Seattle City Council Transportation & Utilities Committee 7/7/21

Chair Peterson.

Present.

For present.

Thank you.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Today we will hear legislation to designate Clarence A. Cox Jr.

Way.

The Seattle City Light strategic plan will be presented again.

We'll hear from the Seattle City Light review panel, which is supporting the strategic plan, which we'll vote on today.

A lease agreement for the Georgetown steam plant property and a revision to the traffic code to allow the Seattle Department of Transportation to raise parking rates At this time, we will open the remote general public comment period.

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

We are continuously looking for ways to fine tune this process of public participation.

It remains a strong intent of the city council that 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's being abused or is unsuitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently and in a manner in which we're able to conduct our necessary business.

Please note that Council Member Herbold has joined us.

So we're all here.

I will moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

Public comment period for this meeting is 20 minutes.

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

If you have not yet 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 at seattle.gov forward slash council.

The public comment link is also 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's their turn to speak and the speaker must press star six to begin speaking.

Please press star six to begin speaking.

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.

Please begin speaking, excuse me, speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

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

Speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time, which is two minutes.

The speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.

Once you've completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line.

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

The regular public comment period for this committee meeting is now open.

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

Please remember to press star 6 Before speaking, first speaker is Michael Ruby, followed by Morgan Littlefield.

Please, good morning, Michael.

This is Mike Ruby, and I am speaking on the Seattle City Light draft strategic plan.

My comment is that Seattle City Light has presented you with a strategic plan that fails to address adequately the needs of the city.

to respond to its ongoing climate change that we are all, unfortunately, experiencing.

I want to point out that when the 2018 IRP, Integrated Resource Plan, was presented to the City Council by Seattle City Light, the first two bullet points in the executive summary of its report focused on conservation and the importance of energy and efficiency investments in the building stock of our city and how that would create the equivalent of a new power generation plant.

In fact, in the second item that they say there, conservation investment remains the first and best resource choice as the most environmentally responsible way to meet the Washington Energy Independence Act.

needs and enable City Light and Bonneville Power Authority hydrogeneration to displace fossil fuel generation impacts by others in the region.

However, I would like you to turn to page eight of the financial forecast appendix they have provided you with and is attached to the agenda.

This does not project any increase in spending for conservation over the four-year period.

Rather, By having a flat amount, which increases by less than 1% each year, it is essentially decreasing because City Light itself acknowledges that it is trying to build into this plan a 3% per year inflation rate.

The City Light strategic plan and other places in the document forecast an even higher inflation rate.

Thank you, Mr. Ruby.

And we do have the email that you sent to council members as well.

Next is Morgan Littlefield, followed by Cindy Laws.

Go ahead, Morgan.

Good morning.

I'm Morgan Littlefield with Climate Pledge Arena.

I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to share our support of amending on-street parking rates for events.

Climate Pledge Arena strongly supports the proposal to increase on-street event parking rates to $12 or higher and to expand the RPZ in Uptown.

We also support this rate adjustment extending to Sundays and holidays.

The proposed plan balances out some critical public policy objectives.

By expanding reserved parking for residents in Uptown, those who need to have available on-street parking will be able to access that parking more easily.

Increasing on-street parking rates will help reduce congestion by reducing the number of people that will drive to the neighborhood and hunt for on-street parking.

In addition making street parking rates comparable to garage rates will encourage those who drive to use Climate Pledge Arena's parking reservation system to secure a spot before they arrive.

At Climate Pledge Arena we're striving to be good a good neighbor not just to our fellow Seattle Center resident organizations but also to our surrounding neighbors in Uptown, Queen Anne, Belltown and others.

That's why in concert with supporting this legislation, we're working to make sure that more arena attendees take public transit, bike, walk, and use options other than driving to get to our arena events.

We attended several community outreach meetings on this topic and think the city did a good job of reaching out to both businesses and residents about the impacts of these parking changes.

Like Uptown Alliance, we believe that the council should adopt the legislation.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next, we have Cindy Laws followed by David Strauss.

Go ahead, Cindy.

And just a reminder to press star six to begin speaking.

Cindy Laws.

Cindy, if you can hear us, please press star six to begin speaking.

We'll come back to Cindy Laws.

Next, let's hear from David Strauss, followed by Rosio Medina.

Hello, this is David Strauss.

I'm speaking about CB120103 regarding the Georgetown Steam Plant.

Starting off with the importance of the Georgetown Steam Plant.

It's a national landmark.

It's a Seattle landmark based on the fact that of its innovative construction, it's associated with an important figure, Frank Gilbreth.

It's an important part of Seattle's history and really an important part of the urban context, especially in Georgetown.

Landmarks are most instructive when they're in use, and the use proposed by the Community Development Authority is ideal.

Monthly tours, in addition to occasional events, have been effective in teaching technology history, but to only a few people.

So the CDA is proposing science, technology, engineering, arts, and math instruction.

So the project's going to open the STEAM plant to a much greater number of people, including younger members of the community, as a place for science, technology, engineering, arts, and math education.

It's also going to open up to an increasing number of events.

So really exposing the steam plant to a greater public.

The lease will facilitate opening the building to a broader public, and in the process, improve the soundness and safety of the building.

So I urge the council to approve the ordinance.

Thanks very much.

Bye.

Thank you.

We just have two more speakers, and then we'll come back to Cindy.

For now, let's go to Rosio Medina, followed by Deborah Frostow.

Go ahead, Rosio.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Rosario Medina.

I'm a Georgetown resident, and I would like to echo everything that David Strauss just said.

We are in support of the ordinance to authorize the chief executive officer and general manager to execute a long-term lease and operating agreement for the Georgetown steam plant, which will incorporate community development, and historically the Georgetown community has not had much access or community connection to the historic site with this new vision of incorporating science, opening the doors, having events with the community and for the community and for the broader people who are also interested in the history of Georgetown and the people and this amazing landmark.

We are in very support of that and This would also provide opportunities for our youth to learn about the history in their community and to continue sharing that and having a role.

So this brings very many opportunities that the Georgetown community has not had in a very very long time.

And I I'm in support of this ordinance.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we'll hear from Debra Frosto, followed by Cindy Laws.

Go ahead, Debra.

Hello.

Hello, my name is Debra Frosto.

I have lived in Uptown for over 15 years and serve as Uptown Alliance's committee chair on arena issues.

We are in support of ESSAS recommendations for the changes to the parking rate structure.

Transportation and parking have been at the core of so many countless discussions over the last three years.

as we get ready for the new Climate Pledge Arena.

We want to thank SDOT and especially Ruth and her team for engaging with us and more broadly within our community in developing this parking legislation.

So today, as you consider their recommendation, we would like you to know that Uptown Alliance supports a progressive rate structure even as high as $12 an hour.

We also support extending event rates to include holidays and Sundays, days when there will certainly be many events going on at the arena.

Progressive rates can be confusing.

It's easy to be concerned if you think that someone who pays for two hours for a 6.30 dinner reservation might pay $16 or $24 in parking, when in fact, that's not how it works.

That person would pay closer to $6.

Instead, we believe the concern should be that if we do not have higher event rates, then the parking on the street will be so attractive to arena event goers, they will choose to look for curbside parking instead of parking in one of the event garages.

and leaving no open spots available for those who want to go out to just grab a coffee, go to a restaurant, or shop at the market.

Uptown Alliance believes that what UPSTAT is suggesting is a good balance for our residents, small businesses, and the tens of thousands of event-goers and deserves your support.

Thank you.

Thank you, Deborah.

Our last speaker is Cindy Laws.

We tried her earlier.

Let's see if she's here.

Cindy, if you can hear us, press star six and go ahead.

Cindy, if you don't mind sending us, if you're not able to press star six and speak now, please do send us an email to council at seattle.gov.

It'll reach all nine council members.

Cindy?

Can you hear me now?

Yes, yes, we can hear you.

Thank you.

I think I pushed star six about 12 times.

Sorry about that.

Thank you members I appreciate this opportunity to call and I am calling I'm calling about an urgent matter That's not on the agenda that I hope you can introduce the resolution as you may have heard Two people two more people were killed by the light rail train in the Rainier Valley on Friday That brings to number ten people that have been killed Pedestrians have been killed by put it by light rail since 2019 at the April meeting of the April 22nd meeting of Sound Transit's board, there was a presentation on the safety stuff relating to collisions.

There's been 140 collisions with vehicles in that time frame.

There are three things that even though that only one of you are on the Sound Transit board, I do hope that you can push hard.

There are three things that can be done.

As we all know, when the city adopted Vision Zero a couple of years ago, it was to have zero pedestrian deaths.

And again, we've had 10 just from light rail since that time.

The three things that can be done is to insist that Sound Transit install railroad crossing arms at every crossing in the Rainier Valley.

Those are installed in SOTO, and those can help the people that have made the decision to try to outsmart or out walk or whatever, they're not paying attention, for whatever reason, we need to make it more clear that there is a train coming.

And that would help a lot.

The flashing lights, the ringing bells, and definitely the crossing arms can help.

You think two things that SDOT can do is to extend pedestrian crossing times.

Because in this case, pedestrians were crossing the light.

So I think the third thing would be to install an island mid-intersection so people cannot make it across the MLK can at least wait in the middle until they can safely cross.

Thank you very much.

I hope you can issue a resolution and get these things moving forward so that we can have greater safety in this horribly dangerous corridor.

Thank you.

Colleagues, that concludes our speakers for this committee meeting.

So we will close the public comment period and move on to the first legislative item on our agenda.

Will the clerk please read the title of the first agenda item into the record?

Agenda item one, a resolution providing an honorary designation of South Hill Street between 21st and 22nd Avenues South as Clarence Acox Jr.

Way.

for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

And I understand Councilmembers Herbold and Morales are co-sponsoring this, I believe.

And Councilmember Morales, we also have Lish Whitson here from Central Step.

But Councilmember Morales, did you want to address this first?

Sure, I'll just briefly.

Good morning, everybody.

Thank you, Chair Peterson for seeing this resolution.

Yes, so this is providing an honorary designation.

For those of you who don't know, since 1971, Clarence Aacox Jr. has helped develop the talents of hundreds of young Seattle musicians as the director of the Garfield High School internationally renowned Jazz Ensemble.

He's the director of all programs at Garfield and more recently is the founding educator of Seattle's Jazz Ed program.

Sorry, my phone is ringing.

Under Mr. Aycox's direction, the General Garfield Jazz Ensemble took first place in 2003, 2004, 2009, and 2010 at New York's Essentially Ellington National Jazz Band Competition and Festival.

at the New York City Lincoln Center.

They swept every major competition on the West Coast, including the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in Moscow, Idaho, and Oregon's Mount Hood Jazz Festival.

We're really excited to be offering this resolution, and my understanding is that Mr. Acox is hoping to be available at the full council meeting to accept this resolution, and we are very excited for its passage.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Council Member Herbold?

Thank you so much.

I just took a few words.

Back in 2019, I was contacted by Lori DeCoach of JazzEd about this vision that they had for the honorary designation of South Hill Street.

And in my capacity as the then chair of the Committee Covering Arts in 2019, we began some work on this effort in strong support.

and work resumed on the effort earlier this year, post COVID.

And just wanna thank Council Member Morales for continuing the work, not only as the Council Member who now has oversight of arts issues, but also District 2 Council Member.

And just really pleased that this is coming forward and pleased to be able to honor all of the contributions of Mr. Aacox, including his contribution as a founding educator of Seattle's Jazz Ed program.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

We have Lish Whitson from our City Council Central staff here.

Lish, do you want to walk through the resolution or describe it?

Sure.

It's a very simple resolution.

It allows for the honorary designation of one block of South Hill Street between 21st and 22nd.

as Clarence Acocks Jr.

Way and allows for the printing or manufacturing of signs to recognize that honorary designation.

And the block is located through North Beacon Hill, North Rainier area, a few blocks south of Valley 90.

Thank you very much.

Council members, are there any questions for the sponsors or for our city council central staff?

And did we have anybody from the community at this meeting that I don't think we have anybody as a panelist today, but we'll, we'll look forward to having them at the full council meeting.

If this passes today, I'm assuming that would go to Monday, July 12 full council meeting.

Does that, does that work for the sponsors?

Okay, great.

I'd like to move that the committee recommend passage of Resolution 23009, Item 1 on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Oh, and I apologize.

I said it's Resolution 32009. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of this resolution.

Any final comments?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that resolution 32009 be approved for forwarding to the full council.

Gonzales?

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation is that the resolution be sent for approval to the July 12 City Council meeting.

Will the clerk please read the title of the next agenda item into the record?

Agenda item two, resolution 32007, a resolution related to the City Light Department adopting a 2022 to 2026 strategic plan for the City Light Department and endorsing the associated five-year rate path for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

On June 26th, or excuse me, June 16th, our committee had a presentation and discussion concerning the strategic plan for Seattle City Light.

As you know, colleagues, the multi-year plan for implementing the mission of this $1 billion city-owned utility enterprise, which provides affordable, reliable, and environmentally responsible electricity to over 900,000 people in Seattle and the surrounding areas.

As I noted at our previous meeting, I'm pleased that despite several cost pressures such as COVID and the recession, Seattle City Light has surpassed expectations in keeping their rate increases under control.

City Light succeeded in not increasing the bills of electricity customers this year.

approved an ordinance in March.

Moreover, City Light's proposed rate path will also lower the rate increases in the future when compared to their previous strategic plan.

So the rates are going up at a lower, at a much lower rate.

The net result is a six-year average annual increase will be less than 3.5% instead of the original 4.5% average annual increase.

So today we'll hear from City Light's customer review panel about why they endorse the plan and support it.

Adoption by the council.

There is also a letter that they wrote, which is part of the agenda materials.

After this presentation, we can discuss this further, and I hope to vote this out of committee today.

So I think we're going to hear from our general manager, Deborah Smith, and she can turn it over to the rest of the folks.

And we also have Eric McConaughey from City Council Center staff.

Actually, Eric, did you want to go ahead and say anything first?

I'll just say good morning.

Thanks for recognizing me.

Just note that The typical path for City Light to bring rates and the strategic plan to the council is through a strategic plan and then a rate ordinance.

Because of the contingencies and the difficulties of COVID, there was a pause and kind of a reordering of those events.

So what you see before you, you saw on June 16th, is a strategic plan that comports with the rate ordinance that you passed earlier this year.

Everything is lining up, and that was the kind of thing that we were looking for to ensure that would happen.

We didn't have a lot of doubt that it would, but that was the sort of the gut check, so to speak.

And the next time we'll look at it will be with the budget.

Council will be turning to the budget in the fall, and that's another time to take a look at City Light's finances, at their long-term capital improvement plan, and that's always an important and useful exercise.

And then also importantly, there'll be a big reset next year into the regular strategic plan and then rate path pattern.

So the council will get another chance to look at City Light's strategic planning in 2022. So those are the things I wanted to cover.

And thanks for the moment to say hello.

Yeah.

Thank you, Eric.

Yeah.

Good morning, Deborah Smith, our general manager of City Light and our team.

Thank you so much, Chair Peterson and members of the committee.

Happy to be here.

Thank you for your comments, Eric.

We have no PowerPoint for this item, so that's good news for those of us who spend all day looking at PowerPoints.

And I'm excited to be here for our second conversation.

I don't have a lot to say.

This is my first strategic plan.

It's been a really great process.

We've been honored to work with a wonderful review panel, and we've really tried to engage them and use the strategic planning process as an opportunity to invite them in and train them on more things and on things that we're doing.

We intend to continue that that cadence and that practice.

So, as Eric mentioned, this is kind of our in between plan.

I was thinking it's kind of like the Olympics.

We'll all get back on the same schedule going forward.

But for right now, we're playing catch up.

And so this is a five year plan.

although we customarily and in the future will present for you a six-year plan.

Mike Hansen, who is also one of our, he is our major customer representative on the review panel.

He runs Savy in Tukwila.

and he has been just a delight to work with.

He probably knew a little bit more about City Light than some review panel members as they joined, because he's a major customer and has been an involved major customer in the activities that City Light's put on.

But he's really had a great, well, he's done a great job of providing good information, asking the right questions, and really encouraging us to move in the direction that honors the future.

So I'm not going to take up any more time except to just really quickly introduce you to who's here from City Light in case you have questions.

Our CFO Kirstie Granger is with us.

Maura Brugger of course is here and she's running our PowerPoint.

Lee Barreca who is in charge of strategic planning and who works closely and closest with the review panel is also here.

So both Kirstie, Lee, myself, Moore, we're all happy to answer questions.

But right now, I'm going to turn things over to Mike Hanson.

Thank you.

Thank you, Deborah.

Good morning, Chair Peterson and council members of the Transportation and Utilities Committee.

I think first off, I'd like to thank the current members of our panel for their efforts.

Sarah Patton, she represents the nonprofit energy efficiency advocate position.

Scott Haskins is our financial analysis representative.

Ann Ayer is the industrial customer representative.

And John Putz is the at-large representative customer.

And Tim Skeel, who's the economic advisor, his appointment is pending.

We actually have three vacancies currently on the panel.

And one of the things I've kind of marveled at is that, Even by the nature of this group, there's some attrition and ins and outs.

And people like Sarah and the Seattle City Lights staff have done such a good job of ensuring that we can have continuity with the changes.

And so we're really proud of that because everybody has provided or contributed to our work product and the people that came before us.

Everybody gets credit for that.

And I'm here today to just give a synopsis of our letter that I hope you've all had a chance to read that highlighted some of the things that we were really focused on during the strategic plan.

And as Debra said, I've been involved with Salicylate on a pretty robust level for almost 20 years.

at all levels of the organization.

And now being on this panel for the last two years, it frankly has been very refreshing to me to see how it all works kind of from an inside view.

We've had just some tremendous people we've worked with from the utility and the review panel, and they've all mentored us and helped us learn the ropes.

So very thankful for that.

The aha moment really, I guess, for me is the depth and breadth of the responsibilities.

They're just so incredibly vast and complex.

And, you know, Deborah, when she briefs us, it just makes my mind kind of spin and hurt all the things that the team is involved with.

So, you know, it's, it's a big operation.

And I guess I'd like to tell the city council members at this meeting and for the mayor's office, from my standpoint, Deborah Smith has been and just done an incredible job of assembling her team.

And it's a team of leaders and her style, it's obvious that she's the leader, but she lets everybody you know, really contribute and she has, feels like there's just real buy-in to the direction that she's taking the group and they all contribute in a very synergistic way and you know, the transparency and the patience for some of us really has helped us to be able to perform our responsibilities.

You know, we power, that's the mission And it is a thing.

They all live it and it comes across that way.

So that's really an amazing, you know, from watching different operations, I'm very, I have a lot of admiration for how that is all clicking.

It's a big operation and these things don't happen overnight.

I'd also like to really thank Karen Reed, Lee Barak, and Maura Brugger for their countless hours to support and drive our panel.

We have long meetings frequently and they're work meetings, they're productive.

And thank you for all your help and oversight of that.

Now Seattle City Light is an incredible green regional asset that we all want to protect and improve through our measured environmental stewardship.

And our letter summarized a list of the successes and some of the key strategies that we were focused on as a group.

I'll just touch on a few of them.

because I feel particularly strong about them.

You know, first off, and Chair Peterson touched on it, but this financial position with the AA bond rating, you know, in the times that we've gone through, it's just, it's amazing how level this ship continued.

We're able to increase the participation in the utility discount program, UDP, And everybody was focused on that.

The pilot programs, they took a little time to really get launched due to some of the constraints we were all faced with recently.

But they're focused on testing new rate designs, improving energy equity to help and improve inefficient energy use.

The demand response rates and the time of day use all, you know, leading edge kinds of responses to what today's customers want.

improve load forecasting.

You know, now from the viewpoint of joining the Western energy imbalance market and netting eight million, Debra talks about this being a long energy or long utility because we have excess capacity.

But being able to, you know, successfully market that at the highest return is really key to what's happened over the last 12 to 18 months.

So on the strategy side, what I gleaned from the Seattle City Light team is really the improvement of the customer experience.

How do we view what we do at City Light from a customer's focus?

And with that lens, you get all kinds of insights into what today's customers want.

And we will remain focused.

in everything we do on race and social justice.

That's one of the real drivers of the customer experience that is part of our plan.

Creating our energy future.

The team talks about the grid modernization.

Sometimes it's a little difficult to get your arms around what that really means on a tactical level.

But Deborah used a metaphor at the June 16th meeting resonated with me, it's the Motorola flip phone.

The flip phone works just fine for phone calls, but you can't do all the maps and apps and all the other things that a smartphone does.

And when you think about grid modernization, how do we more smartly use the distribution system that we have today?

And that's really key to our future.

Workforce agility.

you know, there's a lot of talk about cultural and organizational agility and agility and, and, uh, you know, billion dollar operation, lots of people are, well, there are tough things that lay on top of each other, but that's certainly the goal, uh, is to have that agility and really do what's best for the organization as, as it relates to labor relationships and the values that the labor folks bring.

And, you know, the staff, the team, I mean, how do we mesh all those things together?

So there's a real focus on that.

And the point has been made, and I think it's right on the money, is that if we don't have an organizational change management system, we can have all the initiatives that we want, but we gotta be able to measure them, and we gotta be able to track them and know that we're succeeding on those things.

So that will all be part of that agility.

under financial health and affordability, keeping rates manageable.

Chair Peterson talked about the three and a half percent over the next five years.

That certainly is far better than what was contemplated in previous plans.

And we're very pleased about that.

Predictability from a, you know, as a commercial customer representative and as a resident, if you have predictability, it really eases any concerns planning of what you're going to do going forward.

We've had a growth in receivables that we're well aware of both on the residential side and the commercial side and those are things that we have our eye on and we as a panel we certainly ask about it at each meeting and we're certain that the staff is focused on how to you know manage that going forward because we will have to do that.

Right-sizing the capital improvement plan The panel feels very strong about, you know, how will that be funded?

Will it be from operations?

Will it be borrowed funds?

And those are big decisions.

And the panel really has a great interest in how those things are going to be funded.

You know, growing clean demand, electrification is what we've all talked about, you know, with the board and Metro.

And what other things can we do to improve our revenue stream?

It's really taken a big hit with the office buildings reducing all their occupancies.

So there's a number of things going there, but revenue decline is something we're really going to have to keep our eye on.

and we've made some assumptions on the electrification and we're going to have to check those frequently because they're ambitious and they we have partners and there's lots that needs to be done.

The final part of the financial health is the discussion of the reserve fund and the rate stabilization account.

How do we get that right size?

It was you know the Save for the rainy Mondays and now we have to take a look at that as $100 million is a lot of money to keep keeping that fund.

And what is the right size for that?

Where should we be?

And that'll be a big part of what we're talking about going forward.

An additional strategy, and this will be the final one that I'd like to just mention, is it didn't make it into our letter for no particular reason, but the cybersecurity issue that's international is so important to the city of Seattle and to Seattle City Light.

We just wanna make sure, we've talked about it a fair bit at our meetings, make sure that this group and committee is aware how important we think that is to protect our systems.

And while we all, we're all going through that as individuals and businesses.

So just really wanted to keep that in front of everybody.

The final comment I'd like to make today is that the panel wholeheartedly endorses this plan.

We feel like we really had a big hand in working through it.

And now it's the flush out the measurable targets and benchmarks.

We all want to hold each other accountable and achieve this impressive plan.

And we'll need to do that with some metrics.

So that concludes what I had to say today.

And I thank you very much for your time.

And if there are any questions I can answer, I'd be happy to do that.

Thank you, Mr. Hanson.

And thank you for your service on the City Light Review Panel and the other members of the City Light Review Panel.

I want to thank them for the Countless hours they spend helping us to provide oversight of the utility and all that they do.

Really appreciate the focus on trying to keep rates as affordable as possible since utility bills are essentially regressive with lower income households paying a greater percentage of their household income.

And so thank you for focusing on the affordability.

And also emerging issues such as cyber technology, which we're we're reading a lot about with other large enterprises having to deal with that.

And so we know our city is vigilant on that and appreciate the additional oversight from the review panel on that.

Council members, any questions for City Light or for Mr. Hanson on the review panel?

The letter, the four-page letter from the review panel is very dense in its content, but that's on the agenda as well.

And just for the viewing public, yes, General Manager Smith.

Um, council member, I just wanted to take a moment if I could to respond a bit to Mr Ruby's comment, just because, you know, our commitment to energy efficiency has not in any way waned.

I want to be clear about that.

And we, you know, we traditionally.

Energy efficiency monies get spent in lumpy ways.

That's one way to think about it, especially as we have increased our focus on large commercial and industrial energy efficiency, which is quite frankly, Mr. Rube is absolutely right.

A lot of our residential housing stock is in very good shape because we've been investing in it for such a long time.

There's a lot of value out there in lighting, in refrigeration, and other things that tend to be more focused on larger customers.

And so it comes to us in lumpy ways.

And that's because it's based on when the projects actually finish.

So what we do is we budget an amount each year.

And in this case right now, it's about $30 million a year.

So it's real money.

And then what we do is we adjust our actual spending and we make room for different Pots of money based on the projects that come our way.

There's lots of mechanisms, even that Bonneville offers that allow customers to move money between years because some of our money does come back to us from Bonneville.

And so there are tools because they understand the lumpiness of acquiring energy efficiency, especially in the industrial sector.

So we have and are completing our new conservation potential assessment.

We'll be bringing it to council this fall.

So you will have an opportunity to look at our projected investments based on the most recent data.

And we use the same company that does the CPA for Bonneville.

So we're aligned with the region, which is very important.

And so we'll have an opportunity to talk about it then.

The other thing that's important is that even with the 30 million that we traditionally budget, we typically don't spend it all.

And we are recalibrating right now based on economic recovery.

Energy efficiency does require an investment on the part of our large commercial customers.

So the investments that they make are competing with their other capital investments.

And we recognize right now, coming through COVID, that times are a little, we're less certain.

That's one of the reasons we did a five-year plan.

So all that is to say, and I have not even seen the draft CPA yet, but all that is to say our commitment to energy efficiency as the least cost resource has in no way diminished.

And I just wanted to assure council that and you have that personally council members so that you would understand where we're at.

And so we'll be happy and we'll be in a position to answer any and all questions when we come back with the CPA this fall.

But, you know, Seattle City Light is the grandfather of energy efficiency out in the region.

because we're so old, because we've been doing it for so long.

We've been doing energy efficiency before it was cool to do it.

What was that song?

I was country when country wasn't cool.

We were energy efficiency when energy efficiency wasn't cool.

So we're there and we will continue.

Also just one last thing, and this is kind of just a quick educational moment.

There is some movement and some of the pilots and some of the work that we're doing We think of energy efficiency and in a fairly traditional way, but the language that gets used more and more is distributed energy resources or DERS.

And what that means, it's anything other than sticking generation.

from somewhere into the distribution system and pumping it out to customers.

So energy efficiency is a form of DER, as is demand response, as is a whole lot of new tools that are coming our way.

So we are mindful as we think about how we will spend those dollars in the future about the direction that the industry is going, where Bonneville is incenting monies, because that does change over time.

And, and we are intentionally carving out money to be able to robustly fund energy efficiency incentives per the transportation electrification strategic investment plan I said it.

So the thing I want you to know there is that.

I know Mr. Ruth noted that the plan did not seem as robust.

That was the very high level plan that was approved by council and staff is continuing to work on the implementation plan.

We're also working on our CETA implementation plan.

And lastly, as we pointed out in the strategic plan, in one of the PIAs, one of our goals and and Mike mentioned that in his intro, is to coordinate or to bring all of our planning processes together so that they are aligned.

So that's strategic planning, resource planning, financial planning, CETA planning.

So anyway, hold us accountable to that, but nothing has changed and we're all in.

Thank you, General Manager Smith.

Council members, any questions for Seattle City Light or for the City Light review panel before we vote on this resolution for the strategic plan and pass it on to the full council?

Okay, and for the viewing public, we had a thorough review and discussion of this last month as well.

This is our second hearing of this.

So I think we're ready to vote.

Okay.

So I'd like to move that the committee recommend passage of this resolution, which is resolution 32007. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

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

Any final comments?

Okay.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that resolution 32007 be approved for forwarding to the full city council?

Gonzalez?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation is that the resolution be sent for approval to the July 12th City Council meeting.

Thank you, and I think City Light will be staying, some of you will be staying with us for this next item.

Will the clerk please read the short title of the next agenda item into the record?

Agenda item three, Council Bill 120103, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department, authorizing the Chief Executive Officer and General Manager to execute a long-term lease and operating agreement with the Georgetown Steam Plant Community Development Authority For the use and occupancy of the city's Georgetown steam plant property, a National Historic Landmark.

For briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

Seattle City Light proudly owns a unique century-old electricity plant that used to generate electricity in the Georgetown neighborhood called the Georgetown Steam Plant.

Over the past few decades, City Light has ensured that the historic nature of the plant has been recognized under federal and local laws and that grants were obtained to start the conservation.

The utility has negotiated with a nonprofit to take over operation of the historic site with a long-term lease from City Light.

City Council Center staff has reviewed the council bill and all the attachments and concluded the executive has negotiated an acceptable lease that should protect the city's interests, including assumption by the lessee of liability and insurance coverage.

Thank you, everybody, from City Light for being here.

I wanted to open it up first, though, to our City Council Central staffer, Eric McConaughey, if you have any opening remarks, and thank you for your memo.

Oh, yeah, you're welcome.

I'll just highlight a few things and then let City Light take it from there.

As you mentioned, Chair Peterson, it is a long-term lease.

It's a 30-year term lease.

There are options for two 15-year renewals that would be in this lease.

Those renewals would be by the mutual agreement of both parties to the lease, which would be the city and the community development authority.

Under the lease, City Light wouldn't sort of traditionally or typically collect rent for the lease, but would look to the CDA to perform its obligations under the lease to operate the facility as a historic building and a museum with public tours, historical interpretation, maintenance, janitorial, and other public services.

And so That's the nature of the sort of rent or compensation.

As well, there's additional language in the lease that would say that after the first year of the lease, the CDA would be required to pay City Light 10% of the gross receipts for commercial use of the facility.

So I want to highlight those aspects because those are maybe different than other kinds of lease agreements that come to council or maybe we're familiar with in other contexts.

Overall, The lease would require that the city would maintain and repair the Georgetown Steam Plant as it exists at the time of signing the lease.

And you can think of it as being the roof, the exterior, the supporting structures, the floor of the beam, major maintenance and repair to things like the electrical and heating systems, the fencing and the gates.

I think of them as being the sort of mainstay or sort of like a skeleton and sort of the building as it stands at the time the lease is signed Any of the new things and the augmentations, improvements, modifications would be the responsibility of CDA.

Both parties would agree to participate together to seek third party grants.

And that makes sense going forward, of course, for aspects of maintaining and operating the steam plant.

And then other pieces I think will be handled well by the presentation from city council.

Those are some of the main things that I wanted to point out.

The decision to keep the building in the possession of City Light and to find a nonprofit partner was informed by a group that was put together by, excuse me, by City Light.

And that group was the, so many long names to this, forgive me.

I want to make sure I get this right.

The Georgetown Steam Plant Advisory Committee.

It was formed in 2016 and they did work through that year and at the beginning of 2017 presented their recommendation to City Light.

Among the recommendation was to prefer keeping the building in the possession of the city and find a non-profit partner.

City Light followed that recommendation and through a request for proposals connected with Equinox, which formed the CDA, that is the non-profit that would be subject to the lease.

That's probably enough of me talking, but I feel good about hitting those main points from my point of view.

And unless there's any questions for me about those sorts of things, I'll turn it over from here.

Thank you, Eric.

And General Manager Smith, did you want to lead it off from City Light?

Yes, thanks so much.

It's exciting to be here.

This is an exciting thing for Seattle, for the community, and for City Light.

And I have to say, I have never met Sam Ferrazano.

So hi, Sam.

Nice to meet you in person.

I've heard so much about you.

So we're here to talk about this.

And my team, Juliana Ross, she's going to be presenting.

She is the heart and soul of the Georgetown Steam Plant.

And if I was there with you, I would say, let's do a show of hands.

And if you have visited the Georgetown Steam Plant, I'd love to know because it's very, very cool.

So if you haven't, I'm going to do a plug for it.

And if you're really, really fortunate, Juliana would probably give you the tour herself.

And It's very worth it.

And we'd love to schedule that for you if you're interested.

So the team, in addition to Juliana, is Tim Kroll.

And we've got Maura, who again is running the PowerPoint, and Sam Perezino, who's here.

And again, he is representing the Georgetown Steam Plant Community Development Authority, which is way easier to say than Transportation Electrification Strategic Investment Plan.

So for that, Sam, I'm super thankful.

So I'm going to turn it over to staff now.

Thank you so much.

Great.

Please go ahead.

OK.

Thank you.

All right.

Next slide, please, Maura.

So Eric just ran us through what we're requesting your authorization for.

So thank you very much for having us here today.

Next slide.

I'm going to take you through about 115 years of history in less than five minutes.

So here we go.

The Georgetown Steam Plant was built by the Seattle Electric Company over the course of a year, 1906 to 1907. It was built to fuel Seattle's growing electric streetcar system.

It was located on the bank of the Duwamish River and used the water for cooling.

Later, when the river was straightened for industry, a flume was built from the plant to the river, which was then one mile away.

The flume has now been decommissioned and the pump house on the river related to the Georgetown Steam Plant is landmarked and owned by Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Next slide.

The Georgetown Steam Plant building is landmarked, and so is all the equipment inside.

It is very rare to have a building like this left intact.

And in fact, the steam plant has two of the only Curtis vertical steam turbines left in place in the world.

These turbines were the height of technological innovation at the time, having a dramatically smaller footprint compared to their predecessors.

Over the course of 10 years, two other turbines were added to the first, with each being able to generate progressively more energy.

The steam plant was designed and built by Frank Gilbreth, a self-taught bricklayer who went on to become one of America's foremost experts of time and motion studies.

Consequently, the building has many interesting features.

It is one of the first reinforced concrete buildings on the West Coast, and it was also designed to use gravity in its processes and run on either coal or oil, whichever was most economical at the time.

Having access to see and learn from this historical equipment and engineering is invaluable to visitors of the steam plant.

Boiler operator classes come through for the rare opportunity to see this kind of equipment out in the open and not enclosed behind casings as with modern equipment.

Next slide.

Seattle City Light purchased the steam plant in 1951 and kept it operational for standby purposes until about 1974, fully decommissioning it in 1977. Several actions by people enlightened to the Georgetown Steam Plant's historical significance resulted in a string of important historic and other designations.

These designations help protect the plant, impose controls and incentives on any changes, and also make the building eligible for special historic preservation funding.

Next slide.

In late 2014, staff from City Light began volunteering to open the steam plant to the public for four hours the second Saturday of every month.

In pre-COVID times, these open houses would attract an average of 100 visitors who love to explore, take pictures, and enjoy one of the two guided tours offered each open house.

Private tours are also provided at the request of community groups and schools.

Next slide.

A special quality of the STEAM plant is the diversity of interests it appeals to, including the arts.

Over the past six years or so, we've been pleased to host several special art presentations including a site-specific play, a site-specific dance performance, an 11-hour multimedia arts festival, and many other unique and evocative performances and events.

Next slide.

To optimize public use and access and continue needed restoration and maintenance, City Light organized the Georgetown Steam Plant Advisory Committee, a group of experts from relevant fields to advise on the best ways to sustainably program, fund, and manage this historic building.

The logos here indicate just a few of the organizations who lent us their expertise over the course of about a year and a half.

Their published recommendations, which were accepted by City Light, were for City Light to maintain ownership of the building and seek an appropriate nonprofit partner to assume regular operations and programming of the plant to benefit the public.

In 2018, we issued and publicized an RFP, and in 2019, we accepted the proposal of a newly formed nonprofit, the Georgetown Steam Plant Community Development Authority.

It has been a pleasure working out the details of this partnership, and we are confident the Community Development Authority, CDA, will achieve an exciting and economically sustainable future for the Georgetown steam plant.

Next slide.

Out of the gate, the most pressing work for the new partner includes bringing the building up to code to accommodate the desired level of public programming.

To that end, the CDA has built a team of design and construction professionals, and has already made progress through the discovery phase, including consulting with SDCI, assembling pre-design work, and a tier three seismic analysis.

Next slide.

In tandem with restoration work and fundraising, the CDA will commence community outreach, both to build out their board of directors in an equitable manner, and also solicit community input to inform future programming through the creation of a community advisory board.

As required by the lease, the Georgetown Steam Plant Community Development Authority is committed to maintaining a board of directors reflective of diverse communities residing and working in the Duwamish Valley, and is partnering with other organizations whose boards and staff represent the same.

Now I'll hand it over to my colleague, Tim Kroll, to give an overview of the lease itself.

Next slide.

Thank you, Juliana.

So the highlights of the lease.

The lease is a long-term one, as Eric mentioned, 30 years plus two possible 15-year extensions.

This allows the CDA the certainty they need to support the large-scale fundraising that was indicated in Juliana's slide to upgrade the use of the plant.

The CDA's use is limited to interpreting and protecting the plant, promoting arts, culture, science, technology, engineering, and math, and other education, and enabling community use and other events.

The paramount purpose is the preservation and restoration of the historic Georgetown Steam Plant building.

So any alterations to the facilities are subject to City Light approval and also to Seattle Landmarks Board approval.

City Light maintains, as Eric pointed out, we're responsible for maintaining the general large systems and the walls and the roof and to the level that they're at right now and within our approved budget.

The CDA is, their role is to work on fundraising to bring the building up to code to expand the use and to add amenities to promote the various purposes and education and events.

The lease also allows for further additions in our property.

We have other adjacent property, which we can include in the future under the premises of the lease.

And we are in the middle of negotiating better access with King County International Airport.

And when we achieve that, then we would make that available to the CDA.

Those are the highlights of the lease.

Thank you both very much.

Council members, any questions about the Georgetown steam plant project or the proposed lease before us?

And Council Member Morales, if you wanted to say anything about the project and your district.

Yeah, thank you.

Thanks, everybody, for the presentation.

CDAs are important financial tools for advancing community priorities, and this is a great example of how they can work.

in the Georgetown neighborhood are really eager for more community amenities, more ways to celebrate the community.

So, you know, this opportunity to create an education and science and art center and to do it in a way that really honors community leadership and supports community ownership, I think is really exciting.

So I'm thankful to this team.

I'm really thankful to Sam for his, seemingly boundless creativity and commitment to advancing projects like this, and really excited for the opportunity to support this.

Thank you, that's great to hear.

Colleagues on the committee, any other comments or questions about this proposed long-term lease with the nonprofit?

Okay, well, let's go ahead and move this forward.

Council members, I now move that the committee recommend approval of Council Bill 120103, item three on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Thank you, it's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of this bill.

Any final comments?

All right, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to approve Council Bill 120103.

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the July 12 City Council meeting for final consideration.

Thank you everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, we've got the fourth and final item on our agenda.

Will the clerk please read the short title of the next agenda item into the record?

Agenda Item 4, an ordinance relating to the traffic code amending sections 11.14.277, 11.16.121, and 11.76.015 of in adding a new section 11.14.276 to the Seattle Municipal Code to establish on-street paid parking rates for large events that are expected to draw at least 10,000 attendees for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

In anticipation of large crowds gathering at Seattle Center for upcoming events, including professional sports after the opening of Climate Pledge Arena, formerly known as Key Arena, SDOT has developed a plan to increase on-street parking rates in the surrounding neighborhood.

I know that today we'll also want to clarify how this legislation might impact other areas in the city, and there's also an amendment that's been circulated.

Thank you, Council Member Morales, for sending that.

amendment around and I know that Lish Whitson from our city council central staff can address that amendment and try to put it up on a screen for the public here.

So let's start with Lish Whitson from central staff just about the underlying bill.

If there are any opening comments that you have before the presentation from SDOT.

Just a tiny bit of context.

This bill would authorize increases of parking rates related to large events.

The code delegates authority to SDOT to set on-street parking rates and currently has a cap of $5 an hour for on-street parking.

And this would increase the authority for parking rates related to large events up to $12 an hour.

Thank you.

And I know SDOT works really hard to use data to set these rates and change those frequently to enable on-street parking.

So I want to just set that context that SDOT works really hard on these rates.

This bill would go beyond the current authority.

So go ahead, SDOT, if you'd like.

Welcome.

And we look forward to your presentation.

Great.

Thank you.

I will start.

My name is Mike Esty.

I am the manager of curbside management at FDOT.

And as the presentation comes up, I want to say just a couple things at the outset, mostly in response to recent media.

We'll cover some of these in more detail further into the presentation.

It's a short one, but just want to make sure that we make a couple points at the top.

First, this plan and this legislation is really an outgrowth of a couple years of work, a lot of work with the community.

with the Uptown Alliance wanted to say thank you for their supportive comments, as well as those of the representatives of Climate Pledge Arena.

We have mailed plan documents to over 10,000 people on four separate occasions.

We've left 800 door hangers and a lot of other individual briefings.

So this really is an outgrowth of a lot of work for a couple years by a whole lot of people and a lot of really intense engagement with the community.

A second point I just want to make at the top.

There's a lot of there are numbers flying around and math flying around in the in the media a little bit.

The legislation does change the cap for event rate on street paid parking hourly rates.

Right now the cap is $5 an hour for us to charge for on street paid parking.

This would lift the cap for events to $12 an hour.

However, I want to make very clear that our intent in October when the arena opens is not to charge $12 an hour.

Our plan is to start with a progressive rate structure.

And again, we'll go into that in more detail in a few slides.

But for those that are just staying in the uptown area for a couple hours, they would only pay $3 an hour.

It's for those final three hours.

If you risk to stay for three or four or five hours, we're proposing to charge $8 an hour for those last three hours.

So I just want to make that clear.

And we can do a little math as we get further into the presentation about what that means for someone who's staying for something like four hours for an arena event.

But outside of event days, our regular on-street paid parking rates will apply.

In Uptown right now, that's $0.50 an hour.

The next point I want to make is we obviously want folks to take transit where they can, to bike, to walk to events at the arena, but we also understand people will drive to Kraken games and other arena events.

There are a lot of off-street parking options in the neighborhood.

Some of those are private facilities.

The Seattle Center operates a number of facilities.

Some of those will be reservable, whether private or Seattle Center.

I was just looking today and realized I could actually reserve my off street parking for concerts in March of 2022 today.

There are also off street parking options.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman.

PB – David Ensign – Henderson.

This really is specific to the climate pledge arena and outcome of our work over the past couple years there.

We don't have any intent anytime in the near future to consider event paid parking rates around areas like the stadiums and the Soto and Pioneer Square in Chinatown International District area.

If we were to do that at some point in the future, we would obviously engage in a super robust outreach effort with neighborhood businesses, representatives, and others.

So I know that will be covered again a little bit later on, but wanted to reinforce it up top that this really is specific to the uptown area.

With that, I will let Ruth Harper and our team go ahead with the next few slides and provide a little bit of context for what we're proposing here today.

Hi.

Thank you.

My name is Ruth Harper and good morning to everybody.

And thank you, Mike, for that great introduction.

So this slide really highlights the center of this effort, which is a remodeled arena that is opening in October.

And we want to support the neighborhood and also support access for residents, businesses and visitors.

There are new transit and bike lanes being installed right now.

We're working with the arena and Seattle Center staff to create a plan to manage ride hailing services such as Lyft and Uber.

And one of the highlights of this plan also includes mitigating traffic when there are events at the arena with over 10,000 attendees.

And of course, it's really vital that all of this is in place before the arena opens.

Next slide, please.

So on May 24th, we released a curb space plan with expanded restrictive parking zone that's for residents, permit parking, and expanded paid parking to support the business district.

And we are currently working with businesses to ensure that their loading needs are met, as well as adding disabled parking.

As Mike said, we're here today to discuss legislation regarding event rates for arena events with over 10,000 anticipated attendees.

But I would like to give you a quick summary of the rest of the curbspace plan which we've been working on for a long time.

So next slide, please.

And so here's a map because maps are helpful.

This is the Uptown neighborhood.

And I just want to talk a little bit about the slide that you're looking at.

And so when you look at the slide, you see lots of things, but primarily blue and orange.

And so where you see a solid orange line, that's where we have restricted parking zone parking right now, that's zone 13 for residents, and that has been in place for many years.

And where you see solid blue lines, that's where we have paid parking in existence today.

And that has also been in place for many years.

So where you see the shaded orange, that is where we are going to be expanding the restricted parking zone for residents.

And so what that means is that if you're a resident, you can get a permit.

to park, and you can park there for longer than a two-hour time limit between the hours of 7 a.m.

and 6 p.m., seven days a week, and then you need a permit to park between 6 p.m.

and midnight, seven days a week.

So you cannot park without a permit on the orange blocks and in those shaded orange areas where we're expanding the RPZ.

And the paid parking, again, is on the blue solid blocks and we are expanding that into the areas that you see in blue.

And those are primarily commercial and retail locations where there's certainly commercial retail at the ground level and the office buildings, things like that.

And so we are proposing that the event rates would take place or would be charged on those blocks with paid parking Again, only when there are events at the arena with greater than 10,000 anticipated attendees.

And then this map also shows the bike lanes and transit lanes and bus routes.

And I know it's a lot on one map.

Next slide, please.

So this again, really just highlights the support that we've had and some of the outreach that we've done.

We've done outreach, as Mike said, for years, working with the Uptown Alliance in particular since 2017. We've done targeted outreach, starting with an initial survey in September, a draft proposal in December, a restricted parking zone hearing in March, and then a final plan mailer in May.

So that's four mailers that we've done in addition to a lot of presentations we've made at meetings, we distribute door hangers throughout the business district, and we always do outreach with stakeholders before any proposed changes to garner feedback and also get support.

And so we have really high support, especially for our goals, here and you can see that the second goal is to discourage arena event goers from using area on-street parking.

So we really want people to be able to access the neighborhood for other things.

We don't want the entire neighborhood to be just completely full with no way for anyone to park anywhere in the neighborhood if they're doing something besides an event.

And then in addition, we have 71% of people believe that the on-street event parking rates would really help limit event door parking and preserve access for local business customers.

And so I'm going to set this back over to Mike, but I also want you to know that I'm happy to answer any questions later.

I've been immersed in this effort now for several years.

So thank you very much.

Great.

Thanks, Ruth.

Next slide, please.

And this is our last, I believe, substantive slide, but we have a scheduled slide after this.

So this is sort of the gist of the legislation.

As referenced before, again, we currently have authority in the SNC to charge between $0.50 an hour and $5 an hour.

We've been looking and talking with the Oakview Group, ARENA folks, looking at rates around the rest of the area to see sort of what comparable off-street rates might look like.

Our job is to be completely competitive, but is to price the on-street parking in the uptown or area, again, to try to prevent event goers from circling for cheap on-street parking and really causing a lot of congestion and problems in the neighborhood during events.

What we're proposing is a progressive rate structure, as I kind of mentioned at the top.

So again, the idea is we want folks who are coming to the neighborhood, not going to events to be able to access businesses.

So for the first two hours, the rate would be in October when we start $3 an hour.

For the hours three, four, and five, the rate would be $8 an hour.

So again, if you're thinking about someone getting dinner and they're parking for two hours, that's gonna be $6 for an on-street paid parking rate.

For someone who is at the arena for four hours, their charge is gonna be $22.

So that's the first two hours at $3 an hour, the second two hours of their stay at $8 an hour.

And then we will do what we always do with the rest of our paid parking.

So since 2010, we've had a data driven system where we collect data, and then we adjust rates accordingly.

We're really looking for what is an industry sweet spot of about 70 to 85% occupancy.

And so we will take the same approach here in uptown and the surrounding area.

Once we start with event rates here, and we'll look at transactions, we'll look at parking occupancy, and we'll see how things are going.

Our experience over the last 10 years is we've actually adjusted rates down almost as much as we've adjusted rates up, and we really do just follow the data.

So again, what we're looking for here is authority to raise the rate cap to $12 an hour, but again, we will start at $8 an hour as our highest rate, much like our existing on-street paid parking rate.

Right now, coming out of COVID, as you may know, we reduced all rates to 50 cents an hour, and we've been following the data since to adjust rates.

Incrementally since not knowing how folks would recover and business districts will recover.

Our highest current on street hourly rate is $2.50 an hour.

So it's the same theory.

We have a rate cap.

It doesn't mean we're charging the highest rate authorized by council.

Next slide, please.

And so this is our last slide just on schedule.

So much of this has been done.

It's the two years that led up to our releasing the plan in May.

We are here in July, obviously considering legislation Our next steps are to notify residents how they can go about obtaining restricted parking zone permits in those areas where we're expanding especially.

We have already begun the efforts to install some of those RPZ signs, those on-street paid parking areas.

That's a lot of field work, work instructions, and installation that will occur.

And the idea is we want to have these changes in place by the time the arena opens in early October.

And I think that's it.

Happy to answer questions.

Thank you.

I think this would be a good time to talk about the amendment, because it's important to note, even though this is, the research has been done by SDOT in the uptown area, the bill as it's written, technically would apply to other large events throughout the city, even though SDOT would do additional engagement, the legislative authority is for the whole city.

I think this amendment will address that.

Also, I do understand that Council Member Lewis does support the bill for Uptown.

So I know that's important to a lot of us just to make sure the district council member is where they stand on it.

So he is supportive, as I understand it.

But Lish, if you don't mind, You and Council Member Morales, going through your amendment, unless you could show it on your screen, and then Council Member Morales, you could address however you wanna panel it.

Council Member Morales, thank you for introducing this amendment.

Sure, should I share my screen?

Yes, thank you.

Can you see that?

Yes.

So I'll walk through this really briefly.

The idea is to focus the bill on Seattle Center and events happening at Seattle Center, not just at the arena, but other large events that occur at the center.

So it first takes out the last recital, which talks about other large stadiums or arenas.

It amends the definition of large event to be a large Seattle center event and expected to draw at least 10,000 people to Seattle center.

Looking at this right now, I would suggest a amendment to the title of this section to be large Seattle center event as well.

Something we missed in drafting.

Um, the next section, um, is, uh, allows for the rates to increase to $12 an hour.

Um, and it clarifies that it's for large Seattle Center events and, uh, allows for the parking, uh, changes to be implemented within a mile of Seattle Center.

Um, that's an area that extends north to McGraw at the top of Capitol, uh, Queen Anne Hill.

Um, it extends up to Capitol Hill and south to, um, University Street in the heart of downtown Seattle.

So it captures most areas where people would be walking from, uh, street parking, on street parking spaces to, uh, Seattle Center events.

And then, uh, each other section is just amended to include, uh, the word Seattle Center in between large and events.

Thank you.

And committee members, this was circulated earlier this morning.

Of course, we just walk on amendments at the committee stage.

So thank you for having it drafted and circulated.

And Council Member Morales, if you'd like to speak to it.

Sure, thanks.

Thank you, Lish.

I appreciate it.

So as Chair Peterson mentioned, the language as drafted now does include that this application could be applied to other venue locations such as the Soto Sports Stadium, Stadia.

And my office has heard concerns from community members in the CID on the and legislation, its potential impacts on people living and working in the neighborhood.

So I did ask Lish to draft this, because I think that before implementing anything beyond the original Uptown proposal, SDOT really does need to do a similar kind of extensive community engagement.

with folks living and working in the CID and Pioneer Square.

I do want to say I am fully committed to moving our city away from a dependence on driving, supporting more robust multimodal networks, and prioritizing public transportation and biking and rolling.

I firmly believe that folks in the CID have as much right to set the terms for their neighborhood rates as the folks in Lower Queen Anne.

Especially given that the CID has historically been left out of conversations about what's happening in their neighborhood.

development of the kingdom, the T-Mobile Park, Lumenfield, the streetcar.

These are all, could all be considered community benefits.

Folks in the CID feel like their voices weren't heard when those conversations were happening.

So for that reason, I did ask central staff to draft this amendment, this particular legislation.

would ask my committee colleagues to support it.

And I do want to also say that I may be very supportive of parking changes around stadiums in the CID, in the Pioneer Square area, but only after folks in those neighborhoods have had the opportunity to be engaged by the city as extensively as the folks in Miller-Queenman were.

That is all I have.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you, Chair Peterson, and thank you, Council Member Morales, for that framing of the intent behind this particular amendment.

I have a question for the folks from SDOT, which is really about, you know, why this legislation was transmitted in its original form in the first place.

In other words, Did the executive take into consideration the points that were just made by Council Member Morales or not?

I'm trying to get a sense of how the base bill came into being for discussion this morning.

Excuse me, sure, I'm happy to answer that.

I think our intent in drafting the legislation was aligned with what Council Member Morales just described.

We really, again, this came out of a couple years of discussion with folks associated with Seattle Center and Climate Pledge Arena development.

I think in terms of when we were drafting the bill, it probably had more to do with our thinking whether we should be drafting language that was geographically specific or broader if it was in the SMC.

I think the amendments as described here are totally in keeping with and consistent with where we want to be as a department in terms of our needing to engage with those neighborhoods well in advance of any kind of consideration of something similar there.

I actually spoke with representatives of the CID and Pioneer Square last week as well.

You know, in response to some of their concerns, they are both representatives also of our curb space access sounding board.

And it's important for us to have those kinds of conversations with them.

And I think, again, these amendments are responsive to their concerns and where we want to be and our intent going forward.

So I don't think it was anything intentional.

It was more probably philosophically just drafting something that was a little broader instead of more geographically specific.

But I think these amendments make a lot of sense.

Thank you.

Thank you, Will.

Colleagues, let's handle some parliamentary procedure here.

I'll go ahead and move the bill to get it on the table officially.

We'll second that, and then we'll go ahead and move this amendment from Council Member Morales.

So, Council Members, I now move that the committee recommend approval of Council Bill 120115, item four on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

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

We have discussed Amendment 1 from Councilmember Morales.

It was circulated to the committee and presented on the screen here with the one change that Lish Whitson from Central Staff mentioned, just adding the word Seattle Center into the title.

It's throughout the amendment that this is referring to large Seattle center events only for this bill and that amendment.

So Councilor Morales, would you like to move your amendment?

Sure, I move amendment one.

Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented with amendment one from Councilor Morales.

Any final comments on the amendment?

Council Member, or Council President Gonzalez.

Yeah, I just want to make sure that this amendment doesn't require a change to the bill title.

So in other words, this amendment doesn't impact the bill title.

We can go ahead and move forward with that without worrying about needing another procedural step around changing the title of the bill.

Is that correct, Lish?

That's my understanding bill titles can be over inclusive, but not under inclusive.

And so this is within the scope of the title.

Great, thank you so much.

I just wanted to make sure that was clear for the record since we are going from a bigger city wide perspective to a smaller geographic footprint on this particular piece of legislation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

So it's been moved and seconded to amend the bill with Amendment 1 from Councilor Morales.

And so any final comments on the amendment itself?

OK.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 1?

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries and the amendment is adopted.

In terms of final comments on this amended bill, I'm suggesting that we will vote on it today and it would appear on the city council agenda on July 26th.

And the reason is the media coverage did talk to some small businesses in the uptown area that They said they were not aware of the change, so it just will enable a little bit more time for the amended bill to be available for public comment as it approaches the full City Council final consideration.

And the July 26 full City Council date is completely fine in terms of the timing as done to confirm that, because when you add the 10 days for the merit of sign and 30 days for it to be effective, that's still well before the October target date.

So we'll just let it stay out there a little bit longer.

July 26th, full council.

Yeah, Council Member Herbold.

Thanks.

I did have some questions specifically about public awareness of the changes, and I don't mean within the context of our legislative process and prior to actually implementing.

I'm more asking how people seeking to park in this area will know about the parking rates.

So like when they pull their car to park in this designated area where the rates are higher after a couple hours, how will they know before leaving their vehicle that there is this increased rate?

I'm happy to start that, and if Ruth wants to fill in after that, she should feel free.

A couple things.

One is all of the marketing and communication that will happen with folks that have tickets to attend events.

I know the folks at Climate Pledge Arena are heavily engaged in what that will look like.

That will include not just parking information.

I think that will be substantial, but how to take transit, other ways to access the arena.

They are developing partnerships to facilitate use of the monorail.

So I think a pretty heavy marketing effort with folks that are attending events is part of that.

The other on our side that we spent a lot of time in the past couple months on is how do we communicate with the person when they get to the block.

So that includes a variety of things.

It will include messaging with the pay stations themselves.

You know, they are digital kiosks and they will have information that they can give to folks.

Pay by phone obviously is another option for folks to use for parking on street and messaging with that.

And then we have spent a fair amount of time working on updated sign designs that are trying to accomplish what essentially you're describing Council Member Herbold, which is when a person drives up to a block, what are the signals we can give them with the real estate we have available on a sign that let them know, hey, if this is an event day, the rate might be different.

We won't post the actual rate on the signs themselves, but the signs will be updated in a way that look different in this neighborhood that say on event days, you need to be realizing there are event rates in place.

that will lead them to look at either the pay-by-phone or the pay station for those rates.

I'm just thinking about how when you use the pay stations and you hit that plus sign, I'm just imagining that it's 50 cents per hour as you're hitting it, and then once you go over the number of hours where it's 50 cents, and then it just, you hit it that one time, and then bang, is there a way that, yeah, thank you so much, Ruth.

Well, the paystations and they're different.

Pay by phone and paystations are different in the way that you can have more ability in pay by phone to actually choose.

You can change from minutes to hours.

You can do that in the pay by phone app.

On the paystation, we've worked with our vendor where we're unable to actually have it, the push be more than a certain amount, which might get actually, so you're not going to get too high.

You're just going to get almost more tired of pushing.

You could push to max time and that will jump you all the way up and then you can push backwards.

So that's, so you're not going to all the way just to jump and just see that.

And the other thing I think that's important is that you can always hit cancel.

with your pay by phone, you know, you can't cancel when you're putting in coins, but that would, there'd be really no way to pay for four hours with coins.

So, and then I guess one more thing I wanted to add, um, is that we're also developing a website that will be on that, that, um, sign.

And so I'm not saying that everybody wants to go to a website when they get to a block, but that website will be promoted and it will also have to the best of our ability, all of the climate pledge arena events on it.

So event parking signs, hours, different ways of finding.

We're doing our best to think about that.

Hours have we spent talking about that.

So thank you for that question.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you.

I had some questions sort of in the same vein as Council Member Herbold.

I think the scenarios that were just discussed are based in hypotheticals where the person has already arrived on the scene and is now about to pay for it.

And so I like to go a little further upstream from that and get a better understanding of how the department is working to educate folks before they make that decision to get in their car and drive to Uptown in the first place.

And in particular, I would like to know what role Climate Arena, Climate Pledge Arena is playing in also doing education and outreach and engagement of patrons and visitors to their arena on game days and in advance of game days.

Because we have not done this well historically in the stadium district, as pointed out by Council Member Morales earlier, related to our amendment.

So I, I think it's really important for us to have a conversation and understanding about, about what the arena is committing to do, how we are fulfilling, you know, how we are holding the arena accountable to those commitments and how, how we as a city are fulfilling our obligation to, um, you know, prevent people from making the decision in the first place to drive and try to park it in uptown, which is still going to create congestion and the potential of, lack of access for local economy purposes.

Yep.

So again, I'll probably lead to Ruth a little bit.

So SDOT has been working with the folks at the arena on arena access management plans.

A lot of that is about how we promote and get people to use modes other than driving into the neighborhood.

We've talked, obviously this is a parking discussion, but ideally we would like as few people as possible to drive in circle and park in the neighborhood.

the and this is where Ruth can probably do better than I but but the Climate Pledge Arena folks are absolutely committed to promoting alternate ways of getting to the arena as part of their commitment I think in their transportation management plan to manage congestion and traffic in the area.

They can probably we could probably follow up with them actually if there is additional detail on what the individual elements of that plan look like.

I am also confident, though, that SDOT will be working in advance of the opening of the arena and the first game of the Kraken on an extensive outreach and marketing effort to, again, our first job is to make sure that those who can get there by transit and other modes besides driving do so and they really fully understand all those options.

And then after that, again, those who drive between the folks at Climate Pledge Arena and SDOT, we need to be as clear and communicative as possible and early enough where they understand their options so that they know what they're doing before they leave the home and come to the uptown area.

It will be, I mean, this is a sort of a first-time thing, so we're, you know, in October, we'll probably be working out the kinks a little bit, to be honest with you.

We haven't had event rates here before, so it's incumbent upon us to do everything we can to get it as right as possible.

Ruth, if there is more about your conversation specific to the arena access management plan and what Climate Pledge Arena representatives had talked about, that would be helpful too.

Well, I know that when you buy your ticket, you're going to get an email with basically offering you, you know, if you want to drive, here are the options that you have.

And it's even going to have a dropdown menu of where you're coming from.

This would be the best garage for you to choose.

Um, and then price points, if you're closer, there'll be a, it'll be cost more.

But if you go down to Westlake and take the free monorail, um, then it would be a less expensive option for parking.

So the whole parking reservation system is also tied into how you're going, how you would access that so that there'd be less traffic.

So they're looking at both of those things.

I mean, you will get an, a package when you, when you buy your ticket.

And I know that, let's say for all the Kraken subscribers, a lot of them have already reserved their parking at the premium garage that came with their packages.

So it's a big, big part of the effort in terms of what the arena is doing and how we are working with the arena to minimize traffic.

But I don't think I'm answering your question, Council Member Gonzalez.

I'm seeing.

No, I think you are.

I just don't like the answer.

You don't like the answer.

I mean, I think we're still making it really easy for people to get in their cars, and particularly for those who are wealthy, to get in their cars and congest our streets.

And that has been a primary concern of mine as it relates to this deal from the get-go.

And so I guess what I'm trying to get a sense of is, what are we doing to make it harder for people?

How are we incentivizing people to not get in their cars and pay exorbitant Parking rates in the 1st, in the 1st place, right?

And maybe maybe it's because the rates are too low.

And if that's the case, I want to know how we're going to figure that out.

I know Mike has said, we're going to follow the data.

We're going to understand the data to see if we're producing the outcome that we want.

And I think that the outcome that we want is not reserve your parking spot in advance.

It's.

Don't drive to uptown and congest neighboring communities and the uptown community with just a vehicle parking there.

And sort of encumbering naturally occurring access to that business district by residents and usual patrons who aren't partaking in the event.

So I'm just sort of struggling with how we are meeting that goal if the arena is going to be focused on making it as easy as possible for you to drive in.

Well, I do want to say that as part of the arena access management plan, there is a mode share requirement and a transportation management plan, and they have to meet certain requirements.

And I think starting off, it's that there is no more than 55% of attendees are using a private vehicle to get there.

And so, and those get stronger and stronger or they get more, you know, the share changes as the years go by.

And so that's something that's in the transportation management plan and a big part of our work.

And then the Climate Pledge Arena folks have to meet that.

And so it's certainly a big part of what they're doing.

I was answering that in terms of parking, thinking reserving versus on street, but it's a huge part of the effort is to have people take, I mean, we have brand new transit lanes.

There are 24-7 transit, and that is specifically as part of the arena that SDOT actually said to the arena, you have to put these in and fund them.

And so the arena is really focused on that.

So I hope that helps them.

Yeah, and I appreciate it, Ruth.

I know that you all have been working really hard to try to implement many of the prior legislative actions that we've taken to address the realities of traffic impacts and to mitigate against the neighborhood impact as a result of having this major event center in a residential and commercial neighborhood.

And I guess what I was Was wanting to get a sense of and maybe I'll just be a little bit more laser focused in my in my question is how does this?

How does this piece of legislation?

Advance the collective goal to reduce and mitigate impacts of traffic congestion.

Not in other words, I know that the rates are set.

I understand where the rates are.

And.

The question to me is how how is the department planning to evaluate.

Once it's implemented, whether the rates are are having the intended effect.

Mike.

Right, so.

If we didn't have this legislation in effect, then.

What the current status of uptown on street paid parking is that the existing on street rate is 50 cents an hour.

And it ends at, I believe, 8pm.

And obviously, that incents folks to come in and drive and find every last free parking spot they can in the neighborhood to go to a game.

So what the legislation does is allow us, obviously, to more effectively price the curb and do something we haven't done, which is go higher than the current cap on event days.

to disincent people from being able to drive.

The existing time limit in Uptown is four hours.

That's for a lot of reasons, including that the Seattle Center is there and we want people to be able to enjoy a little time at the Seattle Center on non-event days as well.

But we've tried to price the parking again so that folks can come into the business district for a short stay.

We're trying to disincent folks from longer stays through that higher on-street rate in those third three hours.

And the way we measure is just the way we have, which is a combination of looking at transactions.

So that's both numbers and durations of transactions to see, you know, if people are parking for shorter durations, that's probably good.

If, if the streets are full and everybody is parking for five hours, that's probably not what we want to see to your point.

And so we would adjust accordingly.

And that can be, you know, a combination of changing the parking rate, which is pretty straightforward.

Or it could be our, you know, revisiting time limits and things like that and seeing if the combination of event and non event day time limits are are appropriate or if we should adjust them.

So those are a couple of the tools we have to work with for the on street.

Okay, and are the micro adjustments that you just described changing the time limit.

or increasing the rate.

Are those things that are done unilaterally by the executive once we pass this ordinance?

Or are those micro adjustments items that the executive would need to return to the city council to receive authorization to achieve?

So yeah, so we have existing authority to adjust rates.

So when you think about the paid parking currently throughout the city, we adjust the rates between $0.50 and $5 an hour based on the data.

We go through a notification process and an engagement process with the curb space access signing board and for business districts getting rate adjustments, we engage with them.

But we otherwise do have the authority in the SMC to make those rate adjustments up to the cap.

And same with time limits.

We have the authority to adjust, you know, time limited parking throughout the city, even where it makes sense.

And do you all in your thinking around implementation here, I'm assuming you have, like, an implementation plan or an evaluation plan that that is guiding the work here.

Is there.

In terms of the evaluation that you're describing of of, you know.

Or is everybody still sort of parking here or not?

Is that is that work going to happen within a particular.

Time frame and period and sort of how do we as council members.

get sort of a report back or an understanding of what that evaluation is telling you, sort of what are the trends that are being identified as a result of this legislation.

Right, so I informally I'm sure we'll start looking at the numbers after game night one.

We have moved throughout the rest of our system from an annual rate adjustment and data collection process to a quarterly data collection and rate adjustment process post pandemic.

presume right now that we would follow sort of a similar model here, where I think we would want to be able to be a little bit more nimble if we need to be.

So looking at, you know, the first couple months of data, October, November, it would be nice for us to be able to know by the end of the year, how things are going in a way that we could report to you all, to the executive, to the community and stakeholders and say, this is working well, this is not working well, here's what the data says, and potentially make adjustments depending on what we're seeing.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair Peterson, for letting me explore this issue in a little bit more detail.

Absolutely, and I think this shows the wisdom of Council Member Morales' amendment to limit it to this geographic area today so that SDOT will have to come back when talking about other areas.

Appreciate the fact that SDOT can be nimble, you know, up to the amount we're approving today in the Seattle Center area.

I'm glad to hear that when purchasing tickets, there's an integration of transportation mobility options.

Just want to encourage all the fans to take light rail and then get on the monorail.

And because that system, you know, Sound Transit is working really hard to open those extra light rail stations to time with the opening of Climate Pledge Arena.

And so we will see how it goes.

I know Council Member Lewis and others will be looking closely at this one after that first big game night.

Thanks to everybody at SDOT for their presentations.

Let's go ahead and ask if there are any other comments on the amended bill that's in front of us.

And again, we'll send it to the full council on July 26th.

All right, well, thank you, colleagues, and thanks, SDOT.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to approve Council Bill 120115 as amended and send it to the full city council on July 26th?

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you, the motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended will be sent to the July 26th City Council meeting for final consideration.

Colleagues, this, unless there are other comments for the good of the Transportation, Utility, and Technology Order, this concludes the July 7, 2021 meeting of the Transportation Utilities Committee.

Our committee will meet again on July 21. Thank you, everybody, for participating, and the meeting is adjourned.