Seattle City Council Briefing 7/10/2023

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Council Member Sawant.

Present.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Council President Juarez.

Present.

Eight present.

Thank you.

We'll move to approval of the minutes.

If there's no objection, the minutes of June 26th will be adopted.

Not seeing or hearing an objection, the minutes are indeed adopted.

So let me give a quick rundown on our calendar today of the tomorrow as well.

And then I will go ahead and let our colleagues go around the table for their updates.

On today's agenda, we have one proclamation recognizing the work of our city records manager, Jennifer Winkler.

And I will be speaking to that.

We also have reports from Council Members.

We'll start with Council Member Morales today.

We have no executive session today.

On tomorrow's agenda, the consent calendar will include the minutes, payment of the bills, as well as six appointments, including one to the Equitable Development Initiative Advisory Board, four to the Seattle Planning Commission, and one to the Urban Forestry Commission.

All have been recommended by the Land Use Committee, and Council Member Strauss will be speaking to these.

We will take one vote, as you all know, on the consent calendar, unless of course somebody wants to remove one to have it considered separately.

There is one item under committee reports on the agenda tomorrow, and that's Council Bill 120592, updates, regulations for rooftop features in the Pioneer Square Preservation District.

And I understand that our Land Use Chair, Council Member Strauss, will be speaking to those recommendations.

Information as usual on all items are available online.

I'd like to remind everyone that after today's meeting, our next council briefings will be Monday, June 17th, July 17th and Monday, August 7th.

So let's move on to signing of letters of proclamations.

As I shared today, we will be considering a proclamation honoring our city records manager, Jennifer Winkler.

Jennifer is retiring after 22 years of public service.

I would like to take a moment to highlight some of her work that has benefited the council, the city, and the public.

For those of us who were here or more recently elected, we assume the city records management has always been with us and has always been the same.

Many of us did not know it is Jennifer Winkler.

She is the one who created the city records management program in 2001. She has also updated this system repeatedly during her tenure.

She has responded to changing technology, to legal and state requirements, all in the spirit of ensuring that the public has readily accessible or available, I'm sorry, has readily available access to records.

I apologize, you're messing that up.

Basically making sure that the public gets what they need and us.

Jennifer has trained nearly every Council staff on records management.

She's also established a training program for all city employees.

Jennifer has served in a leadership position with ARMA international, which is the membership organization of information governance professionals.

She was the Bellevue Eastside chapter president of 2008 through 2012 and the great Northwest region manager of 2012 to 2016. and we really do appreciate all her work representing Seattle on the regional level.

We know that public trust and access to records are key components of a healthy democracy.

Today, we recognize someone who has made that her life's work.

It's with pleasure I offer this proclamation making July 11th, 2023, Jennifer Winkler Day.

With that, I wanna thank Jennifer.

Our offices worked together many times on many issues.

And with that, I would like to open the floor for any of my colleagues to provide any comments.

Okay, I'm not hearing or seeing any.

Oh, I see.

Here we go.

Council Member Nelson.

I'll just say that Jennifer was always, when I was in LA for Richard Conlin way back when, she She was so orderly in the transmission of information about record keeping and and kept us all aligned and not in trouble and so I just really want to express my appreciation and I remember we both went through.

parenthood together, and so it's been a long time, and I appreciate everything that she's done for the city.

It's an unsung hero, I would say.

Thank you.

I would say so too.

21 years of making sure that we're all organized and all the documents get out and get in and get documented, so thank you.

Yep.

Are there any other comments before I move?

All right.

I'm not seeing or hearing any.

So with that, I'm going to close the floor.

And Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll on what council members would like to have their signature affixed to today's proclamation?

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council President Moraes?

Yes.

Nine signatures will be affixed to the proclamation.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

With that, let's move on to the preview of City Council Actions, Council, and Regional Committees.

So as we shared before we went online, Council Member Morales will be first.

And then we will have Council Member Mosqueda, Nelson, Peterson, Sawant, Strauss, Herbold, Lewis, and then myself.

So with that, Council Member Morales, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Good afternoon colleagues.

We will start with committee.

The next meeting of the neighborhoods education, culture and civil rights meeting is this Friday at 930 will be voting on several appointments to boards and commissions.

I do want to take this opportunity to introduce some legislation that my office has been working on for a couple of years now.

As I've mentioned in the past, we've been working with community stakeholders in our Seattle Within Reach coalition on development of an incentive pilot for equitable development that is centered on building community cohesion.

And accessibility for homes that are affordable to folks at a range of incomes.

I'm excited to announce that we've been working with the mayor's office with OPCD over the last couple of months to turn this legislation into phase two of the equitable development zoning legislation that we passed recently.

So I just want to give you a snapshot of what this will do.

We will probably be introducing this in September.

There's still some things that we're working out, but given that we've got recess coming and we're all very busy, I wanted to share this now.

So this phase two would provide development bonuses and clear administrative hurdles for projects that do the following few things.

Partner with community or cultural organizations who are actively fighting displacement.

Build no less than 30% of units on site that are affordable to folks up to 80% and ideally we would have two thirds would be for affordability up to 30%.

Build in areas of the city where previous exclusionary racial covenants were in place and or in community preference areas.

For additional bonuses, it would also allow if folks reserve space for equitable development related commercial uses.

In exchange, they would get the ability to bypass design review, a significant bonus for floor area ratio, no minimum parking requirements, and other density and facade requirement exemptions.

As I said, we're still finalizing some of this, but these are some of the big goals of the project.

And this would really address several critical areas that I think we've all been talking about.

One is that it would give smaller organizations, the ability to partner with larger more established developers to allow folks to develop their capacity and build their portfolio.

without necessarily having to have site control.

It would help organizations that are serving immigrant communities and communities of color who are facing displacement, help them to develop housing for their community so that folks can stay in place.

Would target areas where housing is currently limited by setting an intentional floor of 30% affordability and promote kind of income diversity within buildings and combat isolation for low income folks.

It would provide a right to remain for low income homeowners and ensure folks who are living on fixed incomes working families multi generational households would have the ability to build their generational wealth and build community wealth and really stay rooted in community.

And finally, would provide opportunities for equitable development of the kinds of mixed access to services we've been talking about.

So health care, child care, cultural anchors, artist spaces, and really start building that kind of easy proximity to essential goods and services that we've been talking about.

So as I mentioned, we are finishing up this work.

Our goal is to have this introduced in September.

I'm excited that we have, you know, OPCD has identified projects already that could benefit from this pilot.

And I really want to appreciate the partnership that we have been able to develop with the department, with the executive office as we're developing this legislation.

So I do want to thank Mayor Harrell, Marco Lowe from the mayor's office, Director Kirandongo, and the whole team with EDI and the Equitable Development Zoning at OPCD, plus the 35 plus organizations that we've been working with in the Seattle Within Reach Coalition for the last couple of years.

They really helped shape this legislation and have been important, provided important feedback loop, not just within this coalition, but all of the constituents that these 35 organizations represent.

So just really want to thank everybody for that work.

And finally, I do want to thank Land Use Chair Strauss for carving out time.

We've had a very busy committee calendar this year, and I really appreciate the opportunity to make sure that we're able to introduce this legislation this year.

In the meantime, if folks want to learn more, please do reach out to Devin Silvernail on my staff.

He's been herding cats to make sure that all of this is moving forward and we're really looking forward to the chance to have this in committee.

A last couple of quick updates.

We did meet with Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs this morning for our monthly meeting.

I'm excited that part of the work that we've been asking them to do is to look at the workforce development strategies across the city, including OIRA.

So they are hiring a workforce development position.

This person will serve as a liaison also with the Office of Economic Development, because that is an important place where this work happens as well.

So we're really excited about the opportunity to be moving this forward as a strategy and this person will be working with programs like Ready to Work at OIRA.

Let's see, my staff continues to meet with DEEL and with the FEPP Levy Oversight Committee.

We will be going on a site visit soon and just making sure that we are preparing for the conversation about underspend for this year.

There are several proposals that are being considered in the FEPP Levy Oversight Committee and those conversations will continue and recommendations and proposals will be finalized by the end of the summer.

Last week my staff attended the South Precinct Advisory Council and met with business owners in Rainier Beach.

I want to thank Aaron Goodman from the SOTO BIA for coordinating the community meeting.

We look forward to joining this as an ongoing meeting as the community really moves from conversation to solutions.

My staff also attended last week the Henderson Village community meeting.

This meeting was to discuss the planning of Henderson Village at 50th and Henderson in Rainier Beach.

This is a tiny house village that will serve families with children and will be replacing some of the shelter capacity that is currently at Othello Village.

That site is closing because Lehigh is developing the property into 148 units of affordable housing that will have an early an early learning center run by Rewa.

So really excited about that project.

And the folks who are currently living there will be relocated to a new site.

This is going to be right behind the Rainier Valley Food Bank.

location.

So they're working together to also create some space for the for the food bank offices because the food bank itself is going to be undergoing development soon to expand and really turn that into the food innovation hub and food incubator that they've been working on for several years.

Met with the South Precinct officers last week, met the new incoming South Precinct Captain Robert Brown and I look forward to holding those monthly meetings with him and really continuing what was a very fruitful and thoughtful conversation about public safety in the South End.

And finally, colleagues, back in May, one of our community members passed.

Gary Snyder was the co-owner of Geraldine's Counter in Columbia City and Hay Day, a fabulous restaurant in the Mount Baker area.

And this past weekend, There was a community memorial for Gary at the Geraldine's counter.

So we had our what was formerly the Columbia City patio outdoor streetery was reprogrammed to allow for a community to gather and to honor Gary and celebrate his life.

It was a really, really important opportunity for folks to come together.

I am in communication with Sherwin, his husband, about a proclamation, but the family is planning to do a mural on the side of the building.

And so they want to be intentional about the timing of something like that.

So we are staying in touch and we'll follow up as needed.

But do want to just send out my condolences again to Gary's family and particularly his restaurant community.

the workers at both Hay Day and Geraldine's are really going to miss them, so want to send love to all of them.

That is all I have.

I don't see any questions, so I will pass it to Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Council Member Morales.

Colleagues, I wanted to let you know about the, excuse me, I have the wrong script pulled up here.

One second.

All right.

I wanted to let you know about the upcoming meetings in our Finance and Housing Committee conversations.

Our next Finance and Housing Committee meeting is scheduled for next Wednesday on July 19th at 9.30 in the morning.

We have a handful of agenda items on that, which include the Mid-Year Supplemental Grants and Grant Acceptance Ordinance.

This will be a briefing, an opportunity for us to hear what is in the supplemental as transmitted, the grant acceptance ordinance as well.

We will not be voting at this meeting.

We want to make sure that there's two meetings.

So the next meeting that we have scheduled is August 2nd.

We will have an opportunity to discuss the amendments on August 2nd and vote at that time.

As per usual, if there's any amendments that are considered Friendly from the chair, we will do our best to include any of those amendments prior to introduction to really streamline the process.

And I'll read for you in just a moment, the directions on how to do that.

In addition to having the major supplemental and grant acceptance ordinance on our next committee meeting.

We will also have an update on the disposition policies and related resolution.

As folks know, the land disposition policies are two sets of legislation that we passed as a council in 2019 following state legislative action led by former Speaker Frank Chopp, which allows for the city to prioritize surplus or underutilized land for the public's good, and we prioritize access to building affordable housing with the Office of Housing and community partners, specifically partners who are led by and serving communities at highest risk of displacement.

So we're really excited to have some updates to the land disposition policies and I want to thank Council President Juarez who's been working with our office, Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and our Tribal Relations office as well in the mayor's office to help update some of those policies.

So really exciting news to share with folks next week in our committee.

And then we'll possibly have an update on the fiscal note enhancements and the budget transparency legislation.

As folks may remember last year and the year before, we included in our budget document statements of legislative intent intended to bring together members of this city budget office and central staff to create a work group to ask how we can do a better job with receiving information in a very transparent way, not only for members of central staff and the legislative department in partnership with the executive team and the city budgets office, but to ensure that there was greater transparency and accountability for how we do budgeting and the development of fiscal notes.

That work group has been actively meeting over the course of the last year, and they have some recommendations for us.

I am really excited about some of those recommendations and taking them to the next level to ensure that we concretize some of the strategies to ensure greater transparency and accountability.

We have a lot coming up in our committee through July, August, and September, given that we were so focused on the housing levy in quarter two of this year.

If we don't get the chance to go into a deep dive on those two items, fiscal note enhancement and budget transparency legislation, Just note that there's more coming in August and September, but my hope is that we will have an initial briefing as well this week.

Excuse me, an initial briefing next week.

In terms of the mid-year supplemental, I just wanted to reiterate some of the information you received from our budget lead and Deputy Director Ali Panucci.

As you may have seen last Thursday, Deputy Director Ali Panucci sent an email about the mid-year supplemental, And I wanted to reiterate some of these points for you and your team members.

Central staff is currently reviewing the legislation that was transmitted by the mayor's office related to the major supplemental.

This legislation is slated to be introduced on July 18th.

It has been circulated for your review and central staff in my office.

We're reviewing this and we're going to.

Um, intend to try to make a few changes prior to introduction that we've been in conversation with the executive about and in discussion with some of you about, um, no major changes that you will remember, because this is that midway through our 1st year of a, what are we really trying to stick to, which is a biennial budget process for 2023 and 2024. But there will be some initial changes that we are happy to try to introduce prior to streamline the process.

So next Wednesday, we'll have an initial briefing on the supplemental budget legislation.

That, again, is scheduled for July 19th in the Finance and Housing Committee meeting.

The second meeting, as I noted, will be on August 2nd, where we will consider amendments and vote on the legislation.

Colleagues, if there are any mid-year budget amendments that you are considering, remember this has to be self-balancing.

But those amendments are due to central staff no later than Monday, July 24th at noon.

Please do submit any ideas to central staff prior to July 24th at noon so that central staff can work with you.

And of course, feel free to direct those requests to Ed and Ali and Tom on central staff.

And if you want to work directly with them, feel free to if you'd like to copy us or talk to my office about any of those ideas prior.

But we would, of course, welcome that.

If you are not a member of the Finance and Housing Committee, as per usual, you can still submit amendments as an author.

We will invite members of this Council who are not members of the Finance and Housing Committee to participate in these discussions July 19th and August 2nd.

If you do have an amendment and you're not part of that committee, you'd like to have something move forward.

I'm happy to work with you on that.

Please contact Freddy de Cuevas in my office if you'd like to attend so we can make sure that we send you the zoom link and if you have any questions again, and Ali and Tom are your folks on central staff to work with.

That is really all for me.

I'm excited to be joining Lunch and Learn.

If folks aren't already aware, Mary's Place is having a Lunch and Learn conversation with Greg Colburn, who's the co-author of Homelessness is a Housing Problem.

Homelessness is a Housing Problem.

And if you haven't met author Colburn already, wonderful person who's been part of many of our local community conversations around housing and homelessness in the last few years, and there's a great opportunity to hear from them again.

at Mary's Flames Lunch and Learn on Wednesday.

Seeing no questions, I will turn it over to Council Member Nelson.

Well, hello, good afternoon, everybody.

Thank you very much.

So, the economic development technology and city light committee does meet this Wednesday and we have only 2 items on our agenda.

The 1st is the is appointment 0 to 596. that's up for discussion and possible vote.

It is an appointment of.

Budi Mulyo's appointment to the Seattle Film Commission position 11. Now, if you remember, way back when, we did confirm the 10 members of the Film Commission, but the 11th was always designed to be a position that is presented and chosen by the committee, the commission itself.

And it is it is it fills a spot for immersive technology, such as augmented, extended, mixed and virtual reality and emerging technology businesses.

This appointment is coming later than the others because, as I said, the commission selects this nominee and they have done so after their 1st, few meetings.

The other agenda item is another roundtable discussion with small business representatives to address some common issues that neighborhood business owners are facing right now that impede to some extent or another their ability to thrive in Seattle.

And if you'll remember, the first small business roundtable that this committee hosted was back in February 2022, and that pretty much exclusively focused on the impacts of crime.

And this one will be a bit broader and will encompass other issues such as or other barriers such as garbage pickup or permitting problems obstacles etc so this is intended again as a productive conversation so that we can keep these things in mind as we are prioritizing investments prior to the budget deliberations that are coming really quickly it feels like so I look forward to that, and these representatives will also be talking about the different ways that their are really helping their members, supporting the neighborhood business district as a whole and serving the broader community.

And so I look forward to hearing all about that as well.

And I will just read that the participants.

Well, these are the executive directors of the leaders of Friends of Little Saigon, Chinatown International District BIA, Soto BIA, Alliance for Pioneer Square, New District Partnership, Ballard Alliance, and the West Seattle Junction BIA.

So it'll be pretty good representation from across the city.

All right, reports from the past couple of weeks.

On June 26, I joined a special welcome reception during the Washington State Building and Construction Trade Council's state convention.

And this was at the new convention center summit, which was built by their members.

So it was really special actually hearing stories and accounts of what that experience was like.

The project employed 6,000 union construction workers and over 1,400 apprentices with incredible achievements toward increasing equity and opportunity in the construction workforce.

There were 1 million work hours, 30% by apprentices from underserved populations and 34% BIPOC, 12% women.

So that was really, it was a great celebration of all of their accomplishments.

I had the absolute pleasure to tour Harbor Island Studios last week.

I know that many of you have already gone.

And I just have to say, this is the first major King County investment in film production since the 90s.

And it was, this is an essential piece of infrastructure that will benefit our creative industries as a whole in the region.

And I just have to say that it will serve as a site for many different kinds of production from small independent to larger films and TV series and also commercials.

So they will get a lot of uses.

It's getting booked up.

And if there's an opportunity for anybody here to tour it, I definitely recommend that you do.

And it is right in the heart of the industrial neighborhood.

And that's what's also quite fun.

It's actually a converted greenery, I should say.

And very well done.

So my chief of staff met with then Sergeant Wes Collier, now he is Lieutenant Collier, congratulations, about the relaunch of SPD's joint enforcement team trainings, which is great news for the safety of nightlife small businesses, the owners, the staff and patrons.

And just to remind folks, these trainings are offered to nightlife security personnel on everything from how to spot concealed weapons to de-escalation techniques and how to safely evacuate.

in case of emergency.

And this program was suspended during the pandemic, but thanks to the leadership from Lieutenant Collier and also other folks at SPD, along with the Seattle Fire Department and Liquid Control, JET is back up and running and those trainings begin again this month and will take place every month here after.

And Jet also patrols nightlife hotspots, but perhaps more fundamentally, Jet creates relationships with the nightlife community.

And that was, you know, in conversations with businesses in the past year and a half, that has really been It's really been missing, because those relationships really do strengthen informal safety of the whole neighborhood and community.

And that's what struck Jeremy during this meeting, is that JET's approach is relationship first, and Lieutenant Collier has already met with over 60 nightlife owners and managers since the beginning, since taking over the program, and has provided SPD with on-the-ground information about things to watch out for on particular evenings or going forward.

So that is great news for everybody, and thank you very much, SPD, for getting that off the ground again.

We've been working on it for a while.

Speaking of nightlife, on Thursday, I met with Jason Lejeunesse, co-owner of Numos, Oddfellows, The Comet, Barbossa, and other nightlife establishments to discuss issues relating to nightlife.

In addition to just public safety, that was a main focus, but it's not just that.

And he happened to mention that The Capitol Hill Block Party is coming up and we spent a long time talking about preparations for that.

Now to remind folks, the Capitol Hill Block Party, and by the way, he is the owner and producer of that, takes place this year on July 21st through the 23rd.

And the Block Party has been celebrating Capitol Hill neighborhood and the Seattle music and art scene for over 23 years.

And it's grown.

If anybody's been in recent years, it has grown considerably since its inception, but it has remained fiercely independent, locally owned, and has done much to generate economic benefits for not just the performers, but also the community as a whole.

And I have some stats here.

In 2019, which is the last year that it was sort of.

normal.

I mean, before the pandemic, when it was in full force, it employed 78 local and regional artists, and that totals about, that's almost $125,000 in contract fees, generated $95,000 in nonprofit donations, and let's see, $18,000 worth of investment in free community events, lots of neighborhood mitigation that was put into place to prepare for the event.

And those are improvements that have continued to serve.

And then also $87,000 in admission tax went to the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture.

And so I have more stats, but I just mentioned this to emphasize that these kinds of events are really great for the small businesses and artists in our community, and we need to do everything that we can to support these festivals.

And starting with yes and making it happen is where I'm coming from when it comes to this.

And I appreciate everything that city staff have done to help make sure that this is well permitted and ready to go when it happens.

So and then finally, one last note on past meetings, and this is in response to questions that I get from from the public about the status of our conforming legislation and also the mayor's pensional systems work group.

I'll note that the community court replacement subgroup met for the second time this past Wednesday to continue the discussion of possible alternatives.

So this is, again, the community court replacement subgroup thinking about ideas going forward.

And I have to say, I think it's fair to say that there remains some questions amongst members about the scope of our mission.

And that's perhaps stemming from the fact that community court never handled specifically drug offenses.

And so it remains a question, how does the the what is the relationship between potential gross misdemeanor cases for drug possession and public use?

How does that how how does the handling of those cases relate to what, if any, therapeutic court replacement will exist in the future so that we are continuing to discuss that in these meetings.

I'm also assigned to the subgroup that will identify gaps to addiction treatment services in the region.

That has yet to be scheduled and I'm looking forward to beginning that work as well and hearing from other council members that are serving on the work group, how their subgroups discussions are going.

And so, moving on.

Finally, this week, I have a meeting that I'll mention, I will be speaking at the construction celebration of 900 Rainier 900 Rainier is the largest publicly privately funded project in Seattle to include a range of mixed income apartments.

I'll be joined by King County Executive Dow Constantine, King County Council Member Zahili and SDCI Director Nathan Torgalson.

And so I thank you to the Mieze Stegen organization for inviting me to to speak and congratulations on the groundbreaking of 900 Rainier.

That's it.

Any questions?

Seeing none, I will then pass it to Council Member Peterson.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, colleagues, there are no items from our transportation Seattle Public Utilities Committee on the full council agenda tomorrow afternoon.

Our next meeting of the transportation Seattle Public Utilities Committee is currently scheduled for next Tuesday, July 18 at 930am.

I wanna thank you colleagues again for your votes on June 27 to adopt Council Bill 120599, which extended existing authority to enforce lock the box and transit only lanes using automated camera enforcement.

To expand this effort of using technology to increase pedestrian safety without the need for officers in the field, our committee will be voting on additional automated camera enforcement authority granted by the state government to discourage dangerous drag racing.

That's Council Bill 120600, co-sponsored by Councilmember Herbold and me, which our committee heard originally on June 20. By designating our city's initial list of dangerous drag racing zones, Council Bill 120600 will qualify those danger zones for eventual installation of traffic enforcement cameras.

As previously announced, amendments from committee members were due to Calvin Chow of our central staff on July 6. If you have questions about Council Bill 120600, please confer with Calvin before our July 18 meeting.

We'll publish the committee agenda this coming Friday, but we're currently planning to have at least four other items on our committee agenda.

approving a skybridge permit above 300 Pine Street as recommended by SDOT, approving a contract for processing and composting food and yard waste and other organics as recommended by Seattle Public Utilities, a briefing and discussion of SDOT's annual equity report, and approving a property transfer from Seattle Public Utilities to Seattle Public Schools for Rainier Beach High School.

Regarding regional committees on July 7 as Transportation Committee Chair, I attended the Seattle Shoreline Regional Forum, which included a discussion of city, county, and state government plans to improve pedestrian safety along Aurora Avenue North.

On July 6th, as Seattle Public Utilities Committee Chair, I attended the Regional Water Quality Control Committee, which will, well, that's where we continued our discussion on how to provide authority to City of Seattle and King County cities in controlling costs for wastewater treatment to provide more authority for that.

That's a cost passed through from King County to Seattle Public Utility rate payers for wastewater treatment.

As we know, utility costs are aggressive and so controlling costs enables us to remain sensitive to the burden of utility bills on lower income households.

I'm very grateful for the new chair of the Regional Water Quality Committee, Claudia Balducci, who shares the concern of city leaders to keep utility rate increases to a minimum.

In District 4 last week, I joined Mayor Bruce Harrell for the ribbon-cutting ceremony after finally completing renovations at Magnuson Parks Community Center.

Those interior renovations were funded by the state and King County, as well as by the City of Seattle's 2014 Parks Levy.

The renovations make the interior much more functional and fun by adding substantial space and a kitchen for many more activities and programming.

Magnuson Park is home now to 875 low-income residents living at nonprofit housing provided by Solid Ground, Mercy Housing, and the Low Income Housing Institute.

And that's another reason why it's so important to have a fully operational community center with free programming for that Northeast Seattle neighborhood.

And that concludes my presentation.

Any comments or questions?

Turn it over, oh yeah, Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

I just want to thank you and Council Member Herbold for bringing forward legislation to implement state law along this stretch of Alki, because judging from the emails that I've received and presumably everybody else, there is tremendous public support for this.

And I met months ago with a group of neighborhood residents specifically talking about the how unsafe this racing is.

And so I just think that this is legislation that is ripe right now.

And I note that Calvin Chow did reach out to me and say, hey, as a citywide, are there any other locations that you think we should do this?

And I basically said, I leave that to district representatives who know better what's going on in their districts.

But in general, thank you very much for bringing this forward.

It's good work.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Any other comments or questions before we turn it over to Council Member Szilard?

Okay, thank you, Council Member Szilard.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson, and good afternoon, everyone.

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

The next meeting of the committee will be a specially scheduled public hearing this Wednesday, July 12th at 6 p.m.

at All Pilgrims Church on Capitol Hill.

At the hearing, renters will speak about the human impact of the housing crisis that rising rents have created over the last decade in Seattle.

Members of the public can provide public comment in person or can call in for remote public comment using the same public comment sign up system as during any regularly scheduled committee meeting.

As I said during the council briefing two weeks ago, all council members are invited to attend.

Thank you council members Morales, Nelson and Herbold who have let us know that they plan to attend.

Council members can attend in person at All Pilgrims Church in Capitol Hill or over the Zoom coordinates we have shared in your Outlook calendars.

Asha and Jen, who are staffing this legislation from the city council central staff, have requested amendments to be sent to them by Thursday, July 13th, to give adequate time to prepare language and review with the city attorney's office.

I hope to bring the rent control legislation and those amendments for a vote at the regularly scheduled July 21st meeting of the committee.

I will, of course, oppose any amendments that water down the rent control legislation and create corporate loopholes.

That is all I had from my end.

If there are no questions, I will hand it over to Council Member Strauss.

I don't see anything, so yeah, go ahead Council Member Strauss.

Thank you.

Great.

I'm going to set my timer because I've got a lot of updates, try to keep it under my 10 minutes.

Good afternoon coming to you live from my district six office at the library from the land use committee this week on full council, and so I'm going to first talk about this week and next week, I'm going to talk about the remainder of the year.

So for this week and next week.

On this week's calendar, we have Council Bill 120-592 Pioneer Square Rooftops legislation.

This is essentially a cleanup bill from a bill that we passed in 2022. This bill applies to one area, Pioneer Square, and potentially to 11 parcels.

This what is contained in this bill was thought to have been addressed in the 2022 legislation.

And for some in Seattle, there's been some confusion about a little bit of the language that's in that 2022 bill.

The legislation before us tomorrow simply clarifies assumptions made last year.

It's a small and technical bill.

The following appointments are coming to full council tomorrow on the consent agenda.

Janelle Hicks to the Equitable Development Initiative Advisory Board.

Andrew Dannenberg, Monica Sharma, Diana Solares, and Nicholas Whipple to the Seattle Planning Commission, and Alicia Kellogg to the Urban Forestry Commission.

These are all mayoral appointments.

We will be bringing the council appointments for these different boards in September.

Next week, we are going to have the maritime and industrial zoning packages come to full council on July 18th.

I'm going to give a little bit of background and reminder and then current status on this package.

This package of legislation represents a multi-year process of negotiation and compromise.

This included facilitated conversations between 2019 and 2021. The facilitated meetings concluded with recommendations that received 85% approval from stakeholders who typically disagree, disagree vehemently.

For reference, the last time industrial lands were rezoned was in 2007, and the process was controversial.

We have taken a long road to what is before us today, and I know council colleagues, I have been talking to you about this since March.

This process has been going on for many years, so I caution any changes, but I'll give you a little bit of background for where we have been here at Council.

I first addressed this package of legislation and Council briefing in March.

I said then what I'm saying again now.

Council members were invited to receive briefings ahead of the legislation being introduced on April 12th.

All council members were invited to attend land use committee meetings and sponsor amendments.

This is why I have said many times over, this is why amendments at full council are not welcome.

I stated this in March, in April, in May, in June, and now again in July.

What I said then, and again now, changes in the industrial buffer zones and outside of SOTA were not controversial.

The changes in SOTA were heavily negotiated, and the one place where full agreement could not be reached was in the stadium district.

And some changes were agreed upon for the stadium district.

This is why I said at the outset that amendments in South Park, Georgetown and North Seattle were easy to digest, SOTO amendments needed to be vetted, and amendments in the Stadium District need to be carefully reviewed.

As I said at the passage of this package, from the Land Use Committee, I will be bringing a substitute bill with technical and or non-controversial changes that needed to be made from cleanup between final passage at a committee and introduction and final passage from full council.

Separately, we will also be passing a resolution regarding the transportation aspects from that facilitated conversation and compromise that I discussed a moment ago that took place between 2019 and 2021. We currently have a draft attached to our most recent land use committee.

We are welcoming additions and feedback.

The deadline for feedback is August 1st, and we plan to pass this resolution in September.

I'll quickly go over the rest of the year land use committee and then I'll come back for questions.

Colleagues, this is our last council briefing before we take up the maritime and industrial zoning package at Polk Council, so I welcome conversation now.

For the remainder of the year in the land use committee, As of today, we have held 18 land use committee meetings.

And for reference this year, the schedule presented that we presented in January, there were 17 regularly scheduled scheduled meetings.

We've already exceeded the number of regularly scheduled meetings.

And for this reason, we will only hold and use committee meetings as necessary for the remainder of July and August.

For the remainder of the year, we will have two meetings in September on September 13 and September 20. The 20th is a special meeting and two meetings at the end of the year on November 29 and December 6 December 6 is also a special meeting.

Our schedule in September is already full.

We have the downtown act activation plan.

bills.

We have the Industrial Maritime Transportation Resolution.

We have Council Member Peterson's request for briefing discussion and potential vote on impact fees.

We have Council Member Morales's legislation she just referenced earlier in the meeting.

And we have council appointments to the boards and commissions, including Design Review, Planning Commission, and Urban Forestry Commission.

Our December meetings are reserved for any cleanup work from the year, so we are not planning on legislation then for that.

We're going to leave it open.

If you believe you have legislation that needs to come through the Land Use Committee, please connect with me this week.

Again, please connect with me this week.

We will also be taking up, and finally, before the end of the year, we'll also be taking up the next steps in the tree protection ordinance.

At the final passage of the Tree Protection Ordinance, I stated the desire to clean up and continue refining this ordinance.

I still believe that today.

We will mirror the process, the same process we used to pass the ordinance that would pass just this year, which started with a resolution in 2019. This was a resolution I helped craft as staff, and it set the scope, timeline, and reporting deadlines to be completed.

We will do this very same process again this year.

We will have a resolution crafted and passed either in September or December, depending on the responsiveness of stakeholders.

And so colleagues, if you have ideas that you believe need to be refined, included, or developed, please let my office know, because we would like to include these within our resolution, setting out the pathway for refining the tree protection ordinance.

Lastly, we've had a very busy year in the land use committee.

We're in the final stretch.

And I want to thank our land use committee members for attending more meetings than a typical annual schedule contains.

And so with that, colleagues, that is my report.

Again, this is the last council briefing before the maritime and industrial land strategy comes to full council.

And so this is the time to ask me questions.

And council president, I recorded I'm at seven minutes, 30 seconds.

I am below the 10 minute mark.

She's shaking her head for everyone else who can't see and a thumbs up.

Colleagues, any questions?

Seeing none, I hope that means that this industrial maritime land strategy goes smoothly next week.

Please do call me anytime.

I will now pass it over to council member Herbold.

Thank you very much.

Hello, everybody.

The Public Safety and Human Services Committee is meeting tomorrow.

There are three items on the agenda.

First is the mid-year report by each the Community Police Commission, the Inspector General, and the Office of Police Accountability.

This report is a requirement of the 2017 Police Accountability Ordinance, and one of the elements of the report that is required by ordinance to be presented is for the accountability bodies to report out publicly the progress on recommendations made by the entities to SPD.

Secondly, we'll be hearing a discussion and possible vote on Council Bill 12-6.

with our amendments to the police accountability legislation regarding the operations of Community Police Commission as requested by the Community Police Commission itself.

And then thirdly, we'll be having a next discussion and possible vote on series of amendments to bill 120580 on deactivation protections for workers.

There are no items on the full council agenda tomorrow from the Public Safety and Human Services Committee, and my issue-based updates are as follows.

Last Wednesday, the Community Police Commission voted to proceed with interviews for three finalists for the position of Executive Director.

Public interviews are planned for July 19th, and there's a vote scheduled for August 2nd.

Um, as it relates to my regular meetings with, as I had fun this morning, um, we spoke out, um, deployment of immunity, violent task force and the escalating pattern of gun violence.

And this morning, let me know, um, task force, uh, since deployed.

a little over a week ago has already recovered handguns, two rifles and made a homicide arrest.

The context for this work is whereas we do see gun violence on an uptick and homicides also increasing, the overall violent crimes for the city are reduced 14% from where we were last year.

But again, That is encompassing of all violent crimes.

The reality is we are seeing an increase in violent crimes that result in death.

Really want to thank the police department for the work that they're doing, recovering guns into custody already.

first five months alone, we have data for over 629 guns have been recovered, and that is making it look like we're going to have an even higher gun recovery number than we did last year.

Last year was another all-time high.

Last, let's see, I already talked about that one.

Consent decree update.

Folks, you may recall that in March, the DOJ, Department of Justice, and the City of Seattle submitted a joint motion to the U.S.

District Court overseeing the consent decree to approve a compliance agreement.

In late May, Judge Robart convened a status conference I know folks are aware that that motion has not yet been approved by the judge.

Nevertheless, there is some work that the joint agreement commits to that has been ongoing while waiting to hear from the judge.

And so there are a number of timelines in the joint motion and just wanted to real quickly give you a little bit of an update.

In late June, the Inspector General submitted a work plan to the court for transitioning work done by the monitor, transitioning it to the Inspector General with assessment goals for each use of force, stop and detentions, assist intervention, suspension and early intervention systems and bias-free policing.

And then upcoming dates that are proposed in the joint motion include by July 31st, the use of force assessment by the inspector general for 2021 and 2022 data.

and also by the same date by 31st cds response to the recommendations of the sentinel event review uh and then lastly by august 14th the independent consultant retained by the consent decree monitor is scheduled to submit a report reviewing the city's police accountability system Some of you have asked for information about that assessment.

There is a scope of work available if you're interested in learning more about that independent assessment of our accountability system.

Moving on to the Human Services Department, we have the annual summer food program that Human Services Department administers, offering free nutritious meals and snacks to anyone and under.

This began on August 5th and continues through August 25th at 62 locations throughout the city.

No ID for residency or application is required.

We know that more than 18,000 children and youth in Seattle qualify for free or reduced meals, and one in six are food insecure.

In 2021, we know that over 82,000 meals were served 4,500 children who otherwise would not have a meal during summer months.

If you want to find out more about free meal locations, you can go to freesummermeals.org.

On the public health side, just want to let the viewing public know and council colleagues, the King County Board of Health is seeking two community stakeholders to join the board in 2024. The two positions that they are recruiting for are to represent community-based organizations or nonprofits, working with populations experiencing health inequities, active, reserve, or retired armed service members, the business community, or environmental public health regulated community members.

Board of Health advocates for preservation, promotion, and prevention of public health, prevents the spread of disease, local public health regulations, as well as some fees and licenses.

And they also, we also, I should say, enforce state and local public health laws.

Learn more, you can go to kingcounty.gov forward slash d-o-h.

Applications are due in a little less than a month, due by August 6th.

As far as events, last week, coming up this week, last Friday, I toured the New Hope and Chance Center in Pelham.

It's only been a couple of months, but they have a lot of capacity.

They have eight health care providers and are offering treatment services.

with a vision of working with tiny house residents who are exiting from the county jail.

And I've also recently down with Seattle Fire Department to talk about the interest of the city and establishing a post overdose treatment facility and also connected them with reach as well.

this coming week.

Member Lewis and I will tour the Regional Crisis Response Agency.

I'll let Council Member Lewis talk about that since that's a tour that he spearheaded.

And I think that's all I've got today.

Does anybody have any questions or comments?

Not seeing any, pass it over to Council Member Lewis.

Thank you so much.

Council member Herbold.

I think I'll start at the beginning just by reiterating how excited I am to be going on this ride along on Thursday, the 13th of this week to visit Kirkland's alternative 911 response agency to get a sense for how our North King County city partners in the cities of Lake Forest Park Ken Moore Bothell and Kirkland, if I recall all the partners correctly, are implementing and innovating in some new ways to do crisis dual dispatch first response right here in our own backyard.

Very appreciative of the leadership of Council Member Neil Black in Kirkland for introducing me to the fact that they have this service in Kirkland.

for helping to facilitate the opportunity along with our partners on the executive side and with Council Member Herbold to go out there and see it firsthand for ourselves.

So really looking forward to that this Thursday to see what lessons we can glean to implement similar services here in the City of Seattle.

So colleagues, just to go through the rest of my updates, I will try not to take too long.

In committee last week, We heard a presentation about legislation to renew the City of Seattle's concession agreement with Sales Handpoint.

Committee members had a number of questions for Sales Handpoint and the Parks Department, so we will keep that legislation in committee and continue this discussion on July 19th.

Also on the July 19th committee meeting, we will have legislation related to the Seattle Aquarium.

Now we were here last year where we approved a Uh, a loan to the aquarium from the city of Seattle to help finish the overlook walk, um, uh, project and the, uh, waterfront, uh, um, uh, new, uh, center that the aquarium is building, um, the, um, uh, uh, one ocean, um, pavilion center.

Uh, The aquarium has leveraged that generous support, in addition to other resources and wants to come back and propose to the council.

And we'll have plenty of time to discuss this on the 19th but just foreshadowing now proposed to the council an alternative plan, whereby the entire project will become privately financed and we will get paid back well in advance the entire $20 million the city loaned last summer.

uh, to support a plan to, um, uh, to increase investment in the aquarium, um, uh, by leveraging a private financing opportunity.

Uh, we're going to have plenty of time on the 19th to dig into that proposal.

I am not planning to vote on that proposal on the 19th.

We are planning to have a long and very informative presentation, uh, and to give council colleagues an opportunity.

to ask questions of the Aquarium and the Mayor's Office about how this deal would work going forward.

Strongly encourage Council colleagues who are interested and want to learn more about this in advance, particularly committee members, to reach out to Audium Emery or Krista Vallier in the Mayor's Office to get a briefing on this project if there are questions or concerns.

and happy as always for the committee to be a forum to hear and relay those questions and concerns as well.

So that will be another item on the 19th and I anticipated being the item that will likely take up most of the time for our discussion at that meeting.

We will also be considering another appointment to the Climate Pleasure Arena Giving Council.

And we will be hearing some legislation related to Seattle's amusement device license fee, which I am happy to get into more on our committee meeting on the 19th.

Clean city data for Seattle Parks and Recreation June 26 to the 30th.

The Clean City Initiative recovered 568 needles at 165 different locations, along with 43,000 pounds of trash.

The library.

So are you an artist, innovator, entrepreneur, producer, venture capitalist, or simply curious about what it takes to move your business or project forward?

The Seattle Public Library and Evoke Uproar will host Banking on You, a free one-day entrepreneurial workshop on Friday, July 28th from 10 a.m.

to 5 p.m.

at the Seattle Central Library.

Banking on You brings together speakers and workshops that will share effective strategies for achieving financial freedom and moving your project forward, as well as networking opportunities and surprise entertainment throughout the day.

As we hit the two-month mark after, so that's the first, sorry, that's the first item, Banking on You, so definitely prioritize that if you're interested for Friday, July 28th, 10 a.m.

to 5 p.m.

at the Central Library.

Second item that we have today of announcements from the Seattle Public Library.

As we hit the two month mark after launching our books on band we have had more than 3,000 people sign up to our Seattle Public Library to get access to our digital collections from jurisdictions where they may not have a library or they may have libraries under certain political speech controls that are denying the ability of people to more broadly access material.

Cardholders have checked out almost 9,000 titles and more than 12,000 times.

As of June 26th, 4,300 titles are on hold as part of the Books Unbanned card program.

Cardholders represent all 50 states and Puerto Rico.

You can learn more about Books Unbanned by listening to this week's All Policies Local podcast in which I talk with Chief Librarian Tom Fay about the origin of this policy initiative and what the results have been so far in deeper detail.

I do also believe that when I talked to Tom Fay, he indicated that Guam has recently been added to the list of states and territories where we have cardholders for this program.

So kudos to the Seattle Public Library on this great and very needed initiative in our time and look forward to learning more about it as they continue this program.

With that, I don't have any other updates, Council President, so I'm happy to answer questions from colleagues before I turn it over to you for the Council President report.

Seeing none, I will hand it over to you for the Council President report.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

All right.

There are no items from the Governance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments Committee on tomorrow's council agenda.

The next Governance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments Committee will be Thursday, July 20th at 930. That's two days before my birthday.

At that meeting, the Indigenous Advisory Council will be presenting its strategic plan, first in our city's history.

So that is going to be very exciting to see.

Thank you, Francesca, Department of Neighborhoods, Thank you to Ryan in the mayor's office, all the other folks on the Indigenous Advisory Council.

In addition to the meeting on July 20th, we will also have an additional special committee on August 3rd.

More to come on that one.

Let's see, I would like to thank Councillor Mosqueda.

Thank you so much for stepping in for me last Wednesday, Councillor Mosqueda, when I couldn't make it as president pro tem.

Last week, my office met with the SailPoint to discuss their work at Magnuson Park, as Council Member Lewis, as the Chair, just shared, regarding the new concession agreement.

And my understanding, again, as Council Member Lewis shared, that we will be addressing that on July 19th, correct?

July 19th, at the Public Assets and Homeless Committee, and hopefully we'll have more information on the public benefits piece.

Coming up this week on Wednesday, we will be attending the North or the South Transit North King sub area to receive an update on the construction of the 130th Street Station.

As you know, we have as an infill station, so we'll have two light rail stations in D5.

The platform has been constructed and the construction of the station is the next step.

All very exciting for us and for everybody, not just D5, but all of Seattle and Sohomish County as well.

I would like to remind everyone that Sound Transit and King County Metro will be providing free fare service today, Monday, July 10th, and Tuesday, July 11th, to reduce overall congestion due to some baseball game that's happening.

Let's see.

All right, that concludes my report, unless anyone has any questions.

Council Member Lewis, did you have a question?

Oh, no, I raised my hand by mistake, Council President, my apologies.

Oh, I was just giving you a hard time.

I didn't even know that you did that.

I was watching your face.

I thought you did.

Okay, I'll leave it alone.

All right, so I think that's it, folks.

So I will see all of you tomorrow.

Okay, have a good afternoon.

Go spend time with your kiddos.

Recording stopped.