US, in Seattle, in 23, about the caste ordinance.
This is kind of ridiculous.
And I think the city of Seattle is inviting lawsuits, counter lawsuits in abundance.
Take my word for it.
From my experience, I'm telling you.
I also ran for city council in 2015. Please, for your own interest, vote no.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Flora Temple.
Hi there.
I'm speaking in support of the conversation on the mobility discussion we're about to have.
I echo everything that Jason said, very well stated Jason, and would also just like to reiterate that the speed limit on Rainier is 25 miles per hour, but that we are consistently seeing much higher speeds and very little enforcement or, you know, communication to the public about speeding, about the danger that pedestrians and bicyclists are facing, and would really like to work together with Council and with our Department of Transportation and Neighborhoods to improve communication around safety and improve enforcement because it's really the best way that we could ensure that people are actually going the speed limit and not hitting people.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Shahira Kaye.
Shahira, if you're here, press star six.
Okay, I'm going to go back to a couple folks who were not present before.
Atul Jandale.
I show you as present now.
Press star six to begin.
Hello, can you hear me now?
Yes.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, please go ahead.
Hi, my name is Atul Chandra.
I'm what you call a Dalit.
I work in Seattle.
I went to one of the best colleges of India because I was given an upper hand in schools, colleges, and universities admission process.
Even if I was not the brightest of my class, I was treated with respect.
I was hugged on my birthdays by my friends of all cast and even on scoring the low grades At the dorms, I shared food with everybody.
Everybody shared food with me.
I never felt I was any kind of lower caste or lower strata until today.
Today, when this law is being discussed, you are imposing my caste on me.
You are reminding me of me being a Dalit in a bad way.
I'm sure it will hurt me and my fellow South Asians of all castes equally.
With this law, the companies will worry hiring us.
higher or lower cash equally, we will be seen as a corporate baggage.
Please don't, please don't do this.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Rachel Gotham.
Rachel Gotham, Press Star Six.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes.
Thank you for this opportunity to present my views.
I really want to vote against the cost ordinance.
And I'm very concerned that this is coming up.
You know, I think we've learned enough from the racial discrimination that was done earlier with the Japanese internment.
And this sort of ordinance is going to racially profile and ethnically profile Indian Americans, specifically Hindu Americans.
So I want to vote against it.
And I want to make sure that everyone here understands that our current American law takes care of this, you know, any sort of discrimination that happens in the country.
So, you know, while we are all against discrimination in general, I think this sort of targeted agenda-driven ordinance should be treated with a lot of concern, and we hope that you'll give us a hearing in future, right, to talk and give you our point of view as Indian Americans.
Thank you so much.
Okay, thank you.
We've got a couple more speakers and a couple more minutes.
So Prashant Nima is the next speaker.
Prashant?
Am I already one?
Yes, please go ahead.
Yeah, my name is Prashant and I have been a theatre resident for the last 21 years.
When you are used to privilege, then equality feels like an oppression.
This is what we are seeing today.
We are seeing the fragility of the dominant caste people from my community.
I also belong to the dominant caste community.
They are trying to put roadblocks in the path of justice for the people from the oppressed class.
And I would really urge the Seattle City Council to look beyond these doubtful statements.
For example, if the South Asian are saying that they are feeling under pressure that they will be discriminated as casteist, then they should remember that there are already laws to protect people from discrimination by race or religion.
So this is a non-starter argument.
So please vote yes on the ordinance.
Thank you.
Okay, folks, I'm going to take one more speaker.
We have Raghav Kaushik.
I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that right.
Raghav, are you with us?
Yes.
Yes.
Can you hear me?
Please go ahead.
I'm here to speak in support of the caste ordinance.
I just want to say that caste discrimination does exist in America, and it is not true that it is covered under existing law.
All the examples in the text of the ordinance illustrate that the caste discrimination that does exist, there is no legal recourse yet.
And we are proposing to change that through this ordinance.
And any kind of discrimination is bad.
And it is absurd to suggest that it will racially profile South Asians.
That is just a way to excuse discrimination.
So I urge you, I demand that all of you support this ordinance and help Seattle make us a historic law.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you very much.
We're going to move on to agenda item one.
So this concludes our public comment period.
Devin, can I ask you to, oh, yes, Council Member Nielsen.
I just wanted to know, do you know anything about this, when this legislation- This ordinance is going to be on the full council agenda on February 21st.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Okay, Devin, will you please read item one into the record?
Chair Morales, this is Council Member Sawant, just wanted to let you know I joined in late, apologies.
Oh, thank you, okay.
Council Member Sawant is present.
Uh, apologies for missing you, Council Member Sawant.
Okay, yes, Devin, please go ahead.
Agenda items one through seven.
Appointment 2451, 2450, 2452, and 2453. Appointments to the Seattle Disability Commission.
And appointments 2455, 2454, 2456. Appointments to the Seattle LGBTQ Commission for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.
Thank you very much.
Okay, I am going to hand it over to Janet Stafford from the Office of Civil Rights and let folks know that we have created a consent agenda for appointments.
So, Janet, do we have any of our appointees here with us today?
We don't.
Okay, great.
So colleagues, we will ask Janet to speak to the appointees.
If anybody prefers to remove a particular appointee, we can certainly do that and speak to somebody individually.
Otherwise, we will plan to vote as a group on these appointments.
So Janet, I will hand it off to you.
Thank you for being here.
Yes, thank you, Chair Morales, and good morning to all the council chair members.
I'd like to share some words for the appointments of new and returning commissioners, specifically for the Disability Commission, as well as the LGBTQ Commission.
Starting us off with Dawn Daly.
Dawn has been with the Seattle Disability Commission since 2021 and is currently pursuing her master's at the University of Washington.
She has extensive experience working in accessibility and advocating for disabled individuals.
She has previously worked with the University of Washington's Disabilities, Opportunities, Information, and Technology Center to help with the universal designs, technologies, and accommodations.
On the commission, she aspires to continue her advocacy work for an additional term.
Our other recommendation is the appointment of Jessica Lowe to the Disability Commission.
Jessica is committed to amplifying the perspectives and advocating for issues of importance to people with disabilities and or chronic conditions.
Over the past six years, Jessica has served the disability community in several ways.
As a student at the University of Washington, she has overseen a team of 15 people in creating a peer support network for people with brain injuries.
In addition, she has worked at Full Life Care in South Seattle and at the Brain Injury Alliance of Washington.
Currently, Jessica is a medical student who hopes to dedicate her future practice to meeting the diverse needs of the disabled community.
She has been actively attending commission meetings since last year and has recently taken a role to help build and push the commission social media.
Another commissioner we recommend for reappointment is Caitlin Skilton.
Caitlin is also known for being the prior title holder for Miss Wheelchair Washington America, and has worked with RAW Artist Seattle in numerous showcases.
She was recently serving as an interim co-chair for the Seattle Disability Commission in 2022. She is a true advocate for accessibility and safety for the disabled community.
She is looking to join in joining an additional term with her fellow commissioners and in her free time, she enjoys photography.
Uh, our last appointment reappointment for the disability commission is Taylor woods.
Taylor has spent her entire education and career working for persons with disabilities and medical conditions.
She is very passionate about making a better life for this population and community.
Her passion has always been healthcare for people, for people and children with disabilities.
And she's been an active member since 2021 and also looks forward to her continued work on the commission.
I believe that sums it up for the Disability Commission.
If it's okay, I can also speak for the LGBTQ appointments and reappointments.
Great.
Thank you very much, Janet.
Let me just stop there and see if colleagues have any questions or comments about the Disability Commission.
I am not seeing anything.
Okay.
Thank you.
Please go ahead.
Sure, great.
So, I will start us off with Othef.
Othef Osmani was raised on the north side of Chicago, where a majority of his family immigrated to the United States in the 1980s.
So, his ethnic and cultural heritage has always been an important aspect of his identity.
He attended the University of Chicago for his undergrad degree, where he studied public policy and specialized in health care.
He is excited to join the commission because he knows inclusive policy is crucial to challenging the inequities experienced by queer people.
Community development and inclusive inclusivity are two issues that he hopes to address as being part of the commission.
And he also too has been actively participating in meetings since 2022. Our second new appointment is Christina Pisana.
Christina is a fourth-generation Chicana ex-parent and has spent the last 20 years as a grassroots organizer working on equity issues for young people, parents, and families of color centered on liberation and justice work.
For the last five years, they have been advocating in schools.
Part of this work has been very complex, directing and recentering staff and parents, understanding and awareness around inclusion.
Christina has also an architecture background, which in many ways involves listening to stakeholder needs, researching technical design and safety guidelines.
Hope, love, and liberation, and accountability are all elements that Christina strives to center in her time with the commission.
And on their spare time, Christina and her family enjoy family biking, exploring the outdoors, spending quality time creating art, and making connections with community, family, and friends.
Our last recommended new appointment for the LGBTQ commission is Chelsea Wright.
Chelsea is the Director of Operations at the Alliance of Gun Responsibility, a local nonprofit.
working to reduce gun violence among our communities.
They have a deep passion for wanting to organize social movements through their operations work.
In their free time, they have been advocating for trans athletes in college, professional sports, fighting for immigrant rights, and advocating for adoptees.
Chelsea is also a current board member of Adoptees United, a nonprofit representing the interest of all adoptees, whether domestic, intercountry, transracial, or formal foster youth.
Chelsea has been involved in commission meetings since last year and is excited to add to the work that the commission is doing in housing and community safety.
Thank you.
I believe that sums it up.
I'll pass it back to you, Chair Morales.
Thank you very much, Janet, and thank you for bringing all of these appointees to us.
I want to say thank you to them for the work that they do.
I know we have the LGBTQ Commission in particular has requested the opportunity to come before committee to share their work plan for the year and some of the policy priorities that they have.
So we look forward to having them in committee at some point this year, working on that schedule.
So thank you very much.
Colleagues, are there any comments or questions for Janet?
I am not seeing any.
Okay.
So I am going to move that the committee recommend approval of these appointments.
Is there a second?
Second.
Thank you.
It's been moved and seconded.
Devin, will you please call the roll?
Council Member Lewis.
Yes.
Council Member Nelson.
Aye.
Vice Chair Sawant.
Yes.
Chair Morales.
Yes.
Four in favor.
Thank you.
The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the council approve these appointments will be sent to the February 21st City Council meeting.
Thank you very much for being here with us, Janet.
Can I just say thank you very much, everyone, for being willing to serve and for your work putting these appointments through the process.
So thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Nelson.
Okay.
Will you please read item 8 into the record, Devin?
Agenda item 8. panel on the impact of mobility on social well-being, community care, and neighborhood accessibility for briefing and discussion.
Thank you very much.
I'm excited.
We have three folks here to join us.
I'm going to ask you to go ahead and come up to the committee table.
And so I'll ask you to introduce yourselves.
And as they are approaching, I will just say, let me get my notes together here.
I want to sort of set the context for this discussion by providing an overview of the mobility issues that we have now.
Yeah, please come on up here.
So I do have a short slideshow to help do that, and then I will open it up to the panel for your reactions and for your comments.
And colleagues, I also welcome your questions during this discussion as well.
But before I begin, I will ask each of you to introduce yourselves.
Thank you for having me here today, Angela Castaneda.
I am the director of the Beacon Business Alliance and co-founder member of Essential Southeast Seattle Collective, SS Collective, serving small business communities, Beacon Hill to Rainier Beach.
Thank you for being here.
Hi, thank you for having me as well.
My name is Erica Bush.
I am the co-lead of the Duwamish Valley Safe Streets.
I'm also the public space manager for the Alliance for Pioneer Square, and I'm currently the urban designer on the Seattle Design Commission.
Thank you.
Hi, good morning.
I'm at very Aaron there.
I'm the equitable development program manager at Puget Sound stage and I've done a majority of my work in South Seattle specifically in South Graham Street neighborhood.
Thank you.
Great.
Thank you.
Okay, Devin, I'm going to thank you for running the slides for me here.
So I wanted to start, you could go to slide three, please.
By just talking about kind of where we are right now, you know, this is a large city, a growing city, we know we've got a lot more folks coming to move here, but we've got few neighborhoods that actually meet neighbors immediate everyday needs.
It really forces people to travel long distances to go to the grocery store, to the doctor, even to childcare, and can really put low and middle income folks in a tough position if they don't own a car.
Go to the next slide, please.
This is going to be awkward.
It'd be better if I was down there with you.
Right now, what that means for us, thank you.
That's great.
is that our current neighborhood design really means that folks have to drive, they have to plan for extra time it takes if they're using transit.
We're really prioritizing the convenience of those who drive and traffic flow and traffic throughput over safety.
And that in turn prioritizes or really values the time of those who can afford a car over the time of those who use public transit.
So this is sort of where we are today.
This map shows our land use patterns, really how it kind of forces us to travel.
So for example, the purple area in the center is where most of our jobs are.
The kind of orange area is, you know, urban centers, urban villages, basically a mixed use commercial.
And then the yellow is kind of everything else, right?
So single family housing, that's where, you know, basically folks who are centered on getting around with a car are are living.
And the challenge with this is what it means for those who don't have a car and their ability to access services, their ability to get the places that they need to go.
So for example, if you live down in Rainier Beach, the closest hospital is Harborview.
That's a 25 minute drive.
If you have to take the bus, it's almost an hour.
And that assumes you don't have to take a transfer.
It also assumes that you're going during rush hour or during regular hours.
Good luck if you have to get there in the middle of the night.
So this is a serious issue.
It is really important that folks be able to navigate around their community and be able to access the things that they need in a way that is convenient, even for folks who aren't in cars.
So you could go to the next slide, please, Evan.
So another issue of sort of our current situation is really how isolated you are if you aren't in a car.
So this is a map that demonstrates sort of the inequitable transportation network.
The yellow, if you can see it, the yellow lines on here are roads.
Folks can drive or take transit on here.
But we've got something like 4,000 miles, almost 4,000 miles of road.
We have 165 miles of bike lane.
That's what is in blue here, you can see.
But most of this is sharrows.
These are not protected bike lanes.
This is a lane with a with paint in it that says bikes can be here and you should be aware of that.
We only have four miles of what our transportation department identifies as protected bike lanes, but that's really paint also and bollards or posts.
We have some hard protected scapes, bike lanes, but it's not categorized.
So we don't actually know, I don't know precisely how much, how many miles of protected bike lane we have, but it's less than four in the city.
We know that for sure.
So this is another example of the ways in which our land use, the ways in which our neighborhoods are really disconnected from one another and the ability of our neighbors to get from one neighborhood to another without getting in their car is very inequitable.
Only 8% of the land in the city is for commercial and mixed use.
Most of the city, layout requires people to take a long trip in order to access services.
So the reason this is important, well, there are many reasons why this is important, but Devin, if you'll go to the next slide, this is a slide of all of the collisions that we've had in the city in recent years.
You know, It's really an example of the sort of epidemic of challenges that we have.
Almost 7,000 collisions last year, according to the State Transportation Department.
Over 2,200 injuries resulting from those collisions.
20 of the 34 fatalities were people walking or biking.
Over half of those are in my district in the south end of Seattle.
And what we're starting to learn now is some reporting is indicating that almost half of these injuries are hit and runs as well.
So people aren't stopping to render aid.
to offer assistance, to make sure that there is emergency vehicles coming.
So this is clearly an epidemic and a growing problem.
And what it means is that our neighborhoods aren't safe for people who are walking or biking or trying to get away and get around in any way that isn't in a car.
So why am I talking about this in the Neighborhoods Committee?
Because how we design our neighborhoods has everything to do with safety.
It has everything to do with the well-being of elders and children and our community members.
And this isn't just about transportation or housing or parks.
All of these issues are connected, even if right now our neighborhoods are not connected.
So I wanted to have this conversation today because Seattleites deserve neighborhoods that are rich in resources, no matter what part of town they live in.
And that includes mobility options.
It includes access to good jobs.
It includes the ability to go to a small business.
It includes homes that are affordable.
It also means well-connected neighborhoods where people can walk, roll, and play safely.
It means neighborhoods that are child-friendly.
where kids can be autonomous and navigate their streets without having to worry about, you know, a car slow rolling through a crosswalk which I witnessed regularly.
It means neighborhoods that are socially connected and well resourced so folks can go to a cultural center can go to a small business can go to the pharmacy.
And it also means age friendly neighborhoods.
I had in district office hours yesterday, and my first constituent was an 85 year old woman who arrived on a bike, and she's on a bike, because when she was 20 years younger.
She was involved in a car accident and didn't feel safe driving anymore.
So now she wants to navigate her neighborhood on a bike.
You know, her her vision impairments allow her to get around more safely that way.
But her streets don't necessarily allow her to get around more safely that way.
So, you know, no matter what age we're talking about in a community, people need to be able to navigate and get to the things they need to do.
without worrying.
So what I'd like to talk with our panelists about today is really how we move from neighborhoods that create so many barriers to mobility to neighborhoods that allow our kids and our elders and others to navigate around safely.
So I want to open it up to you for your reactions, for your comments, and then I have a few questions and do want to welcome my colleagues to ask questions as well.
Thank you, Tony Morales.
This is Angela Castaneda.
I think I just wanted to add to the wonderful description of all of these issues by saying that also the connectivity needs to be happening within our city government, if the different departments, listen, I work with wonderful advocates and accomplices even, right?
I would call the people that I work with at SDOT or the other departments, but often I find they're not holding hands with each other.
And so I just wanted to put that out there, add that to the list of things we're looking at
Yes, so this is Erica Bush.
Thank you again for having us.
I think this is personally one of the most important topics facing us right now.
It impacts, as you mentioned, our social cohesion, our sense of safety, our sense of adaptation and recovery from the pandemic.
We experienced incredible isolation during that time and our physical environment, our land use patterns are further exacerbating the issues that that pandemic cost us.
We're seeing higher rates of anxiety.
We're seeing higher rates of depression.
And on top of that, we're seeing the actual loss of lives due to these situations.
I know we're kind of going to go around in circles here so I'm not going to go through all of the things that I'd love to speak to, but the presentation we just saw really highlighted how, as I think we can all comfortably say that there has been ongoing historical disinvestment in District 1 or District 2, South Seattle.
And when you look at the roadways, we can see that in a map.
We can see how disinvestment has caused us to have these separations of our communities.
and it will take substantial reinvestment in our communities to bring us back together.
But the good thing is that we know how to do this.
We are an incredibly educated and thoughtful city, and we recognize exactly where these fatalities are happening, why they're happening, and some really strategic facets for how we can implement change We know that over 59% of our fatalities happen at intersections.
Therefore, we know that there are very specific changes that we can implement at these intersections to diminish those fatalities.
So I'm going to move on from there and come back around.
Thank you.
Again, this is Ab Gwenaer from Puget Sound SAGE.
I'm going to just talk a little bit about how Puget Sound SAGE does its work.
We have the Just Transition Framework that essentially is about stopping the bad and creating the new.
And I am a grassroots community organizer and also an urban planning practitioner.
But long before I decided that urban planning was fun, I entered college at 17 to study family life and early childhood development and was a preschool teacher for a couple years.
And even though I'm doing urban planning now, the foundational knowledge that I gained as an early childhood development specialist student was that if you want a child to grow healthy, safe, confident, and fully realize with you know, have the ability to self-determine and have the agency to live their lives freely, you want to create a holistic ecosystem of care around that child.
And that goes beyond just the family structure.
You have to have the social networks, the infrastructure, the public infrastructure in place, basically a built environment that allows for that child to grow healthy.
And that is pretty foundational to how I practice urban planning.
And Long before I moved to Seattle to work here as a professional urban planner, I have visited here every year during the holidays to see my family.
And I'm a grandma's girl.
She has never driven a car.
She lives in an affordable housing in downtown, and every time I would visit her, I will take the light rail from the airport, go straight to her apartment, and then we would take the bus to Chinatown International District because That's where her treats are.
And then we would take another bus to South Seattle to Othello neighborhood, because that's where her favorite Vietnamese pastries can be found.
And I would ask her, like, grandma, why don't we just take the light rail?
You know, it's fun.
And she was like, oh, that's too much walking and it's too confusing.
And the bus is right there.
So let's hop on the bus.
And my mom and I who lives, you know, my mom lives in University Village and we would take the light rail and the bus to go to Beacon Hill because that's where our favorite Filipino and Vietnamese market is.
And so these two women have never driven cars in their entire lives and have been able to get around Seattle.
And before that, I spent my teenage years in Los Angeles, where I learned how to drive first, before I even learned how to take the bus or the train.
But every time I'm in Seattle, I didn't have to drive.
And then when I moved here and then started working in South Seattle neighborhoods, I was stunned to see this experience of disappearing sidewalks.
It's like a mystery to me because I didn't see that in downtown.
I didn't see that in North Seattle.
Why are the sidewalks disappearing in South Seattle?
And so I will stop there.
Yes, thank you.
I know one of what came to me is, you know, learned behavior.
It's like how we get around the city is about our learned behavior, how drivers drive through intersections.
If we aren't using some sort of method to communicate that's not okay, whether that's whatever ways of enforcement, then it's just gonna keep getting worse as we see it happening.
I know when I, the work that I do in advocating and working with small businesses in Southeast Seattle, I ask these questions of how do your, customers get to you?
What are you experiencing about that?
Well, the first question is, the first complaint is that parking is going away.
Well, yeah, we know density is happening in the city and that's not changing any.
So if I could give them, take them with me up to where the protected bike lanes have been already installed in like Roosevelt and North Seattle, I know it was like pulling the Band-Aid off and it was difficult, but now it's working.
It seems to be working.
from my experience, if I were still riding a bike, and as a past bicycle messenger, I did have, I was a bicyclist up until I could afford to buy a car.
So I know that very well as a necessary means for transportation.
But when I'm working with small business owners who don't ride and their customers don't ride.
Their customers are elder elders or families.
A protective bike lane is not something they want to respond to if our systems are or our method of getting that community feedback before we move a project forward, like the current project at Beacon Hill, bringing that protected, making those connections so that there's more than four miles of protected bike lanes connected.
That's gonna be hard.
It's gonna be like ripping off a Band-Aid.
So I think my point is really about how we are communicating these changes.
And if the city's moving faster than the small community-based organizations that are building the trust with these families who are running businesses and that their daily life is surrounded and is supported by their small business, they need to know what it might look like in three years for them to hang in there to what are those three years or whatever the time it takes to get that thing working, that new, that change.
So that's where I find a big struggle and it's the right now, the here and now with the small business owners who don't feel safe get their customers don't feel safe walking across the street to get to walk into their business there.
There's nowhere to park.
There's, you know, what is access accessibility to those businesses.
And Angela can you, I'm sorry, let me ask you one more question.
So, so I'm thinking particularly about the Beacon Hill light rail station area, right so there's that is a high pedestrian activity there right people are going to the station.
There's the grocery store there's this, there's the station coffee shop where lots of apartments there.
Can you talk a little bit about maybe what some of those small businesses, how they benefit from that sort of high pedestrian activity?
And then I am thinking about the intersection at the Red Apple where there are also some challenges and pedestrian safety is certainly an issue.
So there's two sides of it for sure.
But can you talk a little bit about, in that pedestrian rich environment, how small businesses can benefit from that and then what some of the safety issues are?
is the question right now.
So of the varying projects, infrastructure, mobility, transit, focuses that have been going on for that, that have been happening for that intersection and for that node, frankly, the businesses don't know what is coming.
um The benefits are that yeah, we've got the light rail right there.
We can communicate to the community the wider community what that how they can get to The places they need to get to that those places are open that they exist that their doors are open and um you know, I think that if like the Try to say that the actual intersection there has so many complicated movement.
So there's a pedestrian, there's cars going which way, there's a one-way, there's a festival street, and there's no signage, there's no communication to the pedestrians that says, you know, walk this way.
Don't cross midway on this block.
Don't jump out in front of a bus stop.
It's just those are the things that are barriers to having the best situation in that area.
Thank you.
Yeah, I see Council Member Nelson has a question.
Did you?
Yeah, Angela, you mentioned siloization when you first started speaking.
And so I'm just wondering if, um, If Estad and Dawn, are they working together pretty well?
And I don't know if that's a question for you or Council Member Morales, but how's it going?
In my experience, there's always a glitch in how people are communicating.
Not only is it difficult for the work that I do to know who's who, who's the person I need to talk to.
If I'm having trouble, a small business owner is going to have trouble identifying how do they solve a problem or get a question answered.
The phone tree is not the solution.
And SDOTs, if I may call it out right here, the online system is as bureaucratic and difficult as the actual people bureaucracy and politics bureaucracy.
So there's, I don't think people, like I said, doesn't feel like there's hands being held here.
And there's the connectivity between the different, the contractor or the advocate that I'm working with, with Astad is doing an amazing job for what she can do.
And And the it has to go up the tree every time and so there's the process is really the killer Right, but it's it's also then who's talked what your realm is and then the mayor's office and the departments it's just a lot.
Who are we working with here?
Where's the power?
Who are the gatekeepers?
It's just that simple.
Is there a way that we can all come together?
Last night I missed it, but there was an event down at Othello, UW Othello with Rico Quindongo and Yeah, the folks that were speaking and unfortunately I couldn't get there, but those are the kind of conversations that I think everybody should be at that level, we should be talking about how to connect those dots.
Thank you.
I think we have lost something with what I hear from communities is that there should be a more formal bridge between communities and city, you know, community councils, district councils, whatever.
So thanks.
If we don't fund our Office of Economic Development adequately for the size of our city and looking forward into how we're density and how we're growing, the population is expanding here, then the small business community, the small community-based organizations aren't going to get, without the Office of Economic Development, Beacon Business Alliance doesn't exist.
Speaking to the choir here.
Erica, did you want to say something?
Yeah, I think you brought up a really great point, which is that factor of trust, and so did you, that The city in its current state, I feel has it's lost a lot of trust with its constituents, because there isn't that direct line of communication, because there isn't an understanding of exactly how processes will move forward.
and the fact that we, and again coming as a planner to the conversation, we have planned our communities to death.
I have worked on the Georgetown open space plan, the Pioneer Square streetscape concept plan, Jackson hub plan, Duwamish Valley action plan, I could go on and on.
and we aren't seeing implementation of those plans, and yet we continue to fund additional plans.
And as far as the community is concerned, until they see true implementation of the measures that they have been vocal about needing and wanting for decades, every time that doesn't happen, we lose them.
We lose their involvement, and we lose their trust, and it's totally understandable that at this point, the communities don't think that their city cares about them appropriately.
And without that trust, we have a very hard task in convincing them that these improvements will then impact them in a positive manner.
And so before we move into more and more planning, we really need to stop and say, how do we implement We are receiving $26.5 million for improvements to the Soto District and surrounding areas.
And we need that money to be implemented in the ground.
It can't be lost in these in these processes of planning and negotiation and outreach.
I hate to say it because we've heard from the community.
We know that they need safe and reliable access to the services that we all use every day.
And the loss of those resources just sort of like proliferating into the ether is just can't continue.
We just need to see more on the ground implementation of these things.
I will add that I believe that the purpose of local government is to further democratize our public realm.
And one of the ways to do that is to really be intentional in creating continuous open communication with communities and really investing in deep relationship building.
The Growth Management Act requires cities to do comprehensive planning update every couple of years.
What happens in between?
How are we sustaining these relationships and really aligning resources so that neighborhoods could self-determine how their places grow, how their places develop?
And I...
we have this tendency with all of these bureaucratic processes that result in further restrictions around people's experience of the public realm.
And, you know, as equitable development program manager at Puget Sound SAGE, I'm always just frustrated over the fact that in order to make substantial improvements into the neighborhood infrastructure we have to rely on these like major sporting events or multi-billion dollar transportation projects mega market rate with a little bit of affordable housing development to even have a nice sidewalk And I don't want people to, especially children and seniors to be going out of their neighborhoods and walking around like it's like they're playing floor is lava or as if you have like the Pac-Man ghosts as aka cars always just giving you that feeling of scared feeling scared or threatened that you know, you might get hit.
I was at Filipino Village yesterday afternoon talking to a youth coordinator about what it's like to just hang around, walk around Grand Street, and the coordinator walks preschoolers in the neighborhood to go to the park.
And then he commutes to work from Filipino Village, either walks up to Columbia City Station or goes all the way back down to Othello.
And I was like, that's not a pleasant walk.
And he has, in multiple occasions, have been splashed over by water because there were speeding vehicles.
And that's not the experience that we want young folks to have in the street or like our elders who have limited mobility.
My grandma has limited mobility now and she will not be able to fully experience South Seattle the way she used to.
And so how are we creating a public realm that feels good that feels safe and fun and makes us all feel connected to each other because if we have disconnected neighborhoods our communities are not going to want to be engaging with each other.
How do we do that right?
So I guess that is part of the question, right?
And I mean, Puget Sound Sage works on transit equity, work on equitable development, you work on healthy communities.
So how do those things intersect and what does it mean to build a healthy neighborhood understanding that all of those things intersect, right?
That's I think what we're trying to, the direction we're trying to move as a city.
And I think what I hear you say is we can't get there if we can't sort of break down some of these processes that we've set up in place that are actually creating more barriers for us.
And I think to your point, Ab, about how do we build sidewalks in the city, even something as simple as that.
Sidewalks are very expensive, there's no doubt about that.
But our reliance right now on development projects to create new sidewalks is inherently inequitable if what it means is that only the neighborhoods where those projects are happening get new sidewalks and everybody else weights and watches as their sidewalk crumbles or continues not to exist at all, which is the case in much of South Seattle as well as North Seattle.
So, yes, thank you for that.
Erica, I wanted to go back to you and ask if you could talk a little bit about the different mobility needs that you see with the work that you do.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, as you showed in the map where, you know, you had this large swath of undeveloped space in the central corridor of Duwamish Valley, pretty much from where we're sitting now south.
What that has meant is that our communities in South Seattle are completely disconnected in large part because of how we've developed freight systems and where our freight is.
So if you're in Georgetown or South Park or White Center, Delridge or Beacon Hill, you can't get to those communities because it's been prefaced that anywhere that's dedicated for freight means that it cannot be utilized by anyone else.
And that is a total misnomer.
These are huge, huge streets that can and need to allocate for more than one usage.
And we have consistently as a city sort of leaned back and not appropriately engaged with our freight community to talk about how we share these streets.
Because until those streets are shared, those communities are gonna stay isolated.
If you live in Georgetown or South Park, you cannot safely bike to a job opportunity or an educational opportunity or friends and family in other parts of this city.
And that has huge implications to how you live your life.
So until we can bridge the gap of the fact that there are miles and miles of industrial lands separating our community, really work through what it looks like to integrate those into our system, that's going to continue to be a problem.
And right now, the sort of course of action that I often see, I find really challenging is that SDOT's team will come and present a design to the Freight Advisory Board or to the SOTO BIA, and the business community immediately gets angry and thinks that it's going to have a big impact on how they function.
And so SDOT retreats and tries to come up with a different plan and put it in front of them, and it goes back and forth, back and forth.
Instead of working in tandem on these designs to sit down with people who drive freight vehicles, who need to access these businesses, and really talk about how much, like, you know how your business functions, you know how much space you need in order to appropriately make a turning radius, or how much leadway you need in the left-hand turn lanes that it doesn't back onto a highway ramp.
we need to use the knowledge base of our communities better than we do now, instead of it being like, how about this?
How about this?
How about this?
That makes sense.
Absolutely.
Yes, Councilor.
I didn't know, is that freight, there really are dedicated freight quarters that nobody else can use?
Is that a policy?
Yeah, I mean, so in Soto, for example, Airport Way, 1st Avenue, 4th Avenue are all dedicated freight routes.
And that has been the rationale for why there can't be protected bike lanes, why we can't adapt our sidewalks to allow for more sort of like accessibility.
And at the same time, some of our largest social services are in this area.
So we have thousands of people trying to access really critical services in an environment that is unbelievably unsafe.
It's where we see most of our fatalities.
And that's been this conflict back and forth of freight saying that it's just unsafe to have these other uses.
But at the same time, they have to go through this area.
It's not like our industrial lands are far and far removed from our urban environment.
They sit dead center in our city, and they are critical to the lifeblood of our economy.
I 100% understand that, but they do need to work in collaboration and in tandem with our communities adjacent to them.
Thank you.
Colleagues, any other questions?
I'm not seeing other questions.
I feel like there was something else I wanted to ask, but now I've forgotten.
I would like to just, in thinking about the root causes of some of the issues that we're facing with accessibility, safety, What we're talking about a lot of times is just another band aid when root causes, you know, people need housing and types of housing.
And then the restrictions and fees that are, if someone wants to add a living space or an existing housing, all of these things all play into these fatalities.
right, because people are living not housed.
And so they're on the street.
And that's going to always increase the instances of death on the street.
And the, so I wanted to say that, you know, there's a REACH program, King County program, They're opening up a new location in Helmand City.
What I've heard is that there'll be four people, so they have a budget for X.
Well, that budget, that's really not addressing the need.
What if we had three of those and we identified enough funding for REACH The city worked with King County to do that, something we know works.
We could start making a dent in communicating with those chronically homeless and those chronic, those, the recidivism that is, we, I believe, have a list somewhere in the city of X number of people who are continuing to do that same vandalism and it's a mental, is it a mental health issue?
It's resources and access to those resources.
So I really just want to make a pitch to looking at some of the existing services and organizations that are serving.
Are they funded enough to be able to do the work they do?
Or are we going to create a new PDA to address affordable housing, a brand new one.
I voted yes, but I'm saying it just worries me.
Sure.
Well, and we do have more teams.
I think part of the unified care team strategy is to have neighborhood based reach providers.
So that is part of the plan there.
Great to hear.
Okay, colleagues, any other comments?
You hand this up?
No.
Okay.
Thank you all so much.
I do want to, Devin, if you'll put the last slide up for the viewing public, for folks who are interested, we did include a list of resources if folks want to dive a little deeper on some of these issues.
I do want to thank all of you for this discussion.
I think it highlights the role that mobility and social participation play in some of these key determinants of health that we that we talked about in terms of quality of life.
Some of the resources we listed here can help really help us start to understand the importance of changing the community conditions in our neighborhoods so we can create healthy places where where kids can thrive, where our elders can remain active and can age in place, and where our neighbors can make sure that they're safe and accessing the things that they need.
So I wanna thank you all for actually coming downtown to sit in chambers with us.
I think maybe we're moving to have...
real committee meetings at the committee table.
So huzzah.
Okay, thank you all for being here.
Really appreciate it.
Colleagues, I don't see any other questions.
So let's see.
That concludes this meeting.
The next meeting of the Neighborhoods, Education, Civil Rights and Culture Committee is February 24th.
I want to thank everybody for being here and we are adjourned.
Thank you.