Economic Development, Technology & City Light Committee 3/8/23

We are recording.

Well, hello, everybody.

Good morning.

The March 8th, 2023 Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee will now come to order.

It is 9.30 on International Women's Day, and I am Sarah Nelson.

Thank you very much.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Oh, excuse me.

Council Member Sawant has asked to be excused.

Council President Juarez?

Here.

Council Member Strauss.

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

Chair Nelson.

Present.

There are three present, one absent.

Thank you very much.

So there are three items on today's agenda.

A briefing discussion and possible vote on Council Bill 120518, which is an updated surveillance impact report for forward-looking infrared real-time video, or FLIR, a briefing by Seattle IT on its work in 2022 and 2023, and a briefing by Seattle City Light on Seattle's Transportation Electrification Strategic Investment Plan, or TESIP.

Are there any objections to the agenda?

Seeing none, the agenda is now approved.

Let's move on to public comment.

would you please play the video?

We're going to be entertaining comments on items on the agenda.

Seattle City Council welcomes remote public comment and is eager to hear from residents of our city.

If you would like to be a speaker and provide a verbal public comment, you may register two hours prior to the meeting via the Seattle City Council website.

Here's some information about the public comment proceedings.

Speakers are called upon in the order in which they registered on the Council's website.

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A reminder, The speaker meeting ID is different from the general listen line meeting ID provided on the agenda.

Once a speaker's name is called, the speaker's microphone will be unmuted and an automatic prompt will say, the host would like you to unmute your microphone.

That is your cue that it's your turn to speak.

At that time, you must press star six.

You will then hear a prompt of, you are unmuted.

Be sure your phone is unmuted on your end so that you will be heard.

As a speaker, you should begin by stating your name and the item that you are addressing.

A chime will sound when 10 seconds are left in your allotted time as a gentle reminder to wrap up your public comments.

At the end of the allotted time, your microphone will be muted.

and the next speaker registered will be called.

Once speakers have completed providing public comment, please disconnect from the public comment line and join us by following the meeting via Seattle Channel Broadcast or through the listening line option listed on the agenda.

The council reserves the right to eliminate public comment if the system is being abused or if the process impedes the council's ability to conduct its business on behalf of residents of the city.

Any offensive language that is disruptive to these proceedings or that is not focused on an appropriate topic as specified in council rules may lead to the speaker being muted by the presiding officer.

Our hope is to provide an opportunity for productive discussions that will assist our orderly consideration of issues before the council.

The public comment period is now open.

and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six after you hear the prompt of, you have been unmuted.

Thank you, Seattle.

And Chair Nelson, my apologies.

I was having trouble getting off mute.

I've been present.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Dan Strauss is with us.

Okay, so we have got four people signed up in person and let's see, four people are present for the remote public comments.

So we will start with in-person and everyone will have two minutes.

So the first two speakers are Jose Chi and Miranda Perez.

Please come up and pick a mic.

Yes, right in the center.

I'm sorry.

I wrote what I was going to say.

Hello, good morning.

My name is Jose Chi, and I'm part of a small environmental nonprofit, ECOS, and I'm here to provide public comment and support to the transportation, electrification, and strategic investment plan with Seattle City Light.

ECOS was founded in 1994 to address the imbalance of environmental resources and services available to the Southport neighborhood and lower Duwamish River.

To address these disparities, ECOS bridges differences in languages and culture to ensure that immigrant and refugee communities can participate in and directly benefit from the development of environmental solutions.

We speak 10 languages in-house through relationship-based community engagement.

We focus on four impact areas, clean water, waste reduction, clean energy, and environmental stewardship.

A growing area for work is transportation electrification in partnership with community and Seattle City Light.

Our goal in this work is to promote the health and financial well-being of low-income immigrant, refugee, and communities of color by reducing transportation pollution in their neighborhoods and increasing access to equitable mobility options.

Some of the work we've been doing in the community in partnership with Seattle City Light is education, outreach, and engagement to EJ communities on the topics of electricity, electrification, and decarbonization goals.

We have also provided insight on where EJ communities prioritize investment and ways to bring inclusion and unheard voices into Seattle City Light planning.

We plan to continue our partnership with Seattle City Light and our work by centering EJ communities' priorities in order to influence strategic investments.

The long-term success of the City of Seattle's emission goals is dependent on our communities getting autonomy over how and where this initiative is implemented.

by prioritizing equity in this transition, we can create a future that is not only more sustainable, but also more just and equitable.

We have the opportunity to create good jobs, support local economy, and improve public health.

I urge us all to prioritize an equitable transition from fossil fuel dependency to electrification, and the support Seattle City Light on these investments is crucial.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Miranda, were you just standing there?

Okay, not going to speak.

Okay, next on our list is Yasmin Abraham.

Morning.

Morning.

Go ahead.

And before you start, just in case you aren't familiar, you will hear a chime, but you have 10 seconds after that.

Go ahead.

Hi, everybody.

My name is Yasmin Abraham.

I am the co-founder of the Cambo Energy Group.

I'm here to talk about our role with the transportation electrification project to prioritize underserved communities in that.

For over 15 years, Cambo has worked with utilities like Seattle City Light to ensure programs and services are accessed by groups that have traditionally been underprioritized.

In that time, we've worked with over 70,000 immigrant households, worked with over 60 tribal nations, and upgraded over 7,000 lower-income households.

Our work exclusively seeks to build equity within the energy sector.

We hire from the communities we serve to build bridges between City Light and communities.

These trusted spaces create many places and opportunities for an equitable partnership and are designed so that underserved communities can engage with, offer feedback, and take advantage of City Light programming.

We're currently supporting engagement on several projects with the TE project at City Light, including fleet electrification, multifamily EV charging, demand response, and DER.

With all of these projects, our role is to represent the communities themselves, ensuring their voices and their feedback are centered in the design of the programs and ensuring their participation is prioritized.

Our equity-centered model is based on the needs of the community.

We offer education, support, translation, and concierge-style services, ensuring accessible participation to these programs.

Our team is hired directly from the communities we serve.

We are a certified minority-owned business, and our team is 59% women and 95% people of color.

Our team are community connectors.

They have a deep understanding of the needs, challenges, and of their communities.

Our proven approach is also designed to open up feedback mechanisms between the community and City Light, ensuring our communities have the ability and opportunity to share their needs.

Nobody can do this work alone, and we're proud and honored to do this work alongside our partners at City Light, our friends at ICF, and the communities themselves.

Right on time.

Thank you very much.

And then finally, we've got Leon Misik.

I believe this is the last, Leah, I'm sorry, last in-person speaker.

Go ahead.

Good.

Thank you.

So my name is Leah Missick.

I work with Climate Solutions, which is a nonprofit working to accelerate clean energy solutions to the climate crisis in both Washington and Oregon at both the state and the local levels.

And we worked very closely with City Light as it was developing its transportation electrification strategic investment plan, worked to help it get passed through council.

And then we also worked really closely together on passing the clean fuel standard at the state level, along with many other diverse partners.

It is critical that all vehicles are zero emission in short order, and Seattle City Light has a really big role to play.

So, for example, city goals, which align with our climate goals, require that 30% of goods delivery and 90% of personal trips in the whole city fleet are zero emissions by 2030. This will require have been working on and what we've And we know that this work is in demand.

So for example, curbside charging.

There were over a thousand applications for 30 possible curbside charging efforts.

And this really helps folks like renters who may have a vehicle but don't have a place to park their own vehicle at home.

So for example, this was my situation before.

Curbside charging would have been helpful for me.

So this is a really important program that Seattle City Light has been working on.

They've also been working on heavy duty vehicles.

So when we think about transportation, we shouldn't just be thinking about passenger cars.

This includes garbage trucks, transit buses, school buses, and a lot more.

And these vehicles often run on diesel, which is creating toxic air pollution.

So Seattle City Light has been working really hard on electrifying drainage, for example, taking containers from the port.

And this is an area that is hardest hit by toxic air pollution.

So we're really supportive of this work as well.

Now that the clean fuel standard is being implemented, City Light will be able to invest even more.

And so this is a critical effort.

Climate and air pollution really are impacting our community right now.

So we encourage ambition and ask the council to continue to support Seattle City Light in this good effort.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Okay, if there are no other commenters that haven't signed up yet that would like to make public comment in person, we will move to the online public commenters.

And first, we've got Vicki Giles-Faber, please.

Go ahead.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Vicki Giles-Faber, and I'm addressing Seattle City Lights Transportation electrification efforts.

I'm the Executive Vice President of the Washington State Auto Dealers Association.

We represent Washington's 296 franchise new car and truck dealerships who hold over 500 franchises across the state.

The franchise dealers are investing millions in infrastructure and training to help facilitate the state's transition to zero emission vehicles by 2035. The association is also the proud owner of the Seattle International Auto Show.

That's an annual exhibition of new model vehicles, including a broad array of electric, plug-in, hybrid, and hybrid vehicle options held at Lumenfield Event Center.

For several years, we've also produced an ongoing public awareness campaign that we call the EV Revolution that combines events in television, radio, digital, print, and other assets to help educate consumers on how EVs can fit their lifestyle.

The campaign features an exhibit at the auto show called Electric Highways, which specifically showcases EVs, including floor exhibitions and EV test drives.

And last year, we were happy to add Seattle City Light as a show partner and in the EV revolution campaign assets also.

Their commitment to education on the benefits and possibilities of electric vehicles was evident from the moment that we first met with their team and They've been an invaluable partner in our continuing efforts.

As part of the partnership, we've included Seattle City Light footage in the EV Revolution television, radio, and internet advertising campaign, and we're happy to host them in the electric highway display to help answer a variety of questions on EVs to attendees.

We're also able to leverage this partnership to provide dealerships and their customers information describing all the EVs SEL has available in their service areas, We think it's critical that groups like Rosada and Seattle City Light coordinate to help explain things, such as the multitude of charging options available for those with or without a garage.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Next up is Cynthia Spies.

Hi, I'm Cynthia Spies.

My comments are regarding agenda item one, the updated flare, sir.

The revised SIR that is marked online as attachment one on Council Bill 120518 has had its answer to item 2.3 removed.

Therefore, that needs to be fixed.

Amendment number one should include updating item 2.3 to include the tail number for each of the helicopters.

Amendment number four, item 4.7, should continue to explicitly describe how the data is shared and retain the statement on evidence-grade DVD, USB drive, external hard drive, or other physical media.

The same retention of that wording should also occur in amendment number five, section 3.0.

The method of data sharing is important for the public to know so as to understand the possible security and privacy risks that are relevant.

Amendment number three should be adopted and city council should require that Seattle IT must post publicly the SIR and executive overview with track changes actually visible.

Regarding IT's presentation today on slide five, the material update process recommendation has not occurred for this material change to the FLIR SIR.

Additionally, slide number five shows the timeline that public comment period and the working groups review happening concurrently to each other is wildly inappropriate and is a blatant attempt to silence the public's feedback.

Per the ordinance in SMC 14.18.080B1, quote, at the conclusion of the public comment period, the CTO shall share the final proposed SERV with the working group at least six weeks prior to submittal of the SERV to council for approval, end quote.

So the clock on the working group does not start until after the public comment period is closed.

So Seattle IT's past behavior of giving the working group an incomplete SIR and starting the six week clock while the public comment period is still ongoing is a violation of the ordinance.

The only order of events that would follow the spirit of the ordinance for updates to SIRs would be for public comment to conclude and then the working group start their work.

So solicitation of public comments has not occurred for this council bill.

Please see my email.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Next up is Samantha Ortega.

Good morning.

My name is Samantha Ortega.

Hello.

Good morning.

Go ahead, please.

Thank you.

My name is Samantha Ortega here on behalf of Charger Health.

I am here to support the Seattle City Lights transportation electrification efforts.

We are a women and minority owned tech company providing diagnostics, maintenance, and repair for the software and hardware for level two and DC fast chargers in the state of Washington.

Our specialized EV charging maintenance technicians are helping bridge the gap between our industry partners, which are the charging companies and other owners and operators, to really ensure that electric vehicle charging stations are reliable for EV drivers.

Charger Health has partnered with Seattle City Light as of March, excuse me.

We partner with Seattle City Light as of March of 2022. Charger Health has brought in two We're starting to support Seattle City Lights public-facing DC fast chargers throughout the city and to meet their reliability goals.

Our ongoing maintenance support is tailored to the software troubleshooting, upgrades, replacement of program, replacing the parts and reprogramming parts, testing network connectivity, visual inspections, and documenting.

Now, with keeping the EV driver's experience in mind, we also share the data collected and analyzed with City of Seattle Lights to ensuring that the department is aiming towards faster resolution and providing best practices to reach reliability and uptime goals.

Now, we see quite a bit of issues that derive from vandalism, misuse, wear and tear, weather, and inoperability issues.

So part of the larger service that Target Health provides is reliability of the service, which ensures that as soon as an issue arises, there is a tech dispatch on site and analyze the problem and resolve for those issues.

Now, I'll add the last point here that the state has committed strong goals to the electrification of transportation.

Funding has typically been tailored to the equitable deployment of the chargers, but equitable access to reliable chargers is as important for the adoption of cleaner transportation, and it's not just more, and not, you know, more affluent communities, but in all communities.

Thank you very much.

Next up is Matthew Von Ruden.

Good morning.

My name is Matthew Von Ruden.

I'm the System Electrification Program Administrator at Washington State Ferries.

I'm here to comment on Agenda Item 3, which is Seattle City Lights Transportation Electrification Strategic Investment Plan Briefing.

Washington State Ferries is the largest ferry system in the United States.

carry out 450 sailings per day and carry nearly 24 million passengers per year.

We are also the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in state government.

In response to legislative direction and Governor Inslee's executive order, Washington State Ferry developed our system electrification plan in 2020. This was a detailed plan to transition our fleet to hybrid electric propulsion.

This will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 75%.

6 percent by the year 2040. We'll convert 6 of our existing vessels build 16 new vessels and electrify 16 terminals.

The legislature has supported this plan with over one point three billion dollars in capital funding.

A key element of this plan is the electrification of Coleman Dock on the Seattle waterfront.

This facility serves Bainbridge Island and Bremerton routes.

In addition to emitting greenhouse gas gases The ferries in this area generate particulates and oxides of nitrogen, which have long affected the Duwamish River Valley and other local communities.

We've been working with Seattle City Light and signed an MOU to collaborate on building a battery energy storage facility that will help electrify Coleman Docks and the associated ferries operated both by Washington State ferries and the county passenger-only ferries.

This is going to be located on our Pier 48 upland with a facility owned and operated by Seattle City Light.

WSF strongly supports City Light Transportation Electrification Strategic Investment Plan.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And Samantha, I want to say, please do, because you had more to say, please do send your comments to council as well.

So go ahead, we'll view your full comments later, and that applies to anyone who would like to submit in writing.

All right, our last public speaker is Phil Mosek.

Go ahead, please.

Hi, my name is Phil Mosek.

I'm commenting on agenda item number one.

I lived in Seattle from 2001 to 2016 and now live in Tacoma.

I've gotten busy with a child.

My son is four years old, but I've spoken at countless, not countless, dozens of city council meetings.

I've known council member Herbold for more than a decade.

I've been invited to sit at the table there on privacy related matters.

I was the co-founder of Seattle Privacy Coalition and we were heavily involved in the creation of this surveillance ordinance.

And it's been very disappointing to see how it's happened.

It's sort of a mockery of public input.

I wanted to point out, primarily or largely that when these meetings occur, what public input is invited, the police show up to take the side of surveillance, no experts show up to take the side of privacy.

That's a problem.

The way it's being conducted nowadays is a problem.

I hear that the schedule is all messed up.

I support all of Cynthia Spee's comments written and spoken.

She's done a ton of work.

I used to do that work.

I know how much work it is.

A little bit of background, my group came together, we're not really active anymore, years ago when the police department rolled out their drone program, purchased through UASI funds, and then later their port surveillance program through UASI funds.

They built this mesh network ostensibly for surveillance of the port of Seattle, but the reality was they put up nodes all over downtown Seattle and down Rainier Avenue, including cameras far from the port, far from the water.

We found out about this, we got this rule, this ordinance passed that said they had to come up with policies and procedures and get them approved by city council before they use the network.

They couldn't be bothered to do that.

So the thing sat there and I guess the city paid to take it down.

I urge you to think, when you hear GWASI grant funding, think surveillance gear for cops.

It is a backdoor method of bringing in things that do not benefit the public.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

If there are no other public comments, commenters, the public comment is now closed.

Will the clerk please read item one into the agenda, into the record.

agenda item number one, council bill 120518, an ordinance relating to surveillance technology implementation, authorizing approval of uses and accepting the 2023 updated surveillance impact report and 2023 executive overview for the Seattle Police Department's use of forward-looking infrared real-time video.

Briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Good morning.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Hello, we'll do introductions in a bit.

I'll just introduce the legislation for a bit and then we'll get into introductions.

All right, so passage of this council bill would authorize the Seattle Police Department to purchase and use a FLIR video downlink tool that would relay live infrared images from King County Sheriff's Office helicopters to SPD units on the ground.

Council approved the original FLIR, SIR, in May 2021. The executive overview stated that while helicopters are capable of transmitting video of ongoing events to units on the ground, SPD does not utilize that function.

Instead, helicopter pilots narrated information from the FLIR video to SPD units.

So in 2020 council approved receipt of a $144,000 federal urban area security initiative homeland security grant that would enable SPD to purchase the downlink technology that would let officers on the ground view the live stream as well as get the audio.

the technology would not give SPD the capacity to record that video.

And so I want to note that while SPD and other law enforcement agencies do use this technology for law enforcement, this is also used by and or helpful to can be used by agencies in cases of emergency search and rescue, like, for example, for earthquakes and other natural disasters.

All right, so the reason that this council bill is up for a possible vote today is that the executive has requested that it be passed out of full council by March 14th in order to use the grant money.

So I understand that Lisa Kay of Central Staff has offered briefings to council members individually.

And for those who are not on the committee, that offer still stands.

So please do reach out.

Today, we will discuss and possibly vote on five technical housekeeping amendments as well.

So here's how it's going to happen.

I'm going to move the bill, then ask representatives of Seattle IT and SPD to describe the legislation then turn it over to Lisa Kay to walk us through the proposed amendments and answer any questions that you may have.

So, with that, will the presenters please introduce yourselves?

Council Member Herbold.

Yes, I see your hand.

Go ahead.

I just had a procedural question.

So, that means that we are definitely voting on this legislation today.

I thought I read council, I'm sorry, just promoted you there, Lisa Kay.

Central staffer, Lisa Kay, said it was a possible vote, but it is, you've decided, you said you were going to move the bill, so I assume that means you've decided that there is going to be a vote today.

It's up for possible vote.

And so I thought I heard you say you were gonna make a motion to move the bill, which is the precursor step to a vote.

So I'm sorry, I don't, if I'm confusing things.

That was my intention, yes.

Okay, thank you.

Just trying to get the rules of the road straight here.

I appreciate it.

Hey, presenters, would you please introduce yourselves?

My name is Ginger Armbruster.

I'm the Chief Privacy Officer for the City of Seattle and the Division Director that has the team that does privacy and surveillance compliance.

And with that, I'd like to pass this on to Sarah Carrier, who does that job.

Hi, thank you.

I'm Sarah Carrier.

I'm the Privacy Program Manager for the City nested within Seattle IT.

And I'll be presenting some of the slides today.

Good morning.

My name is Brian Maxey.

I'm the chief operating officer of the Seattle Police Department and I will be presenting and responding to questions on the use of technology by the Seattle Police Department.

Eleanor.

And Lisa.

Hold on, let's get everybody's name.

My name is Eleanor Bounds.

I will not be presenting today, but I am on Sarah's team.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

I'm Lisa Kaye, Central Staff.

All right, go ahead.

Ginger, we're ready for you.

Yes.

So I'm going to kick this off and then hand it off to Sarah.

We are going to be spending a couple of minutes talking to you about the overview of how we do updates to CSRS, what our process is.

The CSRS update process in the ordinance is not as prescriptive as the retroactive reviews were.

So we have been working with the legislative We've been working with Lisa Kay, we've been working with law, we've been working with police and other stakeholder departments to figure out and present today the process for updating surveillance impact reviews.

And so Sarah's going to take a minute, take you through that, and then we're going to pass this on to Brian and his team to talk about specifically the FLIR updated, sir.

So Sarah, you go ahead.

Thank you very much.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

So just a brief overview and recap of where we are.

So over the last five years, we have submitted 26 out of the 28 surveillance impact reports that are up for technologies that are on the master list to council.

Since the time of the passage of those SIRS, we know that there have been changes to the technologies over time.

The ordinance does require council approval by ordinance for what is called material updates to an SIR.

And that's why we're here today to discuss one such material update.

SMC, as Ginger pointed out, 1418 does not require as prescriptive of a process for material change as it does for an initial surveillance impact report submission to council.

So again, as she mentioned, we've worked over the last year to year and a half with central staff, the Office of the Inspector General, the City Auditor's Office, the City Attorney's Office, and other stakeholders to develop a working definition of what constitutes a material update.

And we have added those to our surveillance policy, which is POL 203, that was updated at the end of 2022. And so we'll talk about what those look like on the next slide.

Sorry, this is very text heavy, so I'll try to be brief.

So we have developed kind of a criteria for evaluating what is a material update.

And this is some of the work we did with the stakeholders that we discussed on the last slide.

So essentially material updates or material changes include new capabilities or uses of the technology that are not included in the surveillance impact report that was approved by council.

And so when we look and think about material updates, we kind of evaluate them through the criteria that are in the left-hand side of this box.

So if there are changes to the purpose or the use of the surveillance technology, if there are changes to the operations that can be run on the surveillance technology, uses of the technology, and any associated rules or processes that are required before that use, including uses that are specifically prohibited.

If there are changes from the original SIR in the surveillance data, meaning the scope of the data that's collected or any associated data processing activities, which does include changes to data sharing, that will be considered as a material update, as well as changes to retention and storage of that data and any new or newly discovered negative impacts as reported by the CTO's annual equity impact assessment.

So any changes to, civil rights or civil liberties impacts will also be considered as part of a material update criteria.

In the city surveillance policy, you'll also find the processes by which ITD will become aware or try to identify material updates.

So we will be reliant upon the departments who are closer to the surveillance technology and its use to flag for us if there are any changes That's the first and primary thing.

We'll also work to reach out to departments 90 days prior to the submission of the annual, the CTO's equity impact assessment to inquire with the SMEs and the departments if there are any material updates or changes that they have not previously reported.

We'll also leverage the work of the city auditor and the OIG through their annual usage reviews to determine if there are any findings that would constitute a material update or material change that we have not been previously made aware of.

And finally, we will work with our procurement team within IT to monitor for anything that indicates a material change to a surveillance technology.

An example of this might be should a company get acquired, right?

And so now there may be changes to contractual terms or data sharing agreements.

So we'll also work with our procurement and contracting teams to try to flag anything that comes through that medium.

Next slide, please.

Okay, so in terms of what is the process for submitting a SIR with material updates, here's our process recommendation that we have come up with.

So obviously, the SIR itself needs to be updated with the changes.

And this, you'll see here reflected in this slide is an estimated timeline to complete.

So an overview, a one page overview of those changes will be translated also into the tier one languages.

And all of that will be posted where we post the service currently and all of the surveillance ordinance compliance materials on our seattle.gov slash privacy site.

Um, we will have a public comment period because we know that that's important.

We want to hear feedback.

Um, we have shortened it, um, because there is ostensibly going to be much less content to sift through compared to the original, sir.

Um, if we're talking about just particular updates, um, we'll also let the working group know as these things come through, uh, that there has been a material change and when the public comment period is an encouraged comment from the working group on what those changes are.

Um, We will collect all of the public comment from that approximately two to three week period, add that to the SIR as we do with an original SIR, and then draft the legislation and submit the legislative packet, all of that bundled together.

So that's the proposed process for material change.

And I do believe that's our last slide.

So I can hand it over to Brian Maxey, who will talk about FLIR specifically.

Go ahead, Brian.

Thank you very much, Councilmember.

So, as I think has been framed in this discussion, what we're here today to talk about is a single change to the functionality and allowable use of the previously approved FLIR technology.

This was approved in May of 2021. We went through the full surveillance ordinance process at that time.

in order to gain approval and the full community engagement and all the processes that the coordinates set out.

What has not been clear in the past period of time is how to do these material updates.

And that's what brings us here today is we have identified a material update.

We brought that to our partners at ITD and we work together on a process on how do we get this before council to identify and explain what this material change is.

So the forward-looking infrared real-time video, the FLIR, is a system that is mounted on two King County Sheriff's Office helicopters.

And the way this works operationally right now is when the helicopter flies, it uses this infrared technology to track people on the ground in the infrared format.

It does not actually identify that person, but allows the heat signatures to be tracked.

It cannot see into buildings, but it sees heat sources, whether that's a vehicle, whether it is a person, whether it is a fire, anything that is detected in the infrared range.

Currently, the way this works is And there's availability of one of these helicopters SPD can request that assistance through mutual aid.

And this provides aerial view of events happening on the ground.

As this is used, what is being seen by the helicopter is narrated to Seattle police officers and commanders on the ground in order to respond to whatever the incident is.

There's no real-time viewing of what the helicopter can see.

Next slide, please.

And this slide is primarily examples of the type of images that are gathered through the infrared technology, as you can see.

In the first slide, there is some heat signature, but you cannot see inside of the home.

In the middle slide, the heat from vehicles is clearly evident.

This would tell us that the vehicles warm.

And in the third picture on the right, you see images of people and actually a dog as well.

And that's the type of visibility that comes through this system.

Next slide, please.

So what are we here today to talk about?

This update covers SPD's use of the video downlink provided by the King County Sheriff's Office Guardian Helicopters.

We have a facility in Maple Leaf which houses receivers, decoder, and IP encoder equipment necessary to allow SPD to view live stream video from the King County Sheriff's Office as opposed to having a narration.

and later on requesting recorded data as necessary for an investigation.

This equipment is static and acts as a pass-through, allowing personnel to view the live feed of visual information.

No data or images from the video downlink are recorded.

is recorded or stored by SPD.

To the degree anything is recorded, it's consistent with the original SIR and it is recorded by the King County Sheriff's Office.

And if we need that for evidentiary purposes, we do a request to them for that information, but we do not independently record.

And the Maple Leaf downlink site allows personnel to view the video from the downlink feed in real time only.

Again, no recording, no retroactive.

Next slide, please.

This is just this is a listing of policies that we have in place and this is some of these are from the King County Sheriff's Office.

We have our own evidentiary policies that govern what we can obtain and for what purposes and how long we can keep it.

We are, of course, bound by the collection of information for law enforcement purposes is otherwise known as the intelligence ordinance in the common vernacular and that's embedded in SPD policy 6.060.

Additionally, our CJIS or criminal justice information policy can apply to some information when there's personally identifiable information.

Again, how can these files be disseminated?

We have governing policies on email and internet, as well as the use of cloud storage services.

And all of this is online at our police manual at Seattle.gov slash police manual.

Next slide, please.

I'm sorry, Council Member Juarez, I'm not looking up.

I'm looking at Madam Chair.

Yes, I see you.

Let me explain.

I will...

Can I ask a question?

Sure.

Oh, thank you.

Madam Chair, I didn't know how you wanted to proceed.

If you wanted me to wait to the end or just ask while the slide was up?

Do you have a question about the technology or the procedure that work?

Okay.

Sure.

On this slide just quickly.

And I think for the great memo that she provided us ahead of time, though, I would add she wrote maple link and I kept reading it.

I think she means leaf.

But anyway, Brian, when I was looking at this, so you're saying that the King County Sheriff's office would hold the material, but not SPD.

You said there was no recording?

That's correct.

The King County Sheriff's Office, as the source of that data, is the entity that records it.

And if we need a recorded portion of what the FLIR has viewed, we have to go through the King County Sheriff's Office and request that in digital files.

So when you do a request to the King County Sheriff's Office, is it just like an interdepartmental request?

Or is it documented or is there anything to say?

Or do you just pick up the phone and say, hey, Bob, you guys had the flare out last week on this crime.

We need it for evidence.

Can we have it?

How does it work?

It would be similar to any evidence that we need to request from an agency.

We do not go through public disclosure.

We would simply have a detective call and ask for the transmission of that file.

However, that transmission is recorded and tracked.

We do know what we are taking in and there is documentation of it.

That's what I was asking.

Thank you for clarifying that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Brian, were you finished with your presentation?

Yes, thank you, and I'm happy to answer any questions, as the slide indicates.

Okay.

It was my preference to have the presentation to provide more information before making a motion.

So the legislation is on the agenda for as a possible vote.

We published it on Friday.

I mentioned it on Monday.

I see Council Member Herbold, you have your hand up.

Go ahead.

Yeah, I did have some questions about the presentation, but I'm happy to wait for the procedural approach that you want to use.

Go ahead and ask your question about the presentation.

Thank you very much.

Let's see here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

that accompanied the legislation, that the recommendations associated with the process were not strictly followed.

Can you speak to why that might be and whether or not in the future, executive departments or any in this case, intend to follow the recommended approach?

Even though it's- What do you mean by adopted last December?

There was a material update process that was just as part of this presentation that I believe it was adopted in December, I could be wrong about that, but that process was not strictly followed as I understand it and just was hoping that the executive department could speak to that.

I will first ask Lisa Kay to speak.

I just wanted to clarify for the council members, yes, that was an internal policy that was adopted by ITD.

the material update process.

So it wasn't a council adopted process.

It was an internal operation.

Thank you for the clarification.

Yes.

So I don't know if this would be, I don't actually think this would be, I mean, this is a recommended process by ITD.

I think the question is, is whether or not in the future, if there are material updates, we can expect other executive departments to follow the recommendations of ITD.

Ginger.

That would be our direction.

That would be our advice.

That's your recommendation.

I'm asking the other departments, in this case SPD, what they're doing.

Yeah, and I think Brian can speak to the timing of this one and why this is a unique case.

But I believe, and that's why we wanted to adopt a lighter touch to what would be updating an existing technology that had already been vetted publicly.

I think it would be helpful for us to have a review of the changes that we have commented on and as long as those changes were not drastic, we would think that would take a shorter amount of time for review for all parties.

Brian, I don't know if you have anything to say about this one.

We have a $44,000 grant that will expire.

So the surveillance ordinance does not allow us to purchase equipment prior to going through this process for surveillance technology.

So we are trying to serve both purposes.

And I think that led to a need for an expedited process here, which we greatly appreciate because there's been a lot of work in the background by ITD, by Council Central staff, and by the Mayor's office to try to move this forward so that we can recoup the grant funding for this.

In the future, absolutely.

We are actually undertaking a comprehensive review of our internal processes and our collaboration with ITD and all of the players that are involved to bring SIRs for this committee and ultimately to council to improve these efficiencies and the communications there.

And so I think over the last few years, as these things have been developed, sometimes we're building it while we're flying it.

And we are going to really bear down and ensure that we have clear processes, checklists, roles and responsibilities so that we have a little less thrashing around.

Thank you very much.

Very much appreciate that.

recognize that there is ambiguity in the ordinance for how to handle these material updates and really appreciate ITD taking that issue straight on and that ITD will have the cooperation about the executive departments that have these material updates moving forward.

Look forward to that happening.

Other questions if I may, Madam Chair?

Go ahead.

Listening to the public comment that we heard today, one of the testifiers suggested that it's important to include the identification of helicopter tail numbers.

I will admit I don't understand why that might be.

Is there a relation between the tail numbers of helicopters and how the FLIR video system or downlink functions as surveillance technology?

So, go ahead.

Absolutely.

I mean, there are 2 helicopters, there's Guardian 1, there's Guardian 2. As I sit here today, I do not actually know what is on the tail of those helicopters.

Those are the 2 FLIR resources that are included under the current SIR.

So, I see no reason why we couldn't put their tail number down and then if that change is updated.

But I don't know what the tail number is.

So you're saying the tail number is another way to distinguish between Helicopter One and Helicopter Two?

It's just another identifying marker?

Again, I don't actually know what is on the tails of Guardian One or if that is true, then they would be unique to that aircraft and would allow it to be identified as to whether it's Guardian 1 or Guardian 2.

Okay, thank you, appreciate that.

And then the last question I had relates to the risks associated with digital transfer.

Is there a greater risk with a digital transfer than a physical transfer via evidence-grade DVD, USB drive, external hard drive, or other physical media?

Really, I guess the question derives from the issue of what extent is a digital transfer that might bear the risk of an unauthorized access and other security risks, how does that compare to a physical transfer?

So I don't know if anyone from ITD wants to weigh in on any of that, but from my perspective, when you have media such as CDs or thumb drives, that is much less secure because they can be replicated outside of a secure environment.

They can be handed around you don't know the legacy of that media.

When we have a direct digital transfer we have a record of that.

And in terms of the security of this particular type of video.

you don't believe this is criminal justice information in most cases.

It does not typically contain PII, personally identifying information.

And the currently, and I don't know whether it is all of this video or some select portion of it, King County Sheriff's Office actually, in the interest of transparency, posts these videos to a YouTube channel where it can be viewed publicly.

Again, I believe that's for transparency purposes.

So I believe that the digital direct transfer is the most secure way of handling this information.

to ensure that additional copies are not being made.

But again, that is part of the original SIR and our, that we must request this from King County Sheriff's Office to obtain that.

So the, are you saying that the, I think this question derives from an interest and desire to ensure that there's an explicit description of how the data is shared between the King County Sheriff's Office and SPD.

And I think I hear you say a description does not need to be in this update because it is in the underlying SIR.

Is that more or less correct?

Well, I believe that's an additional amendment to the original SIR that can be addressed by Ms. Kay shortly.

that is not the case anymore.

It is now digitally transferred, which I believe is more secure.

So, yes, there is that, whether that's a material update or not, I don't know.

But just in the interest of accuracy, we are recommending that that be included in this update.

Yes, that would be great.

No, I appreciate your question, Council Member.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Council President Orr, as I saw your hand up a moment ago, do you have a question?

Yeah.

Go ahead.

I do, just going back just a few.

Brian, so I got a kind of, well, some just procedural.

So you want, we want, or you want, or this committee's being asked to pass this and the amendments on March 14th so you can retain $144,000 in federal grant money to buy the system in August.

So there's five months between now and then.

So can you explain to me what the emergent situation is there?

Is there like a lagging period or a deadline?

Is the deadline in August or what?

the deadline is in August, but then we also have the city's procurement.

Again, we're not permitted to procure any of this equipment absent going through this process.

So we're at a holding pattern before we can actually go through the procurement mechanisms.

And the grant does expire in August, and We're trying to ensure that we have the ability to actually obtain this during the grant period.

And we're not 100% sure of the procurement mechanism, what's going to be permitted, whether this could be sole sourced, whether this needs to actually be bid.

So we're trying to leave a little bit of a buffer there to ensure that we can use the grant monies.

Councillor Humfryes, she or her, please.

I think we have to frame this that this is a little bit different because there is an emergent situation in which you want to get something because there's this procurement five-month period that you got to get this done.

But the other question I had is more of a kind of an operational question.

So if the pilots up until this point have been there...

Wait.

Can you pause?

Cancel, please.

I'm sorry.

Lisa here who is sitting at the table and making hand gestures has signaled that she would like to say something.

Thank you.

Okay, sorry.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Actually, Council President, I think you did get that correctly, is that as Brian said, there is a fairly lengthy procurement process and there are some uncertainties.

And so procurement did show us a timeline with major milestones that would have it, that pointed to the need to acquire council approval by March 14th.

There may be some wiggle room in there, but I'm not in a position to be able to second guess their process.

Thank you.

And that that helps a lot to know that there is this five month lag and within that it isn't just it isn't just, you know, airtime that you're actually having to have a whole process in there to get it done.

So I'm getting back to my if I may, Madam Chair.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Brian, and thank you for the memo that we received from our friend Lisa.

So if the pilots up until this point have been narrating, King County Sheriff's Office, have been narrating information to the SPD units on the ground, why isn't that good enough anymore?

It may seem like a simple question.

I just want to know, if we've been doing that and now we're saying, well, we don't want to do that, why is it now important, emergent?

to purchase FLIR or take advantage of this federal grant money.

I understand what Madam Chair said, it isn't just for law enforcement.

It could be for natural disasters, search and rescue.

So why now?

Go ahead.

So the why now was, again, a little bit of confusion on how to get this done, and then the implementation of the rules in December of last year, and then the overlay of the grant and procurement deadlines.

That's what's creating the urgency here.

But the reason why, why do we want this?

There's a whole host of reasons.

First of all, this technology doesn't just serve us.

This actually is a, we have a gap in King County on downlink capacity for many of our UASI and regional partners and we detailed some of this in the UASI, all of this in the in our SIR amended report.

So our regional partners need to have this capability as well as we do.

But from an operational standpoint, I'll try to do justice to this.

You know, right now we are dependent on a pilots interpretation of what they're seeing on the ground and then our officer, what they're seeing from the air on the ground when our people are on the ground having to actually respond.

It's just, it's an extra layer of.

of telephone, to use a common analogy here, where if our commanders can actually see what's happening, we can make our own decisions based on full situational awareness and then ensure that the policies and procedures that we have within our department are absolutely followed.

It's not that we're not following them when it's being translated by a helicopter pilot.

It's just we have different perspectives on how things should be done.

And ultimately, the more information we have in real time as we are deploying, leads to better outcomes for everyone.

And that's really what we're trying to achieve here.

Madam Chair, may I ask a follow-up question?

Yes.

In regards to civil liberties and privacy, which of course is, and thank you for the slide to show like the heat and that obviously you can't see into homes, but it shows pictures that you showed us.

So if it's a tool that is used by a detective, then that means it will be used as a prosecutorial tool as well.

How would a defense counsel, if you can't answer this, that's okay, but I think people want to know for the civil liberties, privacy, exculpatory evidence, how would defense counsel would have the same opportunity via discovery or just being able to make the same request as a detective for this information?

Yes, if this were being used as as evidence in a case or if it was simply involved in the investigation, then defense counsel would have access to that information as well as we would.

Didn't you say it would also be on their YouTube channel?

It's certainly could be, I don't know that all goes on the YouTube channel, but I'm sure they would want an original copy that we would procure for them from.

in County Sheriff's Office.

Thank you.

Did you have any more questions?

Oh, no.

Thank you.

Okay.

Just before I go on to Council Member Strauss, do you know, and if this is in the SIR, I missed this detail, but when were the helicopters equipped with this technology?

Do you know?

I do not know.

This technology has been in use for quite a long time.

Okay, thank you.

And Lisa, go ahead.

You had your hand up earlier.

Go ahead, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair Nelson.

For better or for worse, I'm not a lawyer and all of the questions that I had written down were asked in a better fashion by Council President Juarez.

So my questions have been asked and answered in a better way than I could have even asked.

So thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Are there any other further questions before I move the legislation?

Tracy, I see.

Okay, nevermind.

All right, seeing none, I will go ahead and I move, excuse me, I've got to get back into my script here.

I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120518. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

There are five amendments.

And at this point, I will ask Lisa Kay to present those amendments to us.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Stephen, for running the slides.

Stephen will put the amendments up on the screen as I'm speaking to them.

So as Council, I'm sorry, Committee Chair Nelson mentioned, there are five amendments.

These are technical amendments, which she has sponsored.

They're not making material changes to the SIR or to the SPD's policies.

In my communication with SPD, they had no issues with amendments one through three, and in fact, amendments four and five were requested by SPD.

So we'll start with Amendment 1 here.

Just so you know, Amendments 1 and 2 are going to address the same issue.

It's just that the first one amends the SIR and the second one amends the Executive Overview.

So Amendment 1 would basically consistently state throughout the SIR that while SPD doesn't record or store the data or images directly from the downlink, SPD does obtain the FLIR video from the county, as you heard in Brian's presentation, which is then stored as evidence.

So while the reference is made at least one place in the SIR about obtaining the FLIR from the county, we thought it should be made consistently throughout the document so that there's similar language used throughout the SIR.

With that, I'll turn the microphone back to the sponsor of the amendment.

Okay, I will now move the amendment.

Is there, well, excuse me, are there any questions or comments?

Apologies.

Okay.

I move that Amendment 1 to Council Bill 120518 and presented on the agenda be adopted.

Second.

Thank you.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Herboldt?

Yes.

Chair Nelson?

Aye.

Four in favor?

Thank you very much.

Will the clerk please call the amendment two, please read amendment two.

Nevermind.

Go ahead, excuse me.

Lisa, do you feel that you need to explain amendment two?

I will have a one sentence explanation.

Okay, great.

Stephen's gonna put that up on the screen for us.

And amendment two, as I said, essentially duplicates amendment one, but applies to the executive overview.

So SBD basically stating that SBD does request FLIR video from the county and stores it as evidence.

Okay, thank you very much, Lisa.

I move that Amendment 2 to Council Bill 120518 be adopted.

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to adopt Amendment 2 as presented on the agenda.

Please call the roll.

Council President Juarez.

Aye.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Chair Nelson.

Aye.

Four in favor.

Thank you very much.

The amendment passes and we'll move on to Amendment 3. Go ahead, Lisa.

I'll give Stephen a chance to put it up on the screen.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Steven, again for doing this.

I appreciate it.

So amendment three asks SPD to add a record of changes page to the SIR and the executive overview, which would be basically a one-stop shop.

So you could look to see what has been changed each time the document is updated.

I understand that the clerk would still be retaining a track changes version for this record so that you could have a more detailed, you could see it in live.

I guess how it shows on the document, but, and I understand the clerk would be willing to continue to save those track changes versions, but the record of changes would basically become incorporated into the SIR.

Are there any questions?

Okay.

I move amendment three to council bill 120518. Are there any, is there a second?

Thank you very much.

It's been moved and seconded to adopt amendment three.

Will the clerk please call the roll.

Council President Juarez.

Aye.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Chair Nelson.

Aye.

Four in favor.

The motion carries.

Amendment three is adopted and we'll go on to number four.

Go ahead, Lisa.

So these last two amendments, as I mentioned, were requested by SPD.

And as with amendments one and two, they're basically almost identical amendments.

It's just that the amendment four will apply to the SIR and amendment five will apply to the executive overview.

So these last amendment four clarifies how often the technology will be in operation in the format of the shared data.

So it adds additional detail that the air support unit averages 1200 hours of flight time per year in the region.

And it also specifies that the downlink video recordings are stored on digital files.

Thank you very much.

I move that Go ahead.

Sorry, Councilmember Herbold.

Returning to my earlier inquiry, there has been concern expressed about this amendment that it does not explicitly describe how the data is shared between the Sheriff's Office and the Police Department, and specifically concerned that there are words deleted that should be retained, and that's specifically the words on evidence grade DVD, USB drive, external hard drive, or other physical media.

Just wondering if you can speak to that, please.

I would defer to Brian Maxey to see if there is a technical reason that requires.

I interpreted digital files to be encompassing of all of the other terms.

And so it would be more inclusive and permissive.

But I would ask Mr. Maxey if he has any insight onto that.

So my understanding is that the transfer is done securely through their evidence.com cloud-based system into our evidence.com cloud-based system through a direct file transfer.

I believe that's the most secure way to transfer these files.

Again, the reason I expressed earlier, the physical media has less is less secure in my opinion and is also not as easily tracked as the cloud-to-cloud digital file transfer.

Did that answer the question or am I missing something?

I think what I hear you saying is that the policy referenced, for folks who want to understand how this information is transferred and want there to be a clear explanation that because it's a digital file, it is defined by the policy reference in the amendment itself, as opposed to the language that was struck, which is related to a physical transfer.

That's correct.

And that's our intention there.

All right.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Okay.

Are there any other questions?

Okay.

All right.

I move that Amendment 4 to Council Bill 120518 as presented on the agenda be adopted.

Second.

Thank you.

Go ahead, please call the roll.

Council President Juarez.

Aye.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Chair Nelson.

Aye.

Four in favor.

Okay, the amendment four has been adopted and it's the same but modifying a different part of the SIR.

So I'm going to go ahead and move that amendment five to council bill 120518 be adopted.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded.

Please call the roll.

Council President Juarez.

Aye.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Chair Nelson.

Aye.

Four in favor.

All right.

The motion carries.

Amendment five is adopted and the amended bill is before the council.

We have discussed and I am going to move the bill now and then we can continue discussion and questions.

Did she move it?

I see your hand is up, and just a second, please.

Go ahead, if you would like to speak first.

You know, I'm sorry.

Let me go ahead and move this, and then we can continue.

Oh, never mind.

Go ahead, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much.

I just wanted to, before the vote is called, express My thinking on this, given that there is, in my mind, one outstanding issue I'd like to do a little bit more consideration of, and I know Madam President doesn't like amendments at full council.

But given that this has moved quickly and it wasn't certain that there was going to be a vote, I didn't think it was certain that there was going to be a vote scheduled today.

I'm hoping I can be granted the grace to consider an abstention today with the idea that I might, given that I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next item.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next item.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next item.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next item.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next item.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next item.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next item.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next item.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next item.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next item.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next item.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next item.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next item.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next item.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next item.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next item.

That is fine.

I appreciate you letting us know that you would prefer to abstain, and that's fine with me.

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Pardon me?

As amended.

Council President Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Abstain.

Chair Nelson?

Aye.

Three in favor, one abstention.

Thank you very much.

All right, so this will go ahead and go to full council, but there could be some abstentions.

I do recommend that folks talk to Lisa Kay before next week.

Okay, let's proceed to agenda item two.

Agenda item number two, Seattle Information Technology Department 2022 to 2023 briefing.

Briefing and discussion.

Thank you very much.

We will wait for folks to come up.

Thank you very much, everybody, for that robust discussion of agenda item one while we're waiting for folks to sit down.

I do appreciate that generally the SIR process when it comes to council takes longer, let's just say.

Okay, will the presenters please introduce yourselves?

Oh, excuse me.

Stephen, go ahead and read in the item and then we'll have introductions.

Okay.

A little flustered here.

Go ahead.

Please introduce yourself.

We're ready?

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for having us today.

My name is Jim Loader.

I'm the Chief Technology Officer and Department Director Interim for Seattle IT.

And joining me here at the table today, I'll let them introduce themselves.

Hi, I'm John Morrison-Winters, Digital Equity Program and Broadband Manager for Seattle IT.

Good morning, I'm Greg Smith.

I'm the Chief Information Security Officer and Director of Security and Infrastructure Division in Seattle IT.

Before we start, I just want to say thank you very much for coming in person.

And I do believe this is the first time that we've had Seattle IT in committee to discuss your work.

So go ahead.

Online, I just want to introduce a couple members of the team, Tracy and Ginger.

Hello, Tracy Cantrell, Client and Community Engagement Director.

And I'll give a more full representation of my team.

I am the Data, Privacy, Accountability, and Compliance Division.

We have open data, we have public records, privacy, and compliance.

So that's my position here.

Great.

Thank you so much.

And of course, I want to acknowledge Vin Tang, who has been very patient with us as we've been preparing this presentation and making some last minute changes.

and he will be running the slides.

So thank you.

Again, thank you, Councilmember Nelson, committee members for having us here today and giving this opportunity to discuss the Seattle IT Department's accomplishments and goals for the next year.

And I will be reading along here on teleprompter mode, so forgive me for not making eye contact as much as I would like to.

First of all, as an overview of Seattle I.T.

as a department, as a city department came into being in 2016 following the citywide consolidation of I.T.

staff and services.

Seattle I.T.

was created to ensure a consistent level of service across the city, to improve I.T.

security, and to reduce costs and complexity related to duplicative efforts.

Seattle I.T.

provides I.T.

services from the network to the end users' devices for all city executive departments.

We also partner with IT staff in the legislative and judicial branches on core services such as networking and enterprise software licensing.

We also offer programs and services that are somewhat atypical for an IT department, such as our digital equity work that you'll hear about in a few minutes.

Our work to regulate and coordinate the works of or the commercial cable TV and broadband providers in Seattle.

Our award winning government television channel, Seattle Channel, which is producing this committee meeting as we speak.

And as this committee is well aware, our oversight and administration of the city's surveillance technology ordinance.

Next slide, please.

Just to cover some basic numbers and quick statistics for 2023, we are working with a $265 million operating budget and are further responsible for capital efforts around $47 million.

We have 669 employees organized into eight divisions.

And our team responded last year to over 100,000 requests for one or more of our 128 different services that we offer.

That included 60,000 calls to our help desk.

In 2022 we also completed 12 capital projects and we currently have 30 capital projects underway and running.

A lot of work.

And as I mentioned, our department is divided into eight divisions.

Divide is probably not a great word.

We are organized into eight into eight organizations that work very well together in harmony.

This includes applications, security and infrastructure.

And Greg Smith is here with us today.

Project delivery, collaboration and workplace technology, data privacy, accountability and compliance with Ginger Armbruster.

the city of Seattle IT is a trusted partner that provides secure reliable and We approach our work according to the priorities listed here.

And we believe, first and foremost, that our employees are our top priority.

For everything that we do, everything that we do for our city departments and for the public of Seattle depends upon having a skilled, high-performing, and satisfied workforce.

Next, we prioritize security and compliance, and we cannot compromise on our commitment to keep the city's data and assets secure and to ensure that we comply with relevant regulations, laws, and policies.

Next, we're committed to sustainable and supportable technology that is responsibly managed throughout its entire lifecycle.

It's very easy for a large IT organization to amass what we call technical debt or obsolete and unsupported systems that accrue like barnacles on a derelict fishing vessel.

We have to prioritize the unglamorous, continuous, and under-the-surface work that may or may not get recognized or widely appreciated, but is nevertheless necessary to maintain effective operations and be responsible stewards of public funds.

Next, we actually do deliver IT services, and we work to improve that delivery through a continuous improvement lens that's guided by data, but also guided by the professional judgment and experience of our workforce.

We welcome challenges to the status quo and we incentivize staff to identify systemic problems and collaborate to improve performance.

Next, through the management of our city's website and other public engagement and communication tools, we have responsibilities to keep members of the public informed about the city services and our accomplishments and to support the community through our digital equity efforts.

And finally, last but not least, we develop and enhance the technology solutions that allow city workers to do their jobs and serve the public more efficiently and effectively.

This is really the bread and butter of our whole operation and where technology can most directly benefit the people of our city, but it cannot be successful without all of the other priorities on this list being satisfied and operating in harmony.

Next slide, please.

All right, I'm going to take a little time to go over some of what we're proud of having accomplished in 2022. I won't read every item here, but I will note that consistent with one of our highest priorities of security, we formed last year a citywide governance board, two actually, with city leaders, the goal of which is to raise overall awareness and attention that we give to security risks and threats.

The IT department alone cannot protect the city from all of the security risks and threats that we face.

It's very important to have the cooperation of city leadership and all city staff in fulfilling that responsibility.

The Cybersecurity and Risk Board, or CARB, operates at both an executive level as well as a level that involves operational staff from across the city.

Both this high CARB and low CARB, forgive me for that, I want to say thank you to all of you for your participation in this important work.

We will continue to work together to ensure that we have broad support and engagement throughout the city for the actions we all need to take to ensure a secure IT environment.

And Councilmember Nelson, thank you for your participation in that activity.

And you will hear later from Chief Information Security Officer Greg Smith about some recent and planned We've made several major citywide improvements and implemented solutions in that space to ensure that city records can be preserved and that we are being responsive to requests for information.

We achieve this on time and on budget with our partners in records management and the city attorney's office.

and with all the public disclosure offices in all the departments across the city.

It was a big effort and I'm very proud of the effort of our team and others throughout the city in helping get that done.

Next slide, please.

Also, last year we awarded $590,000 in funding to 19 community organizations who deliver assistance and training to individuals to help them use technology to be successful in their lives.

We also worked with community and private sector partners to provide assistance to over 20,000 residents in taking advantage of the Federal Accord Affordable Care Program, I'm sorry, Affordable Connectivity Program.

This is work that Seattle it has been doing for over 20 years we have more ambitious goals for this year and you will hear from john Morrison winters about our upcoming plans to continue this important work.

And then, finally, just to pick one highlight from among this list, I want to showcase the work of our geographic information systems team or GIS team.

who have developed and released several critical tools for both internal city and public use in the last year.

They're listed there, the one Seattle Day of Service, the Homelessness Encampment Support Tools, Rapid Damage Assessment, et cetera.

GIS is critical to supporting the work of the Office of Emergency Management, Transportation Department, Sustainability and the Environment Department, and many, many other city departments.

Next slide, please.

The work of Seattle IT is also recognized regionally and nationally.

In 2022, we were recipients of awards and recognition for our work in digital equity, digital engagement, responsible asset stewardship, and video production.

Next slide, please.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

All right, so I am going to step through very quickly the work as organized by our priority areas and just highlight a couple of things that we're planning for 2023 So as I said, people are top priority and we are continuing to develop programs that focus on their well being their professional success and their skill development and this concept of psychological safety so people can feel safe and secure in their workspace.

I'm not talking about physical security necessarily, though that is important.

I'm talking about feeling that their contributions are welcomed and that their engagement with each other happens in a safe and supportive environment.

We have an active and engaged RSJ change team as well and a commitment to continuing to evolve our recruitment and hiring practices to attract a more diverse and inclusive workforce.

I also want to emphasize that recruitment and retention in general is a huge issue in the IT field right now.

We are working on a project with the Seattle Department of HR and our labor partners and IBEW Local 77 to examine how IT professional job classifications can be updated to better reflect the modern workforce that we and our employees need to be successful.

Next slide, please.

I've already spoken a lot about our commitment to security and compliance.

Cyber security is continually evolving and adapting to the nature of the threats that we're seeing and we will continue to roll out improvements to reduce vulnerabilities in all layers of the technology stack from the network up to the end users themselves.

One of our most visible activities has been and will continue to be our phishing campaigns, wherein we test city employees' ability to detect fraudulent and potentially dangerous emails.

I'm also very proud to announce that as of last week, the city's website is now being served exclusively over the SSL encryption protocol, which is a big improvement and enables users to trust that the content that they're seeing from us is legitimate.

Can I just mention right here that in month two or three of taking office, I fell prey to one of your phishing tests and I learned.

And whenever I see the update available on my phone, ever since I went to that CARB meeting, I do so immediately.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Madam Chair, I just wanna say that our office did not fall prey to any of that.

So I just wanna go on the record, we did not do it.

You're better than I am.

Thank you for being a resource to your fellow council members then, Council President Juarez, and helping them learn the rules of the road.

And thank you, Chair.

This actually makes me feel a lot more comfortable when I receive these phishing attempts, because I just think that we're getting spammed.

But to hear that this is actually you, because I also have a gold star record of never falling for them.

Excellent.

And I know that for somebody that grew up when the internet was becoming, when I was in middle school, The internet was a new thing.

People didn't understand it.

And so I've had the opportunity to grow up with it and understand all the tricks, gimmicks, and hacks that people are playing.

But I know that a lot of folks that didn't grow up with these types of tricks in their life, it's a little bit easier to fall into a situation where you're trusting the information that you believe you're reading.

Absolutely.

You talking about me?

I'm not saying anyone in particular.

I'm just like, I didn't hear any names being called here.

Yeah.

Well, we'll hear from Greg in a couple minutes about this concept of zero trust security, where, yeah, we are we and our systems.

Trust no one including ourselves and and how important that is to achieving our cyber security posture.

That's right.

But yeah, you're absolutely right the The the phishing attacks are getting craftier Not all of them are from us But you know every now and then you'll get one and we hope that you do recognize it and just just to set the record correctly the proper protocols for us to attach a

the email, send it to spam.

We don't want to forward it.

We don't want to click on the links.

Is that absolutely, absolutely true.

Yeah.

And we are we are keeping track of those who open and click on a message, those that actually provide their credentials, and then those that do the right thing and forward it on.

And we're also building up some incentives and possible rewards.

So you might end up with a, you know, coffee card or something out of it, if you if you do it correctly.

I'm glad you're the tricky ones and not somebody malicious.

Absolutely.

Okay, thank you.

Next slide, please.

So I spoke earlier about this notion of technical debt.

We have a number of initiatives that are largely happening behind the scenes and likely won't be directly experienced by anyone here.

But are nevertheless important to remain in current and responsibly managing the city's assets.

We won't be issuing any press releases about migrating to a new storage cluster eliminating old operating systems or completing standard operating procedure documentation.

But we will be celebrating internally when that work is complete.

And then we will turn around and start it all over again.

Next slide.

This is the work that our clients will see and that they do experience.

And as I mentioned earlier, we're in a constant state of improving and streamlining our service delivery processes.

Through both data analytics and the judgment of our professional talented staff, we are continuing to identify bottlenecks and opportunities to improve services through automation, workflow adjustments, better communication, better documentation, and better dialogue and engagement with our clients.

Later, you'll hear more from Tracy Cantrell, Director of Client and Community Engagement, about some specific service improvements.

Next slide.

Or, um, lost track here.

For our public facing services, we have a whole slate of improvements in our pipeline for our open data portal and our public website.

For Seattle.gov, our user experience designers, developers, and production teams have been leveraging user research and analytics to improve site navigation and the discoverability of city services such as discount services, the availability of discount service programs, and the ability to apply to them.

We also work with our content partners and city departments to ensure that content is written in simple and direct language.

And we've recently implemented automated translation services across all of our sites to ensure that our material is accessible to non English speaking members of our community.

We're also expanding our efforts to connect more residents to low-cost Internet services and conducting a technology and access adoption research study, which you'll hear more about in a minute.

And then finally, for me at least, we are working to improve how we deliver IT products and build solutions on technology platforms.

The City uses over 1,000 different software applications across our various departments.

We're taking opportunities to avoid adding to that number by building new business capabilities on common platforms using common tools and standard interfaces.

Also, as more of the industry moves to software as a service delivery model, we are ramping up our efforts to ensure that our contracts with software providers contain favorable terms for the city and ensure that vendors meet city technology requirements with regard to security, data privacy, accessibility, and usability.

So that's an overview.

We have three areas to spotlight and we are being mindful of the time and the fact we have another agenda item today.

So I'm going to turn things over right now to John Morrison Winters, who will talk a bit about our digital equity efforts.

John.

Thank you.

Excuse me.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, it's my pleasure to be here.

Thank you for having us committee chair and council members happy to be here to represent the digital equity team at Seattle it we're a.

team of seven dedicated professionals.

And in addition to the work I'm about to highlight, we also oversee the city's Office of Cable Communications, Wireless Affairs, and help to staff the Community Technology Advisory Board.

Our 2023 priorities in digital equity start with the Internet for All Seattle initiative.

This is a pandemic era initiative with the goal of 100% connectivity for Seattle residents.

It is an interdepartmental initiative and we've worked with other departments to create the Internet for All Action Plan.

And at this point, we're really in the monitoring and implementation stages of that plan.

On the monitoring side, we have created data dashboards that are on the Seattle.gov slash tech website linked there.

And we're tracking affordable connectivity program enrollment and other efforts to improve connectivity, distribute devices and provide digital skills and tech support.

And looking at implementing the plan, we have among the implementation steps are the two that I'm highlighting today as 2023 priorities, one of which is outreach and enrollment for the Affordable Connectivity Program.

The Affordable Connectivity Program, or ACP, is a federal initiative that provides up to $30 off the cost of broadband internet service for those who qualify.

And in January we applied for a $650,000 grant to partner with the Seattle Housing Authority and non-profit community-based organizations to accelerate the sign-ups for ACP through outreach and enrollment clinics.

We applied in January and should hear sometime later this month whether or not we got that grant, and even if we didn't get that grant we're developing a plan to improve and increase upon the efforts that we, we did last year around ACP enrollment and getting the word out to the community.

Another step that really is the implementation of the Internet for All Seattle initiative, as well as building on work that has been ongoing since the mid to late 90s, is our technology matching fund program, our digital equity grants program.

This year we're continuing our focus on digital navigation as one important area.

to improve access to technology, as well as the other aspects of digital equity.

And we're shifting things a little bit and looking to expand the digital navigator cohort that was stood up last year and expand participation in the cohort to any of the 2023 Technology Matching Fund grantees that choose to participate.

And the amount for 2023 that is out right now, it's out in RFP right now is $545,000.

So thank you for your strong support of the Technology Matching Fund Program.

Finally, the Tech Access and Adoption Study is a study that is updated every four to five years, and that gives us a sense of what the current situation is among Seattle residents, how connected they are, what the gaps in connectivity are, and really gives us our data that we use to plan initiatives moving forward.

Currently, we're collecting the quantitative data, there's the data collection is ongoing right now.

And we also will be conducting focus groups to get a sense of where the quantitative data can tell us the whole story about what's going on in our diverse communities.

The focus groups that we're looking at are focused on the African American population, people with disabilities, and two language groups.

And we also are looking to partner with the state broadband office to do some additional focus groups and expand our understanding of the Seattle community.

Thank you, John.

Next, I'd like to invite Tracy Cantrell to speak to our priority area of delivering and improving services and specifically the performance of our service desk.

Tracy?

Thank you.

So as we mentioned, IT really is a service organization.

And one of our focus areas over the last 18 months, two years, has been the service desk.

And this is the organization where employees across the city of Seattle call in for help.

It may be a simple request to reset your password, or it may be preparing for a new employee that's coming in and we need email set up.

There are a variety of activities that the service desk performs.

If you look at the left side of the chart that's shown here, you see that we had room for improvement.

18 months ago, there were wait times of the 10-minute mark that were consistent for several months.

We do continuous improvement efforts within Seattle IT, and we made a concentrated effort to reduce those wait times.

If you look at the right side of the chart, our wait times are now one minute, two minutes, under three minutes is the average, and we want to continue to offer that service.

We know how important it is to get help when you need it quickly, and so we're very pleased at the progress that we've made, and we want to keep up this good work.

I like the purple circle here that describes 96% of the calls are now under five minutes.

This is good.

I also want to acknowledge that it was a particularly challenging time.

During this last 18 months, our calls went up.

So in addition to trying to make continuous improvement, we actually had a higher volume.

So it really is pleasing to see those numbers on the right side of the chart.

So that's just one story of a service that Seattle IT offers that we are making investments to improve.

Great.

Thank you, Tracy.

And I just want to underscore Tracy's point that the demand for services on the service desk not gone down and in fact have increased as the responsiveness has gone up.

And that's, um, we are maintaining full employment on the service desk, but that's also not, uh, through the result of adding any resources or headcount to the service desk.

Uh, it's, it's really through our, um, efforts to improve our processes.

And next, uh, I'd like to invite Greg Smith, our chief information security officer and director of security and infrastructure to speak a little bit more about a couple of key points in cybersecurity.

Yeah, thank you, Jim.

And good morning, Councilmembers.

It's no secret that cyber threats are near or at the top of the list of concerns for organizations all over the world, public and private.

Threat actors are plentiful and have a wide range of motivations for doing what they do, whether it be financial or financial gain or activist reasons or working on behalf of nation states or nation states themselves, in the worst case.

On most days, you can find a story in the media about a new impactful cyber attack on an organization.

whether it be public or private.

They're basically happening every day.

At the City of Seattle Cybersecurity Program within Seattle IT, we focus on protecting the city's ability to deliver services to residents by reducing the risk of the city experiencing a meaningful cyber attack and reducing the probability even more so of material impact to the city services and data should a cyber event occur.

No cybersecurity program can guarantee that an attack will not happen, but we can and do focus continually on risk reduction and preparedness, not only at the technical level, but also in the broader areas, such as the actions and decisions we might need to take and make as a cyber event unfolds.

Jim mentioned the Cybersecurity and Risk Board.

I know he spoke about that for a few minutes, commonly known as CARB.

In that body, we do work hard with city leaders to translate cyber risk into the language of business risk.

It's not simply an IT problem.

We talk about the cyber threat situation in a way that hopefully resonates in the context of our many city business missions.

And again, I want to echo the thanks to you, Council Member Nelson, for being an active participant in CARB and hopefully picked up a few tricks in the process.

Looking at some of our major areas for 2023, broadly speaking, these four bullets break down into two themes, further bolstering our technical security controls and defenses on the back end and also investing in further education and awareness work for our city staff, the human front end, if you will.

On the technical side, Jim already spoke about technical debt.

We'll be focusing specifically on updating any aging technologies that are beginning to compromise our cybersecurity posture because of their inability to be kept secure, to be patched, et cetera.

More beyond that, we'll also continue to improve our technical security controls by deploying and tuning our tools that protect our systems and data from attacks on a regular basis, as well as the ability to detect and stop attacks when they do occur.

Highlights include data loss prevention, which I'm partnering with Chief Privacy Officer Ginger Ambruster on.

This is a technology and a system that prevents the potential release of sensitive data through common tools like email and SharePoint by our business users, inadvertent release of data.

Privileged access management, also known as PAM, secures and audits the use of elevated rights in our IT environment.

Elevated rights in this context are those used to do the most important technical configuration actions around systems and data and networks.

And gaining access to elevated rights is a tactic commonly used by attackers these days to do damage and steal data.

It's a critical step to securing what we do.

Finally, we'll expand our focus on zero trust architecture.

Jim said we don't trust anybody.

We don't want to trust even ourselves.

But this refers to a set of technology tools and approaches designed to make the IT environment very difficult for attackers to make headway in.

There's a lot a lot under the surface there I won't go into.

One important note about zero trust is that President Biden has instructed all federal agencies by executive order to be moving towards zero trust architecture over the next couple of years.

So it's widely accepted as a strong direction for all organizations to be moving in, and we'll be doing just that.

On the human side, which Jim also gave me a prelude on, definitely focusing on this because somewhere in the neighborhood of 80% of all cyber attacks begin with the human element in some way, whether it's clicking on a fish or whether it's downloading a piece of software or succumbing to social engineering.

So we'll continue to emphasize education of our staff on various fronts.

We will continue to work to combat phishing attempts on the city through our campaigns that Council Member Strauss referenced.

We continue to exercise that recognition and awareness of what a phishing email looks like so that they can be detected and forwarded and combated appropriately.

We annually develop and deliver security and privacy training to elevate awareness of secure use of technologies in the city and to reinforce how security and privacy best practices and policies apply to the way we work as city employees on a regular basis.

And finally, public records training to ensure awareness and adherence to our policies and procedures in this important area.

Ultimately, the object of all this human-focused work is to help each of our city employees understand the part they play in protecting our technology environment.

which is so central to how we as a city deliver services to our residents.

Those are some of our focus areas.

Thanks, Greg.

We have one final slide focusing on compliance, and I'd like to invite uncredited participant Ginger Armbruster, who is on the call already, to speak to these priorities, one of which, you know, our work on the surveillance technology ordinance, we already had an opportunity to experience earlier today.

So, Ginger, why don't you talk us through some of the other important work that your group does?

Thank you and thank you council members for this opportunity.

For 2023, following up some of what Greg had to say, we will be focusing on continuing and hopefully getting to 100% completion for public records and data retention training.

All employees will have access to this.

It's important for us to understand the obligations of what we need to do to be transparent and to do what we need to do around public records to be compliant with the laws and expectations of our public.

We will be doing outreach to leadership across the city and departments about public records requirements and support for the PDOs that do such a long, hard work.

There's 70 of them across the city.

They do a lot of work around public records requests.

It's important that we all support what they need to do.

My team is also responsible for the compliance piece for payment card information, annual audit, and the employee training that's going on right now, or just finishing right now.

This is what allows us to continue to take Visa cards and other payment cards to everything from permitting to pet licensing to parking meters and how we pay for parking.

So it's important that we meet that compliance routes we can continue to use those cards.

Greg had mentioned the privacy and security annual training.

We can do all we can around automating security and providing the scaffolding, but it's really the choices we make every day about what we do and what we don't do and I wanted as an aside to tell you that just in the last two weeks I've heard about two people that are professionals in cyber.

that got caught in social engineering phishing schemes.

So they're getting better out there.

Don't feel bad.

You got some of the best right there with you.

So that annual trading, we're at about 88% participation, which we strive for 100. So we'll keep doing it and keep making sure that people are aware of what's available and so that you aren't learning on the job.

You get an opportunity to have a little training and background before those events occur.

The surveillance ordinance we know much about and will continue to close out reviews and work to support our departments on what needs to be done there.

And finally, we're looking to automate open data content so that we can refresh what we're doing around open data.

That transparency piece is so important to not only our own community, but across the country, and maybe even the world, around the data that's made available for entrepreneurial reasons, for academic use, and just to know what the city is up to and how we're using precious resources.

So that's the work we're looking for for 2023. Thank you, Jim.

And thank you.

So that concludes our formal presentation.

And now we open it up for questions as time allows.

Thank you very much.

You make our work possible.

All city employees that sit at a desk and use your technology appreciate what you do that we don't even see.

And the public gets to watch these meetings because of Seattle Channel.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Council Member.

We are running quite a bit late.

And so I appreciate council members that I'm going to ask if it's possible that folks stay for the, for the city light presentation on transportation electrification, if that is all right.

And so, I will entertain questions and comments.

And I do have one from Councilmember Peterson, who, as everyone knows here at this table, has been very focused on digital equity.

And he asked me to ask, and if If this is a complicated response, I welcome that you can get back offline.

Understood.

But for the record, a 2018 study identified affordability as the key cause for why we don't have universal access and adoption of high-speed internet in Seattle.

And Council Member Peterson understands that gap is about 5 to 10% given the internet for all resolution.

that council passed in 2020 and ITD's existing action plan, what steps can we take this year to close that gap?

I, I, if you have a, if you want to respond quickly, that's fine.

Well, as you anticipated, Council Member Nelson, that probably is a difficult question that deserves some some further follow up and attention.

But I will just say that, as John mentioned, the Affordable Connectivity Program, we were successful and facilitating about 20,000 residents to get connected through that program last year, which includes a $30 a month subsidy, which takes a significant bite out of the cost of internet services for low-income individuals and qualifying families.

And then I think yesterday I heard, if you do the math on that, it's about $6 million of savings that our community experienced in getting connected to that program.

And we have further activities to keep that work going in 2023. So that's, I think, a simple answer, but I do think that we can definitely follow up with Council on providing more details to that.

Thank you very much for that.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just wanted to echo your gratitude for the IT department and recognition of how much we all rely on their services, their service desk, their quick turnaround to address our needs.

But I also want to just say how grateful I am for the work that they also do on building digital equity across the city.

specifically the Affordable Connectivity Program and the Digital Equity Grants.

Just not a question, but just wanting to express my gratitude and thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I am not seeing any other questions.

So thank you very much for this presentation.

We'll have you in here more often.

We would love it.

Thank you so much.

Take care.

Okay, will the clerk please read agenda item three into the record?

Thank you very much.

I want to...

I did that wrong.

Okay, go ahead.

I'm sorry, my mic was not on.

Agenda item number three, transportation electrification strategic investment plan briefing and discussion.

Okay, thank you.

Before this meeting began, we had several people speak to this item, so I want to recognize that members of our community did come and express their participation and their appreciation for this work.

We have several people in the audience still, so thank you very much for being here.

And go ahead and make introductions, please.

And Chair, just before we get going.

Oh, sorry.

I have a 11.45 hard stop.

Okay, thank you very much.

Good, I'm on.

Thank you.

And just a heads up, I'm getting over a very, very bad case of laryngitis.

So I still sound a little funky and my voice comes in and out.

And I apologize.

It's hard to listen to, but it was way harder to listen to a few days ago.

So thanks for having us here today.

This is an exciting checkpoint on an important piece of work.

City Light, as you know, has a strategic plan with five key business strategies that are moving us towards our future.

And electrification is at the core of creating our energy future.

And We are a utility that has experienced flat or declining load growth for many, many years.

And that's because the state of Seattle has been such a leader in serving new load with that we're trying to do is make sure that we roll out electrification in a way that meets the city's needs and meets the needs of the We began developing our transportation electrification strategic investment plan.

Say that five times really fast, Council Member Stiles, and see what happens.

Not now, tonight.

We based on extensive community outreach.

It was really actually a great opportunity for the team, and they developed relationships as they were doing that outreach that continue to support us and serve us in the work that we're doing now.

We were really happy to receive the city council's approval for our plan in October of 2020. And today we're excited to share the progress and accomplishments that we've made.

Reminder that the legislature by the state of Washington was enabling legislature.

It allowed local agencies or governments to decide to opt in or not.

The City Council gave us permission and authority to do so through that strategic investment plan, and the requirement to check in with you on a regular basis is part of the plan that you approved.

So with that, I'll turn things over to David Logsdon, and maybe we wanna introduce the rest of the team.

That'd be great, and I'll do an intro first before we go down the chain.

I'm David Logsdon, Director of Electrification and Strategic Technologies for Seattle City Light.

Hello, my name is Angela Song.

I'm the Transportation Electrification Portfolio Manager for City Light.

Hi, I'm Eric McConaughey, and I'm on the Council Central staff, and I cover City Light across all kinds of issues.

Happy to be here.

And we're so excited to see Eric in person.

I'm almost beside myself.

Also, I just want you to know Angela is one of our rock stars who is really truly doing the hard work to move us forward.

So probably your first...

Is this your first time here?

Yeah, but even if she's a little nervous, she knows her stuff.

I know how you feel.

I've been at City Light three years, and this is my first time here in person.

I'm happy to be here in person.

And I wanted to take this opportunity to thank also the folks that issued public statement, not just for showing up today, but for showing up consistently on a regular basis as partners in this critical work.

So really appreciate that.

And in a moment, I'm going to hand it over to Angela, our Transportation Electrification Portfolio Manager, to get into the details of what's been accomplished thus far.

But I really wanted to start us with some additional context about that business strategy Deborah mentioned, Create Our Energy Future, and how this transportation electrification work fits in with that.

And you can please advance, I think, a couple of slides here.

We'll go to one more.

Yeah, this is a great one to anchor us on.

So this work really anchors on our grid.

in terms of decarbonization and the push for decarbonization.

In 2005, Seattle City Light became the first electric utility in the nation to achieve zero net greenhouse gas emissions in our power mix.

We've maintained that every year since.

And with the 2022 integrated resource plan update that Council actually approved late last year, we've got certainty that that will continue far into the future.

So that really creates a green grid that becomes the center of the decarbonization push.

The focus on electrification of in-uses of power flows out of that.

For the reasons that you see on the slide, that's where the majority of, that's where our emissions come from.

The transportation sector by far is the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in our region at 60%.

So electrification of our transportation sector can make a major contribution to meet our region's shared climate goals.

And on the next slide, I'll show how this work is deeply tied into our core values around equity.

So electrification of our transportation sector can actually eliminate pollution that harms the health of individuals, communities, and our environment.

And this is particularly important in the context of environmental justice communities.

Duwamish Valley, which you can see has suffered historic air quality issues on the map on the slide, is a particular area we're focused on bringing benefits to.

This area has also suffered from noise pollution, more highway impacts, flooding risk, higher climate change impacts, and overall the impacts of fossil fuel use.

So as a municipal utility, we've really got to be conscious of the role that we play in our communities.

And what we've taken from that is a continued focus on equity that really strives to reverse both the current and historical impacts that these communities are suffering from.

And also, as Deborah mentioned, hearing the needs of community from the early stages, baking those into the plans, baking those into the prioritization, as we'll hear from Angela.

And in short, our partnerships and investments can create an environment where everyone thrives in the future.

And the plan must also be responsive to the growing demand for electric vehicles in our service territory, which we can see on the next slide.

So the good news here is that the market transition around electrified transportation has been really rapidly accelerating.

As you can see on the left hand side here, we've got a really high compound annual growth rate of 26%.

for electric vehicles in our service territory.

That's tripled the adoption rate across the national average, which is also going up, to be clear.

Our customer research also shows, just in terms of customer motivation, our customers are primarily motivated in this adoption by addressing climate change.

And then right after that is the concern of affordability.

How do we afford the technologies necessary to make this transition?

And then we can compare that, as we're doing on the slide, with the emissions across modes and see where the greatest greenhouse gas benefit opportunities exist.

So you can see from the bar chart on the right that personal mobility and passenger vehicles is the largest contributor to regional greenhouse gas emissions.

And then trucking and fleets are major contributors to local air quality issues, as we saw on that prior map.

So there's a lot of local benefits to be derived from going after both personal mobility and trucking.

And City Light is looking holistically at the energy transition, as we'll see on the next slide.

So this really gets at the whole of that Create Our Energy Future approach.

These are each portfolios under that business strategy.

Alongside transportation electrification, we're aggressively pursuing building electrification.

We've got a strategy development effort underway to ensure that we're going after the greenhouse gas emissions, the 37% of them that come from the built environment with Seattle City Light Strategies.

And we've also established two years ago now our grid modernization roadmap.

So that roadmap supports key operational objectives around affordability, reliability, while also developing the skills and technologies within the utility to build that grid of the future that enables electrification, that becomes more resilient and secure into the future, especially as we grow loads.

And utility next, this is really our strategy around how do we augment and accelerate all of that work by minimizing the amount of investment necessary, by tapping into the historic levels of funding that are coming out from state and federal government right now.

And then these portfolios all interact and reinforce each other to really create our energy future.

It's an exciting area of work for us.

It's building the future for the utility.

And grid modernization is really a key aspect because the grid is the platform.

It's that decarbonized platform that supports all of this electrification load growth, supports all these new uses, gives us an increasing role in the communities we serve.

So on the next slide, I'll just take a look at that load growth at a high level.

This slide shows our load forecast with and without electrification.

Electrification puts the utility, and Deborah mentioned this, into a period of growth for which we have to prepare for now.

That requires good modernization.

It requires long-term integrated planning.

You can see our sales forecasts.

Our retail sales are going to increase at least 15% by 2040. And the sustained load growth is actually tied also to our strategies around affordability.

This puts downward pressure on electric rates so that they can remain affordable for all customers.

And transportation electrification on the next slide we'll see is not just a City Light priority.

It's really citywide, it's statewide.

And City Light is committed to aligning our implementation With all of the existing and emerging city and state climate legislation and policy goals, making transportation electrification a reality really requires close coordination amongst all the city departments you see in this wheel on the slide here, as well as local, county, national agencies, partners who gave public comment earlier, And that it's the alignment across the city family that actually paved the way for the creation of the original transportation electrification strategic investment plan.

You may hear us call it T-CIP for brevity through the presentation.

And as one Seattle City Light really shares climate goals with all of these departments.

And we've been coordinating with them closely on projects and programs and initiatives, but also in a lot of existing interdepartmental team efforts that are underway across the city and have been for a number of years now.

towards objectives like the city's transportation electrification blueprint, towards the executive order that Mayor Harrell signed on transportation emissions late last year.

That collaboration is going to just keep increasing and the number of partners necessary in this work is going to keep increasing.

And now I'm really excited to hand it over to Angela Song, our Transportation Electrification Portfolio Manager, to get into the real accomplishments that she's led her team on and led the portfolio on for the past two years.

And Chair, may I?

Before we move, yes, I just wanted to recognize that Council Member Strauss has a hard stop and people can watch the rest of this.

You can watch the rest of this on the Seattle Channel at a later time.

Go ahead.

Oh, I had a question, David.

If we could slide back one slide to your projections.

The load forecast, sure.

Yes, you know, clearly, you know, and I see that your second dot here is that we have to prepare for existing grid to scale for future load growth.

Can you just say maybe one or two sentences about what we need to do?

I know that this presentation is about transportation.

We've talked offline extensively about this, but it's helpful to understand that while the grid currently isn't set up

is the whole grid modernization roadmap I mentioned.

And I think I'd give some categories just to answer your question at a high level, because it'd take a whole other 45-minute presentation.

You don't want that.

But upgrading the grid and adding automation to it to prepare the local distribution network for it, analyzing any large-scale resource needs.

But beyond that, increasingly, it's about finding customer-side resources.

So I think somebody mentioned it in public comment, DIRS.

That's Distributed Energy Resource.

That's really finding new modular resources on the customer side figuring out ways that make sense to make investments in those, and basically putting what would be traditional T&D investments in the grid itself onto the customer side of the meter to reduce load, to explore flexibility.

Quick examples of those would be managed charging for electric vehicles, which we've got a strategy around battery storage, which we're starting to deploy now and some new different cases.

And we've actually got a separate distributed energy resource strategy coming up this year that's going to finish and update our interconnection policies, update our policies and procedures around distributed energy resources and how we support that adoption.

Wonderful.

Looking forward to it.

Thank you.

Angela, you ready to go?

Yep.

All right.

So as the use of electric vehicles grow, actually we'll go back to the first slide real quick.

Seattle City Light is working with many public and private sector partners to build and maintain vehicle charging infrastructure to make sure charging capacity keeps pace with demand.

Charging infrastructure is affordable and reliable and is equitably distributed throughout our region.

So today I'm going to share with you an overview of the transportation electrification work, TE for short, that's happening at Seattle City Light and the progress that we've made on T-CIP.

Next slide.

So City Light has been working on TE for more than eight years.

Starting in 2015, City Light conducted in-depth analysis with E3 and the Rocky Mountain Institute to really understand the potential impacts of this growing market.

City Light, along with City of Seattle leadership, has been moving towards that electrified future, like David mentioned.

And in 2019, this was a crucial year for us because of the passing of House Bill 1512, which enabled municipal electric utilities to incorporate transportation electrification into their investments and the authority to use ratepayer funds for charging infrastructure.

And Seattle City Light quickly began the engagement effort to develop our strategic plan.

And in 2020, we were able to fully start our transition to transportation electrification.

Next slide.

So since 2020, we've laid the foundation and started moving towards the vision of creating this energy future, making initial investments in our communities and developing some innovative partnerships with community organizations, businesses, businesses and governments to collaborate on some of these complex, challenging shifts.

Our strategic plan covers all modes of transportation to help ensure everyone has access to these benefits.

And our activity areas are prioritized by the outreach we conducted during the development of the strategic plan.

Next slide, please.

So back in 2019, as we began developing our strategy, the very first step was to start with the communities we serve.

We shared a draft of our strategic priorities with 25 environmental justice community leaders, over 40 stakeholder groups, including environmental justice organizations, community-based organizations in all council districts, advocacy organizations, multiple commercial, local government entities, and many more.

The concerns, needs, and aspirations that we heard from these stakeholders is directly reflected in the portfolio investment areas and the priorities as we continue with this presentation.

Next slide.

All right, so we'll start diving in.

In 2021, TSEP really focused on laying the foundations for City Light to expand and scale into our transportation electrification initiatives.

We identified key staff and moved towards stronger partnerships with communities and customers to make the utility ready for increased adoption and opportunities for reaching our environmental, economic, and equity goals.

Next slide.

So in 2021, we made major strides in directly addressing community priorities by developing partnerships that span both public and private sectors.

We initially set up project-based partnerships with agencies like King County Metro, WSDOT, and the Port of Seattle.

And these partnerships were established to identify and prioritize planning efforts to ensure we develop that reliable, flexible, and resilient solution for them.

We also worked on the Seattle, developed the Seattle Waterfront Clean Energy Strategy with the Port of Seattle and the Northwest Seaport Alliance to prioritize infrastructure and capital improvements needed to decarbonize port and waterfront emissions.

So City Light has really prioritized these initiatives due to their significant long-term benefits like reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing access to electrified transportation.

So partnerships with private sector partners, especially those who have routes that emit high levels of greenhouse gas emissions and directly in environmental justice communities have been a great strategic way for us to work towards our air quality improvements.

One of our earliest incentives was with BNF's railways and really helping them to accelerate their electrification of eight yard trucks directly replacing emissions in Tukwila.

Also in 2020, a city council actually approved a ordinance change for us called one site, one service.

And this really allowed City Light to install an additional service to a customer's property and makes it easier for them to electrify.

And this is the type of legislation that helps City Light and our customers deploy more charging infrastructure in our territory.

I know I'm short on time, and I appreciate the fact that you gave me an in-depth briefing before this committee.

As I have been reflecting since we were able to meet and go through the majority of this presentation and today, both with that chart and with this slide, what is clear and present to me is that whether or not we do upgrade our grid, these decarbonization efforts are going to occur with or without us.

And so it is our duty to manage our grid and embrace these decarbonization efforts.

I guess I didn't have a question, more of just a reflection since the last time you brought me up to speed on this.

I really appreciate your work.

Great, thank you.

We appreciate the comment and I think we would just offer agreement with it.

Yes.

I think we move to the next, great.

It seems that Council Member Herbold has a question.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Yes, on that last slide, the reference to the efforts with the Seaport Alliance and the Port of Seattle to decarbonize port operations.

I worked early in my first term to ensure that The permitting for Terminal 5 included an expectation that there would be shore power available at Terminal 5. And I know these conversations, last I heard, we were getting close.

to that going live, but there were still some, the shore power, the use of the shore power, but there were still some labor issues associated with as I understand it, associated with who pays to plug in the ships.

I'm wondering if you could just very quickly touch on that and figure this would be a good time to get a sense on where we are at.

And I know it's a huge priority, not just for Terminal 5, but for all of port operations.

And I can tee that off, you know, my understanding is that that shore power service from city light is in place.

But I do understand there's some sorts of Labor issues and I don't know that that we've got all of that knowledge that's probably more with the seaport Alliance or the board directly.

That's my understanding too, but we can get you some information council member herbal.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's important.

I mean, this is a priority for us.

So I think it's important that we keep on top of the implementation.

And I think it'd be very helpful if city light made an inquiry.

Councilmember, it's also important to remember that, yeah, we've got the issue going on with Terminal 5, and that's where we did the buried cable.

That was the creative solution, I believe.

And at the same time, we are also doing planning work, and we did with the port about hydrogen.

So there's also a separate piece of work going on where we received about $2.15 million from DOE, Department of Energy, to do planning work on how we might use hydrogen as a portside fuel in the future.

And so that's work that's currently happening involving the lab, and our hope is that based on what we learn, we'll be able to potentially roll that into whatever, whatever, hopefully that that Washington state is a leader and a winner in the hydrogen hub.

And we will have some planning work that's ahead of the game.

All right, so in 2021, we were able to cultivate the foundational partnerships needed with key community-based organizations to increase the awareness and understanding of electric vehicles.

So we contracted with two local community-based organizations and provided a training series to ensure our partners really understood the city's priorities around climate change, environmental justice, and transportation electrification.

And this approach really allowed us to develop really great and deep relationships and set us up for success in 2022. Next slide.

Oh, actually, sorry, one more.

So City Light has been interested in deploying infrastructure and environmental justice communities to really fill in the gaps in our charging network.

We conducted outreach with community-based organizations and local neighborhood groups to co-locate public fast chargers in neighborhoods.

And as an early investment, we identified a destination that people were already visiting to install public charging as an additional benefit.

And that was at the Berrien Public Library.

All right, so as a utility, we're expanding from being a clean energy provider to also serving as a fuel provider.

So City Light is really partnering with key stakeholders in our region to bring those innovative projects and charging into our service territory.

For example, David had already mentioned, we're designing a battery energy storage system for our ferry electrification project with WSDOT, and we're also working to deploy induction charging to move freight between Seattle and Portland.

We also began testing the very first bus based first bus charging base in the Seattle City Light Territory and this will lead to our first success in 2022. All right so all right moving on to 2022 we're actually really able to build from the momentum in 2021 and we're able to implement a lot of great projects and programs that our customers have access to today.

So King County Metro opened a brand new charging facility for its battery electric bus fleet and the first step towards achieving its commitment to transitioning the fleet to zero emission vehicles and powered by City Lights renewable energy.

The state-of-the-art base which can charge up to nine buses simultaneously was created with an interchangeable design that utilizes charging infrastructure from multiple manufacturers meaning that all major battery electric buses will be able to charge at any of the stations.

A total of 40 battery electric buses are currently in service, and we are designing their next bus base, which will actually bring an additional 120 buses to our region.

So this strategic partnership really with King County Metro helps us prioritize public transportation and delivers a triple win to our communities, the environment, and for the utility.

I also wanted to take a moment to thank Councilmember Nelson for attending the ribbon-cutting ceremony and supporting this high-priority project for Seattle City Light.

Alright so moving on fleet electrification is another top priority in our strategy, especially the vehicles that run through the Duwamish Valley.

When we talk about fleets we're really focusing on on road and off road vehicles so everything from sedans trucks to forklifts and yard trucks that are located in warehouses and distribution centers.

So to reflect this priority, City Light's first incentive program was really developed for commercial, local government, and non-profit fleets in our service territory.

This program offers fleet advisory services to provide technical expertise and recommendations that are specific for each of their fleets.

And we also are offering charging incentives that can be applied to off-road and on-road charging infrastructure.

So, so far our advisory services has identified, of the customers that have come through the program, has identified over 92% of the vehicles assessed would be cost effective to convert to electric vehicles.

And converting those vehicles could reduce up to about 26,000 metric tons of carbon.

And this is equivalent to about 2.9 million gallons of gasoline.

So we're really excited to see this program grow given the potential greenhouse gas emission reductions that we can achieve with this program.

And now that we have our fleet electrification program available, we really wanted to shift gears towards medium and heavy duty electrification.

We covered this a little bit earlier, but we really want to focus on this sector because of the contributions to PM 2.5.

And if you recall in the health impact slide that David had up earlier, there's a significant concentration in South Seattle.

So we've partnered with OSC, the Office of Sustainability and Environment, to help develop their medium-duty, heavy-duty electric vehicle incentive program.

The city is really focusing on drayage truck electrification, which are short-haul trucks that move freight from the port to distribution centers.

So City Light is responsible for identifying and constructing the charging stations to meet the program's needs, and we'll begin designing that infrastructure later this year.

All right, so expanding at-home and near-home charging for multifamily residents is another top priority in our strategy.

In 2022, we worked on developing a multi-pronged approach here.

We expanded our existing fast charging network, designed and built a multifamily incentive program, and launched a new pilot to install level two chargers in the right-of-way.

Our personal mobility programs will expand these charging options in both residential and public spaces.

This is really important because we know about 52% of Seattle City Light customers are renters and live in apartments and condos or even co-ops, and these are one of the most challenging places to electrify.

So as we expand Seattle's public charging network, we're really focused on filling in the gaps of our existing network.

Seattle's housing stock frequently lacks off-street parking, so to support convenient home charging and multi...

Sorry, let me start here.

Seattle's housing stock frequently lacks off-street parking to support convenient home charging, and multifamily housing is getting more dense and increasing.

So increasing the accessibility in the public charging sector is really important.

So City Light currently owns 19 electric vehicle charging stations and we are focusing on building even more new fast and level two charging stations.

And even within our own charging network, we're starting to see an increase of customer utilization as we're seeing more and more EVs on the road.

So the last thing I wanted to cover here is about an exciting development and our expansion in our public charging program.

So City Light partnered with SDOT, so the Seattle Department of Transportation, and released a new curbside level two pilot, which really aims to increase accessibility for our residents who don't have access to the off-street EV charging.

We rolled out this program with a really unique opt-in process and received nearly 2,000 applications, showing great demand for this type of program and pilot.

City Light is currently ramping up for construction and installation of these sites here in the next few months.

Next slide.

All right, so as you heard in David's introduction, preparing the existing power grid for our growing use of electric vehicles is really top of mind.

The transportation team works in close collaboration with our grid modernization team and other industry leaders to ensure that we're piloting tools, technologies, and systems that help us improve the grid's flexibility and resiliency so we can be sure to deliver power where and when it's needed.

So to plan for reliable infrastructure policies and systems, we really need to co-manage these complexities with our external partners.

Some examples of this work include developing the utilities managed EV charging strategy, participating in the EPRI.

So EPRI is the Electrical Power Research Institute's Fleet Electrification Planning Assessment and the West Coast Clean Transit Corridor.

Maybe I'll just highlight one here.

The West Coast Clean Transit Corridor is an ongoing collaborative among 16 utilities to support the development of charging stations and facilities along I-5 for medium and heavy duty freight haulers.

And as always, we have an eye to test, as an eye to test out new and innovative technologies.

We recently, in 20, sorry, in 2022, we completed an electric pedestal.

What, sorry, our completion, sorry.

All right, let me restart here.

Our completed installation of an electric pedestal was unveiled at Denny Park on Earth Day and allowed food trucks to leave their gas generators behind and use quiet, pollution-free electricity instead.

And so we're really excited about this project because of the marketing campaign and engagement opportunities to grow this pilot.

All right, so in 2022, we were able to build on the community relationships that we established in the previous year.

We conducted direct outreach at local festivals and facilitated several focus groups around local youth and workforce development needs in the clean energy market transition.

We were also able to bring some of our community-based partners, which are present today, to an industry-leading conference, and we even got to meet EPA Administrator Casey Sixkiller.

In addition to networking with regional and national leaders in transportation, our partners were able to drive electric vehicles and learn more from the fleet industry.

And for many, it was actually their first experience in test driving an electric vehicle.

And last, economic development is a key equity outcome for T-CIP.

And to that end, we have engaged with multiple WEMBI vendors to support our efforts.

Earlier, you heard about ChargerHelp, which is a woman and BIPOC-owned business that hires and trains local electric vehicle supply equipment technicians and contributes to local workforce development.

And we are utilizing their services to support, maintain, and repair all of our City Light-owned chargers.

Bringing in more WEMBI vendors into our program will be a continued focus for us in the future.

Once the groundwork was laid in 2021, T-CIP massively scaled up our citywide engagement in 2022 with neighborhood investments, deeper engagement around customer needs and responsiveness to our cross-coordination.

Our program launches in 2022. We're also in direct response to community priorities and meeting customers where they are at, such as the curbside charging program.

We also conducted some high outreach efforts at the Seattle Auto Show.

And lastly, we conducted interviews and research on other personal mobility needs to continue building our understanding around the sector.

So this is just a quick little recap of our preview of 2023. We're really focusing on new transportation emission reduction initiatives through the recent executive order signed by Mayor Harrell, implementing Washington State's Clean Fuels Program, and continuing to center community in our investments.

So the Clean Fuels Program is actually a major undertaking for the utility because it can generate additional revenues to invest back into transportation decarbonization and can really expand our ability to invest beyond charging infrastructure.

Next slide.

You can move on to the next slide.

So in closing, T-CIP really has many focus areas, but there are really four major benefits that I want to leave with you today.

Next slide, please.

Transportation electrification is an opportunity for decarbonization and it's crucial work to meet our local and regional climate goals.

The impact is really multi-modal.

So it spans across all modes of transportation, you know, from the buses to vehicles, even to electric bikes.

opportunity for equity here.

We're really addressing historic and present-day environmental, economic, and social inequities, and our portfolio will continue to respond to this.

And we're also engaging and supporting customers at all levels through our partnerships.

City Light is really poised to be a good partner here, and these partnerships really help us increase the impact of our work and the speed of adoption that we're seeing in our service territory.

Yeah, just want to thank you for the time and yeah, ready for any questions you might have.

So I just want to acknowledge that given that 60 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions are coming from vehicles, this is extremely important to meeting our climate action goals.

And, you know, when I think about when I think that when one hears about electric vehicles, one thinks about personal passenger cars.

Right.

But as I believe it was Leah from Climate Solutions, maybe somebody else, we're talking ferries and buses and garbage trucks, et cetera.

And so this is a lot of work.

And creating the capacity for charging is crucial.

I mean, so you're doing this work.

And it's it's outside the traditional realm of what are you an electric utility usually does.

But I just want to say this.

This is crucial.

And one thing when it does come to the passenger vehicles, sometimes when I talk about City Light, we need to expand our electric vehicle charging station network.

A lot of times I hear, well, those are very, the cars themselves are very expensive.

And while that is true, we still have to focus on making sure that people that live all over the city can charge their personal vehicles.

And so for that, I think that we do need to work to partner with the private sector charging stations just to make sure that we do attain our equitable our equity goals in terms of where this network is built up.

So it looks like you would like to respond.

Yeah, I'd love to.

And the broader response I wanted to make to your comments was also around, I loved what you were saying about the new function that utilities have here.

And Angela's last slide mentioned the Clean Fuel Program, which the state just rolled out.

And City Light actually just registered in that and the technical term we're registering under is clean fuel provider.

And I kind of I just love that because it's it's something that bakes right into the identity of the transition that's happening with utilities.

We're providing clean fuels to our customers and that's that's just kind of an honoring thing to feel.

And on your concept of the public-private partnerships, that's been a key aspect.

You know, Angela mentioned BNSF Railways, the MOU with the ferries.

But then there's the other aspect, which is, you know, we've got our own infrastructure we're deploying.

We've got the DC fast chargers.

We're starting to deploy level twos in the right away in partnership with SDOT.

But the other aspect there is supporting the third-party market, making sure that as they go through our processes, that we're fully supporting that and not standing as a barrier.

We already changed some policies.

I think two years ago, we changed something called one site, one service, which we found was limiting to new service for EB install, EB charging equipment.

And now we've got something that was actually referenced in the mayor's executive order last year, which is the transportation, electrification, infrastructure master plan.

So this is coordination across city departments working with the consultant to say, how do our processes currently stand in regards to electrification, infrastructure, and what could we do better?

And we're actually wrapping that up this month, right?

This month, and we're taking those recommendations.

I'm going to take that into the reporting that goes into our follow-up from that executive order.

So that's a key aspect of partnership and I'm glad you highlighted it.

Thank you.

Do you have any remarks?

No, I just think these are all examples of a super exciting time as we move towards decarbonization.

And another exciting event this week, I think it was Tuesday, was the first auction for credits under the Climate Commitment Act.

And what that does is it requires certain we're going to continue to do that.

We're going to continue to work with utilities and entities to purchase offsets for their carbon emitting resources or use.

And, you know, and over time the cost of those will increase and theoretically the number of them required will decrease.

But in this first auction, it was $300 million I think was what the state sold those offsets for.

So I know that there's some because there are certainly a lot of folks who are looking for money under those programs and we shall see how it goes.

We saw a really interesting proposal even yesterday that had to do with charging infrastructure and electric cars for folks who are income challenged, so yeah.

And I'll just quickly add, you know, the affordability ideas is key for us thinking about how do we make these vehicles more affordable and to Deborah's point, there's there's stacking incentives coming through.

There's funding at the federal level.

We've got the Inflation Reduction Act.

which is now also gonna, for the first time, offer upfront incentives for used vehicles, used EVs, and there's income qualifications under the Inflation Reduction Act for those incentive funds.

Climate Commitment Account, Clean Fuels Program, these are all avenues for us to use to directly address the upfront cost barrier of electric vehicles and transportation.

And we do know it's an issue and we think about it all the time.

I'm sure you do.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much.

I have two questions.

First, and if you covered this, I apologize.

I think maybe I just, if you did cover it, I think I need to just understand a little bit better of how we're sort of matching the need for electrification and our environmental justice goals geographically and on Slide six, there was the map that showed what we know that air quality is worse in neighborhoods like Delridge South Park and the interior of South Seattle.

you know, I mentioned earlier the effort to require shore power at Terminal 5. We have a lot of port surrounding neighborhoods that are low-income that are will be the beneficiaries of electrification of our ports.

But I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about how this map guides where we add infrastructure and where arguably it is most needed.

I don't want to steal your thunder, Angela, but I'm happy to jump off and lead.

I You know this this area and the environmental justice communities are really the primary area focus.

And I think the outreach and engagement side and build relationships with Community based organizations is key to that from has been key to that from the beginning.

And then it's really, like you said, really aligning our investments with benefits in these communities.

The fleet electrification program that Angela rolled out last year, that actually has higher tiers of incentives for fleets that operate through these communities.

So we're really trying to target and make sure that we're investing primarily to the benefit of our environmental justice communities.

Do you want to add anything to that?

Well, maybe just to clarify, they don't have the higher tier access to the incentives, but they have access to potential make ready funds.

And so we're using this map, maybe I'll also point out, we're really looking at the state to lead in this as well.

They released the HEAL Act, which really meant, you know, it was the development of this map and we're utilizing tools like this to help us center those investments.

And so if you're kind of in the higher range, which is like the nine and 10 area, we're trying to like strategically put our investments in those areas.

And even, I'm sorry,

I was just going to say four.

If Moore was up here, she would also say that we've been putting, as we've been looking at our own funding requests, particularly on the federal side, these guys have put a lot of work into understanding community benefits, and most all of what we're submitting for falls under the President's and the Administration's Justice 40 Initiative, which means we're really trying to submit projects or develop projects that are responsive to that, even as we bring them forward.

I was going to bring up Justice 42, so yeah.

Is there a follow-up?

Yeah, a follow-up on that, and then I have a different question.

I seem to recall that OSC and City Light were working jointly on developing a freight corridor project for clean trucks.

The communities that I represent, South Park and now Georgetown and Soto, are very, very impacted by large trucks going through their neighborhoods.

And I recall that there was an effort to try to incentivize the purchase of electric trucks.

Yeah, so OSC is leading that project.

It's their medium heavy duty, I think it's the electric vehicle incentive, and that's where we're focusing on trying to electrify drayage trucks in our region.

They're leading some outreach efforts as well with the African Chamber of Commerce and DRCC as part of that team, and when City Light is really coming in to provide the charging infrastructure and making sure we can support those vehicles when they're here.

Great, thank you.

So the City Lights involvement relates to the charging infrastructure again.

Very, very, very helpful.

And then on the question of, wait, can you, go ahead.

I just said we're working really closely with them and we're actually on a kind of phase two in terms of how that project work is moving forward.

So it's an exciting opportunity and it's a lot about affordability, as you all know, Council Member.

Yeah.

So then my second question relates to the curbside level 2 pilot and public charging.

On slide 21, a constituent recently wrote to me about the public electric charging pilot program requirements.

And that constituent had a concern about who the owner of the the provider chosen in the pilot is currently.

I believe the ownership has changed since the pilot was initiated in 2017. The technology was selected through a competitive bidding process and one bidder met the open charge point call standard.

And my understanding is that the equipment that the Seattle City Light uses is OCPP compliant.

But moving forward, just this question around the current owner of the company who does the provider.

I'm wondering, how will Citi like assessing the network specifications and products available on the market?

What factors will you be considering in any future competitive bidding processes?

I believe, and I recall the exchange you're talking about, and I know The provider that we have been using was purchased by a larger company and I think we did work with your staff to get an answer back on that.

And I think we're at a point now with public charging where we've got these initial investments.

We're at a point of collaboration with all of the city departments.

And we're also needing to really look at how do we rapidly scale up.

So we've been, I think we've started our public charging effort to develop the strategy for the future.

Do you wanna comment on how we're thinking about this?

Yeah, yeah.

So earlier this year, so the current charging stations that we had were a part of the pilot.

We've closed that down and started doing an evaluation of exactly what you're talking about, council member.

We're just about to complete that.

We started redesigning what this new program would look like.

We're starting to look at what those specifications ought to be and how that should support the program and how we scale, and also keeping in mind what the third-party market might look like as well.

We don't have a fully designed concept yet, but our consultant team and our project teams are starting to pencil that out.

Once we do, we'll go into a larger solicitation RFP process that'll address the items you're bringing up.

Thank you very much.

If there are any further questions, Council Member Herbold, maybe you can forward it to staff here.

We are at...

They covered it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any other questions or closing points that you would like to make?

Well, I appreciate that everybody has stayed a little bit longer to discuss this.

This has been a while on the schedule and I look forward to learning more.

So thank you very, very much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

And thank you for the extra time, Chair Nelson and council members.

Thank you.

Well, while you're going, I do have to say that I did go to, speaking of ribbon cuttings, a ribbon cutting at a charging station near the Othello station.

And what was interesting about that was that it was an economic development opportunity for the little stores that were in the location.

where those were installed because people have to do something while they're waiting.

And it was an opportunity to support the local small businesses there.

All right, so unless there is further business and I am not seeing any hands raised, this concludes the March 8th meeting of the Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee.

And I will close at 12.12.

Thank you very much, everyone.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Bye.