Seattle City Council Transportation & Utilities Committee 12/2/20

Son or Eric, is Seattle Channel ready?

Ready to go.

Thank you.

Good morning, everybody.

The December 2nd regular meeting of the Transportation and Utilities Committee will come to order.

The time is now 9.32 a.m.

I'm Alex Peterson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Gonzalez.

Present.

Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Chair Peterson.

Here.

Four.

Yes.

Four present.

Great.

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

OK, hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Welcome back, everybody, to the Transportation Utilities Committee.

It's refreshing to be back to a more regular committee schedule to tackle some non-budget legislation of city government.

We have 12 items on today's agenda, including two public hearings, which are the first two items.

I generally support all the items on today's committee agenda.

Item 5 regarding water regulations has a lot of detail in it.

And so today we're going to hear item 5, ask our questions, and bring that item back for the December 16 committee meeting.

And Seattle Public Utilities is already aware of this.

Any items voted on today will advance to the full council meeting on either December 7 or December 14. Items voted on our next committee meeting, December 16, would be voted on the full city council meeting on January 4, the first one of the new year.

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

Let me double check because we might not have any speakers right now.

Okay, there appear to be no speakers.

We'll give it another minute here.

Everybody can just relax for a minute to see if anybody signs up.

If I may interrupt the clerk here, I saw Council Member Herbold present.

So we have a full house.

Oh, yes.

Welcome, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Okay, it appears that no one has signed up yet for these public, the general comment period for this committee meeting.

So we'll go ahead and close the public comment period and go on to agenda item number one.

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

Item one is council bill 119955. and ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities relating to certain properties in the city of Renton at the intersection of Interstate 405 and Seattle Public Utilities Cedar River pipelines right of way.

Okay, and this is for a briefing discussion and public hearing.

I don't have any opening remarks.

And just to clarify with our information technology team, the spreadsheet that I'm looking at for public comment, I just want to make sure that there's not a separate spreadsheet for the two public hearings.

If there is, then I will need to see that too.

There is just one sheet, Council Member.

OK.

So that indicates that we don't have speakers for this public hearing.

I apologize for any confusion.

This is Mami Hara from Seattle Public Utilities, council member.

Yes.

And we do have speakers available.

Oh, I mean public speakers.

Oh, sorry.

Yeah, that's okay.

Oh, definitely we're going to hear from you.

Definitely going to hear from you.

So regarding the official public hearing, there are no public speakers signed up.

So we will close the public hearing on Council Bill 119955. And we will now hear we will hear the item.

So let's go ahead and central staff is available here.

Um, if, if they want to give any opening remarks and then we can turn it over to general manager, mommy hair on anybody from central council, central staff wants to make any introductory remarks, please go ahead.

Okay, we'll go ahead and just go straight to our general manager that mommy era.

Thank you for being here with us and your team.

Thank you.

And apologies for that interruption.

I appreciate your time Councilmember Peterson and members of the committee.

We know that you have a very long agenda this morning.

So we hope to move through our six public utilities ordinances fairly quickly.

The six pieces of legislation that we're asking you to consider this morning we hope are non-controversial, but nonetheless very important for our business operations.

So we appreciate the time that you're making available so we can have them considered before the end of the year.

Eugene Manchev, who is our program manager with SPU's Waterline of Business, will walk you through the legislation for the first ordinance, which cleans up property rights following the Washington Department of Transportation's project to straighten the Renton S-curves east of downtown Renton in the early 1990s.

SPU has three large diameter water pipelines in the area that predate Interstate 405. Eugene?

Thank you, Molly.

I'm going to share my screen now.

Is my PowerPoint up?

Yes, it is.

Okay, thank you.

Well, good morning.

I'm glad to be here and present to you a property rights exchange between Seattle Public Utilities and Washington State Department of Transportation that has been in the works for a long time.

The area of interest is the intersection of SPU's Cedar River Pipelines right-of-way and Interstate 405, just south of the Cedar River and east of downtown Renton.

In this right-of-way, there are two 66-inch and one 54-inch water transmission pipelines.

What triggered the need for the change?

In 1989, Washington State Department of Transportation initiated a project to straighten Interstate 405 in Renton at the so-called Renton S-curves.

Zero pipelines right-of-way crosses 405 diagonally near the curves and would be impacted by the freeway project.

Straightening the S-curves required cutting into the hillside, thereby affecting the three large diameter transmission pipelines, which used to follow the original terrain.

Here is a before and after.

On the left side, you can see what 405 looked at before the curve straightening.

It's in this area, it's similar to I-90 on Beacon Hill, on the west side of Beacon Hill.

The freeway is elevated with the pipelines crossing underneath it.

Here's how it looks now.

The freeway is a grate cut into the hillside with large retaining walls on the east side of the freeway.

So this all started in 1989, actually 88. But in 89, an agreement was penned between Seattle and Washington State Department of Transportation.

Seattle owned and still owns its pipeline right away in fee, and therefore WSDOT agreed to relocate the pipelines at its cost as part of the freeway widening project.

Seattle agreed to transfer fee ownership along the original pipeline location.

And WSDOT agreed to grant SPU strong protective easements along the new pipeline location.

This is really important in the sense that the easements would provide for relocation again at WSDOT's cost should that become necessary for a future freeway widening or relocation project.

WSDOT also agreed to transfer fee ownership of some adjacent land that would be useful to SPU.

And the overall property rights exchange would be at no cost to both parties.

This slide shows our property rights at present.

The red shaded polygons are areas where Seattle owns the fee.

And you can see this is across the freeway.

In green dashed lines are shown the original locations of the three pipelines.

And in solid blue lines, you can see the current location of the pipelines.

In 1992, the relocated pipelines came online and work on the real property exchange has started.

The exchange is rather complex and involves several pieces and at the time was envisioned to involve even the city of Renton.

However, work stalled after the project was built.

The reason for that is the way WSDOT does projects.

Since the change involved land to be transferred from state to city, that cannot happen until the freeway project is actually built.

Secondly, the the watchdog project team is usually dissolved shortly after a project is built and members move on to other projects.

And that's that's kind of what happened here, largely due to the complexity of the transactions and the time it takes to get them through.

We were able to get work restarted in 2006 and 2007 when WSDOT needed to acquire other property rights from SPU, but unfortunately it wasn't completed even then.

As a result, as you can see from the map on the left, SPU now owns land under the freeway, but has no rights along the relocated pipelines.

The property rights exchange for your legislative approval is shown on this slide.

The red shaded areas are to be transferred from the city to state.

The yellow areas are to be transferred from state to city.

That is fee ownership.

And the blue and green shaded areas are areas where the state will give the protective easements to the city.

The brown area, finally, is underground tieback easement that the state had acquired from private parties and will now transfer to SBU since the tiebacks actually are needed for SBU facilities.

And with that, I'll open for questions.

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, any questions for SBU?

I'm not seeing any questions right now, so.

Oh, please, Vice Chair Strauss.

Thank you.

I don't have any questions because they were answered at my briefing before this committee hearing, which I really appreciated to dive deep.

I just wanted to take a moment to thank you, Gene.

This was a very straightforward presentation, technical in nature, and I appreciate the work that you put into this.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

Thank you.

Any other comments or questions from colleagues?

Okay, so colleagues, we plan to vote on this item, Council Bill 119955, at our next committee on December 16th.

So thank you for this item.

Now we will go on item two, which is also a separate public hearing.

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

Item 2 is Council Bill 119958, an ordinance relating to the Cedar River Watershed, authorizing two years of ecological thinning in accordance with the Cedar River Watershed Habitat Conservation Plan for briefing, discussion, and public hearing.

Thank you.

So we're going to go ahead and open the public hearing on Council Bill 119958. And again, I'm noting that there are no speakers for this public hearing.

So just to double check, I'm going to ask staff from our information technology team, could you confirm that you also do not see any public speakers signed up for this public hearing?

There are no signups, Council Member.

Confirmed.

Thank you.

All right, well, let's let's turn it over to general manager mommy hair if you want to say a few introductory remarks.

Yes, thank you.

And this for this next proposed bill, we are seeking extension of our authority to perform ecological thinning of the forest in the Cedar River watershed because the COVID-19 crisis prevented us from completing the work authorized by an earlier ordinance that took us to the end of 2020. So, Rolf Gersond and Amy Labarge from the watershed will walk you through the legislation.

Thank you.

And I should just say that the public hearing is, I'm still looking, there are no public speakers for this.

So we'll just go ahead and close the public hearing for this.

Please continue with the presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This is Rolf Gersonder.

I'm going to share my screen here.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And thank you for the introduction, Mami.

My name is Rolf Gersonder.

I'm a forest ecologist in the Watershed Management Division of SPU.

And I would like to give you some background on our request for an extension of ordinance authority for ecological thinning in the Cedar River Municipal Watershed.

The Cedar River Watershed is part of Seattle's source water supply system.

Here the Cedar River Watershed in green together with the South Rock Tolt Watershed provides more than 1.5 million customers with municipal water in Seattle and the surrounding urban areas.

And it's important to mention that both watersheds are owned and managed by the city.

The Cedar River watershed is managed primarily from municipal water supply under the Cedar River Habitat Conservation Plan and secondary use policies.

The HCP was approved in the year 2000 as the incidental take permit under the Endangered Species Act to allow the city to manage the Cedar River as a water supply system and to withdraw water from the Cedar River that is habitat to threatened Chinook salmon.

The HCP also provides regulatory certainty for Seattle's water supply, and it commits the city to a range of mitigation measures, including restoring upland and aquatic habitats for the benefit of fish and wildlife.

Part of that plan is a long-term forest restoration program that aims to restore old-growth forest habitat and biological diversity in previously harvested second-growth forests.

And that program protects existing old-growth forests and mature forests from logging.

It uses thinning of younger second-growth forests to promote the development of forest habitat.

And it uses planting to increase species diversity.

The benefit from thinning second-growth forests include a more diverse, productive wildlife habitat for many species.

It includes greater ecological resilience of watershed forests to disturbance.

It meets our regulatory requirements under the HCP.

And the sale of surplus logs can offset the cost of program implementation of the HCP.

The implementation of the thinning program costs approximately $80,000 annually, which are provided through the water fund.

And the estimated revenue from the sale of surplus logs from two proposed projects in 2021 and 2022 is estimated to be approximately $100,000 in total.

The map here on the slide shows the city ownership and the watershed.

And in purple, the two proposed projects for which we seek ordinance authority.

You can also see in green the two projects that were completed under the existing ordinance, which ends this year in 2020. I would also like to mention a few opportunities that this program provides, such as the opportunity to collaborate with the Muckleshoot Indian tribe on project design, The tribe has a strong interest in providing wildlife habitat and increasing biodiversity.

And the tribe has sent a letter of support to council that you should have received.

The program also supports our local and regional economy by employing local logging contractors and shipping forest stewardship council certified timber to regional mills.

And finally, we engage with the environmental community and other local stakeholder groups, neighboring landowners and scientists who are all interested in our land stewardship and forest restoration program.

Generally, this program finds broad support among our stakeholders.

The Sierra Club, for instance, has sent a letter of support for the program, for the projects which would be authorized under this ordinance.

So, to conclude, Seattle Public Utilities requests to extend the previously granted ordinance authority for ecological thinning and sale of surplus logs by an additional two years.

The authority would allow SPU to sell up to 3 million board feet of surplus logs from ecological thinning projects in the watershed.

The surplus logs are produced during thinning with ecological objectives and second growth forests.

The revenue from the sale of surplus logs will be deposited in the water fund to offset the cost of implementing the habitat conservation plan and its programs.

And we submit an annual report of these activities to city council.

And with that, thank you very much for the opportunity to present today and for considering our request.

Thank you very much, Ralph.

Colleagues, any comments or questions about this item number two?

Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you, Chair Peterson, and thank you to Rolfe for the presentation and for the work on this particular issue.

I am interested in, this isn't a question, but I'm hoping that the Chair will be willing to add to the record, particularly as it relates to the public hearing, the letters referenced by Rolfe that we received from the Sierra Club and from the Muckleshoot Tribe.

that indicate their position of support for this particular ordinance.

I just think that would be helpful for the public to know that we've done some of that stakeholder engagement and that the letters are a product.

of that work.

So if there would be a way to, and Council Central staff can let us know if there is, a way to make that part of the record that would come before the full City Council when we take final action, I would really encourage us to consider doing so.

Thank you, Council President.

Yes, we did receive the letter and what we potentially could do is attach it also to the agenda.

as a support item.

So we will make sure that happens.

This is today we had the public hearing, heard the item.

It is going to come back to committee on December 16. Maybe we can get it on the agenda for the committee as well.

But thank you.

That was a great idea.

I appreciate it.

Yes.

Councilmember Morales and then Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Rolf, for the presentation.

We have a lot of items on the agenda, and so I don't want to derail us too much.

But as somebody who is new to understanding how some of these processes work, I'm wondering if you could explain a little bit how those two purple areas were chosen as the places where the thinning would occur.

Certainly.

The areas chosen to support the development of late-seral forest habitat, and in particular, one of them is chosen to create connectivity between existing patches of well-functioning habitat.

Others are chosen to remove barriers to migration of wildlife, for instance, where we can improve habitat for that.

And typically, in forests that do not show very quick development of those habitat features that we are looking for.

So there is a landscape scale planning going on into this process, as well as a local forest and scale planning process going on.

Does that help?

Yeah, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Hermel.

that census scale on the number of board feet that is being reported as being sold is 3 million, a large amount.

How does that compare to previous years?

It compares relatively well on a project by project scale, depending on whether or not we have projects going on.

sell about per project roughly around a million board feet of logs.

Projects are located in very different forest conditions, so the volume amount changes dramatically with forest condition, but they compare with the previous projects that I've shown on the map in green, and the previous projects that we have run with council support in the past since 2003, I believe.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any more questions on this item?

I have two.

OK, well, we plan to vote on this item at the next committee meeting on December 16. Oh, yes.

I raised my hand a couple of times there.

Go ahead, please.

Thank you.

I just want to thank Rolf.

This was a great presentation.

The Cedar River watershed is an amazing asset to the city.

It's really great that we get to have good, clean drinking water without having to dam a canyon like San Francisco does with the Hetch Hetchy.

We know that the upland ecology directly contributes to our water quality that we are experiencing here in the city.

During my time in AmeriCorps, I got the opportunity to engage in forest management.

And so this presentation today brought me back to those days of working in the forest.

And it is really impressive to me to see us engage in a couple of different things.

Number one, returning us to a natural cycle in the forest.

We know that when old growth forests are cut down and second and third growth forests come back up.

We start with a very wide ground under canopy and then when they come back it's so much more dense and so this thinning gets us back to that natural cycle sooner.

As well as before fire suppression of the 1940s and 30s occurred, the fire cycle through our forests, kept our forests, the under canopy much more clear.

So it's really great to see us as the city leading by example.

And it clearly improves the canopy.

I've got a couple of questions.

I wanna see, make sure that this, can you confirm that this area was previously logged?

I heard you say it was second growth already.

Yes, I can confirm that the program only exists in previously harvested second-growth forests.

Excellent.

And no old-growth trees will be logged, correct?

No.

We don't manage in the existing old-growth forests, actually.

They're deed-restricted from any management after the exchange with the U.S.

Forest Service, and there's no management going on in those forests, except that we protect them from from disturbance as much as possible.

That makes complete sense.

And one thing that I learned that I did that wasn't necessarily clear to me from the outset when I was working in forest management is that in old growth forests, you have the upper canopy here.

And then the trees on the side of that canopy actually promote and contain that under canopy and protect it.

Can you confirm that that under canopy of the old growth forests will also not be undercut or?

Absolutely.

Our projects do sometimes work in the proximity of those forests, but we do try as much as we can to protect the integrity of the old growth forests because we know that the processes going on are very important to habitat development.

As much as we can, protection is important, but we also try to work only in the adjacent second growth forests to promote the connectivity between existing habitat patches if possible.

Thank you for the insights.

I'm quite excited.

Thank you for all your work.

Last question is, can you speak to how this changes our fire protection for our assets there?

And thank you so much, Paul, we'll let you take it from there.

In terms of fire protection for the assets, we have limited opportunities for a fire protection because of the wildland, the fire regime we experienced on the West Slope of the Cascades.

We propose to do very limited asset protection by creating dependable space and safe egress for firefighters.

But we do not on the landscape create change fuel conditions at this point, because the scientific consensus is that they are not effective on the west side of the Cascades as compared to other places in Washington, like the east side of the Cascades.

It's a very complex issue, but we have somebody working on these issues and developing and assessment of wildfire risk management.

Thanks for the interest.

Thank you so much, Raul.

Thank you.

All right, colleagues, we'll move on to the next nine items.

Item three, will the clerk please read item three into the record?

Item three is council bill 119956. an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities authorizing the general manager CEO of Seattle Public Utilities to execute an agreement with King County Fire Protection District 40 for fire protection and emergency medical services for certain city of Seattle water system properties in King County, Washington for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

General Manager Harrow, would you like to kick us off?

Thank you very much.

And I'd also really like to thank all of the council members for their stewardship and care of our watersheds.

Your protection of the watersheds is invaluable.

As it was just read, this next piece of legislation also involves the watershed and authorizes SPU to pay King County Fire Protection District 40 for fire protection for our buildings and also emergency medical services to our employees at our Lake Young's facility, which is between Renton and Maple Valley.

And Wiley Harper and Judith Cross are here to discuss the interlocal agreement for which we're seeking your approval.

Good morning.

I'm Wiley Harper.

I'll go ahead and share my screen.

And as Mami just introduced, this is requesting authorization of an interlocal agreement.

I should point out up front that this is a pre-existing agreement that was first established in 2004, providing an annual payment for fire and safety at Lake Young's and our control works facilities to Fire Protection District 40. For a bit of context and background setting, if you're not familiar with the location, I've got a map pulled up on the screen here showing location of Lake Youngs, just southeast of Renton.

Notably, as is described on the slide, it's the home base for SPU crews who support water supply between the Cedar River watershed in the city.

It's also the location of our treatment facility for the Cedar supply.

That treatment facility includes a host of different components, but importantly, chlorine gas, ozone, that in the event of an emergency, we would be reliant on Fire District 40 for support.

And ironically or not, we actually had some support come out last night for an issue with an ozone tank there.

These events don't occur frequently, but certainly when they do, we need their help.

I may also point out, just for folks who aren't aware, Going back to maybe a slide in an earlier presentation, Cedar Supply delivers water to about two-thirds of our customers, both in Seattle and wholesale.

So that's roughly a million customers receiving water that flows from this location.

Zooming in a bit on the area, Fire District 40 is located just north of Lake Youngs, as depicted on the map.

The first interlocal agreement was established in 2004. And about a year and a half ago, Fire District 40 approached SBU and said, gosh, you know, it's been a while.

We should relook at updating this agreement.

So that started at the beginning of 2019 and was negotiated between then and now.

I do expect that part of the motivation was an expectation that the annual cost would increase.

And as it turns out, the annual cost is less than what was established in 2004. And the basis for that is really the methodology of cost calculation being based on assessed tax value.

At the time period for the 2004 agreement, The assessed value was contingent on our treatment facility, which was just nearing completion.

The renewed assessed value is much lower currently than it was 16 years ago.

And bottom line, net savings for the city will be about $16,000 compared to the previous rate.

So this is fairly short and sweet, but that's the quick background.

I think it might be a bit more involved if it was a new agreement, but really we're looking for a renewal of something that's critical to support protection of our assets and our personnel at this location.

So I'll close out just by saying we're requesting renewal of this authorization and glad to field any questions.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Vice Chair Strauss, I see you.

Thanks, Chair Peterson for coming this time.

Great presentation, great work.

My one question is, is Lake Young open to the public or is it a secured facility?

It is a secured facility.

We do give some tours by permission for folks if they're interested in how the treatment process works, but no, it's a fenced area.

It actually is considered a watershed in its own right, small as it is, but the drainage around Lake Youngs and the area at that location is protected, owned and protected by the city.

Thank you.

Council members, any other comments or questions on item three?

Okay.

Thank you.

Council members, I now move the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119956, item three on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

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

Any final comments?

All right, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that the bill pass?

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five ayes.

All right, the motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent on to the December 7th full city council meeting.

Thank you to the presenters.

Will the clerk please read item four into the record?

Item four is council bill 119961, an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities authorizing the general manager and CEO of Seattle Public Utilities to acquire, accept, and record on behalf of the city of Seattle both temporary and permanent property rights from owners of property located along the alignment of the planned combined sewage conveyance and storage tunnel for the Ship Canal Water Quality Project.

Thank you.

And this is for a briefing discussion and possible vote today.

General Manager Parra, please.

Thank you.

Apologies, just need to get organized.

This last ordinance would authorize the utility to enter an agreement with WSDOT to operate and maintain stormwater facilities in South Seattle and transfer easement rights to WSDOT.

Is this?

This is incorrect.

I'm sorry.

I apologize.

That's okay.

Yeah, we're on the ship canal project, item four.

All right.

Yeah, I do apologize for this.

My notes are incorrect.

I am just going to pass this to the team to discuss with you, and apologies again.

Thank you.

Thanks, Mami.

This is Keith Ward.

I'm the project executive for the Ship Canal Water Quality Project.

Richard Fernandez is going to do the briefing, but I just wanted to set a little context for the council members.

The Ship Canal Water Quality Project is a half billion dollar joint project between the City of Seattle and King County to reduce over 75 million gallons of polluted stormwater and sewage, which annually flow into the ship canal from Lake Union, Gasworks Park, through to the Bowerd Locks.

So this is a mega project.

We are actively in construction right now on our storage tunnel project.

And about five years ago, we came to the council to seek ordinance approval for some property needed for the storage tunnel.

But there's other projects as part of this larger program.

And those projects are further in design and have more definition, which is why we're back here today to talk to you about some property rights for this project.

We realize that some of you may not be as very familiar with the project.

And it's been some time since we've done a project overview and update for this committee.

So we were talking with Council Member Peterson about possibly bringing this an overview of the project and an update on this really important water quality project early in 2021. So I did want to offer that up for you.

And of course, if you do have some questions today, feel free to ask those.

So I'm going to turn this over to Richard Fernandez, who is a project manager on our Ballard Conveyance Project as part of the program.

Richard.

Thanks Keith and yeah, our team is awesome on this project and like he mentioned, we'd be happy to come back and provide an update since it's been a while.

This briefing is really about this ordinance to authorize SPU property rights.

Let's see.

Trying to move it along.

So Keith just provided some background.

This this presentation basically includes, because it's kind of an array of different property rights, organize these into three buckets.

The first one being temporary construction easements that are related to future work in Ballard.

The second bucket is really just one single easement and that is for some city light infrastructure located at our Fremont site and that's to be able to site a permanent electrical vault in that location.

And then this third bucket is essentially kind of like other.

These are previously executed project-related easements or other property rights that are included in the bill to accept.

And then there's one existing easement that we're proposing to relinquish as part of this ordinance.

So these are some of the high-level numbers up on the screen, some of which Keith just mentioned.

The red stars on this map just show kind of where the property rights that are included in this bill, where they're located along the project alignment.

So it's kind of all over a smattering from Ballard to Fremont.

And again, that would authorize both temporary and permanent property rights related to the project.

So zooming into that Ballard area, I guess on the left, there's those kind of those red Those red areas are the actual easement locations.

The first one, again, is temporary and is required because our project needs to replace a side sewer.

So there's a property there near the intersection of 56th Street and 20th Avenue Northwest that we'll need to get either an easement or another property agreement to be able to construct on private property just in that driveway area.

The second location in Ballard is a small parking lot that's triangular shape near Schill Scholl and actually identified as Leary Avenue there.

But I believe that's Schill Scholl.

So Schill Scholl is the 24th.

And that's a really small portion of that parking lot that's needed to build a permanent maintenance hole that's I did in the right away.

So the structure itself will be cited in the right away permanently.

There's just a temporary property to be able to construct that maintenance whole safely.

As it's kind of near the edge of that right away.

So again, zooming in again on the left, that red area shows that driveway location where that side sewer is going to be impacted by the project.

We're going to be building a lot of infrastructure right at this intersection.

So that cluster of parcels around that red box are all the properties that are impacted by that one side sewer.

So it's 11, it's a townhome complex.

And so there's 11 properties that are impacted by that one side sewer.

And then on the right, there's that really small strip of property that's owned by Pacific Fishermen that we need to use to be able to dig a large shaft right at that location kind of where those cars are next to that box.

You can see that close.

Onto that second bucket and it's really just one easement.

As part of the project we need to build some city light infrastructure that includes an electrical vault.

And because this area is so congested with utilities there's really nowhere within the street to be able to site this this large vault.

So the project is going to be constructing it in that parking lot.

On the upper photo, upper right, it shows the two parcels that are included in the bill.

The actual vault will be located on that larger parcel.

This parcel in this parking lot is encumbered by this smaller parcel, though, that's just on the other side of this alley from this parking area.

And they have a parking easement for this For this area so so that's why it's also included in the easement that property is not actually being impacted, but their their parking agreement or easement is.

And then that last kind of bucket that other bucket is previously executed I guess one through four are all previously executed so there's.

an Army Corps easement for a pipeline right away under the ship canal.

And that's connecting that Queen Anne that's just off the photo here, but our Queen Anne to our Fremont site.

And number two on the map there shows a previously issued permit for replacement of the 24th Avenue Northwest Pier.

Three is in Fremont, that same larger property, we are proposing a temporary access easement during construction because we'll have some road closures in the way and I'll show you in a graphic what that looks like in a second.

And then that number four is another small temporary construction easement that's needed at that East Ballard site.

And then number five is kind of the other of the others in that it's an existing easement located on our Ballard site for Milwaukee Terminal Railway Company.

They no longer operate, and it's really a way to unencumber this property from this easement.

So this is a zoom-in aerial for all of those that I just mentioned.

So here on the top left is that pipeline right-of-way easement issued by the Army Corps.

Number two, here's that 24th Avenue pier.

Number three, here's that temporary access easement that's needed during construction will be closing.

So this is in Fremont.

just along Leary in between 1st and 2nd Avenue Northwest.

And so anyway, so this is kind of like a drive-through temporary access easement because we'll be closing down 1st Avenue and this will be the only way to really facilitate deliveries and solid waste pickup in this area through this driveway so we can get out of this without getting boxed in.

Number four is a small property temporary construction easement at the corner of 11th and 45th.

It's needed for construction.

And then number five there is that existing easement that goes through that city-owned property from Shoal Shoal Avenue to the water's edge there that's no longer being used.

So that's included in the bill to relinquish property rights.

And that's it.

For anybody listening, I highly encourage you to check out our website, project website.

Like I said, there's a lot going on in the project, and we'd love to get you back to brief you all on that.

Thank you very much.

And we probably will have you come back at another committee meeting.

And one of the benefits of Council President putting the Seattle Public Utilities and City Light and SDOT all on one committee is I know these mega projects do involve collaboration with SDOT, with City Light.

And so please do let us know if you ever need us to help with that coordination, because we know there's a lot going on here with this important environmental project.

Sorry, Keith, did you want to say something?

Yeah, Richard, can you just for a second, can you talk about engagement with folks real quick on these?

I think that's an important note for the committee to know about the engagement and communication with people.

Right, so for the engagement related to the items on this on this on this bill.

We've reached out we've kind of spent the past couple months briefing all of those town homeowners it's it's it can be kind of a challenge getting ahold of people when you don't have an email for them, for example, so.

We sent out a couple of certified letters and then we reached out for, you know, asking folks to reach out to us.

Then when we got contact information, we provided briefings to I believe seven out of the 11 of those town homeowners.

And I know two of them do not live in that town complex.

So in general, they're all supportive.

They understand the need, you know, the intent of that briefing was to really tell them the why.

And then we've been in talks with Pacific Fisherman, who's the owner of that triangle property near 24th and Shilshul.

And similarly, he doesn't see it as a major impact to his operations.

So I think there's support there.

And then At the other properties located along the alignment, you know, some of these relationships have been built over multiple years.

So at Fremont especially, and then at the Ballard or East, what we call the East Ballard site at 11th to 45th, there's been, you know, direct coordination and communication going on with the property owner there.

Thank you.

Council Codd.

Any questions or comments?

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair, for indulging me in all of my comments and questions.

I just want to compliment the team, Keith and Richard, because the majority of this project is right in my district.

I am consistently and constantly asking long lists of questions.

And your team, Keith, you and Richard are answering them with incredible depth.

I really appreciate your robust briefings.

comment that you prompted, Keith, you mentioned.

And what this presentation shows is that this is a technical, political, and outreach-intensive project, as well as this is another example of SPU protecting our environment.

I'm not going to go through the long list of questions that I asked the team in my briefing, because I want to be respectful of colleagues' time, just to say a great briefing, and thank you all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any other questions or comments about this item?

Council Member Herbold.

Sorry about that.

Just wanting to check on the issue related to the budget for this project, specifically the confidence rating.

I think last time we checked, it was at 65% confidence for the $570 million budget.

We're still at that level of confidence.

Councilmember Herbold, you have such a memory, yes.

And that'll be part of our overview.

But yes, we, mega projects, costs are always challenging.

We have done some really good work to keep our confidence at at least 65% on our $570 million project.

So we are holding steady.

I would like it to be higher.

And we are continuing to keep working on that.

Thank you, Keith.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

And I believe this project is on our watch list as well, our capital projects watch list.

So thank you for creating that watch list with your colleagues before I got here.

So any other comments or questions on this?

Okay, Council Members, I will now move that the committee recommend passage of this Council Bill 119961, item four on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

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

Any final comments?

All right.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that this bill pass?

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Councilmember Herbold?

Yes.

Councilmember Morales?

Yes.

Councilmember Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

5, yes.

Great.

Thank you.

The motion carries.

And the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the December 7 City Council meeting.

All right, colleagues, let's move on to item 5. Will the clerk please read the short title of item 5 into the record?

Item 5 is Council Bill 119963. It is an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities updating water regulations to conform to current standards, making technical corrections, amending numerous sections of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you.

And this is for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this item 5 regarding the water regulations has a lot of detail in it.

So we'll hear the item today, ask questions, and we'll have the item come back for a vote on December 16. Seattle Public Utilities is already aware of that.

So we'll turn it over to General Manager Hera again.

Thank you very much.

I just want to note that parts of the city's water code were originally adopted in 1893 and 1935. So this bill would revise outdated and inconsistent terminology and practices and provide greater clarity for our public and SPU staff.

These revisions don't impact SPU's budget, and I'm I'm happy to introduce Michelle Lang from SPU's Development Services Office and Deputy Director of our Project Delivery Branch, Keri Burchard-Juarez, to brief you on this legislation.

Hi, I'm Keri Burchard-Juarez.

So this item, as Mami said, is seeking to update portions of the code that govern how customers connect to the water distribution system.

And so we're talking about residential and commercial customers.

You know, this is pretty high-level language.

The detailed language that dictates the requirements for connecting to the water system are included in the director's rule, which is called Water 440. So at the same time that we're seeking these updates, we are updating Water 440 as well.

And it outlines the more specific requirements for each type of development.

These updates are primarily cleanup updates, getting rid of outdated language.

There is one substantive change that addresses unit lot subdivisions on corner lots.

So this is a very specific type of development.

And we're clarifying what the requirements are when a developer takes a corner lot and subdivides it into unit lots.

And so I'm going to turn it over to Michelle Longa, and she's going to go through the details of that.

Thank you very much, everybody.

So I'm going to move on.

So like has been mentioned, there's a lot of detail in this code updates.

I'm trying to highlight what we thought were the major ones that would be the most impactful and received We have not received any comments during the SEPA process, so that's good news.

So one thing we did, and this is really important, we added a new section and right now there's existing gaps between our regulations.

King County and the Department of Ecology or in certain situations you can actually still.

For new development, dig a drinking water well instead of connecting to our system.

like was mentioned in the previous presentations, we have an amazing water supply here and there's no reason that people should be getting their water from drinking water wells.

So this will close that gap.

It doesn't come up often, but I've seen it once in 10 years.

This next one, number two, is what Carrie was previously mentioning.

And what the code actually does is it doesn't specifically talk about unit lots and corners, but it gives the authority to SPU to under the director's role that Carrie mentioned to make that determination.

So these are little, they're pretty detailed and technical.

Now some things we just have old language right now.

It says you can connect one service per house.

That's not, that has never been our practice.

It's one water service per parcel.

Because we want to build the parcel owner and not each house.

That would be impossible for us to do, and it also matches how solid waste is built as well.

We changed the definition of an inactive service right now, a water service.

Right now it's based on the years.

So if a water service is more than 15 years old, we deem it inactive.

It hasn't been used for 15 years.

Instead, we'd rather base it on the type of material.

There's some material that can last longer than 15 years and still be viable, and there's some that will last less than 15 years.

not be viable, so we're making that distinction here.

We also have a gap right now where we let customers decide if they want a meter removal or a water retirement.

So when people just remove a water meter, the existing water service is still there.

What can happen is we've seen water theft, which is amazing to me when I learn people steal water, but they do.

It degradates the water service pipe.

And it causes undetected water leaks and also leaves us with kind of what we call blind services that we don't really know what is happening with those services.

So this makes it our decision.

If you're just going away for six months and want to remove your meter we in most cases we aren't going to allow that and we don't anyway.

So these are just some really old regulations we have right now.

The city's right to shut off water.

Right now it says at any time without notice.

That's not typically our procedure unless there's an emergency.

We let people know we're going to shut off their water when that happens.

Use of fire hydrants.

So right now we we allow people to temporarily use fire hydrants for projects such as, you know, construction where they might need to wet down the site for dust control and stuff like that.

What we did was remove some of the outdated process from the ordinance because we have a director's rule that that speaks specifically to it, and that's just for SP's inspection side.

We updated this violation penalty we currently have that was established in 1935. Currently the violation for.

Uhm?

The penalty for violating anything in the water code is $100 which is not much of a deterrent.

So with the help of the city attorney's office we're changing that to the standard for a gross misdemeanor.

Our intent is not to ever use this but just for it to be a little more of a deterrent for people so they don't decide they just want to go make a tap in the street without calling us first.

And lastly right now The code says that we will notify people.

Again, of water shut off through a newspaper.

Through the newspaper and instead, you know what we do is door tags and hopefully in the future will even do something better than that, like have outage maps and stuff.

So this is just updating that language.

Again, not controversial.

So that's the end of the major updates.

Anybody has any questions?

Thank you.

Thank you.

The way you presented that was very clear with that table.

So it's much appreciated.

And colleagues, any comments or questions about these water regulation changes?

I do have a quick question for the team at SPU.

When you're updating water regulations that impact additional residential construction, do you typically run that by the, do you run the changes by the fire marshal or the fire department just to get them to sign off on anything regarding fire suppression needs that they might have?

Do you want me to answer that, Carrie?

Yes, please, Michelle.

OK.

You know, we work in close collaboration with the fire department, the fire departments all the time, because we don't.

It's not just Seattle, it's the other ones, Shoreline and Burien.

For this, we didn't explicitly talk with them because there's nothing in here that impacts what they're looking at when they're doing their fire regulations for new construction.

In our meetings with them, what their biggest concern is that Buildings can be properly sprinkled.

So if that requires a bigger water service or even an upgrade to a main, we'll ensure that happens.

We're not going to let somebody have a substandard water to their property.

But in some regards, you know, so for them, sprinkling is the first line of defense because it saves lives.

For us, we're really concerned with hydrant spacing.

That's their second favorite thing because it saves buildings but not necessarily lives.

None of these changes will impact that.

But the bottom line is, in general, we enforce the fire department's requirements for the water system.

And we have a close relationship with them where we understand what it is that they're looking for, and we make sure that we require that.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any other questions about this item, item five?

No?

Yeah, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you.

Just to say that, Michelle, I really appreciated the briefing that you gave me.

I think we spent about a half of an hour asking, going back and forth, understanding all of these, what can seem to be immense changes that we're making.

In reality, from our briefing, I understand that these are clearly technical in nature and mostly just updating our codes in an important fashion to ensure that you're able to do your work without being encumbered by outdated policies that don't really make any more sense.

So I just really wanted to thank you for taking the briefing and the half of an hour of questions that I peppered you with and the great answers that you gave me.

I won't take my colleagues' time right now just to say that I'd be comfortable answering those questions.

You are voting on this at this time, but happy to follow the chair's lead.

I knew the sun would hit me right at my turn.

I'm sorry.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

And so colleagues, this item will come back for a vote in two weeks, and we'll get it moving from there.

So I appreciate SPU coming and giving us this initial presentation.

And we can move on to item six on our agenda.

Go ahead.

Clerk, please read item six into the record.

Item six is Council Bill 119962. an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities authorizing the General Manager and Chief Executive Officer of Seattle Public Utilities to enter into a stormwater facility construction and maintenance agreement with the state of Washington for a briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

General Manager Hera, you are the star of the show today.

Please.

Finally, the stormwater Ordinance.

So this would, as was read, authorize us to enter an agreement with WSDOT to operate and maintain a stormwater facility in South Seattle and transfer easement rights to WSDOT.

And Sabda Mondesi is our stormwater program manager or a stormwater program manager with the Drainage and Wastewater Line of Business, and he'll brief you on this legislation.

Thank you so much for your attention to this.

Good morning.

Thank you, Mami, for the introduction.

I'm going to share the presentation here.

Again, I'm Sahba Mohendisi with the Capital Portfolio Management section of the Drainage Wastewater Line of Business at SPU.

Okay, as Mami pointed out, SPU seeking authorization to enter into an operation and maintenance agreement with WSDOT and to give WSDOT easement rights for WSDOT to be able to maintain their existing drainage system on the SPU property.

Together oriented, This slide shows I-5 just north of the south city limit on the screen.

The north is to the right.

On the west side of the freeway, there are two water quality facilities labeled Washtuck Pond and SPU Pond.

In 1993, SPU purchased property along I-5, just north of Boeing Access Road, for SPU and WSDOT drainage projects.

Both agencies built drainage facility on the SPU property.

The agencies agreed to enter into an operation maintenance agreement for the drainage facilities.

They also agreed that SPU would grant WSDOT property rights again for WSDOT to be able to maintain its system on the SPU property.

The operation and maintenance agreement was negotiated over the past couple of years, and it includes the property right transfer to WSDOT for a nominal one-time fee of $6,100 payable to the city.

And SBU requests the city council authorize the new interagency agreement.

If there are any questions.

Thank you for that.

presentation, and colleagues, any questions about this item, item six?

Council Member Strauss, do you have a question?

I mean, I asked all my questions in my briefing.

This is just such a straightforward transfer.

Saba, thank you so much for your presentation and your work on this.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any final questions here or comments about the sign-ups?

Council Member Herbold.

Sorry, this may have been covered.

I'm just looking at the fiscal note, and I don't see whether or not the state is paying SPU for the easement, and if so, how much?

SPU is receiving $6,100 from the state for the exchange.

Thank you.

Sure.

Colleagues, any other questions or comments?

Council President Gonzalez.

Yeah, usually in these ordinances, it indicates where any sort of revenue is going in terms of a fund, a special dedicated fund.

Is that the case here?

And if so, where will the funds that you just described be parked?

My understanding is that it goes into the general fund, but I'm not quite certain of that.

I'll be happy to dig into it and respond to that question.

Judith, if you're here, maybe you can answer that question.

Yes, good morning everyone.

I'm, I'm still on the line.

So, when we receive funds from our counterparts that we've developed agreements for the drainage and wastewater fund is the fund that would receive the payment.

So, it's actually considered general fund as far as the city is concerned, but it's actually a revenue account in the drainage and wastewater fund.

Great, thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Council President.

Any other questions on this item six?

All right, Council Members, I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119962, item six on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

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

Any final comments?

All right.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that this bill pass?

Council President Gonzales.

Aye.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Chair Peterson.

Yes.

Five yes, no no's.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the December 7 City Council meeting.

Will the clerk please read item 7 into the record.

Item seven is Council Bill 119953, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department accepting various easements for overhead and underground electrical rights in King County, placing said easements under the jurisdiction of the City Light Department and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

And do we have General Manager Smith with us?

Indeed, we do.

Thank you.

Council member Peterson.

We're happy to be here this morning.

We have 2 action items, but 1 PowerPoint, and these are housekeeping items.

So, my, my team that's with us today is Tom who is our environmental officer and for city light.

Real estate is part of our environmental licensing and real estate real property business unit.

Bill Devereaux, who actually manages or is the director in charge of the real property and environmental group underneath Tom's, in Tom's organization, And Greg Sandswich, who I just love.

I like to tell people about him because he comes from Sound Transit.

He worked there when I've been here a little over two years.

He joined City Light, I think shortly after me.

Then he left because Sound Transit created the perfect job for him.

And then he came back to us.

So we're super happy to have him.

And he's actually going to be doing our presenting today.

Well, we have our two routine bundled easement ordinances that we'll be asking for your approval of.

One is on distribution easements, and the other is platted easements.

And I'm going to turn it over to Greg at this time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Deborah.

Such great and warm remarks.

And good morning.

We also have Maura.

Maura Brugger is also here.

Yes.

Let me share my screen here real quick, and there we go.

Good morning, Chair Patterson and members of the committee.

Thank you for your time this morning.

The first item, number seven, Council Bill 119953, is the acceptance of 60 easements necessary for the distribution of our electric services.

These are needed any time city lights infrastructure crosses over private property.

By way of example, If you look at the presentation, the lower left-hand corner, there's an arrow pointing to what would be a power line serving a property.

Where the power line crosses an additional property, it's not serving.

That's where the easement would be required.

These are administrative in nature.

They are typically driven by altered or new service within our service area, and they cover our nine franchise service areas.

that can be either overhead or underground or a combination of both depending on the nature of service we're providing to that customer.

And the second item we have are for what we call platted easements.

These capture all the easements necessary anytime a property is short platted or subdivided into different lots.

And this allows us access to serve the properties within that subdivision and also ensures that proper electrical service is provided to those homes.

or commercial properties, whatever the situation may be.

And these ordinances for our distribution easements package, we have 60 easements captured.

And for our platted easements, there are 531, which is reflective of the growing real estate market over the last year.

And with that, we seek your acceptance.

Thank you, Greg.

And I know since we've switched over to City Light from SPU, Eric McConaghy from Central Staff, if you had any comments, please feel free to give us those now, and then I'll ask colleagues for questions or comments.

Chair Peterson, this is Dan Eder with Central Staff.

Out of a maybe unnecessary abundance of caution, I'm staffing this issue instead of Eric McConaghy.

It just so happens that Mr. McConaghy owns property that is related to one of the several hundred easements that this bill affects.

So I have authored a memo that Eric distributed on my behalf to you summarizing, basically stating that central staff hasn't identified any policy issues related with this.

And we are available to track any questions that you may have.

Thank you for that reminder, for being transparent about that and doing the work on that too.

Appreciate it, Director Eder.

Colleagues, any questions or comments on this item 7?

And this PowerPoint also, I believe, covers item 8. But we'll take questions on item 7 and then vote.

I'm not seeing any comments or questions on this item 7. So we're going to go ahead and move to a vote.

I move the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119953, item seven on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

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

Any final comments?

All right.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation that this bill pass?

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

And Chair Peterson.

Yes.

Five yes.

Thank you.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the December 7th City Council meeting.

Will the clerk please read item eight into the record.

Item eight is Council Bill 11991. 5.4, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department accepting various easements for overhead and underground electrical rights in King County, placing said easements under the jurisdiction of the City Light Department and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

General Manager Smith, any comments?

I think you referenced this already, but please.

Nope, no additional comments.

Thank you, sir.

OK.

Director Eder, anything on this?

Probably not.

Just checking.

So colleagues, any questions on this item 8?

OK.

So council members, I'd like to move passage of item 8, Council Bill 119954. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

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

Any final comments?

All right.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that this bill pass?

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

No.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five yes.

Great, the motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the December 7 City Council meeting.

Colleagues, we're on item eight or item nine.

Will the clerk please read item nine into the record?

Item nine is resolution 31980. a resolution granting conceptual approval to construct, install, maintain, and operate below-grade private utility lines under and across Roy, west of 8th North, Dexter Avenue North, north of Mercer, Roy Street west of Dexter, and the alley north of Mercer, west of Dexter, south of Roy, and east of Aurora, as proposed by McKinstry Company, LLC, for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you, and I see we've got a central staff, Lish Whiston here.

Lish, do you want to provide any opening remarks as our central staff?

Sure.

Very briefly, I think the title of the resolution tells you what it's about, but the code states that the council should consider whether this resolution is in the public interest and whether there is no reasonable alternative and considering whether or not to approve it.

And I think I'll hand it over to Estat and McKinstry to describe it, the proposal in more detail.

Hello, council members.

My name is Amy Gray, and I work for the Seattle Department of Transportation in the Street Use Division.

Thank you for your time today on this busy agenda to bring this project for your consideration.

Next slide.

So as the ordinance or the resolution title in English Explained, McKinstry is seeking a new permit for these lines, and the map shows in the purple lines where they're located on this block.

These utility lines, the extracted waste heat from King County wastewater will be distributed via the utility lines between the three buildings located at 601 Dexter Avenue North, 701 Dexter Avenue North, and 800 Mercer Street.

SDOT is recommending approval for this term permit resolution.

Term permits are for significant structures in the right-of-way and for long-term encroachments in the right-of-way.

they require council action because they're for typically 30 years.

The first step is where we're at today, which is the resolution.

It brings to you the concept for you to approve or deny if you choose the private use of the RIRAE and establish the terms and conditions that will be brought forth to you in the ordinance.

The step two is the ordinance, which is the actual permit.

And it has all the technical information, inspection reports, fees, insurance, indemnification, and a remove and restoration clause if the area is determined needed for transportation purposes.

I'm going to turn it over to Brad from McKinstry for the next two slides.

Great, thank you, Amy and good morning council members and anybody else listening in just to maybe provide a little bit more detail about what we're proposing to do here.

We are proposing to tap actually, there's a.

Very large King county regional sewer main that runs under Dexter Avenue.

And it's a very large line.

It's about an eight foot diameter line.

So what we'd be doing is tapping that line.

We've been working a lot with the county on this.

This is something they have really sought to do for many years, and they actually have just recently passed an ordinance.

And so what we'll be doing is tapping that main and then collecting the effluent in a side, what we call a wet well.

It's basically a vault.

There, the effluent is processed and will be run through a set of heat exchangers.

Um, the affluent, you know, why the heck are we doing this?

The affluent is actually fairly warm.

And so during the winter, uh, you know, the affluent actually is still in.

People are taking showers, all that stuff.

And that's basically waste heat that is flushed out into the Puget Sound at West Point right now.

And so what we'll be doing is collecting that, and then it'll go through the heat exchanger.

Then there'll be actually just a water-based circulation loop.

That's what the subject of the term permit is actually is for that circulation loop.

That'll be providing that, basically that pre-warmed water, it'll be in the 60 degree And then the individual buildings will use heat pumps to then lift that temperature all the way up to the desired temperature in the 120, 130 degree range.

That's basically the technology in a nutshell.

There's obviously a lot more detail than that, but that's a summary.

I will add that it is a tested technology, but it is not well known in North America in particular.

There's probably, I would say, maybe 60 to 70 of these types of systems worldwide.

Most of them are in Europe.

There is a very large system similar to this one in Vancouver, BC, that was built as part of the Olympic Village.

But this system will actually be quite a large one for a sewage heat recovery system.

It'll probably be one of the top two or three in the world, size-wise.

You can see the benefits here.

I won't read them to you, but what we're essentially doing is taking waste heat that otherwise would be dumped into the Puget Sound and turning it into something beneficial.

Yeah, I'll hand it back to Amy.

I'm happy to answer any questions at the end.

Thank you.

So this just shows a larger map of the area in South Lake Union.

And on the final slide, we're seeking council adoption for this resolution.

Again, it provides conceptual approval to the developer so that they have some confidence going forward with the technical drawings that council generally supports the project.

If the resolution is adopted by council, we, I will, and SDOT will prepare the term permit ordinance later in 2021 to bring forward to you for your consideration as well.

That ordinance is the permit and it gives the final approval.

And from then on the ordinance, the first, this ordinance, first term of this ordinance will be in place till 2036 within a one more renewable 15 year term to, So I can't do the math in my head, sorry.

2051, I guess, so.

And thank you for your time, and we're here for questions.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any questions for central staff, SDOT, or for the applicants?

We appreciate the explanation of the technology, and it sounds It's good to have this coming here so that we can see how it works.

And thank you for explaining that.

It is working elsewhere.

And we appreciate your bringing this to us.

Lish, did you have any final comments on this to add to your memo?

No, thank you.

Okay.

And so, colleagues, again, this is just the resolution to get this started, and then we'll still have another shot to discuss it further at the ordinance stage.

Colleagues, before we vote on this resolution, any final comments?

Okay.

Thank you to Amy and Brad and Lish.

Thank you.

All right, council members, I move that the committee recommend adoption of resolution 31980, which is item nine on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, it's been moved and seconded to recommend adoption of this resolution.

Any final comments?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation that this resolution be adopted?

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Chair Peterson.

Yes.

Five yes votes.

Motion carries and the committee recommendation for the resolution be adopted will be sent to the December 7th City Council meeting.

Thanks to everybody who presented.

We're going to move on to item 10. Will the clerk please read item 10 into the record.

Item 10 is Council Bill 11959, an ordinance imposing a revenue measure of 0.15% sales and use tax for transportation purposes as authorized by Seattle voters at the November 3rd, 2020 election, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts for a briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

Again, this is Council Bill 119959, and we've got a presentation from SDOT, and we're obviously very excited that voters overwhelmingly approve this, and this is part of the implementation phase.

So we're gonna hear from Bill Laborde from SDOT and his team.

Just wanted to see if central staff wants to have any introductory comments.

I think Calvin Chow's on.

Morning, council members.

I don't have any introductory comments at this time.

Okay, thank you.

ESTA, please take it away.

Thank you, council members.

My name is Bill LaBoard.

I'm with the Seattle Department of Transportation and like Seattle City Light, I have a couple different housekeeping bills that are related to both the closeout of the current STBD and the startup of the new one that was just approved by voters.

Next slide, please.

So the first bill, that I'm going to talk about, and I think it's the second one you're going to vote on, or hopefully vote on, is a bill authorizing a six-month extension of our current agreement with Metro to deliver bus service.

And we just need a short extension of that MOA or authority to extend that MOA.

So we can just finish paying for the current service change period that started in September and ends in March.

And then the bill that is up before you right now would implement the sales tax measure that was just passed by voters on November 3rd.

Next slide, please.

So just a quick timeline of the STBD.

close out and start up with the new measure.

As you know, the voters approved the measure on November 3rd.

You authorized spending authority for the new measure with the 21 budget, and King County certified the election results last Tuesday, I believe.

And And we're here on December 2 with these two bills in front of you.

The current Seattle Transportation Benefit District measure that was approved by voters in November 2014 expires December 31. So the $60 VLF will go away.

And actually, the 0.1% sales tax that's currently collected will go away as well.

We'll start up the new measure with the spring service change that Metro brings in March 20th, and April 1, Department of Revenue will start collecting the sales tax.

Next slide, please.

So the six-month extension of the current MOA with Metro, We established this to expire when you approved it in February 2015. We had set up the agreement to expire at the end of this year at the same time that the current STBD does.

And we, just because of the way the service change period works with the change at Metro in twice a year, March and September, we just need a short extension of this agreement so we can just close that out and continue paying for current service for the first three months of 2021. And by taking the agreement to June, it just gives us a little bit more time to just do the housekeeping and reconciliation and completely close out that agreement.

Next slide, please.

And then the sales tax implementation, this is really a formality as well as it was approved overwhelmingly by voters.

Once you pass this measure, implementing the sales tax, the city sends, I believe it's CBO that sends notice to the Department of Revenue, and then they go into here to start collecting that sales tax as of April 1. That's really all I have for these two measures.

Any questions?

Thank you, Bill.

And thanks for combining those in your PowerPoint, even though we'll vote on them separately today, just so we can see that comprehensive picture here.

Colleagues, any questions on item 10, which is just implementing the 0.15% that the voters approved?

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I just want to highlight one of the recitals.

I think it's intended to be clear in the resolution, but I want to just uplift the language in the measure that council adopted earlier this year as it relates to the service hours.

And previously, we had limited service hours on King County Metro lines that have more than 65% of stops within Seattle.

Um, but, uh, the council, uh, also added, uh, King County Metro operated routes serving historically low-income communities in Seattle.

Um, and I know, um, on the borders, the southern and northern borders, um, there are, uh, several lines, um, uh, notably for-for, uh, me in, uh, district 1 both in South Park and in West Seattle.

And I just want to clarify that that is the understanding moving forward.

The recital refers to low-income communities, but I just want to make sure that we are not limiting allocation to routes with more than 65% of stops within Seattle.

No, absolutely not.

And we'll be back to this committee probably around February to one of your February meetings to talk about the new service plan and spend plan for the new measure.

We'll also have a new agreement with Metro to bring before you, but we'll be talking about We'll be doing a racial equity toolkit to look at where those needs are between now and early next year.

And that will help guide where those investments are.

But we definitely plan on investing both on routes that meet that 65% threshold and ones that don't, that serve areas like South Park and Georgetown now more than ever.

Much appreciated.

Thank you.

Council members, any other questions about this item 10 about the sales tax?

All right, council members.

I'm going to go ahead and move the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119959, item 10 on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

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

Any final comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that this bill pass?

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five yes.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the December 7th City Council meeting.

Now we're gonna have the clerk, even though Bill addressed a lot of this already, we're gonna have the clerk Read item 11 into the record.

Item 11 is Council Bill 119960, an ordinance regarding the Transit Service Funding Agreement with King County, authorizing the Director of the Seattle Department of Transportation to execute an amendment to the agreement extending the term to June 30, 2021, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

And colleagues, just so you're aware, there is a technical amendment that I will move after we discuss this item.

The technical amendment was published on the agenda.

And I know sometimes we say it's technical and you want to make sure it really is technical.

It is.

It's changing years 2020 to the years 2021. And then it's also updating the signature page for the current director of King County Metro, Terry White.

So Calvin Chow is here again from central staff.

Calvin, are there any items or any just things you want to discuss about this item regarding the six-month extension?

No, they are nothing to add.

OK.

And Bill from SDOT, is there anything that you wanted to add to the presentation you already did?

Yeah, I just think the one thing I'll add is that King County Council just authorized the extension of this contract themselves right before they went into budget.

And so we're bringing it to you right as you're coming out of budget.

Great.

Colleagues, any questions or comments about this six-month extension of the agreement with King County Metro?

Council Member Herbold.

I think I'm probably just asking the obvious.

I assume that there will be a separate agreement needed to implement the levy adopted by the voters that will cover the period of time after June 20th, 2021?

Correct.

Yeah, we'll, as I mentioned before, we'll bring an agreement to you in February that would go into effect by that March service change date.

Got it, by the March service change date.

Correct, yeah.

So there's about three months of overlap just to allow us to handle administrative tasks and closing out this one.

Got it, okay, thank you so much.

All right, council members, any other questions before we go through a couple of motions here to get the substitute or the amendment in there?

Okay, council members, I move that a committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119960, which is item 11 on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

And with the comments, I would like to, are there any comments before I move the amendment one?

Okay, so I'd like to move, that we amend, I move that we amend Council Bill 119960 as shown on amendment one.

Is there a second?

Second.

Great, and as I mentioned, this amendment number one is to fix a couple of dates and also to put in Terry White, the new King County Metro Director.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 119960. Are there any comments on the amendment?

All right, will the clerk please call the roll on the amendment?

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five votes.

Yes.

All right, the motion carries and the council bill is amended.

Any comments on the council bill as amended?

Okay, just to be sure, I'm gonna move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119960 as amended.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thanks, it's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of this amended bill.

Any final comments?

All right, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that the council bill be passed as amended?

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five yes votes.

Motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended will be sent to the December 7 City Council meeting.

Item 12 is the last item on our agenda.

Colleagues, will the clerk please read item 12 into the record.

Item 12 is Resolution 31981. A resolution relating to the Seattle Department of Transportation authorizing the director to act as the authorized representative agent on behalf of the city of Seattle and to legally bind the city of Seattle with respect to certain projects for which the city seeks grant funding assistance managed through the Recreation and Conservation Office for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thanks.

This is another SDOT item.

Calvin from Central Staff, if you have any introductory comments, please.

I think Bill has a presentation that will go over a lot of the detail.

I just wanted to remind, well, I just wanted to say that this is a grant source that SDOT is kind of infrequently uses.

It is really more focused on recreational types of uses.

So it is much more of a grant source that the parks department has used traditionally.

So you may have seen these types of requests come through some of the other committees, but it's fairly infrequent for SDOT.

Thank you.

Okay, we'll turn it over to SDOT, Mr. Laborde.

Again, Bill Laborde from Seattle Department of Transportation, and as Cal mentioned, this is a a kind of resolution that, and Shauna, next slide, please, a kind of resolution that you're used to seeing from primarily parks.

I think it's probably been at least five years, if not longer, since SDOT has brought one of these resolutions to you.

But the Recreation and Conservation Office does require a council resolution be passed to finalize a grant application.

And the primary reason that they do that, and you'll see this in the attachment that includes the sample agreement, is I think a lot of smaller jurisdictions especially are not used to the idea that when they get a grant like this, they are in perpetuity setting aside that property for permanent recreational use.

It is something I think our Parks Department and especially SDOT does all the time with grants where we get a grant for a transportation project and we do often set it aside, the underlying property as right-of-way or some other transportation use in perpetuity.

And that's exactly what this is doing here is just acknowledging that the city accepts that responsibility.

And for the underlying project and the grant itself is a project that you're very familiar with from The budget deliberations that just ended and it's we're requesting just over $900,000 for the trail segment specifically on the flume property.

that's been held by Seattle City Light for decades and would be transferred to parks, primarily as an off-leash area, but the trail segment through there would be held by SDOT as part of the trail.

Next slide, please.

And again, very familiar, you see pictures before and after images of the flume property here.

And I don't believe it's a fully designed image that you're seeing below, but it's a representation of how the trail and the off-leash area will be shared within this property.

Next slide, please.

Here's just another view of the location of the flume property.

And next slide, please.

And this is just more of a representation of the different trail segments and how the flume property, pretty much in the middle of the image on the right, the map on the right, how it will go through that property and extend between the two communities.

And that's all I have, if you have any questions.

Thank you, Bill.

Any questions, especially from the council members whose districts this will positively impact?

Council Member Morales.

I don't have any questions.

I just want to thank you, Bill, for showing some more examples of what this trail could be.

And you're right, it is not fully designed yet, but it's going to be a really important link between two communities that are eager to have a connection.

And I want to thank you for helping explain how this grant process will work as well.

Councilmembers, any other comments or questions before we vote on this resolution?

Last item on our agenda.

Okay.

Councilmembers, I'd like to move the committee recommended adoption of resolution 31981, item 12 on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Great.

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

Any final comments?

All right.

Well, oh, Councilmember Herbold.

Yes.

I'm just interested to know, when might we get a little bit more information about schedule?

Considering the additional funding that the council provided in the budget process, just wondering and hoping that those additional funds can sort of turbo boost implementation schedule.

You know, I think we could probably bring a presentation on the project itself, maybe in the spring to this committee and update everyone on progress and the sort of results of the outreach efforts.

Very, as you all know, I think, a very popular project in both communities.

So I think we'd be well-positioned to give you an update on both the design and schedule for construction next spring, next summer, somewhere in that timeline.

Thank you.

2023, I believe, is the scheduled date for delivery of the project.

Colleagues, it's been moved and seconded.

Any final comments?

All right, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that the resolution be adopted?

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

And Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five yes.

Thank you.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the resolution be adopted will be sent to the December 7 City Council meeting.

Colleagues, this concludes the December 2nd, 2020 meeting of the Transportation and Utilities Committee agenda.

The committee will meet again on December 16th, including some of the items that we heard today.

Thank you for attending.

The meeting is adjourned.