Seattle City Council Transportation & Utilities Committee 42121

Hi, I'm sorry.

I was trying to get into the meeting.

I am now here.

I am present.

Hi, Council President Gonzalez.

Likewise, me.

Great.

Thanks, everybody, for being here.

Next item is approval of the agenda.

If there's no objection, today's proposed agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We will be considering legislation from each of our four large departments in our committee today.

SDOT and the City Auditor are here to present on the status of bridge repair, maintenance, and seismic updates.

We'll also consider how to spend the new $20 vehicle license fee revenues, although we're not taking a vote on that today.

We'll continue our conversation about Seattle Public Utilities' strategic business plan and path for utility rates.

We will have a public hearing about an easement from City Light to King County, which will help us with the trail that we're building in South Seattle.

The Information Technology Department is here to update us on their efforts to implement the Internet for All Action Plan.

And finally, we have an ordinance authorizing a cable franchise partial ownership transfer.

I did want to clear up some questions regarding item two on today's committee agenda.

That's the item for how to invest new dollars from vehicle license fees.

This council increased that funding source as soon as we could last year because we know transportation needs are large.

in our growing city.

And the bill before us today from our Seattle Department of Transportation was crafted after meeting with many stakeholders.

I want to thank everybody for their participation in that process.

That bill, Council Bill 120042, authorizes spending those new dollars just for this year, 2021. That's what the original underlying bill does.

And the amendment that is before us simply asks SDOT to report back to the council, and that amendment is very brief.

It says the Seattle Department of Transportation director is directed to provide counsel a list of transportation projects that could be funded by $100 million of bond financing in 2022. At minimum, the list shall include a title, short description, and cost estimate for each project.

The project list shall identify a minimum of $75 million of bridge maintenance, bridge repair, and bridge replacement projects.

The project list shall be delivered to council in writing by September 30, 2021. That's what that amendment does.

So it's not to authorize the issuance of bonds today.

It's simply asking SDOT to come back with a plan of how we can get more money out the door faster, to benefit communities faster, create jobs faster, to address our infrastructure needs faster.

So SDOT just come back in September with a potential plan to invest the $100 million for transportation infrastructure instead of trickling it out over $7 million each year.

And yes, there's an emphasis on multimodal bridges for a variety of reasons, but the real decision would be made during our fall budget process.

We can see the bigger picture of transportation resources and transportation needs.

We'll talk more about the benefits and questions on that amendment when we get to item two, but I just wanted to clarify the limited scope of the one-year legislation and what the one-page amendment actually would do.

And we're not voting on that legislation today.

We want to hear it twice, so it'll be back at our committee on May 5. We do have a bunch of speakers signed up today.

We have about 21 speakers.

Typically, our public comment period is 20 minutes, but I'm going to set it up for 30 minutes, and everybody will have a minute and a half to speak, or 90 seconds to speak.

I ask that everyone...

So at this time, we will open the remote general public comment period.

I ask that everybody please be patient as we operate this online system.

We're continuously looking for ways to fine-tune this process of public participation.

It remains the strong intent of the City Council to have public comment regularly included on meeting agendas.

However, the City Council reserves the right to modify these public comment periods at any point if we deem that the system is being abused or is unsuitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently and in a manner in which we are able to conduct our necessary business.

I'll moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

Public comment period for this meeting will be up to 30 minutes, and each speaker will be given one and a half minutes to speak.

I'll call on two speakers at a time and in the order in which they're registered on the council's website.

If you've not registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of this public comment period by going to the council's website, Seattle.gov slash council, C-O-U-N-C-I-L.

The public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.

Once I call a speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone, and an automatic prompt of, you have been unmuted, will be the speaker's cue that it is their turn to speak.

And the speaker must press star six to begin speaking.

Star six.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item you are addressing.

As a reminder, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

Once you hear the chime, we ask you begin to wrap up your comments.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of their allotted time, the speaker's microphone will be muted so we can call on the next speaker.

Once you have completed your public comment, we ask that you disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options on the agenda.

If you're calling about the city light easement, please wait until later, because we actually have a public hearing on that item separately that's required.

All right, the regular public comment period for this committee meeting is now open.

We'll begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six before speaking.

We'll start with Kelsey Mesher, followed by Nicolina Miller.

Please, Kelsey.

Hi.

Thank you, Councilmembers, for the opportunity.

This is Kelsey Mesher, Advocacy Director of Transportation Choices Coalition.

I'm here today to support the stakeholder-led Vehicle Licensing Fee Spend Plan and also to express some concerns over the new proposal to bond the funds and change investments.

You know, we participated with a diverse group of stakeholders in developing the Spend Plan.

We and others felt this was a very strong and equitable process and resulted in a holistic plan that was based in compromise, took a systems approach, and had a really strong focus on equity.

The spend plan prioritizes needed repairs for sidewalks and curb ramps and other infrastructure.

It prioritizes neighborhoods with lower access to opportunity, and it makes investments that would make it safer and more sustainable to get around our city.

We're concerned that this late proposal disregards this important process work.

When a diverse set of stakeholders feels adequately engaged, heard, and proud of a collaborative product, we need to make an extra effort to uphold and champion that.

And we're concerned that this would undermine it.

We do really appreciate that bonding the VLF would potentially help protect the funds, but we have concerns about the high cost In the end, Seattle taxpayers would pay more to service the debt than they would see benefits from non-bridge investments.

And when all is said and done, we would still have hundreds of millions in outstanding needs for bridge funding.

We understand the need to maintain bridges, and perhaps the scope, what we really need to do is take a look at how to adequately address this issue in coordination with state and federal strategies.

But today, we please ask you to honor the work of SDOT and the stakeholder group and use these very hard-won BLF dollars to implement the original spend plan.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Kelsey.

Next up, we have Nikolina Miller, followed by Jonathan Hopkins.

Nikolina, please.

Good morning.

Good morning, council members.

I am Nicolina Miller, and I am representing University Heights Center in regards to Internet for All.

We are supportive of initiatives that bridge Seattle's digital divide.

Digital literacy is still a challenge for Seattleites who are low income, who have limited English proficiency, have a disability, are older adults, and are within BIPOC communities.

This digital divide has only been exacerbated by the pandemic, and it is critical that we continue to invest in these types of programs, like Internet for All, that provide much-needed resources to underserved neighborhoods.

U Heights provides scholarships for over 500 of our families to participate in school and after-school programs.

We are also a home to programs and services for people who are unhoused.

Today, our Internet is spotty, and it's been a barrier for U Heights and its dozen resident organizations.

Councilmember Peterson's office connected us with the Comcast Lift Zone program, and we will now be able to offer free internet to our community.

Additionally, they also connected us with UW graduate program that will allow us to serve as a free hotspot for the surrounding neighborhood.

This expanded service is critical to the success of our community organizations, as well as the families and people we serve.

We support the investment in programs that improve infrastructure and access to technology.

Thank you for allowing me to speak today.

Thank you, Nicolina.

One moment.

Next up, we have Jonathan Hopkins followed by Ben Brasom-Lee.

Go ahead, Jonathan.

Good morning, chair and members of the committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I'm Jonathan Hopkins, speaking as Executive Director of Seattle Subway and addressing BLF funding changes.

At Seattle Subway, we believe every neighborhood in our city deserves a walkable connection to great separated mass transit.

As the committee considers changes to the BLF spending plan, we have a very specific request.

The council should keep SDOT's existing recommendation for $3 million to go towards modal plans, including a transit master plan with a critical rail component.

The current plan is obsolete.

It's important that our city have a vision for what our light rail system looks like in the future beyond ST3 because ST3 still leaves a majority of our city disconnected from the light rail system.

That means a majority of our urban villages.

If we do not, there will be decisions made over the next two years that could permanently prevent key neighborhoods from being added in the future.

That's because our downtown, $4 billion downtown transit tunnel that's being planned right now will not allow additional lines to be added in the future, such as a line up Aurora or replacement for the metro 8 into the central district or service to Georgetown or South Park.

Once finalized in 2023, these decisions will be final and cannot be undone because they're building a tunnel under our city with no off ramps for this future line.

As a city, we need to know what comes next so we can champion for the connected city that we want to have.

If we don't do that now, we will regret our mistakes later.

Please ensure that changes to the VLF spending plan do not leave us flying blind.

Please ensure that $3 million is allocated to enable Seattle to have a transportation and transit vision.

If we don't stand up for a thoughtful, updated vision for what our cities need, who will?

Thank you.

Thank you, Jonathan.

Next up is Bren Braselme, followed by Sam Ferreira.

Go ahead, Ben.

Good morning, Council Members.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to speak today.

I'm Ben Braselme, Operating Director at Seattle Subway.

Today I'm asking that Council please budget immediate funding for the $3 million Transportation Master Plan update, specifically to identify future light rail corridors citywide.

And I'm also advocating on behalf of Future Crosstown light rail service for every single council district in our city.

Sound Transit 3 is an excellent start, but if we don't, as a city, create a vision for light rail that we need in the future as our city and region grows, we couldn't possibly connect to the new tunnel being built downtown as part of Sound Transit 3. Fast, safe, convenient crosstown travel is one of the biggest travel issues for most people in our city.

And crosstown travel affects my family daily because my immediate family lives in Northwest Seattle, my future in-laws are in the area near Millet Park, and I live in between my fiancé, who works at Swedish Hospital's First Hill campus.

None of us own a car, and we travel east and west for most of our trips.

Like all of our city's difficult crosstown travel corridors, the Madison and Denny corridors are already approaching pre-pandemic gridlock, and many of us were not able to stop traveling along those corridors even during the pandemic.

As everyone resumes their daily lives, crosstown travel will continue to be excruciating.

The city needs far better crosstown travel options in every city council district.

And if we don't build the new downtown tunnel correctly, we will never be able to feasibly expand light rail service to the Madison Corridor or to the King County Metro 8 Corridor on Denny Way.

Thank you very much, Ben.

And now we've got up Sam Ferrara and also Renee Stamp.

Go ahead, Sam.

Hi, my name is Sam Ferrara, and I'm one of the co-chairs of the Move Seattle Levy Oversight Committee.

As discussed earlier in this meeting, back in November, the City Council passed legislation adding $20 to vehicle licensing fees.

Part of this legislation instructed SDOT to work with certain stakeholders to develop a plan for how these new revenues would be spent.

I was one of those stakeholders.

I participated in multiple meetings with SDOT and also got input from my levy oversight committee.

I believe the spend plan SDOT transmitted to the city council with an accurate representation of the stakeholder input.

The spend plan included funding for sidewalk, streets, and even 24% for bridge repairs.

The recent amendment to the spend plan proposed by some council members does not align with the stakeholder input I heard.

This amendment proposes 75 percent of funds be used for bridges and also the use of bonding.

This was not discussed with stakeholders.

Unfortunately we have more transportation needs than we can fund.

I would encourage the City Council to try to find additional funding for these bridge projects from other sources as I do believe these are critical projects to complete.

I'm here today to caution the City Council in deviating greatly from the stakeholders recommendation as this could lead to distrust within the community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sam.

Next up, we've got Renee Statton and then Patrick Taylor.

Go ahead, Renee.

And Renee, you want to press star six.

Can you hear?

Yes.

OK, can you hear me now?

Yes.

OK, perfect.

Thank you.

Hi.

And I just wanted to thank you.

Good morning, Chair and members of the committee, and thank you for this opportunity to speak.

My name is Renee Staton, and I'm a resident of North Seattle, and I've been organizing around land use and transportation issues for many years.

And I wanted to speak specifically around North Seattle in regard to the VLS discussion.

We all know that stations at Northgate and 130th and 145th won't be enough.

That line or a station in Ballard are going to leave a lot of people out, especially in North Seattle.

And if we want to make it so that people no longer have to drive, we need more transit in North Seattle.

We need more trains in North Seattle.

I've ridden the E line, and that bus is packed.

It leaves people behind regularly.

It's a great service, but the demand on the Aurora corridor needs a train already.

As we try to revision our community along the corridor, we need to serve it with high-capacity rail infrastructure.

So my ask is to please fund $3 million for SDOT to complete a citywide light rail plan by the end of 2022 so that our city has a plan for the future.

Thank you.

Thank you, Renee.

Next up, Patrick Taylor, followed by Ingrid Elliott.

Go ahead, Patrick.

Hi.

Hi.

My name is Patrick Taylor, and I'm commenting on the vehicle licensing funds.

I'm co-chair of the Seattle Police Advisory Board, and the representative on the Levee Oversight Committee.

So today I'm speaking as an individual.

Recently we were asked by SDOT to participate in a council-mandated public outreach process on how to spend the vehicle licensing fee money, along with numerous other transportation and equity-focused stakeholders.

At the end of the process, I feel like the plan produced, which spends 75% of the money on walking, biking, and transit, reflected both the feedback that was given as part of the outreach process, and aligned with the city's values as embodied in adopted policies, such as the Climate Action Plan, Vision Zero, the Bicycle, Transit, and Pedestrian Master Plans, and the Race and Social Justice Initiative.

What we're hearing now is that that work will be ignored, and the new plan will spend 75% of the money on bridge maintenance, and a whopping $40 million on interest payments will be proposed instead.

I'm asking today that the council not ignore the work of stakeholders, and please accept the spend plan as proposed by SDOT, which supports funding for much-needed investments in walking, transit, and biking.

While not as flashy or expensive as spending money on bridges, these small projects will support the health and safety of Seattle residents, reflect our climate commitments, provide jobs in our community, and help fulfill unfunded commitments the council has made.

Thank you for your time and the work you do for the city.

Thank you, Patrick.

Next up, we've got Ingrid Elliott, followed by Billy Hetherington.

Go ahead, Ingrid.

Hi, my name is Ingrid Elliott, and I represent 350 Seattle, a climate justice organization, and I'm here to comment on the BLS spend plan.

At 350, we find it deeply troubling that on the eve of Earth Day, council is proposing cutting $80 million in multimodal funding.

These are the transportation dollars that we need to reduce climate-destroying transportation emissions.

Transportation accounts for 45% of our climate pollution in Washington State.

Infrastructure for low or no carbon mobility like biking and walking is crucial to a healthy climate future, and it makes our city a better place to live now.

This is particularly true for the one in four residents who don't drive.

We support the original SDOT proposal that invests 75% in walking, biking, and transit projects and 25% in bridge repair.

Council Member Peterson's proposal to invert these investments is the opposite of what we need.

On a personal note, my husband is a bike commuter.

He has a near miss with cars about once a week.

He's also a doctor and sees at least one patient a week who's had an accident directly attributable to a lack of separated bike lanes.

And he regularly talks to folks who want to bike rather than drive to work.

but they don't do so because they don't feel safe on our roads.

Bike infrastructure saves lives and it reduces wear and tear on the roads and the climate by reducing the number of cars out there.

Finally, these active transportation projects, especially bike lanes, supply more jobs per project dollar than the larger projects such as roads and bridges.

Thank you, Ingrid.

Next up, we have Billy Hetherington, followed by Katie Wilson.

Go ahead, Billy.

Morning, Chair and members of the committee.

My name is Billy Hetherington, a member of Laborers Local 242. I want to take a moment to speak in support of Councilmember Peterson's amendment to Council Bill 120042, which was also co-sponsored by Councilmembers Mosqueda, Herbold, and Lewis.

This council went a long way in acknowledging the need for increased preservation and maintenance funding to the city's infrastructure with the passage of the $20 VLF in November.

While this funding stream is small, given the size and scope of the city's needs around bridge maintenance and preservation that was spelled out in the audit that was performed by the city last year, allowing this funding stream to be bonded to maximize its potential will go a long way in funding the backlog.

of bridge preservation and maintenance, as well as provide a significant source of upfront funding in other areas that were called out in the stakeholding process that was performed over the last couple months.

While each of these needs talked about during the stakeholding process are important to the safe mobility of Seattle residents around the city, spending such a small amount of revenue across several areas does nothing to fix any of the glaring needs the city has.

The city cannot have another one of its major pieces of infrastructure shut down because of a lack of maintenance funding.

So by bonding these funds to tackle a glaring need that, again, was spelled out over the last year's audit, will not only bring hundreds, if not thousands, of living wage jobs to Seattle as we climb out of a pandemic, but go a long way in shoring up the need that was defined during the recent stakeholdering process.

I thank you for your time and consideration of this amendment.

Thank you, Billy.

Next up, we've got Katie Wilson followed by Deb Parker.

Go ahead, Katie.

Hello, council members.

This is Katie Wilson speaking on behalf of the Transit Riders Union.

We share many of the concerns that have been expressed so far by speakers about the proposed amendment to the vehicle license fee funding plan.

We are concerned by the proposed switch from 75% of funds to go to safe streets, sidewalks, active transportation, and multimodal planning to only 25%.

We're also concerned by the proposal to bond this revenue Bonding can make sense, but given that $75 million is only a very small part of the needs identified for bridges, it's unclear what this path will enable that is worth sacrificing $40 million of this funding source over 20 years to interest payments.

We're also concerned that the SDOT process that many of our organizations participated in would be basically tossed out in this new proposal.

So we ask that you support the SDOT proposal, or if you think that there is a real reason for bonding, it needs to be very clear what that path will enable that could not be done with just using the money as it comes in.

Thank you.

Thank you, Katie.

Next up, we've got Deb Barker, followed by Pedro Espinosa.

Go ahead, Deb.

Deb Barker's up next.

Press star six.

Deb Barker, we can't hear you.

Press star six.

We'll go ahead and move on to the next speaker, Pedro Espinosa, and then we'll come back to Deb Barker at the end of the list here.

So go ahead, Pedro Espinosa, thank you.

Yes, thank you, council members and council chair for allowing me to speak on behalf of the measure that we're looking at, the amendment to council bill 120042. I am in favor of speaking for it.

My name again is Pedro Espinosa.

I am with the Pacific Northwest Carpentries Union.

And like I said, I am in favor of this amendment.

It is important that we invest in our infrastructure as a way out of this possible downturn in our economy that we are facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

We have bridges and roads and other key infrastructure elements that we need to repair.

By investing in infrastructure, we can create jobs that will strengthen our communities.

And also, we can't forget that if we lose another bridge like the Skagit Valley Bridge that was lost in 2013, the collapse, it really impacted our commerce and how we move our goods and services throughout the state.

We're also looking at the West Seattle Bridge that needs to be repaired, and that's another issue that we're facing.

And I know that there's a lot of comments saying that we need to add bike lanes and other transportation, but if we don't repair the infrastructure that we have now, we could see failure, and it could impact the region even worse than it did before.

So I strongly urge that we look and recommend and pass this amendment.

in favor, as it also creates jobs for our communities.

And again, we speak about trying to get out of this possible downturn due to COVID-19 last year.

So by creating jobs, it only strengthens our communities and makes us better.

Thank you.

Thank you, Pedro, for your remarks.

And next up, we've got Curtis Emeril and Eleni Case.

Go ahead, Curtis.

Hello.

Let me get my notes.

It's quick.

Hello, committee members and participants.

I'm Curtis Heimerl, assistant professor in the Paul J. Allen School of Computer Science at UW and constituent of District 4. I'm here to speak to the Seattle Internet for All initiative.

Internet infrastructure has known equity issues in Seattle, and this situation should be improved.

My group has been working with the organizers of the Internet for All initiative to deploy community-based CBRS access, a community-based CBRS access network among marginalized populations in Seattle.

And while our progress has been great, and the city of Seattle support fantastic, we encourage the council to continue to consider permissive policies that facilitate people and organizations deploying community-based networks, specifically those not for commercial purposes.

We also encourage the expansion of fiber and high-capacity network infrastructure in lower-income neighborhoods, where it is critical infrastructure to networks like ours, and it is not available to many households and businesses.

Thank you.

Thank you, Curtis.

Next up, we've got Eleni Case, followed by Eugene Wasserman.

Go ahead, Eleni.

I am Eleni Casey, an enrolled tribal member of the Tlingit Nation, Raven Clan, and an active community member of the Transportation Equity Work Group, TEW, for SDOT.

The City of Seattle asked SDOT to engage with community, and they did so with great care and with our time and effort.

I attended all of the VLF meetings and voted on multiple aspects of the transportation spending plan.

We spent many hours meeting together with ESSA and we had meaningful discussions.

So I was thoroughly surprised to read that the city council's press release of April 19th stated that 75% of the VLF funds would be going to bridges.

This clearly shows that our recommendations for the spending plan are not being taken seriously.

25% of the VLF is not enough to address all of the other equitable transportation needs.

When the TEW met, we came up with a very equitable spending plan, 28% of funds to save streets, 28% to save sidewalks, and 24% to strong bridges.

In contrast, your press release is proposing 75% to bridges.

How is that being equitable?

was all of our effort and time a waste of our time and effort.

Equity needs to be centered on all financial decisions because of historical racism, displacement, lack of access and vulnerable communities of BIPOC people and how we've been excluded in the decision-making processes in the past.

I am pro-union and would hope that they would not take 75% of the VLF funds.

BIPOC people have families who live and work within city and many live outside of King County because of gentrification.

We do need high paying jobs with benefits and we also have the skills to do transportation and other work.

If you pass the 75%, you are undercutting our equity time and effort.

Your actions have consequences and I hope that we are not the ones to continue to suffer the consequences of your decisions because of that.

Thank you.

Next up, we've got Eugene Wasserman, followed by Gordon Peddleford.

Go ahead, Eugene.

Good morning, council members.

This is Eugene Wasserman from the North Seattle Industrial Association.

We would like to join our partners in labor supporting Council Member Peterson and the other three council members' amendment to Council Bill 12042, Bridges are in sad shape in the city.

Our businesses, many of which are union, depend on transportation over these bridges to move their freight and employ their people.

So having bridges that work is very important to us and to our business remaining in the city and the city having a blue-collar labor base.

We spent many years working on drawer bridges, particularly in the city.

the Fremont Bridge and the Valor Bridge.

And from our work, we know that those kind of bridges are multi-mode bridges.

They provide pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit availability to people of all walks and kinds in the city.

A bridge going down affects everyone in the city and has a great deal of impact.

It's important for the city to maintain these bridges and to start repairing them before they fall down.

The West Seattle Bridge should be a wake-up to the impact that it could have.

We hope you move forward on this, and we look forward to discussing with you in the future.

Thank you.

Thank you, Eugene.

Next up, we've got Gordon Paddleford, followed by Douglas Trump.

Go ahead, Gordon.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Gordon Paddleford with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

SDOT's CLF proposal included $2 million for Vision Zero, and I'll speak really quickly to why that's important not to cut back.

As the Seattle Times reported on January of this year, the latest numbers show once again Seattle's not making significant progress towards reaching Vision Zero, its stated goal of limiting traffic fatalities and serious injuries by 2030. The Vision Zero program focuses on investments to make it safer to walk and bike to bus stops, business districts, schools, parks, homes, jobs, and other community destinations.

The data-driven program focuses on the highest crash locations and uses evidence-based solutions.

And as such, it deprioritizes police enforcement in favor of physical infrastructure to keep everyone safe equitably.

But Vision Zero, in the end, isn't really about numbers.

It's about people, because each fatality sends ripples of impact through their friends, family, coworkers, and communities.

You know, a week ago, I attended a memorial ride for Robert Maestri in South Park, and I'm in the process of organizing a memorial for Michael Coleman in Seward Park, coming up on May 15th, which I hope you all attend.

But, you know, the good thing is the Vision Zero program has resulted in meaningful improvements in some of these tragedies in the past.

Desiree McLeod, who died biking in the Central District, there's now a safe place to bike there.

Maria Banda died in Lake City, where there's now a safer crosswalk to the Lake City Library.

James St. Clair, who died crossing the street in the High Point neighborhood, there's now a light and crosswalk for the High Point community in West Seattle.

So I encourage you all to use SDOT's proposed VLF span plan that would maintain funding provision zero.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Gordon.

Next up, we've got Douglas Trump, followed by Nicole Grant.

Go ahead, Douglas.

Thanks.

Good morning.

I'm Doug Shrum, Executive Director of the Urbanist.

I'm speaking to oppose Council Member Peterson's amendment overriding a vetted plan to funnel safe streets funding to bridge maintenance instead.

The amendment represents a $80 million cut to street safety projects.

SDOT struck a careful balance in its spending proposal and incorporated the city's stated priorities of safety, reducing climate emissions, mobility, justice, and equity.

Peterson's amendment does the opposite.

Instead of valuing input from civic modal boards and equity stakeholders, it bends the investments to a preconceived vision that we saw five months ago.

Erasing weeks of work with these groups and devaluing their time.

SDOT's proposal would invest 75% of the DLF in walking, rolling, biking, and safety.

The transportation chair overriding inverting that plan does not honor the process.

Even worse, the bonding scheme would lock in these spending priorities for 20 years to pay back the bonds.

What are we going to get in return for this commitment, which comes with $40 million in debt service costs?

Peterson offers a laundry list of bridges, but $75 million is not enough to make a dent.

For example, the Magnolia Bridge one-to-one replacement is a $400 million project.

If council members want to address the bridge maintenance backlog, It's going to take a lot more than $75 million.

I encourage them to come forward with a real funding proposal, not a bonding scheme swiping safe streets funding.

And let's be real.

Thank you, Doug.

Next up, we've got Nicole Grant.

And we're going to try Deb Barker again after that.

Go ahead, Nicole.

And just a reminder to press star 6. And next up, we've got Nicole Grant.

OK, well, we'll come back to Nicole.

And let's go down the list.

Hello.

Oh, hi.

Yeah, go ahead, Nicole.

Sorry, technical difficulties.

Good morning, everybody, council members, Chair Peterson.

This is Nicole Grant.

from MLK Labor representing unions in King County.

And I wanted to weigh in in favor of the bonding to fund our bridges here in the city of Seattle.

I know it's expensive.

It's among the prices we pay for having a beautiful city full of hills, waterways, It's not something we can ignore.

And we're lucky also to have the best targeted local hire policy in the country and make sure that the employment to repair this infrastructure, replace this infrastructure, gives back to the community, hires people that could really use a strong career advantage, including formerly incarcerated workers.

And it makes sure that everybody has health insurance for their family and apprenticeship to learn a skill that's going to last their whole life.

So support it.

I think it's a good decision.

Good use of the money.

Thank you.

Thank you, Nicole.

We're going to try Deb Barker again, if she's available.

Deb, if you can hear me, press star six.

Debra Barker.

Star six.

Okay.

We'll go ahead and move on.

We've got two more speakers, council members, and then we'll jump into the items on our agenda.

Joe Riley followed by Anna Zwartz.

Go ahead, Joe.

Good morning, council.

My name is Joe Riley.

I'm a resident of Seattle's Wedgwood neighborhood and speaking as development director at Seattle Subway.

I'd like to speak strongly in favor of allocating SDOT's stakeholder suggested $3 million for the planning ahead part of the pie that can update the transit master plan with a rail corridor identification component and speak to how these relatively small planning ahead dollars can solve a major political headache ahead of time for Seattle.

ST3, while great, also fails to bring light rail to over half of Seattle's urban villages, where the majority of jobs and housing will continue to grow.

We will regret a future where we open a new multibillion light rail tunnel downtown, and then Seattle residents ask the city to expand light rail to more neighborhoods, and the city finds itself unable to expand because the new downtown station platforms aren't big enough, the cost is prohibitive, and it would be a major construction disruption to newly built buildings downtown and to daily commuters to shut down the line for many years because we didn't plan ahead.

But with an updated transit master plan, we can take advantage of the most rail and infrastructure friendly federal administration we've had in years and leverage funds in the billions that Seattle cannot support on our own.

It would be a mistake to mess up setting the city for success with another opportunity for a major federal investment like we almost did with forward thrust in the 70s.

Thank you for your time and consideration, and let's plan ahead.

Thank you, Joe.

And our last speaker is Anna Zwartz.

Anna, go ahead, please.

Just a reminder to press star six to speak, Anna.

There we go.

All right, hi there.

Ana Zivarts with Disability Rights Washington, the Disability Mobility Initiative.

We have such a tremendous backlog of streets without curb ramps, without cracked and inaccessible sidewalks, or without sidewalks at all, especially in historically redlined and more affordable parts of Seattle.

This leaves old people who can no longer drive, youth, disabled people, and people who can't afford cars or who rely on transit without the critical connections we need to get around our neighborhoods or to the nearest bus stop.

Just last week, we were in Delridge filming Tanisha Sepulveda, who cannot get to the nearest bus stop at 16th and Holden without rolling down Holden Street in traffic because of missing curb ramps and inaccessible sidewalks.

She used to live downtown, but needed to move somewhere more affordable.

And unfortunately, the more affordable areas in our city often also lack accessible pedestrian infrastructure.

Sidewalks and accessible crossings are the fundamentals of transportation.

Without them, people without the privilege of driving lose the freedom of movement.

It's inexcusable in a city with as much wealth as Seattle that our basic mobility needs are overlooked and year after year underfunded.

Thanks.

Thank you very much.

That was our last speaker.

So we're going to go ahead and move on to the items on our agenda.

items of business.

Item one, will the clerk please call or please read the title of the first agenda into the record.

Agenda item one, presentation, bridge audit repair and maintenance update and seismic safety needs update for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

Colleagues, as you may recall, after the West Seattle Bridge cracked and was shut down for safety reasons, I ordered a bridge audit.

So an audit of the condition of the bridges that the city owns.

And that audit came back to us last year.

And this is an update on the implementation of that audit report.

And then also there were reports about and changes to the seismic upgrade needs of our bridges to keep them safe in the event of an earthquake and costs have gone up for the seismic needs.

And we wanted to talk about bridge audit, pair maintenance issues as well as seismic issues.

So we have with us both the city auditor's office as well as the Seattle Department of Transportation.

and I think we're gonna go ahead and start with our city auditor, David G. Jones and his team, Sean DeBleek and others.

Thank you for your work on the bridge audit.

And I hope you will highlight today the award that you won for doing that audit.

But I'll turn it over to David Jones.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm David Jones, city auditor.

I want to thank you for inviting us here today to talk about the implementation status of the 10 recommendations we made in our September 2020 report on Seattle's bridge maintenance efforts.

For members of the public who want to read the report, you can find it on our office's website, which is www.seattle.gov.

Thank you.

Before I turn it over to deputy city auditor Shonda Blick who will lead our office's presentation today, I want to note as Councilmember Peterson noted that the National Association we belong to, the Association of Local Government Auditors awarded our office its highest award for a 2020 and we got it for the bridge maintenance report.

The judges really liked the evidence we presented in the report that supported its main message, and Tom will be talking about this, about the need for Seattle to develop a strategic plan for bridge maintenance.

I want to congratulate members of our office who produced this award-winning report because they had to do it under severe time constraints, I want to thank you all for joining us today.

We are in the middle of trying to learn how to work in the midst of a pandemic.

I want to thank chair Peterson for requesting that our office produce this audit.

Sean, why don't you take it away right now.

Today, I'll be walking briefly through the status of SDOT's implementation of the 10 recommendations that were published in our September report, which is shown on the screen here.

Because SDOT is joining us today, they'll be able to provide further details to you on each recommendation and also provide details on the recommendation timeline, prioritization, and efforts that they're currently engaged in to make these recommendations a reality.

The three key messages that I want to convey to you all today are as follows.

First, SDOT is in the process of implementing our 10 recommendations.

And although the recommendations are not complete, where they are at this point in time in the process makes sense.

And from what we've seen, their efforts show that they are taking these recommendations very seriously.

Second, SDOT committed to completing all 10 of these recommendations by 2023, and they seem to be on track to get there.

Finally, given the limited amount of time that has passed since our report was issued, we can't really say with certainty that the timeline will be met.

SDOT needs to complete the planning work that it's currently engaged in to really determine what resources it will need to get these items done within the timeline that they've committed.

This first slide shows the key takeaways from our 2020 report.

This was what we put out back in September after looking at the bridge maintenance program and bridge condition data.

Basically, like the rest of the country, our bridges in the city are not in good shape.

The second big point is that SDOT is meeting the bridge maintenance expenditure targets that have been set, but the amount budgeted for bridge maintenance in our city is far below what is needed.

So if you look at our report, you'll see that historically about $6.6 million per year has been budgeted for this important work.

And at the same time, SDOT estimates that it needs about $34 million per year to keep up with the maintenance needs.

Accurate estimates of need and several other issues need to be addressed for SDOT to establish a more strategic bridge preservation program.

Basically, our 10 recommendations come to lay out a path forward to get there, to move from a reactive approach to a more proactive strategic approach for the entire bridge portfolio.

Lastly, the bullet here, SDOT agreed to implement all of our recommendations and they reported that all of the items would be completed by the end of either 2022 or 2023. The next five slides are very text heavy.

These show each of the recommendations that we made back in September and also SDOT's response at that time to the recommendation what they plan to do.

And as we go through each one of these I'm going to talk about a little bit about what SDOT has done to the current status here about six months after that report.

So this first slide this shows the two recommendations.

Recommendations number 1 and number 7 that as of September SDOT planned to complete by the end of 2022. The column in the middle is our recommendation and the column at the far right is what SDOT planned to do back in September.

Now as of today April 21st 2021 recommendation number 1 is the highest priority in SDOT's implementation work plan.

To this end SDOT created a position and has a staff member in place that's doing the necessary planning and groundwork to implement the recommendation and all of the other ones in this audit.

This is all good news.

One item that needs to be completed and SDOT told us that they're in the midst of doing this is to understand the resources it will take to make this and the remaining recommendations a reality.

And when SDOT gives their presentation I think they'll be able to talk more about where they are specifically in that.

Recommendation 7 here.

This one from talking to SDOT is a desktop exercise that may be delayed beyond 2022 based on the prioritization process that they went through looking at their recommendations soon after we published.

And to us this makes sense because the outcomes from the lifecycle cost analysis which is another recommendation will drive the implementation of this recommendation.

So it might be pushed into 2023 but that seems to be okay.

These next few slides focus exclusively on the remaining eight recommendations which are to be implemented by the end of 2023. According to SDOT it still intends to complete all these recommendations during this time period and as I mentioned in my introduction the evidence that we've seen today does not suggest that they will not be able to meet that timeline.

And this is my auditor long-winded way of saying that not much time has passed but given what we've seen so far they can meet these goals and it seems like they're on track to do so.

Recommendation number 2 at the top here, this has to do with reimbursable work.

That is work that SDOT does with its roadway structure staff that generates revenue to actually pay for some of the staff in this division.

They also keep our bridges in safe working order.

Now this particular recommendation is dependent on the results of a staffing analysis that I'll get to on the next slide.

What I want to point out here is that according to SDOT implementing this recommendation is a very high priority and work is underway to do the staffing analysis.

Again SDOT can provide more details in their presentation.

Recommendation number 3. This deals with a historic ordinance from the 1960s that requires SDOT today to continue to frequently inspect private bridges.

Now this ordinance made sense you know 60 years ago but might not make sense anymore.

SDOT has put this recommendation lower on its priority list they told us that they might actually be able to complete this recommendation faster than planned and perhaps we would see that completed this year.

Recommendation number 4 here.

This one is dependent on the previous recommendation the classic ordinance and it's not something we'd see progress on until the prior recommendation is complete.

But if SDOT is able to complete recommendation number 3 this year or sooner then this one would soon follow.

So that's all good news.

Recommendation 5. This is focusing on the staffing analysis that I talked about.

The bottom line here is that SDOT is in the early planning stages for how to actually do the staffing analysis, and it seems likely that they'll be able to meet their commitment to get this recommendation done by the end of 2023. Again, they will have a lot more detail on where they're at and what they plan to get done this year during their presentation.

Recommendation six.

Here, this is a very important recommendation.

that highlights the need for SDOT to include the city's race and social justice values into the staffing analysis.

As shown here in SDOT's plan, they're committed to using the city's racial equity toolkit to influence the analysis.

So we would see that embedded when the recommendation, the previous recommendation is implemented, that should be there.

Recommendation number 8 is shifting gears from the human capital side to focus on the estimated useful life of our bridges.

Our recommendation is to update the information and base it on component by component condition data.

And according to SDOT part of the work that this new staff person that I mentioned is doing this year is project planning for what needs to be done to get to this.

This would be actually a pretty significant body of work.

And as mentioned earlier SDOT seems to be where they should be at this point in time.

and it will be important for SDOT to share their resource needs to get there once they are known.

Recommendation 9 and again this is the last slide of my all my tech slides.

Recommendation 9 builds off of recommendation 8 and is also shown in the SDOT plan.

This is information that can inform the staffing analysis.

Like others it seems that SDOT is at the stage where we would expect given it's both completing these by 2023. And then finally recommendation number 10. This recommendation is the capstone of all 10 of the of all the 10 recommendations that we made.

For this particular one SDOT is quite optimistic that it can still get this recommendation done by the end of 2023. But getting it done in that time period it could be ambitious.

We're cautiously optimistic about them getting this particular one complete.

And this is because that in order to have a really comprehensive proactive strategic asset management plan SDOT has to do quality work on the other nine recommendations that we've gone through.

So spending the time necessary to do the quality work on getting those recommendations done and getting them done well with a robust staffing plan with condition assessments and addressing some of the low-hanging fruit like that classic ordinance makes sense.

Now given the limited amount of time that passed since our report was issued there don't appear to be major challenges that'll push this timeline unnecessarily outward.

So cautiously optimistic that by 2023 this can be In closing I want to thank SDOT for their continued work on these recommendations and providing information to us that we need to follow up independently on what they are doing in implementing these items.

And also just to get back to our 3 takeaways.

First SDOT is in the process of implementing our recommendations and although the recommendations are not complete where they are at in the process makes sense and from what we've seen their efforts show that they're taking these recommendations very seriously.

Second, SDOT committed to completing all 10 of these recommendations by 2023. They seem to be on track to get there.

And we do have a little bit of cautious optimism about that one particular capstone recommendation.

And finally, given the limited amount of time that has passed since our report was issued, we can't say with certainty that the timeline will be met.

SDOT, of course, needs to complete the planning work that it's currently engaged in.

And again, they will have a lot more details, I believe, in their presentation following ours.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sean.

And I wanted to mention that we were joined earlier by council members or committee member Lisa Herbold, as well as we invited Council Member Lewis here because he's a co-sponsor of the amendment item two.

But I just wanted to let everybody know that we're joined by additional council members.

Thank you.

And thank you to the city auditor's office for this update.

We'll keep having you come back.

Right now, we're going to switch over to the Seattle Department of Transportation.

If there are any, and the auditor, yeah, we'll call on questions right now for the auditor though.

So Council Member Herbold, please.

Thank you.

I think it's less of a question and more an observation around the 2023 deliverables and why that is so important.

The recommendations 8, 9, and 10 really need to include cost estimates.

I understand that's a big body of work.

We need to know when funding is needed, what external The timeline is so important.

We need this information for we're not going to be able to do this without including as much funds for maintenance as the 2006 bridging the gap levy.

I think it's really important to do this planning work so we don't the next levy.

We are planning for the next levy.

We do have some of that information as it relates specifically we need to do that same sort of I actually do have one question for the auditor as it relates specifically to the ratings of good, fair, and poor.

The auditor found of 77 bridges, 22 were considered good, 50 were considered fair, and five were considered poor.

And I'm just wondering, is that rating system a rating system that the city auditor developed, or is it something that SDOT developed?

I'm just really interested about what a fair rating is.

The 4th Avenue South Bridge over railroad tracks in Soto is rated fair, but the right northbound lane has been closed since, I believe, 2017, and just trying to figure out how that would qualify for a fair rating under those circumstances.

Thank you.

Thank you for the question.

These, the rating system is actually a, comes from the federal government.

So it's not a, something that SDOT created or something that we created.

So this is taking the National Bridge inventory data and looking at the conditions there.

And it's, you know, as you mentioned, three simple categories, poor, fair and good.

And what we found in doing the data is there's a little bit more complexity in it.

So it gives you a rough picture of how things are, but doesn't give you the most accurate.

And so, for example, the West Seattle Bridge, I believe, was in fair condition.

The I-35W Bridge that collapsed in Minnesota back in 2007, that was also in fair condition as well.

So there are some caveats with the data.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Councilmember Lewis, I didn't know if you had a question or not at this time for, since this is indirectly related item two, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I actually just had, I just want to make a general comment since we have the auditor's office here and just take the opportunity to express my really profound appreciation for the contributions the auditor's office makes in the legislative branch.

I think we tend to forget, as a city and a city government, that the legislative branch is not just the city council.

It includes this award-winning, highly professional, very capable and competent group of oversight professionals that help us accomplish the legislative branches.

I think that is a great example of how it enhances the oversight function of the legislative department.

Thank you, Council Member.

All right, so we'll move now to SDOT, and they can talk about the bridge program.

Thank you.

We've got Matt Donahue here with us, and Director Zimbabwe is standing by as well, I believe.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I'll just, let me just say a couple of words of introduction as Matt gets started, and mostly, you know, this is, Matt's going to lead us through this presentation.

Matt, who folks know, is our Roadway Structures Division Director.

So we want to thank you for having this conversation and checking in on our status of the response to the bridge audit, as well as being able to talk in a little bit more detail about the bridge program and some of the complexity that goes into that.

Many, many dedicated people who have built their careers at SDOT taking care of our infrastructure, taking care of our bridges.

And it is just Matt and I here before you, but we depend and we stand on the shoulders of all those committed professionals who take care of our infrastructure each and every day.

This is a complicated topic.

It is, we have a commitment.

at SDOT to make investments to fix it right, to invest in our infrastructure in an ongoing sustainable way.

And this does feed into not just the response to the audit from last year, which we were very appreciative of the award-winning audit, but also the next item and how we build a sustainable program that's focused on maintenance of our assets in overtime in a long-term sustainable way.

So Matt's going to talk, and we've heard a lot already this morning.

I know we're probably running a little bit behind schedule.

We did feel it was important to talk in a little bit more detail and flesh out some of what it means to run a bridge program and how we approach that at SDOT.

So I'll turn it over to Matt and look forward to questions.

Thank you, Sam.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson and committee.

Good morning.

For the record, my name is Matt Donohue and I am the Roadway Structures Division Director.

Our agenda today is to go over just briefly how Roadway Structures is organized as a division.

And I commit to going through those introductory slides very quickly so that we can get to the three main topics that we've been invited to discuss today.

Next slide, please.

So just a little bit about myself.

I am a professional engineer licensed in the state of Washington and several other states in the region.

I've got about 30 years of experience as an engineer, and I've been fortunate to be able to split my career between both geotechnical and structural engineering design and construction.

but largely focused on asset management and seismic resiliency.

I am the federally designated bridge program manager for SDOT and I'm still a certified bridge inspector.

I've also taught inspection courses in the past for the National Highway Institute and I'm a commercial diver.

On glancing at this slide, you might think, wow, this guy's really good at talking about himself, but I give this specific professional background.

just to demonstrate the type of talent that Seattle DOT attracts.

It is a nation, a department that's known nationwide.

And I, as Sam said, I am only one of several hundred dedicated, talented transportation professionals that work for the DOT and for the city every day of the week.

Next slide.

So, Roadway structures are speaking of transportation professionals, roadway structures is comprised of 30 or 63 permanent positions, split into three main groups.

So movable bridge operations, structural maintenance and structural engineering.

These three groups are there's a fourth group really the leadership team that's myself.

And the two managers that I work with the most kit Lou who's also a professional engineer and a bridge inspector who's been with the city for about 15 years.

He's the manager for movable bridge ops and structural engineering, and then Paul Jackson who is a career maintenance professional who's been with the city for over 23 years.

and leads our structural maintenance team.

With this division and with that group and that leadership, we handle several different types of bodies of work that ultimately roll up to our mandate which is to keep the traveling public safe in the city of Seattle as it relates to roadway structures.

So that covers operation and maintenance of all of our asset types which are bridges and several other asset types, capital programs, providing subject matter expertise, responding to emergencies, leading our work with equity.

And I think as folks know, we do a fair amount of reimbursable work throughout the department, throughout the city and throughout the region.

This group is comprised of long tenured staff over seven labor units that have dedicated their careers for the most part to maintaining structures for the city.

So getting into some details the movable bridge operations group bridge operators effectively maintain the safety of the roadway and the waterway.

And to speak to that operator that's pictured here on the slide is actually a licensed commercial vessel cap captain.

They operate our four city on bridges and then a fifth that South Park that we operate for the county.

They're in an interesting nexus in our operation in that they work pretty closely with engineering and maintenance for these complex movable structures that just aren't a bridge per se, but are a movable facility that has complicated mechanical and electronic components so that it can operate safely.

Next slide.

So our structural maintenance group, there are five specific job class spec types, generally speaking, electricians, mechanics, carpenters, which we call them BCMLs or Bridge Carpentry Maintenance Leads, which is more of a heavy civil type carpenter, concrete finishers and installation maintenance workers.

They are responsible for preventative maintenance as well as major rehabilitation and some capital replacement within the allowable limits for the overall cost of those smaller projects.

Next slide.

Our structural engineering group, or our bridge inspectors, as it were, are engineers and engineering specialists that focus on inspection of all of our structures, not just bridge.

They, we do specialized work for bridge inspection as well, which involves fracture critical and special special movable structure inspections which are stipulated by the National Bridge inspection standards that were mentioned earlier.

We also bring in contractors and supervise underwater work.

We look at all of our asset types, stairways, airways, and retaining walls, as well as several miscellaneous structures that are in our inventory.

That group also does repair design and works with other programs that build new assets that we bring into our inventory.

And we also work with other stakeholder groups, Sound Transit, for instance, to protect our existing assets as it relates to their operations.

Next slide.

So the assets that we maintain are valued currently at a placement value of 8.3 billion and for the most part cover bridges are retaining wall stairways area ways on average as the auditor was speaking of earlier.

Our annual maintenance budget for specifically for maintenance is about 6.6 million dollars and move will bridge operations.

Non reimbursable for bridges is around 4 million.

Next slide.

We also have quite a few capital programs that roll up to roadway structures, as the owning division, some of them are levy and or related to specific projects.

For instance, bridge size with retrofit which I'll get to some specifics on in a minute.

And then other specific projects like the Northgate pedestrian bridge Fairview Avenue bridge replacement.

the North Lake retaining wall project on the north side of Lake Union.

Our non-levy asset type capital programs are related to specific assets, such as airways and retaining walls, and also bridge-specific programs like load rating and painting.

And the 2021 capital program value just for this year is about $86 billion.

Next slide.

So the other things that we do emergency response and I am to, I am to our incident management team that I think you're familiar with.

We maintain a 24 7365 readiness posture year round to respond emergencies related to our structures and other assets throughout the city.

The way I like to refer to roadway structures, when I work with transportation professionals around the country, I often find that they're envious of how we're organized because most DOTs have movable bridge ops, engineering, and maintenance housed separately.

And so we get quite a bit of efficiency and synergy being all in the same division.

And some people say you can do that because you're small.

I like to say we're small but mighty.

And that we have highly skilled professionals who can do a lot quickly in a body of work that's often complicated and only has certain resources available at hand.

We also take very seriously our race and social justice and equity initiatives specific to our division.

Those include things like direct one-on-one WMBIE recruitment for engineering, procurement, and construction services.

We do specific anti-recidivism and workforce equity work that involves direct mentorship and block the box advocacy for community-based organizations that provide work-release services and second-chance employment.

Mentorship and arts and sciences lectures for groups like University Beyond Bars that provide college classes in the state penitentiary system.

Legislative advocacy for state bills that expand education and work-release services.

We've also periodically we do equity-based pay reviews inside our division.

We're developing a GIS-based tool for work distribution across underserved neighborhoods throughout Seattle for our asset types.

And when appropriate, we use our racial equity toolkit to analyze how our programs stand up with an equity lens.

From a subject matter expertise standpoint, we get roughly 300 requests a year for review or provision of information.

And so it involves permit review for street use in SDCI, design review for SDOT programs that are either delivering our assets or affecting our assets, and then the same things that we all respond to in terms of public disclosure requests and customer service requests.

We also give input on various problems as requested by risk management and the city attorney's office.

Next slide.

So, onto the specific topics for today bridge seismic retrofit program.

This is a particular interest of mine given my background in seismic analysis and design.

The, this is currently a levy program.

It is largely guided by our own homegrown policy document and how to conduct analysis and retrofit of existing structures.

It started with 16 bridges in 2016. But by the time we got through the concept definition report phase, which was completed for all 16 bridges last year.

This indicated higher costs than anticipated.

Largely, the way to describe that change in cost versus what was anticipated in 2015 or 2016 is we had to do the work, the CDR work, to really define what those costs are.

And I think, although I didn't come to the DOT until 2017 and wasn't a responsible charge of roadway structures until 2018, The way I understand it is the costs were based on the number of bridges and the size of each bridge as compared to the cost to do seismic retrofit on bridges in previous versions of the program.

So this current program is phase three, and there were two previous phases that were done before the current levy.

And I think the costs that were associated with those projects were for a different type of approach to seismic retrofit.

Having worked in seismic analysis and design or in that field for the last 20 years, I can say that particularly in the Pacific Northwest, the pace at which the standard of practice has changed has been very rapid.

And so, for instance, the current version of our seismic retrofit policy manual really only came online in 2015 as the levy was launching.

And so I think the situation developed where we really needed to do the detailed analysis work in the CDR phase to understand what the true costs are.

Those large costs for the five bridges that were taken off the list were predominantly due to liquefiable soils and the high cost that's almost always associated with foundation or subsurface retrofit.

So our current deliverable is retrofit of 11 bridges instead of the original 16. Next slide.

So bridge inspection and maintenance.

We are the roadway structures division and we have many asset types that we take care of, but it is largely driven by our bridge inspection and maintenance program.

As you know from reading the award winning report delivered by the Office of City Auditor, the average age of our bridges is in the neighborhood of 60 years old, with many older than that.

It drives the division in that it requires coordination between all of our groups, operations, engineering, and maintenance, and leadership.

We conduct our work in this area as stipulated by the National Bridge Inspection Standards under 23 CFR Part 650, and the Drawbridge Operations Regulations as administered by the Coast Guard under 33 CFR Part 117. And when we do our inspection, There's various types of inspections, some routine and some detailed, and it really depends on the configuration of the particular bridge.

So in response to the audit, we've tried to frame this in a way that is strategic and combines work or particular types of audit recommendations where it makes sense.

And generally speaking, you can say that we're looking to make a strategic shift from a reactive asset maintenance project list to a proactive asset preservation work plan.

And so what I've laid out here are what we call our business practices upgrade priorities, which you see numbered on the left.

just to give a general description of what those are, and then to show which Office of City Auditor audit recommendation they correspond to, either individually or when we thought it made sense to combine them.

As to speak to the priorities, it's a combination of order of precedence.

Certain things needed to happen first before another body of work could happen.

And bodies of work in the audit recommendations were our BPU priorities that were smaller or could stand off on their own and be done quickly.

Next slide, please.

So in framing things as a business practices upgrade.

We've really been working on this since 2018 through 2019 and into 2020 and in 2019 and 2020 have incorporated the responded feedback that we received from the Office of City Auditor.

As well as from washed out in the FHWA, who gave us an informal audit in 2019. We're trying to do as much work front end the work that we're doing in 2021 with really writing a script in terms of scope schedule and fee for how we're going to adopt.

and implement all of these recommendations, continuing that on through 2022 with being prepared for our formal WSDOT and FHWA audit first, and then adopting all these other recommendations and business practices upgrades through 22 and 23 until we get to full completion.

Next slide.

So hopefully today I've summarized how thoughtful and careful we are in the work that we do, the task that we're actually faced with given the size and age of our inventory across all assets.

what we consider in terms of how we do that work, or recommend a structure for replacement, or as we've seen recently, partial or full closure.

We really believe that investment in our aging bridges must be planned proactively.

I mean, when I look at these business practices upgrades and how I've thought about what direction to move the division in since I came on board in 2018. This is not rocket science.

We're not putting people on the moon.

We know how to do this work.

We know how things need to change, given where we're at in the deterioration curve for all of our assets.

I think most of the country is in the same position, so there's a lot of national discussion about how to handle this.

We have a pretty good idea of what we want to do.

Now we need to define specifically how we're going to do it and go out and make it happen.

And to that end, even though we're still very early in the process, I think we're on track to meet our commitments to respond to both the WSDOT and FHWA audit and the OCA audit by 2023.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you very much for everything you do for our city and for the overview of the group.

And also wanted to speak to something I appreciate Councilmember Herbold raising this earlier.

I wanted to hear more about the seismic upgrade needs.

The audit was focused on bridge and maintenance backlogs and physical condition.

The seismic upgrade is more of a bigger capital improvement need.

And there was a change in how you were deciding how to allocate those dollars.

Costs have gone up.

You decided to focus in on specific bridges that have the greatest need.

Could you talk a little bit about the difference between the seismic upgrade needs and the changes that have occurred, and also explain why the costs went up so much?

Because I know a lot of people were scratching their heads about why the cost estimates were one number and then shot up to a much larger number later.

Sure.

Yeah, I think there's a number of factors.

As I mentioned earlier, the pace at which the standard of practice, or what people consider to be responsible policy for retrofit of structures, has changed pretty drastically over the last 20 years and maybe even more so over the last 10. And it largely has to do with the performance standards that we design retrofits to.

So we say we want a bridge to remain operational, which means usable with up to minor repairs after a 100-year level event earthquake.

100-year level means a certain percentage frequency of occurrence over 100 years.

And we want the bridge to maybe not be usable, but not collapse at a thousand year level earthquake.

And so a thousand year level earthquake in this region is typically thought of as a subduction zone magnitude nine event on the Juan de Fuca fall or the Cascadia subduction zone.

And so, using those specific performance so that's pretty demanding right it's appropriate but it's you're asking a structure to do a lot, particularly if it's an older agent structure.

And admittedly, as we move forward with our seismic retrofit program we will have to get into these.

sticky wicket conversations where we're determining significantly high costs for seismic retrofit, and then we have to risk balance that cost against, well, is it close enough to replacement, and should we just push for replacement at this point, where you would design that structure to meet those current seismic standards, which are also 100-year for operations and 1,000-year for collapse prevention.

And so I think the department, the region, the profession, the state of practice for seismic retrofit was in a point of transition, right around the time the levee was launching.

And so they couldn't have predicted.

They didn't have any basis with which to predict how those costs were going to increase.

We really had to get into the program and do that first concept definition report design phase or analysis phase to really determine what the true costs are.

And that phase is very detailed.

Most size of retrofit programs are split into, or projects for us are split into three phases.

The CDR, designing the retrofit strategies that you adopt, and then constructing them.

And that CDR phase, you do an analysis of the structure as is, determine what breaks, and then develop retrofit strategies to keep those things from breaking.

So it's fairly mathematically and linear and nonlinear modeling intensive.

Okay, thank you for explaining the differences between just ongoing repair and maintenance needs and then the seismic upgrade needs and also that the seismic upgrade standards have increased, which then increases costs.

I also understand you may have gotten more information about the bridges as well, the more, just like for any project, if you get to 30% design and 50% design, et cetera, you're getting more information and you're finding out the costs were higher for those seismic upgrades.

Is that accurate?

That's a fair analogy.

And, you know, and it's also an affectation of our geotechnical environment here, if you will, that we have just because of how the city was built or geologically how the region developed, we have a high incidence or potential for liquefiable soils, as we know now.

And when you are dealing with liquefaction and retrofit of foundations, because you're doing subsurface work or opening up the ground, your costs get high very, very quickly, as opposed to retrofit modifications you have to do to a bridge that are above ground and just on the structure.

It's a lot easier to do that above ground work.

Thank you.

Council members, any questions for Matt Donohue or for Sam Zimbabwe?

I think the auditor is still here as well.

Well, I want to thank everybody for being here for this report.

We'll hear back from the auditor as they continue to track the implementation of the 10 audit recommendations.

Some of those do have to do with the need for more funding, but there are others that are to improve the organization and reporting.

So I want to thank the auditor for being here.

Congratulations again on winning that award for your audit.

And thank you, Matt and Director Zimbabwe.

All right, we'll move on to item two in our agenda.

Go ahead and have the clerk read the title of item two into the record, please.

Agenda item two, an ordinance amending ordinance 126237, which adopted the 2021 budget, including the 2021 to 2026 capital improvement program, changing appropriations within the Transportation Benefit District Fund the city Council approved a $20 vehicle license fee and an additional one as part of our fall budget process.

A majority of councilmembers

I want to thank everybody at SDOT for doing that work, and also for everybody who participated in that stakeholder process.

Even with the proposal to issue $100 million in bonds, the suggestions from the stakeholder process can inform the investment of tens of millions of dollars.

We could potentially get that money out the door quicker.

Obviously, there are things to talk about with that proposal.

but let's go ahead and hear from, we have our central staff transportation expert, Calvin Chow here, before we hear from SDOT on their original proposal on how to spend this $20 vehicle license fee.

Calvin, did you want to provide any opening remarks?

And do appreciate the memo that you provided to us too.

Council Member, I think SDOT's presentation gets to the heart of it, so I'll hold any comments for now.

Thank you.

All right, SDOT, take it away again.

Okay, you get to hear from me again first before I turn it over to my very capable colleagues, Kyle Butler and Anya Pintak.

I think this is a good sequence of transition from the conversation about our bridges to the work that we did in engaging with stakeholders and coming up with a spend plan for this new $20 vehicle license fee.

This presentation was developed before the proposal, so it doesn't speak directly to the proposed amendment, but we are very happy to answer questions.

When we were asked to do the stakeholder outreach and engagement by the council, we were excited about this new $20 vehicle license fee because we felt like it enable would enable us to invest more resources in maintenance across the broad portfolio of assets that that we we take care of.

Maintenance is one of the most difficult types of funding to secure for transportation.

The ongoing sustainable investment year over year, consistent amounts that we can budget against and that we can staff against.

You heard about from the city auditor, one of those top recommendations was to increase our staffing related to bridge asset planning, investment, asset management.

And it's this type of ongoing resource that really enables us to develop a sustainable program across our portfolio of needs, bridges being a really critical part of our asset inventory.

I'll also say that we designed this proposal to deliver results quickly.

This is money that is new to us, $3.5 million-ish this year, $7.5 million on an ongoing basis.

But the designed proposal that we developed through the stakeholder outreach process is really intended to get that money into projects that people can see results across the city quickly.

This isn't developing a large capital project that can often take years to develop and see results on the ground.

This is trying to get regular maintenance out the door extremely quickly in a way that people can see in their communities.

Um, so, uh, Kyle Butler, who is with our finance and administration division, uh, is here with me.

Um, he is, uh, focused on, uh, and has been really leading this, the, the process here, uh, focused on revenue development and some of our overall revenue needs.

And then Anya Pintak manages our transportation equity program, um, and has been, has been crucial for the engagement efforts that we've done.

You can move forward.

The next slide, just our work here in developing this is grounded in our mission, vision, and core values that Seattle is a thriving equitable community powered by dependable transportation.

And that is no matter how you get around the city and our mission to deliver a transportation system that provides safe and affordable access to places and opportunities.

And we heard a lot about that in the public comment as well.

six core values drive our work, equity, and really addressing some of the systemic issues and historic underinvestment in our communities, safety, mobility, sustainability, livability, and excellence.

And those six values, along with the stakeholder process, really drove the development of the spend plan as we presented it.

We can move on.

So just a little bit more about the process.

We started this work in November, just about as soon as the budget was adopted.

We had an initial briefing with stakeholders.

And so I would say that that start of the process at the beginning was really how can we take this new revenue source, the intended purpose of investing in our assets, and best deploy it, looking across our needs at all of the things that we take care of.

We met with stakeholders on some of those asset needs starting in February.

Really trying to ground that in the overall budget picture for SDOT and our asset needs that we had identified in those first few months.

We took feedback on that broad priority setting.

We came back in March with a second briefing for stakeholders, sharing a proposed spending plan and trying to hear how and if we were able to incorporate what we heard in that first feedback session back to the community stakeholders that we heard from.

I participated in all four of those stakeholder briefings personally.

Uh, we submitted our, our spend plan, um, and, uh.

Are ready to get to work.

We're ready for as soon as we can get the, the spending plan.

Adopted, we start to collect revenue in July, but we can forecast that revenue and we can start to.

work and invest in projects as soon as the spending plan and the budget are set.

Beyond, we can forecast against this.

The existing $20 VLF is a core foundation of what we do as a department and provides reliable, dependable resource that we program in an ongoing way for these sorts of ongoing investments.

So really, this is really focused on the initial part of the spend plan, but sets the stage for a long-term sustainable investment that we see as being really critical in taking care of all of our assets.

And with that, I will turn it over to Anya to talk a little bit more about the stakeholder engagement process.

Thank you so much, Sam.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

As Sam mentioned, my name is Anya Pintak, and I am SDOT's Transportation Equity Program Manager.

I'll talk a little bit more about the stakeholder outreach process.

And so as part of this process, we heard from the following stakeholders that you see on the presentation here.

We had a diverse range of stakeholders that represented transportation, labor, and equity-focused representatives.

who are able to share with us the transportation needs and values that they see within the community.

Partners and representatives here considered all modes of transportation, as well as we're able to share a little bit more in terms of the different mobility and transportation needs of folks from different ages and abilities and how folks rely on them.

As part of this process, and I'll mention that we did this virtually given COVID, as part of this process, we separated the stakeholders into two groups.

The first stakeholder really promptly where our stakeholders were very familiar with our stocks line of businesses.

and are typically engaged in our public forum in some capacity.

So very familiar with our process.

So that includes our modal boards.

Our other group, really our equity-focused representative, and we invited community members from BIPOC and vulnerable communities to participate in the stakeholder group.

And I want to mention that in that group, a lot of the organizations were not familiar with SDOT.

They may have been their first time engaging with SDOT in this capacity, as well as engaging in a public forum in this matter, and engaging in a process like this.

And so we met with those stakeholder groups twice, as Sam mentioned, once in February and in March, and we had a total of four meetings.

And within this list, the representatives from the organization here attended at least one of the meetings.

We can go to the next slide, please.

And so I wanted to kind of give a little bit more context in terms of this stakeholder session.

As my role within the Transition Equity program as a program manager, I work very, very closely and I'm the lead staff with our Transition Equity workgroup members, which is our group of community members who have been co-developing with our department for almost the past three years on our Transition Equity framework.

You heard from one of our members during the public comment and really one of the key equity values that we have heard very clearly from our transition equity work group is that a fundamental piece of achieving transition equity is community engagement.

And really, this process allowed us to provide an opportunity for our department to engage with communities typically underrepresented in public forum.

And this was really an opportunity for us to start building a holistic relationship and not just a transactional way of outreach.

It's very aligned with the recommendations that we're hearing from the Transition Equity Workgroup, as well as our greater department commitment in terms of improving our engagement and outreach.

outreach practices, particularly with communities who have been traditionally and currently excluded from the public engagement process and decision-making process as well.

This picture here, I should clarify, is a couple of our Transition Equity Work Group members.

This was pre-COVID, and so this was when we met in person a couple of years ago.

And I wanted to just mention that within the stakeholder process, especially with our community organizations, serving BIPOC and vulnerable communities for the BLF spending plan process, we held those meetings separately to allow space for conversation and feedback in smaller groups.

It's really important that we facilitate a space that folks felt comfortable.

And for staff, I will say that it was a really good learning opportunity for us to engage and explain our work in a line of businesses, especially with community members who may not be familiar.

What we heard from this process is that folks felt heard.

They thanked us for crafting this space.

And I want to just say that this is a first step for us to really think and invite and engage folks to be a part of a civic engagement process.

We can go to the next slide, please.

So we heard several priorities for the spend plan through our outreach and stakeholder process.

This word cloud here depicts some of the key topics that we heard.

The larger text indicates priorities that we heard several times.

So they included things such as safety, climate change, equity, maintenance, and street lights.

And as you can see, there were other topics that came, but we wanted to really highlight the key priorities that came out of the stakeholder process.

And with that, I will turn it over to Kyle Butler.

Good morning, council members.

I'm Kyle Butler.

I'm a financial policy advisor at SDOT.

And I'll be talking about how the spend plan came together with the elements we're recommending today.

In February, we began with asking the stakeholder groups to vote on how to weight seven evaluation categories that you see across the top of the slide here.

that are grounded in our in our values as a department and and then get their vote to convey which priorities they would like to see us use as we scored the potential programs.

We took three groups had the opportunity to vote.

A subset of SDOT staff members the modal and labor equity the modal and labor stakeholders and the equity stakeholders.

The SDOT staff and modal and labor stakeholders each made up 25% of our final score, and we weighted our equity stakeholders with 50% of the final score.

Ultimately, we combined those results to deliver the outcome row across the bottom.

The darker shades represent higher priority from those votes, and the bottom row showed that the top things that came out of the conversations and the votes were in line with what we heard in the conversation.

They were equity safety maintenance and climate change were the biggest drivers of our scoring the weighting of our scoring process for programs.

So then we took that went back and developed a spend plan proposal came back to those groups in March to share this proposed spend plan with them.

So we turned that feedback into an action-based, into a values-based action plan.

And like I mentioned, we heard a lot of interest in making sure that our plan is equitable, that it prioritizes safety, maintenance, and meets climate change goals.

We also heard a lot of interest in making sure that it supported jobs and we feel that this work does do that.

We consider the budget impacts of the pandemic and the resulting recession and our need to maintain and improve our infrastructure, citywide transportation goals, levy commitments and more.

We also distributed a brief online survey about the proposed spend plan and got feedback from over 400 people online.

And all of that went into developing the spend plan that will go over each element of that starting with the next slide.

Safe streets was one of our biggest categories in our spending plan.

Safety was a big theme that we heard in the outreach, and Safe Streets Focus Area accounts for 28% of the proposed funding responding to investments in the streets and communities experiencing most of Seattle's serious crashes in Vision Zero corridors.

So this funding would go mostly toward the Vision Zero program, which is grounded in equity and data analysis.

So we use data to determine our focus areas Those are streets and intersections with the most fatal and serious injury crashes.

And those locations often overlap with communities of color and vulnerable populations.

Some of the early programs we'll be working on include Martin Luther King Jr.

Way, Rainier Avenue South, Aurora Way South, or Airport Way South and Aurora Avenue.

We also look at this source of funding as a potential source for some key elements of stay healthy streets, especially those focused on safety.

Ready for the next slide.

Okay, safe sidewalks.

We also heard a strong interest in better serving pedestrians and supporting transit access to walkable neighborhoods, improving our walkable neighborhoods, and helping meet our climate change goals.

So this category also makes up 28% of the proposed funding, and it could enable us to do a lot of maintenance work, restriping marked sidewalks, replacing crossing beacons, repairing sidewalks, and especially where street trees have done damage.

and installing new curb ramps, ADA curb ramps.

Using our sidewalk assessment data, we will look at which repairs would provide the highest value improvements in safety and mobility at the lowest cost.

And we can also be really targeted in making sure that we are addressing communities that have been historically underserved.

And Kyle, on the sidewalks, would that be new sidewalks or would it?

Just be repairing existing ones.

The majority of this is repairing existing sidewalks, the new construction in this safe sidewalk focus area would be related to new curb ramps, but this is maintaining what we already have.

sidewalk uplift from trip hazards that come from street trees, that kind of thing.

We heard a lot of interest in the community groups about that, especially for our elder citizens who have trouble, the risk of tripping over sidewalks, that kind of thing.

They saw that as a big benefit to this maintenance effort.

And with $2 million, how many curb ramps could you do approximately?

That's something you could get back to us.

Yeah, I can get that data to you.

The full $2 million is not curb ramps.

That represents a smaller percentage of this.

But yes, we can follow up with that.

OK, thank you.

Strong bridges and structures is our next biggest area in the proposed plan.

It represents 24% of the spending plan and it was a big priority we heard about in the outreach.

With this funding, we would make productive investments to reduce our maintenance backlog, extend the service life of bridges, and maintain safe travel for all modes.

This would support major maintenance and rehabilitation of bridges stairs and essential roadway structures like underground area ways that we have in Pioneer Square.

So spending in the first few years would be focused on a few early priorities.

A lot of these are focused on movable bridge components with those are systems within those bridges like Matt showed you.

There are many different systems, electrical, hydraulic, mechanical, that all go into them.

And this could help with maintaining those for Spokane Street Bridge, University Bridge, Fremont Bridge, and evaluating those needs of the Ballard Bridge as well.

It would also be Spokane Viaduct, Spokane Street Viaduct, deck rehabilitation, and then improvements on the Jose Rizal Bridge, allowing for better inspection access.

That's a key part of us maintaining the structure is being able to access it properly for maintenance.

Kyle, I thought that the movable bridges would cost $8 to $10 million to for those components to be replaced or installed?

Sure.

So this would start that process.

It doesn't fully fund all of that.

But over the time, we would be able to develop the plan and fix the most critical needs first.

And this funding, since it's ongoing, would allow Matt and his team to develop a plan to do that.

Thank you.

So next, we invest 10% of the plan into active transportation maintenance oriented toward bicycle infrastructure.

And it's a key part of our investment to address climate change.

And climate change was an interest area we heard in the outreach.

With this funding, we can repaint bicycle lanes, clear them of debris.

So that'd be a dedicated sweeping program, enhancing our existing sweeping program.

install and maintain protective barriers between people driving and biking and improve and maintain our bicycle signals.

More people are trying biking in the pandemic and we feel that this you know, given higher rates of bicycle ownership, that keeping our facilities well-maintained is going to help promote climate-friendly commute choices.

And also with the work of the Move Seattle levy, our bike network is growing fast and the maintenance needs will grow with it.

Kyle, do we know how much it would cost to I would have to get back to you on a total cost.

This request was

barriers such as candlestick barriers, that kind of thing replaced and maintained.

So that was the intent behind this.

Okay.

Thank you.

Planning ahead, we'd like to also propose investments in planning for a future transportation system and making sure that engaging communities is a big part of that planning to address our goals for equity, safety, and sustainability.

including climate change response.

So this represents 7% of the spend plan.

I should also mention in future years, we're proposing 3% being set aside for reserves to make sure we can continue to maintain the same level of service if we had a revenue shock in the future.

But for 2021, this is 7% of the funding going toward planning.

And we'd like to use this funding to make sure that as we look toward our next major citywide multimodal planning, that we can create a fully integrated transportation plan that also invests in a really robust community engagement and especially with BIPOC communities and other historically underrepresented communities, bringing them in as a voice at the table.

And I'd like to invite Anya in to comment on this as well.

Thank you so much for that, Kyle.

Yeah, I will just add on to what Kyle mentioned and say this is very aligned with the recommendations that we've heard from the Transition Equity Workgroup.

Really, community engagement needs to start from the planning process.

Many times when community engagement starts already in a project process, decisions have been made.

So it's again back to this idea of starting that long-term planning process and inviting and engaging folks who have not traditionally been involved to be a part of that.

So it is very aligned with the recommendations that we've heard.

Thank you.

We heard a lot of folks talking today and we've received a lot of emails about a $3 million plan, but I think that was mainly on additional sound transit stations within the city of Seattle.

So that's $3 million.

this is only $500,000 a year, but I think what you were talking about is sort of synthesizing the various modal plans that we have and doing more deeper outreach to communities that have historically not been consulted.

So I guess I'm curious like how much both of those things would cost.

There's a $3 million plus there's the, what you're talking about is the synthesizing the modal plans, doing better outreach to, other communities that haven't been engaged so do we know how much like the total that would cost so that we could actually be ready in 2023 or when we get ready to renew move Seattle levy?

So, I can, I can jump in there a little bit.

Um, you know, I think we're still scoping out what that future, uh, future planning efforts.

Look like, um, and what the, what the cost is, um, you know, that our, our transit master plan is our most out of date modal plan.

Um, it was done, uh, before S.

T.

3. Um, really, I think there is a, an opportunity to.

think deeply about what our future transit vision is as we build out SD3 and continue to build out the projects in the levy like the Madison BRT that's moving towards construction and the other transit plus multimodal corridors and other rapid ride corridors.

So I don't think it's I think this scaled within the context of all of our asset needs presented in this package gets us gets us there and we're still in the process of scoping out exactly what that engagement and analysis is needed to develop an integrated multimodal plan.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

I will have questions a little further down, but I do want to just thank the department.

Thank you, Anya, for doing this work and for raising the issue of the need to you know, think ahead of time about how you do community engagement.

I'm also trained as a planner, and that's what we do, right?

You make decisions based on what you're hearing from community and what they feel their neighborhoods should look like.

So I just want to say thank you.

I think if we're talking about the equity, safety, mobility as some of the values that the department is operating under, this is a really good example of how you are implementing those values.

And I really appreciate this.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Please continue.

Here we go.

OK, so here's how the pieces all fit together.

As you can see the safe streets safe sidewalks each at 28% strong bridges that structures and structures coming in at 24 are active transportation 10% planning ahead seven, and then a slice for for reserves for being.

setting aside to make sure we can continue to deliver on these types of programs in the future if we had a revenue loss from something like a perhaps a pandemic.

Hopefully not again.

So ultimately we feel that this program focuses on equity including investments in neighborhoods that face higher risk of displacement and lower access to opportunities.

Safety upgrades and maintenance to benefit our most vulnerable users.

Maintenance to help decrease our backlog, climate change benefits to improve the traveling experience for walkers, bikers, rollers and transit, and planning for an equitable, healthier future with flexibility to direct resources where they're needed most geographically.

Our spending plan that you see in our ordinance today is for 2021, and it's constructed in a way that it could be scaled into the future for a full 12 months worth of revenue.

Ready for the next slide.

These programs proposed here, we found that they had overlapping benefits to those key areas that we heard in the conversation with community.

Equity, safety, maintenance, and climate change.

Each of these programs is designed to have benefits in multiple categories.

And about 75% of this proposed spend plan would be dedicated to investments in neighborhoods in the darker color or darker yellow here would be able to be directed to those neighborhoods that have a higher risk of displacement and lower access to opportunities.

And also, there is 25% of this plan that can fall in areas outside of those.

That's recognizing things like bridges that do have fixed locations.

and are a big part of the priorities in the spend plan as well.

So following that overlapping theme, asset maintenance has cross-modal benefits that we thought were a great way to spend this money.

paving street that could be used for bike transit and freight as an example.

In this case, we're not paving streets.

We're serving sidewalks and bike lanes.

But keeping those facilities safe through maintenance is a big priority here.

And 60% of this program is directed towards maintenance.

And those maintenance dollars for every dollar spent now on maintenance and preservation, that does save costs in the future, up six to $10 in rehabilitation and replacement costs.

So the plan proactively manages our maintenance backlog, and it also supports jobs doing that maintenance work, family wage jobs for workers doing that.

Okay, so this slide breaks down by category how much of that work is maintenance in strong bridges and structures that would be completely dedicated to maintenance safe sidewalks is 85%.

The rest of that that lighter shade there represents that ADA ramp work.

The active transportation maintenance for bike lanes that's all about maintaining those.

And then Safe Streets, the Vision Zero work is about 25% maintenance as it's often needed to improve a facility that has degraded and is not safe.

But if it's properly maintained, it would actually improve the safety of the facility.

And the rest of this plan in Safe Streets, is for new improvements, things like improved crossings and signals, new construction that would add sidewalk improvements that would make them safer for crossings.

Planning ahead is also a big part of how we plan to manage our assets.

It's not necessarily maintenance, but it is giving ourselves the time to think ahead on how we prioritize our resources and maintain what we do have.

So we heard a lot of positive comments, and we're excited and appreciative of the level of engagement that we got.

Here are some direct quotes about the spend plan from stakeholders, and I'll give you a few moments to read them.

Okay, thanks, Bill.

I have a couple more.

from folks we heard from in the comments earlier today, actually.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thanks, Bill.

So next steps, they start with council's discussion of this spend plan proposal and your timeline for finalizing the spend plan in May.

Revenue collection of the $20 vehicle license fee would begin in July.

And this summer, as soon as this is approved, SDOT is ready to begin implementing these projects.

And in the future, we'll continue to engage with the community on travel needs and other opportunities to fund unmet needs.

Now we're ready for any questions.

Councilmembers, any questions for this underlying, the base plan that is presented by SDOT?

Also happy to launch into the discussion about the amendment.

We've obviously got Councilmembers Herbold and Lewis here.

If anybody else wants to sign on as a co-sponsor to the amendment, this is a good time to do it during this discussion as well.

I apologize for not marking the slide number, but you have a slide where you say that, you know, 75% of the VLF revenue would be intended for particular parts of town based on the equity there.

Thank you.

how you got to this decision?

How do you make decisions?

I understand in terms of why these areas, obviously, North Seattle, South Seattle are areas that have been disinvested in for generations, but how do you get to the 75% allocation to those parts of town?

Right, so when we had the conversations about how to evaluate our programs with our stakeholders, equity was the number one priority that came out of that conversation.

So with that, the criteria we use to evaluate all of our, those seven criteria when I showed you that kind of blue quilt of ratings, equity had a rubric to score it.

And so programs that had a high score in equity could deliver 75% or more of their program into these areas that have been disinvested in in the past.

So we really worked with our program owners who were proposing the work plans and found out that their proposals could deliver more than 75% of their work into these areas.

They were flexible enough to do that.

Okay, thank you.

And maybe just to add on that slightly finer point a little bit is, is, you know, we, this is. still a fairly small amount of investment overall in the needs that we have from an asset perspective, again, across the whole portfolio in looking at things like sidewalk investments and crossings and crosswalk remarking and things like that.

Those are things that can be directed towards areas that need that and are addressing some of the equity challenges we have, knowing that those are also assets that need investment citywide.

And can I follow up with one more question?

So, when I look at the map, I don't think you had it on here, but I know there is a map of missing sidewalks in the city and most of them are in the areas here that are dark yellow.

Also doesn't surprise me, but my question is, when you had up the list of stakeholders who you engaged with, I didn't see any organizations, maybe I didn't read it all, that represented or might include folks who live with disabilities.

And we know that very often those folks are also experiencing poverty.

And so again, those community members, you know, I engage with a lot of folks who are living with disabilities who are low income and who are in the district that has a lot of missing sidewalks.

And so I'm just, all that is to say, can you talk a little bit about how and whether those folks were included in the conversations that you had leading up to this spend plan?

Yeah, we can get back to you with the list of specific folks that were invited.

I know that not everyone could attend who we invited.

Anya, do you have any more details?

Sure, I can add a little bit more to that.

You know, I would say that some of the organizations that were represented, I think, represented multiple perspective in terms of abilities, for example.

So I know some of the stakeholders within the community-based organizations in the equity group for example, I know one organization works with seniors, but also folks with disabilities as well.

And so I would say that there's an intersectionality in terms of representation.

So I will say that, but we could definitely get back to you in terms of a finer tune list and the representations.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold.

So, um, go back to that map.

We had up just the, um, the.

planning measure of low risk to or high risk to displacement and low access to opportunity is a definition that the Office of Planning and Development has created for purposes of of doing citywide planning.

And my recollection of that map for areas that are both high risk of displacement and low access to opportunity is smaller areas of the city.

And I'm wondering if this map instead represents not only neighborhoods that both have high risk of displacement and low access to opportunity, but also neighborhoods that have just one of those two categories?

Yeah, so the list is It may be that that's the case.

I think we'll have to check that.

It's looking at neighborhoods by quintiles, and I think this is the bottom three quintiles, and maybe Sam has a little more familiarity with the maps themselves, but we can also get back to you on that.

The reason why I ask is I think using both categories together, focusing on neighborhoods that have both high risk of displacement and low access to opportunity, using both of those categories together makes it more meaningful for purposes of targeted investment or targeted land use policies, specifically to address those conditions.

If you are including neighborhoods that just have one of those categories, then it becomes less meaningful as a tool to really have focused investment and focused planning tools.

And so that's why I'd be interested to know a little bit more about how this map was created and how those areas were identified.

Absolutely.

And, you know, I think we've also taken in the last year the added layer of where the pandemic has been most impactful in terms of COVID prevalence, which also does have an even more focused geography of some of those communities where we've seen the overlapping impacts of pandemic, historic underinvestment.

economic distress brought about by the pandemic and vulnerability to displacement.

And so I think this is that initial cut of an equity focus, but our work and the work that Anya talked about in terms of the transportation equity framework goes deeper than that in terms of how we really think strategically about the investments we make in infrastructure that supports community.

Thank you, Council Member Ervold.

And I do have one update.

Anna Zavartis, who commented earlier, she represented Disability Rights Washington, and she did attend our outreach sessions.

Thank you.

Let's see.

So I'm happy to talk about the amendment.

Again, we're going to be discussing this on May 5 as well at our committee, but happy to just put it out there and we can talk about it.

Council Member Herbold, Council Member Lewis, anybody else who wants to jump on as co-sponsor and open session here.

But just to, if I can go ahead and go first.

So what this amendment does is it basically that we're going to do what the stakeholder group was recommending, and that's one of the pie charts that they had shown in their PowerPoint earlier that breaks up the $7 million, or $3.5 million for this year, breaks it up into six different buckets.

And then to have SDOT come back to us in September before the fall budget process with a proposal to spend $100 million in bonds on these issues with an emphasis on multimodal bridges because of how expensive they are, because of the bridge audit, because of the West Seattle bridge closure, and the fact that bridges have not been getting that attention.

So it would give bridges a boost, but it would still have $25 million available for these projects and programs that we've just gone over here.

So when I look at each of these buckets or slices of that pie, you see $1 million, $2 million, a few hundred thousand dollars.

So one of the benefits of doing the bonds is you get 25 million or more dollars right away that you can then address things quickly.

And in terms of job creation, that would also, you know, that's more work than SDOT staff could do.

So there'd be outsourcing some work and creating jobs from, we heard a lot from the construction labor unions today who seemed excited about the amendment.

I'm happy to, you know, if Council Member Lewis or Herbold want to speak to the amendment, I can also answer any questions about it, but it's really having SDOT come back to us.

with a proposal which we would then consider at that time.

Councilmember Lewis?

It looks like Councilmember Herbold has her hand up first, but I'm happy to go after her.

I just want to confirm my understanding, this does not, this amendment in no way impacts the recommended spend plan for 2021. Is that correct?

Correct.

That's what I thought when I signed on to it.

And it only is asking Scott for a plan within the sort of parameters that we're identifying here.

That's right.

And I think the other thing to really underscore, I know I've said this a couple of times, I think, you know, one of the reasons why we're interested in a bonding proposal is in recognition that, again, we are not going to have any opportunity to identify a fund source to address the needs associated with bridge work until planning for a new levy, which would begin in 2023, would go on the ballot in 2024, for funding that would not be available until 2025. And I think some of the things I've been hearing in opposition to bond financing is really similar to the kinds of opposition that we heard and overcome as a council when the council wanted to use our bonding authority for a small housing bond to augment in a single year the funding that we were putting towards very affordable housing.

And it is true that bond financing I don't see it as a cost associated with it.

discretionary.

It is something that we must do and we have to find the resources to do so.

I recognize that, you know, in the scheme, in the grand scheme of the costs associated with I think it's really important for our city and the cities to anticipate larger infrastructure investments from the federal government, and these dollars will complement those dollars that I know that we're all hoping for.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

Happy to make my first guest appearance here in the Transportation Committee, so thank you for the invitation.

I believe that my official position on this is co-author now, given how we have to structure this, the naming of it.

But I am glad to co-author this amendment and this proposal.

I think we're at a moment here as a state and a country where there's a lot of interest in making significant progress on the long deferred maintenance and replacement of critical infrastructure in the United States.

And the city of Seattle needs to be well positioned to capitalize on those opportunities, given that typically infrastructure investment begets additional infrastructure investment, and just making sure that we have in position the kind of resources that could attract those kinds of matches, both from Olympia and from Washington, D.C. And while Councilmember Herbold is right, $100 million in and of itself is not going to be the linchpin that holds together major financing for big capital projects, it can be a big chunk that can be the key to unlocking significant additional investment.

So I do think this is a good strategy, especially given that interest rates are so low, especially given that we have on the horizon the possibility of major federal investment.

This tool will allow SDOT, and our guest from SDOT could speak to this to confirm if this is the case, but this is another stream of bonding capacity that they could use in their planning in those discussions with other jurisdictions to nail down financing plans for some of these big projects that are coming down the pipeline.

I also think it allows us to really quickly and intentionally move to make really big and significant progress on a lot of our Vision Zero and other multimodal projects, that instead of a trickle of maintenance over a period of years, to come in and significantly overhaul, enhance, and expand.

that we have been doing over the last couple of years.

I think it allows us to build out some of these systems now rather than doing it over a term of several decades.

I think it allows us to build out additional additive sidewalks rather than just repair existing ones.

ramp cuts curb cuts into sidewalks in a given year allow us to do more of those quickly and intentionally and mixing it in with various other sources of support and various other sources of funding and So, you know, I think that this really is a way for us to harness the build back better mantra that we're seeing in Olympia in Washington, D.C.

and to position ourselves well to really shape a new built environment for the city that reflects our new multimodal future rather than merely repairing and fixing up a mid-century transportation system that was more car centric.

So with that, I don't have any additional comments.

Thanks for allowing me to drop by.

I do want to address one of the comments that was made earlier about interest costs.

Interest rates are on an all-time low now.

And one of the benefits of getting, when we talk about interest costs, that's just one aspect of financing stuff.

The other consideration, the benefit is getting $100 million.

immediately.

There's a benefit to getting that $100 million.

With the time value of money, it's more valuable to get it up front.

So it's just something to consider when we do consider the costs and benefits.

There is that benefit of getting $100 million all at once instead of $100 million or $140 million over 20 years.

I just wanted to put that out there.

And Director Zimbabwe, I think, Do you have your hand up?

I do.

Council Member Lewis sort of alluded to some feedback that that we might have on this.

And I just I thought I might offer, if it's OK with the committee, a few comments in response.

So I just want to say, and I think Councilmember Peterson, since you took office, you and I have had many conversations about the need for investment and maintenance in our infrastructure, and I wholeheartedly agree.

What I think is really challenging about the proposal to bond against this ongoing revenue source is it would take The investments that we could be making over time, and again, the investments and maintenance of our infrastructure is one of the hardest things for us to secure funding for, and make that into a one-time.

So we would take 20 years of revenue and put it one time into a set of projects, which I don't, I mean, maybe we could come up with some by September, but I don't have that list ready to go right now.

So even on the bridge side of things, it would take 20 years of a revenue stream and make it into a one-time source again.

And we would still be struggling with the regular ongoing maintenance activities that we need.

We thought about a whole range of ways to invest this as we were formulating this process in conjunction with the community engagement process.

And we really thought this was a great new source of revenue for investment in our infrastructure from a maintenance perspective.

And so I do have some real reservations about trying to then take that, compress it into one year, and try to move it out the door quickly.

I also want to say, I think we recognize what's going on at the state and the federal level.

We've never struggled to come up with our own matching funds for those resources.

We continue to pursue federal grant resources, state grant resources around our projects, around our major capital projects.

And I have no doubt that as those opportunities come up, we will be able to.

We've put in an application for the INFRA grant program on the West Seattle Bridge.

We will have one on the new RAISE program.

We continue to secure grants at the state and federal level.

And the matching funds has never been a challenge for us in securing those grants.

Thank you, Director Zimbabwe.

Just to clarify, though, I mean, your annual budget is hundreds of millions of dollars, and so I think finding $7 million, and this is new money, so I just think it's possible for there to be prioritization within your large budget, and that $7 million, there is a way to I'm not sure it's fair to say this new bucket of money would have to go toward that.

We're hoping to get, you know, we're not sure what the state government's going to be able to pull off this year regarding a state transportation package, but we hope the federal government can do more on infrastructure.

There's certainly a lot of talk about it in Washington, D.C. So I'm hoping that SDOT will be able to take advantage of that and absorb the large sums that could come our way.

So I'm hoping that you are getting ready for that one way or the other.

I don't know if this is for directors or central staff or if anybody can answer this question at this point, but I am interested in if there is a federal infrastructure package or allocation, if we have any sense of what the parameters of that would be.

10 bridges across the country or what that money would be used for.

I know all of that is still up in the air, but I'm trying to understand how we could use that money to support whatever maintenance backlog we have here.

And then the other question I have is, If I'm understanding the idea here, it seems like this proposal would use $25 million early for repair, but it would replace potentially $80 million that would have come in over time for sidewalk repairs.

Again, I'm not sure if that's Sam or Calvin who might be able to help answer that, but that's one of the trade-offs that it seems like this is asking us to make, and I'm not sure that makes sense.

I can address that, but if Calvin, if you wanted to, I see your hand is raised, but I think the sidewalk money is $2 million a year.

And this bond proposal would be $20 million, so I'm not sure where the $80 million is coming from.

But I did hear somebody mention that figure.

So Calvin, did you want to try to address that?

Well, I wanted to just start with the first part of the question.

I think a lot of the federal and state funding opportunities are still being defined.

There are, in addition to the infrastructure federal funding, there's also potentially surface transportation reauthorization, which could be another source of funding.

You know, while there may be some earmarks that go into some of these programs, the vast majority of it is going to be formula and competitive grants that will go through existing administrative grant programs and are going to be reliant on future budgets to make that money available.

So, you know, it will sort of set up what those grant cycles look like in the future.

That's the type of thing that SDOT has a lot of history with getting prepared for.

I think when we think about sort of financing, those are choices that we can make as we go incrementally.

When the opportunities present themselves, we have to kind of figure out how that fits in.

I think a lot of the conversation today is the council considering how important it is to try to really push for larger capital spending now.

I think a lot of these federal grant programs tend to focus on the delivery of capital and not so much the regular operating and maintenance that Sam was alluding to.

grants typically want to show a large project as sort of the success.

I think this has been the history of most government infrastructure spending, that it's easier to find the money for the new thing and harder to maintain the upkeep.

But I think it's also useful for us to talk about what maintenance means, because I think a lot of the proposed spending we're talking about is actual construction jobs and construction spending to repair what's there.

So I think we are a little bit trapped in some of our language and I think we need to maybe find a way to have a conversation about what the financing picture looks like.

We do have the Move Seattle levy coming up for renewal at some future time.

that has typically been the time when we've considered, you know, when the move Seattle, excuse me, when the bridging the gap levy was first proposed, that's where we got the commercial parking tax revenue started.

So it does become sort of that bigger time frame to think about what's possible.

And I think we probably need some better understanding of what the federal and state funding opportunities are to help inform that.

I don't think we're necessarily missing any opportunities, even if Congress were to make those decisions we're going to have to figure out how we're going to put together a levy.

I think we're going to have to figure out how we're going to put together a levy tomorrow.

It will take some time for that to be, to roll out as how we would access it.

But it's very important for us to kind of understand what that is so we can have better information on how to put together a levy.

There's also the flip side of SDOT's asset management infrastructure and what do they know about what they need.

you know, a project needs development, it needs environmental, we get these baseline costs that are based on assumptions, and then we find out later that the costs have changed, not so much because, you know, there was something went wrong on the project, but because we now know more about what that project is.

So what level of understanding of the project costs are we going to need as well?

So all that to say that I think we are talking about, this is all coming to light in the context of a relatively small funding mechanism for the $20 VLF.

I think there is opportunity to talk about that.

Clearly it's within a council's prerogative to decide which way to go on this.

Those are some thoughts.

I'm not sure if I answered your question.

Thank you.

From my understanding about the bridge talk from Washington, DC, it is really those major interstate bridges that they're talking about.

And not every city has as many waterways and ravines as we do.

And so that is one of the concerns is that it won't I think it's important for us to make sure that we don't trickle down to the bridges that we care about, like the second avenue south extension or university bridge or Ballard bridge, et cetera.

It's something for us to think about over the next couple of weeks.

Are there any other questions about this item or the amendment?

I just want to start off my line of inquiry from the perspective of identifying what I think is common ground.

And I think what is common ground is that we all agree that we need to take care of our infrastructure and that we need to act quickly but judiciously to make sure that we can address infrastructure maintenance needs before they fail.

As a West Seattle resident and a citywide representative, I know what happens and what the impacts are when one of our major pieces of infrastructure It is bad for the city.

It's bad for the region.

It's bad for transit users.

It's bad for people who drive cars.

It's just bad.

So I just want to start by acknowledging that I think we're all on the same page as it relates to we need to have a plan to address failing infrastructure needs before complete failure occurs.

And so I appreciate the opportunity And think that the way that this conversation is being framed is sort of, I hope, in the context of we have this problem, we have this issue, we need to solve it.

These are the ways we can do that.

I think what I'm struggling with is whether or not this is the proper.

mechanism by which to address the scale of the problem facing the city as it relates to our infrastructure.

And I'm not prejudging the proposal one way or the other.

I'm just sort of expressing what my early thinking is, which is sort of wanting to be cognizant of some of the comments Calvin made, some of the comments I've been hearing from SDOT and in public comment.

any offline conversations that I've been having with people saying we have to fix our bridges and we can do it in a way that is multimodal, we can do it in a way that doesn't pit transit and non-vehicle mobility with sort of more traditional single occupancy vehicle modes of transportation.

So for me, I think it would be important to just hear in terms of you know, from SDOT's perspective, I understand that the amendment doesn't have an impact on 2021 spending plan as crafted by the stakeholders.

I guess what I'm struggling with is in the past, when we've done VLF work that included stakeholdering, Or maybe didn't, but did was it always a year by year plan in terms of the spending or was it or was or was sort of the vision like we're going to have a spending plan.

Or principles that are going to dictate how we're going to spend the money for the life.

Of the of the.

So the last time that there was this kind of stakeholder engagement, and it well predates me, but was at the very inception of the SCBD and the vehicle license fee.

And that has continued to guide our general approach to the base $20 vehicle license fee over the past decade.

So I do think that we, and we entered the conversation with stakeholders, thinking that we weren't just talking about a half a year set of investments, but about that sort of longer term guiding principles.

And I would say that that baseline $20 vehicle license fee supports a number of multimodal maintenance and small scale capital investments that we do on a regular ongoing basis.

So having that stakeholder grounding and stakeholder engagement to then support a long-term approach really helps us with that sort of sustainable ongoing expenditure that does get addressed through the every year budget process, but sort of has a framework around it.

And Calvin, you had your hand up.

I just wanted to add that in the email transmittal that SDOT sent to Councilmembers directly that transmitted the spending plan, it really focused on the next four years before the levy, and it kind of left open the fact that when the levy is up for reauthorization, that may that may require rethinking all of SDOT's revenue sources.

So there is maybe a difference a little bit in terms of what the legislation here, which is really just a budget appropriations transfer to deal with 2021. is a little bit different than what SDOT transmitted, which is really focusing on the immediate future before the next levy, and is a distinction between the proposed amendment, which would really talk about the anticipation of potentially using those resources for the next 20 years.

Okay, so then, so then, This, this amendment.

You know, raises the the sort of policy question around.

A shift between guiding principle, establishing guiding principles through a stakeholder process that influence.

sort of in a sustainable way, you know, guides the manner in which the spending plans are done on a year-to-year basis, but sort of from that umbrella guiding principles perspective.

So that's how we've done it in the past.

This amendment would modify that by effectively doing a year-to-year spending plan now.

I think that with any sort of spending plan, it is just what the executive expects to transmit in future years.

We do all of our budgeting yearly and on a biannual piece.

I think the amendment in front of us I think it remains to be seen how the department will respond.

The request is to deliver a project list so that council can consider it.

The recitals proposed do signal an interest in doing the capital spending, but that would be a decision for the annual budgeting process.

if, does the amendment before us account for, and I think Council Member Morales was kind of alluding to this a little bit, does the amendment before us account for or allow for any sort of flexibility on the city's end in terms of the signaling to SDOT to account for additional revenue sources that may be better, more sustainable, more consistent with our fiscal policies options for us to fund the scale of the need here.

The proposed amendment really just speaks to a project list.

Everything else is a recital signaling intent, but doesn't, is not necessarily binding or ask for anything different.

The specific change to the legislation is to ask SDOT to provide $100 million project list for consideration by September 30th.

Right.

Okay.

But the intent would be to I think the way that I'm reading the intent and hearing the intent from the co-authors and co-sponsors is that the reason to generate this list is because it's laying the foundation to be able to propose funding, those $100 million through this bonding mechanism that we haven't yet approved, but would be considered as part of our fall budget process.

That's correct.

The recitals suggest that that's council's intent.

OK.

And I guess what I'm asking is, I just want to make sure that the amendment is devoid of language that would allow the City Council to pursue a different option if a different option became available.

In other words, if this $100 million list of capital projects became available to the City Council and by the time we get to our fall budget process, which feels like an eternity away, but I realize this is around the corner, would there be enough, you know, does this, does the amendment allow for the city council to effectively shift from this bonding proposal to something else that would still meet the capital needs of maintaining our transportation infrastructure, but perhaps not, you know, rely on VLF as that revenue stream.

This legislation does nothing to direct the 2022 budget.

It doesn't direct any specific bonds.

It just signals the interest.

So it would not constrain council's actions in the 2022 budget.

OK.

So we would still have an option to pursue other revenue streams to effectuate this bonding intent that are outside of the scope of the VLF revenue stream.

Yes.

I think that's it for me.

Thank you, Council President.

Council Member Juarez.

I was waiting.

Thank you.

So my understanding and thank you, Council Member Peterson, for having this discussion with me offline.

I do sit on the Sound Transit Board and I do have some experience in issuing tax-exempt bonds and big capital projects.

And so I'm glad you kind of had an opening statement to kind of share.

from what we heard from public comment as well, there was some confusion.

Today, this amendment, as Calvin so intelligently pointed out, signals an interest based on the auditor's report.

So the amendment is just directing SDOT to go back and report and bring back to Seattle City Council in September, and we'll be making a policy decision about the projects that were listed the 75% for bridges and 25% for sidewalks, I'm guessing it'll be more fleshed out in September, and we'll have a full report on that.

And in that report, I'm guessing what we normally do when we look at whether or not we issue tax-exempt bonds for capital infrastructure or essential governmental services or projects, is that there will be a flow chart, a flow of funds chart.

It will tell us what the upfront capital spending would be and everything else.

So I think today, I think there was some miscommunication.

I've certainly heard it in some of the public comment and in some of the information and phone calls I got that, oh, council's voting today to pass an amendment to pass a bond.

There's a lot of work between now and September.

So, and I think, and just as more of a policy perspective, in my opinion, I support this amendment because I believe, particularly in what happened for two big reasons.

Number one, West Seattle Bridge failed.

and that's not been good for anybody, whether you're biking, walking, on a bus, or commerce.

It has affected commerce dramatically.

We have spent a ton of time in Sound Transit and the Puget Sound Regional Council, I'm on the Transportation Subcommittee, as well as Council Member Gonzalez, struggling with the maintenance, the infrastructure, the bridge, and getting money to West Seattle for the bridge.

So when we got that auditor's report back and we see that there are four or five bridges that are ranked, and correct me if I'm wrong, ranked poor, it is our job as electives to say the infrastructure is important.

This is nothing against people that ride bikes, that want to walk and bus.

It is about the infrastructure on the buses, or I'm sorry, on the bridges to make sure that they're safe, to make sure our city runs.

I agree with what Calvin said.

We will always have some opportunity for federal money to have matching funds, but they mainly look at, when you're looking at grants and particular project money, they're more interested that you're going to build some brand new shiny thing than fix some old thing.

But there's still that opportunity there.

That's not going to go away.

And I do agree with what Council Member Lewis said.

This does give us an opportunity to have the information with this new administration, Department of Transportation, and what I've learned from Mr. Rogoff over at Sound Transit, of with Build Back Better, that there is going to be federal money there.

And we're hoping and counting on that, since Washington state is the number one state that gets the most money from Department of Transportation.

Thank you to our congressional delegation, in particular, our two senators.

So with that in mind, I feel like the wind is behind our back, and that has momentum to think big and to be big and to move forward.

So for that reason, I would be supporting this amendment.

I know we're not voting on this today, I understand, or I'm guessing.

but are we, we are?

We're not voting on it.

Yeah, we're not voting on it.

So we have a lot of room for discussion.

And the one thing that is really important that I, um, that I heard today and that I've been reading about, and I had a chance to read the material that you sent to me, Council Member Peterson, including SDOT's 2017 report and the information on the bridges.

I think it was really important what labor shared with us today.

We are going to have to build back better from this pandemic, and we are going to need these jobs.

And I can't think of a better place to land to provide those opportunities than to build our infrastructure when we are poised to get more money from the federal government.

So with that, I think that's all I have to share.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

Council Member Morales, did you still have your hand up for this item?

Okay, and then we'll, since we're not voting on this item, we'll quickly move through the other items.

I think we're gonna have to drop one of the reports that we're getting today, but let's keep going on this item, finish it off.

Sure.

Thanks.

So I just want to say, Councilmember Peterson, I appreciate the conversation we had yesterday.

I want to say at the start that I don't think that the need to invest in maintenance of bridges and the need to invest in better sidewalks are mutually exclusive.

We're a city surrounded by water.

We need our bridges to be able to get around safely.

And I have thousands of constituents who don't have any choice but to use our sidewalks to get around and do the things they need to do.

And so my question and the questions I will be trying to get answered over the next couple of weeks, are really about, you know, not just, I'm also not opposed to bonding.

I just have a question about whether signaling an intent for the remainder of this fund, that 75% of it goes to bridges, is the right amount.

Because I have Two constituents who died in the last two weeks who were hit on their bicycles.

I've been walking up and down Rainier Avenue with folks from Lighthouse for the Blind to see how hard it is for them to navigate up and down Rainier Avenue.

We have hundreds of housing units that are in the pipeline on Rainier Avenue.

And as somebody mentioned earlier, the sidewalks are buckling from tree roots.

It's loud, it's noisy, it's dangerous to walk down that street given the condition of the sidewalks.

And that's just one street in my district.

So I support the need, especially for seismic retrofits of our bridges and want to make sure that people can get around our city safely.

But I also think it's really important that we make sure people can get around our neighborhoods safely, particularly for those who are in wheelchairs or using a walker.

I've also got lots of seniors down here who can barely get themselves across the street because the signal timing is so short and they're using a walker.

So I have a lot of questions still and we'll be eager to be in communication with all of you before we have to vote on this.

Thanks.

Thank you.

And as we like to say, I appreciate the robust discussion today.

It was really helpful.

And I think it also signals to SDOT that there is a desire to address things faster and think bigger about stuff and to get ready.

And so this, even though we'll vote on it next time, that is one of the benefits is it just gets them thinking about how to go bigger faster if that's something that we want to do.

So thank you everybody, appreciate that discussion on item two.

We are going to go through, let's see, one moment.

Mr. Chair?

Yes.

Did you forget me?

Council Member Horace, hi.

I thought you could do it, but I guess it turns out from the clerk that we have to do it on the record that I would also join in co-sponsoring.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I just got a text saying that I had to say it.

Okay.

Oh, thank you.

Okay, terrific.

Thank you, Council Member Horace, for co-sponsoring the amendment.

I'm just checking with my clerk here real quick.

We're going to hear the Seattle Public Utilities presentation on the strategic plan and rate path.

We're going to go through that quickly, though.

We have the customer review panel with us here today, as well as Brian Goodnight from our central staff, who produced a memo on this.

So let's go ahead and read the short title of item 3 into the record.

Agenda item 3. Resolution 3200, a resolution relating to Seattle Public Utilities adopting a 2021 to 2026 strategic business plan for Seattle Public Utilities for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

Colleagues, today is the second committee meeting for consideration of the Seattle Public Utilities Strategic Business Plan.

On April 7, the utility presented its proposed plan, which includes six-year rate paths for all four business lines, water, wastewater, also known as sewage, drainage, stormwater, and solid waste.

And today we're going to hear from SPU's customer review panel.

I really want to thank the members of the customer review panel for their work.

They're very dedicated to making sure Seattle Public Utilities is doing a good job and sustainable.

And they produced a very thoughtful 10-plus page letter that looks at this strategic plan and gives their views on it.

It's been very helpful to go through their letter.

We're going to hear from I'm going to turn it over to Brian to talk about their chair today, and just point councilmembers also to the memo and the public to the memo from our central staff analyst, Brian.

Good night.

Brian, traditionally we do start off with the central staff analyst.

Is there anything you wanted to say to frame up things for this

Thank you, Councilmember.

I think it would be appropriate to just let Noel Miller go ahead and go forward with his presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome, Noel Miller.

Thank you for being here.

Good morning.

It's nice to be with you.

And just to let you know, I know that you're running late, so I would be happy to come back at another time, but I can move forward with this as well.

Yeah, please move ahead with it.

And council members, do feel free to reach out directly to the customer review panel.

Or Brian, good night, or my team can put us in touch, put you in touch with them.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

OK.

Thank you.

Well, it's good to be with you all.

And infrastructure is really important.

And it's been a great discussion on the transportation side.

And so now we'll go to utilities.

I've been on the panel since 2013 and have been a Seattle Public Utilities customer since 1979. On our next slide, this is a quick summary of our presentation, a recap of the role and history of the panel, a summary of the key points in our panel letter, And this provides panel comments, observations regarding the completely updated SBU's strategic business plan.

And then we can follow up with any comments or questions.

The panel was created initially in 2013, made a permanent standing body in 2017. There are 11 seats and currently eight are filled.

The panel's main purpose is to independently advise the mayor and council in collaboration with Mamadi and her staff.

We held 21 open meetings over the past three years.

And with the SPUE team, meetings would typically last three hours in order to gain an in-depth understanding about SPUE's plan proposals.

The panel members represented various customer interests such as commercial, residential users, public housing, public health, finance, community advocacy, utility and engineering management.

Having diverse perspectives and experiences has been very helpful in our discussions and the recommendations stated in our letter.

This is the second time that the six-year plan has been updated from the original.

This plan includes new vision, mission, and value statements created by the SPU leadership.

Overall, the panel is very supportive of the various documents of the plan, including all of the 18 initiatives and investments, and with the resulting six-year average annual rate path of 4.2%.

And we are pleased that the resulting initiatives and investments support the social, racial, economic, and environmental equity values of the city.

The findings of the affordability and accountability report and the risk and resiliency report that were directed by the city council are integrated into the plans, initiatives, and investments.

We think that these two reports are really important to help SPU continue to become more effective, prioritize its investment strategies, support customers, and enhance the environment.

We will be carefully tracking how these are implemented through the service and reporting metrics that are documented in the plan in our upcoming quarterly meetings.

Major highlights incorporated under the affordability and accountability report.

The utility has taken great pains in the last three years to respond to our questions about asset management.

SPU has three very old critical infrastructure systems, the water drainage and wastewater networks of pipes that on aggregate are approximately 80 years old and with most of them getting older.

We really need to be mindful about the process methodology used to renew this essential infrastructure as cost effectively as possible.

Thus, SPU will need to start planning for what will be a much larger capital asset replacement program over the subsequent decades using a more robust asset management program.

Continuous improvement practices in capital project delivery and in the system operations will need to become more efficient and effective to help slow the annual growth in rates.

Although we did not specifically state this in our letter, we strongly support efforts by SPU to collaborate with federal, state, and local partners to further develop cost-effective approaches in meeting public health and environmental protection goals.

The major highlights incorporated under the risk and resiliency report.

The panel supports the R&R initiatives to support how SPU thinks about the future and approaches its work today.

We look forward to further progress on the climate change adaptation strategy and the seismic resiliency initiatives.

We hope to see the completion of essential facilities, such as the North and South Operation Centers, along with the Cedar Falls Phase 2 facility.

These have been in the works since the last strategic plan and have been delayed in their completion.

Projects to address flooding and water quality concerns in the South Park community have been ongoing since the first six-year plan, and we hope they will be completed soon.

Efforts to support SPU's sizable workforce are essential, and we look forward to hearing about the ongoing Shaping the Future quarterly leadership forums.

Our other observations.

We are very supportive of SPU developing a financial assistance program for individual property owners to renovate and replace their private side sewers.

We are also supportive of continuing and expanding the RV wastewater collection pilot program, trash pickup, and the new hygiene trailers.

We see these as essential services to the unsheltered population, and these measures provide needed protection of the local natural environment.

We would also like to see further coordination and cost sharing between SPU and SDOT in regards to the mutual use of the city's right-of-ways, specifically on projects such as stream culvert replacements and an improved street sweeping program for bicycle lanes.

Following up, there are many Continuing and growing pressures on SPU rates, the renovation and replacement of our water, wastewater, and drainage infrastructure, response to climate change, seismic resiliency, and efforts to improve water quality using GSI are no small tasks.

All these efforts will increase the pressure on rate affordability for SPU customers.

We recommend that work should begin now to map out how we can address this long-term challenge.

In closing, on behalf of the panel, I want to express our deep appreciation for the work that SPU does to support our efforts.

The process has been collaborative with everyone dedicated to the process, and we appreciate the partnership we have had with Mami and her entire team.

One last thing in our letter is a desire for enhanced engagement between the panel and the Mayor and City Council offices.

We think that ongoing communication of concerns, priorities, and questions will help us do our job better as a panel.

So at this time, please let me know if you have any comments or questions.

Thank you very much for that presentation and I'm pleased for the other members of the review panel who may be watching.

I want to thank them for their service and continuing to provide oversight in addition to what this committee is able to do and what our central staff is able to do.

I think it's very important for such a large enterprise such as SPU to have that additional oversight.

Really appreciate your focus also on affordability as being a unifying theme, since utility bills are essentially regressive, necessary, but regressive costs that are paid.

So focusing on affordability helps hundreds of thousands of ratepayers.

And so, council members, any questions for the review panel?

also asked Brian Goodnight any questions about his memo.

And we'll be voting on this at the next committee meeting on May 5. We wanted to give it three hearings because it impacts the rates.

Okay, well that's a testament to all the good work that Councilmember Herbold

Thank you so much.

I want to thank the customer review panel for all of their hard work.

It is so valuable.

And the number of meetings and the number of hours of meetings is really commendable and awe-inspiring as a person who really relies on your input as experts in this area and stakeholders.

I do have a question about an issue that you've taken a position on in your strategic plan advice in prior years.

I think in two prior transmittal letters to the council related to The rate path, the customer review panel has spoken specifically to its support for utility impact fees.

And I did not see that reference in this letter.

I appreciate that Seattle Public Utilities has done a lot of really good work in updating some of its I'm not sure if I'm getting this right.

I'm wondering if this is work that the customer view panel still supports or if there's been some new thinking on projects that drive rates?

Well, when we pressed forward with this from the last plan, additional analysis was done and other stakeholders weighed in in regards to the concern over housing affordability and how this would impact that by putting these rates on.

And I think what I heard was that there was a desire to put these rates on more expensive real estate.

But the lawyers weighed in and said that there wasn't a legal path for that.

That's all I know about it.

I think that there's been more discussion, particularly in the mayor's office, in regards to this.

As you've recognized in the city of Seattle is rather unique in the paucity of impact fees that we have as relates to the utility infrastructure.

I don't know if you have anything to add to that.

I'm not sure if that's the right way to put it.

I'm wanting to understand a little bit more about the customer view panel's concerns around that.

I share your concerns about impact fees driving the cost of I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the strategies that Seattle Public Utilities has developed in this area and specifically the strategies that they have suggested to avoid impacting affordable housing development.

We brought the subject up and there was definitely some pushback.

So we just said, well, we got a lot of other things to focus on as far as weighing in on the next strategic plan.

So that's the reason why you haven't seen it.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold for raising that again.

And I support looking at that so that we don't have a situation where we're charging rate payers or increasing rates on rate payers and not capturing costs in another way so that we don't have to take the money from the rate payers since these utility bills are regressive.

So I support looking at system development charges and I think what's What's helpful about this rate path is that they are coming in lower on average than what they had even promised back in 2018. Now, that's for a variety of reasons, obviously.

And it may not be sustainable for the next strategic plan.

And there are asset management needs that we have to deal with as well.

So system development charges, to me, are still on the table and need to be .

I think it is something to be cognizant of.

The utility tax that we charge to SPU is much I think you have concerns about that as well, the utility tax that's being charged.

Yeah, it's an ongoing concern.

And we made a recommendation last time to maybe look at indexing the total taxes that are collected more towards a rate of inflation being lower than the rate path.

So that would provide a little help there.

Thank you.

Council members, any questions for this second time we're hearing about the rate path?

Again, we'll vote on it on May 5. OK.

Well, thank you, Mr. Miller.

Thank you, Brian and SPU for being on the line today.

We'll see you again on May 5. to vote on this, and if there are amendments, we'll want to get those into Brian in the next few days.

Okay, so the next item is item four on the agenda.

Let's go ahead and read that into the record.

Agenda item four, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department declaring certain real property rights to be surplus to the needs of City Lights.

and authorizing the General Manager and Chief Executive Officer of City Light to execute an easement agreement with King County, allowing the temporary use of a portion of City Light property to resolve the encroachment of an existing structure located on the west side of Boeing Field within the northeast quarter of Section 29 Township 24 Range 4 and the southeast quarter of Section 29 Township 24 Range 4 for public hearing briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

And to what we're going to do is we're going to have the public hearing and we're actually going to do the presentation.

We can't vote on it today anyway.

So what we're going to do is we're going to move the presentation to May 5 when we're going to vote on it anyway.

But we do want to have the public hearing today.

It has to happen in a separate meeting.

And the items are posted on the agenda.

So people interested in this.

have the opportunity to have read that, those items posted on the agenda previously, and to speak to them today at a public hearing.

I do want to say this is just about the Georgetown to South Park Trail is really what this is.

It's a step toward that.

We voted on something, another piece of this earlier.

And so this is another necessary piece that has to occur on the Georgetown to South Park Trail.

This is Council Bill 12-0045 approves I'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing.

did you want to speak to this item before I see if there are any speakers sign up for the public hearing?

Chair Peterson, I think you said the things that I would have offered had you not framed it up in that fashion.

I could suggest that if someone from City Light feels that there's something important to say before the public hearing that maybe they have a moment to do that, but otherwise I'll stand down.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, so I guess I have a question for our information technology folks.

Are there any speakers for the public hearing?

No, there is not.

OK, thank you, Eric.

So.

Deputy Clerk Schwinn, do I need to still open and close the public here?

Should I just go ahead and do that?

OK.

Yes, Chair Peterson.

Thank you.

OK, I will do that.

So The public hearing on Council Bill 120045 is now open.

We'll begin with the first speaker on the list.

However, I'm being told that we do not have speakers today sign up for this public hearing on Council Bill 120045. And is that still the case?

There are no public hearing registrants.

Okay, thank you.

So at this time, we don't have anyone present to speak.

So we've confirmed that nobody is on the line.

So we will go ahead and close the public comment period on Council Bill 12045. The public hearing is now closed.

And I want to thank City Light for being here today.

We are pressed on time, so we're going to Sometimes we'll hear the presentation during the public hearing period, and then we'll hear part of it again the next time we vote.

We're just gonna move that all to May 5. So thank you very much for being here today for us.

And council members, if you do have questions about the Georgetown South Park Trail and the different pieces leading up to that, please reach out to them.

Now, the Internet for All, we also have item five next, which is an Internet for All status report.

And because it's now 12.40 p.m.

and we want to get to the last item on the agenda, which is more time-sensitive, we are going to If the committee has no objections, we would amend the agenda to hold this item, basically, to another committee meeting.

On the Internet for All action plan update, which is online, we're very excited about the progress that's been made.

I really want to thank, from our Information Technology Department, I really want to thank Vin Tang, and I want to thank I want to say thank you to all of the commissioners, others from David Keyes and others who have been working on this, my staff, and council president Gonzalez, who signed on early to the Internet for All resolution which led to the action plan which now we are getting an update on.

At least it is available online.

what we call a digital dashboard, so we can actually start to measure the progress toward the goal of getting access to everybody in Seattle.

So council members, we're going to hold this item, but if there are any questions or comments that you wanted to make on Internet for All Now, feel free, and we'll bring IT folks back at another time when we have more time.

Okay.

Well, again, special thanks to Vin Tang for your work on this and moving things forward.

We really appreciate it.

All right.

So, council members, we're going to go ahead and read the last item into the record.

The short title.

And item six, Council Bill 120043, an ordinance relating to cable television authorizing the mayor or the mayor's designee to approve the transfer of control subject to conditions of WAVE Division I, LLC, for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

So this legislation seeks approval of a transfer of controlling interest in the cable franchise agreement between the city of Seattle and WAVE Division I, LLC, due to a corporate merger that occurred.

And so this is required that it come to the council to amend this or to approve this change.

So, we have Eric McConaughey, if you wanted to kick it off.

We also have, obviously, race technology folks with us and want to really thank Alice Lawson for her hard work on these types of things and really looking out for the city's best interest when we're dealing with the private sector.

Eric?

Eric?

Thank you.

Eric McConaughey, the Council of Central Staff.

Just briefly, as you mentioned, Chair Peterson, the federal rules require that this process happened and that it be approved by the City Council, that this come to City Council for approval.

An awful lot of work went into getting to this point.

You mentioned Alice.

Also, there's a series of steps that have happened.

I think they'll touch on those in this presentation.

And I would just say that this is provided for in the federal law.

and all the sort of forms and procedures were followed to get to this point.

And with that, I'll stand aside.

Thank you, Eric, and thank you, council members.

Good afternoon.

So I'm Alice Lawson.

I'm the city's broadband and cable program manager with the Office of Cable Communications.

A lot of people aren't familiar with our work, but we're the group under Seattle IT that administers cable franchises with our private telecom operators, and that we also enforce the city's cable code, which is the municipal code 2160. So the bill before you today specifically relates to a cable franchise and the one with WAVE, which operates a cable system serving areas of the Central District, parts of Beacon Hill, Capitol Hill, Queen Anne, and the International District, and also a lot of the Central Business District.

And the key facts around this legislation are that there's a proposed transfer in the equity ownership interest, as you've already heard, related to one of WAVE's very high up corporate parents.

But that still triggers some activity in terms of review to make sure there's no impact locally on WAVE's ability to provide services in the city.

So the second key fact is that we have confirmed that WAVE is going to remain the franchise grantee and all of WAVE's brand and operations are going to continue as normal and unaffected here in Seattle.

So the third element of today's legislation is that Seattle IT in these cases does complete a significant review of the transfer and the transferee to make sure the city's interests are protected and the customer's interests are protected.

And we've come with a recommendation to approve this transfer of control subject to a corporate guarantee and a consent agreement that are part of the legislative packet.

Next slide, Vin.

All right.

So again, as mentioned, these kind of transfers are heavily influenced by federal and city law.

So under federal law, when a transfer is applied to through the FCC, we have the opportunity as a local franchise holder To look at it and make sure that again the ownership of the franchise that we have with a private company is not being impacted in a negative way, as well as to make sure that there isn't a lessening of competitive options for our residents as a result of this transfer.

So that's a federal framework we look at.

We're only given 120 days.

We have a hard shot clock to do our review.

In this particular case, we worked with WAVE because we do have a legislative process at the city level to review it, and we got a 30-day extension.

So we have until May 8th to meet the agreed to shot clock to give approval.

That's why we're pushing this forward today, even though it's been a long meeting for you all.

Then under the city code as well as federal code, we have in our cable ordinance, again, to protect always the oversight on our private operators and the impact it has on the services provided in our community, a review of these kind of transfers.

So we look at the financial, legal, and technical qualifications of somebody who's going to be having an impact on ownership of a franchise, and that's what we've done and are presenting today.

On the next slide, Our review, again with legal, we engage specialized outside legal counsel to do this, specialized in telecommunication law and also financial specialized consultants that are specialized in telecommunication finances.

And in the case of both of those reviews, the legal review found no adverse legal impacts identified with this transfer.

They confirmed that this change really is a change in a high-level equity interest in a parent company of WAVE, but WAVE remains the grantee and the responsible party under our franchise.

And the legal review did recommend that we just ensure ourselves have full performance with WAVE and so that's where we have the corporate guarantee and the consent agreement.

The financial review confirmed that the buyer of or the investor at the high level does have the financial capability necessary to take on this transfer.

It did highlight that there's this equity ownership could increase debt at a high level for WAVE.

And so the recommendation is that we get a corporate guarantee.

Again, there's going to be no disinvestment or negative impact on our local service or system as a result of this.

In terms of a technical review, we didn't do one in this case on Stone Peak, which is the transfer party, because they're not a cable operator.

They're not coming to buy the system and operate it.

Everything's maintained and operated still by WAVE.

And in this case, again, as long as we confirm the finances will be behind WAVE to continue its operations, then we can confirm they'll have the technical ability to operate the system.

So the outcome of our review is that Council would approve this transfer of control, knowing that the current level of service and the system operations for our residents and that they enjoy from WAVE today are going to continue.

And we will guarantee that through having Radiate Holdings, the entity that we've reviewed their financials and know they have the money to ensure performance of WAVE under the franchise, would have a corporate guarantee.

And we'd have a consent agreement where WAVE is recommitting to performance guarantees that they'll keep their system up to date and current with other operators.

They'll reimburse the city for the expenses we had associated with this review and that the to be considered null and void.

I would take any questions you have.

back up to with you come up with these best practices of a corporate guarantee, a consent agreement, and things that really protect city residents.

So I want to thank you for that savvy work that you've done on this legislation.

Council members, are there any questions about this?

And Eric, did you want to add anything?

Okay.

Councilmembers, I'd like to move that the committee recommend approval of Council Bill 120043, which is item six, the last item on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

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

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Well, are there any final comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to approve Council Bill 120043?

Gonzales aye Herbold yes Juarez Morales Chair Peterson yes.

Three in favor none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the April 26th city council meeting for final consideration.

That was the last item.

Oh, yes, Council Member Morales.

Hi, Chair.

I just want to make sure that my voice was counted.

I know sometimes my audio doesn't seem to work.

I voted yes.

Okay, good.

Clerk, could you just restate that there are four in favor, none opposed?

Four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation of the bill passed will be sent to the April 26th City Council meeting for final consideration.

Council members, that was our last item on the agenda.

Thank you for your patience if we had an extra long meeting today.

This concludes the April 21, 2021 meeting of the Transportation and Utilities Committee.

The committee will meet again on May 5. Thank you for attending.

We are adjourned.