Good morning.
Thank you for being here on the first day of October for our council briefing We are in the middle of budget.
So I don't expect a long briefing.
We do have an executive session To come right after on an issue just one executive session So I'll dispense of the president's report and simply say that there are no items on today's Full agenda from the governance equity and technology committee and I'll pass it over to my colleague councilmember O'Brien.
I
Thank you, Council President.
The Sustainability and Transportation Committee has one item on this afternoon's agenda.
This is a piece of legislation around pre-tax commuter benefits.
And so this is something that we've been talking about for over a year now.
Passed out a committee two weeks ago, and what the legislation would do is create a path for employers with 20 or more employees to be required to offer employees the opportunity to have a pre-tax deduction for their commuter benefits.
We've talked a lot about it, so I won't rehash the details there, just simply to say that we amended in committee the timeframe of it.
And so the legislation that will be before us this afternoon would take effect on January 1, 2020. And enforcement wouldn't begin until January 1, 2021. So there's a very long ramp up to do this.
Again, the focus of it is going to be on education and making sure folks have the opportunity.
And what we've heard from a lot of the business owners is that this is actually a really great tax savings and a benefit that they want to apply as long as they have the support.
And, of course, we hear from employees, you know, there are tens of thousands of employees in Seattle who work for smaller businesses that don't have access to this and will ultimately get it.
Very good.
Thank you for doing it, Mike.
Thank you.
Council Member Juarez.
Good morning, everybody.
Good morning.
Okay, glad to see Councilor Mosqueda's back from the lovely country of Germany.
Thank you for having me.
We have an ordinance relating to the Hing Hay Park Bush Hotel property agreement.
As I stated before, this is 37 years in the making.
The bill was heard in the Civic Development Public Asset and Native Communities Committee Wednesday, September 19th.
It will be re-induced to Council.
It was re-induced to Council last Monday, the 24th.
The committee is supportive of this legislation and will be up for a vote this afternoon in Council.
I have some really great news and it's a big win for D5, the 130th Street Light Rail Station.
Thursday, September 27th, the Sound Transit Board of Directors voted to unanimously accelerate preliminary engineering for the 130th Street Light Rail Station.
The agency will now determine if it will be able to open the 130th station in 2024, that is seven years ahead of its original schedule.
So a big thank you to Mayor Durkin and to Councilmember Johnson for their advocacy for the North End.
Right now, Transit and I are working together to open the station early to take advantage of potential cost savings and to minimize disruption to transit service in the surrounding neighborhood.
The D5 Community Network.
This month I was pleased to join Legislative Department Director Kirsten Armstead and Director of the City Budget Office Ben Noble at the D5 Community Network up in Bitter Lake, which was the first time we've ever had Director Artstead and Ben Noble at a community network organization.
And the community wanted to know how the budget worked.
And they did, Kirsten and Ben did a phenomenal job.
There were about 100 attendees at the Bitter Lake Community Center who got a chance to ask questions, to understand how the budget process works and basically how city council makes decisions and what to watch for, how to advocate and how to come down and provide public comment.
Saturday I attended the Latina Empowerment Summit, and I know that Councilmember Mosqueda and Gonzales have attended this event as well.
It's underwritten by Nordstrom's.
Dr. Sandra Madrid has been putting this event together since 2004. And normally I don't talk about everything that I've done, but this was particularly important because one of the keynote was Diana Lopez.
She wrote the children's book.
Coco, as you know, was adapted into the Disney Pixar award-winning film, which was amazing.
And then, of course, we had Blanca Santana, who did the artwork.
And she lives here in Seattle, and she's from Peru.
And anyway, I just thought it was a wonderful event.
If you ever get an opportunity to go, it's certainly worth it.
That's it.
Very good.
Excellent.
Council Member Bekshaw.
Thank you.
We have one item this afternoon on the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee and I want to say thank you to Council Member Mosqueda because she and others in your office have helped put this resolution together.
The real focus of this is to state our intent to prioritize available city property for use as affordable housing, something our city drastically needs, but also prioritizing space for education, for child care, for green space as well.
So I'll leave it to Council Member Mosqueda this afternoon to talk about how we're going to do this.
But we're also emphasizing the opportunities for alternatives such as modular and cross-laminated timber construction.
So these are being looked at by Steve Walker and Nathan Torgelson and others.
Yet, there was a great article today in the Seattle Times about the modulars up in Vancouver, B.C., for low-income housing.
And I've reported on this before, having gone up to Vancouver and looked at them last Memorial Day.
So we're moving slowly, much more slowly than I would like to see us move, but this resolution will help us to get more spaces for affordable housing.
Now, pertaining to budget.
This Wednesday, from 930 until the end of our afternoon, we're going to be focusing on the homelessness system.
What's working, what's not, performances and investments.
We're going to hear from many departments, human services department, office of housing, Seattle Police Department, FAS, Seattle Department of Transportation, Seattle Public Utilities and Parks, what they're doing.
I have asked that the mayor come to us and talk about the system itself for emergency services, for housing, for prevention, for public health, what access to services and operations are available.
And that we're going to hear about the outcomes from the navigation team, outcomes from the cleanup, how many tons and tons of garbage that we are picking up, the Q2 performance.
This is after, as all of you will recall, we did a request for proposal last year, contracts that were awarded.
We had some very performance measurements targets.
We're going to hear about how that worked.
And then what happens when people are unwilling to move to shelter?
Because once again, as we have talked many, many times over these years, that having just overnight shelter does not provide stability.
We need 24-7 places for people to go.
with the services attached to it.
So we'll be hearing more from, that's this Wednesday, and we also have our first public hearing on the budget this Thursday at 5.30.
Allison McClain in my office will be coming around and asking if you want some food, because we start at 5.30, we go until we're done.
And the public has been informed that this will be their opportunity, and we will be here to listen to their issues and concerns.
Also, for your offices, I'm sure all of you know by now, are the Form A's.
Those are issue identification are due.
Are you ready?
Hold on.
10-10 at 10. October 10th at 10 in the morning, the form A's are due back to central staff and to my office.
And lastly, I just want to say thank you to Belltown.
We planted almost 14,000 bulbs in Denny Park on Saturday.
Morningside School was there.
Thanks particularly to Tom Graf and Tim Gatos.
Tom managed to wrangle 14,000 daffodil and tulip bulbs, and they're all planted in that park.
So it's just an opportunity to really make some color, and it's the one and only major downtown park we've got that's operating today.
So anyway, thanks to all who participated in that on Saturday.
Thank you.
10, 10, and 10. 10, 10, and 10.
Four Mays.
Got it.
Got some Mosquitos.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I'm happy to be back.
There is one item on the agenda this afternoon in full council from the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee.
This will be the appointment of Deborah Smith to serve as the next general manager and chief executive officer for Seattle City Light.
As many of you know, because we've participated in many of the council conversations over the last few months, we've had committee hearings, and this follows a robust search process that the mayor initiated with 22 members of the community.
We did have the chance to ask her multiple questions as you may remember there was 34 questions that our office sent to Miss Smith to request her feedback her vision and her perspective on issues that are surrounding City Light.
In addition to that and in I think at the advice of Councilmember O'Brien we also asked her to meet with a number of individual organizations prior to a full nomination process today.
And I want to pass out for the committee a summary of the conversations that Deborah Smith has summarized for my office.
I've put her memo to me as a cover memo here and also included a number of emails that we've received from various constituents over the last week and a half since our last committee meeting.
As you'll see there, she has had the chance, as Council Member Juarez suggested, to meet with tribal leaders for a government-to-government relationship discussion.
met with individuals from the salmon recovery effort, and met with some of our other community members there, which you'll see as well.
So I just wanted to provide that in writing.
It is in addition to the questions that we asked her to fill out, but I appreciate the extra time that she spent and the request to make sure that there was enough time between that last committee meeting and her potential confirmation this afternoon.
We also will be updating a expectations letter and I just want to thank I think it was councilmember Gonzales whose model we looked at for the nomination of the police chief and we've modeled our expectations letter to incorporate some of the additional comments we've received from community over the last few weeks.
We will be sending that around to your offices so that you can see that in advance and Mr. President I'd love to put that into the record for this afternoon as well.
I just want to follow up on one other item that councilmember Bagshaw mentioned and that is the work that she has been helping to lead in her committee on finance and neighborhoods to make sure that we update our Disposition policies for surplus land.
I am passing out here for you and they're included in little packets So if you could take two and then pass it to your neighbor This is an update of resolution 3183 Seven and the attachment a which will be on today's full council agenda This is as you heard an update to the disposition policies which prioritizes a surplus land and underutilized land that the city owns for prioritizing affordable housing and community assets and Especially coming from Germany in an area where you see such high density What we have seen is the need to put not just housing on every parcel of land but the need to put open spaces and and parks and child care facilities and and community gathering opportunities and opportunity for economic development through small businesses.
So among the various priorities there, we just wanted to call that out.
It was really exciting to be able to take a bike and bike through Berlin all day on Saturday.
I think I was out for six hours biking.
And to really just see the way that public space is used and the opportunity it provides for social engagement and gathering, especially for people that might not have their own backyard.
I think it's a really great way for us to think about how we utilize property and create density affordable housing and community opportunities.
So the slight wording changes are highlighted in red and this is changes that we've received from community partners just to basically clarify some of the language.
They're just very technical and don't change the substance of the resolution or the amendment.
If you do have questions, please let us know and my staff is happy to answer any of those.
This week I'll be attending the Chief Seattle Club annual luncheon on Thursday.
I'm looking forward to that and just wanted to say thanks again for all of your support for me going last week to Germany.
I did have a very interesting trip.
We did meet with a lot of industry leaders and a lot of people across the political spectrum including centrists and right-wing folks.
And not the extreme right-wing, I should say right-leaning.
And I took the opportunity to ask them about unions specifically, given their high union density, and asked what their perspective was.
And there was one quote that I wanted to bring back from the Minister of Commerce in a northern state in Germany.
When asked about the role that unions play, he said, quote, we need unions.
We need strong unions.
We need strong unions that can negotiate strong, good contracts.
And he said that most of the leaders across the country know that unions are absolutely necessary in order to create an increasingly successful economy and that we get higher output when we have strong unions.
So I thought that that was a really great way to bring back hopefully what will be a growing effort in this country to see stronger unions across sectors.
Thank you so much, Mr. President.
Thank you.
Customers can I just had a question that might have come up and I might have missed it and it's just on the resolution on sort of the meat of it on 4c where it talks about the priorities of use and it starts with affordable housing and then B is parking or open space, etc.
So on page 5 It's c5 I Wait for you there.
It lists is from a to G and Is it implicit in that or am I over reading it?
Is that the list, the order with which they are in, does that signify sort of that, that's sort of a prioritized list or is it just they're all factors to be considered when looking at all the priorities?
The way it reads, it doesn't really say it, but I think when one reads in alphabetical order like that, maybe they would think that it goes down in order.
And I was a little unclear on that when I'd seen it earlier.
Yeah, I'll comment on this and then if Councilmember Baggio has some additional comments, that's great as well.
These are issues that we would like to see considered.
They are included in priority order.
Per House Bill 2382, we really know that making sure that there's housing, affordable housing on these properties in response to the housing crisis that we have.
And as we do that, wanting to make sure that there's public gathering spaces, playgrounds, green spaces.
And then Council Member Bagshaw and I worked on the order here to make sure that education opportunities, including early learning and ongoing adult learning, like the ESL programs that we know are being created, especially in some of the South End.
development are also reflected in our priorities.
So this is intended to be inclusive of everything, but we really did want to prioritize among those.
Okay, thanks for that clarification.
I just would like to add, we started off with just saying affordable housing.
That was the focus of this resolution.
Then we realized we didn't want to exclude parks.
We certainly know that open space is critical and having that vital place for people to go.
And then we're also very keenly aware that having additional childcare available.
So including that as we're going, pretty soon it just had a list that was ridiculously long.
So we're not saying that one has to be at the very top.
We're trying to include them all.
But affordable housing is really an umbrella under which we're really trying to bring the others.
Thanks for that clarification.
Council Member Johnson.
Thanks.
Very brief report.
Proud to have helped secure the additional funding to advance the 130th Street Station at the Sound Transit Board.
I will add that though we got a unanimous vote, we have been received with a lot of trepidation by other colleagues throughout the region who have brought up grave concerns about the capital costs associated with the 130th Street Station and made it clear that they would support the preliminary engineering discussion, but that was as far as they were willing to go.
So we've got a lot of work ahead of us to convince our friends in Pearson-Snowmish County.
who represent a not insignificant portion of the board to go along with us.
But that vote won't happen until sometime next year.
So we've got lots of time in order to figure it out.
Thanks.
I think public comment is helpful, Council Member Juarez, but I also think that spending some time and energy in other people's jurisdictions, as I continue to try to do with my members of the Sound Transit Board, It's a sign of goodwill and helps to convince them of the important need for this station.
Very good.
Council Member Sawant.
Thank you, President Harrell.
Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
There are no items on today's City Council agenda from the Human Services Equitable Development and Renters' Rights Committee.
I wanted to add one point that is, I think, of critical importance.
I think you all received a letter from the school board members about this, but the Seattle School District has announced 33 cuts to educator positions, teacher positions, and that's quite outrageous.
In fact, unlike previous years, the school district now has a $3 million surplus right now.
And so the students and the educators and the staff are asking why cuts now when we actually have the funding to hold all the positions and actually expand, possibly expand the positions.
Just wanted to share with the council and anyone who's watching that the Nova High School students, which is one of the schools that is slated to have two positions cut.
The students had organized a press conference last week.
As you know, Nova High School is in the Central District.
I was there in support of the students.
Another organization, Social Students, was there.
Again, it's composed of students.
We are together demanding, led by the students, that no cuts happen.
One point that the NOVA students have made, which is really important, is that given that it is already so, it's running on shoestring resources, so two cuts means 15% resources cut from their school.
And it's one of the three alternative schools that is going to be the most impacted, NOVA, World School, and interagency.
So two things on this.
One, the educators themselves have launched a petition in which they say, despite the school district's 3 million in reserves this year, they are eliminating teaching positions and displacing teachers from schools this week because of a quote unquote possible budget shortfall next year.
These cuts will impact alternative schools the most, questioning the district's commitment to equity, keeping in mind that these alternative schools serve the students that are most marginalized students with mental health and anxiety issues, students from the LGBTQ community, and not to mention the students from people of color communities.
And so this petition is calling on the district to restore these 33 teaching positions immediately and come up with productive ways of encouraging the state legislature to fully fund education instead of carving it out from our schools.
The Nova High School students specifically have their three demands, which is no cuts district-wide, retain all 33 educators in their current positions, full funding for schools and education, living wages for all educators.
Now, the letter that we have received from the school district is not accurate in its information, and I would urge council members to hear from students and educators.
I will be sending a letter from my office.
I welcome any council member that wants to co-sign that letter.
And the other development that happened was on Friday, the district announced that Garfield High School had let go of two staff members, and there was real objection to that.
educators and the students walked out of the classrooms for several hours.
They were in the gym conducting their own classes for several hours.
And so the school was shut down for part of the day anyway.
And so I think it is really important for the city council to weigh in on this.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Schwan.
Council Member Gonzalez.
Good morning.
Good morning.
My report is very brief.
There is nothing on this afternoon's agenda from the General Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans, and Education Committee.
And as usual, no committee scheduled for the rest of the month due to the budget proceedings.
That is all.
Thank you.
Did you just see that?
I know.
That's Gonzalo's leadership of this finance right there, concise to the point.
Yes.
Follow that lead.
OK.
Two weeks in a row.
Two weeks in a row.
Having said that.
Having said that, we're going to move into executive sessions.
We do have one issue we need to discuss.
So as presiding officer, I'm announcing that the Seattle City Council will now convene an executive session.
And the purpose of the executive session is to discuss pending potential or actual litigation, and these sessions are an opportunity for the council to discuss confidential legal matters with our city attorneys as authorized by law.
However, a legal monitor from the city attorney's office is always present to ensure the council reserves questions of policy for open sessions.
I expect this open session to end in 20 minutes.
9.55.
10.15.
If the executive session is being extended beyond that time, I'll announce the extension and its expected duration.
So at this point, let's move into executive session.