Seattle City Council Briefing 7/27/2020

Let's go ahead and start the meeting.

Good morning, everyone.

The July 27, 2020 Council briefing meeting will come to order.

The time is 9.33 a.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Apologies, Council Member.

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Mosqueda?

Here.

Peterson?

Here.

Sawant?

Here.

Strauss?

Present.

Herbold?

Here.

Lewis?

Present.

Council President Gonzalez?

Here.

Ape, present.

Thank you so much.

If there is no objection, the minutes of July 20th, 2020 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

President's report, I don't have anything to report out this morning, so we'll go ahead and jump into the preview of today's City Council Actions Council and Regional Committees.

I will call on Councilmembers as established by the rotated roll call for City Council meetings.

So this week's roll call rotation begins with Councilmember Morales, Mosqueda, Peterson, Sawant, Strauss, Herbold, Lewis, and then I will conclude today's agenda.

Colleagues, I wanted to make sure that you were aware that I did receive notification from Councilmember Juarez's staff that unfortunately she will not be able to attend a council briefing today or full council.

So we wish her well and want to make sure that she is doing well as she isn't able to join us today.

So we also I know have a, we also have Calvin Chow on the line.

I don't see him yet, but I think he will be joining us soon.

Kelvin is, of course, from our Council Central staff.

He'll be available to us when we address matters related to the Seattle Transportation Benefit District Levy Ordinance.

That conversation will happen under Council Member Peterson's report.

So I'd ask that folks save their comments related to SDVD amendments.

and that ordinance until we get to Councilmember Peterson who is third in line and then we can have a conversation about all STVD related issues at the same time.

So I know several of us have some amendments.

Again, I'd ask that you wait until Councilmember Peterson introduces the subject as the chair of that select committee and we can have the policy conversation related to those potential amendments and the underlying ordinance at that time.

So with that being said, let's go ahead and dig in.

So I will call first on Councilmember Morales, good morning.

Good morning, everyone.

I will start by saying that it was a late night for me as it was my turn to be visited by the demonstrators who are making the rounds of council member homes.

They came late and they stayed later.

Um, I will say that I, uh, did have a brief conversation with a few of the members of the crowd.

There were, I don't know, maybe a hundred people in the street in front of my home.

Um, and I appreciated the opportunity to listen to what they had to say.

Um, my daughter had a brief conversation with them as well.

She decided she needed to go out and express her support, uh, for the Black Lives Matter movement.

So.

We exchange numbers and we will be having a conversation with them at some point later today.

I know that hasn't been the experience for everyone.

So I just want to say that, again, as we all know, people are demonstrating for lots of different reasons, not the least of which is the latest protests of the presence of federal agents in our city over the express objection of our mayor.

They're demonstrating to insist on a shift in public investment away from the police and into black communities.

And they're demonstrating because of the kind of police behavior we've seen over the weekend.

I will say it was really disturbing to see our police department again using crowd control weapons in ways that were blatantly indiscriminate.

In the video footage I've seen over the weekend, it was pretty clear that reporters are being targeted.

Legal observers are being targeted.

Blast balls are being thrown overhead into crowds instead of bold, the way they are directed to do.

Nurses being sprayed directly in the face and at close proximity.

We've heard reports of police dropping flashbangs sorry, concussion grenades onto unsuspecting protesters from building roofs, and that police are shooting protesters with rubber bullets.

You know, this council has been pretty clear in our interest in seeing the end of these kinds of tools and weapons used against our community.

And it doesn't build trust with our community to play what in my mind are semantic games and promise community that you won't use tear gas, knowing full well that officers will be geared up with pepper spray at protests.

I believe this is a cynical attempt to evade responsibility for the actions that we are asking to end and the responsibility to keep our community safe.

And frankly, the community sees through those word games.

It also doesn't build trust with community for us to make empty promises.

And this was part of the conversation that I had with folks last night in front of my home.

This council knows that shifting SPD resources in the 2020 budget is going to be extremely challenging.

And we've shared that with community and they understand the challenge.

They intend to keep pushing us to do it anyway.

And that is their role as community organizers and advocates for the kind of change that they want to see.

So I appreciate that.

And I respect the the accountability that they have to their own community members.

So I expect that we will continue to have this conversation.

And my commitment is to do everything we can to make sure that we are shifting resources in a significant and meaningful way so that we can invest in black communities.

to that end, we will be moving forward.

There are, as we all know, a blueprint that we received from Decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity now with several things that they would like to see.

I know Council Member Herbold will be moving some things.

I'm sure she'll talk about that.

We want to make sure that any items that are not being moved by Council Member Herbold, we will be moving forward and do that in conversation with the rest of the council as well.

Additionally, we are very supportive of investing in Black and Brown communities, especially in the participatory budgeting process that they hope to begin this summer so that that process can inform the kind of changes that we want to see in the 2021 budget process.

Next week, we hope to introduce the My Chance Dunlap-Gittins legislation that protects young people from, that assures that they have access to counsel once they have had their Miranda rights read to them.

So we will be bringing that forward as soon as possible for a vote, hopefully on August 10th.

And I also want to say, finally, that it is the end of July.

Rent is due in just a few days.

And this is the next catastrophe that will be hitting this country.

Thousands of Seattleites will be affected.

And extending the eviction moratorium continues to be a workable stopgap measure, but the moratorium itself will eventually end.

And we have no guarantee that at that time people will be back to work or making any sort of substantial income.

And that means that we risk seeing an even greater increase in homelessness in our community.

Tenants and small landlords, small landlords, talking about folks who are renting a room or an ADU or an apartment in their backyard cottage, are really going to be buried under an avalanche of debt.

And we're looking at the real prospect of a homelessness crisis that we haven't seen since the Great Depression.

Rent assistance needs to be dramatically scaled up, but it needs to be structured so that tenants don't shoulder the burden of an additional application process on top of any other assistance programs that they're trying to get access to.

So we are happy to work with folks to understand the best approach to this.

Maybe landlords apply and the assistance goes straight to them.

Maybe they agree to lower rents in exchange for additional assistance from the city.

I'm not quite sure, frankly, what the right answer is.

But my office will be talking to folks about how to make this work.

And really, beyond that, as I've been saying since April, the best way to avoid the rent and mortgage debt is to cancel housing-related debt like these payments that risk putting people at risk, putting people at risk of homelessness.

That's why I've been very supportive of the demands of the No Debt, No Eviction campaign that the Tenants Union is spearheading, that BC et al. is spearheading, that calls for us to enact a long-term moratorium on evictions, foreclosures, and sweeps, cancel all rent, mortgage, late fee, and housing debt, pass a statewide just cause, because this is more than just a Seattle issue, and continue to fight for housing justice reforms like rent control, public land and community ownership, and opening up tenant home ownership opportunities.

It's really clear that Seattle is not going to solve this problem by ourselves.

Even the county isn't going to solve this problem.

We need our state leaders to step up, to find state-level solutions, and to pressure the federal government to step up as well.

And I think we are all interested in continuing to advocate for those different jurisdictions to do everything they can to protect our neighbors.

I will honor Council President Gonzalez's request that we hold STPD comments.

So that is all I have this morning.

And thank you very much.

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

Any questions or comments on that report?

Okay, hearing none, we'll go ahead and continue on with the roll call.

Council Member Mosqueda, are you ready to go now?

Okay, Council Member Mosqueda, your turn.

Thank you, Madam President.

Council colleagues, there are no items on today's full Council agenda from the Housing and Finance Committee or the Special Budget Committee.

The next Select Budget Committee will be on Wednesday, July 29th.

Last, I want to note that we have an upcoming Budget Committee on Wednesday this week.

We heard from Council Central Staff last week that the Central Staff is facing The challenges of getting information that they need for the 2020 rebalancing budget due to a lack of comprehensive picture and transparency.

And we discussed that a little bit on Wednesday.

We'll be working with central staff to ensure council members and members of the public have access to the information they need to make the best decisions for Seattle as a whole.

Based on evolving landscape, we have a new date for the Select Budget Committees that we've added, and we're asking you to hold these dates.

That would be Friday at 10 a.m.

and the following Wednesday at 10 a.m.

We've previously sent out a calendar, and we will be doing so again.

This Friday at 10 a.m., we will be holding time for the Select Budget Committee for our continued discussion and, if possible, a vote on amendments, including SPD amendments and non-SPD amendments.

If we get through the relevant amendments on Wednesday and Friday, we will continue to plan to have a meeting on the following Monday, August 3rd, before full council and after council briefing.

That is the best case scenario.

So that is why we were asking you to also hold the Wednesday following, just in case we need additional time, and we will make sure to send out information midweek this week so that you all have the updated calendar at your fingertips.

I'll also send an email around so this is perfectly clear.

So again, colleagues, the email that you will see will be asking you to hold, in addition to Friday at 10 a.m., August 5th and August 10th.

We look forward to the ongoing conversations about the proposed amendments to the 2020 rebalancing package, and I want to thank Lisa Kay from Central Staff for all of her work on coordinating this, and we will send a follow-up email.

Any questions on that?

Okay.

I'm going to hold off on that because it relates to STVD and concurrent resolution if I should hold on to that.

I would like to make a few comments related to health and safety.

Reminding us that the reason that people continue to take to the street every day is because the health and safety of black folks are under black members of our community continue to die.

So regarding public safety and health, those protesting since the very beginning of George Floyd's death, we have expressed concern about the continued use of gas and projectiles from our police department on protesters.

I've expressed these concerns in the frame of the global deadly pandemic that we currently face.

Public health has said that using gas, tear gas or CS gas, is bad for the lungs.

It is an irritant to the lungs at a time when this pandemic is affecting the lungs of individuals, increasing the risk of illness and death.

So I am very concerned about the reports that we heard over the weekend.

I am extremely frustrated about the court's ruling.

I think it is really unfortunate at best that Trump's DOJ ultimately had the same goal that Mayor Durkin had, to be allowed to continue to use gas during the time of a global deadly pandemic.

There are other strategies that we can use to address crowd control.

But It is clear that from the court ruling, this city and our police department are continuing to use gas, and whether that's CS gas or pepper spray really doesn't matter when public health has said both are bad for the lungs.

Yes, of course, I do not support people setting fires, breaking windows, or smashing cars.

That is not a justification for indiscriminately using gas, tear gas, Crowds pepper spray on crowds was used this weekend.

There is it is the same effect tear gas and pepper spray People were indiscriminately sprayed from the videos that we saw and from the reports that we saw and I think that we have really an incredible need to step up and have different policies used, but I am imploring people in this city, in our police department to stop using irritants to the lungs during a global deadly pandemic.

That is bad for the health and safety of our community.

Second item on public health and safety.

I am very concerned about the impact that we are seeing across our city where individuals are having their health and safety potentially threatened.

I absolutely believe in First Amendment rights and I support various viewpoints.

even with folks that I disagree with.

I have been an active participant in many protests.

I have participated in civil disobedience.

And I think that it is incredibly important that we continue to have those tactics used, but to make sure that the health and safety is protected, especially for our colleagues and our staff.

I know that many on our staff and us as council members We've received multiple threats, death threats, and other types of threats, including rape.

We get emails about that frequently.

And I think it's important that our staff feel protected and our colleagues feel protected.

For the colleagues who felt that their safety and their family's safety have been a threat, I stand with you.

I think it's important, especially during a global deadly pandemic, that people's health and safety, especially for their family members and those with underlying health conditions, are protected.

It is not just a matter of wanting to I want to make sure that we have the right to speak up.

I want to make sure that we hear from those that I agree with.

I want to make sure that people have their first amendment rights protected from folks that I disagree with as well.

But I think it's incredibly important as we see this global deadly pandemic continue that the health and safety of family members and council colleagues and our staff is protected.

I want to make sure that we as a community continue to allow for folks to speak up but not in a way that to protect everyone's health and safety.

I think it's important that the city council received spray painting in front of her house using profanities as well as the profanities that were included on councilmember Peterson's windows.

I think we want to protect everyone's health and safety and when we get this close to each other, it's important during a global pandemic that we're sending a strong message that supports the health and safety of both protesters and the I think it is abhorrent that our city continues to push for members of the press to hand over video and photos of people participating in their First Amendment rights.

It is not going to protect the health and safety of journalists if this push from SPD continues.

I am going to ask our city attorney and ask our city as a whole to withdraw, to pull back from this continued pressure for members of the press to share their video and share their photos of people expressing their First Amendment rights.

It is incredibly important that members of the press have the protection to say that they are not actors of the government, they are not there on behalf of the police, and we are going to put at risk the lives of journalists if we continue to go down this avenue of saying that journalists need to hand over their footage.

This is not appropriate.

I believe a violation of the rights of journalists.

And I don't think in this city we should be pushing that forward.

I think it does put at risk the health and safety of those journalists as well.

And I will be asking folks to work with us as we try to figure out alternative strategies.

Lastly, I just want to say in light of these public health and safety strategies that I just mentioned, we are looking at Portland, Oregon, and what they just passed last Wednesday to protect protesters, to protect council staff, and to protect members of the press.

I think it's really important as well that we protect the legal observers.

We saw footage of legal observers getting indiscriminately sprayed in the face as well, and really applaud Portland, Oregon for their protection of protesters, of legal observers, and of members of the press.

And I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do to replicate the resolutions that they passed last Wednesday.

Thank you, Council President.

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

Are there any questions or comments on that report?

Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and continue on down the roll call.

Next up is Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez, and thank you, Council Member Mosqueda, for your words, and Council President Gonzalez for your words earlier about health and safety of everybody.

And Council Member Mosqueda, I support your call to protect the integrity of the journalists as well.

Thank you for taking the lead on that.

Today, on the full council agenda, we've got a few items related to transportation, utilities, and technology.

And first, the Internet for All resolution, we're voting on that resolution 31956. I had announced that and distributed the resolution back in May, and we officially introduced it on July 6th.

I want to thank Council President Gonzalez and Council Member Juarez for their commitment and leadership on this important social justice technology issue.

I'd like to acknowledge the executive for their efforts thus far to pursue digital equity and to acknowledge the over 25 meetings my staff has had with some initial stakeholders.

during initial outreach and engagement.

That process is going to continue from us, from also the Department of Information Technology.

I want to thank Lisa Kay on our City Council Central staff and the City Attorney's Office for their help with the resolution.

There's a substitute resolution today.

It simply makes minor and technical corrections and fleshes out a few of the sections.

That substitute version has been distributed by my staff and published on the agenda.

The intent and timeline, the plan, the steps, none of that's changed.

This is just a resolution.

I just want to set the big picture framing here.

It's just a resolution, so the real work's going to begin.

This kickstarts the – I want to say jumpstarts, but I can't say that anymore.

This kickstarts the real work from the Department of Information Technology that will provide its first report to us in September.

you know, in a city that prides itself in leading the world in technology, the COVID crisis has laid bare the inequities and injustice of the digital divide.

This resolution will start the process to highlight that again and get some steps forward to fix this.

Regarding Seattle Transportation Benefit District, On Friday, July 17, our select committee on the Seattle Transportation Benefit District funding unanimously passed Council Bill 119833 to renew funding for that important transit measure.

We voted on all seven of the published amendments at that time.

We were already familiar with this Benefit District expiring.

We've been talking about it for a while.

It's been a success the past six years when voters approved it in 2014. We had a briefing back in December 12th about the Benefit District and again on January 15th about the Benefit District.

Last week, a key theme of the committee was to prioritize transit service.

over road work, so we did some amendments to do that.

I think we can all agree that it's disappointing that Tim Eyman's initiative 976, which was rejected by a whopping 76% of Seattle voters, unfortunately that's removed approximately half of the funding source.

We hope to overturn that measure in the courts.

At the same time, we know that ridership on King County Metro has plummeted 72% in the last year, and we're upbeat on the future, and we want to renew the funding source for this, because transit's going to be so important as an essential, affordable way to get around our city as our economy recovers.

There are four additional amendments for consideration today at full Council.

And I'll just touch on these very briefly.

I know each Council Member may want to address these, but just to get them all out there on the table.

An amendment from Council Member Morales discussed last week would double the transit sales tax 0.1 to 0.2, a compromise amendment from Council President Gonzalez to make sure we get more revenue for transit than the proposal transmitted to us, that would increase the sales tax to 0.15 instead of the 0.1 or the 0.2.

There's an amendment from Councilmember Strauss to provide an opportunity to reconsider what we had discussed at committee in terms of shortening the measure from six years to four years.

That amendment would enable us to go back to six years if we choose that.

There's also an important amendment about essential workers.

Even though transit ridership has gone down during the pandemic, there's still many essential workers who rely on that transit and will rely on it going forward.

As Council President mentioned, Calvin Chow from our City Council Central staff is here to answer questions.

To the extent you're struggling with how to vote on any of these amendments, please know that ultimately we are relying on the wisdom of the voters to do the right thing in November.

So the deadline, though, to get it on to the November ballot is August 4th.

So we are at the end here.

So there's also a companion resolution that Council Member Esqueda will speak to.

I'm co-sponsoring that.

we have a lot of work to do to make sure that her team, she and her team really did all the work on that to emphasize the need to re-regionalize our transit system.

those are all my remarks.

happy to hear from others or answer questions.

I'm going to proceed as follows in order to make today's conversation as efficient as we can make it.

So first of all, I'm going to ask that either Councilmember Mosqueda or Councilmember Peterson address the resolution, a sort of overarching context of sort of work that will happen in the future, and see if there are any questions or comments on the resolution.

And then I'm going to ask that Kelvin walk us through, Kelvin Chow from our council central staff who's on the line.

I'm going to ask that Kelvin walk us through the various amendments.

We'll take a pause after each amendment.

And to the extent that there are competing amendments, like amendment six and amendment to, um, we'll, we'll have a conversation of those competing amendments together.

So, um, so again, we'll, we're gonna, we're gonna sort of take off the resolution, um, take off the resolution from the to-do list, um, at the top.

We'll then transition over to Calvin, have him talk about each amendment.

We'll have discussion about each amendment.

And then and then we'll we'll continue down the line until we exhaust the amendment.

So my hope is that we're able to have as robust of a policy conversation as we can here, because some of these amendments We have a lot of questions that are pretty substantive so that we can have a clear sense of what we might be wanting to do this afternoon at 2 o'clock.

Hopefully we will be able to vet some of these important policy questions.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council President.

And thanks to Council Member Peterson for his co-sponsorship.

I'm really excited to bring forward this resolution today affirming our commitment to work in partnership with King County, jurisdictional partners, community advocates, and transit advocates to re-regionalize transit spending and plan for a future countywide transit funding measure.

This resolution also works towards replacing regressive sales tax and uses taxes to fund transit services in Seattle with other progressive revenue sources.

So, colleagues, I know one of the most challenging things about us is the very few tools that we have in our tool belt for raising revenue.

This resolution really follows the We have a partnership that we have with King County, and it follows a letter sent by King County Councilmember Balducci, signed by Executive Constantine and Councilmember Coe Wells, Dombowski and Up the Grove affirming their intention to reengage in conversations for a regional transportation benefit conversation.

Just very briefly from the letter, which I believe you all received, it says transit has provided much-needed mobility options for essential workers and first responders, and that's helped to ensure that people throughout King County have had a way to get to essential services, including groceries and medical treatment.

Even with transit services significantly reduced in response to COVID, the network has continued to function, currently providing more than 125,000 trips a day.

During the last few months of the pandemic closure, for instance, we have seen that routes with less reduction in ridership have primarily been those in South Seattle and King County, with the least reduction in ridership, and that the South King County residents are often people of color with lower incomes who cannot work from home, who rely on transit to make essential trips for work, for shopping, and other needs.

So it's important from us from a racial equity lens to continue to reengage with our regional partners so that we can increase the funding and create more stability, especially for our diverse community throughout Seattle and specifically in the south end.

I'd like to thank again Councilmember Peterson for working on the co-sponsorship.

We've engaged with the mayor and I believe she would concur as well.

and I'd like to thank the folks who worked on this legislation, including Blake Trask from Council Member Balducci's office, Transportation Choices Coalition, Rooted in Rights, and MLK Labor and Puget Sound SAGE.

Looking forward to hopefully having your support this afternoon, and I believe the resolution was sent last Friday.

Thank you so much, Council Member Mosqueda.

Any comments from you, Council Member Peterson?

Okay, any questions or comments from any of my colleagues on the resolution?

Thank you.

Hearing none, thank you so much for introducing that resolution.

Council members really appreciate the opportunity to continue to affirm our commitment to having this transit conversation from a regional perspective.

I think it's really important to signal council's intent with that in mind.

With that being said, I'm going to hand it back over to Calvin.

the process of walking us through the amendments for consideration this afternoon.

Again, we'll take each amendment individually and allow for questions and discussion.

So over to you, Calvin.

Thank you, Councilmembers.

Calvin Chow, Council Central staff.

There are three items on the agenda and another item that was circulated, I believe, on Friday.

The first amendment is Councilmember Strauss's it would extend the term of the proposal from four years to six years to a term expiring in 2026.

Thank you.

Councilmember Strauss, would you like to address your amendment before we open it up for questions?

Yes.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

At our last committee, I was having trouble weighing the pros and cons, the costs and benefits between four years and six years, I was on the prevailing side of reducing the term for four years.

And after giving it much thought, I am at a place where the six year duration is one of them is the most important consideration for me in this bill.

And so I will be bringing this amendment forward, returning it to six years and I, um, For me, the conversation about rate is secondary to the conversation about longevity.

Because we are right now we have a very blurry vision of what the future will hold at this time in our nation's history.

We have a hard time understanding what will happen next week, much less in three months from now, and definitely not within six years.

I think an important aspect of the six-year authorization is that it does not preclude the county from moving forward with their own ability to raise their own benefit district.

what is something that I've noticed to be very important for Seattle to be able to get the transit that it needs, because Seattle's transit needs are different than the rest of the county, is that the city has dollars to put into Metro so that we retain leverage to receive the services and transit levels that we need.

Even with the county passing a regional transportation benefit district that does not then mean that Seattle will get the transit service that it needs.

So I think that the six-year authorization is very important.

It does not preclude the county from moving forward and what we heard time and time again was that 2020 was going to be the year for a regional transit measure.

We've been hearing this for a number of years and We did not see that come to fruition.

So for me today, the conversation about rape will come second to my focus on the six-year duration.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Any questions or comments?

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

You know, I would ask a question of the sponsor here.

In our conversations last week, We did talk about decreasing the rate from six years to four years.

And I think that was in recognition of the fact that the tax was not asking for as much as I think it should or could.

And so that is why I was supportive of decreasing it to four years, recognizing we needed to work as quickly as we could to replace it with additional strategies at the regional level or progressive strategies if possible.

I guess my concern, though, is in order for me to support moving it to six years again, I think it would make a lot of sense for us to have a conversation about the rates and what those rates will be.

If there is the possibility of increasing the amount of money that comes in and having that for a longer period of time, that's definitely something I would support.

So basically, just wanted to flag for both the council president and for the sponsor of this amendment, I think that it would make a lot of sense for us to go back to six years.

But if the rate were increased, I would be more supportive of it.

So it might just be a matter of the order of the conversation.

And that's my concern with the current sequencing of the discussions for the afternoon amendments.

And Council Member Roscada, it sounds like you and I share very similar concerns.

I was okay bringing the I would like to see the duration down to four years because I did not want to see us sever our transit service to the degree that this 1.1% does for six years.

I would be happy to have conversations about increasing the rate.

For me, I need to see that six-year duration occur.

make some comments, observations here.

Okay, it doesn't look like it.

So I think, you know, I would agree that the conversations around the rate of taxation and for how long are related, but perhaps not interdependent.

I am concerned that You know, I think that the reason perhaps why we were skewing to four years is because the future is so uncertain and so blurry.

And committing ourselves and asking the voters of the city of Seattle to commit us to a six-year structure, even in light of this resolution about regional partnership, seems And so I think, you know, I think the reality is that no matter where the rate is at, whether it's .1, .15, .2, you know, pick your adventure, you know, the reality is that we're still asking voters to consider a sales tax that is city-based only in the context of understanding that what we need is a regional approach.

And so I worry about, you know, have a six-year plan that effectively creates an environment where we are waiting too long to pull together, with some level of urgency, regional partners to really address this issue and tackle this issue from a regional perspective.

So I can't support this amendment for those reasons.

in large part because I just think that the more time we buy the partners in this space, the longer it's going to take us to get to what I think is the ultimate goal, which would be a regional plan around this.

And that is coupled with the lack of uncertainty in this environment.

that leads me to sort of be a little skittish about committing for an entire six years and instead skewing towards four years, which is still a significant, meaningful amount of time, but doesn't tie our hands so severely as I think a six-year period would.

Council President, that's very helpful.

Calvin, could you remind me, Would the county and the region be able to move, or I guess, would the city of Seattle be able to reassess our transit benefit district in a period of time between now and six years to increase the rate?

Should the environment change, or do we need to wait for that entire duration of six years?

I'm sorry, could you, under the scenario that a six years at 0.1% were to go forward, could we reevaluate that 0.1% within the term of that six years?

We could go back to voters to increase the sales tax up to a maximum of 0.2%.

Great, thank you, Cal.

And so I guess what my overall point in this meeting today is we should at this time be authorizing for the greatest duration possible because in the future should variables change, should the environment change, should the economy change, should anything change, we do have the ability to go back to voters in four years, we do have the ability to make These changes with the public's input, in the interim, what we can't do is extend authorization.

And I think that at this time, with the amount of uncertainties in our world, the greatest duration of authorization is most important.

I'm sorry, so the proposal is go for six years, and if we want to change our mind, we'll just ask the voters, we'll go back to the ballot?

That's the proposal on this?

If, I mean, to your point, Council President, if what we are seeing is that we need to regionalize or we need to put pressure on the region to make these movements, we have the ability to cooperate and participate as partners.

To your last points, in the interim, just because we authorized for six years does not mean that we can't make changes in the interim.

Councilmember Lewis and then Councilmember Peterson.

I'm not sure if that's the right way to put it.

I was a supporter of the four years.

I remain a supporter of the four years just given a lot of the reasons that the Council President stated.

Be it this discussion about the transportation benefit district, be it discussions about payroll taxes, be it discussions I know that on all of these issues, it is increasingly Seattle that is expected to shoulder the leadership in tackling these problems, but I do think that part of that needs to be really setting a line and saying, we're going to get it this far.

And at that point, we're going to have to have a regional conversation.

And I think four years, by forcing that conversation in four years, that that's a better approach instead of having having six years and signaling to our regional partners that that's going to be locked in for six years.

And I think we can't forget that a lot of our regional partners have benefited from Seattle's transportation benefit district.

We buy service hours that go far outside the boundaries of our city.

So what's to say that there will be less incentive for a regional we are not going to have a solution if we lock in a six-year Seattle only one.

I like the idea of saying given the circumstances, given that 2020 is a very difficult year for lots of different reasons, we are going to renew because we have to and the transportation benefit district is a critical piece of our but we're only gonna do it for four years, and then we are going to resume the conversation we wanted to have this year, to have the regional transit benefit district, hopefully with more tools by then, too, be it from the legislature, be it from successful litigation and appealing Tim Eyman's initiative.

So for that reason, I guess I'm just signaling, I continue to think the four-year model is better.

I think it gets us where we need to go, and that is what I would continue to support.

councilmembers.

Thank you.

Thank you, councilmember Lewis.

Kelvin, you have something to?

Yes, councilmembers.

I just wanted to help clarify that what we are putting on the ballot is asking the voters for permission to put up to .1% sales tax to be imposed.

Future councils could choose to change that.

I believe after two years, You could imagine in some period of time when the county had a proposal coming forward, council may decide to not impose the tax if the if the county tax were to move forward and could potentially take a legislative action, an ordinance that says if the county measure passed, we would no longer collect.

There are ways to kind of marry up and combined our measure have it be supplemented by a county measure.

I think it's a question of, you know, how much do you want to force the conversation with the county on that timeframe and sort of what position do you want the city to be in for that conversation?

Calvin, on that last point that you just made, what are the factors that should be considered in terms of city position and leverage in what we hope will be impending conversations related to a regional approach as opposed to a city-only approach?

Well, I think it's useful to think about what happened this year.

At the beginning of the year before COVID happened, there was a broad effort to try to get a regional package together for reasons that weren't anybody that anyone could foresee.

The county was not able to decided not to move forward with it, and it left us somewhat scrambling to kind of put something in place to continue service.

Because of that, if we are able to get a proposal approved by voters, we will actually miss about three months of collections because Department of Revenue will stop at the end of this year, and our new measure, if it passes, won't be put into effect by Department of Revenue.

for about, until about April 1st, in terms of when we would start collecting the sales tax.

That's an administrative sort of issue, but it happens because of how, you know, because our measure ends now, and we are only planning for the extension, asking voters for that extension in November.

So issues like, so there are some administrative issues like that.

I think, having a city measure in place means that the city knows what funding it's, we will have a better sense of what our funding needs and our requirements are at that time and how we would fund it.

And that helps us better explain to the county what we need to see in a regional package and have some conversations around that.

I think that on the flip side, if we don't have it in place, it just means that we have to be much more structured and much more I think we are going to have to focus in our conversations with the county about how to roll out and what the timing of that is because we would have to scramble again for backup if that measure were not successful.

Thank you, Council President.

And I want to thank Council Member Strauss for bringing back this amendment.

I know it was, you know, it's not an easy thing to do to, you know, bring back an amendment like this.

So I really want to thank you, Council Member Strauss, for doing that and having the fortitude to, you know, recognize that the rate and the length of the measure go together so we can have the debate together today.

I think that's better for the ultimate policy, whatever we decide.

I did favor the six years.

I think I continue to favor the six years, especially based on what Calvin just told us, that in years five and six, we don't have to collect the tax if a regional measure is successful.

I'm committed to the regional measure, hence co-sponsoring the resolution with Council Member Mosqueda.

work with the county in a very positive way earlier this year, there was a lot of pressure where it felt like we were reaching a cliff.

And there'll be an even bigger cliff four years from now because the Seattle levy is expiring at the same time.

So to the extent we're going to have a need to put additional funding forward for both Seattle-type improvements as well as transit.

I would think King County leaders would want the regional measure to go on the ballot in four years because it's a presidential year where you're going to have the we're going to be able to do that.

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for me it moves it more in favor of the six-year just having that new or that new information clarified by Calvin.

Thank you.

Any other comments or questions?

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you Council President.

Again just to speak about Calvin's comments about continuity.

It is important that this is one of the reasons why the six-year amendment is important to me. is to be able to provide a continuity of service to ensure that we are not breaking down on our reserves and to make sure that we are collecting and providing transit service without a break because we can't necessarily wait for the, we have these conversations about regional approaches on a number of different issues before us and What I have heard time and time again from this body is that we can't necessarily wait for the region.

We know that we have the solutions before us.

This again is another one of those situations where if we create a four-year term and the region does not move forward in four years, we're stuck.

And I'll posit this forward, which is even if the regional transit benefit district is successful in four years, that means that Seattle loses its leverage to request the service that we need.

And I can tell you that there are a lot of needs throughout the county.

And with the densest population in the county here in the city, we have different needs than our neighboring cities, even though they're just a made up line away.

Tukwila, you can't really tell the difference between Tukwila and Seattle.

Seattle has much different needs when it comes to creating and providing public transit.

And so that again, even with a regional measure, I think will be important for the startup time that Seattle still retains its ability to demonstrate where our transit needs are.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Morales, looks like you have some comments to make.

Sure.

I really just want to reiterate what Council President Gonzalez and Councilmember Lewis said, which is that we really need our partners to come together sooner than six years.

And because we have, you know, this is, especially if we don't adopt either of the amendments to increase the rate, what we are putting forward is already going to be a drastically reduced service package.

And we know that that's going to have a really, as I've said before, a really draconian effect on folks who rely on transit, who can't drive, and who need to get to work, get into their communities.

I just think that we need to be really aware of the fact that this isn't the kind of measure we would prefer.

And so why we would extend it for six years is a question.

I really think that because of the kind of measure we're having to consider today, that we should try to make it as short as possible so that we can really work with our regional, with other jurisdictions, with King County, to make sure that at the end of that four years, we have something much more equitable in place.

that.

Thank you.

Any other comments or questions?

in terms of our bargaining position with regional partners.

We were very close this year at the end of, I think, a six-year cycle.

Unfortunately, COVID happened, and that put us all in a very different scenario.

I think if COVID had not happened, we would be talking about a regional approach right now as opposed to a city-only approach.

in my conversations and my office's conversations with transit advocates and folks who work in this space, they truly want to see, at last, a regional approach to how we structure this proposal in the future.

I think going from four to six years loses the urgency of now.

I think that while it is technically accurate to say that we could choose to not tax for a period of time or to modify the tax, I think that those things are easier said than done.

And so I don't see them as actual viable tools that would see the light of day.

I see them as technical opportunities, but ones that are unlikely to come to fruition if there is the need to do so.

I just think it's a lot harder to say you're going to now suddenly revise a previously voter-approved levy mid swing in order to shift or correct course.

I just don't think that that's as easy as as one might think it to be.

And so I think I just don't think that that's a reasonable or viable option in that space.

So I think that in order to create incentives in order to continue to keep the pressure up on us and our regional partners to get to the table and have realistic I think that we need to have conversations and planning around regional approach.

We need to skew on the side of keeping this at four years.

I appreciate the conversation and the intent with which the amendment was brought forward.

I think I have a disagreement about the effect of the

viewing the same issue with slightly different lenses where, you know, I think continuity of collection and providing service is very important.

And I do believe that the regional and transit partners could put forward with a similar amount of urgency in four years with or without four years on our own Seattle Transportation Benefit District.

But I'll let this conversation expire.

Thank you, Council President.

I suppose I'm just a little bit more, a little less risk averse than you are in terms of pulling the dice on a four year.

Transit and transportation have been the issues that I have staffed for nearly a decade now.

Many of us come to different issues with different subject matter expertise.

Transit and transportation is one of those areas that I bring subject matter expertise.

I can tell you exactly where we could build the light rail tunnel from West Seattle to Ballard.

Utilities, I might have a little bit more learning to do when looking at utilities rates.

So I just bring to you that this is an area that I've studied and I've staffed for many years.

And this is something that I see a way forward with us.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for that explanation of your expertise.

Any other questions or comments on this amendment?

Okay, we'll go ahead and move along to the next set of amendments.

Kelvin, please.

So there are two more amendments that speak to the rate.

So I will talk about both of those.

Amendment number two is sponsored by Council Member Morales.

It would double the rate.

from 0.1, one-tenth of 1%, to two-tenths of 1% sales tax.

And amendment number six is sponsored by Council Member Gonzalez.

It would extend the rate to 0.15%.

Amendment number six would also raise the maximum amount of spending that could be spent in the ORCA opportunity, the low-income subsidized pass bucket.

It would raise that cap from 10 million to 23 million, which would essentially make all the additional money from the increased rate be eligible for that program.

Thank you, Kelvin.

Council Member Morales, do you want to go first?

Sure.

Go for it.

Okay, let's see where to begin.

Well, so I want to thank everybody for this conversation.

Last week, we began this conversation.

And as I said then, I'm really looking to restore about 150,000 transit service hours to our neighbors, even as we struggle with the fact that this is an increase to sales tax.

And I will apologize for my poor speech today.

As I said, it was a late night.

So last week I did withdraw the amendment after much discussion so that we could allow more time to hear from stakeholders.

And I will after dozens of conversations with King County Metro, with county council members, with labor, community organizations that serve workers, low-income residents, people with disabilities, communities of color, I decided to bring the amendment back for consideration.

These stakeholders understand what's at risk.

Those are the kinds of conversations we've been having over the last week.

They also, I want to say, I don't know that a lot of folks know this, but a couple of years ago, I worked with Puget Sound Sage.

Did I go out?

Yeah, we're having a hard time.

hearing you, you're breaking up quite a bit.

Um, I, I, I knew it wasn't me because usually I'm the only one who, um, is having internet connections.

I saw other people's faces struggling to.

Okay.

Can I call in it?

You seem to be coming in.

Okay.

Right now.

So maybe, okay.

Maybe you can go.

I will go slowly perhaps.

So I worked with Transportation Choices Coalition and Puget Sound SAGE a couple years ago to survey hundreds of low-income transit riders and really got to understand the variation in travel patterns for them.

This is about much more than just commuting into downtown Seattle.

This is, you know, they're looking for an initiative that acknowledges the really heavy reliance on transit for essential workers, for families who rely on transit to access grocery stores and medical services, and for those who just can't drive.

So we know that SDOT and the King County Council, as referenced by someone, we've received a letter from Council President Claudia Balducci.

They've committed to making decisions with a racial equity lens, to recognizing travel patterns of these families.

We are about to consider a resolution ourselves that acknowledges that we need a regional approach.

So these commitments, though, are really only meaningful if we retain as much service as possible.

So this amendment would raise an additional 55 million a year or so to support another 200,000 to support about 200,000 service hours.

It's three times the original proposal and it really helps us maintain the robust transit system that we've already built and keeps people moving as we inch toward a COVID recovery.

Um, I really think it's important that we continue these investments so that we don't lose the network, um, that we have built up over time.

And that is really robust, even in light of the reduced ridership that, that we are seeing right now, when the ridership comes back, we need those, um, services and those systems be in place.

So I am, um, advocating for the 0.2, um, increase the 0.2 rate so that we can ensure that the systems that we have in place continue to serve our neighbors.

I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to have an awkward transition there.

I don't want it to come off as oppositional because I don't increase the amount of anticipated revenue from a renewal of this levy as compared to what the mayor originally proposed, which was a .1% taxation rate.

So can you guys hear me?

Okay.

Um, everybody froze on me.

So I thought maybe I was my internet again.

So I just really want to emphasize to you all colleagues and to the members of the public that I think the fact that the council is having a conversation around where to move the dial to that, that is higher than 0.1% is, um, is in my mind, uh, uh, a good thing.

Um, and I welcome that conversation.

And so the question is, I think, um, you know, where do we want to set that dial based on both some policy considerations and the overarching consideration of whether we think that the voters of Seattle would find a sales tax increase of 0.2 or 0.15 more or less palatable to them so that we can ensure that the the lobby will ultimately be passed, and that we won't lose all of the existing service hours because the lobby failed.

And so I just wanted to sort of give some introductory comments about that to begin with.

So I am bringing forward a 0.15%, which is a 0.05% increase from the original mayor's proposal of 0.1, and sort of is is exactly 50% less than what Councilmember Morales is proposing.

The intent here is to, again, increase the amount of revenue that we could get from the levy at 0.15%.

We would raise about $39.3 million, which is an increase from the mayor's original proposal, which was 26.25.

and at $39,375,000, according to the Seattle Department of Transportation, we would be able to purchase anywhere between 150,000 to 200,000 service hours at a .15% rate.

So he, according to the Seattle Department of Transportation, they estimate that given the realities of, excuse me, if you average the last four years of data and ridership, that they expect that we will need a total number of hours of 195,000 for the 2022-2024 years, and again, this is all assuming that this is a four-year levy and not a six-year levy.

And so those are the just fact points, the data points that are leading me to believe that .15 still gets us the revenue that we need in order to to increase transit service, and to mitigate against the deep cuts to transit service.

I see this as sort of coupled also with the amendment that we'll talk about next, Amendment 3, that really talks about the need to allow essential workers to also be able to qualify for our low-income programs as people who continue to be high users of the system, and so I think that the .15 is viable not only because it gets us within that range of 150,000 to 200,000 total service hours, but also allows us to have a, I guess, mitigated sense of the potential risk of this being rejected at a 0.2% sales tax at the ballot box, which I worry about.

This will be the first time that we go to the ballot box in a period of a massive economic crisis related to COVID.

And I do worry about what the outcome of the election will be.

that context where we are asking folks to tax themselves via sales tax, which, you know, is felt most deeply by low-income communities and by those who consume products throughout our city, whether they live here or not.

And I just want to make sure that as we are asking folks to consider increasing or maintaining the sales tax, on themselves that we're in the best position to advocate for that issue.

So I will leave it there.

Happy to sort of answer any questions.

I also got a very long email just recently from SDOT sort of describing what else we can purchase with I am happy to forward that e-mail to the full Council for your consideration before this afternoon.

I think I would just add, just as a frame of reference, in 2019, before COVID, the existing measure, which was 0.1% sales tax and the $60 vehicle license fee generated about $56 million.

So, you know, doubling the rate to 0.2% wouldn't quite get there, but approaches that level of funding.

So just in terms of what our past funding stream is, we lost half of it in the vehicle license fee.

And that's sort of one way to think about what the rate of options are in front of you.

Thanks, Calvin.

Council Member Mosqueda and then Council Member Lewis.

Okay, Council Member Mosqueda wants to wait.

So Council Member Lewis, are you ready?

Yes, thank you.

I have a few questions for Calvin as well.

And Calvin, under the best case scenario that all of us here are hoping for, where we get the car tabs back, potentially as soon as this fall, maybe later, depending on what the timing is of that final decision.

would the unblocking of those car tabs, because my understanding is we're still accumulating them, and that money would just be unlocked, put right back into service if we prevail in litigation.

Does that get us back to the pre-COVID levels?

Or I mean, I guess I should say the pre-IMAN initiative levels.

Or would there still need to be some supplemental revenue in the benefit district to maintain that service?

Sure.

So just as a reminder, there are two vehicle license fee charges that we currently charge.

There was a Councilmanic $20 vehicle license fee, which traditionally had been used for road maintenance and other transportation maintenance funding.

And there was a $60 voter-approved vehicle license fee, which went to transit.

The city of Seattle received a temporary injunction that allowed us to continue collecting both those revenue sources.

we are successful in overturning I-976, that funding would be available for us to spend.

Currently it is being held aside in case we have to pay it back.

The $60 vehicle license fee would expire at the end of this year.

We would have some portion of money that could help transition us into the next phase, but basically we would have the 2020 revenues to help as a reserve to help buttress our service.

But we would either have to go back to voters for continual authorization of that $60 vehicle license fee for that to continue.

The $20 Councilmatic vehicle license fee, Council has the ability to extend that by Councilmatic approval to $40 immediately, and then could extend that to up to $50 total after another two years.

So there is some additional Councilmatic authority available to us if we are successful in our I-976 challenge.

And Calvin, just one quick follow-up on that.

Could we do the Councilmatic up to 50 and then also go to the voters to raise the car tab portion even higher, potentially?

There is a total max.

I believe the total max is $100 vehicle license fee total.

And unlike sales tax, which we don't overlap with the county, on the vehicle license fee, if you pay TABS, the cap is on the total amount of vehicle license fee you pay.

So if King County were to move forward with the measure, the combined measure, they would only pay up to $100 to the county and the city.

So there is a practical limit to how high we can go.

But if we did a regional measure, that wouldn't really matter so much if it was like a King County wide TBD.

I'm not sure if that's correct, but if the King County imposed a vehicle license fee, as did we, any individual Seattle TABS payer would only pay up to $100.

Right.

All right.

So, you know, I think that now pivoting away from just clarifying questions with central staff, you know, I think that where I was getting with is, you know, my preference would be, I do see the merits to a potential sales tax increase to stave off the worst of the cuts, but I see that as a scenario that is more hedging against not being successful in our litigation over the car tax as a mechanism to support our transportation funding goals.

And I guess what I wanted to ask, too, here is, you know, if we did commit to be at the .05 or the .1, Calvin, as a last question, could we subsequently, councilmatically repeal it, even if the voters approve the sales tax increase, in a scenario where, let's say the voters approve the increase, but we're successful in our litigation, we get that CAR TAP money.

could we then turn around and councilmatically repeal the sales tax increase because we have the car tax money now?

Yes, you are asking the voters for permission to impose up to currently a 0.1% sales tax.

You could choose to impose a lesser amount under that authorization.

Including just putting it back down to the 0.1 that it said.

I mean, like our current 0.1.

Whichever the ballot measure, whatever the voters authorize us to impose, a future council at any state could choose to impose a lesser amount.

Okay, great.

Thanks.

So I guess that just to kind of make it clear where I'm kind of standing on this now, I think it would make sense potentially to pursue a sales tax increase, although, you know, I You know, my hope is that it would never be realized.

What I would hope is that we could also package similar I don't want to have a scenario where we have intent as a council to eliminate that sales tax increase in the event that we do get the car tab money back.

If we could include that in the recital or as a whereas clause in the legislation to signal that would be our intent.

That would be something I would potentially be interested in.

I think we are in a position where we have imposed another aggressive tax.

I know there are some other sales tax authorities out there that King County and the city are potentially looking at.

you know, in and of itself, like a 0.1% is not a big additional hit to a lot of households that are on tight incomes, but the aggregate of the regressive tax system catches up to the most vulnerable and the poorest people in the city.

And even though, you know, one regressive tax here isn't gonna, you know, maybe be the straw that breaks the camel's back, the aggregate impact is something I'm very concerned about.

So I do want us to think about this in the context of if we are successful with the CARTAB litigation, which I'm inclined to think we will be, but you never know, that we would immediately repeal this councilmatically back down to the status quo instead of having a increase in the sales tax.

So that's just where I'm thinking about this.

I'm open to potentially I'm supporting the 0.05 or the 0.1 later today, but it's mostly because I'm optimistic about getting the car tabs back.

And in the event that we did, I would hope that we would repeal whatever increase we put on the taxpayers.

Customer Mosqueda, did you still have a question?

Yes, thank you.

Actually, one clarifying question on that line of questioning and then another statement if I may, Madam President.

Just a clarifying question for Calvin.

In response to Council Member Lewis's line of thinking, I thought what I heard you say was that if the council chooses, for example, to pass a tax at .2 or .15, the council still has the option to not impose the tax at that full amount.

We wouldn't necessarily have to repeal it, correct?

We could just choose to impose a lesser amount.

That's correct.

We're asking the voters for permission.

We will have to take a separate action once we have the voters permission to ask the Department of Revenue to impose a tax of up to that amount.

I think that's helpful clarification, because I understand the line of questioning and the thinking that Councilmember Lewis was just articulating.

I also, though, want to caution us from using the term immediate repeal again, because I think that that is a very, very big action on behalf of council.

And under this scenario, whether or not it's an increase of 0.1 or 0.05, we wouldn't necessarily have to act to repeal.

We would just choose to implement a lesser rate.

I see heads nodding and for the benefit of those who are not able to see all of us, I just wanted to confirm that point.

And then, Madam President, just to add to the discussion here, I appreciate both what you have put forward and what Council Member Morales has put forward to increase the amount of funding that can go into these critical transit services, I think one of the biggest things that we've heard from folks is that there is a deep need right now for services and frequency, especially if you think about the type of workers that are being asked to leave their home and continue the essential work.

Sometimes they're getting off work at 2 a.m.

from a shift at the grocery store or from the hospital.

And so the frequency and the services is something that I'm really interested in making sure that we maintain whether either one of these go forward.

And I would be supportive of we are looking forward to any effort to increase the amount.

So I'm looking forward, I will forward to you all as soon as I get the chance some possible considerations for your consideration of the sponsor of the amendments.

Just to make sure we are clarifying or adding to the list of options that we can use these dollars for so that frequency and increased services are really

We are not going to be able to the current status of service and frequency.

At least that's been my understanding is that we are facing cuts to the system no matter what.

And none of these proposals prevent cuts.

And so the question is here is I think Councilmember I think it is important to understand that not only is Councilmember Morales and I are interested in advancing something that will be both viable at the ballot box, but also that it is a proposal that will help to mitigate the anticipated cuts.

I think that clarification is important because Councilmember that we will see 0% change in the system.

Because my understanding is that there will be some impact even with the passage of this levy.

So Calvin, I saw that you raised your hand.

Please feel free to add to that, correct me, take it away.

I think that's correct.

I just remind the council that with our previous ballot measure, we were fortunate to be able to be additive to king county service and that's just doesn't appear to be what's going to happen for the next couple of years.

king county is going to have to go through their own restructuring process this fall.

we expect them to be making some cuts.

so even if we were able to completely restore our funding, the service on the street, the service that people would see would likely still see some cuts.

You know, as I said, the conversations that I've been having over the last week are.

This is the crux of the issue, right?

We know that there will be cuts.

We know that folks who are most reliant on transit are the ones most at risk of these cuts.

And so, um, so that is why it's so important to have the commitment that we have from, you know, council member, uh, county council member Balducci from county council member Dembowski about the use of that racial equity tool.

As we are looking at this, we need to make sure that people can get around their communities.

And the reason I mentioned the study that, um, that we did the survey that we did, is because we learn so much about the travel patterns of folks who are people with disabilities, people in low-income communities, people who are really using transit to get around their neighborhood.

Here in my district, people use the 7 not only to go to work downtown.

They use it to go to the grocery store, to go to the doctor, to drop their kid off at daycare.

when we had daycare.

Um, and so it's really important that as we are trying to protect service, as we have some resource available, um, that we focus on, uh, you know, the grocery store workers who are trying to get off their shift at 11 o'clock at night and get home.

Um, so that, that's why this is so important because, um, we need to both, uh, ensure that we can restore some hours and make sure that the folks who are most dependent on transit have the ability to do that.

So the last thing I'll say is that the folks in my district who I talked to about this were not only transit advocates.

As I emailed to colleagues last week, I spoke to Asian Counseling and Referral Service, the Refugee Women's Alliance, Seattle Chinatown International District PDA, Interim CDA, Puget Sound SAGE, El Centro de la Raza, The King County Labor Council, Teamsters 117, Beacon Hill Safe Streets, Rooted in Rights.

These are organizations in my district that really focus on serving their constituents are people who are low income, immigrants and refugees, communities of color.

And they're the ones who will be most impacted by this, and they're supporting it.

So that's my pitch and I will leave it there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales for that additional information.

And I agree.

I agree with everything you've said, with the exception that I just, I would love to see point two.

I just am nervous that we're not going to be able to get that across the finish line, but we can have difference of opinion on that.

But I do think that that point around what the effect to the transit system will be, either under a 0.2 or 0.15 is really important point to make that I think merits this whole policy conversation around increasing it from 0.1% to begin with.

And so I appreciate the opportunity to continue having that conversation.

and I just wanted, I know that Council Member Herbold is in the queue.

She has some comments she'd like to make.

I wanted to just really quickly make a clarification on my own amendment.

There is some language in subsection C that increases the amount, the dollars available from this levy should it pass from $10 million to $23 million that could be used to support I just want to be really clear.

It increases the amount of dollars available to vulnerable communities who are most dependent and reliant on accessing transit services.

And so the way that I think about it is that we know that there will be cuts and impacts to service and frequency because of what we've been told by King County Metro in terms of their need to reorganize as a result of lower ridership throughout the system.

And for me, I think it's really important to make sure that we continue to promote the ability for people who need access the most in the system as it transforms is going to be really important.

So I just wanted to make sure that we were signaling to that we had an interest in making sure that we were providing additional resources to those populations, but certainly.

to make sure that we are still leaving flexibility intact to allow for policy decisions to unfold around increase in transit services and frequency, particularly on some of these late night routes that are needed where we know that essential Just wanted to provide a little bit of clarity around my mandatory language.

Thank you.

I just want to very briefly say I really appreciate learning that the transit advisory board has contacted us letting us know that they continue to support the six-year term and that they are also supportive of the two-tenths of a percent for the I just want to underscore during the committee discussion of this that without a six-year term, if the King County measure didn't succeed in 2024, the city would be in the position of needing to hold a ballot measure in early 2025 as we did in 2015 and would run the risk of losing service in the meantime.

I appreciate that this has been I was a council member representing the city on the regional transit committee, and I just feel like I sort of have witnessed this happen in the past, and because of that experience, I'm just really concerned that I would urge the council to work closely with the county to It was very, very difficult being a Seattle City Council member on RTC, being really supportive of a regional transit effort, and just seeing sort of the difficulty and the complexity of that in the past.

I think that is a good point.

Also, a couple of other things.

I just want to recognize that both as it relates to the increase of over 1%, whether or not it is, I'm sorry, an increase, whether or not you're looking at one and a half or two-tenths of a percent.

I'm interested, and also as it relates to the term, the city doesn't have to collect the tax in 2025 and 2026. I'm wondering if the legislation says so, and says so that perhaps we don't intend to collect the tax either if a regional measure passes or if we win our lawsuit regarding car tabs.

And then finally, if the rate is increased to either 0.15% or 0.2%, I'm wondering if it's worth examining the maximum amounts included in the emerging needs funding bucket.

As the representative for West Seattle and South Park, I'm keenly aware that the city has a mode shift plan in light of the removal of the West Seattle bridge from the places where we can get off the island, as they say.

And the mode shift is, again, from 17% of the folks who are pre-COVID using transit to 30%.

And there's just, there's no way that we're going to be able to meet that 30% goal under the current funding proposal.

we are having cuts even with the emerging needs in the mayor's proposed package.

the investments necessary to get to that 30% mode shift are just, they're not very, I have to say, realistic.

So I'm wondering whether or not either one of the proposals, the two-tenths of a percent or the one-and-a-half, yeah, one-and-a-half-tenth of a percent includes an increase in the emerging needs funding bucket.

Thank you.

So two questions in there, both, sorry, two questions, both.

What does the, what do the measures, the amendments say about not collecting the revenue if we are successful with a regional measure or successful CAR TABs?

And secondly, what do the amendments say about the emerging needs funding buckets?

Thank you.

I can take a shot at trying to answer those questions.

The legislation that's in front of you currently asks voters for permission to impose up to a 0.1 percent sales tax.

It does not say anything in the ballot language itself about Reducing that if I-976 were to be overturned or any of those specifics, I would identify, I would say that there are challenges of describing that in a concise legal way on the ballot in the context of the 75 word count and the like.

It may be difficult to do that in time to get this to the county on I think there is a lot of potential there.

I think there is a lot of potential there.

I think there is a lot of potential there.

I think there is a lot of potential there.

I think there is a lot of potential there.

I think there is a lot of potential there.

I think there is a lot of potential there.

I think there is a lot of potential there.

I think there is a lot of potential there.

I think there is a lot of potential there.

I think there is a lot of potential there.

I think there is a lot of potential there.

I think there is a lot of potential there.

I think there is a lot of potential there.

I think there is a lot of potential there.

I think there is a lot of potential there.

that idea has been identified a lot.

Councillor, I'm sorry, I forgot your second question.

The emerging needs bucket, whether or not there is an increase potential for that bucket to be funded with either the 0.2 tenths of a percent or the 0.1 and a half tenths of a percent option.

Council Member, neither of the amendments offered change the cap of the maximum allowable spending for the emergency needs bucket.

Can I ask the sponsors whether or not they're open to doing so?

By some proportional amount?

So I think, you know, I think I'm totally fine with an emerging needs issue.

I think the original proposal has $5 million, up to $5 million.

I'm trying to find the actual language, Calvin.

Which section is that in?

You're still on mute, Calvin.

Sorry.

I'm sorry.

There we go.

Section 2, item, sorry, item B, I believe.

No, sorry, item C.

Item C, up to $10 million of the Proposition 1 revenues may be used annually to support the implementation, management, and administration of programs to support transit service by.

No, I'm sorry.

I think it's D.

There we go, sorry, $6 million.

So currently it's $6 million.

So it's up to $6 million of the Proposition 1 revenues may be used annually to support emerging mobility needs.

And we can take the sort of the conversations around the math offline.

I was just interested to just get a temperature read whether or not folks are open to that.

May I, Council President?

Yeah, go ahead.

I think I would be, it depends, is my short answer.

I do think that particularly supporting folks around the West Seattle Bridge closure is obviously important.

I will say that I did support the amendment to support the first mile, last mile, that transit That shuttle route from the light rail station down here, particularly in the Rainier Beach neighborhood and, well, really all down the line in South Seattle has been a really important tool or option for particularly seniors in our community.

That said, I'm also really nervous about investing more in kind of I would rather see us invest in more of a service around there, so I guess it kind of depends on how we slice it, and I'm happy to talk with you more after the briefing.

Thank you.

Okay, any other questions or comments?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam President.

So I just had a quick question because I think that you're correct.

We do not want to over promise or misrepresent what we are able to purchase in this and I think it's fair to remind folks that in this time we are not looking at increasing frequency and services so thank you for that correction.

As we look at the proposals in front of us what I'm wondering or trying to achieve is that we're going to be doing is increasing the amount of money through either proposal to make sure that we're being as directed as possible to increasing frequency and services.

Calvin, could you please speak to the proposals in front of us and how the spending side of it either compares or addresses frequency and services, if you could?

Because I think that would be helpful.

And again, don't want to misrepresent that this is

Sure.

Thank you.

So I think one thing to keep in mind is that the ballot measure identifies eligibility of certain spending buckets, but the actual spending will have to be decided year to year on a budget basis.

And for the proposal that the mayor has sent down, SDOT has proposed to really focus on the frequent network, the all-day service as where we spend the bulk of our transit dollars.

In the past, we had spent a lot of it on overcrowding for, frankly, commuting hours, because that's where we had a lot of people waiting for buses.

We had a lot of additional commuting service that we needed.

That isn't necessarily what we need today, and that hasn't necessarily been the demand today.

So the SDOT's proposal, which is not included in this ballot measure, but is how they intend to propose using it, is to focus on the all-day the all-day service, the network service that provides the basic transit route for the 24-7 service.

Thanks, Kelvin.

Because this issue keeps coming up around priorities of funding, which is laid out in Section 2. I just wanted to make sure that regardless of where we end up on the taxation rate, we are aware of a bit of a cautionary sent to my office, which says that, and I'm just going to read from it, it basically says that they want a caution about focusing too intently on service hours at this point, because it can imply a level of planning that they just don't have certainty around at this time.

And of course, they're referring to the fact that they part of how we, and Calvin, you can help to clarify this if folks have more questions, but part of how we do our transit purchasing, transit service purchasing is dependent on what King County Metro's planning will be for that year.

And so we get to, we get our purchasing choices are made within the construct of policy decisions that aren't necessarily in our control in terms of how King County Metro is going to structure the city of King County.

The city of King County has a lot of money in their service plan.

What has driven our choices at the city in terms of how we purchase transit services are influenced by the King County Metro's planning efforts.

But according to SDOT, they say this is why we have tended to and in communities that are most transit dependent.

And so, I guess to follow up on Council Member Mosqueda's line of questioning, is there language in the existing ordinance, either in the recitals or in the base legislation that indicates that that is sort of, In essence, the city's philosophy around how to make policy decisions around where to invest, i.e., frequent transit networks and in communities that are most transit dependent.

there are, I believe there are whereas clauses that speak to that.

Uh, it's again, it's, it's not necessarily spelled out in the ballot title itself.

Uh, the ballot title is more broad.

Uh, and again, um, I think you, we don't know what budget decisions will want the County, excuse me, that the city will want to consider, uh, as we start to understand where the County has spent its money.

So I think there is sort of that implied flexibility to respond to whatever the service plan is that the County comes up with in the fall and in future years.

Okay, that's helpful.

Council Member Muscata, did you have another follow-up, Calvin?

Okay.

Colleagues, any other questions or comments?

Okay, next amendment.

The last amendment is amendment number three.

Council Member Gonzalez, is your amendment that would add essential workers to the bucket of low income and transit pass programs to make them eligible for that spending?

Pretty self-explanatory.

It is a standalone amendment.

So regardless of what policy choices the council makes in terms of four, years versus six years or 0.2% or not, this amendment would be considered on its own and would allow funds from the passage of this levy should it pass to be able provide transit passes for low-income medical workers, health care workers, first responders, pharmacy workers, grocery store workers, and other workers deemed essential by any state order, such as the one that we saw in the COVID-19 civil emergency.

Happy to answer any questions.

I think it's a solid amendment.

Would look forward to folks' support.

Okay, no questions, no comments.

All right, I think that concludes any other comments or actually before I ask for comments, any questions for Calvin on the STVD ordinance before we let him go?

Okay, and so you are, free to go.

Thank you so much for your work over the weekend and over the past several weeks on this issue during a very busy budget season.

We appreciate you and all of your time.

Thanks, Calvin.

Okay, folks, any other comments or questions on this issue or on any other issues that Council Member Peterson lifted up?

All right.

Hearing none, we're going to go down the roll call here, and next up is Councilmember Sawant.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone.

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

The regularly scheduled meeting of the committee this Tuesday has been canceled due to the summer budget season.

Just over a month ago, the Justice for George Floyd movement won a historic victory when the city council in Seattle voted unanimously on the ordinance from my office and from our movement to ban police use and purchase of militarized weapons such as tear gas, flash bangs, and blast balls.

Last Friday, Judge Robert shamefully ruled that these weapons can continue to be used by Seattle police.

While a temporary injunction, we understand this is a serious threat.

It was particularly chilling that this came in tandem with Trump's decision to send border patrol agents like an occupying army into Seattle.

I issued a statement Saturday morning warning that this ruling was being explicitly used to allow the Seattle Police Department and federal officers to ready their full arsenal of weapons to attempt to violently suppress demonstrations.

And that was unfortunately exactly what happened later that evening.

The crocodile tears that Mayor Durkin has cried about Trump sending violent federal agents are frankly absurd when her own police officers are doing the exact same thing.

The consent decree hearings are farcical when Donald Trump's Department of Justice and Jenny Durkin's Seattle Police Department are superficially the two sides of the court case but are in total agreement on repression of protests, and both want to continue the use of weapons with impunity.

Both filed motions for an injunction against the ban passed unanimously by the city council on these militarized police weapons.

Socialist Alternative and I disagree with some of the tactics by a minority of protesters, and we believe we need a real debate in our movement about what kind of tactics are effective and what are not.

However, as I said, it is clear that Trump's Department of Justice, Seattle Mayor Durkin, Seattle Police, and the courts of the capitalist state are in total agreement on repression of protests.

and want to continue the vicious use of weapons in rejection of the weapons ban won by our movement.

The police violence championed by the police chief and allowed by Mayor Durkin and the federal judge was predictably horrific and indiscriminate.

There's video on The Intercept that shows a nurse in scrubs being directly maced in the face by police at the exact moment when she was helping an injured protester.

There were reports on social media of officers entering people's homes to rain munitions down on protests from the roofs.

The Seattle chapter of the National Lawyers Guild issued a statement condemning what they described as, quote, the violent targeting of its volunteer legal observers by the Seattle Police Department.

unquote, to quote a section of their statement.

In addition to SPD's haphazard and arbitrary deployment of force, officers specifically targeted the Seattle National Lawyers Guild's legal observers, all while concealing their badge numbers.

These incidents included deliberately spraying pepper spray into a legal observer's face at close range, video available by request, tossing flashbang grenades directly at legal observers, needlessly grabbing and shoving legal observers, purposely hitting legal observers with their bicycles.

The National Lawyers Guild has been providing legal observers at protests nationally since 1968 and in Seattle for decades.

They are well known to law enforcement and immediately recognizable by their bright green hats, which say National Lawyers Guild Legal Observer.

Legal observers fulfill the crucial function of monitoring demonstrations to ensure that protesters' First Amendment rights are respected.

They are important bulwarks against police misconduct.

Seattle legal observers are all lawyers, law students, or legal workers.

They are trained in professionalism and are not permitted to participate in the protests they observe or to interfere with police actions.

The rights of legal observers are codified in Seattle law, which specifically permits the observation and recording of police officers prohibits officers from punishing or retaliating against observers.

This is an extract from the press release from the National Lawyers Guild.

On the budget on Wednesday morning at 9am this coming Wednesday, my office, my office, and the people's budget movement will host a community meeting over zoom in preparation for the budget committee meetings that will discuss Seattle Police Department related amendments.

This will be the council's opportunity to defund the police by 50%, as has been consistently demanded by the Justice for George Floyd movement.

And our movement is also bringing forward allied amendments that go alongside defunding the police, which is funding renter organizing and continuing to funding renter eviction defense.

Because we know that even though the eviction moratorium has been extended statewide, that the crisis is only postponed.

And what we need is rent and mortgage payments for working class and middle class people to be canceled.

But for this to become a reality, it is not going to happen through lobbying politicians at the state or at the city.

It is going to happen when renters get organized for a real rent strike.

And that will need to be organized building by building, city by city, state by state.

We also need to stop the sweeps of homeless neighbors and I will be bringing an amendment to that effect.

As always, my office will live stream the community meeting to our Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch accounts.

And I also wanted to say that my office has submitted budget amendments to support the Justice for George Floyd movement's demand to defund the police by 50%.

and also the four-point blueprint that has been brought forward by community organizations and coalitions and to support other movements.

So as I said, we'll be bringing forward the fight to stop the sweeps, to cut the budget of the police by 50%, but also very specific amendments as well related to the 911 call center out of the SPD, cutting 80,000 from the patrol operations budget line to restore the funding to the Green New Deal Oversight Board, We want to make sure that we fight to also cap Seattle police

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Any questions or comments on that report?

Okay, seeing none, thank you so much.

We are gonna move over now to Council Member Strauss, please.

Thank you, Council President.

And I'm going to, I've been asked by Council Member Juarez to read her notes.

Oops, just lost them.

Here they are again.

If it's all right with you, I will read Council Member Juarez's notes.

Please go ahead.

Great.

and technical difficulties.

There we are.

Councilmember Juarez's report from the Public Assets and Native Communities Committee.

There are no items from the Public Assets and Native Communities Committee on this afternoon's agenda.

The August 4th Public Assets and Native Communities Committee will be canceled.

Under her parks jurisdiction, Councilor Juarez's office will email you the weekly parks COVID-19 programmatic updates.

As the pandemic continues, our park systems continue to be an essential part of our city's mental health and physical health, bolstering our resiliency.

The highest visitor counts over the weekend were at Golden Gardens, Magnuson, Green Lake, Alki, and Seward parks.

Our parks ambassadors are reporting that compliance with physical distancing was lower than the previous weeks.

And the levels of park use was higher than usual.

So we must remember that crowded parks lead to closed parks.

Since June 20th, the boat ramps have been open.

Parks has opened five boat ramps around Seattle and has sold a total of 3,667 boat launch permits.

Unfortunately, due to persistent overcrowding in and around the boat ramp areas, the Stan Sires boat ramp near Genesee Park was closed effective last Sunday.

Food Lifeline distributes emergency food.

So Parks and Recreation partnered again with Food Lifeline to distribute emergency food boxes at Rainier Beach Community Center on Wednesday.

Food Lifeline distributed thousands of boxes this week at four locations around Seattle and Bellevue.

These boxes contain fresh produce and assorted dairy items.

The CARE van celebrates Seattle Parks and Recreation employees, the superintendent's office organized a Care-A-Van car parade last Wednesday to visit 10 work locations around the city.

This Care-A-Van delivered t-shirts, treats, and heaps of gratitude to parks' essential workers from a safe physical distance.

Horns were honked.

The celebration occurred during the National Parks and Recreation Month, which is July, in honor of our park staff.

Mayor Durkan proclaimed Wednesday, July 22nd, as Parks Recreation Employee Appreciation Day.

On Wednesday evening, Seattle's Great Wheel, the Ferris wheel on the waterfront, was lit up green in honor of our Parks and Recreation staff.

In the libraries, nine library branches in the city are accepting returns in their book drops Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday from noon to 6 p.m.

Book due dates have been extended to August 15th, and please return your books if you're done reading them, so others may read them.

Dale Park Public Library is in the process of planning curbside pickup services for checkout at some library locations available by appointment.

And the service is expected to be available in early August at the earliest.

In Sound Transit world, Sound Transit is working on a passenger confidence plan to ensure that they're making trains and buses as safe as possible during the pandemic.

Goals include 100% passenger and employee face covering compliance, increased cleaning protocol increased air flow and filtration.

Sound Transit continues to grapple with the planning for revenue restrictions during this pandemic.

And in other news, Sound Transit was featured on the Discovery Science Channel's Impossible Engineering Show, which aired worldwide, for its achievements as being the first to build light rail across a floating bridge.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez, for that report.

Switching to my report, there are no items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on the Introduction and Referral Calendar.

There are five items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's full agenda.

Resolutions 3158 and 31959, which both approve memorandums of understanding with Seattle Pacific University and Seattle Central College to establish citizen advisory committees as they prepare for their new major institution master plan.

I have asked Lish to be present because these items are heading towards quasi-judicial.

And Lish, could you remind the body of the rules and considerations we need to keep in mind as we are considering quasi-judicial items?

Yeah.

Thank you, Council Member.

So both the Seattle Central Colleges and Seattle Pacific University's major institution master plans are currently pending.

under our quasi-judicial rules, which means that council members should refrain from discussing the merits of those plans or the merits of future growth on the campuses.

You are free to discuss the content of the two resolutions that you have in front of you this afternoon, which are related to setting up community advisory committees.

Feel free to talk about the makeup of those committees, but you shouldn't talk about the master plans that those committees will be the city of Seattle planning commission.

And I look forward to providing advice in the future to the council.

Any questions?

Any questions, colleagues?

Looks like your reminder was well received and understood.

Thank you, Lish.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lish.

Thank you, Council President.

The other two aspects on today's I'm going to be bad with pronunciation.

It's Durek and Lauren Squires.

Those are the five items on the full council today from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee.

On last Wednesday, the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee met to hold public hearings on the Child Care Near You Ordinance, the Annual Omnibus Bill, and received an update on tree protection work from the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection.

The next meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee is August 12th at 9.30 AM.

with three agenda items, the vote on child care near you, a vote on the land use omnibus bill, and a briefing and public hearing on rezones in Rainier Beach for development of affordable housing.

That is my report from committee.

Regarding our continued budget rebalance, I want to thank everyone who supported and worked with me on amendments last week.

In addition to the amendments I brought last week, I was looking with a more detailed eye, and I noticed a couple other things that I need to move forward.

Four amendments to the SDOT budget.

which would redirect funds from the unreserved balance towards critical transportation projects.

I have been clear with the executive, or with CBO, that the need to retain these items as line items is important, understanding that these dollars might not be spent this year.

It is for the Thomas Street redesign, the market for low-high pedestrian improvements, Fortson Square redevelopment, and the Route 7 multimodal corridor.

projects are received an immense amount of work over the last few years.

And it's understanding that they may be cut in future budgets, but retaining the one item right now is important.

Finally, an amendment to require a feasibility analysis of providing meaningful B&O tax relief to small businesses will be put forward.

I'm still working on the exact Also, I was happy to work with Council Member Mosqueda, thank you, on a reconciled version of our competing amendments related to non-congregate shelters.

I've already talked about Seattle Transportation Benefit District.

I'd like to talk briefly about the protests over this weekend, but I'm disappointed to see our city's response over this weekend.

When legal observers and independent media are not having their constitutional rights protected, how can we be sure that our residents and our citizens' rights are being observed?

We have a choice in how we respond.

and we continue to choose the most aggressive response available.

If our reform efforts have been effective over the last decade, why does our city's response look like every other city in the nation?

We know as government officials we are held to a higher standard and indiscriminate use of force has no place in our city.

We know that our police should be held to these same higher standards.

We know that aggressive indiscriminate use of force perpetrated by our government has no place in our society.

And we cannot rationalize this behavior away.

I look forward to working with our colleagues to understand and move forward with ways that we can better respond to protests occurring in our city.

In other news, this is also the 30th anniversary of the American Disabilities Act.

Yesterday, July 26, was the 30th anniversary of the American Disabilities Act.

This historic legislation was passed in 1990. It's a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life.

This ensures that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else and make sure that everyone has equal access to public spaces and buildings.

I consistently and constantly look through a policy lens of all ages and abilities and I know that this is important with how we construct our built environment in our world.

If you'd like to know more about the American Disabilities Act and our city's engagement with us.

Anne Frantilla and our city archivists have made an amazing exhibit at Seattle.gov.org slash archives under the exhibits and education section in the digital documents library.

So thank you and thank you to our archivists.

Thank you to the history of working for Americans with disabilities to ensure that everyone can navigate our built environment with ease.

So happy anniversary American Disabilities Act.

Here in District 6, folks are invited to help design the new Green Lake Community Center and Pool.

The Parks Department is hosting an online open house from July 22nd to August 20th.

You are invited to provide input on these three site concepts and programming preferences.

An online public hearing will be on Wednesday, July 29th at noon.

To join this open house or register for the public meeting, you can visit glcc.infocommunity.org.

During my regularly scheduled District 6 resident meetings last week, I spoke to D6 residents about race relations in District 6 and plans to move forward, Seattle Police response to protesters, and a host of other topics.

My office continues to advise small businesses under financial pressure due to the pandemic.

My office assisted stabilizing two longstanding establishments on Pliny Ridge by advising them on how to best leverage the governor's extension of the Washington State Subdictions Moratorium until October 15. and advise a 20-year business in Ballard regarding about how to restart operations in phase three and possibly shift their business model to maximize their operations.

I was also very relieved to hear that our Cafe Streets proposal now has a permitting pathway, and I look forward to and let everyone across the city know if you need assistance with understanding anything to do with Cafe Streets, please reach out to my office.

We're here to help.

Last week, on Tuesday, I held our District 6 Town Hall.

We had over 1,000 people tune in and 200 questions submitted.

The conversations that we were having needed to be extended.

And we went 30 minutes over our typically allotted time and also took up the time that I was scheduled to answer questions from the public.

So we will be answering questions via newsletters and videos throughout this week.

I received a report out and address questions from our community councils.

Thank you, Valor, Premont, Longford, Green Lake, and Finney for participating and continuing to engage the city to find solutions that enrich our district.

I also held our first community conversation on race in District 6. Thank you to DeMarcus Whitfall for hosting this important and timely conversation.

Being born and raised in Valor, this is the first time that we have had this conversation at this scale.

This is just the first step and I plan to continue the conversation because we're not finished and there's even ways that I noticed that I need to personally improve.

The work of undoing systemic racism isn't finished and we have a lot more work to do.

Lastly, looking forward to this week, I look forward to the discussions with residents and businesses in the Leary Triangle and coffee with the Fremont Chamber of Commerce.

and providing the video and newsletter responses to the 200 questions submitted to the town hall.

We will also be posting our regularly scheduled District 6 resident meetings.

And so I look forward to speaking with everyone from District 6. Thank you, Council President.

That is my report.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Are there any questions or comments?

Seeing none, we are going to move down the list to Councilmember Herbold who is next.

Just a quick reminder folks that we still have an executive session after this.

And we do have a hard stop for we can maximize our executive session time.

Councilmember Herbold, you're up.

Thank you, I'll be brief.

There are no items from the Public Safety and Human Services Committee on either the introduction and referral calendar nor the full council agenda this week.

As mentioned by Councilmember Morales, next week the Dunlap-Gittins Youth Rights Ordinance will be on the introduction referral calendar.

I appreciate working with Councilmember Morales on this legislation.

I'm pleased that many of you have signaled your interest and support in this bill.

As you may know, there's a similar version working its way through the King County Council sponsored by Councilmember Zahili.

I want to also just, again, as many of you have done, express my support for the work that is being done in community as it relates to our budget efforts, particularly Decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity Now.

Really appreciated receiving their ideas and partnership in developing proposals to make well-considered cuts to the Seattle Police Department budget and investments in community safety that will begin a process of reshaping community safety now and sets us up to continue that work and those reinvestments next year and beyond.

I am working on a package of amendments that the city of Santa Barbara and the city of Santa Barbara.

statements of legislative intent, budget provisos requested by Decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity Now, as well as a resolution that identifies some of the priorities that community and council share for our ongoing work in this area.

As it relates to a public health update, Governor Inslee and Secretary of Health Wiseman announced last week further restrictions on the Safe Start phase reopening in Washington.

These restrictions come after an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases across the state.

We now have over 50,000 cases, 1,500 deaths, and 5,000 hospitalizations due to the virus.

In Seattle, the virus is surging among young people in particular.

In Seattle, at our free testing facilities located in Soto Aurora areas, the fire department has administered a total of nearly 75,000 tests in order to try and stymie the increase.

The governor has changed the regulations for restaurants, bars, fitness centers, weddings, and funerals.

And further, the governor has expanded the requirement to wear face coverings in all common spaces.

including elevators, hallways, and shared spaces in apartment buildings, universities, hotels, as well as congregate settings such as nursing homes.

It is more important now than ever before that we double down on social distancing, wearing a mask when in public areas, and staying home as much as possible in order to save lives.

I was very sorry to see this weekend reported by the Seattle Police Department that 59 officers were injured with one of those being hospitalized with injuries ranging from abrasions and bruising to burns and a torn meniscus.

We don't know how many protesters have been injured, but my Twitter feed is full of pictures with injuries.

I also regret the unnecessary property damage that has occurred over the week.

Property damage is not just an abstract.

There are not only impacts to those who own property, but to also people who work in those businesses.

In addition, there are risks of physical injury inherent in property damage, including to our firefighters responding to intentionally set fires.

As I have, I will continue to speak out against property damage and call for peaceful protests.

Nevertheless, as a public official, I have a responsibility to be most focused on addressing the actions of public agencies.

In this case, the Seattle Police Department.

As a reminder, the June 12th temporary restraining order includes chemical irritants such as tear gas, OC spray, and any projectile such as and including flashbangs.

pepper balls, blast balls, rubber bullets, and foam tip projectiles.

The TRO specifically says they shall not be deployed indiscriminately into a crowd and they should be targeted at the specific imminent threat of physical harm or identifiable to others or to respond to specific acts of violence or destruction of property.

I watched in live feeds this weekend the targeting of reporters like Omari Salisbury and Joey Weissman.

In addition, I saw legal advisors, those are the folks wearing the green hats, and nurses specifically targeted.

It does not seem like the use of these munitions was done in a way that is consistent with our expectations as a city.

officers are not allowed to be in contact with the police, nor with the specific temporary restraining order.

Additionally, reported on Sunday, I've heard but not confirmed that officers drove the perimeter of protesters at Seattle Central College, verbally taunting protesters, playing bad boys loudly on their police radios.

I saw a video of an officer defiantly ripping off her name tag.

I also want to highlight the fact that the July 10th letter that I sent to the mayor and chief regarding the treatment of the members of the media in contravention of the city's law, as well as the police department's policies around orders to disperse, and that members of the media are exempt from orders to disperse.

I've not yet received a response to that letter.

I'd also like to thank Councilmember Mosqueda for her words of concern about the city's pursuit of journalist records, and I too feel that the city's legal position puts the media at great risk and has an unacceptable chilling effect on their efforts to hold government accountable.

The media is not an extension of government, period.

Lastly, for District 1, I just want to highlight that I have office hours scheduled this Friday between 2 and 6 p.m.

I do note, though, for the viewing public that there may be a need sort of on a last-minute basis to reschedule this office hours because of the potential need for a Friday budget meeting.

And then lastly, as far as the regional committee service that I do, last Thursday, the regional law, safety, and justice committee met, and I was pleased to hear a report from OPA director Andrew Meyerberg on the city's efforts regarding compliance of the I-940 Citizens Initiative.

That's all I have for today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any comments or questions on that report?

Hearing none, we will now hear from Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you so much, Madam President.

I will try to be brief as well, knowing that we do have a very large executive session on the horizon.

There is nothing from the Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies and Investments on the introduction referral calendar.

I am excited to say that tomorrow morning I will be joining the crisis response team of the Seattle Police Department for a ride-along.

For those who are unfamiliar, the crisis response team is a combined unit of sworn personnel and DESC, so that's Downtown Emergency Service Center, mental health workers that respond to folks who are in crisis.

I'm looking forward to that experience and learning more about that.

and how that may inform our future conversations about what our overall public safety system in the city will look like.

Additionally, I'm having a town hall tomorrow from 330 to 5 p.m.

on a number of different topics from the budget to public safety to our ongoing homelessness response.

I'll be joined by Chief Scoggins of the Fire Department, Downtown Emergency Service Centers Dan Malone, Sharon Lee for the Low Income Housing Institute, and a few more folks soon to be confirmed.

Definitely invite members of the public to join me for that town hall and ask questions and provide feedback as we go into the final leg of our summer balancing session.

I also want to join my colleagues today.

I heard Councilmember Herbold, Councilmember Mosqueda, and have seen many comments from other folks regarding the ongoing city litigation.

to compel news organizations to produce images and information pertinent to ongoing police investigations.

I stand with my colleagues in broadly and strongly condemning this.

The independence of the press in the United States is sacrosanct.

trust between the press and the citizenry is critical to ensuring that the First Amendment rights of everyone are upheld, and that the press is a trusted institution, not held in suspicion by the public, and not, as Council Member Herkul just stated, a appendage of the government.

I do not think, I do not think that it is the role of government to compel the press to appear as witnesses against their fellow citizens.

And that is essentially what this order would do were it to be carried out.

And I'll be blunt, to the city attorney who has the power to drop this case, Pete Holmes, drop this case.

This case is a threat to the foundation of an independent press, and we need to take that seriously.

And I am proud to join my colleagues in speaking out strongly on that.

Finally, in a similar thread, I do want to condemn the vandalism and the harassment that some members of this council have been subjected to by folks who hold different views on matters of public policy than they do.

I do not personally think as a public official that I am entitled in any way to be civil to me.

I think that people should be able to express their views bluntly.

And I have certainly been yelled at by constituents.

And I understand that that's part of the give and take of democracy.

But I do think from what I have seen from my colleagues that some of the messages that have been conveyed have gone beyond that.

And some of the actions that have been conveyed have gone beyond that.

And in fact, in some cases are criminal or almost adjacent to criminal.

I think that we all need to just bear in mind that we hold a certain obligation to each other to not cross certain lines.

I think that some of the remarks that have been expressed to these council members, if they were done by Safe Seattle, would be broadly condemned by the progressive community, in some cases as misogynistic, because a lot of these messages happen.

and I do just think it is important that we call those messages out for what they are, that we all agree that we need to come together, that we need to change this, a lot of the ways that the city does public safety and that a number of us on this council are committed to this, but that we do it in a way that does not jeopardize the health and safety of our public officials.

So I did just want to join in condemning those acts and standing with fellow members of this council.

So with that, I have no further updates, and we'll turn it back over to you, Madam President.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis, for that report.

I don't have much to report.

I don't have anything for my committee on this afternoon's agenda and don't have anything to report from the President's Committee.

I do want to pick off where Councilmember Lewis ended and just be really clear Again, for the third time, first time in a press release, the second time at the end of Budget Committee last week, and now for a third time, I'm going to reiterate once again that I do not support demonstration tactics that rise to the level of I just cannot state that more clearly or more in terms of the actions that were taking place at his home.

A lot of people on the progressive side have indicated that Post-its don't hurt anyone.

Unfortunately, Post-its might not hurt folks, but there were messages that were marked with marker into his home.

with profanities and with what one could conclude are threats of physical or serious bodily injury if he did not vote in a particular way.

And to Councilmember Lewis' point, that is when we begin to cross the line from having a discourse around policy and a discourse in which we might disagree, and it crosses the line into actually creating a reasonable fear for your safety if you are receiving threats of potential bodily harm and death.

I think the word used was, you know, defund SPD or be done.

And so I think that there's a lot of concerns about sort of the language used in these demonstrations.

And again, I fully support the first amendment that is no longer acceptable.

I also, over the weekend, received some pictures from Council Member Juarez of words and phrases sprayed on her street that are clearly directed um, to her, um, in front of her neighborhood.

And, and I just want to say that I also don't support that language and think that that language is completely inappropriate.

And I'm going to be really clear and specific here.

The language being used, um, by some of these protesters is misogynistic.

It is sexist at its core.

It is the word whore and bitch.

So for those people who have been completely flabbergasted and on the side of Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez last week after she was subjected to the phrase fucking bitch, I think you need to reevaluate whether it is appropriate to use that language locally against one of your council members.

It is inappropriate.

And I am intentionally using those words because these are quotes.

These are the words that are being directed to elected officials.

And I don't support that language being used towards women.

I think that we can stay committed to the cause of transforming our public safety systems, of transforming law enforcement, of standing in solidarity, with Black Lives Matter without at the same time saying that we find it acceptable to engage in misogynistic and sexist tactics.

I cannot support that.

I will not support that.

I'm always happy to engage with folks who disagree with me.

I'm happy to engage with folks who agree with me.

But I think, you know, allowing folks to feel that they are empowered and entitled to use terms like that towards an elected official that are clearly misogynistic and sexist and hurtful.

is problematic.

So again, this is the third time I have personally spoken about this particular issue.

Not a lot of council members have spoken up about this issue, and we all make our own personal choices for why we speak about certain things and not about others.

I want to be written and to misogynistic and racist terms.

This is a lot of the same things that we are seeing, a lot of the feelings that I know are being evoked here, particularly for Councilmember Juarez, harken back to some of the behavior that the women on this City Council were subjected to when we voted on We are not allowing the vacation of a street in order to facilitate the development of an arena.

I want to make sure we are continuing to support each other and to support the long-term a more just society by virtue of focusing ourselves on the policy conversations, by being willing to have a civil discourse.

And that doesn't mean that we're not, it doesn't mean that we're going to agree 100% of the time.

We shouldn't be agreeing 100% of the time.

It does mean that, that as elected officials, we all have a responsibility to call out oppressive language when oppressive language is being used.

I have attempted to do that.

And I have defended many of my colleagues at lots of different points of time.

And I will continue to do that in my utmost respect for each of you and in my utmost respect for community as well.

So that being said, I don't have anything else to report on.

anything else for the good of the order before I move into exec session.

Okay.

Looks like there are no, oh, Council Member Sawant, please.

Thank you.

I just wanted to briefly say that tactics.

I mean, as an elected representative myself who has rejected the the framing of electoral politics by the democratic establishment that's convenient to big business, pro-big business politics, which is that elected officials should legislate and leave the activism to someone else.

Socialist Alternative and I, as we've demonstrated for six years, we don't agree with that approach.

And in fact, we use and have consistently used our council office as a platform for the wider movement.

And I remain as part of that wider movement.

And that is the only basis on which we have won any of the victories that we have won, whether it's $15 an hour, the Amazon tax, or the victories for renters and our homeless neighbors.

It's on the basis of using our office as a movement built through a movement building approach.

And so we do have opinions about tactics because the effectiveness and success of movements depends, of course, on our unity and solidarity around the vision for society, the broad demands that we organize specific movements on, but also tactics.

And Socialist Alternative and I, as I said earlier this morning, disagree with some of the tactics by a minority of protesters.

And we believe we need a real debate in our movement about what kind of tactics are effective and what are not.

And I will specifically say among the tactics that I disagree with is using graffiti, especially that is sexist or racist is not acceptable and it's not effective to building the movement.

So I disagree with calling any council member a whore and using that kind of terminology.

I will also say that in the, Over six years that I have been in office, I personally, in my office, have experienced just countless such attacks.

I have truly lost count of such attacks.

Just to quote just one message among just the countless messages, just to give a sense of the kinds of attacks that our office is under constantly and has been for years, quote, you are a disgrace and a fucking terrorist scumbag.

go live in whatever third world shithole that your family came from, you worthless cunt, unquote.

And as I say, we've received these messages for years, and we don't likely share them because we want to focus on building a positive movement.

But I think this is a context in which this should be shared, that this is an approach that is not acceptable.

And the right wing and the Trump administration reactionaries use this approach And we have to aim for our movement, for our movement that has a vision for a better society to use tactics that will be effective in building solidarity, not creating this kind of atmosphere where it's really, whether you intend to or not, end up empowering The right wing.

And so it's important for for my office to acknowledge that it's also important for me to note publicly that, and I have, I have, I have communicated this to Councilmember Juarez.

But it seems to be coming up.

So I wanted to clarify this publicly, that Socialist Alternative and I have not in any way organized these protests.

I think, on the one hand, the establishment likes to claim that my office and our movement had nothing to do with the positive policies we have won like the Amazon tax.

On the other hand, they ascribe supernatural powers to me and my office and to socialist alternatives.

So I just wanted to make it clear, we have not organized these protests.

As a matter of fact, many activists and organizations are organizing many of the protests that are ongoing.

That's a particular strength.

of the George Floyd movement that it is, it is not one organization but multiple organizations and communities that are organizing this, these protests and that's why the protests are have been effective.

And I want to be crystal clear once and for all.

a socialist alternative, my office, or I have nothing to do with having organized these protests.

But I do want to make it clear that as far as the goal, the objectives that have been stated by all the protest actions, which is to defund the police by at least 50%, to demand an end to police violence, to demand an end to racist gentrification, for Seattle becoming an affordable city for everybody, for a search for an end to all kinds of oppression like racism and sexism.

All of these are absolutely the goals that we need to be fighting for and I stand with as a socialist with everybody who's fighting for that.

But as I said, we need to have a discussion on tactics.

I also feel the reason that the protesters are animated about certain council members is because they have not been on the right side of history.

They have not supported defund And they have not, they voted against, Peterson and Warris both voted against the Amazon tax.

So politically speaking, I think the protest movement as a whole is on the right side of history.

Unfortunately, the politicians who oppose the progressive measure are on the wrong side of history.

And at the same time, I think, just to reiterate that, The tactics matter and I and I and I believe there is no blanket situation of idea in my view.

So for the Democratic Socialists of America and the families whose loved ones were killed at the hands of the police when they organized a protest and went near Mayor Durkin's house, and I was invited as one of the speakers.

I didn't organize that protest either, unlike what Mayor Durkin might want people to believe.

But at the same time, I don't believe that that was a wrong action.

That action was absolutely on the right side of history.

And as I said, that action was led by the families whose loved ones, whose family members were killed at the hands of the police.

And so what Mayor Durkin is doing by Continuing to over amplify the fact that this protest was outside our house is to negate the real questions that she has failed to answer, which is why under her watch have people continue to die at the hands of the police, you know, especially I mean black and brown community members like Charlene allies.

and why police violence continues to happen under her watch.

And so the issues that are really of importance are those political questions that Mayor Durkan has been on the wrong side of history on.

And I would really urge everybody in the movement to let's build solidarity, greater solidarity, and let's win, defund the police by 50 percent, and let's make sure that we hold all political officials accountable.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Sawant, Councilmember Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam President.

I want to thank you for your words that you led with in your opening comments.

And I also want to echo what Councilmember Sawant raised.

At the beginning of our council briefing this morning, I raised some of the same concerns about members of our staff and individual council members who've received threats or misogynistic messages sent to them.

and I want to make sure that the folks in the public know and that there's no ambiguity around this.

I'm not conflating the messages that I've received about death threats or rape threats with those who I think are going to the homes of our colleagues.

I do think that it is important for us to, as Council Member Sawant did, call out that type of language, whether it's being used by people who are disagreeing with me, because I do want to defund SPD by 50% or people who agree with me on reducing SPD's budget.

no matter what your political position is or your policy goals, I think we are all saying that that type of language, both violent and misogynistic language, is not appropriate.

And I think all of us are interested in making the deep changes, the fundamental changes that need to happen.

That doesn't take away from, I think, my concern with the type of language that's being used against other council members, nor do I think that we are above that necessarily in terms of holding these offices.

but we should call it out when it happens, whether it's from people that we agree with or disagree with, as the council president said.

So I just want to make sure that my comments weren't being misunderstood from before.

There are different camps that are sending messages to all council members, and no matter what camp you're coming from, when you use misogynistic language that impugns sexual violence, I think it's important for us to call that out.

And so I just wanted to be super clear that I was not conflating what is being sent to me and other council members via email and the phones with other messages that are being written down.

And I think that's important.

And I appreciate the words that were just shared and share council member Solon's sentiments as well.

Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda.

And of course, if you're an elected official, particularly if you are a person of color or a woman, or in my instance, both, it is not new to be subjected to misogyny, sexism, and racism, and xenophobia that unfortunately comes with the territory, and it shouldn't.

But unfortunately it does.

And I have been consistent in my position that that type of behavior is inappropriate, as is outward intimidation and harassment.

And of course, the difference of getting an email remotely in your inbox or a voicemail is very different than, for example, having that same experience or that same sentiment communicated to you in your front lawn.

and in Councilmember Peterson's case, having comments made on his front porch.

And so I just want to really acknowledge that it's all bad and the tactic of bringing it to your home is tough.

And I know that the protesters are making the rounds.

I know that folks are having different experiences with them, and I just want to encourage I think we are better served and the people we are seeking to Okay, colleagues, any other comments?

Okay, seeing none, we're going to go ahead and close out the open session of council briefing.

I'm going to go ahead and move us into executive session.

As a presiding officer, I'm announcing that the Seattle City Council will now convene an executive session.

The purpose of the executive session is to discuss pending potential or actual litigation and labor negotiations.

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

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

I expect that the executive session will end by 1 o'clock p.m.

If the executive session extends beyond that time, I will announce the extension and the expected duration.