Awesome.
Good afternoon, everyone.
It is April 10th, 2024. This is the meeting of Parks, Public Utilities and the Technology Committee.
And it will come to order.
The time right now is 2.03.
I am Joy Hollingsworth, your favorite council member and chair of the committee.
Will the clerk please call the roll?
And we'll give the clerk one second.
You're all good.
Council member Kettle.
Here.
Council Member Rivera.
Present.
Three council members are present.
Thank you.
And please note that we have Council Member Strauss and Council Member Nelson who are excused today, but we do have a quorum, so happy to do that.
We have three items on today's agenda.
First, we are going to have the presentation by our phenomenal Seattle Public Utilities, giving us an update on the ship canal WATER QUALITY PROJECT.
SUPER HAPPY FOR THAT.
AND THEN NEXT WE'LL DISCUSS WITH CENTRAL STAFF ABOUT THE SIRS THAT WERE INTRODUCED LAST WEEK TO HOPEFULLY VOTE THEM OUT OF COMMITTEE.
THEY ARE CALL YO AND THE HOSTAGE NEGOTIATION THROW PHONES RESPECTIVELY.
WE WILL VOTE ON AN AMENDMENT TO CALL YO TO INCLUDE THE CTO.
THIS IS A STANDARD PART OF THE SURVEILLANCE BUT DIDN'T MAKE IT INTO THE ORIGINAL TRANSMITTAL PACKET.
SO WE HAVE THOSE ON THE ITEM AGENDA TODAY.
WE'LL NOW CONSIDER THE AGENDA.
IF THERE'S NO OBJECTIONS, THE AGENDA WILL BE ADOPTED.
AND I'LL PAUSE HERE.
HEARING NO OBJECTION, THE AGENDA IS ADOPTED.
WITH THAT, WE WILL NOW OPEN THE We'll now open the hybrid public comment.
I'm hearing your question, but it's not time for you to ask that.
There is, thank you so much for following the guidelines.
I really appreciate that, thank you.
You can actually sign up for public comment as well if you wanna make a public comment.
You can sign up for public comment.
With that, we'll open the hybrid public comment period.
Public comment should be related to today's item agenda and be within the purview of the committee.
Clerk, how many speakers do we have signed up?
We have four in-person speakers and no remote speakers.
Awesome.
Okay, so each speaker today will have two minutes.
And, Clerk, will you please read the instructions for the public comment period?
The public comment...
will be moderated in the following manner.
I will call on speakers by name in the order in which they are registered, both on the council's website or from the sign-up sheet available in council chambers.
We will start with in-person speakers first.
If you have not registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of the public comment period.
Just go to the council's website or by signing up on the sign-up sheet near the public comment microphones.
The online link is listed on today's agenda.
When speaking, please begin by stating your name and the item you are addressing.
Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left on the allotted time.
If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next person.
The public comment period is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.
The first speaker is Eugene Wasserman.
Hi, this is Mr. Wasserman.
We'll get two minutes.
We'll go ahead and throw that up.
Thank you.
I'm Eugene Wasserman.
I'm president of the North Seattle Industrial Association.
I'm here to comment on the Ship Canal project.
It's basically in our industrial area and has been there for years.
And considering how bad things could have been, things were just actually pretty great.
The project team was great.
Keith Ward, the guy who managed the team, has been working with us for years now.
He seems like part of the family.
And did an absolute great job as project manager.
The utility backed him up, it seemed.
I'm not sure who's in charge of the utility anymore.
Not in that role.
But things went really well compared to how bad they could be.
And the project hopefully will end soon, but there's very few complaints.
Nobody ever calls me to say they really screwed up here.
What are you going to do about it?
And I have a group of businesses who love to complain.
So overall, they did a fine job, whatever.
we have some fairly large property owners, so whatever problems came up, they solved on their own.
We had good meetings with them, had a good communication strategy, and I hope that the mayor takes the lessons from this project and uses it to work with SDOT's project managers, who generally don't go the extra mile as far as Keith did.
So we're very happy with the, you know, as much as you can be with them tearing up your neighborhoods, we're happy with the project and the way it was handled and we hope the city learned some good lessons from this thank you thank you the next speaker is alex zimmerman thank you
My name Alex Zimmerman.
I want to speak about policemen because I have huge experience with this for last year.
You know what it means.
Three times prosecute me.
So, guys.
I go to police commissioner meeting many time, many, dozen and dozen time.
People who in this commissioner meeting, they very stupid.
They don't know what is going on.
When you don't have experience with like a criminal, you don't know how system working.
You understand?
So this exactly, I try talk to them about this.
They don't give me chance ever speak.
Guys, what is we have right now with police, this very unique situation.
Chief of policemen, for last three chief of policemen, under three mentally sick mayor, you know what is mean, what is they thinking?
They all low-class professional.
You understand everything come from head.
When head stink, you know what is mean?
Nothing will be changed.
You make them $100,000 salary, what is will be happen?
More garbage will become.
Criminal will become.
Meme criminal, you know what this mean?
Because when you have a good money, everybody who low life, you know what this mean, will be go for this and you will be a because you need a policeman.
First what is you need is a chief of police, what is not controlling by mayor, who by definition are criminal.
Seventh floor never open for two years.
He never have one Q&A.
You guys, you understand we need something doing about this.
My proposition, and I'm talking about 100 times for the last 10 years, open better room one day per week.
You know what this means?
From 9 to 5, so people can come and talk.
We need to make people involved in this business.
You know what this means?
It's enough for many years.
Stand up, America.
Need something doing about this.
Now.
Thank you.
FOR THANK YOU MR. ZIMMERMAN FOR FUTURE REFERENCE YOU HAVE TO SPEAK ABOUT SOMETHING THAT'S ON THE AGENDA AND FOR THE RECORD I THINK THE NAZI SALUTE IS ABUSIVE LANGUAGE AND SO THAT'S GOING TO BE ON THE RECORD IN OUR COMMITTEE THAT THAT IS NOTED ON THE RECORD FOR OUR COMMITTEE NEXT SPEAKER PLEASE CLERK THE NEXT SPEAKER IS DOUG KISKER
THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
I'D LIKE TO EXPRESS GRATITUDE TO THE COUNCIL FOR HAVING THESE MEETINGS OPEN.
I'M HERE WITH MY TWO SONS TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW OUR COUNCIL WORKS.
MY TWO KIDS ARE WORKING ON THEIR CITIZENSHIP AND THE COMMUNITY MERIT BADGE FOR SCOUTING.
TODAY'S AGENDA LOOKED ESPECIALLY INTERESTING BECAUSE WE DO LIVE IN THE BALLARD NEIGHBORHOOD AND SO THE WATER QUALITY PROJECT HAS BEEN SOMETHING THAT WE'VE SEEN FOR QUITE SOME TIME.
AND BEING YOUNG AND HAVING AN INTEREST IN TECHNOLOGY, THE SURVEILLANCE AND THROW PHONE COMPONENTS ALSO LOOKED VERY INTERESTING.
AND WE APPRECIATE YOUR TIME FOR HAVING THESE SESSIONS OPEN AND TO BE ABLE TO LEARN MORE.
NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU.
AND WELCOME TO YOUR TWO YOUNG SONS.
APPRECIATE YOU ALL BEING CIVICALLY ENGAGED AND INVOLVED.
HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE ENTERTAINING FOR YOU ALL TODAY.
SO THANK YOU ALL.
Next speaker.
The last speaker is Linda Roselle.
Is there a hostage situation?
You said hostage situation.
Are we having people being held?
Why are you smiling?
Why are you smiling?
Your time is two minutes, ma'am.
I know how long it is.
Don't treat me as a lesser being.
Tell me, uh, because I'm a salon.
She's supposed to help the homeless.
You know what she did?
You do know.
She put all that money towards unionizing Starbucks.
Then they voted to make drugs on the street legalized.
But unless they commit a crime, it is a crime to do drugs on the street.
I don't like her.
I don't like Jay Inslee.
I don't like any of you.
I don't like this we're working from home shit.
I'm a very powerful person.
I got assaulted at Angeline's almost three years ago.
The cops say it's not our problem.
It is their problem because women are getting assaulted all the time.
I called Lisa Herbulb, that's who, was it Her?
About two years ago, I said, look what's going on.
People are dying in these shelters.
I graduated from the University of Washington and got gold and purple robes for citizenship.
And I focused on human rights.
I don't like any of this.
These children need to take over.
In fact, they'd do a better job than you people.
How is it okay for a person on the street from DESC to be put out there, their identity is stolen, they are not counted.
When they die on the street from hyperthermia, they're so severely traumatized, and I admit, mostly all lives, they're not good, they get kicked out.
How is it okay for DESC to never report their death and collect their money, get bonuses for free cars from Danielle Malone in that situation?
I'm not done here, but I am done here.
Because I'm also want, and all of you can go to hell, to walk in here and hear about hostages when there are children here.
They need to hear it, but, and you smile, and that is my problem.
I am not done.
Are there any additional, are there any additional comments?
There are no additional speakers.
All right, awesome.
There will be, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for coming today.
Really appreciate that.
And if there are no additional people who signed up for online, we'll now proceed to our items of business.
Will the clerk please read agenda item number one into the record.
Agenda item number one, Ship Canal Water Quality Project update presentation for briefing and discussion.
The presenters are Kerry Burchard Juarez, Ben Murray, and Keith Ward from Seattle Public Utilities.
Awesome.
And to our young two kids who are here, who this is probably one of your first times interacting with government, Usually when this happens, you have to continue on with legislative stuff and continue to be professional.
So hopefully you all are gonna learn some great stuff today.
This is what happens in government, especially in Seattle.
So looking forward to our Seattle Public Utilities to talk about the project, the Ship Canal Water Quality Project.
I had, just for the public, I went on a really, really fun tour of the project with Council Member Strauss, Feels like a long time ago, but it wasn't.
Three, four weeks ago, I'm looking at my favorite Hennessy, four weeks ago and had a great time with you all seeing about the project and all the hard work that's going in.
So I got to geek out with you all.
I'm looking forward to hearing about the updates.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chair Hollingsworth and council members for having us at your meeting today.
I'm Carrie Burchard Juarez.
I'm the deputy director of project delivery and engineering for SPU.
And I'm also the executive sponsor of this project.
I'm joined by Ben Murray from our planning and program management of our drainage and wastewater branch and Keith Ward, who's the project executive for this project.
So we're here to give you an update that we have underway for this project.
We are going to increase the budget and extend the schedule.
But I want to be clear that funding for this project comes from SPU's Drainage and Wastewater Fund and not the General Fund.
And also that we're committed to managing the project cost within our planned rate path.
providing a predictable rate is a very important part of our commitment to our customers.
So we may adjust this project's cost, but we will manage it within our Drainage and Wastewater Fund rate path.
So Ben is gonna provide an overview of the combined sewage overflow program.
And then Keith is gonna provide an overview of the project.
He's gonna talk about how we develop our cost estimates, some challenges that we've had on this particular project over the last few years and the cost and schedule update that he is leading right now.
Then it'll come back to me to talk about next steps.
All right.
I always like to start with the problem we're addressing with this project, which is combined sewer overflows, or CSOs.
In some parts of the city, including Ballard, Fremont, Wallingford, and Queen Anne, stormwater combines with sewage and pipes.
When it's not raining or there is light rain, the pipes convey sewage and stormwater to the treatment plant, as you can see in the figure on the left.
During heavy rain, the system overflows into local water bodies, and this is shown on the right.
This is a combined sewer overflow and it prevents sewage and stormwater from backing up into basements or onto streets.
Combined sewer overflows are regulated by the Clean Water Act.
And over time, we're responsible for reducing them to protect human health and the environment.
One of the ways to reduce combined sewer overflows is to design large tanks or tunnels to hold flow temporarily until a storm passes.
After the storm passes, the stored flow is pumped back to the treatment plant.
We've been working as a region to reduce combined sewer overflows for many years.
And this figure shows our progress.
The X axis shows time beginning at about the 60s and extending beyond 2030. The Y axis shows the estimated annual combined sewer overflow volume.
Big strides were made in the 60s and 70s to reduce combined sewer overflows.
This was an era when it was relatively easy to fix the problem and improvements yielded big results.
Today, we're in an era where we are chasing the hardest problems that remain.
In 2013, the city signed a consent decree with the U.S.
Department of Justice, U.S. EPA, and the Washington Department of Ecology about combined sewer overflows.
The consent decree reinforced the city's commitment to meeting state and federal requirements to reduce combined sewer overflows to less than one overflow per outfall per year.
Since 2013, when the consent decree was signed, we've made significant progress by completing more than 50 sewer system improvements that increase system efficiency, including projects like increasing wastewater pump station capacity, replacing outdated passive system controls with modern smart gates and valves, and lining and replacing pipes We've completed green stormwater infrastructure projects that are managing nearly 13 acres of impervious area in combined sewer overflow basins.
These projects keep stormwater out of the system in the first place.
We've worked with customers to install more than 1,000 rain gardens and or cisterns on private property to manage stormwater runoff through our RainWise program.
And we've built four storage facilities, providing a total of 5.4 million gallons of storage throughout the combined sewer system.
And in 2027, we'll complete construction of our largest ever capital project, the Ship Canal Water Quality Project, which will provide 29 million gallons of additional CSO storage and reduce the number of combined sewer overflows in Seattle by nearly half.
The Ship Canal Water Quality Project is our most important CSO project because of the number of CSOs that it will address.
We have 82 outfalls in the city, but the four outfalls in Ballard, Fremont, and Wallingford contribute nearly half, 43% of the overflow volume in the city.
The blue wedges in this figure show those four city outfalls that are part of the Ship Canal Water Quality Project.
The gray wedges are the other 78 outfalls, contributing the remaining 57%.
This project is an important part of protecting our region's water quality and human health.
The project, when completed, will keep an average of 75 million gallons of polluted stormwater and sewage out of our waterways each year.
Great.
Thank you, Ben.
The Ship Canal Water Quality Project is a 13-year-long project to reduce combined sewage overflows and improve the region's water quality.
It addresses overflows at six outfalls for SPU and the King County Wastewater Treatment Division.
Currently, these six outfalls overflow 104 times per year on average, and we will reduce this to less than six.
This is a shared project with King County.
It will address four of Seattle's outfalls and two of King County's outfalls.
As Ben said, the four outfalls overflow a disproportionately larger amount of CSO annually than all of our other outfall locations.
This map shows King County's drainage basins in green and the City of Seattle's drainage basins in pink that flow to the six outfalls.
The cost for this project is shared, are shared.
Our joint project agreement with King County includes a cost split of about 65% for SPU or the city and 35% for King County.
There are some costs that aren't shared.
Ben discussed the CSO problem.
In the case of the Ship Canal Water Quality Project, we're building a storage tunnel, which is essentially a 2.7 mile long underground tank to reduce combined sewage overflows into waterways.
After storms pass, flow will be sent from the storage tunnel to the West Point Treatment Plant in Magnolia for treatment.
Now I'm gonna talk about project design and then construction.
This is a plan view of the project.
Our work includes construction in five neighborhoods along the Ship Canal.
The backbone of the project is the 2.7 mile long, 18 foot, 10 inch diameter storage tunnel from Ballard to Wallingford.
This is the same size tunnel as your standard transit tunnel.
We also have two other smaller tunnels, see numbers two and three, one under the ship canal from Fremont to Queen Anne and one in Ballard.
This is a simplified section of the project.
Each of the five neighborhoods we're working in is shown at the top, and the three colors denote how we've packaged the work between three construction projects or packages.
Shown at the top, conveyance pipes grab flows from the existing system, and this is shown by the arrows.
These conveyance pipes connect to the drop shafts.
Drop shafts takes flows from the surface down into the storage tunnel, and the tunnel is shown in dark blue and slopes to Ballard.
It is between 57 to 105 feet deep, and there are only two above-ground structures, a small electrical building in Wallingford and a pump station in Ballard, which I'll talk more about.
We selected our storage tunnel contractor in 2019, and they've been working for the last four years through the pandemic at each of our sites.
They completed the storage tunnel after 22 months of tunneling in June, 2023, and they are nearly complete with heavy construction work in the five neighborhoods and will finish this year.
This is an overview of our Wallingford conveyance project that is currently in construction.
It is building a deep pipeline to send CSO flows to the storage tunnel instead of overflowing to Lake Union at the end of Stoneway North.
For this important work, we have temporarily had to close Stoneway North and North 35th Street.
We've focused on community outreach and coordination with adjacent businesses due to the location of the project in arterial streets.
Construction of this project will also be completed later this year.
We've made considerable progress on the project the last nine years, which is shown in this timeline.
We've completed the designs for all our projects, and this phase is shown in the light blue bars.
We've completed construction on one project and are nearly complete with the two projects I just mentioned.
These are denoted by the darker blue bars for construction.
Because we have bids for this work, we have more cost certainty on over $270 million of construction work.
Our last remaining project, the Ballard Pump Station and Conveyance Project, will start construction later this year and is shown as a lighter shade of dark blue.
We just received bids for this project, which I'll talk more about later.
We expect to have the entire facility complete and operational in 2027, which is shown by the yellow star.
Thus far, we've expended over $400 million on this project.
The final Ship Canal Water Quality Project is the Bowerd Pump Station and Conveyance Project, which will construct a new 12 million gallon per day pump station to drain the storage tunnel and build a new eight foot diameter tunnel to bring peak flows to the storage tunnel instead of overflowing into Salmon Bay near the Bowerd Locks.
In this slide, you can see the alignment of the new conveyance tunnel, as well as a rendering of the completed pump station from a public pier that we rebuilt at the end of 24th Avenue Northwest.
This project will start construction in the fall of this year and will be complete in 2027. The project will be responsible for startup, testing, and integrating all the components that were previously completed by other projects in the program.
Our current budget was established in 2018. It was $570 million at a 65% confidence.
I'm going to provide a brief introduction into the data we used to develop this cost estimate.
This cost estimate included base costs like construction costs, soft costs or labor costs, property costs, and escalation, which is an informed prediction of how much cost will increase in the future.
These items are included as single values.
We use historical averages and current trends to estimate these.
The cost estimate also included our uncertainties and risks.
Uncertainties and risks are unknowns that we can't, no, until a later date, or events that may or may not happen.
For both these, we set aside reserves or contingencies to cover impacts based on their probability.
If a risk holds a 40% probability, we'll set aside 40% of the cost to cover them.
Our cost estimate included a confidence.
This is a standard practice for very large projects like the Ship Canal Water Quality Project.
And confidences reflect the variability and uncertainty in a project.
Budgets can't absorb all possible uncertainties and risks unless set at a very high confidence with a corresponding very high budget.
This means that in 2018, giving our estimates of cost, escalation, and uncertainties and risks, there was a 65% chance that costs would be at or below $570 million and a 35% chance we'd be above.
Most agencies budget between 50% and 80% confidence.
If too high a confidence is budgeted, then funds for other projects may not be available.
In my 2018 presentation to this committee, I noted that our budget didn't cover significant cost impacts or delays, major risk events, or escalation significantly beyond the historical average.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what we've experienced.
We anticipate increasing the budget and to extend the schedule for the Ship Canal Water Quality Project.
Before we describe the challenges of the past few years, I want to reiterate what Carrie said, that SBU is committed to managing project costs within our planned rate path established in our strategic business plan.
The budget and the schedule for the Ship Canal project was established in 2018, as I said, and over the past six years, the project has experienced unprecedented escalation, pandemic-related impacts, and risk events.
We are now doing a comprehensive project overview and update so these events can be reflected in our budget and schedule.
I'm now going to talk about factors that have impacted the budget.
A major challenge for us is record high escalation.
We discussed this with city council in two presentations in 2022. These construction related indices shown here show the annual change in construction costs from the previous year from 2009 to 2024 for items like construction labor, materials and equipment.
Annual changes are cumulative.
So even when the rate is decreasing, it is still adding escalation over the life of the project.
Left of the blue line, you can see that in general, between 2009 and mid-2018, the annual change stayed under 5%.
Our 2018 cost estimate was completed during what was considered a period of high escalation from 2017 to 2018, and we assumed that Seattle would return to the historical average within five years.
But more recently, these indices show escalation increasing at 11 to 24% annually, which is shown on the right.
This is record setting and impacts the bids construction projects received.
As you're likely aware, this record setting escalation has also impacted budgets for many other regional and national megaprojects.
We've also encountered underground risk events, and I'm gonna mention a few of these here.
I want to assure you that our storage tunnel project did prepare for the variability of underground work.
To design the project, we performed 73 borings along the tunnel alignment in design to assess soil and groundwater conditions.
And then we integrated these ground conditions into the contractor's requirements.
This included telling the contractor to expect up to 88 boulders less than three feet in diameter.
Unfortunately, we encountered a risk event that was less than 5% likely, the largest boulder ever seen in a North American tunnel alignment, which was 12 foot in diameter.
Our team, including our contractor, worked diligently in 2022 to assess and then grind through this mega boulder and not have to remove the boulder from the surface, which would have impacted a major arterial and local businesses.
The contractor asserted damages of about three and a half months of scheduled delay and $17 million in cost.
We've also discovered underground infrastructure that wasn't accurately reflected in 100-year-old historical records called as-builds.
These are records in which people document how they actually installed new infrastructure.
Unfortunately, this differing condition cost us $1.8 million.
As described earlier, we recently opened construction bids for the Ballard Pump Station and Conveyance Project.
It was first bid in 2023. SPU received a single bid for more than $65 million over our budget, including reserves.
This slide illustrates the steps SPU went through to get to the project's rebid process.
After opening the bid in 2023, We evaluated the bid and tried to understand the large cost variance and why there was only one bidder.
We held debrief conversations with bidders who dropped out and convened a group of national project delivery experts to help us evaluate the situation.
In the end, we decided not to award the bid and proceed with a rebid process.
A big part of the rebid process was to understand the marketplace and how to attract more bidders to create competitive tension and reduce project costs.
We solicited input from the contracting community to inform what changes to make to our project and ultimately made several changes to contract terms regarding risk allocation along with some smaller scope changes.
We advertised for bids again in January of this year and just opened bids several weeks ago at the end of March.
I'm happy to report we did receive three bids.
All three were between 4% under and 2% over our engineer's estimate.
We're now in the process of evaluating the bids and specific experience requirements which we expect to complete in mid-May.
We expect to start construction on this project in the fall of this year.
We've done work to develop preliminary estimates based on the impacts I've already described.
Our preliminary assessment indicates a 14 to 25% increase in the current total project budget from our current budget of 570 million.
We are conducting a project update to give us more certainty about our revised budget, and I'll talk about the timing of this next.
We're continuing to implement cost saving measures such as reducing scope and finding more cost effective means and methods to complete the construction work.
We've also acquired over $341 million in low interest rate federal and state loans, which will save SPU rate payers over $267 million rather than conventional financing over 25 years.
As I've said, we are working on a project update so that we can provide new cost and schedule estimates.
This process is built around the advertising and bidding process for the Bower Pump Station Conveyance Project, which I just discussed, and is shown in light gray.
Knowing the bid amount for our last construction package will provide us much more budget clarity because it represents about $195 million in construction work.
Now that we've received the bids, we are creating a revised budget and schedule for the program.
We expect to come back to this committee with that information in June.
I want to reiterate that we're managing these costs within our existing rate path with no impact to the city's general fund.
Please know that while we work on this update, we are continuing to deliver the project.
This includes completing construction on the storage tunnel and Wallingford conveyance projects this year.
Thank you chair again for inviting us.
We will be back to you in June after we have completed our reassessment and we're happy to answer any questions that you have.
Well, thank you for that presentation.
I will open it up to my colleagues to see if they have questions.
I don't have a couple and I'll also look online too if council member Rivera has any questions as well, but I will ask my colleague council member Kettle if you have any questions.
Thank you, Chair.
I know you do.
I don't want to let my chair down.
Thank you for the presentation.
It's very interesting.
Obviously, this is not your first time before the Council, although it's your first time in front of the new Council, so very interesting for the new members, including us two, actually three of us today.
In terms of the 43% and the 50% that are out there in terms of that one slide, in terms of the other, I forget the number of outflows, 78, whatever that bigger number was, is there any kind of grouping that's similar to this grouping with the ship canal, or is it kind of spread out and not easily brought together?
That's a great question, and they are spread out around the city into Lake Washington and Puget Sound, also a small mountain of Duwamish.
And is there strategies to deal with that?
I think of all the new construction that I see throughout District 7 in terms of stormwater catches, like if it's a new build home as opposed to the older homes like in Queen Anne and Magnolia, they do have these, I call them catch basins, but what kind of impact is that having in terms of reducing the outflow problem?
Yeah, those kinds of strategies can have a huge impact over time, you know, I think especially across decades.
And so we're actually updating our planning around this program to incorporate those kinds of ideas really directly into the program as a way to get in compliance and then to stay in compliance in the long term.
And along those lines, there's a lot of different issues that we're facing on the council across all the various elements.
It's not just utilities, but across everywhere, really.
and that is the coordination amongst the departments.
I'm wondering if there's lessons learned.
Are you communicating to SDCI, for example?
It's like, you know, what you've done so far is great, but you know what, if you did a little bit more or if you did this, from our experience, this would be very helpful, like a focus in this area versus that area.
Is there any communication between the departments related to this?
Yeah, I think there's really strong communication, actually, in that regard between us and SDCI.
We actually author the code, which SDCI administers on our behalf.
So we work together on updates to that code to build in what we need to achieve goals like this, and then they implement it every day.
And my last question is along those lines of terms of coordination amongst departments.
You know, this is a major project and you're slamming.
You started just before the pandemic and before our, you know, the CPI, the inflationary period that we had and kind of still have.
Obviously, clear lessons learned there.
You know, financing is always key.
Is this something that's being passed down in terms of these lessons learned on the on the you know, the process, the project management, financing, and, you know, is this being passed to, you know, other departments or within other projects within SPU?
Yeah, definitely.
So we have a capital subcommittee that the mayor convenes with all of the department directors for the departments who deliver major capital programs to do just what you're talking about, that type of communication and coordination.
We also have various coordination efforts at the staff level.
Of course, we coordinate mostly with SDOT because a lot of our work is in the right of way that they manage, and it just makes sense for us to include our improvements in each other's work.
We also coordinate a lot with City Light just to make sure that we're not stepping on each other's toes.
But yes, we work very hard to do that coordination.
We're always looking at what else we can do and looking at new tools that will help us coordinate better, but that is a very high priority for us.
The new council is also there for you to facilitate coordination amongst departments because not always happens.
And so if it's needed, please reach out and engage with us on those pieces.
Thank you.
Hint, hint.
That's all, Chair.
Thank you, Council Member Kettle.
And Council Member Rivera, if you do have questions, just go ahead and raise your hand and I'll look on that Zoom if you have any.
And you do, Council Member Rivera, I'll go ahead and call on you.
Thank you, Council Member or Chair Hollingsworth.
I want to thank the department for their presentation.
I'm also very grateful to have had a briefing about this as part of this occurs of this work is occurring in Wallingford which is in District 4 the district I represent I really just want to thank the department for their efforts and for their engagement along with SDOT to the businesses on Wallingford that are impacted by this particular construction so I really just want to acknowledge and thank the department for all the work they've done you know as traffic has gotten, has had to be redirected and et cetera.
So really just appreciate their partnership with SDOT and being responsive to the businesses and the residents there in Wallingford.
So thank you.
Thank you for your support on that.
It has been very impactful to the people who drive in that area and some of those businesses.
We have worked with them very closely, but we know that big construction is super impactful and we appreciate your support.
And I had one question.
We have so much construction going on in the city.
I've never seen someone from the business community come and thank a department for public comment.
Did you pay him to come?
No, I did not.
I was surprised.
That was extremely gratifying.
We definitely appreciate that partnership.
They are a big stakeholder for us.
We want to partner with them, and we're very glad that they partner with us as well and that they support the project and that they appreciate the work.
Is there something, like, in your secret sauce that you all communicate to the community?
Because it's, honestly, that's the first time I've heard someone say, like, hey, they've done a really great job.
They've been out, you know, outreach.
Is there something that you take prideful, like, you hang your hat on that you do well?
Yeah, I think it's, you know, I think it's, and my team, I think, is behind this, is that, you know, we're in these neighborhoods.
Some of these construction projects are five to eight years.
We'll be in Ballard for probably eight to nine years.
And we're like a neighbor, and we need to get to know our neighbors, understand their business practices.
We need to understand residences, garbage pickup days, all those kind of things.
So that's kind of an expectation for our team.
And I think SPU does this on other projects.
And we've been working with Eugene, the North Seattle Industrial Association, for probably eight years.
And they've been a great partner.
Awesome, thank you.
And before I ask my second question, I wanted to tee up if our two young fellows have any questions, you're more than welcome to come to the mic to ask questions directly to SPU if you had any about our, so just think about it if you have any questions.
And then, I don't know if that's out of order, but it's my committee, so I thought we would be able to do that.
And then the second thing, so there was a slide on there, because if someone sees this and they see, hey, some costs have gone up, And the point where it says we're committed to our existing rate path as a person that uses Seattle Public Utilities would, as a rate payer, would I feel confident that, hey, like my rates are not going to be impacted by the costs overages of this project?
Yeah, that's a great question.
So we manage within our rate path, right?
So if that means rescheduling other work or changing other project plans, we work within the rate path that we have approved.
So that is, like I said, it's a very important part of our commitment to our customers, and we're committed to doing that.
Awesome.
Thank you.
And I also wanted to comment that I think the rebidding process, we had talked about this in our meeting that it was probably the right thing to do when we were on our tour and you all talking about a lot of the issues of the contracting piece and the inflation and the costs have gone up and what someone had committed to a couple years ago had changed down the line just because of all the inflation going on around the world.
in general people don't understand like construction costs have gone up but people know that food because that's one thing that's very tangible have gone up 25 percent uh across the country so um i don't know what they are construction wise but i'm sure it's it's very similar so um if there are any other questions uh do my young my young civic civic mind no Okay, that's okay.
I don't want to put you all on the spot, but if you did, I want to give you a chance.
You got SPU in front of you.
If there's no other questions from my colleagues, none, thank you so much for the presentation.
Really appreciate it.
I don't know if you all had any last comments or anything.
No, just thank you for your time, and we'll be back.
Awesome.
Looking forward to that.
Thank you all.
Thank you.
And we will now move to agenda item number two.
And will our phenomenal clerk please read agenda item two into the record.
Agenda item number two, an ordinance relating to surveillance technology implementation authorizing approval of uses and accepting the 2023 surveillance impact report and 2023 executive overview for the Seattle Police Department's use of Callio.
for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.
Presenting today is Tommaso Johnson from Council Central Staff, James Britt from the Seattle Police Department, Sarah Carrier, Eleanor Bounds, and Ginger Armbruster from the Information Technology Department, and Greg Doss from Council Central Staff are also available for questions.
Awesome, I wanna thank Tommaso who's been phenomenal with providing background information and also Greg Doss, you all have been great from our central staff to be able to educate us on this and brief us on this and thank you for coming back Tommaso and with that, please introduce yourself for the record and then you can begin your presentation.
Yes.
Good afternoon, Chair Hollingsworth, members of the committee.
For the record, my name is Tommaso Johnson, Council Central staff.
I'm here to provide a brief summary and overview of the Central staff memo that was prepared, recounting the background and providing analysis on Council Bill 120753, authorizing the use of this technology and approving the surveillance impact report for Caglio.
As a reminder, this is part of a retroactive surveillance ordinance review process, meaning that this technology was already in use prior to the passage of the surveillance ordinance in 2017. As you noted, the council heard a report from SPD and the IT department during the last committee meeting on March 27th.
The memo that central staff provided summarizes the information available on this technology, the process regarding the surveillance ordinance, as well as some commentary that was provided on the use of this technology.
By way of background and as a brief reminder, Callio is an application suite being used by the Seattle Police Department for cell phone identification, masking, meaning caller ID blocking or spoofing, as well as audio recording purposes and GPS location.
This is utilized by the Technical and Electronic Support Unit, or TESU, as well as the High Risk Victims Unit, or HRVU, within SPD.
It has been in use by SPD since 2013. As far as deployment, the high-risk victims unit uses the identification masking function only.
All other uses of the technology by SPD are deployed via the technical and electronic support unit.
Primarily, those other uses are audio recording, though there is GPS identification use as well, and those uses that are not the ID masking function are used pertaining to a court order or warrant or warrant exception.
As far as data retention and storage, data extracted from is extracted from the COGLIO system and put onto physical media such as a thumb drive.
This is then made available by TESU to the investigative officer or detective and then purged by TESU from the COGLIO system.
The investigative data that's relevant to the investigation as well as compliant with the warrant requirements are then entered into the evidence system of SPU.
The surveillance impact report describes potential disparate impacts of this technology and how SPD mitigates these impacts.
There was a public engagement period for Caglio in 2021, so from May to June of 2021. Comments from that period are included in full in the appendices C and D of the surveillance impact report.
The majority of public comments made during that period largely mirror the things that were highlighted by the community surveillance working group impact assessment, which I'll be discussing in a moment.
As I mentioned, a component part of the surveillance ordinance process is a review by a community surveillance working group to look at the impacts of this technology, the privacy and civil liberties impacts of this technology.
The working group report is part of the surveillance impact report package submitted.
The working group highlighted several questions and concerns, including how weren't requirements applied to Caglio, the data retention and storage, particularly the question of whether or not this technology, data gathered by this technology would be shared with the provider Caglio.
well, their parent company, Motorola, or whether that would be stored via cloud storage.
They also had questions on data oversight and info on usage.
There was a...
CTO response, Chief Technology Officer response, as you noted, was not originally submitted as part of the surveillance impact package, but it was received prior to the first hearing.
And there is an amendment sponsored by yourself, Chair, to incorporate that and approve that.
The CTO response largely addresses the concerns highlighted by the Community Surveillance Working Group.
Specifically, it clarifies, re-clarifies that warrants are required for audio recording and GPS location functions used by departments other than high-risk victim units, which does not use those features.
It also clarifies that the data policy and audio recording policies contained in the CER govern here, data is not shared with Caglio or Motorola, and describes how the the data is stored in physical storage or the SPD standard evidentiary procedures.
The central staff report did note one policy consideration, which is that data has not up to this point been supplied by SPD regarding the deployment.
For example, frequency of use units using this in specific case types.
There are no amendments other than to add the CPO response However, if the committee should be curious to obtain additional information about the usage of Caglio, that can be obtained outside of the amendment process.
Happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you so much for that information and also like recapping us where how we got here too as well in the history.
Definitely want to open it up to some of my colleagues if they have any questions and I'll pause here and I'll also look online to see if Councilmember Rivera might have any questions as well.
But Councilmember Kettle, I'll defer to you if you have any questions.
Chair Hollingsworth, thank you.
I don't have any specific questions except to note it's good to have the CTO response to, you know, speak to those issues because obviously anything that relates to technology and public safety, you know, the civil liberty side of things is always going to be paramount.
So thank you for including the CTO response as attachment and through the process to be part of this.
So thank you.
awesome thank you and then uh i don't know if councilmember rivera if you have any questions go ahead and raise your hand if not we'll continue to proceed Okay, awesome.
I'll wait for one second, because I know sometimes it's hard to find the button there.
And I don't have any questions, Tomaso.
I think I'm glad that we're obviously offering the amendment to add the CTO's memo and report to this.
IF THERE'S NO OTHER QUESTIONS FROM MY COLLEAGUES, WHEN THIS LEGISLATION WAS TRANSMITTED, IT DID NOT INCLUDE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER'S RESPONSE TO THE MEMO THAT WAS ISSUED BY THE COMMUNITY SURVEILLANCE WORKING GROUP.
AND SO TO FIX THIS, WE HAVE TO AMEND THE BILL.
AND SO I AM MOVING TO AMEND COUNCIL BILL 120753 AS SHOWN AS AN AMENDMENT ONE.
AND I WILL WAIT TO HEAR IF THERE'S A SECOND.
Second.
It has been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 120753. Are there any comments regarding this?
Seeing none, it has been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 120753. Will the Clerk please call the roll to the amendment?
Councilmember Kettle?
Aye.
Councilmember Rivera?
Aye.
Chair Hollingsworth.
Aye.
Three in favor, none opposed.
Thank you, clerk.
The amendment is adopted and council members, I now move that the committee recommends passage of council bill 120753. And I'll wait to see if there's a second.
Second.
It has been moved and seconded to recommend passage of bill as amendment.
Are there any other comments?
Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll in the committee recommendation that the city council pass the bill as amended.
Council member Kettle.
Aye.
Council member Rivera.
Aye.
Chair Hollingsworth.
Aye.
Three in favor, none opposed.
The motion carries and the committee recommendation of the bill as amended will be sent to the city council meeting, to the next city council meeting.
And can we please move on to agenda item number three, the hostage throw phone.
Oh, will the clerk please read agenda item number three into the agenda?
My apologies.
Absolutely.
Agenda item number three, an ordinance relating to surveillance technology implementation, authorizing approval of uses and accepting the 2023 surveillance impact report and 2023 executive overview for the Seattle Police Department's use of hostage negotiation throw phone for briefing discussion and possible vote.
The presenters are, excuse me a moment.
Tommaso Johnson from Council Central Staff, James Britt from Seattle Police Department, Sarah Carrier, Eleanor Bounds, and Ginger Armbruster from the IT Technology Department, and Greg Doss from Council Central Staff are also available for questions.
And I apologize, I didn't realize Captain Britt was on the line.
So is Sarah and Eleanor.
So thank you all.
I didn't see you all on Zoom.
My apologies for not recognizing you all.
Tomaso Key, please reintroduce yourself for the record and then you can begin your presentation on the hostage throw phone.
Yes.
Chair Hollingsworth, members of the committee, for the record, once again, Tommaso Johnson, council central staff.
I'm here to provide a brief summary of central staff memo, providing background and analysis on council bill 120754, authorizing use of and approving the surveillance impact report for hostage negotiation throw phone technology.
I'm going to be referring to that by the shorthand of throw phone.
This is, once again, another retroactive surveillance ordinance approval, meaning that this technology has also been in use prior to the passage of the ordinance in 2017. In this case, we understand that these hostage throw phones in some form or another have been being used by SPD for 20 plus years.
This was also heard during the last meeting of this committee on the 27th.
There's a presentation by SPD on ITD and ITD about the technology itself and the surveillance ordinance process.
By way of background, throw phones are two-way communication devices in a durable enclosure used for communications in situations where SPD is unable to directly communicate or communicate in a safe manner directly.
with individuals.
Those can be, as the name suggests, in a hostage negotiation situation.
It can also be used and frequently are used in other situations where the subject that SPD needs to communicate with has barricaded themselves into a location or for other reasons is not accessible, immediately accessible for communication.
These are used by the hostage negotiation teams and the special weapons and tactics or SWAT teams exclusively within SPD.
The throw phone include features such as a handset for two-way communication, external microphones and speakers for hailing or communicating, signaling attention of the individual tempted to be communicated with.
They also include in the current technological version, external cameras.
Deployment of these throw phones are authorized by supervisors within the hostage negotiation team and or SWAT team if SWAT is on scene and utilizing technology.
All deployments are logged by those units in after action reports as well.
Once again, the surveillance impact report for the throw phones describes potential disparate impacts of this technology and how those are being mitigated by SPD.
Public engagement.
around this technology occurred last year.
And there's a comment period from April to May in 2013, or sorry, excuse me, 2023. And these comments are also included in appendices C and D of the surveillance impact report.
Once again, I would say that these comments largely mirrored the community surveillance working group Report overall there was a lower I would say a lower level of overall concern about civil liberties impacts for the throw phones considering their sort of more niche applications and availability The working group report highlighted a couple considerations, primarily the potential use of this technology of throw phones by units other than hostage negotiation team or SWAT.
One concern that was highlighted in particular was the use of this surveillance technology for surveillance of other groups, for example, in the context of deployment during a protest.
The working group also had questions about the number of throw phones in use by SBD as well as use statistics outside of the 2021 data that was provided as part of this surveillance impact report.
There was also a question about whether or not biometric voice or video gate analysis tools were being used in connection with the video and audio data that may be recorded during use of the throw phone.
CTO, chief technology officer, did provide a response that was included in the original surveillance impact report for the throw phone, sir.
It did, I think, adequately address the concerns listed in the working group impact report.
In particular, The one thing that was highlighted by the CTO response is the information that's provided in the surveillance impact report, according to the surveillance ordinance, once the usage specifications that are in the surveillance impact report, once that is adopted by council, that is what governs use of this technology by SPD.
If SPD chooses or attempts to use the technology in a manner that's outside of the four corners of the surveillance impact report, that would be a material change and that would not be in compliance with the legislation before you.
So in other words, because the surveillance impact report specifies that the The throw phones are exclusively used by hostage negotiation team and SWAT for the purposes described there.
That use is restricted to those units.
The CTO response also explicitly stated that biometric analysis is not being used on information collected through the throw phones.
The policy considerations that central staff identified were, number one, Once again, as I just described, by units and for situations that are outside of the scope of hostage negotiation or barricaded persons.
This is addressed, as I just mentioned, by the Surveillance Impact Report and the CTO response, but in theory, SPD could also draft specific policy to elucidate this further.
The second policy consideration that we identified was similar to the surveillance working group.
There is data that has been provided by SPD regarding the number of throw phone deployments in 2021. Should the council be curious about deployment data either retrospective or forward looking beyond 2021, those questions could still be put to SPD outside of this legislative process.
I'll also just mention this applies as well to every technology adopted through the surveillance ordinance process that once this This ordinance has been adopted accepting the technology in the surveillance impact report.
The Office of Inspector General as part of the surveillance ordinance process has been contemplated in municipal code, is tasked with going back and doing annual technology audit, surveillance technology reviews of all the technologies authorized.
So there is another mechanism.
built into the surveillance ordinance review process there to continue to monitor usage and collect data on throw phones, Callio, and the other approved technologies.
Happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you, Tommaso, for that update and information.
And I'd also like to note, and I think I said it before, that we do have Captain Britt from our SPD on the line as well as Eleanor and Sarah from IT to answer any questions in addition to Tommaso.
So I wanted to pass it off to my colleagues if they have any questions.
And Councilmember Kettle, I don't know if you have any questions.
Thank you, Chair Hollingsworth.
And to note, take the opportunity to the point that you were making at the end.
Obviously, the Public Safety Committee working with our accountability partners can work on both of these and others in terms of, you know, working with the OIG, Inspector General Judge and others on issues related to this.
And we will do so as part of our oversight responsibilities.
Thank you for that, Councilmember Kettle.
Councilmember Rivera, do you have any questions at all?
No questions.
Thank you, Chair.
Awesome.
Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.
Okay, as with the previous bill, thank you, Tommaso, for all that.
I know that all of the surveillance that's done in our city, but...
With SIRs, it's really important that we go through the full process, and like you have stated, that this is retroactive.
We have, during this process, we're taking public comment for a couple surveillance technologies that are currently...
IN THE COMMUNICATION PHASE WHERE PEOPLE WERE TAKING PUBLIC COMMENTS IN THE COMMUNITY AND THEY'RE DISCUSSING ABOUT THE DIFFERENT SURVEILLANCE ITEMS.
THESE ARE RETROACTIVE, SO THESE ARE PART OF THAT PROCESS.
SO I JUST WANT TO THANK YOU FOR PROVIDING ALL INFORMATION AND BACKGROUND AND ALL THE HARD WORK THAT YOU AND OUR CENTRAL STAFF HAVE DONE.
SO THANK YOU.
As with the previous bill, I now move that the committee recommends passage of council bill 120754. Is there a second?
Second.
It has been moved and seconded to recommend the passage of the bill.
Are there any comments?
And I will pause.
Okay, clerk, will you please call the roll on the committee recommendation that the council pass the bill?
Councilmember Kettle.
Aye.
Councilmember Rivera.
Aye.
Chair Hollingsworth.
Aye.
Three in favor, none opposed.
Motion carries in recommendation.
The bill passes as amended and it will be sent to the council meeting, which I now have a date, which is April 16th.
I apologize for not knowing that off the top of my head.
April 16th.
And I know we don't have any other further agenda items, but I want to give our two young people a chance if you want to come to be in the record for the rest of your life to say that you were at a council meeting.
Okay.
You can come and say your name and your age or your name and what school or not what school, but name and what grade you're in if you want.
So you can look back on this moment.
Or scouting, no, okay, don't worry.
I won't put y'all on the spot, but thank you.
I wanna thank you both and your dad for bringing you all here today.
My parents were always civically engaged and they always would bring me to different meetings and it was so important because I look back on these moments and I thought how cool it was to be able to come and your dad bringing you.
So that's really cool.
So thank you both for coming.
Really appreciate y'all.
20 years from now, they'll be sitting at this location here on the dais.
And hopefully you will be sitting.
Thank you.
Inspiration.
Hopefully you'll be sitting at the same spot that we're in with the microphone.
It started like you all in that chair right there and then having a dream and a vision.
So thank you all so much.
If there's no further items on the agenda today, do any of my colleagues have any more business for the committee?
Council Member Rivera, go right ahead.
Council Member Rivera.
I JUST WANTED TO ECHO THE SENTIMENT AND THANK OUR TWO STUDENTS FOR COMING TODAY AND BEING ENGAGED.
YOU CAN BE CIVICALLY ENGAGED AT EVERY AGE, AND I ALWAYS APPRECIATE AND I AM ALWAYS IMPRESSED WHEN YOUNG PEOPLE COME BEFORE US, BEFORE THE CITY IN PAMBERS.
IT REALLY IS AN IMPORTANT THING TO BE CIVICALLY ENGAGED, AND THEY TOOK TIME OUT OF THEIR SPRING to come and listen in.
And so I hope it was an interesting experience.
And I really appreciate you both being here and listening and being engaged in the way that you have.
So thank you.
And I too hope maybe in the future you will have, you know, a job in government, if not on the dais.
There's so many other opportunities.
And so thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Rivera.
I know our meeting started off hot, and then y'all stayed for the whole thing.
So seeing none, this concludes our April 10th meeting of the Parks, Public Utilities, and Technology Committee.
Our next committee meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, April 24th at 2 p.m.
No further business.
This meeting is adjourned.
The time right now is 3.11 p.m.
on the dot.
Thank you.