Seattle City Council Briefing 3/20/23

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Today is Monday, March 20th.

It's two o'clock.

It is our Seattle City Council briefing meeting.

I will now call it to order.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Council Member Morales.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Present.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

Council Member Sawant.

Council President Juarez here, a present.

Thank you.

We can swing back when customers want.

I know I saw her tile up there, so I know she's here somewhere.

Right.

OK, so moving along, if there's no objection, the minutes of March 13th will be adopted.

Not seeing any objection.

The minutes of March 13th are adopted.

We'll be on to the president's report on today's agenda.

We will again welcome our director, Director Tarleton.

And staff to give us an update of what's going on in Olympia their weekly presentations on the legislative session, which I understand is the will will will be the end of April.

OK, following the state legislative update, we will have a presentation on the property tax levy by central staff.

Allie Pannucci will be joined by Eden Sissick.

Eden, I hope I said your name right.

And Tom Meskele, Meskele, I'm sorry.

I probably said that wrong, too.

How about I just say Eden and Tom?

We have a proclamation as well to sign today.

It's a proclamation celebrating the Iranian New Year or day.

No ruse.

Council Member Herbold will be speaking to that proclamation.

You should all have received a copy of that, I think, last week.

Following the proclamation, we will then have individual reports by each Council Member.

And today, we will start with Council Member Lewis.

On tomorrow's agenda, the consent calendar will include the minutes and payment of the bills.

We will take one vote, as you all know.

And if one of you want to remove one of the items, you would remove it and vote on it further on into the agenda.

There are two items under committee reports on the agenda tomorrow.

The first is Council Bill 12529, clarifying the structure for the charter position of Director of Finance.

Councilor Mosqueda will speak to this as she is the sponsor.

This item was recommended by the Finance and Housing Committee.

Item number two is Resolution 32088, approving an MOA, a Memorandum of agreement with University of Washington Medical Center Northwest Campus regarding establishing a development advisory committee for the preparation of the Northwest Campus master plan.

Council member Morales is a sponsor and will be speaking to that item as well.

This item was recommended by the Neighborhood Education, Civil Rights and Culture Committee.

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

Please note that we will be canceling Monday, March 27th council briefing and the next council briefing will be two o'clock on Monday, April 3rd.

All right.

So with that, we are going to slide into our state legislative session update and I'm going to hand it over to Director Tarleton.

Thank you, Council President Juarez and members of the Council.

I'm here today with my State Relations Director, Samir Junejo, and State Legislative Liaison, Anna Johnson, for our weekly update.

And today begins a very fast and full remainder of the legislative session.

I'll make sure Anna and Samir have a chance to share some of the highlights that have been happening last week and then today, the State Senate released its version of the capital budget from the capital budget vice chair of Ways and Means and so We'll have a lot happening this week and next week regarding hearings and votes out of committee and votes off the floor of the House for various bills related to the budget.

So I'm going to let Anna Johnson first fill you in on some of the key pieces of policy that continue to move through the legislative process.

So Anna, why don't you take it away?

Yeah.

Hey, good afternoon, everyone.

Anna Johnson, State Legislative Liaison for OIR.

Um, as Gail mentioned, the Senate released their capital budget today, and over the next two weeks, we'll see a total of six budgets released.

Um, one capital operating and transportation budget for each chamber.

Um, this afternoon, we're also expecting a new state revenue forecast that will help prepare the budgets to be released based on an updated revenue forecast.

So that's the plan for the next two weeks.

Also, I want to remind you that we are anticipating the next cutoff, which is Wednesday of next week, which is opposite House policy cutoff.

And so right now we're just in the thick of policy hearings and executive sessions of the bills from the opposite chamber.

And so that's where we're at amidst the legislative session.

So I'm going to start with the bill updates in the budget and revenue.

One bill that I haven't had a chance to share with you all yet is House Bill 1355. This bill was heard in the Senate Ways and Means Committee last week.

This bill is from Representative Wiley.

This bill updates the property tax exemption for service-connected disabled veterans and senior citizens.

It expands eligibility by increasing the income thresholds, and it also adjusts the threshold check-in to every three years instead of five years.

This bill passed the House unanimously and is now moving through the Senate.

And a bill in the climate and environmental space that I want to update you on is House Bill 1181 from Representative Dewar.

This bill had a hearing last week in the Senate Committee on Local Government, Land Use, and Tribal Affairs.

This bill adds a climate change and resiliency element to the list of elements that must be included in comprehensive plans under the GMA.

This bill moved out of the Policy Committee late last week as well, and it now is scheduled for a hearing in Ways and Means this week.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Sameer Junaidjo, State Relations Director with OIR.

And I'll move on to a behavioral health bill that we've been watching at OIR.

This is regarding crisis relief centers.

These are 23-hour crisis centers.

Senate Bill 5120, sponsored by Senator Dingra.

It was still moving.

It was heard last week in the House Health Care Committee and is scheduled for a vote out of committee this Wednesday.

Many housing bills are still continuing to move.

One that was heard last week and is scheduled for action later this week is related to lot splitting.

This is House Bill 1245. This bill requires cities to allow for the splitting of residential lots under certain conditions.

So this bill moved out of the House.

It is now in the Senate and is scheduled for a vote out of the Senate Housing Committee this week.

A tenant bill that is continuing to move is House Bill 1074. It's related to tenant deposits and damages.

It was heard last week as well and scheduled for a vote out of the committee this week.

This bill requires a landlord to substantiate the cost of any damages withheld from a tenant deposit with repair estimates, invoices, or other documentation.

It also extends a timeline for a landlord to provide a statement and documentation for retaining any portion of a deposit from 21 days to 30 days.

It also prohibits the landlord from withholding any portion of tenant deposit for certain items.

The larger land use and density bills are continuing to move as well.

Senate Bill 5466 related to transit-oriented development and House Bill 1110 related to middle housing both had hearings last week, and both are scheduled for executive action this week.

And another priority housing bill is House Bill 1474 related to covenant homeownership program that I've also talked about in previous weeks and that also is continuing to move and had a hearing in the Senate, last Friday.

Moving to cannabis bills, Senate Bill 5080 social equity and cannabis that bill had a hearing in the house last weekend is also scheduled for executive session, this upcoming week.

As a reminder, it expands the state social equity and cannabis program.

by expanding retail licenses that are available and also adding processor and producer licenses.

One of the changes that was made during the process was the bill was amended to allow a process for local governments to object to the LCB granting any license under this bill.

All right, moving on to the public safety section of your council bulletin.

Last week, the Senate Human Services Committee heard House Bill 1470 from Representative Ortiz-Self.

This concerns private detention facilities.

It requires Department of Health to adopt rules and standards for sanitary, hygienic, and safe living conditions for individuals detained at private detention facilities.

It creates a private right of action and civil penalties that would be enforced by the AG's office.

to recover civil penalties.

It's scheduled for executive session this week.

There's a couple of bills that were heard in the Senate Law and Justice Committee last week that support victims.

First, House Bill 1025 from Representative Orwell.

This supports crime victims and witnesses by promoting a victim-centered, trauma-informed responses in the legal system.

A second bill is House Bill 1715 from Representative Davis.

This is a comprehensive protections for victims of domestic violence and other violence, including family members and intimate partners.

Both of these bills received bipartisan support in the House, and they're both scheduled for executive session this week.

And then last section is the social programs and education, I've mentioned in previous briefings that it's a priority of the legislature to increase access to childcare through the working connections childcare program.

There's a couple bills that are intended to do that.

On Monday, the Senate Early Learning and K through 12 committee heard House Bill 1525 from Representative Fossey.

This expands the Working Connections child care eligibility to those who are in 12 month first 12 months of a state registered apprenticeship program.

Um, also on another bill related to working connections.

Child care is Senate Bill 52 25 from Senator Wilson.

This bill had a hearing on Friday.

This one expands eligibility to include those who work in child care, and it also prohibits D.

C. Y. F. From considering the immigration status of an applicant.

Both of these bills are bipartisan and were exact out of their committees late last week, and that is it for our briefing today.

Happy to answer any questions.

Well, let's see, are there any questions from my colleagues regarding for Director Tarlington and team?

All right, I do not see any questions, I guess we're all OK until we find out what's going on next week, right?

And Council President, you aren't having a working session next Monday, you had mentioned.

So we are happy to talk offline with anybody.

As House of Origin cutoff of the opposite chamber happens, March 29th, we'll be seeing over the next few days the bills that are getting heard and the bills getting executed, you know, voted out of committee.

So happy to keep you all informed individually since we won't have the briefing next Monday.

Great.

Is there anything else for my colleagues before we say goodbye to Gail and her team?

All right, not seeing any.

Thank you, Director.

Thank you, Anna.

Thank you, Samara.

OK, folks, moving on into our agenda, we are going to have the an overview of property tax levy overview and central staff will provide this overview, and I believe Ali will be you should have all got an advanced copy of the 21 page PowerPoint and the five page memo property tax revenues and debt capacity memo, five pages, which was riveting if you didn't have a chance to read it.

So at this time, I'm going to just hand it over to Allie and team and let them walk us through this.

Are you just going to go through the PowerPoint, Allie?

Is that what you're going to do?

Are you going to put it up?

Yeah, I'm going to put it up on the screen.

OK, well, then the floor is yours.

Great.

Thank you, Council President.

Good afternoon, Council Members.

I'm Allie Panucci of your Council Central staff, and I'm joined by my colleagues, Ed and Cissick, and Tom Mikesell, who I will be turning most of the presentation over to in just a moment.

But as the Council President, Tied up for us.

We distributed a memo and PowerPoint that is also posted to the agenda for the public's viewing.

I'll just flag that there's a typo at the top of the memo.

It was drafted in 2023, not 2022. So note this is our current memo on property taxes, and we're excited that the Council President is so enthusiastic about this presentation.

There is a lot of material to cover today in about 30 minutes and so we'll do a high level walkthrough of the presentation but we're also happy to meet with you individually to go into more detail.

as needed.

I'm just going to provide a quick introduction and then I'll turn it over.

We prepared these materials in response to questions from council offices during deliberations last summer on the renewal of the park district levy.

The presentation is really focused to help us all have a shared understanding of how property taxes are calculated and how individual proposals to renew a voter approved levy fits within the context of all the various levies.

The scenarios we've provided in the latter part of the presentation, which Tom will cover, are for illustrative purposes and don't reflect any specific proposal on future voter-approved levy-renewed rules.

The scenarios were developed using a model that the City Budget Office developed, and then central staff adjusted for discussion along with input from the Office of Economic and Revenue Forecast.

So moving forward, central staff, we will use this model to analyze and inform future decisions around levy renewals, including council's upcoming deliberations on the city's housing levy.

And just a quick thank you to Director Dingley from the City Budget Office and Director Noble from the Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts for providing technical support and analytical support as we develop these materials.

And with that, I'm going to share my screen and turn it over to Aden to kick things off.

So before we begin, I'm going to ask Mike, well, what would you prefer?

I, I would I would ask my colleagues if you can hold off on questions, but if people have a burning desire to ask a question.

But my preference is, is we let these guys get through this overview.

All right, go ahead.

Thank you.

Thank you to Director or Deputy Director Pannucci for that riveting intro.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Ed Encicich with Council Central staff.

And for this presentation, I will provide a brief overview of property taxes, how they're calculated using one of our levies as an example, followed by some breakdowns of the overall in the city's property tax portions, along with other related comparison charts, including how we compare to our neighbor cities.

And then Tom will go into future levy scenarios and decisions that lie ahead.

So by the end of this presentation, and also a memo that we just mentioned that we circulated prior to the briefing, we're hoping that the audience will gain three key takeaways.

They'll understand the difference between general property tax levy and voter approved levy lifts, understand the impacts of these levies to property owners and renters, and lastly, what decisions lie ahead and how each individual decision impacts future options.

So, with that, let's get started with slide 1, the overview.

There are 3 different types of property taxes that combine to create the city's overall rate.

We have the general purpose levy, which is not subject to voter approval, but is dependent on council budget action during the budget process.

And this levy generates about one-fifth of the overall general fund revenue, though the growth of this levy is limited to 1% plus the value of new constructions, which ranges between 0.5 and 2% typically.

Voter-approved levies for specific purposes, known as levy lift lifts, because voters authorize taxation above the statutory limits, which constrains the general purpose levy.

We currently have five of those, and we'll cover the details later in the presentation, but those include the Moose Seattle Levy, low-income housing, families and education, election vouchers, and libraries for all.

And lastly, levies to pay debt service and voter-approved bonds, like the Alaskan Way Seawall Bond, and they're called excess levies because they don't count against the city's rate limit, and they also require a 60% supermajority vote.

Next slide please.

So this is the, so how are property tax rates and property tax bills calculated?

First off, it's important to understand that Property tax rates are expressed in units of 1,000 of assessed value.

So in this slide and the slides to follow, you'll see assessed value, AV, they're being divided by 1,000.

And this is just to conform with the standard way that property tax rates are discussed.

So the first part of this slide, it calculates the levy rate, levy tax rate, and that's simply done by taking the annual levy, annual amount that the levy is authorized to collect, and dividing it by the total assessed value of all property in the city.

And then after determining the tax rate, calculating the tax amount for an individual property is done by multiplying that tax rate by the assessed value of that property.

And in the next slide, I'll provide a specific example Using the move Seattle levy and a 2022 median assessed home value so we can put the formulas that we just signed the previous slide into context.

So here.

The $100 million at the top represents the 2022 revenue collection amount for the Move Seattle levy, and dividing that by the $275 billion figure, which represents the total assessed value of all Seattle's property per 1,000 AD for a tax rate of 37 cents in this case.

The next portion for an individual property tax amount, we take that $0.37 tax rate and multiply it by the property's assessed value, the $760K, which is the 2022 median assessed home value.

And the median tax amount in 2022 for the Move Seattle levy was $278.50.

And this is the largest of the five voter-approved levies, actually.

Now the calculations for all the various levies are done in a similar way, and then all of them combined make up the total property tax bill for a property.

And so this chart shows the different jurisdictions whose rates make up the total property tax rate imposed on Seattle property owners.

As you can see, For a medium assessment value of the 760K, the total tax bill was just over $6,700.

And the city makes up about a quarter of that amount with the state school fund and school district accounting for just over half of the total amount.

And then the next slide further breaks down the city's portion of that $6,700.

Median assessed home value property tax bill and the largest portion of the city's property tax is the general purpose levy, which makes up over half.

just about 54% of the total, followed by the voter-approved Move Seattle transportation levy, which is about one-fifth or 18% of the total.

And that's the example we just used a minute ago.

So the city's rate for 2022 is $2.37 per $1,000 assessed value.

And that includes the Metropolitan Park District MPD's 2022 rate of 20 cents.

And I will turn it over to Tom to discuss the next couple of slides.

Thank you, Eden.

Good afternoon, members of the City Council.

Tom Mikesell with your central staff.

So what the next two slides I'm going to cover and then turn back over to Eden.

But these slides are something that we have created as a kind of a new concept for this type of presentation.

And this is with respect to rental housing.

recent reports have indicated that actually more than 50% of Seattle residents, in fact, live in rental housing.

So having a perspective of how property taxes play into rent or typical rent is an important consideration.

The trouble is that there is not a really great metric for what a median rent is. or particularly with regards to the median assessed value, which is what's used for property taxes.

So to kind of tackle this challenge, we have worked with the Office of Economic and Revenue Forecast, who has helped us estimate the value of a typical rental property in the city of Seattle.

And the primary way that was done was looking at Zillow values for median rent, The value of that median rent is approximately $2,195 as of January 1st of this year.

And then working from that value, the forecast office applied some rules of thumb about the cap rates and management fees and various considerations that are included in determining rent to calculate, to back calculate what the associated assessed value would be for that rental unit.

And I just want to want to caveat this because there is really is no one size fits all for for rental housing, there are a number of different types of rental properties that vary in terms of age and the number of units.

And furthermore, the financial characteristics of the property itself may vary whether or not there is financing involved or fully owned by the landowner.

So those are kind of some grains of salt to keep in mind when considering these numbers, but we do the best that we can and to provide a little bit of additional information into discussion.

So all that being said, Um, as you see on this slide, if we, um, use approximate the, uh, the little rent of $2,100 or about $2,200.

Um, that calculate that to be an assessed value of $350,000 that equates to a total annual property tax bill of about $3,100.

Um, and this is for all, all tax and jurisdiction.

This is a, an annual, um, property tax bill.

And then that compares to the annual rent of about $2,200.

It's about, on a monthly basis, about 15% of the rent.

I thought it was important to note that whether or not the rent is 100% passed through to the renter is unknown.

I mean, that again is determined by the financial characteristics of that specific financing relationship.

But this gives some sense of how much property taxes on all jurisdictions basis factors in or compares to the monthly rent.

And if we look at the next slide, please, this is a similar calculation for just the city taxes.

So these are essentially duplicates of the two slides prior that Edwin showed for the median assessed value.

And this is a similar proportion for the for the rent property calculation for tax bill, $830 for the full year, which is about 3% compared to the annual rent.

So on a monthly basis, the comparison would be the same.

It's about 3% of the rent.

So again, these are just some rough calculations that we've been made, if there's an opportunity to enhance them as we move along in the discussions, we will do so.

But for now, hopefully this provides a little bit of insight into how property taxes impact the housing costs for half of the residents of Seattle.

And I'll turn it over back to Edwin to wrap up the first part of the presentation before going into scenarios.

Thanks, Tom.

So, this slide is related to exemptions.

Washington State offers four property tax exemptions or deferral programs for primary residences.

So this table just shows some of the basic eligibility requirements and information for qualifying the income levels.

for the available programs and the Washington State Department of Revenue website would be the place to go for those interested in learning more.

But just to provide a tiny little bit of detail on one of the programs, the first program in the table provides a tax exemptions for qualifying seniors and disabled persons.

And this program allows the value of a residence to be frozen for property tax purposes and the owner becomes exempt from all excess levies and possibly regular levies as well.

And this combination results in an overall reduction in property taxes.

And then one other interesting fact I read on the King County assessor's website is that while these these benefit programs for senior citizens and disabled are provided, more than 26,000 qualified seniors and disabled persons have yet to register for the exemption.

So only about one in 100 of those eligible for deferrals are currently enrolled.

So on the next slide related to this, kind of the similar charts that we I saw earlier, but these are for seniors.

So based on information from those previous couple of slides, I dug into the data just to see what the average senior tax bill is and how it's broken out.

Though I found limited data on the assessor's office website.

It combines state, county, and port into one group.

But you can see that for a median home, a senior tax bill is almost $3,000 less or about 42% less than what we saw in the previous chart.

And for this slide, we also thought it might be helpful to provide some historical context in terms of how the median assessed value and the total property tax bill have changed over the last several years.

You'll notice that the property tax amount is generally correlated with assessed value, except in 2019, where total property tax amount decreased while the median assessed value increased.

And that's because of the state legislature levy swap.

to fund K-12 education.

So 2022 is also a great example of the point we alluded to earlier, that voter approved levies and not the rising property values are the main drivers of property tax increases.

As you can see in the chart, the increase in the total amount of property taxes to be collected in King County was modest for the 2022 tax year, about 3%, despite the fact that the property value rose by about 9%.

So that covers that portion.

I'll turn it back over to Tom to go into some scenarios for you guys.

Thank you, Ed.

So the next, pretty much the remainder of the slides in the presentation will talk about financial planning scenarios around the upcoming levy renewals.

What we have here is the table that shows all of the upcoming levy renewals for not just the city, but also other jurisdictions in the context of the calendar updates from starting with this year through the next renewal of the Metro Park District in 2028. The city levies are highlighted in green, then the school and county levies, which are also included in the scenario model for purposes of showing the context for all the full tax bill are included as well.

But this is just to show kind of what the current amounts are, the duration in years, and the sequencing of the different dates that are included in the model that's been built to describe the growth in levees and kind of form the context of the upcoming decision.

If we could look at the next slide, we'll just kind of cover just some of the kind of high-level considerations that are contemplated in the modeling.

First is that the total city rate.

So this is the rate covering our general purpose levy and any lid lifts.

It would not include the Metropolitan Park District because that is a different tax and jurisdiction.

And then it would not include the excess tax levy for debt.

Neither of those are included within the cap, but everything else is capped at our total city rate of $3.60 for $1,000 of assessed value.

And that's important, as you'll see later on in the slide, because it shows kind of the upper limit of the taxation capacity for the fee.

And the kind of the sequencing matters because decisions that are made earlier in the order can serve to crowd out taxpayer appetite to consider larger lifts for different purposes.

In future discussion.

So that's why we do this kind of financial planning scenario is to show how, how the decision back upon which other upon each other, because they all tax against the same tax base of value in the city.

And they all at least for the city's perspective are within that $3 and 60 cent total cap.

And again, just to reiterate, we're talking about all of the city LIDLIPS, not just the low-income housing levy, but the transportation levy and all the other ones that we currently have.

Furthermore, we're including the county LIDLIPS, the school district levies, and then also the new county behavioral health levy that is up for vote next month.

By way of assumption, So this is the big one.

So what we are describing is the mechanics of how this works.

And we're not talking about any specific proposals.

And this is important because we are working from this model.

We are working from the assessed value forecast that came from the Office of Economic and Revenue Forecast in November of last year.

We have received notice from the director of the forecast office that the upcoming forecast update on April 10th will actually reduce the assessed value forecast for next year and future years.

So that has implications for the rates that are shown and for the ultimate taxing capacity that the city has.

So again, we always update with the best available information.

What we're using now is the best available information, but the information will change as of April 10th.

Um, also we, I believe as a deputy director, the new panucci, um, emphasize, um, we are not modeling any specific proposals.

We do not have any proposals to model.

Um, we are just showing how this model worked, um, with, and, but in order to kind of demonstrate the sensitivities of the different assumptions that are made, um, we've chosen three general scenarios to show you.

One is a scenario that just adjusts all of the existing levies for inflation on the date of renewal and then for future years.

So it kind of resets them all to account for the impact of inflation over the term of the levy.

The next tiered assumption is essentially a doubling or 100% increase in the levy value for each one of the levies at their renewal date.

And then the third, kind of the highest level assumption is the 200% increase, which would triple each of the levies.

Again, this is just to show how it works and how sensitive the model is.

None of these are specific proposals that we've received.

So the amounts that are calculated through this process are shown here.

Again, it's just for context so you can understand the current levies that we have in the first column.

are the current amount for each one of these levies, amounts shown in millions.

And then what happens if you just say, we're just going to grow it by inflation or double it or triple it?

These are the amounts that would result.

And it's just essentially applying this broad assumption to each of the levies across each scenario.

So if we could go back.

And it's not to say that that's the only way that the model can work.

different decisions can be made about each one of the individual levies as we progress through the discussions for not just the low-income housing levy, but all future levies.

If there's a modeling assumption that we should make about any one of the individual levies, we can use that specific proposal if the model doesn't limit us to apply kind of a cookie-cutter, a peanut butter approach to everything.

That's just what we did because we're just showing you broad examples.

So now we can look at the next slide.

So using this model, these are the sort of projections that are made.

So the kind of starting point is the 2022 amount, and this is for just the city tax burden.

So these are only the city, the city levy, the general purpose levy and the lid lift.

So it's about $1,800 as a kind of a baseline starting point.

And then you can see that if we just grow the levees using the inflation assumption, by the end of 20, by 2029, that total tax bill for the median value haul is about $2,500.

For the doubling of the levees, a little shy of $3,000 annual tax bill.

And then for the tripling of the levy, it grows to $3,700 by the last year.

And then kind of to piggyback on a comment that Ed made earlier, this includes also growth in median home value as well.

So it's not a fixed value.

The median value is assumed to grow by about 5% per year.

So there's a combination of factors that leads to the growth in the tax bill over the seven years that are shown here.

Um, it's the, um, the, uh, assumptions about size of the levies, but also, um, the growth in the median value that is, um, at the levy rates are assigned to.

And so this is, um, doing the exact same, um, approach except looking at all of the jurisdiction.

Uh, so we, what we have not done in this, scenario is apply the same inflation doubling and tripling assumption to the other jurisdiction.

We relied on CBO, who is the original author of this model, their assumptions that they made, which generally approximated the size of prior levy increases for those other jurisdictional levies.

So this one builds those kind of assumption that the next levy renewal for those other jurisdictions will be very similar to the magnitude of the prior renewal.

But it does, however, make different assumptions as described to the 50 portion of each one of the tax bill to show that building from a starting point of $6,700 for a median stress value home in 2022. At the inflation scenario, it would grow to just shy of $9,000 by 2029 in the inflation scenario.

And then at the high end, it would be $10,500 for the tripling scenario.

So again, these are just scenarios.

Once we start receiving different proposals for modeling levies in the upcoming discussion, we can input those and tweak assumptions to show various impacts for tax bills, not just for the current levy under discussion, but also considering the impact from other future levy discussions as well.

And then I believe there is one.

So this is not looking at the the impact to the taxpayer, but this is looking at how much money each one of these scenarios would generate.

So this is like the total amount of levy revenue under the various scenarios.

And the top line of the graph is the max level.

So this is essentially saying that's the total taxing capacity for the jurisdictional of the city of Seattle.

This is the $3.60 per thousand that's value.

times the forecasted assessed value for each one of those years.

The next line below it is the tripling scenario.

So it's a 200% growth plus the levy reserve.

So what the levy reserve is, it's a stipulation in our city debt policy that says 12% of the city's taxing capacity should be held in reserve for emergency.

So it's not actually a tax rate that has been authorized.

It's just a kind of reserve excess capacity that we hold to the side in case of an emergency.

A very key takeaway here and one in discussions with folks with a rich history at the City of Seattle is that if you look at that top levy scenario, it touches the max capacity by 2027. So that means that the But that scenario essentially hits, but then starts to decline away from our maximum taxing capacity in that year.

It's, which is in its own right, an interesting observation, but even more interesting, I guess, the word.

When you take into context that we expect to see an assessed value forecast that is decreasing, so the total amount of assessed value, the growth, is going to be lower in the April forecast than what we have to use this model.

So it's probably a fairly safe assumption that after we update this graph, with the April numbers, the green line will cross the black line, indicating that that example scenario of tripling the levy plus levy reserve would be more than our taxing capacity could afford.

So as we get those numbers, we'll update these and see how that looks.

But that's kind of the most significant takeaway in this otherwise examples of how the model works.

That's essentially the discussion scenarios, and I'll just turn it over to Edwin to talk about some more of the characteristics of the actual 2020-11.

Thank you, Tom.

To wrap us up, I've just got three more slides that I'll go through real quickly.

So the next few slides will show us how we're tracking compared to our neighboring King County cities in terms of residential property values.

property tax rates and median property tax bill.

So we exclude the cities that have a population in these graphs.

We exclude the cities that have a population of under 15,000 people as those were primarily outliers in the data.

And so while looking at these, as I mentioned earlier, property tax bill is a product of two factors, the assessed home value and the tax rate for the jurisdiction in which that home is.

So this first slide shows the 2022 median residential property values for these 20 cities.

And you'll see that Seattle ranks in the top half as the seventh highest at the $760,000 median home value figure.

And the next slide compares the 2022 property tax rates, which shows Seattle is having the fifth lowest rate, which for 2022 was $8.83 per 1,000 MSS value.

And Seattle is relatively unique here because our entire city has the same tax rate, compared to a lot of other cities having multiple rates within it due to overlapping taxing jurisdictions like school districts, hospitals, fire districts, et cetera.

And then the next slide will bring it all together.

And as you might've expected, if our median housing values are higher than average and our rates are lower than average, the median property tax bill should be somewhere around the middle.

And that's what this graph shows.

Seattle's median property tax bill in 2022, as he signed the earlier charts, was just $6,700.6710.

So yeah, that wraps up our presentation, I believe.

So if there are questions, we're open to that.

Thanks, and Tom, so that was a lot of information and a short amount of time like I said we're happy to do a deeper dive in office briefings and all and happy to take a few questions now I think we have just like three minutes left on the on the agenda.

and just really wanted to highlight sort of get us all grounded in how property taxes are calculated.

And as we enter into discussions over this year and next year with the housing levy and transportation levy and other things, we are happy to work with individual council members to think through different proposals and how it fits within the context of the entire property tax bill and how that might impact and benefit homeowners and renters as well as businesses.

Hey, with that, are there any first of all, thank you guys.

And I'm sorry, and I was saying your name wrong.

Thank you for putting this together and the overview.

Are there any questions or comments that my colleagues would like to make?

So if we're done with this, we can move on into our agenda.

Hey, I do not see any questions or any hands raised.

All right.

OK, I guess we are done with you guys.

Thank you very much for providing the charts and all the information.

It's very helpful.

All right, so let's see, moving on into our agenda, folks.

Item number five, looks like we have a proclamation teed up today.

Council Member Herbold, I understand that you have a proclamation recognizing March 20th as the day of Nowruz for signature.

And so I'm going to hand you the floor.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

Let me just change my screen here.

Thanks for your patience.

I really appreciate the opportunity to bring forward this proclamation commemorating Nowruz, which means New Day and marks the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and is the first day of the Persian New Year.

Nowruz began today at 2.24 PM this afternoon.

This holiday originated in ancient Persia more than 3000 years ago.

It's celebrated by nearly 300 million people of different faiths and cultures around the globe, from Western, Central and South Asia to the Caucasus, Black Sea Basin and the Balkans.

This holiday is the embodiment of a centuries long tradition, promoting values of peace and solidarity and symbolizing a time of renewal and community, marking the departure from the trials of the previous year and bringing hope the new year.

Really want to thank everybody working together on this celebratory proclamation while recognizing that there are members of the Iranian community and Afghani community where these holidays are celebrated, where community members are very tied to their families back home, families who are dealing with persecution, disruption of their lives, and really am grateful for the opportunity to lift up what the significance of this new year means for those communities.

Appreciate that the mayor is signing on to this proclamation in concurrence, and I also want to thank our governor for also having issued his own proclamation celebrating Nowruz.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Do any of my colleagues have any comments that they wish to make before we go to a vote?

All right, not seeing any.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll to determine which council members would like to fix their signatures to Council Member Herbold's proclamation?

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Yes.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Council Member Sawant.

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Council President Juarez.

Aye.

Nine signatures will be affixed to the proclamation.

Thank you.

And thank you again, Council Member Herbold, for bringing this forward.

So we will come to the point in our agenda where each of you will tell us what you did last week, this week, and maybe next week.

So it looks like the roll call order.

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

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you so much, Madam President.

Today I'm just to kick it off with the most topical thing was thrilled to visit Pike Place market for.

Daft free daffodil day and the kicking off of the spring season.

It was really great to see a long line all the way down Pike Place onto 1st Ave for people getting in line to get their limit of two free daffodils per person to celebrate this festive change of the weather, so strongly encourage community members to make their way to Pike Place Market to engage in this activity and really was great to see the market doing very well today with a lot of visitors.

And it was a good way to kick off the week.

The Seattle Youth Employment Program applications are still open through the end of this week, so ending Friday, March 24th.

The Seattle Youth Employment Program supports young people age 16 to 24 from qualifying income households and communities that experience racial, social, and economic disparity with a goal of increasing youth and young adult abilities to pursue careers that pay well and are meaningful to them.

Participants receive stipends while gaining marketable skills and exposure to various career fields, and many are also placed in structured paid work settings within City of Seattle departments.

as well as local nonprofit agencies to apply those skills and hands-on experience.

So if you are interested in that program, get your application in by Friday, March 24th.

Seattle Public Library.

The Central Library and all branches of the Seattle Public Library will be closed on Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023 for a staff in-service day.

The Central Library book drop will be closed, but all branch book drops are going to remain open.

No library materials will be due on March 22nd, 2023, given the staff and service day.

And all branch library parking garages are also going to be closed.

One exception, the central library garage is going to be open during regular operating hours on Thursday, March 23rd of 2023. The Seattle Public Library's short story dispensers, which provide on-demand printed short stories at two locations, just got an exciting update.

They now feature a new collection of stories written exclusively by Seattle area authors.

The dispensers are available for visitors at the Central Library at 1004th Avenue or customers waiting in line for coffee at the Station Coffeehouse in Seattle's Beacon Hill neighborhood at 1600 South Roberto Maestas Festival Street.

Finally, Reflections 2023. Reflections 2023 returns once again to inspire and liven up Seattle artists and the community.

Filmed on the elegant stage of Pier 62 on Seattle's waterfront, Reflections Dance Festival 2023 is another stunning love letter to the city of Seattle.

The third chapter of this unique dance festival will be screened as the closing program of the City of Seattle's Race and Social Justice Summit during a special livestream program on Friday, this Friday, March 24th, from 6 to 7.30 p.m.

Reflections debuted in the first year of the pandemic in 2020 to an audience of 4,000 people.

And Reflections 2023 continues to feature contemporary dancers and cultural practitioners who care about culture and equity in the arts.

Reflections is co-presented by the Seattle Public Library and Friends of the Waterfront Seattle with lead partners Seattle Office of Arts and Culture and the Office of the Waterfront and Civic Projects.

And wrapping up the library section, award-winning poet Claudia Castro Luna is going to be hosting a bilingual spring program series at the Seattle Public Library, exploring how we can keep creativity alive.

The former Washington State Poet Laureate has guest curated this series, which kicks off with a program called Creativity Every Day slash Creatividad Cotidiana, which explores cultural practices around creativity.

The first event will be held on Thursday, March 30th from 7pm to 8pm at the Central Library, Level 4, Room 1.

And Cleaning City update...

Council Member, you went on mute.

Somehow, if you can hear us.

Yeah, I can hear you.

You talk to me.

Sorry customer.

I'm sorry.

I briefly muted my apologies.

I don't know how that happened.

Okay.

Gosh, I thought I was in trouble.

Yeah, but anyway, just to repeat the clean city.

Portion the clean city data for March 6 to March 10th, 301 needles recovered and 32,000.

760 pounds of garbage from 143 different park pickup locations.

And with that, Madam President, I don't have anything else to add.

So unless there are comments from colleagues, and I don't see any, I will pass it along to Council Member Morales.

I'm coming, I'm coming.

Find the button.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

As Council President mentioned, there is one item from the Neighborhood Education, Arts and Culture Committee on tomorrow's full council agenda, a resolution 2088 that approves a Development Advisory Committee for UW Medical Center Northwest Campus.

master institution, major institution master plan.

The next committee meeting is this Friday at 9.30.

We've got a pretty packed agenda.

So colleagues, if you are a committee member and you are going to be there, please let me know as soon as possible.

The agenda will include a vote on the Council Bill 120525, creating an RSJI ordinance.

We had some discussion last week And we'll be voting on that this week.

We'll also be putting on the appointment of Eric Wheeler Smith as director of the Office of Civil Rights.

And we'll be joined, I'm very excited to say, by guests from Richmond, Virginia and from the city of Chicago to discuss their work on community wealth building initiatives.

As you know, our Department of Neighborhoods has been conducting research for the last year on the role that the city might play in facilitating and supporting different generational wealth building programs and pilots.

So we've been talking with folks from other cities to see what they're doing, and we'll be hearing from a couple of them this week.

This morning, I met with Jennifer Chow, Mayor's appointee for the director position at the Department of Neighborhoods.

I'm looking forward to working with her I think it's going to be a great partnership.

And I really do want to thank Sarah Morningstar who's been serving in the interim capacity for the last many months and has done an excellent job of spin the trains moving at D.O.N. This week I'll be meeting with the Domestic Workers Coalition to discuss their interest in creating a portable benefits package for landscapers, nannies, house care workers, people who are domestic workers, and we've been talking for about a year now, and they are pulling together a package, so we'll get an update from them this week.

As Council Member Lewis mentioned, on Friday afternoon, there will be the 2023 Race and Social Justice Initiative Summit.

This year, the theme is on healing, belonging, and unity.

The meeting is going to be on Zoom, and I'll be making some remarks at the beginning of the event and look forward to celebrating the passage, at least out of committee, of the Race and Social Justice Ordinance.

Past weekend, I attended the fellow town hall at New Holly participate in some community discussions around economic development and health and safety.

And I have to say, there were several takeaways.

I think we all hear these similar conversations across the city, but there's a clear desire from neighbors for more opportunities for young people, particularly around job training opportunities, pre-apprenticeship programs that are connecting to through school.

Also heard a lot about the return of youth programs, especially, for example, late-19 programs and the need for more of that at our community centers, as well as an interest in a return of funding for youth programs, especially for those that kind of dried up during the pandemic.

Residents also spoke about their desire for communities that are designed to allow them to walk to the park with their kids.

walk to a grocery store, and also an interest in much better street lighting throughout the neighborhood.

So I want to thank the folks who were organizing that, and thanks to the residents and the providers who came out to listen to the concerns that neighbors had.

I also attended the Columbia City Night Market, which was chock full of black and brown vendors selling jewelry, art, body products, great food.

This night market was started in 2021, I believe, by Peace Peloton, which is a group that came together to connect neighbors to these businesses and really help people, communities, and businesses thrive.

Also run a bike program invites cyclists of all levels on grades throughout the city.

And the point of those bike rides is also to connect.

They ride, create paths through parts of the city that are have historical significance for the black community.

And they end up along the way at black businesses.

These routes offer education and the opportunity to celebrate Black achievement throughout the city.

So the next night market is April 15th.

You should come on down to Columbia City and celebrate with folks there.

And then there will be a bike ride.

The next bike ride is scheduled for May 20th.

If you're interested in doing that, you can be on an electric bike, I asked, and to be able to join.

Here this week I'll be a guest speaker at the Seattle Girls School for one of their community meetings.

They like to have their young people talk with folks who are involved in local government and who shape our policies so they've invited me to join them looking forward to that.

And last thing for me, since next week's briefing is canceled, I do want to let folks know that on March 29th, I'll be hosting the next panel discussion of our Seattle Within Reach series.

We'll be discussing the intersection of arts and the comprehensive plan.

So I'm really looking forward to that discussion.

We will have Chaco Phillips, who's a program director at 4Culture, Randy Engstrom from Third Wave Creative, And Eric Arguello, who is the co-president of Calle 24, might be Calle 24, which is a Latino cultural district in the Mission in San Francisco.

So I'm really looking forward to that discussion and to hearing more about how our arts sector really needs us to be paying attention to them as we're doing our comprehensive planning.

Because as I've said many times before, Our artists also need affordable production space, affordable rehearsal space, and places to practice their art and perform for the community.

So looking forward to that discussion.

That's all I have, colleagues.

I don't see any hands.

So I will pass it to Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Council Member Morales.

And I want to come with you on one of these bike rides soon.

That has been a goal of mine.

So please let me know if folks are listening.

Let's do it.

All right, that sounds great.

Maybe on a sunny, sunny day, though, you know, I'm not going with a biker.

I'll let y'all know now I'm not going.

We'll ride an extra mile in your honor.

Thank you.

Okay, excellent.

Well, thank you colleagues, we did have a fine a special finance and housing committee meeting this morning, where we had a good discussion we voted on a handful of items that includes the establishment of labor standard requirements for paid sick and safe leave.

for app-based workers in Seattle.

Very good discussion and really appreciate the vote out of committee.

If you have any questions about the legislation and you'd like to talk about it more before next Tuesday's vote, please do let me or my office, Sejal Parikh, know, along with Karina Bull, the mayor partners and the executive team partners, as well as Karim Levitas from the Office of Labor Standards and Brianna Thomas, From the mayor's office, so it was a joint effort here and really excited to be able to pass these protections into statute.

As we know, sickness continues to plague us, whether or not it's a covet or not.

The other item that we voted out of committee this morning was the multifamily multifamily.

Multifamily tax exemption for housing properties.

This is an extension of the program so that we have another year to really work on policy proposals and new changes enhance.

We'd like to see to the program that will take place in 2024. this is an allowance of the continued policy for the next year.

Instead of having expire at the end of this year, really wanted to get this out of our committee before we take on the housing levy and other items throughout the rest of the year.

So, thank you colleagues for your support for that legislation.

We will seek to have a report back in our committee on the program review later this late summer or early fall.

As you heard in my committee today, there's also a number of protections that we included in 2019 legislation that will continue as a requirement for the extension that we authorized in committee this morning.

The 3rd item that we pass out of committee is the 2023 grant acceptance ordinance.

This is our annual grant acceptance ordinance from.

Um, other government and private entities who provide grants to the city that is outside of our normal budgeting process.

We go through a process of reviewing those to make sure that we are fully aware and providing transparency to the public.

I don't want to think council members, council members, Herbold and Peterson for their amendment today regarding 1 of the related items and the support for that amendment as well.

That was passed at a committee and up for vote next Tuesday.

And then finally we had a briefing on the Seattle Rescue Plan, the 2022 year-end report, and we have a lot of appreciation for central staff and the CBO office who continue to track those expenses, making sure that any encumbered expenses are being reported and that if there's funding sitting around that we make sure that we're expediting the process to get it out.

And the good news is we are ahead of the pack across the nation with getting the funding from the American Rescue Plan Act and other COVID related expenses out the door and been very appreciative of the city's budget office response to the council's request to have those regular monthly meetings, monthly reports, quarterly updates in our committee, and year-end reports as well.

We have asked for a summary page so that you too can sing the praises of the work that we've done through the Seattle Rescue Plans, plural, at least three or four of those in the last three years, and look forward to getting that summary document so we can really highlight the work that we've done in Seattle.

Our next finance and housing committee meeting is not scheduled until May 17th at 930 a.m.

We have decided to convert all of our finance and housing meetings that are regularly scheduled between the beginning of April and the end of June.

to be the Select Housing Levy Committee.

That is a committee of the whole, so if you have not already received a calendar hold for those committee meetings, we will make sure that that does get on your agenda, but I believe that that has been reported out in the LA meetings.

This is an opportunity for us for the three-month period between April 5th and June 27th To really dedicate all of what would have been our finance and housing committee times to discussing the housing levy that is going to be on the November ballot this year.

Once the council approves it and sends it to the voters.

So, again, we will initiate the discussion on April 5th.

We will have the legislation in front of us later in April.

And really have an opportunity to have robust discussion with community partners as well in May and June, that's really exciting, but we wanted to make sure to keep the May 17 930 meeting on the books, because this will offer us an opportunity to get an update from central staff on the recent.

revenue forecast council report.

We also know the state legislature is in the midst of providing an update on their revenue forecast as you heard from the OIR team this morning and it'll give us a better sense of how to incorporate feedback from CBO and central staff on other revenue streams that were not part of the revenue forecast report in the last two weeks here so that we can have really have a robust picture of what revenue streams are changing and any adaptions that the council may need to make regarding 23 or 24. So again, be on the lookout for the Select Housing Levy Committee meetings to be on your calendars between April, May and June, and for the Finance and Housing Committee meeting to be on May 17th at 930 a.m.

In other updates, I may be joining other colleagues.

I'm not quite sure who's all coming, but we're going to go to the National League of Cities Conference in Washington, D.C. I will be taking off a little bit early for the board meeting, which is on Friday.

I'll also be having the opportunity to meet with congressional members there.

I'll be highlighting our American Rescue Act plan investments and applauding them for the direct funding to the city.

Again, this is relatively unique in the history of national funding directly to large cities like Seattle.

And I want to showcase how successful that direct infusion of cash has been in Seattle.

We'll also be lifting up some of the earmark requests for some of the spending policies or packages that are moving forward for the city of Seattle.

And I'm really excited to discuss what our city has been working on collectively.

So if you'll be at National League of Cities, either folks here or across the state, I'll look forward to seeing you all there.

Finally, not finally, second to last, I have an update that I wanted to share with all.

If you did not see that our very own Joseph Peha from the communications staff from Seattle City Council's Communication Department.

He has won the Blue Pencil and Golden Screen Award from the National Association of Government Communicators.

This was a specific award for his work that he did on the budget transparency efforts, the social media efforts, the specific website, the interactive tools that he created.

All of you applauded his work over the last three years.

As we've been budget chair, we've been really trying to provide greater transparency here, and it would not have been possible without Joseph Pijas.

Concept of how to communicate this out to the general public and really make it an interactive tool, not just for the public, but for us too.

So that we could quickly scroll through and see who was a proposing amendments and what the final product look like.

We have helped to deconstruct what the process is for the city's budget and the award to Joseph.

from the National Association of Government Communicators is very well deserved.

This is specific to the 23-24 biennial budget process.

And again, congratulations to him.

Thank you for your work, Joseph, to help make this complex, somewhat bureaucratic process more accessible and digestible.

And congrats on your blue pencil and gold screen award.

Okay, I have one more announcement.

colleagues with our passage of the sick leave legislation this morning.

Not only is this historic in terms of the protections that it offers for workers themselves, for the broader public health and the public good, investments in our community health and also in our local economy, a great reason to celebrate alone.

But another great reason that it's an opportunity for us to collectively celebrate is that this was Sejal Parikh's last piece of Worker protection legislation now going into near six years of work in our office Asia pre serving as chief of staff has led on labor relations budget procedures revenue reform and a number of other issues and.

We are very excited for her as she thinks about what is next for her after city council.

And it has been an honor of mine to have her as chief of staff in my office.

I told her that every minute that she worked for our office has been a gift.

So I thank her for all of her work, her tenacity and getting policy through her commitment to collaboration and her doggedness when it comes to stakeholder.

You will never second guess that a policy has been.

stakeholder in our office because of Sejal's commitment to that on all of the items that she touches.

So we will have a proclamation, probably no surprise to Sejal, we want to highlight all of her work.

And we will send that around to all of you to be able to sign on to, if you would like, throughout the course of next week.

And then we will have an opportunity, it sounds like, maybe to sign on to that on the April 3rd day, which is fantastic because our hope was to have Sejal Parikh Day recognized on April 6th.

That will be her last day in the office.

And we will make sure to send out to the floor and the executive and our community partners as well.

a chance to celebrate her on April 6. Thanks so much for all the work that you've done, Sejal, and we'll send the information around to all of you as well about the proclamation and the celebration that we anticipate coming up that first week of April.

Thank you very much, colleagues.

Seeing no questions, I'm going to turn it to Council Member Nelson.

All right.

Hello, everybody.

Happy spring.

The Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee will meet on Wednesday, and there are two items on the agenda.

The first will be another small business roundtable, this time with a panel of small housing providers, which is a segment of the small business community that my 2022 and 2023 work plans identify for attention and support.

For context, last year on February 9th, the committee hosted a panel of neighborhood small business owners and representatives to talk about crime and its impacts on their workers and customers and livelihoods.

That conversation surfaced several recommendations, two of which were implemented, which were case conferencing and the storefront repair fund.

So anyway, small housing providers occupy a really crucial niche of our housing ecosystem, because they supply a substantial portion of Seattle's below market rate housing options, including most of the multi bedroom rentals that that families and students can afford.

And retaining that housing stock is key to our housing and anti-displacement goals.

And so this will be an opportunity to hear directly from providers about some of the challenges that they face staying in business in our city.

And they'll also present this particular sector of our housing market and just talk about ways that the city can support them going forward.

The second item on our agenda is a briefing discussion and possible vote on Council Bill 120532, which would authorize City Light to join the Western Resource Adequacy Program, or WRAP.

WRAP is a new voluntary resource adequacy planning and compliance program in the Western United States, which unites multiple participating utilities.

The purpose of the program is to make sure we have enough resources to provide electric service under a range of conditions or scenarios with a sufficient degree of reliability and stability.

City Light briefed the committee about this program on January 11th at our meeting and they did that in anticipation of this legislation once federal approval of the terms of this program had been received and that happened last month.

City Light and Eric McConaghy of central staff circulated memos explaining the The details of the program and the legislation to committee members and so if you would like more information you can reach out to Eric for that and people that are not on the committee.

You're welcome to this information as well.

So just ask.

All right, meetings I took last week.

Let's see on March 14th, my staff and I attended downtown Seattle associations 2023 state of downtown and DSA president John schools provided the state of downtown address and a couple of data points from downtown's report card caught my attention.

A record high of 104,000 residents now called downtown home, more than 340,000 jobs are located downtown which is 55% of Seattle's total jobs and office worker foot traffic reached 47% of 15% at the height of the pandemic.

So, I don't know what grade Seattle would get on that last point but it's it's below average and so john issued basically a, a call to action for city leaders to to step up to the plate and accelerate efforts on downtown revitalization.

and he identified four priority areas, which can be boiled down to make streets safer, take the lead on bringing workers back to the office, incentivize new businesses to locate downtown, because if San Francisco can do it, why can't we?

And then finally, cut permitting red tape.

And, you know, you've heard me talk about some of these priorities for the past year or so.

So I support them 100%.

And while we're waiting for the mayor to develop the downtown activation plan, we can get to work.

You know, inter departmentally on on these goals because we can do them right now so I support, taking to heart, these recommendations, and I will note that both john schools and the keynote speaker at laser.

Ended on a high note, which was that and they went through periods of Seattle's history and noted that we've gone through a lot of challenges in the past, the fire and building the space needle in record time, et cetera.

So we can do it if we focus in in all work together.

That was a takeaway of the of the event as well.

Okay.

In addition, last week, my chief of staff, Jeremy Moon, attended a panel discussion with local arts and cultural leaders hosted by Inspire Washington and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.

And in his report back to the office, he noted that Ellen Walker, who's executive director for the Pacific Northwest LA, posed a really important question to the Congresswoman on how to advance the narrative In our advocacy of of arts and culture that it's not just nice to have arts and culture, it's these organizations are economic drivers in our city.

And so it's how do we how do we.

advance that narrative, and also it dovetails, of course, with downtown revitalization, as many of these organizations are located downtown.

And Congresswoman Jayapal agreed, and she said we need to reframe the conversation around arts and culture, both as an economic driver, but also as something transformative.

And she recalled that during the pandemic, arts and culture organizations got really creative, creative with the ways in which people could interact with art and culture and the organizations from home and allowed us to feel a range of emotions during what was a really difficult time.

And I have to say, I couldn't agree more.

And NAM was represented on the panel as well.

And I've been working to secure federal funding for that organization so that they can continue after the pandemic in strength.

And I look forward to adding my voice to the reframing of this conversation.

And then finally meetings I have this week.

I on Wednesday I'll be attending the Fred Hutch ribbon cutting event celebrating the opening of the new South Lake Union clinic.

And I also wrote a.

I wrote, I think it's due this week, I couldn't, I'm a little bit unsure of that.

I wrote a letter in support for federal appropriation funding for community roots housing.

And if funded, this will help ensure that these properties remain affordable for the long haul and that the residents can continue to live in safe, affordable housing.

And that is it for me.

Are there any questions?

Seeing none, I will hand the mic to Council Member Peterson.

Thank you Councilmember Nelson.

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

Our next meeting of the transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee will be tomorrow, Tuesday, March 21 at 930am.

We have three items on our committee agenda.

We will have a briefing and discussion with our city auditor and SDOT to update us on progress SDOT has made implementing the 10 recommendations from the September 2020 audit of Seattle-owned bridges.

As you may recall, we ordered this audit of city-owned bridges after the sudden cracking and closure of the West Seattle Bridge in early 2020. The city audit found several bridges in poor or suboptimal physical condition.

One of the key findings is that repair and maintenance of our bridges has been historically underfunded.

Other themes of the audit included the need to improve overall asset management techniques and procedures in 2015 to move Seattle property tax levy promised investments in bridges and during the past two years the Council has taken the initiative on multiple occasions to increase funding for bridges.

Many thanks to the Seattle residents who've written to the committee about the need to do more for bridges that connect our communities, support all modes of transportation, and enable our economic recovery.

We'll also have a briefing from SDOT to discuss their reaction to their recently completed federal audit that mentioned several SDOT projects.

As you may recall the Seattle Times posted an article last month describing parts of that federal government 46 page audit that audit was conducted by the inspector general at the US Department of Transportation, and its recommendations were directed at various administrators within that federal department.

But the report has potential funding implications for Seattle.

I've asked our city auditor, David G. Jones, to join us at the committee table in case they can lend additional expertise regarding this federal audit report.

And I also spoke to the U.S.

Inspector General's office after the report was published.

They confirm that the U.S.

DOT must resolve these concerns by December 31st of this year.

And finally, our transportation committee will have a briefing and discussion from city council central staff on transportation projects that could be built if we move ahead with a funding source that is used in 70 other Washington State cities and across the nation.

These are of course transportation impact fees.

In addition to an overview reminder of what impact fees are how they work elsewhere will highlight the many multimodal transportation projects throughout the city that would be eligible for such funding.

This is merely following through on a commitment the council made and and repeated nearly every year since 2017 to keep this funding option viable.

For more information, you can go to the Council's website Seattle.gov forward slash Council forward slash issues forward slash impact hyphen fees.

Last week I attended the King County Regional Transit Committee.

We received an update from the new general manager of King County Metro Michelle Allison.

The sobering news is that bus ridership is still down roughly 50% from its peak in 2019. But the good news is that it has increased year to date this year as compared to the same period last year.

I continue to serve on the Regional Water Quality Committee, which is part of my work with Seattle Public Utilities.

Last week, we learned the good news that King County Wastewater Treatment Division adjusted their capital budget assumptions so they could maintain their promised rate for 2024. This is important for our Seattle constituents because roughly one third of our bills from Seattle Public Utilities are actually passed through to us by King County for wastewater treatment.

So when King County sticks to its rate promises, that enables Seattle Public Utilities and the City Council to stick to our rate path promises.

That concludes my report.

Any questions before we go to Council Member Szilard?

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Good afternoon, everyone.

There are no items on tomorrow's city council agenda from the sustainability and renters rights committee.

The committee met last Friday, March.

17th and discuss the legislation from my office to cap late fees for renters at, you know, for late rent payment for renters at $10 a month.

It was an extensive discussion with over 30 people speaking in public comment.

Overwhelmingly renters urging the council to regulate rent fees to $10 a month and to ban notice fees.

We also had a few landlords predictably speaking in opposition to the late fee cap, but what's notable is that there were small landlords who testified in strong support of the late fee cap.

A panel of renters and representatives from the Tenants Union of Washington, B. Seattle, and the Housing Justice Project were present at the committee table, and they answered questions and provided examples of truly outrageous late fees.

There are currently no limits to the fees Seattle landlords can charge renters for overdue rent as I have reported in previous briefing sessions.

Some renters have told us that they are charged upwards of $250 as soon as rent is overdue and many leases have clauses where landlords can charge an additional $40 or $50 every day the rent is late.

Other renters have even faced late fees and then late fee notice delivery fees which as I've explained is an additional fee for the privilege of getting a late fee.

You know, getting the piece of paper that tells you you have to pay late fees.

For working class renters, this is a punch in the gut for being a few days late on rent.

And for people who are temporarily unable to pay rent, late fees can spiral out of control.

I encourage especially committee members, but all council members who have questions about this legislation, who were not at the committee to watch the video of Friday's committee meeting, because we had many council member questions about what the problems are with the current late fee.

regime that the city has that many renters are forced to stomach, why a cap at $10 a month as passed by the cities of Auburn and Burien is the most progressive policy measure, and what accumulating late fees can do to a renter's credit score, and most crucially, the role that late fees can play in leading to possible eviction as they keep accumulating.

And we also talked about why the question of late fees is unrelated to the landlords being able to pay their mortgage payment.

And in fact, we are gathering together more data based on the questions that came in the committee.

to really understand and, I mean, my office knows it, but to share with other council members and also members of the public about why actually late fees do not incentivize, you know, as landlords claim, but a false claim that they do not incentivize payment.

And in fact, the statistics showing that The overwhelming reason for late payment of rent is when people, when renters are in financial distress.

And so it is very much connected to low income people.

And in fact, now increasingly even middle-class people, people with better salaries, living paycheck to paycheck, and then having one unexpected financial hit to their, you know, their months, monthly cash can put them behind on rent.

So given all this, we had a very good discussion about all of this.

We intend to bring the bill for a vote at the next regularly scheduled meeting of the committee, which will be on April 7th.

And last Friday's committee also voted out a committee appointment to the Seattle Renters Commission, which I expect will be on next week's city council agenda.

That's it from me.

Are there any questions or comments?

I don't see any, so I will pass it on to Council Member Strauss.

Council Member Strauss, are you there?

Yes, ma'am.

OK.

Apologies for that.

I was turning off my TV because it's reflecting on the picture behind me.

So you all didn't have to see everyone's face in the ether.

Thank you, council president.

Colleagues just want to share.

I was able to attend an event last Friday at the Nordic Museum with Jonesy, the lead singer from Sigur Rós.

He's got an amazing multi-disciplinary, multi-sensory art exhibit up at the Nordic Museum in Ballard.

It's going on right now.

Strongly suggest folks attend.

He mentioned that he was staying at a hotel on Ballard Avenue and Jonesy said, quote, Ballard Avenue is poppin'.

I asked him if I could quote him on that.

He said, yes.

So there we have it, folks.

Internationally acclaimed artist thinking highly of Ballard.

I was also able to join other elected officials on Sunday for the 95th annual blessing of the fleet of the North Pacific Fishing Fleet that is based out of Salmon Bay.

Something, folks, as you're driving, if you Like me, enjoy going to Ballard, if you are on the Ballard bridge, and you look over to Fisherman's Terminal and you see each fishing vessel.

Understand that each of those vessels is is a small business directly employing four to 10 people.

the bigger vessels, even more than that.

And together, they are directly employing hundreds of people and indirectly thousands.

And so just as you might go to Ballard Avenue that Jonesy says is popping and you see those brick and mortar storefronts, also understand that when you're looking at Fisherman's Terminal, that's a.

Those are it's a different type of brick and mortar, and we depend on those small businesses to make our port nationally and internationally known.

On to a regular scheduled land use committee.

There are no items from the land use committee on tomorrow's full council agenda.

We do have on the introduction referral calendar, the tree ordinance.

It is on this week's introduction referral calendar instead of last week, because there were technical cleanup changes that did need to occur.

So folks, I did brief the urban forestry commission on this.

So if you do see some differences, they are technical in nature.

And any policy items that were changed we're going to bring up and committee colleagues, I am, I'm, I don't know how many times I've asked but I'm asking again I'm searching for times on the calendar in the next in this next month to host a special land use committee meetings.

If you think you may be canceling a committee meeting or able to combine your meetings, please do let me know because we're having a difficult time finding times on the committee calendar.

The next regularly scheduled land use committee is this Wednesday, March 22nd.

Let me just quickly pull up my calendar here.

We do plan to have a special land use committee meeting.

Next Wednesday, the twenty ninth.

The following week on either Friday, the 7th or Monday, the 3rd.

We are then also looking at the week of April 17th.

We're we've not landed on a time, but it could be Monday, the 17th.

If there is availability on either Thursday, the 20th or Friday, the 21st, we would greatly appreciate it to get this tree ordinance in good working condition before Earth Day.

on April 22nd.

Back to the regularly scheduled program we have a full agenda this week for March 22nd meeting.

I am anticipating this meeting may go over the two hour scheduled time so please do be aware that we may be going on past 4pm.

The EDI appointments I mentioned last week will not be coming to this land use committee meeting after all.

We didn't receive the information in time, so we will schedule that at a different time.

The agenda for this week currently has three items, two of which are briefings only.

The first is an item that may be voted on, which is a contract rezone.

Clerk file 314470. This is a standard contract rezone application that has gone through the hearing examiner's process.

for us as the Land Use Committee and City Council to consider.

This clerk file is quasi-judicial and members should avoid ex parte communication.

If you have had ex parte communication, please contact KETL today or tomorrow.

The typical flow for Land Use Committee meetings is to have two meetings on an agenda item.

Colleagues, if you are comfortable with voting on this clerk file on Wednesday, it will free up time in committee later this month, as this month's committee is already overflowing, which I just mentioned.

So before the clerk file can be voted on at full council the property owner and development agreement will need to be executed.

We will have the ability to vote it out of committee colleagues if you are comfortable, and then hold it for the full council meeting until that property owner and development agreement is executed.

Second on this Wednesday's agenda is the tree canopy report.

OSC released the 2021 tree canopy assessment report two weeks ago.

This is a briefing only and it will set the stage for the larger tree protection bill that is being heard directly after, which brings me to The third agenda item which is the tree protections STC and central staff will be on hand to brief the entirety of the bill, we will be getting into the details, and this is intended to be the initial briefing at maybe a little bit of a higher level because in subsequent meetings, we will dig deeper section by section so please do use this as an opportunity to understand the bill as a whole and where you will want to dig in deeper so that we can prep SDCI and central staff for when they return.

We will issue the overall tree schedule this week once we nail down some of those outer the week of April 17th meetings.

And we would have liked to have that out for you today, but we've been held up with the delay in introduction as well as difficulty finding time.

in council chambers to schedule this special committee.

For all agenda items for this week's presentations, the agenda has been updated.

Legistar has all the materials and the presentations are available, so please do review the materials in advance as we have a full agenda.

With that, Council President, colleagues, that is our committee report.

Are there any questions at this time?

Seeing none, I will pass it to Council Member Herbold.

Oh, dear.

Hello.

Let me see if I can get myself off.

There we go.

Greetings.

Thank you so much, Council Member Strauss.

So there are no items on the full council agenda tomorrow from the Public Safety and Human Services Committee and the Public Safety and Human Services Committee does not meet this week.

The next meeting will be next Tuesday, March 28th at 930 a.m.

For just a short update on the public safety front.

The Seattle Police Department has recently submitted to counsel responses to two statements of legislative intent.

One is a statement of legislative intent.

Requesting a report on S.P.D. backgrounding services.

This is just what it implies, the services that S.P.D. uses to do background checks on applicants.

The second is a statement of legislative intent report on S.P.D.' 's use of hiring incentives through the end of February.

My correction, this is not a statement of legislative intent report.

This is a report required by ordinance 120389, which is the hiring incentives legislation.

Between 2013 and 2013, I'm sorry, July 13 2022 and February 28 2023 SPD hired 42 new recruits in one lateral higher 38 of these new recruits have received their first payment.

I for have four of those recruits have their first payment pending.

My quick review without any central staff confirmation so please don't hold me to it, is that these numbers align pretty closely with SPD goals of 42 new hires in one lateral hire for the month.

July 22. 2022 through the end of February 2023. We'll hear more in the Public Safety and Human Services Committee next week on all of these issues, not just on recruitment as it relates to specifically to hires, but also a lot of the system and process improvements, their digital backgrounding system, their addressing the number of entry and lateral exam administrations, the work to address the need for additional locations for physical agility tests, a whole slew of things related to systems and process improvements, reporting out on their marketing and outreach efforts, including their temporary advertising plan, as well as their long-term advertising plan, their dashboard that is being used to track internal metrics on candidate processing, and a survey of new recruits and hires to understand why they were drawn to apply to the Seattle Police Department.

We'll also, as mentioned, be hearing about retention efforts within the department, including an update on something that we've talked to briefly, the shift structure change, one of the most highly rated goals by police officers in a 2019 retention study, the interest in changing the shift structure for wellness attributes associated with working four days a week, as opposed to the current shift structure.

Also want to mention that the Executive Council Joint 911 Alternatives Pilot Work Group met last week.

I want to thank Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell for being with us.

and confirming that the executive is still on track for a pilot launch this fall and confirmation as well that the call types that the council and mayor have been discussing person down in wellness checks to average about 7000 calls a year, that these are still the call types that this pilot will focus on with a dual dispatch assistance.

I also want to acknowledge that with the new community safety and communications center director, acting director Gonzalez with her on board and a deputy director hire imminent, I'm very optimistic that many of the other needed elements will begin to fall into place.

So being a person who has expressed some frustration about the development of this pilot, I wanted to take this time and space to express my optimism based on last week's work.

Updates in the area of the Human Services Department.

Last Friday, I had my monthly meeting with Human Services Interim Director Tanya Kim.

One of the topics we discussed was her nomination to fill the permanent director position.

And last Wednesday, my office circulated to Public Safety and Human Services Committee members proposed questions for Interim Director Kim.

I welcome feedback and additions, and please send those by the end of day Wednesday this week.

At Tuesday's meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee, we were joined by representatives of a University of Washington-led team of national and international scholars presenting the results and recommendations of their in-depth research into the pay penalty.

experienced by anyone working in human services locally, their report, you can find at social work.edu.

You dub.edu forward slash wage equity study.

This report found that nonprofit human services workers are paid 37% less than comparable workers in other sectors.

Fixing a 37% pay penalty is not going to be easy, but the city and all of the other public and private funding partners must take immediate steps to increase wages for these essential workers.

I want to also uplift a grim milestone that King County reported on recently.

In quarter one of this year, 281 King County residents died of drug or alcohol poisoning.

This exceeds the total number of overdose deaths in all of 2012. all in one quarter of 2023. It also puts us on track.

Sadly to exceed last year's record 1002 overdose deaths by more than a 10% increase if deaths continue at the current rate.

This is largely driven by a dramatic increase in fentanyl and methamphetamine involved overdose deaths.

I understand the Board of Health will be receiving a briefing on this work at the April meeting.

While addressing this crisis is primarily a responsibility of the county, we know that this crisis impacts city residents and the city has stepped forward to provide additional funding to help folks struggling with substance use disorder.

Meanwhile, I really think it's important that we note this painful moment as we know every death and overdose means precious lives lost and pain and grief for their loved ones.

On the regional committee front.

Last week at the Board of Health we received a briefing on a planned nine month strategic planning process.

Director con noted that the public health worse workforce is exhausted after three years of pandemic response and federal funding cuts that are anticipated that will require a clear understanding of our priorities.

The city's interlocal agreement with public health was last updated in 2011 and there has been significant evolution in our partnership since that time.

So I flagged my interest in considering an update to the interlocal agreement as part of the strategic planning work.

I also want to note that we heard a lot of public comment at the Board of Health from medically fragile and immunocompromised members of the public with significant concerns about the state's announcement that as of April 3rd, masks will no longer be required in medical facilities.

Public health has no authority to require masking without a declared public health emergency.

Public health officers are discussing the concern that we heard.

But meanwhile, masking remains required in medical facilities for the time being.

And I really encourage everyone to mask up to prevent neighbors to protect neighbors when conditions warrant.

Upcoming regional committee meetings include this week's King County Regional Law, Safety, and Justice Committee meeting on Thursday morning.

And then other meetings I wanted to flag last week, I mentioned that I was going to be meeting with Inspector General Judge, the CPC, and Fire Chief Scoggins.

In my meeting with Inspector General Judge, we discussed the status of the development of the new SPD RUES policy.

I should say their stalled status.

We discussed the inspector general mid-year report to the city council and the OIG role in the future of the consent decree.

In my meeting with the CPC, we discussed appointments to the commission, the future of the consent decree, and the long-delayed less lethal weapons policies from the Seattle Police Department.

In my meeting with Fire Chief Scoggins, we discussed the potential for expansion of Health 1 to a fourth and fifth unit.

I attended the Be Loud Breakfast benefiting King County Sexual Assault Resource Center and celebrating four decades of leadership by departing CEO Mary Ellen Stone.

This week, I have monthly meetings with the OPA Director Betts and Public Health Director Kahn, and I will be participating with Seattle Public Utilities CEO Lee to visit the site of the Longfellow Creek drainage project in District 1, and I will hear and see the concerns from neighbors there impacted by the project.

That's all I've got.

Does anybody have any questions or comments?

Not seeing any, I will pass it on to Madam President Juarez.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I will be brief.

There are no items from the Governance, Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee on tomorrow's council agenda.

The next committee meeting will be April 20th.

I'd like to begin by highlighting news from Climate Pledge Arena of our local Native American artists, multimedia artist and curator, Matika Wilbur, who is also a friend.

who is Swinomish and Tulalip, is the first ever artist in residence at the new arena.

Matika and illustrator Sean Peterson, who is from the Puyallup tribe, also a good friend and artist, completed an exposition called the Salmon People featured this winter onsite at Climate Pledge Arena.

The exhibit was featured as part of the First Residence, a first-of-its-kind residency program for Native American artists.

Congratulations to both Matika and Sean.

The new program was funded by the Climate Pledge Arena, the Seattle Kraken, and Smartsheet.

We look forward to seeing many more Indigenous folks being presented not only at Climate Pledge, but also with Seattle Rain, and of course, Sorry about I forgot.

sale storm sorry about that I forgot for a minute.

Alright, so last week we met with multiple constituency groups regarding the West Seattle ballard link light rail extension.

We met with the Regional Homeless Authority regarding encampments citywide and in District 5. And we met with city staff, Elliot and Sarah, regarding the West Seattle Ballard Link Light Rail Extension.

As you know, that's been in the news a lot.

We have a vote coming up in Sound Transit coming up on March 23rd.

So we will also meet with the Human Services Division, which we do once a week.

regarding encampments specifically in district five and RVs.

On Wednesday, we will meet with the Sound Transit North King County sub area, which I'm a part of, and this will be in preparation for our vote on Thursday, March 23rd.

Before we conclude, another reminder that Monday, March 27th, council briefing will not be held, and the next city council meeting briefing will be Monday, April 3rd.

All right, that concludes my portion.

Are there any questions?

OK, not seeing any.

Thank you all for your patience and we are adjourned.