Council Briefing 1/9/23

you.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Today is Monday, January 9th.

It is two o'clock.

My name is Deborah Juarez.

This is our Seattle City Council Council briefing.

Um, will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Sawant?

Present.

Councilmember Strauss?

Present.

Councilmember Herbold?

Councilmember Lewis?

Present.

Councilmember Morales?

Here.

Council member, Mosqueda.

Present.

Council member, Nelson.

Present.

Council member, Peterson.

Present.

And council president, Juarez.

Present.

Eight to present.

Thank you.

If there is no objection, the minutes of January, I'm sorry, December 12th will be adopted.

Not hearing or seeing any objection, the minutes are adopted.

Moving on to the president's report.

Let's see, on today's agenda, we do not have any proclamations or letters or signatures today.

We have, of course, we'll go around and everyone will have their individual reports by each council member.

You should have received a copy of the roll call today.

So the lineup today will start with council members.

So want and then let me finish.

Let me finish what I got to say, then I'll hand it over to you guys.

Um, so we'll go through the calendar.

I'm following the consent calendar on tomorrow's agenda.

You'll see a resolution which was on the calendar last week affirming support for the Iranian women and girls.

This item was postponed from last week's council meeting and I believe Council Member Strauss will speak to that during his remarks.

In addition, last week we postponed consideration of an ordinance related to the historic preservation and specifically the Seattle First National Bank building.

This bill will be considered by the Neighborhoods, Education, Civil Rights, and Culture Committee It is on today's agenda as promised and I believe Councilmember Morales will speak to that in her remarks.

Finally, the Public Assets and Homeless Committee has two items on tomorrow's agenda, one regarding the Japanese garden at the Arboretum and others regarding a Another regarding protection of open space in an agreement with King County, and I believe Council Member Lewis will speak to that as well today, to both items today.

Information on all the items on tomorrow's agenda is, of course, available online.

Coming up, we will be hosting our Office of Intergovernmental Relations, also known as OIR, our state lobby team, for regular presentations on Monday morning or Monday afternoon council briefings, throughout the legislative session.

The weekly presentations will begin on Monday, February 6th.

One final reminder, there will be no council briefing next week, January 16th, due that it is Martin Luther King holiday.

And then the next council briefing will be two o'clock on January 23rd.

Got that right.

Okay.

So my understanding is that there are no letters or proclamations for signature today.

So I'm going to move on to council briefings.

So today's lineup are the week's roll call rotation for this week.

It will start with Council Member Sawant, Council Member Strauss, Herbold, Lewis, Morales, Mosqueda, Nelson, Council Member Peterson, and then myself.

And with that, we will start with Council Member Sawant.

Thank you, President Morales, and good afternoon, everyone.

There are no items on tomorrow's city council agenda from the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee.

There will be two items on the following week's city council agenda from the committee, which are two appointments to the Seattle Renters' Commission, which the committee just approved this past Friday.

The next regularly scheduled meeting of the committee will be this Friday, January 20th.

It will be Friday, January 20th.

And as I said in committee, in the city council briefing last week and also at the committee on Friday this year, my office intends for the committee to pass comprehensive rent control legislation capping rent increases at no more than the rate of inflation without any corporate loopholes.

My office is also going to be preparing legislation to cap late fees, which I believe will be the next bill coming before this committee.

Legislation improving the enforcement of lenders' rights and legislation prohibiting credit checks in rental histories.

Thank you.

I don't see any questions coming up from council members.

No, I don't see any.

But before we go to Council Member Strauss, can I add something?

Please do.

Oh, sorry.

I forgot to say this.

We do have an executive session for 20 minutes when we're done with our round robin here.

So thank you.

Thank you.

And since I don't see any questions, I will pass it on to Councilor Strauss.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you, Council President.

For D6 residents watching, as you've become accustomed to me sharing my daily and weekly and district and citywide activities, I'm going, as I said last, at the end of last year, I'm changing that practice so that we can revert to the pre-pandemic use of council briefings to focus solely on the preview of city council actions.

Council and Regional Committee reports as well.

So I will continue to provide video updates on my work in district and in Seattle in another forum so that I can continue to respect the time of my colleagues and Council President, I will do much better to keep it under 10 minutes with this new practice in place.

So in the Land Use Committee, the first regularly scheduled Land Use Committee meeting of the year will be on January 11th at 2 p.m.

this coming Wednesday.

We're anticipating this to be a very short meeting because there's only one agenda item, which is the mayor's appointment to fill position eight on the Urban Forestry Commission.

We will have that and that will be the only agenda item for this coming meeting.

We're going to be spending a lot of time in February on tree issues and tree policies.

So at this time, we are planning to have three meetings in total, two regularly scheduled meetings, and then we will be adding a special meeting We may add a fourth meeting if, if necessary, the shortest month of the year with the most amount of land use committee meetings so that we can take trees on entirely.

That said, we will also be canceling the January 25 meeting, so that we can prepare for all of this work in February on full Council Council President, thank you for your partnership and work on the resolution standing with the women of Iran.

At this time, the resolution isn't ready for tomorrow, and I will request that we postpone the resolution until it is ready for council review, and I can make the formal request tomorrow.

Colleagues, it still needs a little bit of work, so I just wanted to share that here.

With that, colleagues, that is my report.

Council President, colleagues, do you have any questions?

Oh, wow.

I think that's the shortest report you've ever done, Council Member Strauss.

Look, when you make systemic changes, you can wrap it up quickly.

I'll pass it to Council Member Herbold.

Thank you, colleagues.

Yes, Council Member Herbold, or you are...

That figure was me trying to unmute myself very slowly.

Thank you so very much.

Appreciate the opportunity to be here with everybody today.

Let's see here.

So as far as items coming up on tomorrow's full council agenda, I have no items from the Public Safety and Human Services Committee on the full council agenda tomorrow.

I do have an amendment to Council Bill 120312 that is on the full council agenda.

my staff circulated this to council members earlier today.

As mentioned, it's intended to address and meet both the goal of maximizing potential for housing while supporting landmarking.

And I will at this point defer my additional comments on this amendment until after council member Morales presents in council briefings.

And so I will look after that item comes up a little bit more.

okay with everybody.

As far as the committee agenda coming up on Tuesday, we will be meeting tomorrow at 9.30 a.m.

Items on the agenda include three reappointments to the Community Police Commission.

Two of those three, I should say three appointments to the Community Police Commission.

Two of those three appointments are reappointments from the commission and one of them is a council reappointment.

We'll also be hearing the 2023 work plan for the Office of the Inspector General, and we'll be receiving an update on the city's response to flooding in South Park.

The Office of Emergency Management is leading that update because they are playing a coordinating role with other departments, including the Human Services Department, The Seattle Public Utilities, which has really been doing really critical work in the neighborhood, as well as the Seattle Department of Constructions and Inspections to deal with some of the physical conditions of the units.

And the Health Department, again, it's been a very much a all hands on deck response to this flooding.

So we'll be hearing more and have an opportunity to talk to the department about that work and about the preparation for future high tides as soon as one is coming up again on the 23rd of January.

On public safety related updates, just want to highlight that On Thursday, myself and Councilmember Mosqueda will be visiting Stations 37 and 26. As I think everybody remembers, the Council approved a budget amendment to preserve Ladder Truck 13 at Station 37 and Medic Unit 26, reducing response times by life-saving minutes And we're gonna have an opportunity to see more of that work in District 1 in person.

Appreciate Chief Scoggin's willingness to help us organize this visit as well as Council Member Mosqueda's, her idea to pull us together to spend some time in the district.

I just wanna talk a little bit about public safety regarding the police department.

We know that we have seen some positive trends from the data coming out of the Seattle Police Department.

The fourth quarter of 2022 saw an 18% drop in violent crime compared to the 2021 fourth quarter.

December showed the fewest acts of violence reported since March 2020, where we saw a spike in crime reports.

But I do want to remember that Between the last two weeks of the year, the police department reported more than 100 more shots fired in 2022 than in 2021. We're cautiously optimistic about the positive trends in reduction, but still remain to be very concerned about shots fired in our community.

I look forward to working with Chief Diaz to discuss strategies to address those trends, as well as working with the state legislature to support the efforts to ban military style assault weapons.

As far as events coming up, this week, I didn't have any regional committees last week, but this week I'm considering attending the Regional Policy Committee.

I am an alternate to that committee.

I wanna see of the folks who are regular members of that committee, whether or not it might be okay for me to attend I'm very interested in learning more about the county's behavioral health levy, and that is on the agenda this week.

In addition, as far as other major events that are not regional events, I want to highlight last week, on the weekend, on Saturday, I attended the South Park local resource event.

Again, that was something that was jointly organized by the city as well as the Duwamish River Community Coalition and really uplifting the resources that the city is making available, but also turned into a really, I think, helpful accountability session about who is supposed to be doing what moving forward.

So appreciated that opportunity.

Another event coming up this week is I will be attending the Domestic Violence Prevention Council, representing the council there.

And I think those are the main events I wanted to highlight from last week and this week.

No further remarks.

If anybody has questions or comments, happy to take them now.

Council Member Juarez?

Madam President Juarez, my son.

That's fine, I don't care.

So you're going to go learn about the behavioral health levy then?

Yeah, the RPC is hearing it this week.

I'm an alternate.

Right.

So my culture at the City Council is usually the alternates only attend if the regular members don't attend.

For my discussions with King County staff working on the behavioral health levy and staffing RPC, the regional policy committee's culture is a little bit different and alternates can attend, regardless of whether or not the regular members aren't ending but I just don't want to.

Well yeah I just don't because I'm an alternate to so I know we have Councilmember herbal or Councilmember Lewis and customers so want I believe are on that.

So if they're not attending then you and I would or we would vote or

be part of the fight about that for sure.

Yeah, yeah.

And then the other thing was on the flooding thing.

Are you going to come back to full council to give us an update on how you're handling the flooding at South Park?

Yeah, I'm there's like, we have a full briefing tomorrow morning.

I'm happy to facilitate any information sharing that might come out of out of that.

or if there's interest in having some time before full council, happy to facilitate that as well.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

All right.

Seeing no further questions, I'll pass it on to Council Member Lewis.

Thank you so much, Council Member Herbold.

I think I'll start my remarks maybe by addressing the Regional Policy Committee question that you raised.

I will be attending Regional Policy Committee this week.

I'm very much looking forward to this meeting where we are going to take our first step moving this regional behavioral health measure forward.

And it's been really great to work with Leo Flohr and King County Council Member Girmay Zahalai on this project to create crisis centers for people experiencing behavioral health situations.

And I really look forward to that presentation and can understand your interest in it.

So I'm sure that the chair of the Regional Policy Committee, Pete von Reikbauer, King County Council Member Pete von Reikbauer would be happy to have you there as an alternate and I'm just letting you know that if you are there, I will be there with you, so do please come.

I think it will be a good meeting.

Moving on to other items on the agenda, an update from the Clean City Initiative for December 26th to December 30th, so the week between Christmas and New Year.

The Clean City Initiative recovered 556 needles.

They also removed 22,880 pounds of garbage from 73 pickup locations.

There was no focus park during that cycle, but we look forward to seeing if there will be focus parks in the future and appreciate getting these updates from the Clean City Initiatives.

As Council President alluded to, there are two bills from the Public Assets and Homelessness Committee that we approved and recommended at last week's meeting last Wednesday.

The first, Council Bill 120483, relates to current use taxation and approves the applications in presentations that we heard for two properties to benefit from the King County Public Benefit rating system.

And the committee unanimously recommended approval of those applications for the two properties in question.

We did have a fairly long discussion.

Really vetting the appropriateness of that tax authority and ultimately deciding that this was an appropriate use and that the applications were sufficient to be forwarded on and approved by full Council.

So I look forward to voting on that legislation tomorrow.

The other bill, Council Bill 120489 authorizes Seattle Parks and Recreation to enter into an agreement with the Arboretum Foundation for the support of the Seattle Japanese Garden.

This is a renewal of a longstanding arrangement between Seattle Parks and Recreation and the Arboretum Foundation, and we got a review from the Foundation and Parks and Recreation comparing and contrasting this new renewal of the agreement relative to the old one.

And to the extent that there were material differences, they were differences that appeared to benefit the city, and there was a recommendation from both parties that we ratify this agreement.

The committee did unanimously so recommend and tomorrow that will be on the agenda for full council consideration.

I do have some remarks on the C-FIRST bank legislation.

Similar to Council Member Herbold's statement earlier, I think I will wait until Council Member Morales' presentation to comment on that, so I guess to the extent that Council Member Morales is on deck here, since I'm about to end my comments, just know that I'll be raising my hand for that portion of your presentation, Council Member Morales.

So with that, I don't have any additional things to report, and I'm happy to answer any questions from colleagues.

Seeing none, I will turn it over to Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Well, I guess I better get to it.

Let's see, the Neighborhood Education Rights and Arts Committee for this week is canceled.

Our next meeting will be January 27th.

As has been alluded to on tomorrow's full council meeting, we will be discussing Council Bill 120312 regarding controls and incentives on the landmarked Seattle First National Bank building.

Um, so this bill did come out of committee with a unanimous recommendation that it do not pass.

Um, and I want to be clear, uh, we had lots of folks calling in for public comment last week.

Um, so I do want to be really clear that council does have a role to play in this process, uh, in this landmarking process, but it is not to decide whether or not to approve the landmark designation.

The, the board approves that, makes that decision and has So moved with this particular building.

What we do is the city council is decide whether or not to accept the controls and incentives agreement.

And we have three options we can adopt the agreement as presented, we can modify it, or we can reject it.

And what happened when we heard this in committee is that the committee voted to reject the controls and incentives, which would have granted transfer development rights would have required approval before making significant changes to the building.

The discussion that we had in the committee really was that these the statement of significance by the board when they granted this in 2006. was I think we felt it sort of strained to explain why this particular building warrants protection.

That said, I will also say that in committee, the attorney representing the property owner, which is now Walgreens, the attorney attended committee and testified that the owner did not oppose the vote, So that's sort of how we left committee.

Last week I did file a substitute that would have preserved Section A of the legislation to preserve the landmark status, to acknowledge the landmark status, but would have removed the controls and incentives agreement.

Council Member Herbold, as she mentioned, has circulated a different substitute that would remove the parking area, the surface parking on the property, from the designated features of the landmark.

Lish sent an email earlier today explaining a little bit more about this process and I'm happy to hand it to you Council Member Herbold if you want to talk about this a little bit more.

But the idea here is that because the project is in the Seattle mixed-use uptown zone, it does allow for an incentive of an additional floor if development happens on a preserved landmark site.

And so we could potentially develop 310 units on that site, particularly if there are at least 10 large units that are contemplated, because that would allow another half floor.

So all that to say, Compared to what is possible, if we completely remove the controls and incentives, or if we leave the legislation as is.

There are additional 30 to 60 units possible.

If we move Councilmember herbals substitute.

And so I want to let my colleagues know that I consider that a friendly substitute and will be supporting that tomorrow.

I have more on my report, but I don't know if, if this is the time to stop and let Council Member Herbold and Lewis chime in on this particular issue.

Council President, do you have a preference?

I would like you to get through your whole briefing, and then we can come back to questions.

Sure.

Okay, so a couple more things.

My department updates.

I met with the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs today.

There's their new program coming online, the Immigrant Families Institute program.

This program will focus on victim support, on in-language support and really respond to requests that we've heard from community in the last year about their need, particularly for folks who don't speak English.

There is a deep need to understand how our medical systems work, how our prosecuting systems work, and especially for things like unexplained deaths, homicides, unnatural deaths.

There is a lack of understanding, for example, with the King County Medical Examiner's Office on what the process is for a family to be reunited with their loved one's body.

And when we have a significant portion of our population who practices, whose religious obligations require that they bury their bodies within 24 hours.

There's been a lot of challenges with families understanding how to how to get access to their family to their loved ones in a timely way and so so a wire is working on.

So that is the point of this new program is to make sure that we start to put those systems in place so people really understand what to do in the event of a tragedy in their families.

It also underscores the importance of language access ordinance that our office is working on with ORIHRA to ensure that all of our city departments are providing the kind of critical information that families need in order to be able to navigate the different city systems that we have.

I also met with deal last week to understand their priorities for 2023, which include aligning and improving access to childcare and supporting the workforce there.

issues around hiring qualified workers.

We all know it's a statewide issue, but definitely one of the priorities for DEEL.

They're also working for their preschool program, continuous improvement, continuous quality improvement, and expect a report shortly for all of us to review.

And then they're also focusing on their culturally responsive, culturally specific responsive work, developing a framework across K-12 programming investments.

I do want to note that as part of the budget process last year we also added Council President added a slide on mental health resources that are available and so they are working on that and that is due very quickly so that that will be out in just the next couple of weeks.

Next week I will be meeting with my other departments, and we'll be reporting on them then.

One external committee update the growth management policy board was briefed last week by PSRC and the Puget Sound partnership staff on strategies for Puget Sound recovery.

The board provided feedback on how to accelerate our Puget Sound recovery and how to support their local work, whether it is, you know, removing fish barrier fish passage barriers or how we protect the watershed.

There's a lot of work that's happening in partnership with our regional entities.

We also got updated on their equity advisory committee and the development of their regional equity strategy that that advisory committee just completed its first year and was really instrumental in providing support and input that helped shape the regional housing strategy and help shape the regional transportation plan.

Um, let's see district updates quickly.

I want to start by acknowledging that over the last three days, there have been at least three pedestrians critically injured in my district.

On Friday, a pedestrian was hit by a sound transit train at MLK and Graham.

Same day a cyclist was hit the intersection of Rainier and Plum Street, that was a hit and run.

Yesterday, there were two crashes on MLK and another pedestrian was hit by a car in Rainier and Forest outside the Mount Baker station.

Colleagues, I'm really hopeful that by the end of this year, I can stop reporting to you on how many people have been injured in car accidents, traffic violence in my district.

I do want to announce and I'm excited to announce that the CID resource guide that my office has been working on in collaboration with service providers and Department of Neighborhoods is getting finalized and sent to print this week.

We'll be distributing it in neighborhood next week.

It will be available in traditional and simplified Mandarin in Vietnamese, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, and Tagalog.

This will also be available online through HSD's website and will be regularly updated.

This Thursday and Friday my team will be out of the office, we will have our annual strategic planning retreat.

So, please be aware of that.

Thursday evening I'll be attending school safety town hall at Rainier Beach High School.

I do want to say, you know, I was contacted by folks there who were really frustrated that.

Understanding that violence in any situation, particularly when a student is shot at school is traumatic and tragic for the whole city.

There is frustration that several students and former students of Rainier Beach High School have been shot in the last several years, and there was no quick response to make sure that there was millions of dollars of mental health support for them.

I know it's not quite that simple, but there is definitely a perception for students in the south end that when when tragedy happens in their community, the response isn't so quick, so I do feel obligated to mention that.

And finally, since we'll be out next Monday, I do wanna plug that the RSJI team and OCR will be holding their annual MLK Unity Day event online.

This is a virtual free celebration.

I'm honored to be one of the featured speakers alongside Mayor Harrell, OCR Director Wheeler-Smith and others.

The event begins live at 10 o'clock on Monday and I hope you will all tune in.

I think I might have gone a little over, so I apologize, but happy to take any questions.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much.

I just appreciate learning, Council Member Morales, that you're seeing my proposed substitute as a friendly substitute.

That's really great news.

It was intended to be a compromise, And as I mentioned in my opening remarks, the objective would be to maximize the potential for housing development, while also recognizing the landmark process and recognizing the, I should say the recommendations coming out of the landmark process, to be more precise.

And so what the amendment would do is it would maintain the controls and incentives agreement on the building, lift it, so there will be no controls and incentives on the parking lot.

As mentioned before, there are two versions of the amendment.

I will work with Council Member Morales on the parliamentary procedure.

as far as which approach is preferred.

One version assumes that Council Member Morales' substitute is before us and amends that.

The other version assumes that Council Member Morales' substitute is withdrawn and works from the base bill.

As also mentioned, there's some material that central staff, Lishwetson, distributed that identifies sort of what the different options are for potential development at this location.

It sent an email to the council members earlier this afternoon, the rough numbers, but they give you an idea of what the different alternatives and potentials arising from those alternatives are.

Thank you.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you so much Councilmember Morales.

I did too just want to acknowledge having reviewed the amendment that Councilmember Herbold is proposing as the person who represents this particular site in District 7 that I am also inclined to support this amendment.

My interest in this process has been maximizing the amount of housing that could be produced at this site within the constraints that we have been presented.

And as Council Member Herbold just alluded to, the analysis from central staff indicated that this path would actually materially produce significantly more units for a total of 300, an estimated total of approximately 310 units on the site, and potentially more if we could incorporate, or if the developer rather could incorporate an arts or school facility on the site.

which would give even further incentive in terms of maximum housing units.

It is a significant site and most of it is the parking lot.

That in and of itself takes care of a majority of the issue of unlocking the potential for the site that is joined by a significant amount of housing to itself accommodate a significant amount of housing in this neighborhood.

For those reasons, I really appreciate the creativity of Council Member Herbold in putting all of these, presenting all these incentives together to show the potential of what the maximum number of units could be and appreciate Lish Whitson on quick notice, putting together this summary for us as well.

So I just want to go on the record and indicate my support for this approach.

So thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Thank you very much.

I recognize that some of this conversation will probably happen again tomorrow, but for the sake of transparency in the discussion here today, and given how I think this is helpful for our dialogue tomorrow on our Council floor, if you will, I'm happy to also weigh in.

First, I want to thank Council Member Morales as the chair of Neighborhoods education, civil rights and culture and the committee for your thoughtful deliberation and discussion during your committee process and considering this legislation, I agree with the committee.

that this legislation, as it was transmitted and considered in the committee, does not best serve the city's need to place landmark controls on this site in Seattle.

Given that this is one of Seattle's densest neighborhoods, especially with light rail coming to the neighborhood and with all of the opportunities to expand transit-oriented development, especially to meet our community needs, I really appreciated the leadership of the chair and the committee members for voting no to not advance the policy or to have that.

Recommended no vote in full council.

Um I also did not get the chance to reach out to, uh, Council member herbal does, um, Coast as prime sponsor of the amendment that's been submitted.

So I apologize that I didn't realize you're having this discussion today, but happy to chat.

At any time as well, I guess just to be fully transparent.

I am still concerned about the amendment that's being brought forward.

I think specifically We have shared goals with wanting to make sure that there's an opportunity for building as much affordable housing as possible, even with preserving the landmark but with the drive through and signage in the controls and incentives, this would reduce the site to such that it would not be feasible to build to build multifamily tower on the site.

I think that that could significantly reduce the type and the amount of housing that could be built here.

And I look forward to having further discussions because I worry that the site would be reduced to less than 14,000 square feet, which would not be able to use the maximum.

airspace in this location to create an apartment that could serve family-sized housing to the fullest extent possible and fully capture the capacity of the site for affordable housing.

So I look forward to sharing a little bit more tomorrow, obviously, but also happy to chat with Council Member Morales as the prime sponsor and chair of the original legislation and Council Member Herbold as sponsor of the amendment.

I think my preference would still be that we move forward with the substitute as suggested from Council Member Morales.

And I don't want us to sacrifice any of the additional airspace that our city needs for affordable housing and worry about that given the signage and drive-through language that's in the controls and incentives.

Okay, um, I'm happy to keep talking with you, Council President I do see Lish what's in here, I am wondering if this is an appropriate time to ask Lish if he can comment on that.

No.

Okay.

We're doing Council briefings, so next.

Well, thank you very much.

Colleagues, our first Finance and Housing Committee meeting is going to be scheduled for this year on January 18th.

That's next Wednesday at 930 a.m.

We are still finalizing the details for that agenda for that meeting, but we will have the Office of Economic Development provide us with an update on their economic resilience plan.

We will have an update on the facilitators work and report out on some of the research and the proposal that they had put together at the end of last year for our consideration as we think about the deployment of JumpStart, progressive payroll tax as it relates to the economic resilience section of the codified spend plan and appreciate Director McIntyre for all of the work that he and his team have done and look forward to having this update.

This will inform the full blueprint, if you will, for JumpStart's progressive payroll tax spending.

for 2024 and beyond, and we look forward to hearing more about the lead up to the deployment of the spending plan details as codified in statute.

We also have an update from our partners at the housing connector it's been a few years since we've had the housing connector and committee, and it would be helpful to tune in if you're not part of the committee if you'd like to hear an update on how the housing connectors working with the regional homelessness authority as part of their weekly brief or daily briefings that they do with the community that's working on finding well, emergency housing and affordable housing for folks who are in need of housing stability.

Housing Connector has done a lot of work and this will tee up some legislation that we may consider later this year regarding the ability for people to use various forms of identification to be able to get into housing.

We may have one additional item as part of our agenda, but I'll make sure to let you all know as soon as possible if that gets added, that would be added by this Thursday.

In terms of updates, again, I want to thank Council Member Herbold for what she already shared about the ride-along that the Chair of Public Safety and myself will be doing in West Seattle and in South Park to visit Fire Station 37 and 26. Really excited about being able to highlight this work and very proud of that joint investment that we included in the budget and looking forward to celebrating with IAFF 27 as well.

to support what their members had asked for and really thankful that the chief has also been spearheading this visit, and we look forward to sharing out the information with members of the community and public as well.

On Thursday this week, I'll be going to your neighborhood council member Strauss, I'll be speaking at the Sierra Club housing forum at yonder cider.

in Ballard and look forward to having a more detailed discussion about the upcoming comprehensive plan and all of the work that the community is doing to try to push for a robust and comprehensive and inclusive Seattle moving forward through the comp plan.

Two exciting announcements at the state level happened last week and we didn't have a council briefing last Monday given the holiday so I wanted to just Highlight that as of January 1 Washington State now has the highest minimum wage in the country at $15 and 74 cents with Seattle, slightly above that but I wanted to highlight this a very proud moment for Washington State, I was also proud to have worked on initiative 1433 which helped passed the increase to the state's minimum wage and provides paid sick and safely for all workers in our state.

Really excited about that headline from last Monday.

And the other headline that is very exciting and something for us to be very proud of as well in terms of support for improved labor standards is that Washington state is now among the states that require employers to provide salary and benefit information on all job postings to ensure greater transparency and greater pay equity for all workers, especially women and people of color.

So very excited that that has gone into effect statewide and we are now part of the other states that are offering this information for workers.

And lastly, I want to express my deepest sympathies and express my support and sympathies for Mr. Roland's family and his loved ones.

If folks haven't heard about Mr. Roland's untimely death.

This is related to the death of Michael Roland, a 63 year old man who was taken into custody at the King County Correctional Facility.

He has active mental health crises that he was enduring at the time.

And after police and correctional officers both at different times placed him under arrest, they put him in the prone position to subdue him.

This is the same position that led to George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis.

We did post some information on our social media threads, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

last week to highlight the ongoing concerns that we have regarding the use of incarceration instead of treatment for people experiencing mental health crises, to call out conditions that are occurring not just here in our backyard, but also across the country in terms of health and safety for both inmates and workers in jail facilities, and also linked to some of the national coverage and local coverage of systemic issues within prisons across our nation.

I think that Mr. Roland's case and the situation that surrounds his death highlight the importance of some of the budgetary investments that we made in last year's budget regarding specifically increased investments for reach and lead.

the investments that we made into the affected persons program work group that will be convened through the Office of Police Accountability, and the proviso that we put in the budget mandating a report back on the negotiations between the City of Seattle and King County to continue to reinvest in putting the surplus King County correctional facility funding into upstream solutions to help prevent crime.

And I look forward to continuing to work with community and my colleagues here to make additional investments into community-based health and housing programs for communities that are disproportionately affected by the criminal legal system and incarceration.

Again, our deepest sympathies go out to Mr. Rowland's loved ones and his family and community and hope that this is yet another call for us to continue to revisit and reform how we deal with mass incarceration and that this is a reminder that we must continue the work to reimagine how we as a society prevent and respond to interpersonal harm.

Thank you very much.

I'm not seeing any questions.

I'll turn it over to Council Member Nelson.

Well, greetings everyone in our first briefing of the year.

So the Economic Development, Technology and City Light Committee will meet this year, this week for the first time this year on Wednesday, January 11th at 9.30 a.m.

And we only have one item on the agenda, which is a city light briefing on Western energy markets, including a look at the Western interconnected power grid, which includes all or part of 14 US states plus British Columbia, Alberta, and Northern Baja, California.

City Light will also discuss its participation in the Western Energy Imbalance Market, which is an advanced system that automatically adjusts for energy imbalances to serve real-time consumer demand and improves the integration of renewable energy.

And the briefing will conclude with a first look at the Western Resource Adequacy Program, a region-wide approach for addressing and assessing resource adequacy and reliability.

So that is happening for about 40 minutes in our committee on Wednesday.

All right, report from last week.

I was asked to attend last Wednesday's Community Police Commission meeting because they had convened a small business roundtable to discuss impacts of crime with representatives from Jackson Food Stores, Viet Wah, Dockside Cannabis, and a representative from UFCW 3000. And this is part of the CPC's effort to zero in on specific issues that diverse constituencies in Seattle are facing.

in small businesses because they have frequent interactions with police due to break ins or other public safety threats.

They, they were first on the list and I believe that they'll be focusing on immigrant community and and other specific constituencies down the line.

And my role was to listen and offer my partnership to the CPC and also to our neighborhood business districts in any capacity that I can as chair of economic development.

So many thanks for having me there.

All right, on Saturday, which was two days ago, I attended the dinner we were all invited to, I believe, that was hosted by We Heart Seattle and the California Peace Coalition, which had convened a three-day conference of organizations from across the country and Canada that are focused on advancing best practices to address addiction.

Also in attendance were Chief Diaz, City Attorney Ann Davison, the Public Deventer Association Director Lisa Dugard, and lots of folks that are interested in the in addiction and its intersection with homelessness.

So that was I look forward to hearing more from that group going forward.

Let's see, my legislative aid team will be attending the CPC engagement meeting tomorrow evening.

And on Thursday, we will both be attending the the we'll be heading down to District two to join John Yasuzaki's table at the Organization of Chinese Americans Golden Circle Dinner.

This is the second year in a row.

So that's becoming a tradition.

And then finally, today is law enforcement appreciation day.

So I want to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation for the service of our Seattle Police Department officers who are out there every day responding to emergencies and also investigating serious crime to help make Seattle a safer city to live, work, and play.

That's all I've got.

Any questions?

Yes, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Councilmember I unfortunately will not be able to attend the entire meeting on Wednesday, I will need to leave right at 10am, and I have met with Seattle City Light regarding the wrap.

I understand we're not going to be voting on it this week.

Right, he gave me a very detailed presentation and I really want to thank City Light for doing so.

It's a lot of engaging work.

I'm really excited to learn more, and I just wanted to let you know I will be able to join you, but just for the first 30 minutes.

Thank you very much for letting me know and anybody you included can watch the whole meeting on the award winning Seattle channel.

Thank you.

I will pass it now to Councilmember Peterson.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, colleagues, there are no items from the transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee on the full council agenda tomorrow afternoon.

Our next meeting of the transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee will be on Tuesday, January 17 at 930am.

We're currently working with departments on their availability for a few items.

We haven't yet determined the exact dates on which these items will be heard but within the next month we expect a report from our Seattle Department of Transportation on their analysis of traffic related fatalities and serious injuries, and how to improve vision zero.

Similar to previous years in 2022, the traffic-related fatalities, there were 57% pedestrians, 29% drivers, 10% cyclists, and 4% on scooters, with each of these 28 fatalities being a tragedy on our city streets.

So we were expecting a top to bottom analysis of the Vision Zero program to come to our committee within the next month.

We'll also soon consider a council bill regarding how employer transportation programs can share public transit stops to encourage commuters to leave their single occupancy vehicles at home.

Central staff is circulating a memo on this topic of shared transit stops.

Within the next month or so we also plan to receive one or more reports from s.on on what it is doing to upgrade our city's bridges, specifically to hear which recommendations have been implemented from the audit of our bridges published more than two years ago, especially in light of the recent recently losing access to the West Seattle low bridge.

I'd like to join Councilmember Herbold in thanking the city employees from Seattle Public Utilities and other city departments for helping the people negatively impacted by the flooding in parts of the South Park neighborhood a couple weeks ago.

I had the opportunity to visit the location of the flooding and I look forward to working with Councilmember Herbold and city departments to prevent future flooding, which might require an earmark of federal funding from our congressional delegation.

Last week I invited, I was invited to provide a City Hall update and answer questions to the Wallingford Community Council.

The neighbors attending asked about a variety of issues, public safety, homelessness, low-income housing, tree protections, and other priorities.

And that concludes my report.

Any questions before we go to the Council President?

Nope, I don't see any.

Oh, I can go now.

That's planes.

I'm sorry, I was waiting for you to say something.

That's what Peter said.

All right.

So governance, native communities and tribal governments committee, there are no items from our committee and our committee meeting that was scheduled for January 19th is canceled.

The next committee meeting is expected to take place on February 16th.

So This week, I'm really excited about this because this has been going on a long time about our second light rail station on 130th at Meadowbrook Community Center OPCD is having a meeting between six and eight o'clock p.m.

That's tomorrow, January 10th, Tuesday, regarding growth strategies, including around 130th light.

Link light rail station.

So just a quick background, this second stop has been going on since I got elected and before that.

So we are finally and we've been working with OPCD I'd say at least five years and now we're actually getting right down to the DEIS and Different plans about what transit oriented housing and development and all those things are going to look like giving community opportunity to see what OPCD put together.

We met with the OPCD folks Friday, myself and Brindal and Rico and the whole team, and it's going to be very exciting and we're going to find out how.

we are going to implement all these wonderful programs about transit-oriented everything around 130th.

So I hope to have more information for you next week.

We posted the notice for the meeting in our newsletter, The North Star, Friday.

And then this coming Friday, we will post what happens tomorrow night at the community center meeting at Meadowbrook between, again, 6 and 8 p.m.

Okay, that being said, let's see.

Last week, when I say we, it's the collective we, sometimes it's me, sometimes it's my staff.

We met with the counseling team at Ingram High School to discuss steps to be taken to reduce gun violence and strengthen mental health support services for students.

We attended the Sound Transit Chinatown international district community workshop regarding the West Seattle Ballard link light rail extension specifically was an opportunity for sound transit to hear from community members about potential options for the placement of light rail extension and concerns about potential impacts.

on the community.

Also, we discussed preferred options for activating Union Station.

So if you remember, some of you remember this, there's a lot of more community work we have to do in the International District and different options to look at.

And we continue this discussion for six more months.

but it's going to come up again.

And then we're going to find out more as my role on Sound Transit about what other options there are for light rail within the international district and the CID.

And again, everyone is cognizant of the history of uprooting or disrupting the international community.

We kind of don't want to see that again.

And the community has been very clear about that.

Also, we also met with the director of the office of planning and community development, which I just said, regarding the comprehensive plan for growth management and the scoping report.

And again, we are going to be focusing about the areas surrounding the 130th link light rail stop currently under construction.

So, if you drive up North, you can see the platform is actually being built as we speak.

If it's not already built.

Coming up next week, my office will be meeting with HSD regarding impacts of encampments in district 5. We continue to receive reports from neighbors concerned about health and safety in and around encampments.

We'll also be meeting with Sound Transit North Seattle King sub area regarding upcoming issues regarding the West Seattle Ballard Link light rail extension.

And as you know, that's an ongoing conversation.

We will be developing, we, as in all of us, you guys too, will be developing your 2023 work program for the governance, I will be doing mine, for the Governance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments Committee.

And as you know, the Council's annual work plan program is our public report on what committee what committees plan to do to address in 2023. I'm sure you'll be meeting with central staff about what your work plan will look like.

Central staff will be working with each committee chair to develop their 2023 council committee work programs.

Please make sure, make time available to fully participate.

Our goal is to have the work plan on the agendas for a vote by February 28th.

Ali Panucci on central staff is available if you have any questions.

Let's see, and with that, are there any questions before I move us into executive session?

Okay, I do not see any questions.

So that wraps up our council briefing for today.

Council members, please stay on the line so we can go into executive session.

Let me read what I need to read to put on the record so we can move into executive session.

If there's no further business, we will move into the executive session.

Hearing no further business, we will now move into an executive session as presiding officer.

I am announcing that the Seattle City Council will now convene into executive session.

The purpose of the executive session is to discuss pending potential or actual litigation.

The council's executive session is an opportunity for the council to discuss confidential legal matters.

with the city attorney as authorized by law, a legal monitor from the city attorney's office is always present to ensure that council reserves questions of policy in open session.

I expect the time in the executive session to end by, and Madam Clerk, you wanna help me on this?

So it's almost three, so I'm gonna say 3.20, 3.20.

Yes.

Okay, 20 minutes.

Okay, if executive session goes beyond that time, I will announce the extension in the expected duration.

At the conclusion of this executive session, the Council briefing will be automatically adjourned.

January 16th is Martin Luther King holiday and the next regularly scheduled Council briefing meeting is on January 23rd at 2 o'clock.

The Council is now in an executive session.

Thank you.