SPEAKER_02

Good morning, the Select Budget Committee will come to order.

It is 9.30 AM, September 27th, 2024. I'm Dan Strauss, Chair of the Select Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Understanding, Council President Nelson is excused and Council Member Saka is excused for the first few minutes.

SPEAKER_08

Council Member Kettle?

SPEAKER_15

Here.

SPEAKER_08

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Rivera.

Present.

Council Member Wu.

Present.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

SPEAKER_02

Here.

SPEAKER_08

And Chair Strauss.

SPEAKER_02

Present.

SPEAKER_08

Six present.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

Welcome, everyone.

Day two of department presentations.

We are not going to have verbal public comment today, and Council Member Moore is also present.

The next time for verbal public comment will be at the public hearing on the 16th, and everyone will have two minutes, no matter how many people show up.

So the agenda for today is Office of Sustainability and Environment, the Office of Seattle Department of Transportation in the morning.

And I'm just losing my script right here.

Office of Parks Department this afternoon.

My apologies.

I was not in education this afternoon.

Hearing no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We're gonna move into the first item of the day, which is Office of Sustainability and Environment.

If you all wanna come on up, and clerk, will you please read the short title into the record?

SPEAKER_08

Agenda item one, Office of Sustainability and Environment for briefing and discussion.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you to everyone.

I had Friday's script pulled up.

Here we are on the 30th, which is why I said it was the 27th.

So just for the record, on the correct script, committee started this morning at 9.30 a.m.

on September 30th.

Today is my father's birthday.

Happy birthday, Dad, if you're watching, as well as it is the anniversary of Babe Ruth hitting a 60th home run when MLB only played 154 games in a year.

So that is still on the history books.

With no further ado, I see presenters are ready.

Good morning, Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Director Farrell, if you want to take it away and introduce the panel.

SPEAKER_13

Good morning.

For the record, my name is Jessen Farrell, and I'm the director of the Office of Sustainability and Environment, and I'll have my colleague introduce herself.

Hi, I'm Megan Doran, the finance manager.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Thank you, members of the committee, for the opportunity to present our 2025-2026 proposed budget.

We have a short slide deck, and then we're happy to take questions.

So why don't we get rolling?

So I'll just do this first slide to ground us in the Office of Sustainability and Environment's mission and major program areas.

As all of you know, our mission is to ensure that every resident of our city has a safe and healthy environment.

in particular focus on areas related to climate change and climate justice.

We are working to fulfill Mayor Harrell's One Seattle climate justice agenda, and we deliver lean, effective programs to do three major areas of work.

We're working to build an equitable clean energy economy, We are working to ensure a just transition away from fossil fuels.

And we are also investing in healthy and resilient communities.

And just one final remark.

As we know, we're all facing the effects of climate change.

But in particular, members of BIPOC communities, low-income communities, are facing the effects even more profoundly.

And so we do focus our work across the city, but in particular areas as well.

And with that, Megan is going to talk about our proposed budget.

SPEAKER_12

In 2025 and 2026, OSC will be able to continue many of our programs that build on those core priorities that Director Farrell just called out.

Some of these investments include programs like the Clean Energy Apprenticeships, Youth Leadership in the Duwamish Valley, our Clean Building Accelerator, which funds building improvements sourced in frontline serving buildings to comply with building emissions performance standards.

The Seattle Clean Heat Program, municipal energy and emissions programs are also administered by OSC.

In addition, the office administers the Fresh Bucks Healthy Food Program, environmental justice grant making, a healthy food in schools program, and tree planting in low canopy industrial areas.

In 2025 and 26, OSC is going to scale back a few community investments to help address the city's forecasted revenue shortfall.

At the same time, OSC is also leveraging city investments with external funding for specific projects in this unprecedented moment for climate funding at the federal and state level.

OSC has successfully received over $30 million in recent awards, though much of this money actually flows to other departments for implementation.

And just to note that those numbers don't appear here in these figures, which just represent city investments.

Between 2024 and 2025, the budget is a 15% reduction.

This is partially due to the sunsetting of about $4 million in one-time funding that was included in the 2024 adopted for programs such as the Environmental Justice Fund and indigenous-led climate initiatives.

We'll talk about some of the other changes between 2024 and 2025 for the rest of the presentation.

Between 2025 and 2026, funding is level.

Any adjustments you see here are just the result of central cost adjustments.

So to talk about some of the specific changes going into the 2025 and 2026 proposed budgets.

One change is a cost saving measure, which is to recognize actual projected spending needs for a technology solution that's going to support the building emissions performance standards.

This compliance solution is a key part of being able to implement this policy.

But we've worked with our partners in IT to re-forecast the spend in 2025 and 2026 and aligned the budget to recognize those savings, which are just over $500,000.

OSC will also sunset funding for the heavy duty electric truck incentive pilot.

OSC's pilot led to increased engagement and investment for this program.

And this work will now transition to other public sector partners to implement similar programs with state and federal resources.

And they'll do this at a larger and regional scale.

Funding that was already allocated for this pilot in previous budget years will continue to be deployed.

and will continue OSC's focus on independent owner operators of drayage vehicles operating in poor adjacent communities in the Duwamish Valley.

This represents a proposed reduction of $900,000.

The 2025-2026 budget reduces funding that are used to support OSC's workforce development and small business assistant efforts in the Duwamish Valley.

OSC will still maintain a place-based approach to the Duwamish Valley in other aligned program areas, such as the Clean Energy Workforce Development Program and the Clean Building Accelerator, and through our ongoing investments in Duwamish Valley Youth Leadership and Industrial Greening.

Small business support will continue to be offered through the Office of Economic Development, though their program does not incorporate a place-based approach, which has been the Duwamish Valley's small business support model at OSE.

One last area of changes to talk through and then we're happy to take questions.

The Environmental Justice Fund includes several changes in the 2025-2026 budget, all designed to stabilize the fund following the sunsetting of one-time ads.

from the 2023-2024 budget.

The Environmental Justice Fund awards grants to community-led projects that improve environmental conditions and advance climate and environmental justice.

This program has been operating since 2018, was originally funded with General Fund, and then was able to expand starting in 2022 to meet the great demand for this program.

2023 and 2024 had a one-time funding add, which helped to scale the program.

And now in 2025 and 2026, we're looking to stabilize with a series of a few changes here to ensure that we can continue the current program model.

So there's three changes that impact the Environmental Justice Fund.

One we've talked about, the sunsetting of those one-time ads.

There was $1.2 million in the 2023 and 2024 budget.

That was one time that is expiring in 2025. We're also looking to restore an ongoing EJ fund baseline budget to continue programming at $250,000.

This represents the original budget allocation for this program that was cut in 2024. We're looking to restore that with PET dollars to ensure that we can continue the program model.

Lastly, we're proposing to consolidate the Duwamish River Opportunity Fund with the Environmental Justice Fund so that OSE will implement one community grant-making program focused on environmental and climate justice.

There is some overlap between these programs, but there are many projects that have been funded by the Duwamish River Opportunity Fund that would not be eligible for funding with the Environmental Justice Fund.

The net of all these changes is a $950,000 reduction from 2024 to 2025. And that wraps up the presentation on our side, and we're happy to take questions.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you so much.

As per protocol, I'm going to pass it over to the chair of your committee, Council Member Wu, and I will note that Council Member Saka came in at the very beginning of that presentation.

Thank you, Council Member Saka.

Welcome.

Over to you, Council Member Wu.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you.

So I want to thank Director Farrell for everything that you've done.

There have been a lot of amazing programming and a lot of accomplishments in the last year.

And so I do have a couple of questions.

This one-time fund sunsetting, what are the impacts of these reductions?

Are we looking at organizations or groups that will not receive funding?

It looks like there's some programs that may be moving to other partners.

But what would these impacts look like?

SPEAKER_12

Sure, yeah, so for the Environmental Justice Fund, I'll start with that, which had $1.2 million in one-time funding in 2023 and 2024. With the sunsetting of that, we estimate probably the grant-making program would shrink from probably about 17 awardees per year as what was awarded in the last cycle to probably closer to eight or nine.

So that represents fewer organizations being served every year.

With the Indigenous-led climate initiatives, that's currently in, we're early in implementation and are executing an agreement at the moment with the Seattle Foundation to actually administer the grant-making process there.

The current proposal is to probably fund around five to seven large grants, but without continuing funding, that would be the extent of that program.

And then lastly, for the heavy duty truck incentive, we'll continue to see incentives being offered through those state public sector partners.

Though OSC's focus has always been on the independent owner operators.

And so at the loss of this funding, it's not clear if those individuals would be able to access the other incentive programs.

What's currently being explored is having stacking between city and state and federal funds to be able to serve this specific population that has more barriers to accessing the heavy-duty electric trucks.

Anything to add?

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

Any further questions?

Thank you so much.

Colleagues, do other folks have questions?

Council Member Morales.

SPEAKER_14

Thank you.

Yeah, I actually have a lot of questions.

I may hear the same answer from you, but I'm going to ask my questions anyway.

I'm going to slide four.

It's $4 million in, is it in payroll expense tax that is sunsetting?

Yes.

Why is that?

SPEAKER_12

Those were one-time ads in the 2023 and 2024 budget, so they were set to automatically expire at the end of this year.

SPEAKER_14

Can you talk a little bit about how the Green New Deal investment that comes from the payroll expense tax relates to the things that are here in why it would seem to me that that funding would support continued operation of these programs.

So maybe I'm just misunderstanding how it's allocated.

SPEAKER_13

So why don't we actually go back to the prior slide?

Great.

So I'll just say overall, our approach and recommendation in the shortfall that we've been grappling with was to keep all of our program areas up and running because they're delivering effective programs.

We're able to leverage external funding for many of them, not all.

And so, as you can see on this first slide that we presented, there are actually many programs that are moving forward intact at funding levels for 23 and 24. And so, all of these areas are in alignment with our Green New Deal Oversight Board's recommendations, again, relating to fostering a green transition.

And again, you can see our investments in workforce development, clean energy apprenticeships, the focus on the Duwamish Valley.

And then of course, the reducing pollution from fossil fuels and focusing on our buildings, both access for homeowners, low income and middle income homeowners to be able to have access to rebates.

And that program has been augmented by state and federal incentives as well.

and then investment in our own municipal buildings, and then helping under-resourced buildings to comply with BEPS.

So that's a whole suite of investments that's very much in keeping with our Green New Deal.

And then finally, investing in healthy and resilient communities, and there are three main areas of investment there.

Food, which is related to Fresh Bucks and healthy food in schools.

The environmental justice grant-making program is really about ensuring healthy and resilient communities.

And then finally, Tree planting in low canopy industrial areas and that primarily focuses on Georgetown and Duwamish Valley South Park So so I guess to summarize overall Our investments are very much aligned and then a couple of these cuts are mostly related either to efficiencies that $500,000 IT BEPS cut is a recommended cut because of efficiency and The $900,000 cut to the Drayage Truck Incentive Program is also recommended because we're able to now work with our state and regional partners to scale that program in a much bigger way.

And so the state has received almost $100 million, which is, again, our piece of it has been important to focus on equity But ultimately, we want the state and region to be playing a robust role to be able to actually get these drayage trucks electrified.

SPEAKER_14

Well, to that last point, The department proposed retaining $100,000 to be able to continue that focus on the short-haul drivers who are mostly East African immigrants, folks who are independent owner-operators, like you were saying.

It doesn't seem like that proposal was accepted.

Is that right?

SPEAKER_13

There is funding to allow us to continue reporting, measuring, and doing data.

So again, we're still very much in, I don't want to say negotiation, but we're still working to leverage the city investments so that potential port investments, potential state investments are basically using the contours of the pilot that we are launching.

So to focus on the electrification.

And so there's a small amount of money to allow us to continue to monitor and ensure that this program is working the way we want it to work, which is to focus on immigrant and refugee drivers, focus on the drayage trucks that are impacting South Park and Georgetown in particular.

SPEAKER_14

Okay, I wanna move to slide six.

Can you tell us, as you're making the proposals about reducing workforce and small business investments in the Duwamish Valley, if folks were consulted about what the impact of those would be?

SPEAKER_12

So the small business support that's currently operated through OSC has evolved over the years and looked a few different ways.

During the pandemic, it was largely focused on COVID and pandemic support, getting masks and helping with implementation to new public health guidelines.

Over the past few years, it's looked like contracted services to help support small businesses with marketing, technical assistance, and other services like that.

So those would no longer be offered through OSC.

OED will continue to have small business support, just it wouldn't be specifically to that neighborhood the way that OSC has been offered.

OSC's program has also provided a nexus for these small business owners to engage in the Duwamish Valley Action Plan and programming there in a way that it's given them an access point to that program area.

With the workforce development, this is currently for this year, the plans for this investments are around exploring some partnerships and some potential job fairs in the Duwamish Valley area, partnerships with some local partners to help with connections to...

to workforce development.

So while we would continue to have a focus in the Clean Energy Workforce Development Program, which is a maintained investment in the 2025-2026 budget, it probably wouldn't fund partnerships to the extent that this investment would have been able to.

SPEAKER_14

So what kind of resources are planned for the Duwamish Valley Action Plan and the mitigation things that need to happen there and how are residents going to be able to continue to benefit from that?

SPEAKER_12

OSC has continued ongoing investments in our Duwamish Valley Youth Leadership Program and in industrial greening, which is tree planting in the industrial areas.

And then we also have quite a bit of one-time funding that we anticipate will either be deployed this year or carried forward into next year to support, I guess, actually, Justin, you might have a better characterization of the one-time.

SPEAKER_13

To support resilience and particularly resilience hub planning and moving forward with decarbonization of community buildings in the Duwamish Valley.

So those are some funds from 22 and 23 that are moving forward that we're hoping to deploy.

But to kind of reiterate what Megan said, there are some changes in terms of the place-based support.

SPEAKER_14

Well, and I think that's really problematic.

You know, I mean, if I understand this right, the mayor's proposing an 80% reduction in Duwamish Valley programs by 300,000, maybe more.

That's the only funding source for South Park in Georgetown.

And You know, these are communities that are hardest hit by pollution.

Well, Beacon Hill as well.

So I think, you know, the last thing I want to ask about, because it's sort of related, is the changes to the Environmental Justice Fund.

The slide on slide eight says that consolidation will help stabilize, but the reality is that funding is down by 40% from 2024. And all of the work to support the Duwamish Valley, the organizations, the small businesses is work on climate impacts for those two neighborhoods.

So I know, I just wanna read from some of the budget documents that were submitted about the impacts of this, because what we know is the Duwamish Valley is home to 5,600 people, 42% are immigrants, 37% are Latino, 63% are people of color.

This is an area that disproportionately faces social and environmental stressors.

72% live in poverty.

The life expectancy, and as the former representative of Georgetown I know, the life expectancy is 13 years less in Georgetown than it is in Laurelhurst.

That's why we're making these kinds of investments, and I know that you all know this.

My frustration is not directed at you.

But that's what we're talking about when we're talking about these budget cuts, when we're talking about these policy choices.

So the Duwamish River is a Superfund site.

It contains more than 40 chemicals above environmental and human health standards.

58% of the population lives within one mile of the Duwamish Superfund site, and residents and workers have access to less than half the green space per resident than the citywide average.

So these neighborhoods suffer from air pollution, from asthma, from major industry, industrial waste damage.

And the fact that dire consequences are at stake for these communities is nothing to gloss over.

So I think it's important that as we make these decisions, as we understand that low-income communities and communities of color are going to be impacted by this, Seattleites who are trying to manage disparate health outcomes disparate income inequality for their families are the ones who are going to suffer the cost of this.

Every reduction we take will have lasting, harmful consequences for our children, and especially for children of color.

So colleagues, these may be the mayor's policy and fiscal choices, but they aren't mine, and I hope they aren't yours either.

Thank you, Councilmember, Chair.

Please, Director.

SPEAKER_06

We will follow up.

I totally understand and appreciate, Councilmember, your perspective on this.

We'll follow up with central staff to provide additional information about the pots of money that we think that the organizations who had been applying for and receiving grants in the Duwamish Valley area will be eligible for.

Our expectation is for all the reasons you just described, they will be competing four grants in a very successful and way that they can get funding on a continued basis.

What we have done in this proposed budget, given the pressures that we were facing, is eliminated a place-based carve-out that was exclusively and only for them, but that is not the only source of funds that we have.

And we expect that they will continue to get funding, maybe not exactly the same dollar amounts, but we do expect them to continue to get funding moving forward.

even without changes, and I understand you may be advocating for some changes in that proposed budget.

SPEAKER_14

Well, and the last thing I'll say is if we're talking about place-based solutions being the right answer for lots of other things, particularly around public safety, I would say the reason those investments are very particular to that neighborhood is because it suffers disproportionately from the health impacts of all the environmental injustice that has gone on there for generations.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02

Council Member Saka, District 1.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and apologies about being a few moments late to the meeting today.

My kids' school bus was 10 to 15 minutes late through Seattle Public Schools, and therefore I was also, you know, a little late.

So shout out to all the parents, current, past, and present, and future, who understand those struggles or will understand those struggles.

It is real.

In any event, thank you all for being here today.

Appreciate this presentation on the proposed budget here for OSCE.

I had some questions around some of the impacts potentially on the Duwamish Valley that I now have the honor of representing, but we've heard a good exchange on that, so let me pivot.

Electrification.

Electrification.

So overall, just be curious to better understand, what is the commitment to furthering our city's electrification goals?

As you as you know, I am chair of our transportation committee and I am particularly interested in electrification across all modes and particularly personal electrical vehicles and So just be curious to better understand what actions our OSC is OSC taking and working on with other departments in planning efforts over the next few years to implement the transportation electrification blueprint

SPEAKER_13

Great.

Thank you for that question.

So I'll start by saying OSC's role is to kind of drive and innovate policy within the city, and we feel successful when we're able to work with our capital partners or other outside entities to scale.

So where we are right now is continuing to play a coordinating and strategic role amongst city departments, and as of course you know, Some of the levy will be deployed towards EV infrastructure.

Seattle City Light has a really important both strategic implementation and funding role in the deployment of those dollars.

And then, of course, we'll be continuing to be aggressive around looking for outside funding to provide the ability to get to our goals around electrification.

That said, there are some specific ways that we'll continue to engage.

Electrifying drayage trucks is a really high leverage move for particularly the port-adjacent communities.

And so while we're recommending sunsetting our funding, we will be continuing to work with these other entities, particularly on the port, who have received much bigger outside funding grants, which is appropriate.

They're state and regional entities.

It's a state and regional problem.

But we'll be continuing to use our pilot to really drive an equitable and focused set of programming to ensure that we're lowering particulate impacts to South Park and Georgetown.

So that's one area.

And then the other area where we're focused on in this budget is electrifying and working with city departments to actually take steps towards electrifying the city's own fleet.

And that includes both the building upgrades, the planning, the vehicle procurement.

So those are our two areas of focus in the 2526 budgets.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03

Yes, transportation-related pollution, and, you know, that's the number one contributor, number one factor, there's a variety of factors, but to climate change.

So it is important that we have a concrete-specific plan to drive electrification across the entire transportation spectrum, including drainage, including the port, and...

And personal EVs is one element of that.

Ferries, buses, all of the above.

So thank you for that.

Let me pivot now to a topic that's really important to me, healthy foods and addressing food deserts.

So I talked a few days ago, you weren't here, so no worries.

I talked a few days ago during another department presentation about the importance of addressing food deserts in our communities.

And I represent a few of them in District 1, Delridge, particularly North Delridge, South Park, Georgetown, the Duwamish Valley, basically.

So it is one thing that I would like to see addressed.

And I've also talked about, look, we're not going to bodega our way out of this.

Yes, we need small, locally sourced, organic, kind of STORES AND OPPORTUNITIES, BUT WE ALSO NEED MID-SIZED GROCERY STORES AND WHAT I'M ABOUT TO SAY, YOU KNOW, I THINK WE NEED TO MAKE SURE WE HAVE larger grocery store options as well.

Because one thing I didn't get to last week, as we talk about smart planning and balanced planning to make sure we contemplate the growth that we currently project and just because we need to play catch up.

And then also like, you know, we need to grow and grow quickly and have capacity for a variety of things, including making sure we have Grocery stores and access to healthy foods and food deserts.

One thing I didn't mention is that in my district alone, colleagues, I know in your district, same issue is happening.

But in my district alone, we can expect to lose at least two grocery stores, big grocery stores that are on the chopping block as a result of a proposed merger.

And at least two that I'm aware of.

And then I didn't mention also that in Jefferson Square, the Safeway there is going to be knocked down in lieu or to build the Sound Transit light rail station, which I support.

But that's...

Minimum one, likely, potentially three, big grocery stores in capacity.

And we can't just assume that the two that might be shut down, that some other retailer is going to come in in their place.

And so that's why we need to thoughtfully consider all of our planning, and OSE is part of that as well.

So just be curious, are you coordinating or working with OED or OPCD on the fact, like I said, that many neighborhoods, particularly those in disadvantaged communities, are food deserts, which is likely only to be further exacerbated potential and likely grocery store mergers and I'd just be curious if anyone is coordinating and and working with all stakeholders across the city on specific projects to knock down these silos to address again healthy foods and food deserts

SPEAKER_13

Yeah, thank you for that question.

So I would say as an overall framing for the answer to this is that OSC's investments exist in an ecosystem across multiple departments to effectuate a healthy food system for everyone.

Again, in the case of food, we coordinate, drive, lead in partnership with HSD, our food action plan, which does include lots of different strategies around improving access to healthy food, including access to grocery stores.

And so we do coordinate with OED and OPCD.

In our programmatic work, we also work to ensure that things like Fresh Bucks can be used at our biggest grocery stores.

So we have a partnership with Safeway, We've been working for quite some time to ensure that we can have this kind of partnership with other grocery stores as well.

So I think the short answer is our work nests within a multi-departmental strategy and around planning.

Of course, that's OPCD, the business side of that, OED.

And this, of course, cuts across our transportation investments on electrification.

We also nest within a multi-department strategy.

And I would also say with the Duwamish Valley.

So while there are Just to go back to that for a moment, there are impacts to our programming in this budget.

The Duwamish Valley Action Plan is a multi-departmental strategy by design.

So it's important to look at our investments kind of holistically as they fit with the multiple departments that work on these interdisciplinary issues like food.

Any additions, Megan?

SPEAKER_03

All right, thank you.

No further questions, Mr. Chair.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you, Council Member Saca.

Council Member Rivera.

SPEAKER_11

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you for being here today to answer our questions.

Director Farrell, it sounds like, and this is just, I'm truth testing what I'm hearing.

It sounds like OSC is working really hard to leverage state and federal funding as you do this work, to do so in more robust ways than I think maybe the department has done in the past.

Is that true?

SPEAKER_13

I would say yes, but it's a qualified yes because we have this unprecedented investment in climate justice programming through the Inflation Reduction Act at the federal level and the Climate Commitment Act at the state level.

Those are new laws.

the office has really been able to take advantage of that over the last two to three years, really these last two years.

But I will say that Because we've been able to have what I'm calling shovel-ready programming, starting way back in 2016 with the equity and environment agenda and investments like our environmental justice grant making program, investments that focus on the Duwamish Valley, investments that focus on workforce development, we've been really well positioned to compete nationally and at the state level to be able to receive funding to augment these programs.

SPEAKER_11

Understood.

I mean, it is a newer source of funding at the state and federal level, but you are leveraging and it's great that we're at this point.

I appreciate hearing that the department positioned itself well to be competitive in this space and also recognize that you are utilizing the ability to do that via the new state and federal funding in this space.

So really appreciate that our state and federal partners are coming along In some ways, I think the city has been leading in some of these spaces, and the state and feds are coming up to speed.

But I very much appreciate the department doing so, really, in, like I said, this robust way to take up some of the work that we maybe started and couldn't do as robustly, and now we have at the state and federal level and ability to do so.

So very much appreciate your leadership there and also want to acknowledge that before you were at the city you were in the private sector doing similar work and so we have the benefit of your experience and background working in this space including tracking and advocating for the state and federal funding that has gotten us to this place.

So appreciate your work prior to coming here and appreciate you being here to really put all of that together on behalf of the city.

I do have, and then my second question is just on the, well, a comment on Council Member Saka's comments about food.

I very much also care about food and food deserts.

There is a food desert in the D4 at Magnuson Park and very much appreciate the city's efforts and I want to hear more about the food action plan and how the departments come together.

I want to hear more about the plan and how the departments come together to implement that plan as part of the 25-26 biennium.

I do have a question on the Environmental Justice Fund changes.

These community-led projects, can you tell us a little bit about the types of projects that are under this fund?

SPEAKER_13

Yeah, just to give a couple of examples, and then Megan may have a couple of examples as well.

In the past, for example, we've worked with the Delridge Neighborhood Development Association, DNDA, to fund youth-led projects related to environmental sustainability.

So that's been a really wonderful partnership that we've had with them.

Another example has been to work with the Lake City Collective as they have improved and focused on building a resilience hub.

So that's actually a place where they were able to purchase land and we were able to help work with them to provide capacity.

It's no small endeavor to develop a resilience hub or to develop a community hub.

And so our environmental justice grant fund has been able to be deployed to work with them.

And now we're actually taking the next step and applying for federal funding through the EPA's community change grant to actually have funding to build that.

So those are just a couple of examples of how in some ways diverse, the projects and programming are youth-led, you know, environmental stewardship, but then also real place making through resilience hubs.

Megan, do you want to add anything?

SPEAKER_12

Yeah, I can add a few more from the most recent granting cycle.

Aspire Global Ambition Society is developing a job training program for BIPOC individuals ages 16 to 24 and Focused on providing skills within electrical construction, renewable energy integration, and sustainable construction practices.

The Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association is converting 25 tons of local food waste into 28,000 gallons of probiotic plant food.

And Restaurant to Garden is reducing restaurant food waste in Chinatown International District and increasing compost production.

So a really wide variety of projects from across the city.

SPEAKER_11

Great.

Thank you so much.

Very helpful to hear.

When I read, oftentimes it comes in as community-led projects and you don't know what those are.

So it's really important to get a flavor and hear about what those projects are actually doing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Council Member Kettle.

SPEAKER_15

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Director Farrell, good to see you again.

Enjoyed our earlier conversations.

And I will not be talking about trees anymore.

SPEAKER_13

We're always happy to.

SPEAKER_15

Evergreen trees or projects that bring densification and trees together in a great way, since we've already talked about that.

Oftentimes in the past year, and including this year as a council member, I've talked about the Port of Seattle, and we're going to be a port city.

Our geography, our topography, we can't escape it.

And we have to ensure that we have a viable port 100 years from now.

And it's so important.

And I just wanted to say part of being viable is being environmentally viable.

Something I haven't really said from the dais, but as a young 12-year-old reading the Buffalo Evening News about a place called Love Canal, it really strikes a chord as a young man, but now still today in terms of what we're seeing in the Duwamish River Valley and in the port itself.

And so we really need to be...

thinking about the environmental impacts of the past plus what we're doing and going forward to being that viable port 100 years from now.

And in my engagement, I've been a strong supporter of the port.

One of the things I say that we're not just the port of Seattle.

And I say we, I'm the collective we because I recognize the city of Seattle, the port, two jurisdictions.

But it's the port of King County.

It's the port of Washington State.

It's the port of Pacific Northwest and really west of the Mississippi in a lot of ways, particularly to the north.

And we need to protect it, and we need all levels of government to support, the federal, the state, county, the regional to support as well.

I see in the briefings talking about the Environmental Justice Fund, the Duwamish River Opportunity Fund, the Workforce Small Business, all these adjustments.

Question in terms of moving forward with those, but also the other part of this is us working in, because you hinted at it in the question, in a one Seattle way with like what City Light can do, what SDOT can do in terms of freight and so forth.

OIR in terms of engaging on these levels of government and in addition to OSC because we need that all hands on deck effort.

Can you speak to that kind of one Seattle A and B that this idea that it's not just the Port of Seattle and we need all these other entities to recognize and be part of that solution?

SPEAKER_13

Thank you.

And I was actually going to use a phrase that you just used, which is that some of these issues like climate change, equitable transition are really all hands on deck issues and that the city can be a driver and can be an innovator.

But we really do need the partnership with the port, with the state, with the Northwest Seaport Alliance, not just the Port of Seattle, to really be able to make significant progress.

And so I will say that in the case of, for example, our drayage truck electrification pilot, that is an instance where the city, I think, was taking a first step, in part because the health impacts are so profoundly felt by South Park, by Georgetown, by Delridge, those adjacent neighborhoods.

And so we were able to start to work through some of these really challenging policy issues related to how do you actually get these heavy duty electric vehicles, which are very expensive, which require charging infrastructure.

It's not something that we can kind of flip a light switch on and say, great, we're going to electrify.

How do we make sure that drivers who may not have access to traditional financing, may not have access to a charging hub that's privately owned.

So we've had to be working through all of these things.

And then in the meanwhile, the good news is that there's been federal and state resources that have become available.

And so now the imperative is to really knit together these efforts so that they're an efficient use of government funding, that they're deployed in a way that makes sense for the multiple political economic imperatives of these different levels of government.

reason for being is different from the city of Seattle's, and we have to recognize that sometimes there are different incentives and imperatives, but how do we weave together, even though we're in this moment of federal funding and state funding and city funding for these programs, recognizing this transition is expensive and will take multiple ways of getting there.

So that's maybe not as specific as you want.

I'm happy to dive in a little deeper.

But our mindset very much is we have the opportunity to innovate and push where it makes sense and then to really knit together these efforts so that it makes sense for the people who are going to benefit.

And in our focus, it really is those neighborhoods that are adjacent and impacted by the port.

SPEAKER_15

Essentially being a force multiplier, it sounds like.

And we all have this responsibility, too.

I've met with the Coast Guard at Coast Guard Base Seattle talking.

The environment has got to be part of the conversation.

It was.

I've done a veteran hiring event with Washington State Ferries, the electrification of the ferry system.

All these kinds of pieces are going to be very important.

And, uh, I also like to thank, uh, my colleague council member, uh, Saka, um, for bringing me down to Georgetown for an event, because it's one thing to talk about it and you kind of drive through sometimes, but when you're a group with a couple dozen plus people and you hear from the various aspects that happen in the community, it's really good or, or visiting the Duwamish long house.

Um, then you have an even deeper understanding if you go back further in terms of what it once was.

So, um, I appreciate that very much.

Um, And going back to my original comment, in terms of trees and low canopy industrial areas, 110% support that.

It's kind of like sidewalks.

It's an area that's clearly underserved, and it needs that support to include other areas too.

And so I'm very happy, for example, that the Seattle Storm Center for Performing Sporting Excellence, which is essentially an industrial area, went ahead and THOSE TREES IN.

SO WE HAVE TO CELEBRATE THOSE KINDS OF ACTIONS BECAUSE IF IT TAKES EACH OF THOSE INDIVIDUAL ACTORS DOES THAT IN ADDITION TO WHAT WE DO AS A CITY, THAT CAN REALLY, AGAIN, BE A FORCE MULTIPLIER.

SO THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

CHAIR?

SPEAKER_02

THANK YOU, COUNCIL MEMBER KETTLE.

TOOK THE WORDS OFF OF MY page here, force multiplier, I think is a really great way of describing your department, Director Farrell.

I see Councilmember Hollingsworth and then Councilmember Wu, do you have something to respond there?

You'll have another opportunity at the end.

All right, fair enough.

Councilmember Hollingsworth.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Director Farrow.

Really appreciate all the work that you have done.

I had a quick question.

With the priorities piece, which I think my colleagues will, I don't want to say get mad at me, but I always talk about food, so hopefully they like food.

But the healthy food in schools, could you go into a little detail about prioritizing that and the investments made and where in the city potentially that would be located?

like those investments.

SPEAKER_13

That sounds good.

Megan has the specific numbers.

I can give kind of the broad contour of the program.

So this is a really wonderful partnership with Seattle Public Schools and the Culinary Department, where we work with specific schools that qualify for free and reduced lunch across the city to bring more scratch-cooked, culturally relevant, locally grown food into schools and to give kids the opportunity to have more fresh fruits and vegetables over the course of the day.

There is a strong evaluation component to really measure, are kids eating more fresh fruits and vegetables?

It turns out they are as a consequence of this program.

And maybe Megan can talk about the number of schools and some of the schools that are in it.

SPEAKER_12

Yeah, I'll have to get back on the exact number of schools, but I want to say it's around 20. I think they've been able to add schools over the years.

The investment itself is $388,000, but in this next two years is actually supplemented by a federal grant that we were able to get using the city investment as match.

So there's another $100,000 to do some more, expand that work and bring in some partners to help with an educational component too.

SPEAKER_00

Understood, and if I could just give a quick plug, I'm gonna jump down to Council Member Morales' district.

The Rainier Valley Food Bank, excuse me, they account for 25% of all the food bank visits come from Rainier Valley Food Bank.

And the Fresh Bucks program that I love that our city does, that Othello Safeway has the highest redemption in the state.

And so what I've seen with just food insecurity is just South End, South Park, South End, Rainier Beach, Rainier Valley.

Those investments could be focused there.

I just love data.

That's where I know a lot of the food insecurity piece is.

And I think we've talked about this, Director Farrow, but in Spokane, 30% of the food that food banks purchase, or excuse me, when food banks, people either, when you get food from a food bank, it's either purchased or donated.

30% of their food comes as donation, or 30% is purchased, 70% is donated.

In Seattle, it's backwards for a lot of food banks where they purchase food.

around 50 to 70%, and 30% is donated.

And so I think there's a real big opportunity, and I know that you're working on the food action plan, which is great, for us to really hone in on the sustainability aspect of it and the donation piece and the food waste, 40% of food is wasted in the garbage, to be able to extend the life of food, which I think is incredibly So I know that you all work with, I know Don has a food equity program, but I know that some of those funds are unfortunately decreasing.

But Deal has, where they donate, or excuse me, where they give grants to organizations that also do food as well.

And then SPU with their food rescue plan as well.

I really think there's opportunity for us to hone in with that piece because a lot of the food banks are purchasing a ton of their food.

and that money could be used for other opportunities and pieces.

And then regarding South Park and the Duwamish investments there that are decreased, I think there's another opportunity.

There's a food distribution hub, Food Lifeline, at Northwest Harvest.

It was always Food Lifeline or Northwest Harvest, but I love both.

And there's an opportunity with Food Lifeline as a distributor in South Park, in that neighborhood, to be able to partner with the city to have like some type of market, walk-up market, very similar to Northwest Harvest does have in Soto, but something of that nature for a stopgap as we're talking about trying to figure out stores and grocery markets as well.

So anyways, I just wanted to throw those things out there and just advocate for the South End for investments for when you all are thinking about the pieces for the food part.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_13

Thank you, and we really look forward to working with you on those things.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you, Council Member Hollingsworth.

I'll say, as I was reading in the 2019 to 2024 budget summary, Council Member Rivera, do you have another hand?

SPEAKER_99

I do.

SPEAKER_02

All right, I'll pass it over to you before I make my final remarks.

SPEAKER_11

Thank you, Chair.

One thing I meant to ask about was on the trees and tree planting.

Super appreciate that effort.

What other, is this the, I'm trying to figure out at the city all our, like many things, many of these efforts are in between departments.

And so how much of the tree work do you, because SDOT, I'm seeing, hi Rodney, Maxie back there, has, you know, they tree planting and then there are, you know, other departments that obviously SCCI does the enforcement piece.

So, yeah.

Can you tell us more about trees at OSC and the work that you do?

Is it limited to this tree planting in the low canopy areas, industrial areas I mean, or is there other work that is happening?

SPEAKER_13

Yeah, that's a great question.

So like our work with the Food Action Plan, like our work in the Duwamish Valley, we take a strategic and coordinating role in partnership with other departments.

And then also kind of an innovative and piloting role.

And the greening of industrial areas is that kind of pilot that is small right now.

And ultimately, as we continue to invest in tree canopy equity, that would be a place where potentially we can do more, depending on future budgets.

So I don't want to say anything related to that.

in this particular budget.

But very roughly, SDOT is overseeing trees in the right of way.

SPU also has a role.

Seattle Parks, of course, in our park lands.

So there is a comprehensive set of investments that the city makes across the different kinds of land use related to trees.

And again, OSC's role is that strategic.

piece.

We do our canopy cover investment and then work with departments to align where we're investing based on what we know about canopy.

And one of the things, of course, is in industrial areas, that's a particular place that needs greening.

So that's where we're experimenting and innovating there.

And then I will also add, we have $12 million in federal funding that we're working on in partnership with Seattle Parks Department to do community-led tree plantings and stewardship in CID and Beacon Hill.

And so those are very place-based tree investments based on our canopy cover data.

SPEAKER_11

That's great to hear, actually, Director.

So thank you for sharing that information.

I always appreciate when we can get dollars back from the state and the feds to be able to do some of this work.

Who is leading on this comprehensive tree plan at the city?

SPEAKER_13

We oversee or lead the broad data keeping and strategies related to urban forestry.

Then, of course, it is up to the departments who really oversee particular land use types to actually implement it.

Again, on the rights of way, on the parks, on the regulatory side, which is primarily on private property related to SDCI.

So again, as with many different things in the city, there's kind of a holistic approach where there are many departments involved, but it's because there are different kind of areas of expertise and areas of jurisdiction.

But our role is really that kind of coordinating and focused role.

SPEAKER_11

Yes, thank you.

I understand that piece.

I'm just wondering who is coordinating the comprehensive approach because sometimes there's a department or usually there's a department that is coordinating a comprehensive effort since these things reside in all the various departments.

Like, I'm just using an example, downtown activation plan, OED is leading.

So in this regard, who is leading the comprehensive tree strategy?

Yes, sorry, I didn't get that the first time.

SPEAKER_13

No, that's okay, I'm sorry.

Yeah, so again, it depends on, the long-term strategy is really kind of instantiated in the comprehensive plan, which OPCD, of course, is leading on.

But those near term planning efforts, OSC is actually leading through our tree canopy equity plan, which is a response to the latest tree canopy assessment, which was released in 2023. And so this is a more short term look and a more Finely Grain looked at what parts of the city are under canopied.

You may recall we have a 30% canopy goal across the city.

Many neighborhoods are actually close to that or at that or exceed that, but there are some places, particularly Rainier Valley, parts of Beacon Hill, Georgetown, parts of North Seattle near Aurora, Lake City.

that tend to scan with where our race and social justice neighborhoods are, where they are under canopied.

And so this plan is really to help coordinate city investments, leverage state federal funding to be able to invest in those.

So the federal funding that we received is actually in anticipation of that plan.

And is there a plan, a written plan that we can...

There will be a written plan.

We're in the midst of doing that, and we should have that available in...

early 2025, Q1 or Q2.

Thank you, Director.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Chair.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

Council President.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you very much.

I apologize for being late earlier this morning.

Talking about food deserts, and it's clear that there is a priority for making sure that we're doing something about, we're being mindful of the fact, not just that they're already existing, but there could be future deserts or blank spots.

Does the city, and this is not necessarily directed at you, but have there ever been any, is there any consideration of recruitment of markets to come to food desert neighborhoods?

And when I say, and also there could be incentives which don't have to be monetary, they could be expedited permitting or something like that.

Do you happen to know if there's any effort on that front?

SPEAKER_13

That is a great question, and I'd be happy to get some more information on that.

That is a little bit outside of OSC's direct purview, but I am happy to help bring that information to you.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

I'll make my comments and then I'll ask my questions and I'll pass it over to Council Member Wu, chair of your committee as well.

I agree with Council Member Kettle about sidewalks and street trees.

I also know that the two can create issues when they're not properly made.

I love cherry trees as street trees and they do a number to our sidewalks.

side commentary there.

I've got a number of questions that I'll just have CBO and central staff come back to me with.

I'll ask those in just a minute.

I will also touch on what council member Hollingsworth shared about the Fresh Bucks program.

When I'm looking at the 2019 to 2024 review of your budget over the last five years, I noticed there's $1.4 million of general fund that goes to what is an otherwise sweetened beverage tax funded program.

and it brought a smile to my face because that was my amendment.

That was my first budget amendment colleagues that I ever passed.

It was the one that, and so when we're going through this budget process this year, I ask you to think about what is most important to you and let's make sure to get that budget amendment into this budget because when you come back five years later and you look to, so the question, don't need to answer it now, is that $1.4 million general fund still funding Fresh Bucks?

SPEAKER_12

Yes, it is.

SPEAKER_02

Fantastic.

That's the easy answer for today.

And it's really critical.

I didn't know that statistic, Council Member Hollingsworth.

It doesn't surprise me.

And it's also really amazing to get to watch Fresh Bucks being used at our farmers markets.

I do know that the sweetened beverage tax hasn't been doing as necessarily projected.

What is the situation right now with Fresh Bucks?

Is this a place that has had reduced funding over the last couple of years because of sweetened beverage tax?

Are we in a better place?

What's the status report, please?

SPEAKER_12

had any budget changes over the past few years, so it's been stable.

I think the $1.4 million general fund add was the last addition to the program, but there haven't been any changes since.

SPEAKER_06

Great.

We have unfortunately been living with accurate projections of the sweetened beverage tax, which is to say they have been declining over the years.

That's an example where we stepped in and provided through your leadership additional general fund dollars to backfill the declining sweetened beverage tax.

We were not able to do so this year.

So we are living within the sweetened beverage tax proceeds and augmenting those in 2025 with use of some tapping some one time reserves.

So there are no changes being made in 2025. There are some projected uh declines in 2026 which we couldn't use that one-time resource for and as i mentioned don't have general fund to backfill so on a projected basis we are expecting some declines not in fresh bucks but in some of the other programs that were funded by the sweet and beverage tax we're also holding steady all of the funding the city's funding for food banks So we hope for better news in future forecasts.

We will have to revisit this in the fall of next year when we're looking at the 2026 proposed budget and you're deliberating on an adopted version of that.

For now, the proposed 2026 budget is the only time where we have changes to sweetened beverage tax funded items.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you, Director Eater.

You brought up a point that I was happy to expand upon, which is that the food banks, as Councilmember Hollingsworth, another great data point from District 3 today about how our food banks are funded.

I know that at the Ballard Food Bank, which is more than a food bank, they have case management, dental health care provided there, a free cafe.

It feels more like a community center and community A SERVICE PROVIDER THAN IT IS SIMPLY JUST A FOOD BANK.

WHEN I'M TALKING TO THEM, THE COST OF FOOD FROM FOOD LIFELINE IS RISING AT INCREDIBLE COSTS AND THEY'RE MORE DEPENDENT ON THE PURCHASED FOOD THAN THE DONATED FOOD, WHICH GOOD STATS COUNCILMEMBER HOLLINGSWORTH ABOUT OTHER PARTS OF OUR COUNTRY.

ANYTHING ADDITIONAL YOU WANT TO SHARE ABOUT HOW WE'RE SUPPORTING THE FOOD PLAN THROUGH FOOD BANKS?

SPEAKER_13

I think that would be a good question for HSD.

SPEAKER_02

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_13

But we're happy to help provide some more specific information.

SPEAKER_02

I was going to, apparently that wasn't the best segue.

I was going to lead into how does this budget support your food plan that was recently presented?

SPEAKER_13

Yeah.

So overall, the programming that was in the food action plan are continued in this budget.

And I think Director Eder can speak specifically to other departments, but in our budget, which has two specific programs related to the food action plan, that Fresh Bucks program and the healthy food in schools, those allocations are held intact from 2024 to 2025. Fantastic.

That's great.

SPEAKER_02

I'll have some more questions just about the specifics.

So for central staff when we're meeting, making, I'd like to dig down to the program level there.

The truck, the drayage trucks, and this is not necessarily a question that needs to be answered right now.

I recall that there was another program that the port had been working on between 2015 and 2020. which I believe is a different program than what we funded through Jumpstart.

But for Central Staff and CBO, I'd like to dig into the history of the connection with the port as compared to the program that was discussed earlier today.

Another question for Central Staff and CBO is, I recall a program in Georgetown or, you know, OSC Director Farrell, if you've got info on this one.

Former Representative Velma Valoria had been working that would both help clean the air but also reduce some of the noise pollution from King County Airport.

Do we recall if this was completed or if this was still ongoing and needing funding in this budget?

SPEAKER_13

I am not familiar.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

So we're just going to put that one on the question list for later.

This is another one I should probably know the answer to.

We've been very excited about having a tree farm that is owned and operated by the city of Seattle.

Is this within your department or do I need to be looking?

SPEAKER_13

I think it's SPU.

SPEAKER_02

That's right.

Which brings me to the questions about the Duwamish Valley partnerships.

I know that there was a position in OPCD that was transferred to SPU.

OSC.

Are you also?

SPEAKER_12

There's one position and one is being transferred to SPU.

SPEAKER_02

Nailed it.

You led me right into my question, which is can you speak a little bit, and if you need to come back with a more detailed report, this might be for CBO Eder, of can you be able to demonstrate to me all of the programs that the city is funding within the Duwamish Valley?

Because it is easy to get, And if I had my way, I would just be increasing funding for all of these programs.

But I'd like the ability to look at these programs comprehensively.

SPEAKER_06

Yes, Chair Strauss, I've already asked my staff to begin pulling that together.

So we will have that as an answer to a formal question.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

Because my question here was going to be, is your program coordinating with the SPU position?

Because I see it sounds like the answer is yes, but I'll just double check.

SPEAKER_13

Yes, I can say that the Duwamish Valley work across the city is deeply integrated in part because of that comprehensive work through the Duwamish Valley Action Plan now five years ago.

And so OSC's role will continue to be to lead on the implementation of the Duwamish Valley Action Plan in partnership with our departments who are really doing the work on the ground.

And then we work very closely with SPU to increasingly address sea level rise.

And so that is a real focus of the coordination that's happening around how are we given the flood that happened two years ago.

It happened much worse and sooner than we thought it would.

So there is an effort to expedite it, but to really ensure that we're doing it in a way that keeps community at the center of all of our planning efforts and in deep dialogue.

And so our role and SPU's role are a little different in that way.

We're really focused on particularly the environmental justice aspects of that, but that's also really integrated into what SPU is doing.

SPEAKER_02

Fantastic, thank you, because I will like to dig a little bit deeper into, I see two budget actions on this in your budget, which Council Member Morales had touched on, which is not only restoring the baseline environmental justice funding, but then changing to consolidate the funds.

I'd just like to be able to understand from budgetary perspective of place-based is absolutely important and I support that and how much are we focusing there which we need to be because I also understand in CBO eater this is another one for the that comprehensive study which is we we just received a settlement regarding the Duwamish Valley I believe for twenty two million dollars twenty seven million dollars and

SPEAKER_06

Sorry, I don't know the answer offhand.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, I do know that we received a settlement regarding the Duwamish Valley Superfund site for over $20 million, and I'd like to understand where and how that is going to be used.

I know that it has to be used for environmental cleanup specifically, which may or may not be different than some of this other work.

And this is why I want to have a comprehensive understanding, because it's incredibly important that we keep up, don't lose any momentum on the direction that we're heading.

With that, I'm gonna just look at the 2019 to 2024 budget summary because OSE has a very interesting story to tell over the last five years.

In 2019, the department had $8 million budget, and today it has about a $30 million budget.

I know that there's some reductions here.

This demonstrates the city's commitment to addressing the climate crisis ahead of us.

And within that time period, you actually had a 9% reduction in the general fund contributions to your department.

This is very unlike everyone else.

Even with that amount of growth from the hard dollars, your staff only, it didn't even grow 50%.

And so I believe you're still at or around 40 employees

SPEAKER_13

We're at 50.5 for 25-26.

But I will say a lot of the growth of our budget is about putting money into community programs.

So that's where you see kind of the accordion when we can grow programs to reach funding or, you know, reduce them depending on the budget.

So yes, our staffing has been steady and where we've been able to really focus is putting funding into communities for the various things we work on.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you for that accurate number.

I was doing back the envelope math over the 2019, 2024 and five-year growth numbers in the central staff memo, making a best guess there.

And with just over 50 employees, you're still delivering $23 million in non-labor dollars.

So from a labor, non-labor standpoint within your department, this is why I went back to Council Member Kettle saying a force multiplier.

You are able to get dollars out the door to address the climate crisis ahead of us And then in addition to that, noting here the $12 million USDA Forest Service grant from last year is just one of many.

So is there anything that you'd like to share with us in your ability to get dollars out the door with a small labor force and that large climate budget?

SPEAKER_13

Well, I would say, again, I referred to this a little bit ago, but in part because OSE has been working on equity and environment in a really intentional way since 2016, it meant that we already had these programs that were built up and already functioning when the IRA was passed, when the Climate Commitment Act was passed.

that built into those funding mechanisms, environmental justice direction.

So we may be familiar with the Justice 40 commitment at the federal level, which is that 40% of funding goes into environmental justice programs.

So we were in a position where we already had programming running.

I know we use the phrase shovel ready for capital projects, but that's the phrase that we can use with OSC as well, which is to say that The city commitment to these kinds of projects that you can see outlined on our slide up here meant that we were able to pivot really quickly and go after federal funds or state funds because we already had a clean heat program that was focused on oil conversion and had a focus on low income conversions and middle income conversions.

And that was a really important investment early on.

Council Member Morales was a champion of that.

So being able to have these ongoing programs already has meant that we were just able to be nimble and go after funding.

So the city commitment is really important and then it just allows us to be that force multiplier and be aggressive in getting outside funding.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

I'll come back to my final comments in just one second.

I do want to note another question.

With the change in the building efficiency performance standards technical support, I just do want to make sure, Director Eater, that we're still able to provide that no-cost technical support in the future.

I'm happy to dig more deeply into that offline.

I just want to flag that.

SPEAKER_06

I'll follow up.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

Before I share my closing statements, Council President, is this a new hand?

SPEAKER_09

Yes.

SPEAKER_02

Happy to, Council President.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

You jogged my memory.

On July 25th, the city attorney's office put out an announcement that Seattle will receive the largest single-city settlement from chemical giant Monsanto for years of polluting in the lower Duwamish River.

Not $20 million, but $160 million settlement.

So it will go to help care for the lower Duwamish and mitigate the cost of pollution control to find and remove PCBs.

Now, of course, the question is, was there general funding that was already going to pay for that?

And then can that be used for something else?

I don't know.

But just lending some attention to that question.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you, Council President.

And I know when I received that news, I was very joyful and did a quick cursory summary.

And unfortunately, it does not come back to take general funded programs, in part because this is supposed to be mitigating the Superfund sites that were out there.

SPEAKER_09

And if there's any lower Duwamish general fund that is being used, this could also be used for...

SPEAKER_02

Please make sure to be recognized, Council President.

And so this is something that we'll look into as well, but I do know with my cursory summary when we receive that news, that it is all mitigation work.

I'm gonna close us out and then pass it to Council Member Wu, Chair of your committee.

It's really important that, that your department is separate so that we don't lose focus on addressing the climate crisis ahead of us.

Your budget presentation in this five-year review clearly demonstrates the impact that you're able to have with a small and mighty force.

And it's really difficult to balance sometimes the work within departments with not being in the department.

We've had a couple conversations just in my questions and answers about Seattle Public Utilities and Human Services Department.

because it's critical for you to be nimble, to be that forward-thinking thrust, while we're also making sure that every department in our city puts addressing the climate crisis in the perspective of everything that they do.

Thank you for all your work.

Council Member Wu, over to you.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you.

I had a whole list of programming I wanted to ask questions about.

I'm so glad to hear that they're all been checked off.

So I will end with this.

As Council Member Strauss said, Chair Strauss, small but mighty department that's a nationwide leader in many aspects.

You unite local, state, and federal resources and grants and help local communities.

And so...

These reductions, while they seem small, have a huge impact.

We can always do more in the Office of Sustainability because it encompasses a lot of necessity from food to how people can comfortably live their lives.

So I'm excited to work with everyone on digging in this budget to make sure that many of these essential programs are funded and your office continues to grow.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

Any final comments from the panel?

SPEAKER_13

Thank you.

We appreciate the conversation today.

SPEAKER_02

Looking forward to following up more and appreciate you coming down.

I'll now transition us into our second item on the agenda.

And if folks want to change positions while clerk, if you want to read the second title into the record.

SPEAKER_08

Agenda item two, Seattle Department of Transportation for briefing and discussion.

SPEAKER_04

Good morning, Greg.

SPEAKER_05

Good morning.

SPEAKER_02

Good morning.

One, two, three, four, five, six, we still have quorum.

If you wanna introduce yourself, Director Spatz, and everyone at your table, and then we'll take it away.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you, I'm Greg Spatz, Director of Seattle Department of Transportation.

Good morning, I'm here with Chris Godwin, our Finance Manager from SDOT, and in the audience, you'll see about a half a dozen of your favorite SDOT leaders here supporting our effort.

SPEAKER_04

Chris, would you like to introduce yourself?

Good morning.

Chris Godwin, finance manager for SDOT.

SPEAKER_02

Fantastic.

If you'd like to just take it away.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you very much.

Thank you for the opportunity to present the executive's proposed 2025-26 transportation budget.

Over the past eight months, we've worked closely with the council to lay the groundwork for future transportation investments.

First, the Council adopted the Seattle Transportation Plan, which establishes a holistic 20-year vision for the street network, centering six goals, safety, equity, sustainability, mobility and economic vitality, livability, and maintenance and modernization.

Subsequently, the council voted to place a transportation levy proposal on the ballot, which represents an eight-year investment program in alignment with the Seattle Transportation Plan, our department's asset management strategy, and other important city policy goals.

The budget proposal we are discussing today is a baseline budget which allocates the resources we know will be available to us in 2025 and 2026. Please note that although the nine-year collection period for the Levee to Move Seattle ends on December 31st, we do have projects funded by the Levee to Move Seattle that continue construction in 2025 and 2026. Therefore, the proposed budget contemplates approximately $20 million in Levee to Move Seattle spending in 2025 and another $5.5 million in 2026. This budget proposal does not include additional resources that would become available if the proposed transportation levy is passed by the voters on November 5th.

Next month, the executive plans to propose for council consideration specific additions to spending authority and staffing that would be needed to make a strong start on projects and programs funded by the new levy.

Our baseline budget for 2025 and 2026 aligns with the mayor's one Seattle priorities and values while recognizing that absent a new levy, SDOT would need to focus on maintaining and operating the existing street network.

There would be fewer opportunities to design and construct capital projects such as new sidewalks or traffic calming.

You can see in the budget proposal a sharp decline in capital project funding representing the tapering of levy to move Seattle spending and the grant funds associated with those levy projects.

Our decisions in preparing the proposed baseline budget were guided by the mayor's top priority of safety for all users of our streets.

Although there are fewer chances to modernize our streets in the baseline budget, we would continue to pursue grant opportunities to enable future capital projects.

Please note that the proposed budget includes a reduction in general fund support, which affects both the operating and capital sides of the SDOT budget.

And one point about transit to conclude my introductory comments.

The Seattle transit measure continues to fund improved transit in Seattle with a proposed policy change to enable the measure to also fund city costs related to the light rail expansion extension.

Now I'll turn things over to Chris Godwin, SDOT's finance manager, to summarize the financial changes in the proposed budget for the department.

SPEAKER_04

All right.

Thank you, council members.

The first slide here is just a quick orientation to the SDOT budget before Greg talks a little bit more about our process.

So orienting you to the table before you, the one thing I want to remind everyone of is that the SDOT budget includes the budget for the Office of the Waterfront and Civic Projects.

And so that adds, that's a scaler to our budget.

Starting in 2024 adopted, you'll see that our budget's $718 million.

That includes $63 million of general fund to support many of our essential transportation programs, $1 million of payroll expense tax revenues to support public space activation under the downtown activation plan, and then $654 million in other funds to support our work.

The 2024 figure does include over $130 million of levy to move Seattle funding that is still in our budget.

As we move to the 2025 proposed, you see that our budget is significantly smaller than the 2024 adopted.

This includes reflecting reductions to our general fund appropriation.

It also reduces the payroll expense tax fund, although it is important to note that the 2025 funding for payroll expense taxes is only for the waterfront.

SDOT isn't using anything beyond what we have in 24. And then our other funds, the decline reflects changes to the levy to move Seattle leaving our budget, and then the overall change in our funding as presented in the revenue forecast.

One note on the FTEs at the bottom, you do see that from 24 to 2025, our FTE, our position authority, grows by three positions.

That is related to the UCT.

We do not have a slide in our presentation that speaks specifically to the Unified Care Team proposal because you received a briefing on that from CBO last week.

With that, I will pass it back to Greg.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you, Chris.

Next slide, please.

Budget establishes a new baseline that prioritizes limited resources to ensure the safe operation of Seattle's existing transportation assets.

Key focus areas include routine maintenance, emergency response, regulation and permitting of the right-of-way, and compliance with the American Disabilities Act.

Next slide.

In 2025, we'll be completing significant projects, most of them funded by the levy to move Seattle.

Regarding transit corridors, the Route 40 project construction continues, and Rapid Ride J along East Lake will begin construction this fall.

Three levee-funded bike projects will be under construction in South Seattle next year, including projects connecting Georgetown with both South Park and downtown.

An additional bike project under Alaska Way will commence construction, connecting the north end of the waterfront with the Elliott Bay Trail.

We continue to complete the levee-funded bridge seismic upgrades in 2025, and thanks to a grant, we will be painting the Jose Real Bridge.

Thanks to a $25 million federal grant called Safe Streets for All, nearly 100 safety projects will be implemented with that funding during the 2025-26 biennium, many of which are in historically underserved communities.

Next slide, please.

Thanks to the levy to move Seattle from 2016 through 2024, we received about $100 million each year in funding for transportation projects and programs.

As a result of council action last July, a new eight-year $1.55 billion transportation levy will be on the ballot for voters to consider in November.

The executive will prepare a set of amendments for council consideration to enable SDOT to get a running start if the proposed levy passes.

These amendments to be submitted to council in October would include additional spending authority and new positions that would be needed to launch and manage the various new levy programs.

Next slide, please.

This slide summarizes the proposed levy investments.

And in the right-hand column, the expected amount of outside funding we hope to attract for each category.

As you all know, additional details about the levy proposal are contained in attachment A that was passed by the council in July.

And now I'll hand it back to Chris Godwin for details on changes in the budget proposal.

SPEAKER_04

Great, thank you.

Before we actually move on, we're going to be talking over the next several slides about notable changes to our budget.

I wanted to add one additional caveat to our summary slide that talked about the changes in the general fund appropriation, which is going from $63 million in 2024 to about $54 million in 2025. We will be staying above the general fund floor amount that is called for under the current levy to move Seattle in this scenario.

I just wanted to make sure that everyone is aware of that.

BEFORE WE GO ON TO THE NEXT SLIDES, WE ALSO WANTED TO ADD THE SAME CAVEAT THAT GREG HAS ALREADY INDICATED, THAT WE WILL BE DISCUSSING SOME OF OUR PROPOSED REDUCTIONS, MANY OF WHICH ARE THE RESULTS OF SDOT NOT HAVING A TRANSPORTATION LEVY.

IF THE VOTERS APPROVE A PROPOSED TRANSPORTATION LEVY, THE SCALE AND STRUCTURE OF THESE REDUCTIONS WOULD LIKELY CHANGE, AND WE WILL BE WORKING WITH THE CITY BUDGET OFFICE AND CENTRAL STAFF AND YOUR STAFF TO AMEND THE BUDGET ACCORDINGLY.

THAT BEING SAID, WITH MORE LIMITED RESOURCES, AS THE DEPARTMENT DEVELOPED THE PROPOSED BUDGET, WE CONTINUE TO PRIORITIZ that support our operating programs that maintain bridges, traffic, signals, and major streets, support maintaining our assets as much as possible, support managing the right of way on behalf of the city and the people of Seattle, and ensuring compliance with our regulatory environment on critical infrastructure like ADA upgrades.

All right, getting into it then.

On slide seven, we're going to be talking about changes to our arterial asphalt and concrete program and our arterial major maintenance program.

Without the revenues brought in by the property tax levy, SDOT will not have the budget to support large-scale transformative corridor projects that include paving but that also provide opportunities for investments in bike lanes, transit lanes, and other critical infrastructure.

In the 2025 proposed budget, however, we will maintain budget for our crew-delivered work that provides urgent repairs in the right-of-way that allow for all modes of transportation to flow safely.

Moving on to the next slide.

Without the levy to support transportation operations, we will have to scale back on the service hours at our transportation operations center that monitors the right-of-way in real time.

Under this budget, we will eliminate the late shift when there are the fewest vehicles and people on the roadway and when there are the fewest incidences.

This may increase some early morning travel times when the TOC first comes online and may slow our ability to dispatch our incident response team.

OK, ON TO THE NEXT SLIDE, IF IT GOES.

OK, THERE IT GOES.

BIKE INFRASTRUCTURE.

ESTAD'S ABILITY TO DEVELOP AND MAINTAIN BICYCLE INFRASTRUCTURE WAS SIGNIFICANTLY FUNDED BY THE CURRENT LEVY TO MOVE SEATTLE.

SINCE OUR PROPOSED BUDGET DOES NOT INCLUDE A NEW LEVY WE WORKED TO ENSURE THAT WE HAD SOME FUNDING IN 2025 THAT WOULD ALLOW US TO MAINTAIN THE INFRASTRUCTURE AND TO MAKE SOME SMALL SCALE INVESTMENTS.

Planning functions.

The proposed budget reduces the budget for planning across the department.

This will impact our ability to support the ongoing work around the Seattle Transportation Plan.

However, without a transportation levy, we will focus on smaller profile projects that may not require as much long-term planning.

Yes, all right, I'm on Sound Transit.

THE PROPOSED BUDGET WILL PLACE FUNDING INTO FINANCE GENERAL IN THE AMOUNT OF 3.8 MILLION IN 2025 AND 5.2 MILLION IN 2026. THIS FUNDING WILL SUPPORT THE CITY'S STAFFING NEEDS ACROSS MULTIPLE DEPARTMENTS TO SUPPORT THE STREAMLINED APPROACH AROUND PLAN REVIEW AND PERMITTING.

WE SEE THIS APPROACH AS PROVIDING AN EFFICIENT AND LOWER COST APPROACH TO SUPPORT THE WEST SEATTLE AND BALLARD LINK EXTENSION PROJECTS.

THIS FUNDING WILL REMAIN IN FINANCE GENERAL PENDING THE DEVELOPMENT OF A STAFFING PLAN.

RELEASING THESE FUNDS TO THE DEPARTMENTS THAT NEED IT WILL REQUIRE A FUTURE COUNCIL BUDGET And that is the extent of the notable changes that we've summarized.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you.

And that concludes our introductory presentation.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

As per protocol, I pass it over to the committee chair for first and last comment after the presentation.

I'm going to touch on process, and I communicated this with the chair, because you're the only department in this situation.

I will state for the record, I believe it is prudent that you provide us a current law budget, and I'm disappointed to not also receive a budget that would propose us hitting the ground running with the levy.

I have provided central staff and the CBO a deadline of February 22nd for a presentation, which if that means that we are going to have work done on that that we're gonna need to receive it earlier than that.

I think you mean to say October 22nd.

Yeah, I am sorry.

I don't even know what month we're in.

October 22nd, I'm just looking at the calendar with numbers on it.

because it is important for the public to have a transparent process.

It's important for the council members to be able to participate in this.

And if we are not able to meet that October, not February, October 22nd deadline, we'll be moving this to next year.

Chair Saka, over to you.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Director Spatz, SDOT, you're right.

We see the stars of SDOT in the audience here, the A team.

Thank you all for being here today and sharing your proposed budget and presenting today.

So this is a crucial budget for the city.

as we are operating today in a very limited resource environment where every single dollar counts now more than ever.

And as I've previously mentioned in committee time and time again, colleagues, transportation investments need to be thoughtful with the focus on the nuts and bolts, the nitty gritty basics of good government and making sure that we as a city are prepared to deliver those nitty gritty basics in an extraordinary way.

We also need to be mindful of how we spend resources and remain focused on the fundamentals like roads and bridges, sidewalks, the 2025-26 transportation budget, Does not incorporate the potential new levy dollars pending approval from voters in November and as the chair noted, you know, I too am disappointed that nothing was that a budget that assumes passage wasn't also proposed at the same time.

Just because, as I understand from a historical perspective, just last year, the last time the city went through this, when a nearly $1 billion housing levy was on the ballot at the time, a decision was made to propose a budget that assumed passage of that.

And I think that it's for the most part the standard practice in the city and then but but also as I understand it in the last time the transportation levy was on the ballot, I think they took a similar approach and and Proposed a an initial budget that didn't assume passage But regardless I'm glad thankful for the the chairs leadership and And the executive's alignment, we're aligned that October, by October 22nd, hopefully earlier, we have a budget that, a proposed budget that assumes passage because principles of transparency, fairness, thoughtful planning, on everyone's end, you know, require us to do this work now, and then be prepared for any number of scenarios after election day.

So, in any event, so, yeah, this council, myself as chair of this committee, and working closely with our budget chair, distinguished budget chair Strauss here, and the executive, will need to ensure, you know, access to the budget, making sure that it incorporates dollars, again, pending approval from voters, and there's a plan in place to do exactly that.

So I look forward to hearing more about SDOT's plan for addressing the transportation fundamentals and how the levy, should it be approved by voters, this one assumes not, but will be incorporated into the budget for council to consider on it going forward.

So that said, let me just say, I do want to express my deep concern about...

This budget obviously does not assume passage.

But what that portends, Director Spatz, as you noted in the beginning, that means that there is significantly less money under the proposed budget for major rehabilitation projects and road repair.

Capital project spending is significantly slashed.

Smaller scale neighborhood safety type improvements Regardless of who decides, whether it's solely SDOT, whether that's through community, Wayne, whether it's us as a council, regardless, that smaller scale neighborhood safety improvements for sidewalks or signs, stop signs, traffic calming measures, marked crosswalks, Shout out to Signs.

I went and visited the sign shop where SDOT produces the signs.

But anyways, money and investments for those kind of things, our ability as a city to deliver upon those next year is significantly limited.

And in any event, huge concern.

And I also don't like that...

I know, again, plan in place to assume to have both, but I personally wouldn't have made the choice to slash.

As I understand it, there's 4%.

It assumes a 4% overall cut in this year's budget for SDOT.

I think this is such a critically important department that I personally wouldn't have Public safety, public works, in this case, SDOT, and public parks.

I don't love how that choice that was made to slash in this amount, just because people want us to repair potholes, and people want us to add sidewalks, and people want us to continue to build access to transit and make neighborhoods safe.

That said, I have a couple questions now.

And then I suspect this is going to be a popular topic amongst my colleagues.

And so I'll carve out room.

And to the extent my other questions don't get addressed, we'll come back.

But my first question relates to cameras.

Cameras.

No surprise there.

So it's my partners at SDOT that I have a question about cameras.

Colleagues, I also want to make sure it's not lost upon us.

We are being asked to review and approve a significant policy decision with respect to cameras in this proposed budget this year.

Under the proposal, I think 16 net new school school speed enforcement cameras would be deployed as part of the proposal here.

Now, there is any number of cameras that are already existing at schools.

What we are being asked to do is sign off on a significant expansion of those cameras.

And in general, colleagues, I just want to make clear, I'm default skeptical of enforcement cameras that have the capability to just send you a ticket in the mail.

I don't support wide-scale mass deployment of those.

And 16 net new school speed enforcement cameras across our city, I think, would rise to the level of approaching mass deployment of those.

We are, well, we have a choice.

Is that proposed deployment?

Does it make sense?

Instead, is there a better allocation of those enforcement cameras that we might want to consider?

Because we know that there are school speed enforcement cameras.

We know that there is non-school speed enforcement cameras in Elk High and Harbor Avenue who are clamoring for those yesterday.

There is block-the-box cameras.

There is transit cameras for people in transit-only bus lanes.

There's red light cameras.

There's any number of automated enforcement technologies where people could potentially receive a ticket in the mail.

So I am default skeptical.

I don't say no on every case, but I'm default skeptical.

I think rather than having these cameras as a revenue-generating tool only, If that's the primary purpose, that is the wrong purpose.

I think our approach needs to be guided by data.

So there needs to be a sound data in any potential location, deployment of these cameras.

Also, there are some important equity considerations.

Where are we deploying these cameras?

Are they in neighborhoods that are already historically marginalized and underrepresented?

And I'll tell you, for example, in my district, Stemborn School, I think is a Title I school, that has speed enforcement cameras.

Where are these cameras going?

Who is likely to be impacted?

That's the second factor that I look at.

And the third factor is, it's really a bonus, because I don't know if many communities are gonna be like, give us cameras yesterday!

But if there's strong community support for these type of cameras, That raises a special case.

We need to strongly explore expansion.

So Elk Island Harbor Avenue, classic example of exactly that.

In any event, colleagues, I just want to make sure it's not lost upon us.

We are being asked to review and approve a substantial...

Decision, significant decision, policy choice regarding automated enforcement cameras in our city.

And is this the appropriate balance and deployment of these cameras relative to the other potential uses that we talked about?

I don't know.

I think we need to be very mindful of that.

So cameras.

On the 16 deployed cameras here, proposal there for net new cameras.

How has SDOT engaged with the community neighborhoods and schools and other stakeholder groups regarding the current deployment and then also the proposed upcoming deployment of school zone cameras?

SPEAKER_02

And Director Eater, if there's anything in Council Member Saka's opening that you need to respond to and then come back to the cameras, please.

SPEAKER_06

Great, thank you.

Yeah, so I wanted to talk about some of the framing that both Chair Strauss and Council Member Saka began their remarks with.

The executive hears absolutely loudly and strongly your preference to have as much information about what would change in the proposed budget available by October 22nd so that you have full and fair access to the information, the public has full and fair access to the information, and you can make your deliberative choices in time for the end of the budget cycle.

We are committed to doing that.

We will be working towards that end, have already begun working towards that end, and are confident that we'll be able to meet your deadline With respect to overall funding, I just want to point out that as a share of the overall funding that SDOT gets, the general fund is a minority portion of the overall funding.

So when you look at the decrease in general fund funding of SDOT compared to their 700 $718 million base from 2024. We're looking at more like a 1% decrease in overall funding from the changes that were made to the general fund.

It doesn't make it more palatable necessarily, but I just wanted to provide that larger perspective in terms of what we're looking at in terms of a decrease to the SDOT's budget.

And with that, unless there are further questions, I'm going to turn it over to our friends at SDOT to provide answers to the more specific questions that you had about cameras and other items.

SPEAKER_99

Thank you.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you.

So regarding enforcement cameras, our ability to utilize that technology is governed by state law, and the state law continues to evolve.

Almost as soon as we're able to bring forward local ordinance changes to align with existing state law about the cameras, the existing state law changes again.

And there's new changes that just went into effect this summer.

We've been focusing, as far as the expansion that's proposed, on...

what is generally the most popular and accepted means of automated enforcement, which is during school hours at school sites.

All of our school safety programs are some of the most popular and well supported programs that we have in Seattle.

And, you know, we When we issued our Vision Zero top to bottom review in February of 2023, one of our early action items, our early momentum items was to do an equity analysis of automated enforcement, which is becoming even more relevant because of the staffing challenges at SPD for human based enforcement.

And we did outreach in a number of different ways.

And one of the most helpful perspectives is we received a letter from our own transportation equity work group stating that in their conversations with underserved communities, the sentiment was If our neighborhood has cameras, then every neighborhood should have cameras.

Folks were supportive of slowing people down to save lives.

If everybody in Seattle was subject to similar measures, to similar enforcement technologies.

And so the proposed locations we have for expanding the school zone cameras are largely outside of underserved neighborhoods for this round that would kind of rebalance the school zone safety cameras so that they would be kind of evenly distributed across the city, and there's a map that we can provide.

So that's the thinking currently.

And we intend to bring forward an ordinance change to align with the recent changes in state law about other camera types to the Transportation Committee in the first quarter of next year, and there'll be an opportunity to really discuss in detail and receive all of your policy guidance about which of those modalities and where would be in the best interest of the city.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you.

I generally agree with the proposition in your response that speed cameras in school zones can help slow people down in a critical area.

I would just add that it's not the only way to do that.

It is one of many tools.

We know we can redesign the roads to narrow the road.

I've gotten so many briefings from you guys behind the scenes.

You all know more than me, but the wide range of options and tools at our disposal, speed enforcement cameras in schools are one of many, many options.

So colleagues, I just do want to emphasize that this is a significant policy choice that we are being confronted with here.

And last council, as I understand it, essentially approved authorized deployment of school cameras in every school effectively.

And so what we were being, I'm sure some of my colleagues might have additional context on that point, but regardless, in part what we are being asked to do is essentially rubber stamp a policy that was championed by a prior council.

And with the two-thirds new composition of this council, I don't know if, That makes a lot of sense.

I would have liked to devote more committee time to this personally this year, but I had not one but two substantive, significant, executive-generated pieces of legislation in the Seattle Transportation Plan and the proposed levy that came through my committee.

And between that and all the other sort of Nitty-gritty street use, alley vacation permits, and all the like, time was limited.

So we'll pick that up in earnest in partnership with the executive next year and figure out the appropriate balance.

But it is a significant...

Expanding the 16 net new schools is a significant policy decision The second question I have and then I'll table my others and allow my colleagues to talk so as I understand it the The urban forestry spending in this year's proposed budget represents a 62 percent INCREASE OVER LAST YEAR'S SPENDING FOR THE SAME PROGRAM.

I WOULD JUST BE CURIOUS TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE RATIONALE FOR THAT.

WHAT DOES THE EXECUTIVE'S PLANS FOR THAT MONEY AND THE RATIONALE?

WHY THE BIG INCREASE IN THAT LINE ITEM?

THANK YOU.

SPEAKER_04

Council Member, I'd have to double check those numbers and get back to you on what the actual increase is.

My suspicion is that a good chunk of that is in the capital establishment program, which is where we move budget from other capital projects as they close out so that we can continue the tree planting and establishment responsibilities that we have.

But I'll have to double check across the whole portfolio about what might be driving the increase.

From our standpoint, for the urban forestry operating side, the budget was largely holding Pat for the 25 proposed.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, thank you in advance for looking into that.

Yeah, 62% increase by my calculations.

And so just curious to understand the rationale for that and what do you plan to specifically do with that and with that increased spending?

So thank you.

No further questions at this time, Mr. Chair.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you, Council Member Saka.

Council President Nelson.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

I want to address the camera issue because I signed on to the council budget action that increased the number of cameras around town.

First, a clarifying question, if you would allow me.

Are these 16 cameras what we voted on last year that, because we didn't have the authority to civilianize that function of monitoring the camera and SPD, are now happening?

SPEAKER_05

Yes, correct.

SPEAKER_09

Okay, so this was a decision made by the prior council, and I'll explain why I liked it.

Because it is an efficient way to keep children safe, and it's one tool to meet our Vision Zero goals.

And SDOT has made clear that they prefer changing the engineering of a street than to enforcement when it comes to meeting Vision Zero.

This is one case where It's just too important to make sure that cars aren't speeding through school zones, that a camera is a good intervention.

And so we didn't pay dearly, but this was being able to—the problem was before that installing cameras but not having anybody in SPD watch the video and then issue citations didn't the thing fell apart and so that was a key part of the civilianizing SPD effort in this contract that we did pay for and so I do support these new cameras mostly because I was invested in them before and it's really difficult.

I think that the crossing guard program, when did the crossing guard program end?

Well, I'll just fill in.

Schools used to have more crossing guards, and that program has gone to the wayside.

So in any case, I can try to convince you offline why it's so important.

But I had a question about the overall budget.

What is the percentage of SDOT's operating budget that is paid for by the levy versus general fund right now?

And then were the levy to pass, what would it be in the future?

And I ask because I'm...

about offloading basic services onto renters and homeowners.

SPEAKER_04

Those are percentages that I wish I had off the top of my head, Councilmember, but I don't.

I'll have to get back to you.

I can say, as a broad statement, most of the levy funding is on the capital side.

Right.

The predominant majority are.

SPEAKER_09

So it'll probably be the same.

SPEAKER_04

As for the future levy, that's, I think, those are conversations that we will be presenting to you We have been when the levy passes.

SPEAKER_09

Okay.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

Council president colleagues, council member kettle.

SPEAKER_15

Thank you.

Uh, chair Strauss.

I was, I thought there was a few more hands up there, so I appreciate the, uh, the call out.

Um, director spots.

Thank you very much.

Uh, you've probably heard I've been using the Seattle transportation plan a lot lately as a, as a model.

I won't go into that, particularly since my colleague's not here, who has that oversight.

But I do appreciate the work that went into the Seattle Transportation Plan, both with SDOT and, of course, the review that we did and the levy itself.

And I do think it's a good model for other areas of government.

Regarding the briefing, and I know that we've had this discussion about the levy and so forth, but one of the things is I don't think that people truly appreciate you know the level of efforts to improve our roads and I think somewhat this is because buckets of money go to different pieces like bridges you know with a complete street plan bridge roads are also improved the freight program can you speak uh in transit quarters and so forth can you speak to how the overall road network would be improved not just with the thing that says arterials or roads, but also the other elements of the plan that SDOT has moving forward?

SPEAKER_05

Sure.

Our approach, if we have enough funding, is to maintain and modernize at the same time, where it's the best time to make our roads safer and more multimodal is when we're fixing the bridge or repaving the road.

And we've had great success with projects like Rapid Ride G on Madison, where you replace the water main under the street, you put in a brand new concrete street that's capable of withstanding the loads from the buses, speed up the bus at the same time, straighten out a bunch of complex five-way intersections so the crossings are more are shorter and better organized for visibility of pedestrians.

So that's our holistic approach.

But in a no levy scenario, we will have to focus primarily on sort of smaller maintenance, routine maintenance, and we'd have far fewer opportunities to do major rehabilitation projects and attach modernization to those projects.

There was some presentations that we made when we were talking about asset management to the Transportation Committee earlier this year.

And the overall infrastructure challenge facing Seattle is significant, even with levy-sized amounts of funding.

There's real challenges in creating an upward trajectory on the net asset condition.

across our major assets.

And this is in parallel with trends statewide and nationally as well.

SPEAKER_15

Thank you.

And I do support the bike lanes that support infrastructure for bikes.

And we have our colleague in the back.

And it gets a lot of attention.

And I worry a bit that other folks are not understanding the my question and how you answered, so thank you, because the level of effort for roads is great, particularly when you bring in these different pieces.

And I don't think a lot of people appreciate that point, and I just want to highlight it for those that may be reflecting on transportation in our city between now and a little more than a month from now.

The next question I had is, We definitely, in terms of cameras, cameras are going to come up tomorrow.

We have traffic vision safety.

We have school safety.

And then we have our general public safety.

We have these big buckets.

And so I think this is something that as we move forward through the budget and as we move forward through this term, on the public safety side, we have our accountability partners, the OIG and so forth.

And then working with the school district, we have that piece, which will have overlap with the public safety side, but then there's the traffic.

We just need to ensure that these three areas are meshed and there's good oversight from an accountability perspective that really achieves its aims, whether it's transportation safety, pedestrian safety, traffic safety, or school safety, and then all the things you've been reading about in the paper related to general public safety.

And colleagues will definitely be getting a slide or two on that tomorrow.

And lastly, I do appreciate the efforts piggybacking on the briefing that we just had from OSCE on the urban forestry pieces.

You have a heavy lift in this if we're going to achieve our canopy goals.

So it's really important what you do, how you do it in terms of really increasing across the city, not just to our south, but you impact across the city on this.

So look forward to doing that and And I will throw out there, too, that I thank you and anticipated future support, near future maybe, related to creating, on this front, Portal Park in Belltown.

Belltown does not have a park.

I recognize where the old viaduct went into the Batter Street Tunnel.

It's a brown site in a lot of ways.

It's transportation.

but this is something that we need to move forward on.

And I really appreciate across the board from the executive on this, but there's definitely pieces with SDOT and City Light, property swaps, working with parks, and there's the Brown from being a former transportation piece of property in terms of function.

So support is definitely needed.

So thank you in advance, because I think that's going to be a great way to bring something to the Belltown community.

but also help achieve our canopy goals across the board.

So thank you.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you.

And I've walked that area with Belltown constituents, and I think their vision for it is very exciting.

SPEAKER_02

Anything further, Council Member Kittle?

Thank you.

Vice Chair Rivera and then Council Member Morales.

SPEAKER_11

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for being here to answer our questions.

I have concerns about the school cameras.

We need to make safe routes to schools more robust, and we need to do everything that we can to make sure that our kids are getting to school safely around the schools and then on the way to schools.

And we know that there are many ways that you can go about that, including we need sidewalks so that kids can get from home to school on sidewalks and not on the middle of the street, which also goes toward kids getting hit, et cetera.

So I support the cameras.

And I also want to hear what else are you doing to reduce speed around the schools?

Because we know the cameras alone are not gonna do it.

I would love to see data that supports that the cameras actually are effective in reducing speeds around the schools.

I'm wondering about speed bumps and things of that nature that I think would really be helpful, but I am not an engineer and I would love to see some data that supports what are the things that we should be doing in this space in addition to the speed, the cameras.

I don't know if you have information now or you can get me information later, but wondering what you're doing in that space so that we're not just relying on cameras, but we're doing some of these other, it's a more robust plan for safety around the schools, like I said, and safe routes to schools.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm pleased to say that the current budget proposal does a very good job of preserving our investments in Safe Routes to School and Vision Zero.

And, you know, SDOT's Safe Routes to School program has won awards.

It's longstanding and effective.

It is the primary way that we address these issues is through changes to the streetscape.

Additionally, though, the federal safe systems approach is something that we've embraced, and that involves both the design of the roads and driver behavior and enforcement and all these other factors.

And we do have data that supports the idea that in the right places, cameras affect driving behavior and reduce speeds and the city has used revenue from those cameras to pay for pedestrian based improvements around the schools and there was a time where that revenue couldn't be realized because SPD didn't have the the capacity for officers to timely review those tickets and it was really a very positive development for the city when the state legislature made a change recently that allowed civilians to issue those citations, those camera-based citations.

And it was only after that legislative change, which was part of the city's legislative agenda with the state, that we could then propose creating positions in SPD who are non-sworn officers to review those tickets.

These aren't exactly an either-or, right?

We're not deploying cameras as a revenue generator.

We're deploying them in places where we believe they can slow speeds, but they are a net revenue generator, and state law and city policy causes that revenue to go right back into safety improvements for kids.

SPEAKER_11

Thank you, and I'd love to see the list of schools as well.

I think it's already been requested, so looking forward to seeing that.

And then I have some other questions, Chair, but I think I'll just put them as part of the question and answer pieces to the thing.

So thank you.

SPEAKER_02

Easy.

And also, colleagues, just as for your awareness, if you have a list of questions that you want CBO and central staff to be aware of, you can just read them out on the record should you desire to.

Not required, but...

Council Member Morales.

SPEAKER_14

Thank you.

Well, many of my questions have already been asked, so that will make this short.

I do wanna start by saying that I share the chair's frustration that the provide information about how levy dollars would be spent I think that is a little bit of a punt, and I would really like to understand, assuming it passes, how we would be able to deploy those dollars to make sure that our neighbors are safe and that our roads and bridges are getting the investment that they need.

I do want to clarify, I think what I heard you say is that the mayor would be sending amendments in October?

SPEAKER_05

Yes.

SPEAKER_14

Okay, so assuming it passes and that we have to get that work going, we will be seeing amendments then.

Thank you.

Okay, a couple of questions.

Can you talk about, it looks like about a 21% reduction to the Transportation Operations Center.

What is the impact of eliminating that late night shift?

SPEAKER_05

Sure.

You know, not every city staffs itself 24 hours a day in this way.

But the center that we have has sensors and camera information coming in from all over the city.

And we do benefit from being able to coordinate with a variety of partners, whether it's WSDOT or our public safety responders, when that center becomes aware of an incident.

So it's definitely our current practice and preferable to have that staffed around the clock.

it wouldn't be at all unusual for a city not to have that overnight shift.

We definitely prefer it, but with all of the various trade-offs that we faced in the base budget, we decided that we felt we could mitigate, largely mitigate those effects as soon as the morning shift came in, when the morning commute was beginning.

SPEAKER_14

Well, I'll say maybe this is a different issue, but as somebody who represents MLK and Rainier, I will say that late night is precisely when people are speeding and crashing into buildings and other things.

So it's a concern.

Yeah.

If we do not have the levy pass, can you talk about how we would achieve the 2020 sidewalk policy recommendations or any of the sidewalk policy recommendations?

SPEAKER_05

So we were really thinking carefully about how to apply limited resources to our sidewalk challenges if there's no levy.

And we decided that it was better to focus on repairing our existing sidewalks, to focus those limited resources on repairing our existing sidewalks so that we were aligned with the audit recommendations.

And if we have an existing sidewalk that's broken and there's a service request about it, we've been put on notice.

And so it is a way to manage our liability risk.

Sure.

So one of the things that is sobering about the baseline budget is there really isn't an opportunity to build many new sidewalks with the resources that are available.

SPEAKER_14

That's not the answer I was hoping for, but I understand.

So staying in that vein then, if the levy doesn't pass, will there be any funding allocated for the Transportation Funding Task Force?

SPEAKER_05

I think that would be, there isn't currently any plans for that, no.

SPEAKER_14

Okay.

We already talked about safe routes to schools.

I'll probably have a few more questions about that.

I do want to say, sort of in response to Council Member Saka's question about trees, one of the things that we had hoped to do, that I had hoped to do in the transportation levy was to include, I think it was $15 million for tree maintenance.

because we know that we are planting trees in the city, but we don't necessarily have the funds for maintaining them.

And so a lot of them are dying off.

So given that that was not included in the final transportation levy package, I do think that if that is, if I'm understanding right, I think what I hear you saying is that as resources are available, you're sort of moving pots for tree maintenance and the tree related work that you're doing.

Am I understanding that right?

SPEAKER_05

Well, certainly, I'm very passionate about building our ability to maintain the tree canopy.

I was overseeing that function in Los Angeles, and when I moved here, I was actually quite surprised at how small our urban forestry staff was compared to other cities of this size.

I think what Chris was saying earlier is that when capital projects are finishing, that's when the trees go in, so the increase you're seeing is...

We'll verify this in writing, but the increase you're seeing is largely when projects hit a phase where we're now expending money to plant the new trees, when capital projects finally reach that point where the trees go in.

But there is an ongoing challenge to fully staff both our tree maintenance and the maintenance of our landscaping as well in the public right-of-way.

Right.

SPEAKER_14

Okay, and then my last question.

Well, yeah, I think I'll wait on that issue.

I do wanna just talk about the Unified Care Team for a moment.

Is there any payroll expense tax money going into that?

No, okay.

Okay, I'll probably have a few other questions about that, but I'll add them to the SharePoint.

Thank you, Chair.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Council Member Moore or Council Member Wu?

Who was first?

Council Member Wu, you had your hand up, you put it down, now it's back up.

Is that right?

SPEAKER_10

I think my question might get answered by Council Member Moore.

I think we might have a similar question.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you, Chair.

Absolutely.

I don't actually have a question.

I have a statement, which is I know how we can pay for sidewalks if the levy doesn't pass.

Impact fees.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_10

I wanted to ask questions regarding ST3.

Specifically, the budget amount from 2024 to 2025, is there a difference?

And with this project going long, a little behind schedule, do we see any impacts regarding the proposed budget going forward past 2025, 2026?

SPEAKER_05

Sure, so there's been a lot of developments regarding the light rail expansion during my two years here.

And we used to talk about the West Seattle to Ballard light rail extension, but it's now been separated into two projects.

And the West Seattle one is moving forward more quickly than the Ballard one because Some transit has been making decisions about the routing of the Ballard one.

We just received a schedule of what plans are going to be incoming for us to review for city departments to review on the West Seattle project.

And it's extensive and it's coming soon.

And so the policy change that's proposed allows us to use Seattle Transportation Measure funding to fund dedicated city staff positions in both SDOT and other departments that review these plans so that we can be an excellent partner to Sound Transit and give them timely responses on their plan submissions.

Previously, the Seattle Transit Measure was focused on expanding bus service and expanding opportunities for people to get free or discounted Orca cards.

All of those programs will continue at the current levels, but this policy change allows us to staff up to handle the increased city costs in being timely and responsive to a large number of engineering plans that are imminently coming in to us.

SPEAKER_10

So are these positions, which currently are not in place now, or are they in place?

Would they be go towards our relationship partnership with the county?

Would any of these positions be community facing?

SPEAKER_05

The community, so Sound Transit is responsible for the community relations for the train itself.

but there are SDOT projects to improve connectivity at proposed light rail stations, and we do have SDOT folks who do community relations around those projects.

A lot of those projects are contemplated to be funded by the new levy, and some of those positions would be included in the new levy, but these positions are engineering, the positions that would be funded by this policy change are largely engineering positions to review plans.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you.

My second question involves Orr Avenue North.

Working with the state funding that's currently in place, is that part of the transportation levy or part of the current plans with SDOT to incorporate that funding going forward?

Or what's going on with that funding and how are we planning to carry out those plans with state partners?

SPEAKER_05

Oh, Aurora, you're talking about?

So there is a significant amount of money in the state budget for a project to re-envision part of Aurora, but the construction funding is far out.

They've programmed it for, I think, 2027 to 2029. So we're in the process of...

sort of initial concepts and getting public review and then entering design of that project.

And there's a lot of detail about that that we can brief people on.

And there's also a lot of information online about our progress in developing a concept and then coming up with detailed design for that.

SPEAKER_10

and that funding is not being impacted, or the city's portion of that funding?

SPEAKER_05

I think the current proposed budget incorporates money for us to keep advancing the concept and design of that project.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

Anything else, Council Member Wu?

No, thank you.

I'm going to tick through some of my comments here, and then I'll pass it over to Council Member Sacco to round us out.

Council Member Morales, just responding about the amendment process.

This is SDOT and Calvin Chow on day one of the budget has been brought into the fold, so I appreciate Calvin being in there, but it is SDOT and the CBO creating, as well as central staff, creating this package of amendments.

Again, the presentation deadline is the 22nd, which means that we should probably work a internal deadline out from there.

Can you just briefly discuss the contingency fund within this last levy?

Should the next levy not pass?

What's our situation with closing out lines of business?

SPEAKER_05

Do you want to respond to that?

SPEAKER_04

So the, as Greg mentioned at the beginning, our 25 and 26 budgets do still include a portion of levy funding for projects that are in flight and where that's continuing.

So like Rapid Ride J has its portion contributed.

We will expect there to be some carryover from 24 into 25 from a delivery standpoint.

And so from what will happen on January 1, if there's not a new levy, we will still continue to be pushing out or closing out some of the projects that are still part of the levy now.

But at this point, there's not another source of revenue to replace that funding once it goes.

So once we close out projects, they're closed out, and we are living in a world without a levy.

SPEAKER_02

Correct.

How much is in the contingency fund?

SPEAKER_04

There is no contingency on the levy as it stands.

The intent of the levy was to be spent and programmed for the investments that the voters approved, and that is what we as a department have been working toward.

SPEAKER_02

How much do you have bookmarked for it?

SPEAKER_04

We have cash on hand at the moment.

We'd have to take a look.

I think we'll be sitting on less than $100 million, but we'll be sitting on some cash on hand at the end of the year in the current levy.

SPEAKER_05

Okay.

Let me add, there's two efforts that we've had underway regarding this.

One is we've been working on what I've been calling tapering the levy because we have large projects underway that sometimes have overages.

So trying to keep managing what's remaining so that we can finish what we start and being very cautious to start anything that we might not be able to finish.

So we're continuously and carefully managing that.

I also wanted to mention that we're maintaining a very high vacancy rate at the department so that we're prepared in the event that the levy didn't pass.

We have 144 vacancies out of our 1,100 staff positions right now.

That's a 12% vacancy rate, and we're doing that on purpose so that we have some financial flexibility.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

I mean, that brings up the point that I was making earlier, which is that if the next levy passes, we can't wait to hit the ground running.

We need to be ready to go.

Coming back to my comments here, talking about some of those projects that were started, not yet finished.

It's interesting that you raised Route 40. I believe the department understands my current frustration with the construction work that's occurring in Ballard.

Just on the record, if we're gonna go in and tear up sidewalks that will later be replaced, in this case by the Berkman Trail extension, I don't think it's good governance for us to rip up concrete only to re-pour it.

I don't need a response.

Looking at the conversation in your budget book about the waterfront opening, what is the duration of this waterfront grand opening?

How long, how many days?

SPEAKER_05

I think we probably need the Office of the Waterfront to respond to that question.

It's in your budget?

SPEAKER_04

It is, and we are happy to find the answer and get back to you.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

Streetcar operations.

I'm going to go back to our five-year look back on your department, and I appreciate the work done here.

I'll just quote from it.

For 2024, the required operating subsidy is about $10 million, which we see later in your budget.

Much of the budgeted variation between the First Hill and South Lake Union, First Hill operations at 19% decrease with the Lake Union, South Lake Union with the 66 is related to accounting practices and operational agreements with King County Metro.

Taken together, the budget for the two streetcar lines has decreased by about $500,000 from 2019. to 2024. This reflects a slight reduction in streetcar operations, both in frequency and span of service that went into effect during the pandemic.

That understanding, I see a couple different items within your budget regarding the streetcar, both changes to first hill and to South Lake Union can you just now touch on that's the preface the question is we've recently seen some issues with the South Lake Union streetcar where it's been pulled out of service can you help me understand this background information and how it applies today with this current situation sure so

SPEAKER_05

There's a number of complex cross currents that have been taking place regarding both of the streetcars since before the pandemic.

There were various funding arrangements to get funding from other folks for each of the streetcars that have phased out and the cities had to take on a larger portion of those costs.

Also, as you know, transit ridership is still recovering from the pandemic, and I think the overall transit system in Seattle is about 60 to 65% ridership of what it was.

For our streetcars, the First Hill line has bounced back much stronger than the South Lake Union line, and some reasons for that were presented at the by central staff.

Recently, the outage that we had in South Lake Union was the result of some electrical parts that had to be sourced from Europe, but we were able to get replacement parts and get them put in.

All of that maintenance is actually performed for us by King County Metro, by contract, and they actually did a very good job of...

handling that when we had the same part failed in multiple power substations at the same time, but that seems to be resolved.

SPEAKER_02

So it has no change on your budget?

SPEAKER_05

Regarding that outage?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, well, regarding that outage, and I'm also seeing the first Hill Street car operations technical adjustment and the operation South Lake Union technical adjustment, page 442 of the budget.

Can you help me understand what both, the question was both about this outage, but then what are these two adjustments?

SPEAKER_05

I think we should maybe get back to you about those adjustments in detail, but we haven't proposed any budget changes pertaining to the August outage.

Okay, thank you.

SPEAKER_02

I'm going to...

take your presentation regarding the Operations Center a little bit further.

I know that Council Member Saka has visited your Transportation Operations Center.

It is one of my favorite places in the city.

And that is because it is more than just CCTV cameras, it's more than just sensors throughout.

You are operating, you glossed over this, so I'm just gonna slow down and pull it out.

which in reading off of your website right now, you have 39 dynamic messages citywide.

You've got 12 corridors with these travel time messages.

And then you have congestion monitoring on 10 corridors.

You have...

1100 traffic signals, granted some of them you have to change by going out in person to change, which needs to be updated.

You don't need me telling you that.

But you also have six corridors where the traffic signals are responding to traffic volumes and can be adjusted from your transportation operations center.

It's a pretty important place.

And so can you just, with that additional preface and giving you the opportunity to expand on what is the Trade and Exportation Operations Center, can you help us understand what you're doing there in that room?

SPEAKER_05

Sure.

I also worked on helping establish that type of center in Los Angeles in my previous job.

It's highly beneficial for a city to be able to monitor and potentially adjust signal timing across the city from a central location.

And it's also helpful to have live human beings who can interact with people who actually would be making responses, whether they are SDOT folks, other city departments, or even folks who are deployed on the freeways by WSDOT, for example.

So there's a lot of benefits to having such a center and having it staffed, and I would say we have You know, in this current era of the levy to move Seattle, we have very well-resourced staffing that center, 24 hours a day, often with multiple people in it.

And it is a very difficult policy choice to decide not to staff it on overnights.

It's one of many difficult choices in a budget that's been reduced by $200 million, the base budget.

But we're very open to your input about whether that was the right policy choice to propose.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

Within this budget, I see that you have a line item for bridge seismic retrofits of $4 million.

How many bridges would that provide seismic retrofits for?

SPEAKER_05

So most of the bridge seismic is in the levy, and we're doing 16 projects, which is what was specified.

SPEAKER_02

Director, all due respect, we're here speaking about the current law proposal.

We'll come back to the set of amendments next month.

SPEAKER_05

No, I meant the existing levy.

Most of what we're doing with bridge seismic is existing levy funding, and we'll have to look up what particular element of that the $4 million is supporting.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

I've got no further questions.

I look forward to the continued conversations and the presentation again next month, Council Member Saka.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I do have a few more questions.

Actually, one that I'll ask now, then I'll table the others and ask them via our SharePoint centralized thing in the interest of time.

But a couple other comments before I get to my closing remarks.

And one more question, Mr. Chair, if I may.

I guess, first off, As I stated before, I kind of put public safety-related investments, SDOT, I would say public works, but we know that the utilities are ratepayer-funded, and so leaving SDOT.

So I put public safety, public works, or SDOT, and public parks in a category of things we need to protect at all costs.

And I don't like the parks, as I understand it.

And we'll get our presentation later.

I think that total budget increased by 6%.

And although under the proposed budget, although there is a notable decrease in capital support, but net increase in about 6% budget.

Meanwhile, SDOT, assuming no levy passage, 30% decrease or 1% or whatever.

We're going to get those numbers offline.

I'm concerned with that.

But I also want to...

And I'm glad I intentionally didn't ask some of these questions because I think we got to the heart of them with some of the prior discussion with some of my colleagues as well.

I'll just put a note on one thing I learned.

Well, I guess what's confirmed here, Director Spatz, I learned this a couple nights ago when I was doing some really enthralling reading, poring over the budget binders and SDOT's proposed budget, like in the breakout for each thing.

you confirm today i noticed at the time that there didn't seem to be a ton of money if any for new sidewalk building and you confirm that today there's the levy doesn't pass there's not a lot of money if any for that which is to be honest disappointing because as one of the co-architects in the proposed levy of the significant, the city is, if that levy passes, voters are going to decide, but if that levy passes, the city will be doing more as a city, like new sidewalks.

And there's some money in there, of course, for sidewalk repair as well, but we'll be doing more for new sidewalks than we have in city history.

And As one of the co-architects of that, what I envisioned is that money would be, for new sidewalks, would be supplemental to our existing investments and not at all a replacement for, and not at all as a means to let us off the hook for continuing to invest year over year in building, because that's the only way we're going to build new sidewalks and close our 26%, 27% missing sidewalk gap as if we have continued to sustain substantial efforts over time and we can't just do that solely via levy funding.

And so, a little disappointed to learn that, but I sense I'm not the only one.

Also, because new sidewalk, New sidewalks investments is very, very important policy priority of this council, and I think this mayor as well.

I think going forward, I would like to see sidewalk spending, ideally new sidewalk, but sidewalk spending, whether it's, if you lumped it all in one, sidewalk repair and new sidewalks and maybe 88, however you want to do it, I do think it's important to up-level that As a standalone category and item similar to the reasons I think it also makes sense in the near term at least to up level the World Cup investments so that they're not buried and and and and you don't have to like pour over and analyze and then confirm and summon up the Expertise of a department director to confirm.

Oh, well, you know, what is a new sidewalk spending?

We need to understand that clearly So we can hold ourselves accountable on a going forward basis.

So I would like to see that going forward, us to be intentional and up-level that spending for sidewalks.

My final question here, before I close this out, just relates to...

World Cup spending, and that was a pending ask that I had, but SDOT is one of the many departments, one of the few departments that is really like the tip of the spear for planning and spending for World Cup investments, World Cup related investments.

So I guess what type of estimated spending under the proposed budget is geared towards World Cup?

SPEAKER_05

Thank you for asking that.

So there's two different aspects to preparing for the World Cup.

some kind of physical changes we might make to our streets, and the other is more sort of how we operate the transportation system to get most people to and from the matches in a zero carbon way, using transit, walking, biking.

Regarding the operations, we have a regular series of meetings with the local organizing committee, and they're just about to submit to us a draft traffic operations plan for our review and comments.

So we are working very closely with them on making plans to be able to get people around when there's going to be lots of visitors here.

Regarding capital, we have three projects that are already either under construction or in bid and award that are supportive of the World Cup, and these projects are kind of in the area.

We're redoing the 3rd and Yesler intersection, and that's in construction currently.

We have a project to redo 3rd and Main, which is a very important bus terminus where a lot of buses that take you close to the stadiums terminate, and that project's in bid and award right now.

And then we have a wayfinding project across the greater downtown area that's also in Bidden Ward, and I'm very excited about the idea that there'll be better signage for people to get around and understand where just different destinations are.

Within the current levy proposal, there are some additional substantial investments contemplated, including investments on Occidental and also on Third Avenue.

And that would enable additional substantial street improvements in time for the World Cup.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you, Director Spatz.

And on that, I actually have an excerpt of the roadmap, Attachment A, to the proposed levy in front of me.

And I was going to note the same thing.

But those are contingent investments, contingent upon approval by voters.

And voters are going to ultimately decide.

Should that pass, so there's a category investment for People Street capital projects to design, implement, and co-create People Street projects to activate business districts and community spaces with the focus on high equity priority areas.

Improvements could include, excuse me, redesign streets, seating, wayfinding, lighting, and activation, and it calls out an anticipated list of projects, including the Occidental Promenade project, And so I guess and then I think the third Avenue project you mentioned is under a separate one of the 11 proposed spending categories in the levy, but so just to plug My senses were probably aligned anyway on this but I think should that pass We should prioritize So the oxonot Occidental promenade project would connect people from the stadiums to through Pioneer Square and it's primarily a pedestrian improvement feature and So I think we should be ready to implement that ASAP quickly quickly quickly quickly So that it's ready in two years and then the third Avenue stuff as well but Anyways, so thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have no other color commentary.

If I may, go ahead and close us out.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

Well, I know that we'll have the department back next month for another bite at this apple.

And so I'll give us a little bit of time back for lunch right now.

Colleagues, I also want to identify a change in our department briefing schedule.

because we are taking a deeper look at the internal services through our ongoing third party consultant and additional, we're gonna be looking at that pretty deeply.

And with the importance of public safety on our streets, we will be switching the internal services for the Seattle Fire Department this coming Wednesday morning.

With that, if there are no other questions or items to come before the committee before our recess, We will.

SPEAKER_03

Mr. Chair?

Yes, sir.

Yeah, I just want to officially close us out as chair of this committee that oversees this department.

And I just want to express my appreciation and gratitude toward you all, folks at the table, and then sort of...

in the audience here that me and my office have worked with, and especially, especially the people at SDOT that do the work every day of, the hard work every day of repairing potholes and staffing the operations center and maintaining our bridges and then, you know, like, for our draw bridges, actually, like, pulling, like, Making sure we enable that.

I don't know if they do cool stuff.

And make the signs and deploy the signs.

I've had a chance to personally visit all these stops, and we'll do more next year, Bill.

I want to see a list of stuff that I can do and visit and tours with the nest dock because it's so complex, but it's so remarkably important and strategically important to the city.

And this is how we demonstrate value to the taxpayers, and we do that in a number of ways.

including by making sure we safely help connect people to places and experiences safely and reliably throughout the city.

So thank you all for the great work you all do.

Learned a lot today and looking forward to continuing to support your work and helping partnering with my colleagues and the executive to make sure our outputs and our outcomes and our results are even better.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

No further questions.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you, Council Member Safa, Chair of the Transportation Committee.

With that, it is 12-12.

This afternoon, we will have the Parks Department, now that I'm on the correct script for September 30th, 2024. We've got the Parks Department with Council Member Hollingsworth as the Chair, and then the Department of Education and Early Learning with Vice Chair Rivera as the Chair of that committee.

So with that, we are on recess until 2 p.m.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_99

Thank you.