Good morning, my three colleagues.
How are you this morning?
By way of introduction, we do have two executive sessions after our briefing.
And so if I could impress upon you the need to be a little brief this morning, it would be helpful.
And we also have a briefing from the hearing examiner on the lid issue, the waterfront lid issue.
So having said that, it never works anyway.
keep trying every Monday let me just give give a brief report from the governance equity and technology committee and that is we have no items up for vote this afternoon we have our meeting tomorrow morning at 9 30 you have two items that will be up for vote.
One will be the SOTO-BIA legislation, which has come up to our committee before, and that should be prepared to vote.
And I think a lot of you are familiar with that, SOTO-BIA activities.
And then the second piece is the surveillance update legislation, which we've been discussing for several months, nearly a year now.
And I think we've reached a great compromise, both meeting the needs of our need to use technology and balancing those needs.
the concerns of many privacy advocates including the ACLU and so we think all the issues have been resolved and so that would be up for a vote as well.
And with that I'll turn it over to my esteemed colleague Council Member Sawant.
Thank you President Harrell.
Good morning everyone.
There are three items on today's City Council agenda from the Human Services, Equitable Development, and Renters' Rights Committee.
There are appointments, Lori Goff, Devin Silvernail, and Marcy Tate Lamar to the Seattle Renters' Commission.
One is a mayoral appointment and two are commission appointments.
Last week, we held our last committee meeting before the budget, so the next regular scheduled meeting of the committee will be after the budget deliberations in December.
And I also wanted to share that my office will be hosting a coffee event to welcome District 3 constituents to discuss housing affordability, renters' rights, and other issues that may be of concern for them.
This will be co-hosted with Squirrel Shops, which is a coffee shop in the Central District, on Saturday, September 22nd, starting at 10 a.m.
And so I invite all DT constituents who may be avidly listening to the council briefing 9.30 a.m.
Monday morning or may watch later to come and join us there for a discussion.
We will also be inviting other organizations who are helping to organize renters and people who are struggling with housing to come and speak to the constituents as well and offer their services, you know, exchange information and so on.
So congratulations to the Tacoma Education Association who went on a very courageous nearly a week strike action and had a fantastic rally last week that I had the chance to join them at.
This was phenomenal.
They had solidarity from the American Federation of Teachers, Teamsters, SEIU, many other unions.
It was really quite empowering for the workers there, for educators and other workers there and they won a very strong 14.4% wage increase.
This morning, the Seattle Times has an article on the various strong contracts that teachers' unions, educators' unions have won throughout the state, and they're asking the question, how will the state pay for this?
Well, it's very simple.
Close the corporate tax loopholes, tax big business.
You will raise more than enough funds to pay for the basic needs of educators and students throughout the state.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilman Schwan.
Councilman O'Brien.
Thank you.
The Sustainability and Transportation Committee has a couple things on the full council today.
We have three appointments to the Move Seattle Oversight Committee and two appointments to the Seattle School Traffic Safety Committee.
We also have a committee meeting tomorrow at 2 p.m.
here in Chambers.
In the committee, we will be discussing some appointments to the Citizens Advisory Board for the Sugary Beverage Tax.
We will be hearing updates on implementation plans for a variety of modal boards, so the Freightmaster Plan, implementation plan, the pedestrian master plan implementation plan, and then a progress report on the bike master plan implementation plan.
And so just as a reminder for folks, these are multi-year plans that are in place, but we have a process where every year there's an annual update to kind of a five-year implementation plan that's rolling, and it's looking at what are the projects we're going to be working on in the next year or two.
so that we have some clarity about what are the priorities and what are the opportunities that come up.
So we'll be hearing on all three of those.
We will also likely be voting on legislation around pre-tax benefits and so we've had a number of conversations about this and the idea is Again, pre-tax benefits, the IRS code allows for employees to have the cost of their transit passes, amongst other things, deducted on a pre-tax basis from their employers, hence saving them payroll and income tax on that, which could be about, you know, a 30% savings in the cost.
Employers also get a savings because they don't have to pay employment tax on that, which is 7 or 8% savings.
But it can only happen if the employer is willing to do that.
And so what we've been talking about for almost the past year now is a process where we would make it a requirement that employers offer that to employees.
And the legislation that we currently have in front of us, for those that haven't been tracking this closely, would require that businesses with over 20 employees offer their employees this option.
We've been working closely with Commute Seattle.
We helped fund some additional outreach for them last year in the budget, and they have been talking to mostly small and mid-sized businesses.
The larger businesses typically already required to do some of this work through commuter production programs.
They're pretty aware of it.
But making sure that smaller mid-sized businesses understand the opportunity here, frankly, because it really is an opportunity.
And we're hearing a lot of good feedback from some of these businesses where they can save some money and provide a benefit to their employees through this tax savings.
And, you know, it's a competitive market out there.
And so employers are often looking for how can they attract and retain employees.
The current legislation says that this would not take effect until July next year.
And then enforcement would just be education for another year, so there's almost a two-year period before there would be enforcement.
A number of other cities have done this, notably San Francisco Bay Area, Washington, D.C., New York City.
When New York City implemented this, in the first 18 months, they had, I think, eight complaints.
So, it's not an overwhelming body of work, and all of the complaints in New York City were resolved by someone talking to the employer and explaining how to do this.
There's a variety of ways to meet the requirement that are low cost, no cost options that are almost always more than offset by the tax savings to the company too.
So we may be considering some amendments to change the timing of that to give a little more flexibility for a little more time for folks to take advantage, but we'll have that discussion tomorrow in committee.
Two other things really quick, we'll have the first discussion on a potential vacation, a street vacation for a Nissan dealership.
It's down at an airport way south.
And then we'll get an update on the Traffic Incident Management System, affectionately known as TIMS.
Reminder, the fish truck turnover a few years ago on the viaduct had kind of massive traffic implications citywide.
And at that point, SDOT went back and essentially created a more robust system for how they respond to traffic incidents like that.
Since that was first put in place, there have been a couple other incidents.
And so we'd asked for SDOT to come back to us and say, hey, what have you learned?
Is it working well?
Are there tweaks you made to it?
So that's what the update will be about.
Great.
Very good.
Interesting.
Thank you, Council Member Bryant.
Council Member Bakeshaw.
Thank you.
I've got a number of things today on the committee.
Is this on?
No.
The little green light is on.
Can you borrow?
Thanks.
That sounds better.
So I've got a number of things that I'm reporting on from Finance and Neighborhood Committee, and then some things I want to acknowledge and say thanks to our Waterfront and Civic group around Belltown and our Pioneer Square efforts.
So first of all, I'm also reporting for Deborah Juarez.
And by the way, Council President Harrell, Debra, and I joined thousands of others yesterday to celebrate the storm's victory.
And I'm glad that we were there.
It was a great opportunity.
And talk about here come the storm.
You know, it's one of those days where you had sunshine, and then it was pouring rain just before everybody was let in.
So we were glad to be inside together.
But congratulations to the storm and to the fans and everybody who participated in that.
So first of all, from Debra Juarez, there's no full council agenda.
for her civic development, public assets, and native communities.
The next civic development is going to be this Wednesday, September 19th at 2 p.m., and they're going to consider two bills for Hinge Park, Bush Hotel, and then an RCO grant application resolution.
Now, for those of you who don't have enough meetings on your schedule, we are also having a special committee meeting this Wednesday, the 19th, at noon.
for the Finance and Neighborhood Committee.
So it's going to be a fun-filled afternoon on Wednesday.
And we're, of course, getting ready before the budget.
Five items today from Finance and Neighborhoods.
The two major ones that I hope that you will all know what we're already about.
We are looking to appoint Calvin Goings and Andre Mattia.
to their new positions of FAS and Department of Neighborhood Directors respectively.
We will be adding the expectations letter as always.
You know, we go through these things and then the expectation letter is finalized, so I'll just have to be Amending the appointment today, but you've all seen that you've had an opportunity to give us input and I appreciate that We're also selling an s-stop property to Dunn lumber, which is off the Berkman Trail Cascade Bicycle Club and pedestrian Organizations and neighbors were there in support of that last week So you'll be seeing that and we have an appointment of Leanne Kim Doe for the Community Involvement Commission and also Karen Kubo Fleming for Community Involvement Commission.
That's today.
There are 14 items on our committee meeting on Wednesday, so we're going to try to move that forward and move it quickly.
Most of it's appointments, but we do have a few other landmark controls and supplemental ordinance for budget and the quarterly grant acceptance Wednesday.
Okay, so the two things that I am wanting to say thank you for.
Marshall, I know you're here now, but we put together over the community in Belltown a weekend long event where they invited the community to talk about what do we want to look next at Belltown.
A number of you will remember that some of the Belltown leaders wanted to do something called recharge the battery, which was to take the tunnel and do something like Paris and other cities have done with abandoned tunnels.
It turned out to be just simply too expensive, not feasible.
But they have gotten themselves back together and looking at what can they do on top of battery, but also there's a two-acre parcel that WSDOT will be using for staging during the battery street when they're filling it, frankly, with rubble.
But the community is coming together saying, what can we do with that two acres?
And they've got a great idea.
I think, Marshall, you talked about having a lung, which is green space down there.
Coincidentally and totally parallel, the community is looking at an orchard, at additional pea patch expansion, at just green space.
And I think that what they are, the direction that they're going is feasible.
It's not going to be, you know, the $2 billion.
It's hundreds of thousands of dollars rather than into millions and billions.
But I'm really wanting them to get together and get coordinated this year, and we'll be back to you with that.
And then also thanks to the Pioneer Square Group, the courthouse, DESC, others who are looking at what we're calling Yesler Crescent.
Many of you will already know about it.
We'll be doing a lot more of it, and especially my at-large friends, in the next weeks and in the budget.
looking at improving the courthouse property, which we did during the summer, across the street in front of DESC, down the little triangle property that is called Prefontaine Triangle, and then across to Fortson Square.
There's some very great opportunities.
People are coming together around a coordinated way of making that happen in the next year or so.
All right, that's it.
Okay, thank you, Council Member Bechdel.
Just for a reminder for Council Member Mosqueda, I'll brief this.
We have both the Waterfront Local Improvement District, the LID presentation after, and we have two fairly lengthy executive sessions this morning, so.
And having said that, we're at the halfway mark, so I'll wait just for the halfway mark, and Council Member Mosqueda, you are up.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Good morning.
There are no items for today's full council.
No items from the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee on today's full council agenda.
That said, I do have a resolution that we will be bringing forward.
Resolution 318. I just want to make sure that folks have a sense of what it is that we're passing around.
As many of you know, I've worked with the union community for a very long time and specifically the farm worker community.
working with United Farm Workers over the last almost decade to make sure that we're improving working conditions.
What we've seen from individuals throughout our state who work in the dairy industry is that many of these workers face very intense safety concerns.
You may have heard of Randy Vasquez, who in 2015 died in a manure pond because there was no safety provisions protecting him from driving into that pond at night.
These individuals work around the clock and they work in very unsafe conditions.
We've heard situations of harassment, intimidation, retaliation, wage theft, people being forced to work off the clock, individuals not having facilities, bathrooms, hand-washing facilities, etc. and many cases of sexual harassment and intimidation as well.
I bring this up not because we have a number of dairy farms in Seattle, but we do have one of the largest dairy industries located right here in Seattle with Dairy Gold, and we want to make sure that from the top to the bottom, we have responsible employment practices that we promote here in Seattle.
This resolution calls for us standing in solidarity with farmworkers and asking those who work with farmworkers or contract organizations who employed these farm workers to live by the standards that we've set here in Seattle, which is good living wage jobs, protection from harassment and intimidation, making sure that people have important safety protections, and upholding the wage theft protections that we put into place.
Given the headquarters here in Seattle, I thought it was important to bring this resolution forward.
This week, you will see many farm workers beginning a five-day strike, I should say a hunger strike, to make sure that this issue is really brought to life.
Obviously, this is something that we've worked on here in the state for a number of years.
It was back in 2015 when Randy Vasquez died in the manure pond.
A year later in Idaho, a similar situation happened.
So where we have responsibility to ensure good supply chain economics, I think we should take the opportunity to do that.
So this is one resolution that calls for our support in solidarity with those workers.
I also look forward to any questions that you might have.
Happy to connect you directly with United Farm Workers or any of the workers, the dairy workers themselves.
If you haven't heard some of those stories, happy to share that.
The next Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee will be coming up this week on September 20th at 9.30 a.m.
We will be reviewing the Gessler Terrace Annual Report and Office of Housing, Race, and Social Justice Report and Action Plan.
Those first two items will take about 30 to 40 minutes, and I'll take public comment on those two pieces first, and then we're going to have the opportunity to hear again from Deborah Smith, who is the mayor's appointee to potentially serve as the general manager slash new CEO for Seattle City Light.
So you can anticipate that we'll start taking public comment for that second of our two hearings around 1015, 1030, and we'll spend the rest of the hour talking with Deborah Smith.
If you haven't had the chance to review our Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee tape from last week, Councilmember Juarez and myself asked a number of questions over about a two-hour period and I appreciated her honest responses.
You can find on our website as well, Seattle.gov backslash issues, a link to her questionnaire as many of you know because you all submitted questions.
We submitted 34 questions to Ms. Smith.
She responded to 20 of those with the commitment to respond to the latter half this week.
We will send those around to you.
You all should have a very beautiful binder that our staff created, and we will walk around the hand-printed copy as well.
Just for your memory, we are going to be talking about energy conservation, environmental justice issues, ongoing conversation about workers' rights, and workplace culture in this upcoming meeting.
So I hope you'll join us for any part of that upcoming meeting.
Councilmember President Harrell has asked us to be brief, so I will close up with some things on the horizon here.
We have really great news coming out of end of last week.
Council Member Gonzalez and myself had the chance to be with the workers from Unite Here Local 8 as they were taking their final vote on whether or not to strike.
You may have seen information across many states where hotel workers from Unite Here who work at the West End Marriott have decided to strike with a 98% vote, which is very impressive.
I know a lot of us are used to going to the West End for many activities and events and we will honor their strike and make sure that their voice is uplifted and heard.
Today I'll be sending our congratulations to Farideh Cuevas from my staff who I believe will have to go speak on my behalf because of all of our executive sessions.
Congratulations to the folks at Rainier Beach Safeway who've partnered with Fresh Bucks and really excited about that partnership and wish Farideh Cuevas all the luck out there speaking to the community about the importance of that program.
Tomorrow I'll be attending the real change breakfast in the morning bright and early hope to see many of you there and Speaking at the Magnolia community meeting event in the evening on Friday.
I'll be welcoming our new president of SEIU 775 very excited to be celebrating all that David Rolf has accomplished and really excited to be welcoming in Sterling as the new president.
And then this Saturday, I have the chance to attend a delegation trip to Germany with the AFL-CIO.
The AFL-CIO has invited about 20 electeds at various levels of government to create a bipartisan delegation to go and talk with individual electeds in Germany and union members there.
Germany has one of the highest unionization rates.
It is an issue that is not political.
And they have some of the, I think, best safety protections that we can continue to learn from here.
So I look forward to reporting back how that trip goes.
I also just want to take a quick second to say thank you to Councilmember Bagshaw who through your committee and through your chairmanship has helped us get the Second piece of land disposition policy out of committee unanimously Really excited to be working with you on this policy that preserves public land and public hands to build affordable housing if the city decides that they are not going to build publicly our public housing on that land and then we want to work in partnership especially with those community organizations who are at the highest risk of displacement to make sure that affordable housing gets built along with public amenities like child care facilities, health facilities, community spaces, and open public green spaces.
So thank you for your support on that.
Excited about the unanimous vote that came out of committee and we will have that in front of full council on October 1st.
And with that, thank you very much, Mr. President.
Good, thank you.
Councilman Johnson.
Thanks.
A couple of items on today's introduction referral calendar today.
One of those is the resolution regarding council's preliminary decision on the University of Washington major institution master plan.
We will be considering this document at our committee discussion on Wednesday morning.
And this is just my chance to remind all of my colleagues that the UWMIMP is a quasi-judicial manner and so council rules related to ex parte communications do apply.
I'll also be walking on a resolution that we talked about on Friday at the special committee discussion on key arena.
The resolution effectively, as I mentioned to my colleagues on Friday, is going to ask for some reporting back from the various different departments that are working on key arena.
related to the transportation projects that are going to be invested in as a result of the key arena redevelopment, both by the development itself, as required by the state's Environmental Protection Act and the MUP that we'll issue on that project, and then other city capital investments in the neighborhood.
So no vote on that today, but walking that on to INR in the hopes that we can take a vote on it the following Monday, the 24th, when we take the rest of the transactional documents up.
Happy to walk my colleagues through some discussions and look forward to having you back, Council Member O'Brien, so we can get your imprimatur on that.
We do have a PLEZ committee meeting on Wednesday, and we're cognizant of Council Member Bagshaw's committee starting at noon right behind us.
So we're gonna be starting at 9 a.m.
that morning.
So make sure to remind my colleagues of that early start time.
And we've got a busy agenda.
We've got a public hearing briefing discussion and likely vote on the curb ramp requirements that many of you are familiar with that will result in bringing the city into compliance with the ADA.
We'll have a public hearing and vote on the Southwark Union design guidelines, which we heard a little bit about on our last committee discussion.
Ditto, a public meeting and discussion and vote on the moratorium that we passed last year related to a development of certain types of land uses on the Aurora-Licton Springs urban village.
And then further discussion and vote on the resolution related to the UW major institution master plan.
If we've got time, we'll also have a little bit of discussion at the end about the proposed tree regulations that we've been talking about.
That timeline has been pushed off till post-budget.
So if we've gotten through those first four agenda items, we'll save a little bit of time at the end to talk about sort of the continued direction that we're getting from the community about trees.
But if we've run out of time, we'll have to put that one off to our final discussions after the final committee discussions after the budget has concluded.
One just small piece of information from my colleagues related to my work at Sound Transit.
Folks may have seen that the capital committee meeting last Thursday, we took a proactive vote on a couple of Seattle-related projects.
Early investments in the 130th station has been something that this table has talked about a lot.
And at the capital committee meeting last week, we took an affirmative vote to allow for some preliminary engineering of that station at the 130th station potentially be open at the same time as the extension to Linwood.
No promises there, but the early engineering work gives us a framework by which future Sound Transit board action could be possible.
And then secondarily, we also authorized the Sound Transit staff to do some work with the consultant team to advance capital investments on Rapid Ride C and D.
which are part of the early wins package of ST3.
So that work is going to get underway this year in the hopes that we can make those capital investments starting in 2020. So good stuff coming out of Sound Transit that I want to make sure that didn't slip under the radar.
That's it for me.
Excellent.
Thank you, Councilman Johnson.
Councilman Gonzalez.
Good morning.
Good morning.
We have one item on today's full council agenda that is related to the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans, and Education Committee.
It is Resolution 31816. That's a resolution from our Office of Emergency Management.
It is a basic resolution that updates four elements of the City of Seattle's Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan.
And I'll talk about the components of that resolution a little bit more during full council today.
This is a standard piece of legislation that is required by OEM to do every year to make sure that the City of Seattle is in compliance with its emergency management requirements and obligations.
We have a committee hearing scheduled.
It's a special meeting scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, September 18th at 12 p.m.
here in council chambers.
There are five items on the agenda for the meeting.
We will be considering the appointment and reappointment of three individuals to the Seattle Fire Code Advisory Board.
We will then hear an update from the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs on our Legal Defense Network Fund.
And then finally, we will hear from the Department of Human Resources as they present on their Workforce Equity Accountability Report to the committee.
And then I wanted to just really quickly pass around these proclamations that we will be presenting at today's, do you want me to go this way first?
that we'll be presenting at full council this afternoon.
So these are two proclamations to recognize more awesome people doing good things in sports.
It seems like that's been like the theme over the last few months.
So not a lot of folks know that we have two teams here.
One is a women's team, one is a co-ed team related to Ultimate, formerly known as Ultimate Frisbee.
And so these are two proclamations to recognize the good work of and the accomplishments of Seattle Riot and Seattle BFG.
Seattle Riot was undefeated at the 2018 WCC and they actually won their competition in undefeated tournament in that case.
And then Seattle BFG had a similar story.
And so we will have members from both of those teams present this afternoon at two o'clock to accept the proclamations and appreciate your all's willingness to sign the proclamation.
And this is a joint proclamation with the mayor, of course.
And then just really quickly wanted to give an update on, for those of you who may have been receiving some correspondence, My office has been getting a lot of contact from members of the Central District related to some incidents of gun violence that have been occurring within the Central District.
In particular, we have seen that in the last, since about the end of August, there has been probably about 10 shootings.
in that particular part of town.
I wanted to let folks know that I've been in contact with the Seattle Police Department, both Chief Best and Deputy Chief Garth Green, to have them walk my office through what they are doing in response to this particular incidence.
I've received about a dozen inquiries from constituents related to this.
I want to make sure that folks understand that we are aware of the issue, we understand what the problem is, and that the Seattle Police Department is prioritizing its resources to make sure that we continue to keep folks in that neighborhood safe.
I also want to make sure folks understand that these are not random acts of gun violence.
And the police department is marshalling its resources in a manner to make sure that we address this in a regional way, because these are regional issues when we're talking about gun violence.
this particular city.
And also just want to make sure that folks understand that we will be working with the police department as they curate a list of what are referred to as violence interrupters, organizations that community members can engage with if they're interested in taking some time to engage in some harm reduction approaches to really figure out how to create some social cohesion within their communities to interrupt these acts of violence through means that don't always include calling 9-1-1.
But for now, the police department is asking that folks call 9-1-1 if they see actions that cause them concern in their neighborhoods, not just descriptors of people, but actual actions and behaviors that are concerning to them to please call 9-1-1.
That is helpful to them to figure out how to make sure that They need to continue to dedicate resources to this space.
But I want to make sure folks understand that the police department has taken this very seriously and I'm continuing to make sure to work with them to ensure that I can get as much accurate information out to constituents who are contacting our office on this public safety issue.
Council Member Gonzalez, I really appreciate you raising the issue and assuring the public that the police are getting as much intel as possible and trying to trying to protect us in the best way possible.
And I do know that often when this violence sort of erupts, there's things happening in the community that at least someone in an office in City Hall wouldn't just, we wouldn't have a clue as to what's going on out there.
But there are a lot of community organizations like even the NAACP and other organizations that really know, sometimes knows the families and what's happening out there in terms of who's doing what.
And so all of that, working with all these families and all these people to understand what's going on is very helpful.
Not just the police, but all these community organizations.
So I appreciate your comments.
Yeah, one of the things that Deputy Chief Gareth Green mentioned to me today is that they have contacted some of those community-based organizations to engage them in helping to make contact with some of the families who they know may have touch points with what is happening in this particular area.
So I appreciate their holistic approach to not only take the public safety concerns seriously through the law enforcement lens, but they are also looking at some of the more comprehensive holistic strategies to make sure that the faith community and community-based organizations like the NAACP are connecting with families to Again, make sure parents know what's happening and to see if there's a way to just bring down the temperature in the neighborhood to reduce the number of incidents of shots fired.
I just wanted to say that my office has been contacted by a lot of constituents about this and we are responding to them.
But I also think the discussion here is along good lines that not everything can be solved.
by increasing police presence that there needs to be other social factors that need to be considered.
And I also agree that as far as we know, these are not random acts of violence.
These are gang related.
And I agree with Council Member Gonzalez that that makes it a regional question and that we should approach it responsibly in that manner.
So I appreciate what you said.
Yeah.
And I have high confidence in the briefing, as a result of the briefing that I got this morning, that they are definitely looking at this as a regional approach and are absolutely committed to having a holistic approach here to try to figure out how to leverage existing community resources, which are frankly limited in this space, to again, intervene and interrupt some of these cycles to prevent additional shots fired.
So for any folks who want more information, I encourage them to reach out to my office and we will get them as much information as we can that is, you know, not sensitive information.
Thank you.
Very good.
Customer Herbold.
Thank you and good morning.
What we've got going on in full council coming out of Crueda today is a whole bunch of appointments.
We've got one appointment to the Music Commission, one appointment and one reappointment to the Seattle Arts Commission.
We have five appointments to the Human Rights Commission, three appointments to the LGBTQ Commission, and one appointment to the People with Disabilities Commission.
In addition to that, we are bringing forward from committee to full council the Domestic Workers Anti-Discrimination, Harassment, and Retaliation Bill.
If you recall, this legislation extends the recourse that is available through the Office of Civil Rights enforcement against those types of actions that are discriminatory, harassing in their nature, or retaliation.
and allows the Office of Civil Rights to investigate and enforce our laws against those activities in those instances when the actions are being taken against domestic workers who are independent contractors.
So this is going to be a new addition to the Fair Employment Practices section of the Municipal Code and Basically, it covers a number of different changes, but the upshot is, as I said, it allows the Office of Civil Rights to enforce the law that already exists for regular employees prohibiting these types of actions.
It's really important because without the ability to enforce the law against retaliation, it really hampers the ability to bring forward the important changes that have been made through Councilmember Mosqueda's Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.
People have to be able to use the law without fear of retaliation.
a pleasure to have been able to sort of tie up that last little piece.
I appreciate Council Member Mosqueda's leadership.
There is one amendment at full council that we'll be discussing related to this bill.
The legislation was written with the standard 30-day implementation period.
Upon further discussion, it became clear that it would be important to have this legislation aligned with Council Member Mosqueda's legislation, have them both go into effect at the same time.
that will make it easier for the Office of Labor Standards to work with the Office of Civil Rights to do the education and outreach necessary for implementation of this law.
So the amendment itself changes the implementation date to July of 2019. Again, this is to align with the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.
We have a couple meetings for my committee, the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, Arts Committee this week, two of them.
One will be a public hearing at 6 p.m.
on Wednesday that I hope folks can make.
This is a public hearing on the legislation that we had already passed to create a 10-month period to study the expansion of the Pike Place Market Historic District to include the Showbox site.
Under state law, a public hearing is required within 60 days of passage of the ordinance.
Sign-up will begin at 5.30 p.m., but the public hearing itself will start at 6. In addition, we have a special meeting of the committee on Friday.
We are beginning at 9 a.m.
We have a lot of business to take care of before we go into budget.
On the agenda, Friday at 9 a.m.
is an appointment to the Arts Commission review of the use of funding for for film approved by the council and last year's budget for the Office of Film and Music and we're going to be again a number of appointments that we'll be bringing forward on Friday but that I'm going to be walking on to today's full council agenda and or today's full council introduction referral calendar.
So there will be a number of those.
Also at the committee meeting, we're going to have a second discussion and vote on two pieces of legislation related to Seattle Public Utilities.
One relates to the water system plan and the other relates to the drainage and wastewater rates.
This week, I have attendance at Regional Transit Committee.
I also have office hours this Friday between 1 and 6 p.m.
at the South Park Community Center.
And as far as major events going on this week, I too will be attending the World Change Breakfast tomorrow morning.
I also wanted to make an announcement regarding the Hugo House reopening, which is happening on Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m.
Finally, at the culmination of a multi-year capital campaign where they've raised $7.5 million, They're going to be opening this fantastic new space, 10,000 square feet, 150-person performance space, and a new writer's salon.
So this is going to be a really fantastic new part of our literary scene.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Herbold.
Very interesting.
Thank you very much.
So we're going to move into a briefing.
from our waterfront folks and Councilmember Juarez was going to tee it up, but Councilmember Baxter, you said some introductory remarks already.
As they approach us, would you like to say a little more about the waterfront LID activities?
Thank you.
I want to welcome everybody back.
The local improvement district, of course, is something that we have been planning since 2004, that having additional resources available to do what I call the sizzle on the steak, which is the good stuff that we'll all be seeing on top of the waterfront.
And I am now free through our wonderful Office of Ethics to be able to participate in these discussions, but I do have to continue to say every time I have a condo, my husband and I own a condo just a couple of blocks from the waterfront, so I will be involved in paying this tax if it passes, and I am very pleased to participate in this, so thank you very much.
So before we start an introduction, let me just, maybe I can give a little more context.
So we have an over, we've asked the hearing examiner, of course, to conduct the hearing process.
And I don't know if many of you have the, you should have the report in your prep materials.
There's also a frequently asked questions document if you want me to pass this down, but there's been an overwhelming amount of comments, many opposed, some for, and we thought are appropriate.
I believe this is council member Warris thought are appropriate in light of the overwhelming Number of comments for us to be able to ask the hearing examiner and his is Other folks questions about where we are in this process.
So with that, why don't we start with introductions?
Monica Martina Simmons city clerk Ryan vansell hearing examiner Good morning, Joshua Curtis with the office of the waterfront and civic projects Marshall Foster office of the waterfront and civic projects Okay, I'd like to proceed
I've been asked to give a brief overview of the hearing program, and essentially what I'll be doing is simply walking through the report, and a good morning to President Kountz and the rest of the council.
So I'll just be walking through the report.
If you have it with you, you can follow through or just listen.
This is a summary of a summary, essentially.
The report is formed following a formation hearing, and the formation is the only subject of the hearing.
As you may have been briefed by your legal counsel or others, there are additional processes you'll be facing through the LID.
formation after the LID formation.
The opportunity for the formation hearing is to give members of the public an opportunity to come forward and appear and fully vet essentially and share their opinions on the LID and why and what they think about it.
And I think it's fair to say that the process that was provided by the city was, in my opinion, exemplary.
I'm not patting myself on the back.
I was asked to join as the hearing examiner overseeing the process, the public side of the process.
But behind me was a team of support from the waterfront committee and the clerk's office that I found it was a real treat to work with them and extremely supportive that I was stepping into a fully operating system that really provided an excellent opportunity for any individual who wanted to voice their opinion about the LID to come forward and speak.
We had a series of days, a full day, Friday, July 13th, and then two evenings on July 17 and 18, and then a Saturday morning hearing as well.
I don't know the total hours, but multiple days of hearing.
Very good.
Thank you, Council Member Bagshaw.
We were there from beginning to end.
We noticed it as the times that are shown here, so we didn't just start and if nobody else came, we were there the whole time ready for anyone to come in.
Frequently, what we had were individuals coming in at the beginning in a small group or a cluster, and then over the course of the hearing, we'd see a few more come in as well.
They got the full treatment, as it were, of with coming in to particularly over at the convention center, which was the whole first day.
And there, there were information tables to discuss and tell them about the LID.
There were opportunities to file protests, to submit written comments.
And then finally, if they also wanted to make an oral statement, they could do that before me.
All of the oral and written public comments submitted during the comment period from July 13 to 31 are summarized in the report.
And this is just a summary.
So you could look to the stack of comments at any time if you want to get a little bit deeper dive.
Those are an attachment.
that were supplied with the report.
And when the speakers came forward, the opportunity they had, there was really no limit put on written comment.
So if you wanted to submit a comment, they came in by email, they came in by letter, they came in by sort of petition, as it were, with someone who had formed a statement that everyone signed on to.
We also had a lot of email comments.
And they ranged anything from the simply no, I don't want the lid, single comment, up to well thought out letters with multiple points in them.
Many of the points were somatic in the written comments that matched also the oral comments.
And so if council wanted to go beyond the summary here, one suggestion I would give you is if you could look in the comments and simply look for a long letter, you're probably finding one that reflects the other comments to some degree and gives you a bit more depth in the summary that I'm providing here.
For those that were speaking orally, originally we set it at two minutes was going to be the opportunity to speak.
But because we didn't have large numbers of individuals showing up at any one time, essentially what they were provided was unlimited time.
I gave them the opportunity to speak for two minutes.
And then if it appeared that they hadn't finished their statement or something along those lines, they were encouraged to finish whatever statement they had.
In addition to that, after any particular group that was there had spoken, I asked if anyone had not had an opportunity to finish their statements or to share their opinions.
And generally the case was not the case that they had more to share, but if they did, they came forward and shared that.
And so there was ample opportunity for individuals to come forward and share orally what they had to say, as well as unlimited opportunity for written comment.
We received a total of 333 comments during the official comment period.
There were some that came outside of that, which I did not consider.
This is not a quasi-judicial process so much, but it is relatively formal, so I thought it was important that comments that came in during that time be the ones that were respected and were included in the summary.
We got a total during the oral hearings, some people submitted written comments during that, but the oral comments were 69, 56 written comments during that, and then outside of that, the emails and such that I mentioned, there were 208 of those.
That's a general summary of the experience that speakers had and written comments and how it was set up.
We also, I'll go into just giving a very brief overview of some of the comments and then I'd love to get to any questions that you have.
If you look at the, again, this is a summary of comments, so I'll give a brief summary of that.
And I think it's, what I'll try to do here is just touch on the ones that I think were thematic, essentially, that the commenters, I heard the same comments from many, many speakers as opposed to a few.
I think it was clear that there was some coordination among speakers and those who were providing written comments, so there were themes within it.
Sometimes, as I mentioned, they were actually prepared as comments that were simply signed on by individuals.
So I think that did reflect some coordination in those that were opposed and for, in fact.
Those that were opposed did express support for the city's proposed improvements but expressed mainly a concern about their perception of unfairness being responsible for paying for the improvements of the LID.
And I should take a step back just a moment and remind you too that I'm presenting a summary.
These are the comments of the individuals came forward and I took it as my duty to share those as objectively as I could with counsel and they don't represent my opinions or anyone from the waterfront, but I think that they needed essentially a good clear conveyance of what their opinions were and that's what this was an attempt at.
Many commenters indicated they believe the LID process is to fund a park that serves the entire city and tourists and so they were concerned about them having to pay for it.
They believe that that was unfair when many others were benefiting from it and not just them.
Okay, let me it's that area I don't know something's going on right here in the middle of table So I guess that's my biggest question.
I I see from your Q&A document that there's been an effort to do a similar type funding mechanism repeatedly from City Council and And I can't find the list in front of us, but you did give us a list of all of the various places that this type of funding mechanism has been done in the past.
What is the specific controversy this time around?
Is there a different ratio of funding of residents, business owners, et cetera, or why is this one?
Thank you.
Just for the public's reference, the city has formed numerous LIDs over the years, including South Lake Union Streetcar, Third Avenue Transit Tunnel, Aurora Bridge, Magnolia Bridge, and the Denny regrade.
So why is this one seeming to raise concerns?
Is it a difference in ratio or formula or is this just because this is my first time experiencing it and it's been like this the whole time?
And I should say that's a small portion of the concerns I heard.
We also heard a number of individuals coming forward to express support, especially from our friends who are the friends of the waterfront and others.
So I just wondered for historical context if you can give me that comparison.
And so, Council Member, my role in this was very limited.
I was essentially the emcee face for the formation hearing and then to file the report.
Much of the data and even the formation of the hearing and how it was put together and history behind it is better put to the Waterfront Committee.
So I was just providing you the summary for this report, what was actually said by the individuals at it.
And I think I'd be better directed at Marshall and his folks.
I'm happy to speak to that a little bit.
I think the essence of that concern has been, while yes, the city has formed LIDs many times, council has taken actions to form LIDs in the We have used it to fund a park as opposed to a piece of transportation infrastructure or a bridge or a utility.
That said, and, you know, we've discussed this quite a bit with our stakeholders, you know, state law explicitly allows the use of LIDs to help fund parks.
And in this case, part of what's unique and important about the context for how we're funding the waterfront is that the state and city funding, hundreds of millions of dollars, is funding the basic infrastructure elements, which otherwise could be funded by an LID.
But in the case of the waterfront, we thought those elements, the city and state money should fund the basic infrastructure to make the park possible.
Without those underlying investments, there's not a space to create that park.
So it's really part of that whole package.
But that's really what's unique here is the use of it for a park.
Just mention once again, how much money has come in from the state through WSDOT?
How much money that we put in through our parks, Metropolitan Park Improvement District?
Can you just do a quick summary on that?
Sure.
So the state has a couple different ways they're funding the waterfront.
The largest obviously is the deep bore tunnel and the viaduct demolition.
That's in the billions of dollars depending on how you want to do the math.
more specifically to the Waterfront Seattle program that our office manages.
They've funded $153 million for the replacement of Alaskan Way and the construction of the new Elliott Way, which is essentially all the surface transportation along the waterfront.
And then our budget, again, we have a host of different funds, but it's a little over $200 million in the total in terms of the funds that are going into the transportation infrastructure, as well as the utility replacements and upgrades that are part of City Light and SPU's budget on the waterfront.
$200 million seawall that was voted on by the public.
Yes, the public voted on a $290 million seawall bond measure.
And then there was city and county money on top of that that all helped to make the seawall reconstruction possible.
So the scale of the leveraging, if you look at it as a package, you have a total program that is close to a billion dollars of just local money.
Then you have all of the state money.
over and above that, that's leveraging the proposed $200 million LID.
Any other?
Well, we have launched a lot more discussion, I suppose.
Council Member Gonzalez, just let me ask one question, and I'll defer to your question.
So there's one bullet comment, and I think you sort of addressed it, but I'm just trying to see if this math is incorrect, and I think you're suggesting it is.
So the bullet point is on page 6 of 16. It's the bottom one.
It says, So the project is marketed at $696 million project with the LID landowners within the LID paying $200 million.
This is misleading because the LID project improvements only cost $324 million and the landowners are expected to foot $200 million of that cost with the city only providing $40 million.
Therefore this project, I'm saying therefore, therefore the project is inequitable.
So is that sort of the, How would you respond to that?
How should we respond to that?
Yeah, Councilmember, that goes back to the point I was trying to get at before.
So, the waterfront program that the city manages is $696 million, approximately $700 million total.
That's really the whole package.
When we talk about the 324 with the public, the number that's referenced there, there's a set of specific projects that the LID itself helps to fund, and that's that piece.
But without the larger context, so without the city and the state essentially taking down the viaduct, building the new Alaskan Way, relocating all the utilities out of the park spaces, we don't have any ability to create that new park.
So it really is one package at that 700. And we've always talked about it that way.
So I think that's kind of a little bit of the confusion that's in that comment.
I'm withdrawing my question.
So you're just here for Q&A at this point, there's no more introductory comments?
You know, in many ways the report can certainly speak for itself.
My role was, I think, as designated by council, was to be neutral.
I always report on it.
So you probably want to get at the meat of it with the Waterfront Committee.
So at this point, and this conversation has actually been occurring since 2012 or so, since the first mention of a lid and how we are to fund this sort of landmark project.
It's been controversial since 2012. I think we all could see that.
So can you walk us through when you Let's just be very transparent here.
The overwhelming amount of comments are opposed to the lid, correct?
Numerically speaking.
Yes.
And the substance of them are...
And so where do we go from here?
Let me just ask that question.
What is...
procedurally, Marsha, maybe walk us through the process.
And quite candidly, I never met anyone that's just really eager to pay taxes.
And so, I mean, to some extent, this isn't a total surprise, but sort of walk us through what we do this, particularly as we approach the budget season, are there ideas we should come up with?
Do we do more?
process, walk me through how you would advise us moving forward in light of this process.
Yes, happy to do that.
So this builds directly on the council action, the resolution of intent to form the LID.
And so that process by state law, you know, triggered this more formal public hearing process that the hearing examiner has helped facilitate.
That's in addition to all the other public outreach that we've talked, that we talk about in this FAQ.
which has been going on for a number of years.
The next step, Councilmember, is that the Executive will be submitting to Council legislation to form the Local Improvement District.
And so, under the state process, these comments are intended to inform your deliberation.
on that.
That's essentially how it is set up.
So when that legislation comes down, which is imminent, I would say that will be coming to you within the next month to six weeks, I would say something like that, you will have the opportunity in your discussion of this, again, at the dais as we review it publicly, to have that informed by these comments and sort of a sense of where the property owner community stands.
That's really what this is intended to do.
Let me give an example.
Let's say I'm a property owner and I'm paying $75,000 in property taxes a year right now.
It's going to increase because of the LID.
The actual math, the increase that I will pay, has that been made known to their actual increase has been made known.
Yes, it has.
Yes, it has.
So for a number of months now, I'm going to go back to, I believe it was in April or May when it first came out, the actual assessments.
So we published in that whole series of outreach in May an actual draft, what we called a preliminary assessment roll.
So each property could look up the specifics of what their assessment might be.
Because they have the potential assessment.
Is there an appeal process as there are generally speaking for those individuals or businesses?
During this process.
Yes, there is there's actually two steps of protest or appeal So I mentioned the ordinance coming to Council if that is approved there is a 30-day window where there can be a protest of the formation of the ordinance as a whole the formation of the LID as a whole and And then if the LID ordinance withstands that protest period and it moves forward next year, we'll be back at council to actually do what's called the final assessment roll.
So if council acts this fall, then our appraiser updates his special benefits study.
So he takes another look at all the properties to make sure we haven't made any errors.
He considers new information.
buildings which have been completed since the draft was done earlier this year and puts out a final special benefits study then that becomes the Final assessment role you would have the opportunity to approve that we expect probably no, you know sometime next year we're working on the specifics of that right now and then If that final assessment rule is approved by council, there is the individual appeal.
So a property owner, this is getting to your specific question, if a property owner comes forward and says, hey, despite all this process, we still believe in our property there was an error made or they didn't consider X, Y, or Z factor, they can make a specific appeal to the council to make that change.
So there's several different steps where they can object through this.
their property taxes if they believe that the assessment is wrong.
Not directly to the assessor.
The King County assessor isn't directly involved.
There are some programs that we've been helping promote to property owners through this, where the assessor can actually, you know, he can, I don't want to say weigh, but he can adjust some property taxes on, you know, for seniors and others in particular situations in the city.
Those are programs run by the county.
But the assessor does not directly weigh in on the LID assessments.
But individual properties, if they feel like they're taxed.
It's wrong if the taxes are simply too high or it doesn't compare with their neighbors or whatever.
They still go back to the assessor for that.
Yes, if it's a general concern.
And we have had a few property owners through this process have realized that maybe the data on the King County Assessor Database was wrong.
They've been actually able to go back and change that.
And if I may, Marshall, I just want to confirm, I didn't hear you mention in your process, but I think that there is another, there's a final assessment confirmation hearing.
So there is another hearing that the council.
Correct.
Thank you.
Yeah, that's true.
Thank you.
Council President, if I may just ask one more question here.
So what I'm hearing from the comments that came to you is there was not an objection so much to the actual project as to the way that this was being funded by the LID.
I think that's a very fair summary of the majority of the opposing comments that I heard.
That strikes me too as accurate based upon what we're seeing from my office.
Almost every sentence starts off with, I'm not objecting to the project.
I want the project to go forward.
I just don't think it's fair in the way that I'm being charged.
Okay, well, any other comments or questions?
Just wanted to get this issue in front of us as we deliberate.
Council Member Gonzalez.
Thank you, Council President.
I just, Marshall, I wanted to circle back to a comment that you made in your summary of the process moving forward.
One of the things you said is that the executive will be shaping a proposal for City Council's consideration.
that will presumably also take into account some of the comments and feedback that was gathered through the hearing examiner process.
And one of the things that we had made sure to incorporate in the legislation through Council Member Juarez' committee was this component around potential proposals for mitigation related to specific types of I'm not asking you to get ahead of the mayor.
I'm asking you to give us a for the viewing public and for ourselves in terms of the work on that particular component.
That's absolutely, Councilmember, an element of the proposal.
So the deferrals and things that are allowed under state law.
Joshua, do you want to describe them?
Yeah, so there are several types of deferrals.
And I should remind everyone that the majority, if not all, of low-income housing, primarily those who have relationships either with HUD or with our Office of Housing, Although they are not exempt, they are naturally occurring zero benefit just because of all the prohibitions or the regulatory issues that they have around trying to redevelop.
So those are sort of set aside.
And then there are several state low-income housing or senior low-income persons with disabilities and veteran-related Deferrals, those are already in place, and so really just a homeowner qualified for that would just need to reach out to the state, and we have a link on our website to that.
There is an additional economic hardship deferral, and I think that's what you're referring to.
So that allows a family or a person who meet a certain income qualification could receive up to two years of a deferral.
It's really important to note that that is a deferral.
They still have to pay for it.
But it is for people who are experiencing economic hardship.
So loss of a family member, loss of a job.
We will be bringing that forward absolutely.
Yeah.
It people have the option.
It's a it's a one-time assessment And so you can either pay it up all of it right up front or you do have the option to actually Pay it off over 20 years and there are some finance Related charges that would be on top of that.
Yeah Okay, well thank you for being here more work to come and thanks for being available for a briefing, right Thank You Okay, as presiding officer, I'm now announcing that the Seattle Council will now convene an executive session.
And the purpose of this executive session is to discuss pending, potential, or actual litigation.
And the Council's executive sessions are an opportunity for the Council to discuss confidential legal matters with city attorneys as authorized by law.
A legal monitor from the city attorney's office is always present to ensure that we reserve questions of policy for open sessions.
I expect this executive session to last 45 minutes.
It's 10.40, so what will that be?
There's Mike Collins.
11.40, 11 what?
11.25.
And if it goes beyond that time, I'll announce the extension and the expected duration.
With that, please secure the room.
Bye!