Seattle City Council Briefing 6/15/20

call the roll.

Councilmember Peterson?

Here.

Councilmember Sawant?

Here.

Councilmember Strauss?

Present.

Councilmember Herbold?

Councilmember Juarez?

Here.

Councilmember Lewis?

Present.

Councilmember Morales?

Here.

Councilmember Mosqueda?

Here.

Council President Gonzalez here.

8 present.

Thank you so much.

If there is no objection, the minutes of June 8th, 2020 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

President's report, I'll just do this really quickly because I know we have a full agenda.

I just want to let folks know that you should be expecting in your inboxes an update from me about telework protocols for the remainder of the year.

And I'm looking forward to sharing that information with you.

We've gone through the process of asking each of our division directors to engage with their staff around what they hope to see in terms of our work model moving forward.

looking forward to getting out a memo to all of you that reflects what I think will be a policy that really does center the health and safety of our workers and all of our workforce and make sure that we're still continuing to follow public health policies, particularly around the CDC's recommendations of to be able to continue to telecommute through the end of this year.

and all of our committee and council meetings will continue to be held remotely as well.

That is, again, consistent with a lot of information that we're seeing coming out of public health officials and agencies that really talk about how if you can do telework, you should continue to have telework models in your office space, and so we are continuing to to make sure that our policies here are centered on those issues.

You may have seen that the mayor's office issued a directive to her executive agencies extending the telework policy until September.

I think it's prudent for us to extend it through the end of the year, including having remote counsel meetings and committee meetings and working closely still with FAS and Monica in our clerk's office to provide an in-person viewing option so that we can continue to comply with the Open Public Meetings Act should the proclamation that applies to the Open Public Meetings Act is not, if it's not extended, then we'll have hopefully a safe alternative for folks to that we can do in-person viewing that allows us to continue to meet remotely.

Happy to take any questions or comments on that.

Also happy to connect with you all after you see the memo and have a little bit more granular detail around those policies.

Any questions or comments, colleagues?

Okay, great.

Let's go ahead and move on to Agenda Item 3, which is a presentation on Council Bill 119802. This is related to an acceptance of a property transfer for the purpose of development of affordable housing.

Always exciting to see items related to the development of affordable housing on our agenda.

We have until 950 a.m.

to have both the briefing and discussion on this issue.

We have several presenters.

Emily Alvarado, the director of the office of housing.

We also have Steve Shane, also from the office of housing.

We have Tracy Ratzlaff from our own council central staff also available on the line.

very briefly.

Thank you, Council President.

I want to thank all the folks who are lined up to present today and for your office's facilitation to get them there.

This is a really exciting opportunity, and I know that many people are interested in taking advantage of any property that we can to build affordable housing because we've reduced the cost of that over all housing.

This has been a partnership with the state legislature, so looking forward to hearing any of the conversation and then with the council's support, moving as quickly as we can to get these housing units built as we transfer the property as this first step.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

So who is going to kick us off first?

Is it going to be Office of Housing or Tracy?

You want to go first?

I think we're going to go ahead and go right to Stephen, Shane, and to Emily Alvarado for the presentation.

Excellent.

Take it away.

OK.

Sorry for logistics.

Do I need to share something, or there is a PowerPoint presentation?

How does that work?

Whoever is presenting usually shares their screen, so.

I can do that.

If you give me one second.

Sorry.

No, it's OK.

Figure this out.

Oh, the host has disabled my screen sharing.

All right.

IT can work on that and give you permission to share.

Council President?

Yes.

Since we have a moment, maybe I can just add a little context as we wait for that to get shared.

It looks like she now has the authority to share.

I do.

All right.

There we go.

But I appreciate the offer to filibuster, Council Member Mosqueda.

OK.

And I will try to move this.

So thank you, council members, for the opportunity to present today.

As was mentioned, this is really legislation, straightforward legislation to accept property known as the University of Washington laundry site, which is in the Mount Baker neighborhood.

And previously, this site was used by the University of Washington as consolidated laundry services.

And as you may recall, and as mentioned by Council Member Mosqueda, in the 2019 state capital budget, the state legislature The state legislature directed the property to be taken from the University of Washington and transferred to the city of Seattle.

And there was a hard transfer date of June 30th, 2020. And the site will be used per the capital budget proviso for affordable housing and other kinds of benefits like research and clinical uses, including early learning.

So this is an exciting opportunity, but today is just the first step in availing that opportunity by accepting the property.

Because the city charter requires council action and legislation in order to accept property.

Good morning.

Councilmembers, good morning.

This is Steven Shane.

Just wanted to identify that this is a substantial piece of property in the Mount Baker area.

It's a little shy of four acres and it's been mentioned it's related to develop affordable housing, ground floor, early learning, and open space.

on the north here that's a little piece that sits underneath the Mount Baker light rail that has limited height capacity.

But all of the property the University of Washington owns in Mount Baker is going to be transferred to the city of Seattle.

The laundry site, King's Hall, and then there's a parking lot on the bottom.

One of the things that this is a fairly, if you will, perfunctory ordinance is that we're authorizing receipt of the parcels at no cost to the city.

It authorizes OH to put the property under their jurisdiction.

And FAS will go ahead and manage the property with a limited cost from Office of Housing.

A couple of key issues to consider on the property.

Legislature said that the city would take the property with all liabilities, we'll transfer it to the property.

We went ahead and did substantial due diligence prior to accepting, before we accepted the property.

We did an environmental phase one and phase two.

There is limited exposure.

We just wanna make it clear it was a laundry site, not a dry cleaner.

A lot of people assume that because it was a laundry, there's groundwater contamination from that.

There is some soil contamination that our environmental engineer has suggested through a soil management plan that that could be taken care of.

One of the other items that we negotiated with the University of Washington is an upfront reversionary interest that provides a university that the city has 10 years to go ahead and develop the property.

And within that 10-year period of time, if we don't, those portions, that could be revert back to the University of Washington.

parcel C on the north is not subject to that reversionary interest.

The other part of the reversionary interest is that once we get 200 units in construction, all the reversionary interest burns off.

So one additional piece that is not included in this legislation is to let you know that the capital budget proviso doesn't really address all of the details of the property transfer.

And therefore, we've established a term sheet that will be executed between me and the University of Washington.

It's a non-binding agreement It spells out our intent, but it does cover a few issues that I wanted to share with you all.

One is it puts forward that the Office of Housing will go ahead and release our first RFQ related to potentially a phased redevelopment of the site by June 30th, 2021. Also, because it allows for the opportunity for the University of Washington to participate in the site, namely on the ground floor spaces, The term sheet helps spell out specific deadlines that would need to be able to be met by the university to meet that, to meet our RFQ deadline.

In addition, the capital budget proviso explicitly states that units on the site shall count towards the University of Washington's master plan obligation for affordable housing.

The term sheet also carries forward that capital budget language, but saying that only units that are actually constructed will count.

And it's important to know that in order to count, the University of Washington will be reporting progress on their obligations as part of their annual reporting to SDCI.

So that's generally what the term sheet includes that has been executed by the University of Washington and pending my signature.

So the next steps on this site, you see we were a little optimistic there.

Apologies for the error.

We are discussing this with you today on June 15th in anticipation of a full council vote.

The most important thing to notice on this timeline is that June 30th, 2020 is the date by which the capital budget directs transfer of this property.

So our action is in, We will be moving forward subject to more community engagement, collaboration and collective visioning around how we release an RFQ for the first phase of redevelopment for affordable housing and other public benefits.

I will stop there.

Colleagues, we may be having a little bit of a technology issue and IT.

I'm going to ask that you all give us a sense of what we need to do next if Zoom is giving us a warning that we only have three minutes left.

The issue should resolve shortly here.

If it doesn't, we'll just reconvene right away.

Usually this gets a little too close.

Yeah.

So this meeting abruptly ends, then council members and presenters will need to call back in.

Is that what I'm hearing you say?

Yes.

Thank you.

Okay.

So we'll go ahead and go as long as we can.

I feel like we're in our very own episode of 24 hours now.

And so we'll hopefully not see an expiration of the time here, and that'll get resolved.

Tracy and Lish, anything to add before I open this up for questions?

Nope, have reviewed the legislation, reviewed the phase 1, phase 2 environmental, talked to law.

As far as we're concerned, the legislation is ready to move forward.

OK.

Lish, anything to add?

Only that the master plan's requirements for 450 affordable housing units, 150 of which are below 60% of AMI, area median income.

I'm sorry, only 150 are below, are 60% or less area median income.

Yes, and the remainder are 80% or below area median income.

Got it.

That was going to be my next question.

And what are the, I didn't see this in the presentation, and it could be that I was worried about the time, keeper here that I missed it.

But in terms of units, how many of these are family-sized units versus one bedrooms, et cetera?

for the redevelopment or under the master plan?

For the redevelopment, I will say we're not there yet.

What the capital budget proviso says, and what we have said since then as part of the term sheet, is that we're going to redevelop the site with an eye towards the principles of transit-oriented development.

We are looking forward to identifying that mix as part of the redevelopment RFQ and welcome your input and feedback as we do so.

I think it's important to have our priorities reflected in terms of that redevelopment plan.

I welcome your thoughts on how we can collaborate.

Certainly one thing we're able to do as we've done on other publicly owned sites, including some home ownership sites, is we have brought to council a proposal for the RFQ, and I would be happy to do that.

In this case, it's a significant piece of property, and I know it's really important to the city as TOD

I am happy to open this up for questions and comments.

Councilmember Morales already indicated to me early on that she has some comments and questions, perhaps some questions that she'd like to make in this space.

So if for any of you who are interested in also making some comments or for those of you who have questions for Council Central staff or Office of Housing staff, now is the time to do that.

do

I want to be clear that as this project develops, we need to steward our city resources and make sure that we're addressing the need for good jobs as this project develops, particularly for communities of color.

I also want to point out that this parcel is a block away from the Mount Baker light rail station and a block away from the intersection of MLK and Rainier Avenue.

So there's been a lot of community planning already happening in that neighborhood for the last five years.

people looking for safer space.

Franklin High School is there and so the students need that area to be more accessible and a safer place for them to get back and forth.

There's conversation happening about moving the Metro bus depot so that there is less pedestrian traffic as people try to get get around the neighborhood.

So I just want to let councilmembers know that, you know, once this project transfers and especially once the laundry facility and the King's Hall are demolished, it's going to leave a huge hole in the neighborhood.

If we're talking about 10 years potentially before anything develops there, We just need to make sure that this is really thoughtful and really intentional in not leaving a giant hole in the gateway into the Rainier Valley.

you know, I was talking to a constituent yesterday who said, you know, this is a rare opportunity, seven acres altogether of developable land, really close to downtown.

So we need to make sure that everything we do here is very intentional about protecting the community, centering what they want to see in these projects, and making sure that this is also centering equity as we move forward with this project.

Director Alvarado, you and I have spoken before about the community's interest in participating in crafting that RFQ so that the interests of the community are reflected from the very beginning in the kind of developer that is sought as this project begins.

So I look forward to being in very close contact with you as this continues.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

I look forward to the collaboration.

Sorry, Council President.

I will say one thing is that our hope is that there is development on the site before 10 years.

Just to point out that the 10 years is really related to a reversionary interest that the university would get in the event that no progress is made.

But we do intend to move forward next year with an RFQ, and hopefully we can make some meaningful impact on the site that's consistent with community vision far before then.

I think I appreciate that clarification and that sort of.

of the needle there.

I think we have seen in the past that sometimes the city has good intentions around development and moving forward with development, and then one thing happens, and then another thing happens, and then another thing happens, and the next thing we know, we're in year 10 and still haven't developed things.

And that's not a criticism of the Office of Housing, that's more of a criticism of the full ecosystem in which we, as a city, And so we're still well-made in.

This is that this is going to advance and sort of making sure that there's contingency planning in the event that in the event that something falls through, we want to have good contingency planning to make sure that we that we can sort of pivot and opportunity that is presented by this potential project.

Okay, I think I saw Council Member Sawant's hand go up.

Any other folks who have questions or comments, please make sure to raise your hand.

Should I go ahead?

Yes, please.

Thank you.

So needless to say, of course, my office strongly supports building the affordable housing here.

And I wanted to echo Council Member Morales' the context of how this came about or is coming about.

I understand that these are the first steps, as Emily said.

It's a real shame that the University of Washington closed the laundry despite the workers and their unions saying that it was not the right kind of step.

because it has ended up laying some of our most marginalized workers off.

They were already not being paid enough for their labor.

But at the same time, many of the employees were immigrant and from immigrant and refugee communities, and many of them were women.

And so while absolutely we would welcome and celebrate affordable housing, it's also a reminder that we don't want a situation where something that is socially beneficial is taken away, and then something else that's socially beneficial is put in place.

We want both.

We want the jobs, public sector unionized jobs, and we want affordable housing.

And the only way we can accomplish that is in addition to projects like this, to have a major expansion of progressive revenues by taxing big business so that we can create both jobs and affordable housing.

I think that is well said.

Okay.

I'm not seeing any other questions or comments.

Of course, this item will be on this afternoon's agenda for our consideration.

And we hope to be able to hear more dialogue about it at this afternoon's full council.

But this concludes this presentation.

I'm going to turn it over to council member Mosqueda.

Council member Mosqueda, you are the prime sponsor of the legislation.

If you want to close this discussion out, now would be the time to do that.

And then we'll go ahead and move into reports from council members.

Thank you very much, council president.

And thanks as well to my council colleagues for reminding us of the history of this piece of property.

to make sure that this was a piece of property that went back to public use.

It could have been a property that slipped out of the city's hands.

I appreciate all the community continuing to raise the concerns and strongly echo the message from councilmembers who said that this needs to be a reinvestment And her team, thank you so much, Steven.

You guys have raised the flag for us to say that this needs to happen before June 30th, so we really appreciate the urgency in which you have put together this presentation.

Council President, our hope was actually to have a vote on June 22nd, so it gives a little bit of time to have a little bit more questions answered from folks, if that sounds okay with you.

I love the urgency, but I see you nodding.

If that's okay, we'll, I think, have another week.

No, that's great.

Um, and then just, yeah.

Oh, sorry.

Zoom is so silly.

It keeps creeping up.

I apologize.

That's okay.

Perfect.

Perfect.

And then just to end, I want to lift up a few of the pieces as we, um, center the next steps around you know, as Council Member Morales described and Council Member Sawant too, to really make sure that the next phase is driven by the community who has been for a long time re-envisioning what that area of our city looks like.

And to make sure that the roots that had been put down there long ago continue to remain in place.

And for those who maybe have been displaced, to offer more places for people to come back to, I think is really important.

And as we look at just the basics on the piece of paper or the proposal that had been worked by the city and And by the state legislature lifting up a few pieces as has already been described.

This is next to light rail like we always talk about this has childcare included like we always talk about this is an opportunity for us to really infuse community driven priorities and services and amenities to have a partnership with labor in doing so.

and I think that Council Member Sawant's point about, you know, long-term good living wage jobs is also a great reminder.

This is really, I think, another way for us to be fiscally responsible when we build on publicly owned land.

We save a tremendous amount of money in production.

So, for anybody who's watching out there, you know, the messages around build housing, build it with community-oriented amenities, and do it on public property to maintain public control, This is a great example, and I think, as Council Member Morales said, continuing to ask, is the community voice being centered is really important.

So with that, I am hoping to hear any questions from you all over the next week and look forward to a vote on the 22nd.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Mosqueda.

And my apologies for creating a little bit of confusion is not on this afternoon's agenda.

It is on next week's full council agenda and Office of Housing folks are available to you all as are Tracy and Lish for any additional questions of clarification or a mandatory work that you might want to do on these bills.

Okay, with that being said, we're gonna thank our presenters, Emily and Steve for being with us.

Thank you so much for being with us this morning and you are free to disconnect.

Thank you very much.

Have a great day, thank you.

Thank you, bye-bye.

Okay, colleagues, we're gonna go ahead and move quickly into a preview of today's City Council Actions Council and Regional Committees.

We will go ahead and do I will conclude this agenda We do have until 11 a.m.

to do a report.

We don't have to take up the whole hour, however, but we do have until 11 a.m., and then we will transition into executive session at the end of agenda item four.

So let's go ahead and get started.

Councilmember Peterson?

Over the past two weeks, I've sorted through 22,000 passionate emails about public safety, including 1,000 from District 4 constituents.

And I want to thank my constituents for sharing their views and ideas about how to reimagine public safety.

This past week, I participated in two more demonstrations for police accountability, one in the Wallingford neighborhood of District 4 on Wednesday.

And then on Friday, I joined 60,000 other Seattleites in the historic silent march from Junkins Park to Jefferson Park.

Powerful demands for change.

We know there's much work to do to fulfill our pledge to demilitarize our police department, restrict the use of excessive force, increase accountability and transparency in police union contracts, give subpoena power to our official independent oversight boards, and redirect meaningful funding toward effective community-based alternatives.

So very soon, I look forward to voting in favor of legislation to ban chokeholds, to ban chemical weapons, and to uncover badges.

On today's introduction and referral calendar, I'm co-sponsoring Council Bill 119808 with Council Member Lewis.

This would be, this is amending or repealing, actually, Section 12A.10.010 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

This supports the recommendation of the Seattle Reentry Work Group to repeal the prostitution loitering law to eliminate a source of disproportionate harm to people of color from our policing and carceral system.

I want to thank Council, I want to thank the Budget Chair, Councilmember Esqueda, and Public Safety Chair, Councilmember Herbold, and our City Council Central staff for the deep dive last week into our Police Department's budget so we can start to leverage the budget-making authority of the City Council.

I agree we must reimagine true public safety in strategic and sustainable ways.

that are anti-racist and grounded in the voices, the needs, and the hopes of marginalized communities so we can prevent harm and achieve healthy communities.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Peterson, for that report.

Any questions or comments on that report?

Okay, hearing and seeing none, we'll go ahead and move over to Council Member Sawant.

Please, the floor is yours.

Thank you, President Gonzalez.

Good morning, everyone.

The movement for LGBTQ rights has just won a historic victory.

The Supreme Court has ruled that an employer violates federal law when they fire someone for being gay or transgender.

This is truly historic, and it's not as if the court or the establishment have led on this.

It's decades of activism, courageous work on the streets and in the workplaces by LGBTQ rights activists and by everybody who supports having a society free of oppression.

So congratulations to those who have fought for this over decades, some who are, many who are not with us any longer, but it's so important that the movement has won this victory and As a socialist, I'm proud to have marched alongside the LGBTQ community, and this really is a great example of how, when we get organized and fight, we can win.

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

There are two bills on today's city council agenda from my office related to the Justice for George Floyd movement.

The first bill bans the city from owning and the police from using crowd-controlled weapons, tear gas, mace, blast balls, flash bangs, plastic bullets, and other weapons that are typically used indiscriminately on gatherings of peaceful protests.

Some of these weapons, like tear gas, are banned from use in war by the Geneva Conventions, have been for decades, and yet Mayor Durkin and the Seattle police under her control have repeatedly, on a daily basis, used them in the recent protests against the people of Seattle.

As we discussed last week, several council members have witnessed this and those who have not have heard public testimony.

For days Seattle police used these weapons on the streets of Capitol Hill.

They falsely claimed that protesters were being violent or rioting or throwing projectiles.

Chief Best has doubled down on this accusation that the protest movement was throwing projectiles and that These weapons were needed to be unleashed in order to maintain safety of police.

This is absolute gaslighting.

The police were there armed to the teeth against a totally unarmed protest movement.

And we now have proof that the police were the source of the violence, because when the Mounting public outrage eventually forced Mayor Durkin to pull the police back out of the streets of Capitol Hill.

The violence has left with them.

And now, as you know, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone or organized protest, and it's known by different terminology, has now become something that has attracted global media attention for a powerful example of what is possible.

But of course, this is the only beginning.

We have to keep moving forward.

But so today's bills stand in that powerful context of what has happened, not only there on Capitol Hill, but around the nation.

Demonstrators have been grievously injured by these weapons.

And as I mentioned earlier, an open letter signed by over a thousand medical professionals has explained that weapons like tear gas may significantly increase the danger of COVID as well.

We do need to ban these weapons, and it cannot be a matter of making recommendations to the police and the political establishment that these weapons not be used, because clearly, clearly those recommendations are simply not working.

So these bans, in my view, are the bare minimum that we should be doing as a city council.

If Seattle passes the legislation banning chemical weapons and other so-called drug control weapons, it will be historic.

It's not unprecedented.

In Minneapolis, the city council, I believe, has passed such a ban.

This is being discussed throughout the nation in cities and states throughout the nation, yet it will be one of the first cities that does it if Seattle does this this afternoon, and this will be extremely important for us to I will be bringing technical amendments to this bill based on certain recommendations from the city I would like to make a motion to approve the amendment.

All councilmembers by e-mail I welcome any questions or clarifications that may be needed.

The amendments rephrase two recitals and clarify the definition of crowd control weapons.

from Eric Garner to Manuel Ellis to George Floyd.

We have all seen the devastating consequences of chokeholds being used as the police.

And as I mentioned last week, similar restrictions have been put in place by other cities, most recently in Minneapolis.

Of course, we need to be sober.

Chokeholds, banning chokeholds by themselves will not be enough.

It is a necessary first step, and it is a statement.

If both these bills are passed without watering down by the city, the city council will be making an important statement that this is the kind of city we want to live in.

We don't want to live in a society where I think that's the main point in addition to actually passing the law.

But we do need to be sober, that won't be enough.

Chokeholds were banned in New York City when Eric Garner was killed and that obviously the law was insufficient to save him.

So in addition to critical legislation like these bills, it will also be important to continue to build the movement that is actually the reason we are even having this conversation.

But beyond that, we need real police accountability measures.

Like an independently elected police oversight board with full powers over the police, including hiring, firing, and subpoena powers, we need to end the entrance system of impunity, which is why the police murders of black, brown, poor, homeless people, people with mental illness, it continues unabated.

In the midst of this uprising, we saw Atlanta police murdered Rayshard Brooks just on Friday, hours before, hours after he celebrated his 80-year-old's birthday.

And so clearly, massive change is needed.

And these bills today are an important but only a very small component of what needs to be needed.

They're the bare minimum.

So I look forward to the city council voting yes without weakening the bills.

or delaying them because I think that will be the first step towards truly putting actions to the words that Black Lives Matter.

But as I said, we do need an independently elected oversight board.

We need to defund the police by 50% and steps like what San Francisco has taken, which is the need to go towards community organizers, community workers, as opposed to police responding to non-criminal emergency calls.

I think those are important parts of defunding the police by 50%.

And so we're going to be discussing that soon.

Just last but not least, I wanted to share with the public that we should all stand with the workers at Trader Joe's on Capitol Hill in Seattle.

So please sign their petition.

We will be sharing their link.

We've already shared the link to the petition on our council office social media.

We will be posting it on our council office blog as well.

But as many of you may already know, the store, the Trader Joe's on Capitol Hill on Madison, was abruptly closed on the day that dozens of the employees took action in support of the Movement for Black Lives.

In the petition, the workers say that they believe the store has been closed by the executives to ward off a so-called hotspot for worker organizing.

To quote the workers, quote, Trader Joe's corporate has aggressively squashed worker organizing for years and has a long record of retaliation.

This is the most dramatic retaliation any Trader Joe's store has seen to date, but it is not an isolated incident.

Prior to the abrupt closure, we had been organizing to secure a living wage, health insurance for all workers, and basic protections against COVID-19.

The large majority of us were already living paycheck to paycheck, and many of us were working without health insurance while risking steady exposure to the public in the midst of a pandemic.

We are saddened by the store closure.

For each of us, it means both a loss of community and a loss of financial security in the midst of an economic downturn.

We recognize it's a loss for our neighborhood as well.

And we hope you will join us in demanding that Trader Joe's open store number 130 and restore our jobs immediately unquote.

So just wanted to let the workers at Trader Joe's know that my office and Socialist Alternative stand in full solidarity with them and with the Black Lives Matter movement.

and that if the Trader Joe's workers are watching, please contact my office, and also if Trader Joe's workers from outside Seattle are also watching, please contact us as well, because as the workers point out, workers in Trader Joe's throughout the country have been organizing, and this fighting to open the store back again is part of their nationwide organizing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Salon.

Any questions or comments on that report?

Councilmember Herbold, please, the floor is yours.

Thank you.

I want to again thank Councilmember Sawant for bringing forward the two bills related to banning chokeholds in Seattle as well as banning the use of crowd control weapons.

I think folks received last week a preliminary memo from the OPA and the OIG.

where they let us know that they researched whether or not there are resources out there that advocate a blanket ban of of what the bill before us calls crowd control devices.

They also say that their summary is a preliminary report, and commit to continuing to gather and synthesize information about the use of crowd management tools by SPD, and make note that the analysis of the sufficiency and appropriateness of SPD policy and training related to crowd management would be a forthcoming product.

We heard from the OPA and the OIG yesterday that they have not had time to complete this product.

And they are requesting additional time as it relates not to the chokehold legislation, but to the legislation about the ban on crowd control weapons.

We know that Friday the court has issued a temporary restraining order against the city of Seattle for the use of these weapons for the next two weeks.

and also the CPC has been unable to meet to declare this legislation due to the compressed timeline.

I think they have a meeting scheduled on the 17th, and I think I've shared with most people correspondence that we've received, that myself, Council Member Swant, and Council President Gonzalez received from the CPC over the weekend.

So, We also received a memo from the law department, which we'll be discussing more later.

And we'll also be hearing from the, we'll be joined by the OPA director, the Inspector General and the CPC co-chairs.

I just want to sort of flag that as it relates to the chokehold bill, if the council does decide that they want to move forward, there are some amendments that if I have not already shared with you, I will do so very soon.

And as it relates specifically to the tear gas legislation or the crowd control weapons legislation, the amendments do things like clarify that the legislation restricts crowd control weapons in scenarios of crowd dispersal and management.

It recognizes the authority of our accountability partners to advise in these matters under the 2017 accountability ordinance as approved by the council.

They have a statutory authority to advise us in these matters, and the amendment requests a recommendation from them by mid-August.

the city attorney to notify the Department of Justice, the court monitor, and the court itself.

Use of force is at the heart of the consent decree and changes to city policies have to be submitted to the court.

It expresses an intent for City Council, the city attorney, to notify the Department of Justice, the court monitor, and the court itself.

Use of force is at the heart of the consent decree and changes to city policies have to be submitted to the court.

It expresses an intent for City Council, the city attorney, to notify the Department of Justice, the court monitor, and the court itself.

Use of force is at the heart of the consent decree and changes to city policies have to be submitted to the court.

It expresses an intent for City Council, the city attorney, to notify the Department of Justice, the court monitor, and the court itself.

Use of force is at the heart of the consent decree and changes to city policies have to be submitted to the court.

It expresses an intent for City Council, the city attorney, to notify the Department of Justice, the court monitor, and the to, if necessary, engage with labor relations on implementation.

And it clarifies that additional damages are possible under federal and state law to exceed the 10,000 limit in the original bill.

And then it also clarifies that the legislation applies to the alleged conduct that occurs after enactment of the legislation.

There are a couple other small changes, but they're mostly technical.

Again, intend to, if I haven't sent you a copy of those amendments, we'll do so shortly before, well before the noon deadline.

And then also as it relates to the chokehold legislation, a couple of small amendments there, too.

Again, clarifying the legislation.

to the city to notify the DOJ, the monitor, and the court, and then finally expresses an intent if necessary for the council to engage with labor relations on implementation.

And that's all I have in response to Councilmember Swartz's report.

Thank you.

I'm not sure I'm sorry about

I'm not sure if you have central staff on the line to talk about the amendments, but I guess my big question is, okay, perhaps for the sponsor or the sponsor of the amendments, my big question is, is there a big difference between the technical amendments that councilmember Swann as the prime sponsor is planning to bring forward and councilmember Herbold, the amendments that you're talking about?

I ask that so that we can better I just wanted to ask whether there's harmony in the ones that Councilmember Swan is bringing forward and also just very briefly, want to underscore the urgency of passing the legislation because I think that while the temporary restraining order was put in place on Friday, even members of that legal team have been reaching out saying, please make this permanent.

We look forward to the council making this permanent.

So just wanted to ask that sort of technical question about the amendments, if you will.

Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda.

Well, we do not have the benefit of having anyone from Council Central staff on the line with us today.

This all sort of evolved very quickly.

But I would open it up to either Councilmember Herbold or Sawant to perhaps react to that question posed by Councilmember Mosqueda.

I don't think they cover the same technical issues, but I don't think there's any conflict between our amendments.

I have only glanced at Councilmember Sawant's amendments, and I think Councilmember Sawant has only had the benefit of hearing me describe my amendments.

I don't think she's received them yet.

Councilmember Sawant?

My office hasn't seen the amendments.

All I heard was what she described just now.

So we will of course be looking at the amendments, but I will assure the public right now that if any of the amendments are to fill the band with loopholes, then I will be opposing them.

There's no question about that.

Certainly welcome the temporary restraining order, but I don't think that is enough, and in fact, I don't, I'm actually at a loss to understand how any council member can play a role in delaying the passage of what is absolutely bare minimum legislation to address the horrific violence that is happening in our society and that the mayor of this city has been responsible for.

So I just, I mean, I just fail to understand that.

This is not a question of training of police officers.

The question is, do we really want to live in a society where it is at the discretion of the police or the establishment, whether or not to use horrific weapons on their own constituents?

No, absolutely not.

It should not be allowed.

I want to live in a society where those weapons are not used at all, and furthermore, For decades, the Geneva Convention has had a position on many of these weapons, so it's just completely bizarre and just really unacceptable to me that these questions are even being asked.

And as far as the OIG is concerned, Did the OIG ask the federal court not to issue a temporary restraining order because they didn't have time to come up with an opinion?

Why is it that they are saying this about this?

And most importantly, the OIG has simply not earned the credibility to ask for this delay because this hasn't worked.

The OIG has been aware of police abuse for years.

Activists have been demanding action.

Now we have a nationwide and global uprising, and there's pressure on the establishment to do something.

So it's exactly the wrong way to go to say we're going to delay the legislation, pass it on to the legislation, because an entity that has been aware of police abuse and done nothing to address it is saying we need to delay it because they need to examine it.

On what basis have they earned any right to examine it?

We have tens of thousands of people in Seattle, if not more.

I haven't seen a formal poll, but I can tell you the society in Seattle is completely outraged at the use of these weapons.

People are saying this is Seattle in the 21st century, this is happening, this is not acceptable.

The Community Police Commission has not met to discuss councilmember Herbold's legislation either, and I don't understand why this should be held up by any means.

The Community Police Commission has pointed out the brutality of using chokeholds in their letter as well.

They have made those points about chemical, weapons as well.

And, you know, the bottom line is the activists and these legislation are doing what the OIG and the system has failed to do for years, which is stop police abuse.

Okay.

I just want to, I want to clarify that, um, Council Member Sawant, you made a comment about how to that, and I think we should back CUNY in effect for about 18 months.

So I'm reconciling how they have known about police quote years, unquote, when they've only been around for about 18 months.

And so again, the integrity of these agencies that are that are part of our accountability system that the entire city council of putting into in place.

So I think that's a hard agent role and want to tear it.

Council President, you're cutting out.

Let's see if anybody else has any questions.

Yeah, Councilor- I'm sorry.

Can you hear me?

This morning.

Yeah, you're cutting out.

Council President- I can hear you.

Oh, great.

Can you hear me, Council President?

Go ahead.

Thank you.

I was going to make- I can hear you.

Great.

Thank you, Council President.

This is Council Member Juarez speaking.

I just want to say I support Councilmember Herbold in continuing this for one week in light of Judge Jones issuing the TRO.

But more importantly, what Council President shared, that the OIG just came into existence in the last 18 months.

But just the point that makes common sense to me is the OPA, the OIG, and the Community Police Commission, are asking for more time, and they were created for this reason.

They have the subject matter expertise, and we're also gonna have a briefing by legal, and we wanna do this right.

So nobody is saying that it's okay to do this.

Right now, nothing's gonna happen, hopefully, that we have the TRO in place, and the protesters did have standing.

So we will move forward in one week.

So I wanna share that I support Council Member Herboldt in moving this over one week So we have more information, and we can make this solid, and we can make it stay, and we can be legally upheld.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Colleagues, I'm continuing to have some Internet difficulties, so I may have to I'm going to call into the meeting to sort of avoid the skipping around in the feed, but I see that Councilmember Sawant has another comment to make, so I'm going to hand it over to Councilmember Sawant, and then I really want to wrap up today's conversation.

Again, it's 10.30 a.m.

We have until 11 a.m.

for this before we have to transition into executive session.

So Council Member Sawant, I'm gonna let you have the last word on this, and then I'm gonna ask that we move along.

Council Member Morales is Council President Pro Tem this month, so if you all lose me due to technology, she has the list of roll call and is at the ready to call on the next Council Member.

So Council Member Sawant, you have the last word.

Thank you.

It is accurate to say that the OIG itself, as an entity, as an office, has not been in existence for years.

However, I think the import of my comments was very clear that the system has been in place for years, decades.

The OIG itself may not have been, but the OIG is simply the latest incarnation inside a system that has simply not worked, and I do not accept that the so-called integrity of agencies that have completely let down and betrayed black and brown community members, allowed police violence and racism to continue violence and brutality against peaceful protest movements to continue.

I don't think integrity is the word to use in relation to the agencies that have completely failed ordinary people, especially our marginalized communities.

I think the question is, will the council uphold the integrity of those who have been brutalized at the hands of the police?

And I hope that that question will be taken into consideration when The city council this afternoon votes, I think it seems like, shamefully, to delay the legislation.

Just as an example of what kind of role the OIG is playing, the OIG said, quote, what about a large scale response to an active shooter?

or terrorist attack that requires outside assistance where these weapons might be necessary.

I'm sorry, the threat of terrorism has always been used, especially by the right wing, to curtail civil liberties, and the OIG is trying to raise that kind of specter.

Now, that's the kind of specter that was raised in very bad proceedings that happened at the federal level, including the Patriot Act, and I don't think that in Seattle we should allow that kind of specter to be raised in order to prevent such a bare minimum legislation from passing and I will maintain once again in closing that there is nothing we are going to learn in another another week that we don't already know hundreds of us that got tear gassed and maced.

We know these legislation need to pass today without watering down.

Okay, thank you Council Member Sawant.

you know, there's a lot that I can respond to if we unpack what you just said, but I think we're going to sort of just leave it there because we really need to move along and appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation.

And let's go ahead and move through the reports.

So next up is Council Member Strauss, please.

Thank you, Council President.

Good morning, colleagues.

There are no items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's full agenda or introduction and referral calendar.

The next meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee is on July 22nd, also the birthday of one of our dear friends.

At full council today, I will be distributing a proclamation honoring Thomas Whittemore.

He is a 19-year veteran of the Department of Neighborhoods, and he's retiring this week.

As you'll hear this afternoon, his life includes tales from working all over the globe and once almost getting his hair cut by Jane Goodall.

I'll be excited to share with you the rest.

That's just a preview for this afternoon.

The proclamation was distributed to your offices last Friday, and I look forward to you signing on.

Looking over last week, after last Monday, we saw what happens when we meet nonviolent demonstration of First Amendment rights with peace.

The reaction is peace.

We had heard actions leading up to last Monday's up to last Monday in Capitol Hill and around the East Precinct was due to a threat of arson on the East Precinct.

We did eventually see an individual attempt to light the East Precinct on fire, and indeed, the peaceful residents exercising their First Amendment rights put out the fire immediately.

I think that this is important to note that the majority of people there were there to be peaceful.

We are seeing history in the making.

Public opinion on what is and what is not acceptable public policy is changing before our eyes, even in the last month.

This is both, we have the opportunity to plant seeds that will grow for generations to come.

Sometimes all it takes is a bag of dirt, a shovel, and a bag of seeds.

This is both a metaphor and our reality.

I'm glad that we have Seattle's newest community garden added to our city's land.

And if the creators want it to be a permanent installation, maybe it could even become a pea patch.

The future is left to see those answers provided to us.

It is equally important that we take this moment to create meaningful policy to reflect the changes in public opinion and create public policy that will last for generations to come.

Additionally, last week, last Wednesday, the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee held a post-adoption public hearing on Council Bill 119769, the emergency permitting legislation we adopted in April.

We still expect a report back on the ability from SDCI to have virtual meetings by June 26th.

As we experience and continue to experience this morning, it is clear that there are continuing difficulties with meeting remotely.

even though zoom does work most of the time it can be difficult from time to time.

Also on Wednesday my team attended the mayor's industrial maritime strategy meeting to hear from stakeholders and discuss how the process can move forward given the changed landscape we are in.

Also last Thursday I joined the planning commission to discuss my child care near you proposal which will be moving forward after our summer budget season.

I also held my weekly district office hours for residents.

We spoke about transit, homelessness, Black Lives Matter, the police budget, and Cafe Streets.

I am excited to hear last week that there is movement on the Cafe Streets proposal.

And if that announcement has not already been made, I look forward to that announcement being made this week.

In this coming week, I will be attending Association of Washington City meetings, Regional Transit Committee meetings, and more meetings with District 6 residents.

Thank you for your time, Council President.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Any questions or feedback on that report?

Okay, hearing and seeing none, we'll go ahead and move over to Councilmember Herbold.

The floor is yours.

Thank you so much.

Good morning, everybody.

I want to again thank Councilmember Sawant for referencing some of the announcements coming out of San Francisco, specifically Mayor London Breed announced that for calls on help related to non-criminal matters involving mental health, the homeless response, school discipline, and neighbor disputes, police officers will be replaced with trained, unarmed professionals to respond to calls for help.

is a really, I think, another example of how cities are supporting one another as we reimagine policing services to instead be public safety services that aren't dependent the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco what a more useful and appropriate response would be to those types of calls.

Also, the city auditor has begun doing some research on other jurisdictions that don't have police departments that instead have public safety departments that have merged the roles of police officers with firefighters and EMS responders as well as other important professionals who have subject matter expertise and can deliver more a response to public safety issues that do not need a police response.

Some of the work that we in Seattle have done already as it relates specifically to re-establishing the CSO program is another step in that direction and I'm really I'm looking forward to working with the council on this area of using the budget realignment process to not only make near-time cuts to the police department, but also to begin this larger discussion of what a public safety department can look like for our city.

In addition, we have before us today a bill, Council Bill 119803, which requires officers to display their badge numbers while allowing warning bands to observe the death of officers, but on a different part of the badge, not obscuring the numbers.

Numerous constituents have contacted the council about badge numbers not being visible.

After I announced that I was drafting legislation, we all know that Chief Best issued a directive to all officers to display their badge numbers while wearing morning bands.

And I appreciate her order, but nevertheless, this requirement must be adopted into law.

The legislation itself amends Seattle Municipal Code 3.28.130, which was actually created after the 1999 WTO protest in Seattle, when people noted they could not view the name tags of officers.

So former Councilmember Steinbrook to create a new section of the municipal code to require display of name tags.

This legislation amends that and is emergency legislation and would go into effect immediately upon signature by the mayor.

And it also requests that the Seattle Police Department work with other law enforcement agencies whose peace officers are reasonably may be anticipated to enforce traffic or criminal laws in Seattle to develop a policy that required those peace officers when enforcing the laws in the city of Seattle to conform with requirements concerning badges.

So that will be before us today on the full council.

Pivoting over to the Human Services Department, just want to note that Human Services Department planning continues in partnership with the Office of Sustainability and the Environment to assess need and address issues related to food, transportation and distribution and provision of emergency meals at permanent supportive housing locations.

And HSD reports that one of the most pressing concerns for the Aging and Disability Services Division and its service providers is recovery and preparing to go back to office and in-person services.

Agencies are exploring a staggered return to in-person services based on urgency.

For example, agencies serving deaf, hard of hearing are on a quicker timeline to reopen due to the challenges experienced for that community with remote communication.

As it relates to activities from last week, along with Councilmember Peterson, I participated in the first meeting of the West Seattle Bridge Community Task Force.

The meeting focused on introductions and a very high-level briefing for community members.

At the meeting, SDOT released a decision tree about the path forward for resolving the closure of the West Seattle Bridge.

The starting point is a decision during the summer about whether a repair is feasible based on bridge structural testing that is ongoing.

One path in the chart leads to repair with an opening as soon as 2022, with a lifespan of that repair of up to 10 years.

In this path, the bridge still would need to be replaced around 2032. The second path leads to replacement with controlled demolition.

SDOT estimates roughly that a new bridge could take about four to six years, opening approximately in the 2024-2026 timeline, depending on the type, size, and location of the replacement.

The decision tree notes that, again, that we are poised to make a decision about a path this summer, and estimates I've heard have been around four weeks.

So this is, I think, one of the most significant next steps for progress on the West Seattle Bridge.

I also, last week, attended the lead policy coordinating board meeting.

and heard about the development of the co-lead model and discussed concerns that despite the clear need in our city, co-lead is not receiving referrals from SPD right now.

And there is a discussion, a great concern about that, understanding that police officers may have their focus on other activities in the city.

It is a frustration of the model for and for the underlying program lead, that they rely on referrals from, or if not always referrals, even for the social contacts, approval of clients for lead.

And so the meeting was really focused on whether or not there could be a workaround within the current contract to this problem of the fact that we are that we are unable to get approval of referrals right now.

And we talked about having the city attorney play that role.

the prior criminal history of the potential client.

So, again, we did not come to any solutions in this meeting.

There was a great deal of frustration in the room because, again, the need for these services is great.

In the meeting, you know, folks involved in the delivery of COLEADS services were looking out their window and you know, referenced the fact that they could see people in distress out their window right then during the meeting, people that they know would be a good fit for COLEAD.

And I found that at best, the problem with the referrals at best is bureaucracy at its worst.

If not bureaucracy, these problems could be really seen as really having a very cruel impact on people who can use these services.

There are empty hotel rooms that Co-Lead has access to where people could be coming inside.

So I look forward to discussing this more with council members and seeing how we can assist Co-Lead in delivering these services.

And then lastly, I think just want to reference, of course, that Friday is Juneteenth.

I want to recognize that since 2013, there has been a bill before Congress observing the Juneteenth Independence Day, and want to throw out there that We might want to consider, as a city, observing this important recognition of Black independence in our country, and to do so for our city.

There are both observed city holidays as well as city holidays that are not formally observed with time off.

And many cities enact their own holidays.

I've not found a lot of cities that have their own unique observed holidays with time off.

I spent some time over the weekend looking that up.

Berkeley does have a Malcolm X Day where they close government functions and schools.

And of course we have our own Indigenous Peoples Day, but we are open for business that day.

But just want to throw out there that given the fact that there has been an effort before Congress since 2013 to create this formal holiday, that we might want to consider doing so.

For Juneteenth, one of the events going on is a rally and conversation called the Next Steps hosted by Not This Time.

It's at 1 p.m.

at Judkins Park.

The goal is to educate the public on the things that our city, state, and county can do to address the impediments to justice, equity, and police accountability.

The focus has been to make sure that we have representation from all levels of government to have this conversation about where the gaps lie.

You can find more information about this event at www.notthistime.global.

I am going to be speaking at the Next Steps event about the council's efforts regarding the Seattle Police Department budget.

And some of the speakers thus far include families impacted by police use of deadly force, youth leaders, congresspeople Adam Smith and Pramila Jayapal, Michelle Merriweather of the Urban League, President and CEO of the Urban League, Lisa Dugard, the Director of the Public Defender Association, King County Executive Dow Constantine, Monisha Harrell of Equal Rights Washington, Mayor Durkin, the Puyallup Tribe will be represented.

We'll hear from Dominique Davis of Community Passageway.

Pastor Jamal Cole of the Greater Gospel Temple, Bishop Tyson of the Goodwill Missionary Baptist Church, Andrea Koppen of Bird Bar Place, CEO of Bird Bar Place, Willard Jimerson of United Better Thinking and State Senator Manka Dhingra.

That's just, I think, the running list.

And I contacted everybody over the weekend about this event.

I would like to say thank you to all of you for attending.

Andre Taylor is very interested in having as much representation from the City Council as possible and is trying to do in advance of the day headcount.

So if you haven't already, please do let me know whether or not you will be able to attend.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold for that report.

Any questions or comments for Councilmember Herbold?

Okay, hearing and seeing none, Councilmember Herbold, I do have one point of feedback for you.

I received a rather disturbing message from a constituent who um, is a lawyer who primarily works with victims of domestic violence, um, and, uh, has a long time career as a, as a public defender, um, and, uh, and she indicated that she has been trying to get, um, protection orders served by the Seattle Police Department who have told her that they are one to two weeks behind in serving protection orders, specifically from the Domestic Violence Service Unit.

And that the reason that has been provided to her is because officers have been pulled from the Domestic Violence Service Unit to do crowd control in the demonstrations and whatnot.

And so this was just something that she received as of last Thursday in terms of I wanted to flag that for you as our public safety chair in and hopefully dig into that a little bit and provide us and the general public with some additional information about that aspect.

Thank you so much.

I'm happy to follow up on that.

You're giving me an opportunity also to reference the fact that I did not mention in my remarks the fact that I have inquired with the mayor's office to find out why it is that Chief Best is telling the public that responses to 9-1-1 calls in the East Precinct will take three times as long as they would under ordinary circumstances.

This is another issue that we have a police department that is telling us that policing responses in this case to their responsibility to deliver DV orders, as well as the responsibility to respond to 911 calls, as well as the responsibility to approve co-lead referrals, just have a lot of concern about the I think it's a great response from the police department about their ability to do the work that we depend on them to do in this time, and are citing the need for crowd control as the reason for that.

Thank you, Councilmember Hopel.

And I think, colleagues, frankly, that this kind of response or reaction to the conversation that we're having right now about defunding the Seattle Police Department and reimagining public safety, I certainly think that these examples related to co-lead referrals and certification of who gets into the co-lead program service of protection orders related to domestic violence, and who knows what other issues are not getting attention right now, certainly makes the case for me as to why we need to continue to have this conversation around right-sizing the police department in a way that is consistent with our expectations and the expectations of the public.

You know, this is an opportunity for us to sort of look at the lines of service, if you will, that the police department is engaging in right now.

and rightsizing accordingly to make sure that this type of work, if it's not being prioritized by the police department, which apparently it seems not to be, that again, that makes the case as to why it is even that much more important for us to make sure that we are taking these facts into consideration as we continue to have the conversation and the debate around what we want public safety, policing, and emergency services to look like at the City of Seattle in the long term.

Obviously, we have short-term needs right now related to these important public safety issues and And in the short term, while we are doing this long-term work, it is important for us to have confidence that our police department is going to continue to provide these services in a manner that is responsive to community needs and look forward to our ongoing conversation in that space and Councilmember Herbold, your leadership as we move forward in that conversation.

Any other questions or comments for Councilmember Herbold and her report?

hearing and seeing none, we'll go ahead and move on to Council Member Juarez.

Thank you, Council President.

Let's see, there are no items on the Public Asset and Native Communities Committee this afternoon's agenda.

Let's do a quick overview here.

I should note, though, that I'm very pleased and happy that the Chief Librarian, Marcellus Turner, the Superintendent of Parks, Jesus Aguirre, and the Director of Seattle Center, Mr. Nellums, are in weekly contact with me, which I appreciate.

So we are monitoring public projects and construction projects and related legislation that hopefully we can tee up soon.

Update on parks.

Again, you will get a weekly update email from our office regarding park usage.

And now if we are talking about the modified phase one under King County's modified phase one, A number of the Seattle Park and Rec and outdoor activities will resume with social distancing restrictions as always.

That would include and we're moving forward with outdoor tennis and basketball courts, disc golf, community gardens and skate parks are now open for public use.

All boat ramps will be open to the public by June 20th.

Selected swimming will reopen with lifeguards present daily starting July 1st.

And Seattle Parks and Rec will be taking reservations for athletic field practices starting June 17th for selected fields with permitted practices hopefully starting July 1st.

I had the opportunity and the honor to give the commencement speech at the University of Washington Evans School along with Congresswoman Jayapal.

I want to thank and congratulate Dean Alsop in our office our new district director and Murphy Bush both of them graduated with their MPAs, and we got to watch their graduation at 4 o'clock Thursday.

So congratulations to two of our staff members.

This week, I plan to attend and participate in a scheduled budget committee.

Thank you, Councilor Mosqueda, for your leadership on this.

And let's see.

That's about it.

Thank you, guys.

Great.

Thank you, Councilor Juarez.

Any questions or comments on that report?

All right, thank you so much.

Let's go ahead and move on to Council Member Lewis.

Please, floor is yours.

Thank you, Madam President.

There are no items from the Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies and Investments on this afternoon's agenda.

I personally do have two bills on for introduction and referral today.

Council Bill 119807, Repealing the Drug Traffic Loitering Ordinance, which I'm introducing with Council Member Morales as co-sponsor.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

And Council Bill 119808, in the city.

the city has a history of repealing the prostitution loitering ordinance.

these ordinances have a racist and discriminatory history.

I stress that point because in scenarios where actual enforcement of the underlying issue, so drug dealing or the act of exchanging sex for money, there are different statutes criminalizing those activity, possession with intent to distribute and prostitution.

So, for that reason, these statutes have really only had the effect of criminalizing circumstantial and completely innocent behavior, because if there was something there, there's other statutes that people would be prosecuted under.

So city attorney Holmes supports both of these repeals and indeed has had an office policy against charging these crimes for the last two years.

But the election of a new city attorney could change that.

And for that reason, we should just go ahead and make it permanent.

Indeed, a permanent repeal was recommended by the city's reentry policy group report, and that is cited in the recitals of these bills.

this is a small but important step and I look forward to discussing these proposed refuels at full Council and moving forward with them in the coming weeks.

Also, this afternoon, gig worker premium pay will be back up.

Councilmember Kerbald and I are putting forward a substitute bill.

The substantive changes are lowering the per delivery premium pay fee from $5 or premium pay mandate from $5 to $2.50.

We believe that this will accomplish the policy goal of making sure that workers in our gig economy are receiving adequate compensation to make sure that time spent cleaning their vehicles, to make sure that time, money and time spent on acquiring PPE and disinfectant, that that is compensated and that they are getting some due consideration for that and the essential work that they are doing.

We think this bill is an important step forward and look forward to its consideration of both Council this afternoon.

I want to say as a last note, like a number of us here at the Council, I did have the opportunity over the weekend to visit the CHOP, formerly known as the CHAZ.

I just want to say for the benefit of members of the public that what I witnessed was consistent with our tradition in Seattle of peaceful protest, and I would echo a lot of the observations Councilmember Strauss made earlier.

I witnessed people dancing, collaborating on public health and gardening projects.

holding impromptu teach-ins on race.

I did see that the protesters had been negotiating, although I didn't witness this myself, but negotiating with Chief Scoggins and other first responders to make sure there are clear ingress and egress for emergency health services.

So, you know, from everything that I saw, consistent with You know, the occupation of academic buildings in the 60s or the Occupy movement of 10 years ago.

And, you know, I respect the folks that are in the CHOP for engaging in peaceful protest and making an important and critical point.

I was appalled, but not surprised, to see depictions of the CHOP on Fox News intentionally altered to make it appear very different from the reality on the ground.

And, you know, I hate to disappoint our conservative neighbors, but based on my observations, I think it's far more likely that the CHOP will become a branch campus of the Evergreen State College than an anarcho-communist state.

And I look forward to continuing to work with the demonstrators in the CHOP to make progress on a lot of these intractable issues that we've had around our criminal legal system in American policing.

With that, I have no further updates, and I look forward to another week of working with all of you for the people of the city of Seattle.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Lewis.

Any questions or comments on that report?

Okay, seeing and hearing none, we'll go ahead and move along the line.

Council Member Morales, please, the floor is yours.

Thank you.

Good morning, colleagues.

I want to begin by thanking Councilmember Herbold for acknowledging Juneteenth.

For those who don't know, it is commemorating June 19th, 1865, which was the date that slaves in Texas were actually made aware of the fact that they had been freed two years before.

So as a native Texan, it is an important time to commemorate what should have been celebrated much sooner.

I already made comments about the UW laundry facility, so I do intend to watch that closely.

We want to make sure that, as I said before, that we are really centering equity in that community and that neighborhood as the project there continues.

So there are no items from the Community Economic Development Committee on today's agenda.

As we know, we're all now in a budget process that will include conversations about both progressive revenue and the call that we're hearing from our community now to defund the police.

So I just want to take a couple minutes to zoom out and allow this body a chance to reflect on what that means for us.

We have a budget shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars for 2020 and a hole that we're going to have to fill by making significant cuts.

We have an opportunity to raise significant new revenue by taxing the largest corporations in the city and requiring them to invest in our communities in a way that they haven't done before.

And we have demands from our neighbors to cut the budget to SPD and instead invest in our communities.

So as we begin to weigh our choices, I want to be clear that my North Star for these discussions will be about disrupting and dismantling white supremacy.

Everything about how these institutions work will be questioned, need to be questioned, if we're really going to invest in our communities in a way that centers racial equity.

So as we discuss what defunding the police department really means, because let's be honest, we haven't asked ourselves these questions yet, we should ask, what do the police do all day?

And if what they do is respond to people dealing with mental illness, to people experiencing homelessness, to young people who are hanging out, then we have a problem.

The police shouldn't be responding to those calls.

It's not their job.

They aren't trained social workers, and these things are not crimes.

So we really need to build community safety in a way that doesn't center police.

And when we say defund the police, what we mean is shrink their responsibilities and shrink their funding.

In organizing spaces that really focus on disruption, And I will say many of those organizations come from my district.

So, you know, there is an important guiding principle to that work, which is that we spend about 20% of our time dismantling the current system, but we really spend 80% of our time building community alternatives.

And I just want to make clear that we already have a lot of these alternatives in place.

We have the corner greeter program in Rainier Beach.

We have community passageways.

We have the REACH program that serves and does street outreach to serve our homeless neighbors.

We have the kernel of what we need, and that's how we achieve the kind of transformational change that people are asking for.

As a city council, we have to be prepared to provide significant resources that help scale these programs that are already doing this hard work on the front lines.

You know, we received an email from our director of the Office of Civil Rights a couple weeks ago saying we have to create a budget for black lives.

And that means that we invest in diversion and homelessness outreach, not in navigation teams.

We invest in libraries and community health centers, not in jails.

We invest in violence prevention, restorative justice, job training programs, not in emphasis patrols.

We invest in community-led development that includes resources for land acquisition and site control.

In other words, we invest in community economic development.

That's how we're gonna solve this problem.

That's how we're gonna demonstrate our commitment to black lives by investing in black communities.

And the transformational change that we need really means that we have to do everything we can to close the wealth gap that has existed between our black and white neighbors for 400 years.

So I'm looking forward to these conversations.

They're not going to be easy.

We have a lot of different balls in the air, but I think they are all channeling us to think about how we transform the way we invest, the way we commit resources of the city, and the way we ask more from our corporate neighbors to help achieve the goals that we have in the city.

And I look forward to working with all of you to do that.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales for that report.

Any questions or comments for Councilmember Morales?

Okay, hearing and seeing none, we'll go ahead and move over now to Councilmember Mosqueda, please.

Thank you, Madam President.

Good morning, everybody.

There are no items from the Finance and Housing Committee on today's full council agenda.

Last week, we began our conversation about the Seattle City's opportunity to respond to the COVID crisis, to redirect funding, to prioritize health and safety, and among that, our inquest into the Seattle Police Department's budget.

Thank you to all of you, especially Councilmember Herbold, who collected questions, but all of you who participated in that over four-hour meeting.

It was the beginning of us having a baseline understanding of what's in the Seattle Police Department's budget.

We do hope that very soon we will be receiving the mayor's proposed 2020 revised budget, and we have held time on our calendar for this upcoming week in the Select Budget Committee on Wednesday.

Council colleagues, as a reminder, that calendar went out to you two weeks ago now, I believe two Fridays ago, and it included a summary of the conversations we will be having over each Wednesday to come.

At the beginning, we will have a 10 a.m.

meeting on session one, and in the afternoons, starting at 2 p.m., will be session two.

So you should see that on your calendars.

If you have not already received a calendar hold, we will be sending that around.

In session one, we will be discussing revenue, and we will this week begin, or I'm sorry, continue our conversations around progressive revenue proposals.

Public comment for that section opens at 8 a.m.

We will also have public comment at 2 p.m.

at session 2. For folks who do want to comment publicly, we're going to ask folks to comment at 1 or the other, ideally.

We are going to test this out with an opening of public comment starting at 8 a.m.

So all of that information will be sent to you in case you want to send it out to your distribution networks or post it on your social media.

This week, during our 2 p.m.

session, we will have an overview of the city budget's office proposed or the mayor's proposed 2020 budget if it comes down.

And if it doesn't come down, we'll let you know, and we will continue to have a placeholder on next week's agenda for an overview of the mayor's proposed 2020 revised budget.

Importantly, continuing our conversation around the inquest in the Seattle Police Department's budget, we will also hear from various cities on how they are responding to the calls for defunding and restructuring and investing into Black and Brown communities following the guidance and lead of Black-led community organizations.

This week, we have a tentative hold to hear from cities such as Austin, Minneapolis, New York City, Los Angeles, Portland, and San Francisco.

We are finalizing our panelists, so we will keep you all updated, but please note that we do have meetings at 10 a.m.

and 2 p.m.

on Wednesday this week.

I also want to take a minute to lift up some of the comments that have already been shared by our council colleagues, including our council president, who eloquently talked about the long-term and short-term goals Council colleagues have talked about our responsibility in this moment.

And I think the most important thing for us to continue to underscore is that as elected officials, our job is to protect residents, especially right now to protect First Amendment rights.

The message that was sent all last week was to immediately halt the use of militaristic force against community members.

And I want to lift up some of the comments from our city council members, the community, and within our own city departments from the Office of Civil Rights.

Their letter has been referenced, which harmoniously demand that as a first step, as a bare minimum, we A, cease the use of flash grenades, rubber bullets, tear gas indiscriminately against community protesters in order to deescalate the situation.

B, stop the use of military force against civilian demonstrators as it further escalates tension.

C, stop demonizing protesters, trying to create a false narrative around good protesters or bad protesters when night after night we're seeing more people come to the street who were protesting the very use of force from the night prior.

And yes, that has happened over the last seven days, and I appreciate the tone.

The tone has changed about protesters, and the tactics have changed towards those protesters.

However, those messages, as Councilmember Herbold mentioned, were undermined by comments from the chief, and we need more information about where those potential threats are coming from.

And beyond tone, We need structural change.

We absolutely cannot let the end goal, the long-term goal, be sort of pushed to the side or put on the to-do list for later.

Right now, we are being demanded that we take action on institutional change to redirect the budget.

People have been saying that this is a crisis of consciousness and inaction.

And we have a chance to change that by making necessary changes to the budget.

And as our council colleagues have talked about, especially the safety chair, true policy changes about what we expect of our police force.

If there is to be a redirection into funds that we must do this through community led priorities.

This moment demands action to address institutionalized racism, to defund the police and to redirect investments into communities of color and actionable leadership in the longterm.

There's been a number of things that have been listed, but I want to lift up some of the things again from the office of civil rights letter, Release and do not prosecute demonstrators.

That's what actionable leadership means.

And I think we can all work towards that because they were exercising their First Amendment rights.

Reprioritize the city's budget to invest in community infrastructure with black and brown communities and decrease funding by 50%.

increase alternatives to and repair harm caused by the criminal justice system, boost housing and supportive services, strengthen health and social services, make meaningful investments into community wealth models and land ownership, stop using the police to move those who are houseless, as Council Member Herbold referenced as well, and hold officers accountable for using excessive force.

Get those who are being investigated off the street right now.

We have a long list from the inspector general of the type of investigations they are conducting.

I want to make sure that those folks who are being investigated are not currently on our streets and that we have taken action to the extent possible in this moment.

I want to be very clear on what's being asked of us.

We are not being asked to find a pot of money in the budget, which we know would starve already underfunded departments and social services.

We are being asked to reduce the police budget specifically and to reinvest in programs that are in alignment with our community demands.

The actions that deescalate the response were just the first step.

And we need transformational change to address the harms caused over centuries.

We need actionable commitments to move away from harmful policies and patterns that have been killing Black community members.

And today, I think that the bills that Council Member Sawant has introduced are part of that.

I think, again, these are first step measures as we look at the institutional changes that are needed.

I want to lift up some of the comments that were actually summarized very, very well by SCC.

If you haven't had a chance to look at those, we retweeted some of the comments in their summary of the ruling from the court decision on Friday that put the temporary restraining order on the use of non-lethal weapons.

They summarize it by saying the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claims that the city violated First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights.

While acknowledging, quote, the record is limited at this stage, end quote, he nevertheless determined that on some occasions, SPD has in fact used less lethal weapons disproportionately and without provocation.

The judge concluded SPD's actions would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing to protest.

SPD's use of less lethal crowd weapons have surely chilled speech.

SPD exerted excessive force without provocation.

Plaintiffs have established a threat of immediate irreparable harm in the absence of a temporary restraining order.

Plaintiffs have shown that the protests were a substantial or motivating factor in SPD's conduct.

In other words, that the fact that the demonstrators were protesting police brutality motivated SPD to respond the way they did.

Those are the judge's words.

So I want to thank David Perez as one of the lead attorneys in filing this temporary restraining order request and him doing that on behalf of the community who was harmed by the response.

And I know that they're looking forward to us putting that temporary restraining order into permanent action.

I look forward to the conversation on the bills today and taking permanent action.

Thank you for your thoughtfulness, council colleagues, as we continue to lift up the right to free speech and to protect our community members in this time.

And just want to underscore the long-term goals that Council President Gonzalez so articulately discussed.

Those long-term goals help us get at the crisis of consciousness and show true action where there has been past inaction.

I really appreciate all you for all the work you did and for these first steps that have been put into place and so much work is to do ahead of us as we respond to what the community is demanding of us.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda, for that report and for your ongoing work as it relates to the budget.

Really, really appreciate all of your ongoing attention to those issues.

Okay, folks, I am last in terms of reports.

I'm going to go and make this brief because we are about 20 minutes behind in terms of our agenda for this morning and we anticipate we'll have a long executive session.

So, from the Governance and Education Committee meeting, we have nothing on this afternoon's full council agenda for consideration by the full council.

We don't have any scheduled committee meetings this week and look forward to being able to continue to work through the issues that I reported on during my president's report at the top of today's meeting.

Look forward to engaging with you all as I roll out that new memorandum related to our telework and potential in-person work options.

So with that being said, we're going to go ahead and wrap up now the section related to I'm going to go ahead and move us into executive session.

is to discuss potential pending or actual litigation.

The council's executive sessions are an opportunity for the council to discuss confidential legal matters with city attorneys as authorized by law.

A legal monitor for the city attorney's office is always present to ensure the council reserves questions of policy for open sessions.

I expect that the executive session will end in in no more than 120 minutes.

So I'm being a little conservative here, folks.

And in order to avoid the technology dance that we have to do to extend executive sessions, I'm going to announce that we expect the executive session to go from 11.20 until no longer than 1.20pm today.

If for some reason we need to extend it beyond that time, then I will return to open session.

to announce the extension and the expected duration.

So with that being said, colleagues, we will need to leave the Zoom meeting now.

And then you have credentials related to the executive session via Skype, via the Skype platform.

So I would like to adjourn this portion of it, have us go into executive session.

And to do that, you'll need to leave the Zoom meeting at this point.

hear from y'all shortly.

Bye.