Seattle City Council Finance & Neighborhoods Committee Public Hearing 8/14/19

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee.

Today is August 14th.

It's 2 p.m.

I'm Sally Bagshaw.

I chair this committee, and I'm joined by Lena Thiebaud from my office.

Thank you so much, all of you from Nicholsville.

Has everybody signed up?

Yes.

Great.

Excellent.

So we're going to approve the agenda today.

And if there's no objection, the agenda is going to be adopted.

Since there's no one here but me to object, we're going to assume that the agenda is adopted.

We've got nine items on our today's discussion.

The first is a briefing and discussion for an ordinance from the mayor's office relating to extensively damaged motor vehicles.

Thank you so much to everybody that is just arriving for this.

We will be discussing what's called affectionately the RV legislation.

Next, we're gonna have a briefing and discussion on the Seattle City Employee Retirement System, and that is known as CERS.

Thank you so much, Council Member Muscata for joining us.

Council Member Muscata is working with me on our retirement system.

And we'll also have two briefings from SDHR, Seattle Department of Human Resources, with a possible vote on a citywide position list and the city's power marketing compensation program from Seattle City Light are the next five items.

So we will have a public hearing on one of those items.

So as we go through, we will get there.

I'm going to then ask if anybody wants to speak on that particular item.

We will then, I assume, close the public hearing if we don't have anybody here, and then we will move forward.

with allowing the vote and moving forward so that we can actually suspend the rules.

That will then allow us to vote on it next week.

Thank you so much for coming.

So we have two people signed up.

Peggy, good to see you again.

And David Olson is here to discuss RV campers.

So I'm going to ask you just to come up to the microphone.

And thank you, Allison McClain from my office is here.

And we'll have two minutes for you.

And we look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Peggy Hotz and I'm a longtime volunteer with Nicholsville.

I'm commenting on the extensively damaged motor vehicle ordinance proposal of Mayor Durkin's.

Nicholsville is full of people who've lived in vehicles.

This ordinance was not crafted with any regard for them and should be shelved immediately.

Here's an update on what should be on the top of your problem-solving list.

Lehigh and HSD have started a new effort to escape the obligations of the council's city-sanctioned encampment ordinance.

They want to throw it out and call Othello Village a religious encampment, a religious encampment funded by city money going to a large corporate staff.

This is simply a way to evade compliance with land use obligations, community notice obligations, and oversight by a community advisory council.

It's thoughtless and bad policy and probably illegal.

The pastor of the church they plan to call the operator of the so-called Othello religious encampment has been on the Lehigh board of directors for three years.

Talk about a clear and blatant conflict of interest.

Toss out this terrible plan for treating motor vehicle campers as a crime problem.

help people who are pleading for help.

Use the Nicholsville conflict with HSD and Lehigh as a way to see the connection between good ideas and a terrible execution by HSD and Lehigh.

A mediation between the three parties, HSD, Lehigh, and Nicholsville, and a report by the mediator on what they learned and what happened.

The homelessness division of HSD is in chaos.

Staff is fleeing as quickly as possible.

The interim director is out of touch with facts on the ground.

Please do what you can to push this mediation forward that we've been asking for for so long.

Thank you.

Thank you, Peggy.

David Olson.

Hello, my name is David Olson.

I am the external coordinator at Nicholsville Northlake as well as a resident.

As a former transient living out of a vehicle and an RV before that, Nicholsville was a natural option to assist in getting me housing.

We hope that the Seattle City Council will help push mediation between Lehigh, the HSD, and Nicholsville so this option will continue to be available for others that may lose their vehicle or RV in this process.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, David.

Thanks for coming.

So anyone else like to speak that didn't sign up?

All right, well, seeing none, then we're going to move on to our first item of business, and this is a report.

And if I can invite Jeff Sims.

Any of you want to join us?

And by the way, thank you for the report that we just got a little bit ago.

Great.

Then, Lena, would you kindly read in item number one?

I'm item number one, extensively damaged motor vehicle ordinance briefing.

Very good.

And Jeff Sims, if you will introduce yourself.

Sure.

Jeff Sims, Council of Central Staff.

Very good.

Thank you.

So last week at our special meeting, we had a number of our friends from the mayor's office talking about the introduction of the RV legislation, and then we ask you to come back and provide some additional information.

They have offered some data, but unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to read that before this meeting, so if you've got any comments.

Sure, I'm happy to.

So the majority of the material I'll cover is already contained in the memo that was attached both to last week's agenda and to this week's agenda.

I don't have any visual materials, but if anyone is online or watching, they can access that for reference as well.

I'll go through some of the background that was not covered at our special session last Friday, including some of the new information that has been provided by SPD and SPU.

And then we'll go through items that were raised already by the committee on the amendments and on the legislation, and then other areas that central staff has identified as areas of interest for the council.

So first, as we know, we already established last time that as a larger context around this ordinance, our shelters, especially our Hans shelters and tiny house villages are operating at essentially full capacity.

And with this ordinance, as was discussed in the memo, we don't have a full picture of how extensive the stakeholder engagement was or where stakeholder support lies with this ordinance at this time.

Jeff, I'm getting a signal from the audience.

Can you slow it down just a little bit?

Sure, sorry.

Go ahead.

You haven't even gotten anywhere.

We already have questions.

Last time I had the chance to join your committee, and thank you again for letting me sit in on these.

One of the questions that I asked was around the fiscal note, and you sent me a reply later.

But in that analysis, we don't really see how much money has also been spent so far.

So do we have a sense of how much money has been spent either with initial outreach and engagement or even internal office coordination and then how much money this would cost going forward?

I have talked to both HSD and FAS through CBO and tried to learn exactly that.

With in regards to the actual disposal of vehicles, they're still projecting an increase.

I didn't bring the number with me, I apologize for that.

That would be more related to the administrative change on how to complete a junk vehicle affidavit rather than this ordinance if it were to be implemented.

CBO indicated they don't expect that to impact the quantity of vehicles that would go through a towing and thus have a junk vehicle affidavit and have to be disposed.

it might affect the timing that those vehicles arrive.

HSD's impact is also considered negligible by CBO.

They found that the staffing and case management availability that they have right now should be sufficient to handle whatever would arise from this ordinance in terms of needing to connect people with landlords or helping with restitution assistance, things like that.

Good, so you can get back to us about just the financial side of this when you've got that information.

Absolutely.

Great.

Thank you.

We've also received some new information on the scale.

All of you, I believe, asked about how common this practice is, how widespread we're looking at.

SBDN parking enforcement confirmed for us that they know of four predatory vehicle landlords that have a minimum of 30 to 40 vehicles.

They also emphasize they think that there are more.

It's just that they can confirm that there are four.

They've provided us some information that I won't go into today about each of those specific individuals, the number of vehicles that they have, things like that.

FAS and Lincoln Towing also are aware of at least 10 individuals that have multiple vehicles in circulation in their name.

And each of these individuals has had more than 30 vehicles in their name in the past, though various numbers of these have been disposed of already.

I believe, to some degree, that was covered in the Seattle Times article that was mentioned by Councilmember O'Brien at our last committee meeting.

Council Member O'Brien, thank you for joining us.

Jeff, can I ask you a question?

Of the 38 active vehicles that are registered among those five people, how many of those would we anticipate are what we would consider to be uninhabitable?

I don't know precisely what that number would be.

Because the information we received characterized this as a predatory vehicle landlord, my assumption is that these are considered situations that would be under the scope of the ordinance or the bill if it were passed.

So meeting some of the criteria to be the person being fined as a predatory situation and possibly restitution and relocation assistance being available.

And then so in addition to the maybe the small number of predatory vehicle landlords that have a large number of vehicles, we also the information that was provided to us is that FAS and Parking Enforcement SPD are aware of smaller scale landlords, they only have one to two vehicles perhaps, that they don't know the identities necessarily of those individuals, but especially in the Soto and Georgetown regions, they are aware and have come across at least 10 or so vehicles where what they believe is going on is this predatory practice of ranching an RV.

So that was some of the new information that had been requested by the council specifically.

There was one section that was not covered as background last time that I wanted to make sure was highlighted for council members at this point, as you can consider this ordinance.

And that's related to other avenues and penalties that might already interplay.

with these RVs.

As was discussed last time, an RV is not considered a dwelling unit.

That's defined by the land use code, the building code for mobile homes, and also the building code for single family dwellings.

However, the housing and building maintenance code does allow us to impose penalties and fines on premises.

SDCI currently does not consider premises to, or they interpret that to exclude the public right of way, which is why this, those, Penalties and fines and standards would not apply in this circumstance.

I'm not sure that that was abundantly clear during our last committee meeting.

There are some other avenues that we could look at for potential enforcement.

I believe business licensing was brought up at our last committee meeting.

Through conversations with staff from the executive, they clarified that they did not want to pursue that as the route, because then obtaining a business license, which would be very open to these RV ranchers, would essentially condone the activity, and they did not want to take that step.

I also thought it'd be important to highlight that for $511 or less, assuming that these ranchers are not grossing more than $2 million, they could obtain a business license and thus be conducting legal business.

And then there was a question last time about vehicle equipment and whether or not there are other issues, since it's not defined as a dwelling, how that might relate here.

Generally speaking, these, Codes and requirements for vehicles focus more on the equipment.

They don't consider situations where a person resides in their vehicle.

So we'd be looking at fines that could range from like $48 to $93, depending on what is broken on the vehicle.

And then, of course, with parking violations, things like that, you could have a vehicle towed and impounded and ultimately put up for auction.

But as we've seen, that just perpetuates our cycle here.

So with that as the additional background we didn't get to last time, I wanted to switch to what was already raised as issues by council members and then a couple other areas that council central staff have identified.

First, we, it was clarified at our last meeting that the cooperation of the person residing in the vehicle would be required to pursue either a civil infraction or a misdemeanor.

That is not how the legislation currently reads.

There's no requirement that that would be the case.

But it was brought up as a concern last time and expressed by staff from the executive and the mayor's office that that is the goal here.

And so that's a that seems to be an avenue where there's agreement if that's a change that council wants to make.

Can I speak to that too?

Of course.

Is this your memo, Jeff, or from the executive that we received the email?

The one that's the, that looks like this?

Yeah.

That's from the executive.

Okay.

So, it lists a number of bullet points that are limiting knowledge about it.

The last one, I don't know, I don't have the page.

I guess it's the first paragraph.

Sorry, that's not the right place.

Let me scroll down a little more.

Anyway, I'm not seeing it.

I recall somewhere that one of the reasons why we may not have good information was for fear of retaliation.

Oh yeah, unwillingness of documents to report predatory landlords for fear of retaliation.

I think another point might be that an unwillingness for people to report for fear that they might lose their housing.

They may be living in conditions that we would say are not acceptable, but for that person it might be like, if they take it away, I'm even worse off.

And so the comment about, you know, if there's clarity in some sort of Structure that says, you know, we will only exercise these rights if the tenant agrees About it helps me with that a lot because because to the extent that people are unwilling I mean we still want to be contacting these folks and trying to give them better options But we don't want to pull the you know The RV out from under them if you will if that's the best housing situation they have until we can get them something better Absolutely.

Thanks

Please, go ahead.

I think your point's well taken, Council Member O'Brien, is that we know that, and we talked about this last time, that people are survivors.

They find the best option that they can for themselves.

And unless we've got something that is better than what they have, they're not going to want to change.

They're really, so what we're talking about today is what can we do What will we do to be able to say, well, there's some better options for you, and here they are.

So I'm really interested as you're going through this to figure out what are the options for us.

And I've got a bookmark on a couple of ideas, but let's keep going.

Thanks, Jeff.

Okay.

Well, the next area that was brought up at our last committee meeting actually stems exactly with what you just raised, Councilmember, related to increasing the vulnerability or exposure to unsafe living conditions for these individuals, and recognizing that where they're at now is often seen as preferable to other options for housing or shelter that they might have available.

Noting that restitution is a process that is going to take some time and wouldn't immediately provide them assistance, might not even be something that they can meet the burden for because there'd be documentation necessary.

My understanding is that it's, exceptionally rare right now for a civil infraction to have a restitution proceeding with it.

So there'd likely need to be a separate proceeding in which documentation and evidence were brought forward.

I did want to highlight for council members looking at the damages and the restitution that can be in relocation assistance and the ordinance that's provided is capped at $2,000.

and compare that to what is in our landlord-tenant laws, mostly established at the state level, which provide for the greater of either three months of rent or triple the actual damages that are incurred, that's just for the restitution, on top of that relocation assistance that's, again, the greater of three months or $2,000, so instead of a maximum of 2,000, a minimum of 2,000.

And then with our emergency order where the city says this is unfit, you must leave, providing $4,734 or two months rent depending on the circumstances of the individual.

So we're talking about very, almost very different scales of restitution that's available to individuals with how the ordinance is, the bill is currently drafted.

You know what would be really helpful for me to see is a chart of that.

What is available for somebody who's in an apartment right now?

What would it be available under?

the current thinking under this legislation and then what are our options and what should we be looking at?

Because I think it really matters if an individual actually has the opportunity to get three months rent.

as you're moving, what's the pot of gold that we can access for that?

If we're going after restitution, are we seriously thinking that the RV ranchers have the kind of resources that we would have to, and then we need something fast.

We can't expect somebody to say, well, I'm gonna move out of here, don't have another option, but we're gonna go to court and get it out of this, it's sort of like the, squeezing the onion.

There's not a lot there.

And again, that's an excellent segue to the next point that was brought up last week about the ability to advance payments, which is permitted under our tenant landlord laws, but would not be an option with the bill as it's currently drafted.

That's not an authority that's provided, despite the provision of funds that were passed in the supplemental budget earlier.

The bill at this point wouldn't allow for that.

So, sorry, absent this bill going forward, can folks do that today?

Not for, you could provide assistance to an individual residing in a vehicle, and that was written rather broadly.

So there wouldn't necessarily, you wouldn't have a situation where the person is being displaced and having to seek any relocation.

We can get assistance just like we provide assistance to a lot of folks.

Yeah, I would say it's not too dissimilar from some of our other homeless services programs.

either prevention, or we call it prevention now, where someone's imminently going to experience homelessness, or diversion, where they already are, often are appearing at one of our shelters, and we provide them flexible financial assistance to move into housing, things like that.

And so the last main area that was discussed last week was clarifying the impacted type of vehicles and who ranchers are.

Specifically related to who ranchers are, the bill as it's currently drafted would still apply to someone that's residing in the vehicle so that they, if I'm allowing a family member or a partner to reside with me, I could potentially be labeled as an RV rancher and therefore subject to the penalties and restitution or possibly lose my vehicle.

I would note that there are two court decisions that could potentially also be at play there.

One is a Superior Court decision and another is a Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that could come into play if that went through.

The Boise opinion in the sense of the Court of Appeals?

The Court of Appeals is Boise, yes.

Do you have a question?

Yes, thank you Madam Chair.

Last time we had this meeting it was the first time I'd heard RV ranchers used and it's not in the legislation as we talked about.

I think what I see in this memo is the term predatory vehicle landlords or predatory landlords I think is referred to in subsequent paragraphs.

So if we're talking about predatory landlords to individuals for dwelling units on wheels, I think we can be really specific and attempt to be very intentional in our language.

I just want to make sure that we're not using language that again gets us into sort of this association with somehow working with folks who, you know, we're talking about working with people, period, individuals, right?

So let's try to be really intentional about the language that we use and just stick with predatory vehicle landlords.

I think that could help us out with the narrative a lot.

And I think it's a fault of the piece of legislation, frankly, that it doesn't have it defined as who we're talking about.

But if I can offer that as a framework for us as we think about who it is that this legislation in theory is targeted towards, If it's those predatory vehicle landlords, let's try to use that term universally if we can.

And that's in lieu of?

In lieu of ranchers.

Okay.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

sure I'll be careful to do that going forward too.

No problem it was not I didn't care to originate from you so I appreciate it I was using it last week too because that was the terminology that had been presented but if we can be thoughtful about what we're trying to talk about here and how we've regulated bad landlords in the past this is clearly a market that's cropped up because of that lack of housing lack of Safe places in enhanced shelters, and so I think for us to to just be really intentional about the language Which is what I was the walk the takeaway that I had from our last meeting that would be helpful Jeff I don't know if you know the answer to this, but I'm curious does this legislation or any of the discussions are there?

Non-predatory RV landlords is there a path to be an RV landlord and not be predatory I

As this legislation would lay it out, if you didn't meet the criteria of having a damaged vehicle that's inoperable, there's four criteria, two of the four, it's not a public health or a fire hazard, something like that, then you could arrive at a situation where Providing this as a dwelling unit for providing a vehicle Again, it's written as vehicles right now.

Not just RVs for Dwelling that's not meeting those criteria.

That would be permissible.

We wouldn't be imposing fines or penalties because I think that's

You know, again, we shouldn't have people living in vehicles.

People should have lots of good choices.

But if, you know, when we have, you know, 1,000 people living in vehicles right now, if there is a path to figuring out how they become compliant, if we want to do that as a policy matter, that's great.

And so I appreciate that clarity.

Good.

Thank you, Jeff.

Go ahead.

Sure, and actually going on that, you guys are really setting me up well tonight.

In addition to clarifying who the RV predatory landlord is, we also, Ray's last time was focusing on what types of vehicles would be impacted.

So clarifying whether this is all vehicles, just RVs, which have been the majority of the conversation.

Also clarifying some of the conditions.

For example, I think Council Member O'Brien raised that Looking at some photos, it's difficult to tell what is considered junk and miscellaneous things in a vehicle that are a hazard versus something that the individual in the vehicle would consider their own possessions that they might want to reclaim.

That's not specified and this kind of ties into an area that did not get into last time as well.

There's not a discussion about the possessions that a person would have.

Currently, FAS will permit a person to be accompanied to Lincoln Towing's lot and reclaim their possessions if they need to.

There's not protections in this bill, though, that would specify that should be done or anything that notes how if the RV predatory landlord is, sorry, I shouldn't be saying RV, the predatory landlord is not allowing them access to their possessions.

There's no discussion of that or any rights or restitution laid out in the bill currently for that situation either.

So you're proposing some amendments, right?

And are you helping us build some?

I mostly wanted to lay out areas that either have been already raised as issues or in the case of possessions, something that I think that council members likely would want to consider possibly as amendments.

And I'm certainly able to draft the language for that.

In some cases, since it's already been raised last week, I'm prepared to do that.

I've already done that separately, but I defer to the council on what you would like me to do.

Allison McClain has a question.

Thank you.

Jeff, I was wondering if the ordinance talks about what the enforcement agency would be like.

Who would be in control of doing this and what sort of training would they receive for supporting vulnerable populations, if at all?

It's not actually, neither of those are specified currently.

There is, the RV remediation team is a collaborative effort between multiple departments, SPD, parking enforcement, SPU, FAS, that currently does seven RV cleanups per month right now.

There are also parking enforcement officers going throughout the city.

So there's a variety of avenues that you could have people that are actually implementing this.

And there was nothing laid out about the type of training that they would need to receive.

Though I know that in the case of the RV remediation team, I've gone with them and seen that there is certainly approach of trying to connect with the system navigators that work with the navigation team with other outreach providers currently and also providing outreach and human services resources as they engage with individuals.

Did you have a follow-up?

My follow-up was just if they were going to have caseworkers or mental health professionals with them when they were going out, or if they currently do.

Currently, they are defining them as a mental health professional.

I'm not sure how to answer that, but there is nothing in this bill that would require that kind of training or that kind of connection.

I think I'm hearing that we would like to look at an amendment to add that.

If I could just add, you know, well, I guess a question, Jeff, I think you answered this early on, but the tenant landlord law does not apply here.

I mean, because these are not, for whatever reason, they do not fall under the definition of that.

And yet there's a lot of similarities, and I know that our tenant-landlord laws are enforced.

You know, there's a role for the police or the sheriff at the very end of the process, but largely enforced by folks that have expertise around that.

And I think that defining that if we're going to be going in and working with folks, I think we should be pretty specific on the types of qualities we want to have people have that are doing that work, because it's complicated.

Do you have a question?

Go ahead, please.

Thank you very much.

That sort of dovetails with a question that I was going to ask, prompted by your earlier question.

I'm still not convinced that we need this legislation.

Is there not some sort of protection that we currently have for consumer protections, consumer rights?

If these individuals are purchasing a product, if they're purchasing an RV and they've entered into an engagement with the individual who's supposed to be renting them a product, is there not some sort of Consumer protection law that we can also look at to say you've clearly rented out what you knew to be a faulty product there was a leaking roof leaking windows a broken windshield and a car that doesn't run and you've withheld the keys there seems like there ought to be some other protections for these individuals on that end and I'd love to hear if you have looked into that analysis.

I definitely have.

That's a very important question and focus.

So the short answer is no, there's not.

Let's focus first on these as vehicles, which as I said, the regulations around vehicles doesn't envision a situation in which a person is dwelling in the vehicle.

So that's not outlined as a penalty or a situation.

Instead, what you have is a faulty piece of equipment with your vehicle and you can pay a fine And they have to get it repaired, things like that.

So that wouldn't provide the assistance for these individuals here.

And if you wanted to focus more to your question about seeing this as a rental situation, The land use code defines a recreational vehicle as it actually says not a dwelling unit.

And then separately in the building code, mobile homes are defined as usable for temporary living quarters, for recreation, camping, or travel use.

So again, excluding this situation.

And for single family homes, having a permanent foundation.

So with those definitions, the only avenue that we could treat these as being dwelling units or a residence.

For example, if I had an RV that was parked in my driveway, and it was in deplorable condition and shouldn't be fit for human habitation, but I was renting it out, because it's on my property, SDCI could come and I could pay fines and have penalties associated with doing that.

But in this case, and that's because it's defined as on my premises, my property.

SDCI does not define premises as being in the public right of way, and therefore that definition of premises and the ability to impose those fines and penalties or those protections for these individuals is therefore not being extended to them.

And that's primarily a concern about the scope of what they are able to enforce and their capacity to be looking at the public right away as well.

Do you want to pursue your comment?

You said you're not sure that this legislation is needed because I believe we're looking at this from a public health standpoint for the individuals that are there, what can we do to protect?

And then also from a dwelling space, what can we do to promote more dwelling units that are going to be healthy?

So do you want just to answer that?

So, yeah, thank you for that, because I was going to actually clarify as well.

What I do think is needed is places for folks to live that's healthy.

What I do think is needed is enhanced shelters and lockers and case management and a safe place to be with your family so that people aren't getting separated.

What I do recognize is that this industry has cropped up so that people can keep their belongings and keep their family together and not have to go through the trauma of lining up.

in the morning and being kicked out, I'm sorry, getting kicked out in the morning and lining up in the evening.

And so I see these vehicles as the last resort.

For many people, they've kept their belongings there.

And I also recognize that a lot of times individuals are using this as the last resort because our shelters are at capacity and we haven't built the housing.

So I absolutely agree with the need for us to get folks into safer, living places and to get them potentially support.

Permanent supportive housing would be ideal for anybody who needs case management.

As I think Council Member O'Brien mentioned, if this was somebody's home and we saw some of the conditions that we'd see, we'd call someone to assist with case management because it might be considered hoarding versus a public safety hazard.

This is a public safety hazard to have folks living outside.

The reason that I don't know if this bill is the right vehicle for addressing the concern out there is I'm still not sure how this helps those individuals who are living in that situation not be in a worse situation outside in the street or potentially spiral back into the street if they do end up in some of our current shelters.

So the question that I also have is how are we targeting the intervention?

If we know, according to this memo, that there's four of these slumlords on wheels, what are we doing to hold those individuals accountable?

That's one question.

Number two, it seems like there's a little bit of a revolving door.

If Lincoln Towing, for example, is the one who's towing these vehicles off of the public right-of-way and then also then auctioning those same vehicles back out, what are we doing to end that revolving door of those vehicles going out?

This legislation doesn't speak to that.

And I guess the last thing I would ask around the kind of consumer protection angle is we obviously have limit laws that help with individuals who buy a faulty car.

Is there not some sort of lease law if we consider this a lease of a vehicle to make sure that those vehicles ought to be operable and in good condition?

That doesn't speak to some of the public health issues and the images that we saw last week, but I think it speaks to individuals being rented or leased a product that is not up to par.

So is that an angle that we've looked at as well?

I did look at treating it as a rental vehicle.

So if I were to rent a car for a stay, those codes apply to a situation where a vehicle is being rented for less than 30 days.

So in this situation, I'm not sure how they would apply.

I have not looked into that, honestly.

So I can look into that and also see if they're related to Lemon Laws and things like that, how that would apply with a vehicle here.

I don't have an answer in that regard.

I think that you are correct in focusing on the impact that this ordinance or this bill would have compared to current practice that is now in place administratively, but had not prior to, let's say, June.

Now, as these vehicles are being towed, instead of continuing to put them into circulation, FAS and SPD are completing junk vehicle affidavits.

They are actually using very, very similar criteria to what's in this bill.

to determine that a vehicle that is in Lincoln Towing's lot is a junk vehicle and should not be re-released.

There is an associated cost to the city for that of $2,000 to dispose of that vehicle, but they are doing that more now to prevent these vehicles from going back into circulation.

One of the earlier numbers we were given was that about half of the vehicles that had been towed were reemerging after going through auction, and so that would discontinue.

Has there been discussion either as part of this during the research or with the police department about somehow putting markings on the vehicle to say, not fit for human habitation may not be used for, so if somebody wanted to buy it for $25 and tow it to their farm and use it for, you know, a place that you're going to put tools, that's something very different than renting it back out and giving it to an individual.

Has there been further discussion or review on that?

As requirements and the law currently stands, none of these would be considered fit for long-term human habitation because we defined an RV as not being that.

In terms of the specific vehicles as they go through.

Just marking them, licensing them, you know, put the yellow police tag permanently on it.

I'm not aware of any of those of those steps being taken in many cases there as Individuals that were buying a large number of these vehicles at auction as FAS or Lincoln became aware of them I understand that there are times that a person was not permitted to return to the auctions But that they often would just locate a proxy that would come in their place.

So they're finding ways to work around this Okay, let's talk more about that Councilmember Ryan

I guess for me there's some objectives here that I would love to see as just as guidance as we think through ways to amend this ordinance or if there's another path to this too.

One is of course I think the best way to, you know, to the extent that there are bad actors out there in this business, the best way to drive them out of business is to just provide a better product.

And that's going to be permanent housing or good shelters that are more affordable, like free.

And when we do that, there will no longer be a market for this.

And so that should be the big focus.

To the extent that we're not capable of doing that immediately, and we know that we're working on that, but it's a challenge.

I appreciate a path to saying, hey, if there's going to be folks out there renting RVs, you know, this is what acceptable rentership looks like and these are the RV landlords that are appropriately operating a business.

There's probably other things about they probably need a business license and they don't have that.

And so, you know, if we want to, you know, normalize that, you know, that's going to be up to the executive a bit, but I think there should be a path to saying that's okay.

And then clarity around what's not okay.

To the extent that there are, you know, RV landlords, sorry, what's the adjective we're using?

It's predatory.

So there are predatory RV landlords out there who are looking to exploit people and profit off them.

We probably just need to drive them out of business.

To the extent that there are people that, you know, and I, who characterizes what, that are out of compliance but are generally trying to provide a product that, right, you know, let's help them get into compliance at the moment until we make their business model obsolete because everyone has housing options in Seattle, and I think that's a trajectory.

I have a question about the ordinance, and I don't have it in front of me, but there are the four criteria, two of which would trigger

Thank you all.

Two of the criteria would trigger condemnation of the vehicle or whatever the appropriate word is.

One of those was about sanitary conditions and is that specifically about having a functioning bathroom or not?

That's if you're looking at it's a subsection C, maybe subparagraph, I'm not sure which, and then you're looking, where it's inadequate sanitation, and then you look down, there's down to number four, where it's the leaking fluids, or sorry, that's automotive fluids.

There is a...

Oh, sorry, it's number three, the discharge of sewage.

So we are talking about RVs.

My understanding is the vast majority of these don't have functioning sewage systems, nor do they have a place that they can dump their sewage, even if it were functioning.

And so this is being dumped onto the street and cleaned up by SPU with their trucks that come and suction it out.

And often it's also then flowing into our sewage systems, which especially like down in Soto, we're talking about a sewage system that flows straight into the sound.

So are you asking whether or not it's a requirement that an RV have some sort of a functioning or any kind of a sewer system attached to it at all?

Yeah.

Specifically, we're not actually talking about RVs.

We're talking about vehicles.

And, you know, Chevy or a Toyota Corolla doesn't have a toilet in it.

Does that automatically make it fail on number three?

Or is it only if you have a toilet in it, it needs to be operable?

I actually have not delved into that question.

The problem has been primarily presented as an issue with RVs, not with vehicles.

And so if the council wants to narrow that scope to vehicles, I didn't focus in on how this would apply in other vehicles, but I can definitely get back to you on that.

Okay.

But the legislation as it's drafted is not exclusive to RVs, right?

It's for all vehicles.

Correct.

It's every vehicle, yes.

Yeah.

And so I think I just want to, I would love to get clarity about what the intent is there, to make a policy decision to make sure we have clarity on that.

I think that, I mean, the issue of people have to go to the bathroom.

And, you know, if, I will hope the intent is not to say that it's illegal to camp in your, you know, your car because it doesn't have a toilet in it.

And then what do you do with RVs?

If they decommission the toilet, does that make it okay or not?

And I'm not sure, like, does decommissioning the toilet help us or not?

Clearly, when someone's dumping raw sewage onto the street or into a drain that may drain to a body of water as opposed to the sewer system, that's a problem.

But I think one, but if we eliminate all that, these people still have to go to the bathroom somewhere, and they're probably using the bathroom that's probably inoperable in the RV because that's the best option they have in the middle of the night before they're parked.

And if we take that away, they're still going to the bathroom somewhere.

I don't know where it's going.

But, you know, a solution, I think, might be to figure out if this is a reality we're going to live with for a while, how we provide pump-out operations for folks.

And so another place we might want to invest in is just make it clear, like, look, you can't pump out on the street, but we will come by once a month and figure out how to clean these out.

Or maybe the landlords can sign up for this, and that's part of their lease agreement with folks or whatever that looks like.

So again, focusing on how do we solve this problem?

And the problem is human waste, and we all create human waste.

Most of us have access to an appropriate place to dispose of it.

Some don't.

And instead of saying it's inappropriate to dump it on the street, make sure we're giving them options that it is appropriate, and it is safe, and it is addressing human health needs.

And that comes back to what we talked about last time, too.

If we don't want people in these RVs or in vehicles on the street, we have to provide space for them to be.

And one of the thoughts that I think I sent to both of you is I'm interested in whether there are some buildings that we can access, that we could lease, that we could turn into 24-7 shelter and obviously this is expensive and I really have a lot of faith and thanks to the executive because I know they've been working on this but just like this over the weekend I was at Sam's Club that thing has been empty now for years and why could we not rent a facility like that and at least have 50 places for people to be again increasing the 24-7 shelter.

I'm very reluctant as much as I hate having these RVs out there that are terrible in condition and not habitable if we don't have places to put people.

We're just, you know, we're stirring the pot, putting people back on the street, back in the tents, back on, you know, with the cardboard boxes.

We haven't solved the problem.

So I'm hopeful that whatever we come up with with this legislation, ultimately we're going to be able to find places for people to be.

I mean, you put, I mean, you, we put $100,000 into our supplemental budget on Monday, saying we want to increase this, make it available for individuals.

So between now and time budget starts, I really hope that we can dive into this and find a few more solutions.

Yeah, and another area really unrelated to this bill, because this is exclusively focused on folks that are leasing RVs to someone else, but for folks that do own their own RV, We know from the experts out there on the street that are working with these individuals, transitioning out of an RV into housing is often a real challenge because that vehicle is their safety net.

That is the thing that is stable.

And what we hear is like, hey, if you want to transition someone into more stable housing, Make it an actual transition and create a place where, hey, we're going to move you inside, but your RV is still there.

We've got a parking space on site.

Maybe it's a 24-hour shelter that we think would be better, but you still have your RV there.

And actually have a transition period where folks get to see what a different living option would be without having to say, I have to give up the one thing I've known for the last three years and then doing that.

Again, that's not really what this bill is because it's probably not the case for someone that's renting an RV.

Rather, it's probably someone that owns an RV.

But I do think in the broader context of finding, you know, this is different than having safe lots where people are going to live in RVs.

if people are transitioning into shelter or other types of housing, providing some parking for RVs so that they can try out another way without giving up their current way.

And I suspect that they'll find that like, okay, you know what?

Not so bad.

Yeah, I can do without my RV now and then we can move someone out.

So I want to bring this to a close.

So if you have any major questions, please let me know.

But one thing that came up and I didn't hear, and answer to, and that is if somebody is renting from one of our less favorite people right now, but they're allowing a partner to come in with them, I really wouldn't want to see that the individual renter is now suddenly falling under the penalties because they bring in a partner and say, we're going to charge the individual renter who probably has no money to start with a penalty because they invite somebody else to join them.

So I'd like to explore that a little bit further.

So if you've anything else, we're going to have more conversations about this.

It's not, this is not the last conversation we're going to have, but it is the last conversation before our break.

So thank you for scribing all of this.

I appreciate it.

I want to say thanks to our folks from the mayor's office.

I know they've done a lot of work on that as well.

We just are going to work on this jointly until we get something right.

Thank you very much and thanks for coming.

So the next item that we have on our agenda is the city employees retirement system.

And I see that Jeff Davis and Jason Malinowski are here.

Thank you for joining us.

And if you'll come on up to the table.

And if we have an item to be read in.

Sure.

Item number two, Seattle City Employee Retirement System Briefing.

Jason.

Great.

Thank you very much.

So as everybody gets settled in, I don't know that you've been to the table since I've been chair for finance committee, but welcome.

And if you'll just state your names for the record and we'll start moving forward.

Oh yeah, Glenly, come on up.

I know maybe you don't want to, but please join us.

My name is Jeff Davis.

I'm the director of the Seattle City Employees Retirement System.

Great.

Thank you.

Jason Malinowski.

I'm the chief investment officer for the retirement system.

Thank you, Jason.

These things move, and I just bring it a little closer to you so you don't have to lean in.

Great.

Tom?

I'm Tom Mikesell with your council central staff.

Great.

Thank you.

I'm Len Lee, city finance director, and I'm on the board.

Very good.

Thank you so much.

Well, welcome.

And I had asked to have you all join us, give us a little update on our retirement system.

And this really arose because of the potential legislation that Senator Reuven Carlisle had brought forward last year that would offer us an opportunity to join the state's retirement system.

And I had asked for an independent analysis.

You guys were great about helping get our other board that advises us on various investments to provide us an independent analysis.

And the conclusion at the end of that was not so interested.

So I didn't want to focus on that today.

I wanted you just to talk about the health of the retirement system, but we can circle back.

Sure.

We'll cover that and a number of other issues.

So, thank you for having us here today.

You bet.

So, I've got a presentation we'll go through.

Please feel free to ask questions at any point.

Some things that we're going to cover today, we'll give a little background about the retirement system.

We'll address CSRS's financial condition, including our assets, our funding ratio, and then actions that we've taken to improve the finances over the past several years.

We'll also talk about some specific investment management issues, investment performance, the issue you raised about outsourcing the investment management, and then talking about environmental, social, and governance issues.

Very good.

Thank you.

And I'm sorry that Councilmember O'Brien had left because that's one of the issues that he has raised for the last 10 years.

So we'll fill him in.

Great.

So a little bit of background about CSRS.

It was established back in the 1920s.

And it provides retirement benefits to all city employees other than those that are uniform police and fire employees that are covered by the state plan.

We provide our retirees with a defined benefit plan.

That means upon retirement they are guaranteed a lifetime benefit that is based upon their age at time of retirement, their years of service in the system, and their highest average salary.

SERS is governed by a board of administration.

It has seven members.

Three members serve by nature of their role with the city.

So we are chaired by Council Member Bagshaw as the chair of this committee.

Glenn Lee, the city's finance director, is on the board, as is Bobby Humes, the city's HR manager.

We have three board members who are elected by our membership, two are active city employees, and one is a retiree.

And then collectively, the six of them select and appoint our seventh board member.

Just some stats about our membership.

At the end of 2018, we had around 9,400 active members, around 2,600 deferred members.

That means they're no longer employed by the city.

They haven't yet retired, but they still have money in the system.

And then around 6,800 retirees and beneficiaries.

So 9,400 current members?

Yes.

And then how many are we paying out?

Those are the 6,800 retirees and beneficiaries.

So our board serves a very important function for the system.

They have a fiduciary duty, and what that means is they take a number of actions, they make a number of decisions, and when they do so, they must do so in the best interest of our members, in the best interest of our fund.

Now, we make a lot of decisions around investments.

And none of our board members are expected to be experts in investments.

But when they do make decisions, they can rely on other sources as resources to inform their decisions.

The first of those is our staff.

We have a group of four investment professionals on staff, led by Jason, our chief investment officer.

And all four members are very experienced investment professionals.

They each play a leadership role on different asset classes and overseeing them in our portfolio, whether it be fixed income or public equity, things like that.

We are advised by an investment advisory committee, which you referred to earlier.

This is a group of five investment professionals in the local area.

They are not affiliated with CSRS or the city, but they volunteer their time to give advice on investment issues to the board and to staff.

Third, we contract with an investment advisory firm called NEPC.

They are one of the largest investment advisory firms in the country.

They have over 350 clients that they work with.

and over a trillion dollars of assets under advisement.

And finally, we, our staff don't make investments directly.

Instead, we contract with different investment managers.

So, we contract with over 20 investment managers who each specialize in a specific area of our investment portfolio.

And then our staff and NAPC work to evaluate the performance of those managers to make sure that they're meeting our expectations and their performance is consistent with benchmarks we establish for them.

Great.

Jeff, I think we talked about this, and I'm round numbering here, but the budget for CSRS is roughly $20 million annually, of which about $10 million that we expend on outside advisors.

Do you know how that compares with other systems?

Jason can maybe speak to this.

I think our, the amount that we pay in terms of fees to our investment advisors is roughly in line with other pension systems.

But Jason, you want to?

Yeah, the way to think about that number is a percentage of the total assets of the fund.

So we pay around 0.5% in fees.

And that is slightly lower than the median pension fund.

Great.

Thank you for that.

So, moving on to the pension system's financial condition, and a conversation around here starts with a look at our assets.

So, at the end of 2018, we had around $2.7 billion of assets in our investment portfolio.

Around half of that were invested in equities, so stocks in U.S. firms or international firms.

Around 18% were in fixed income, so think corporate bonds or treasury notes.

And we have smaller allocations to things like real estate and private equity and credit fixed income.

The goal here is to have as diversified a portfolio as we can, so diversified across different asset classes and different geographies to minimize our risk.

Next page we get into funding ratio.

If you're looking at how pension systems are judged, what metric is looked at to gauge the health of a pension system.

The funding ratio is the thing that is most often cited.

So this is simply the assets divided by the liabilities of the system.

So assets we just spoke to, that's the 2.7 billion we have in our investment portfolio.

The liability side is the amount that we expect to pay current retirees and current employees upon their retirement.

So the sum of that is our liability that we look at.

A funding ratio of 80% is considered to be relatively healthy for our pension system.

If you look at the chart on the bottom left here, at the end of 2017, we were at 69.9%.

If you look earlier in that graph, you can see there were times we were over 100%.

But a dot-com crash and a global recession had something to say about that.

Over the last couple years, we've been making steady progress in climbing in our funding ratio.

After a little bit of a dip in the markets last year, specifically last December, we ended 2018 at 68.2%.

So how does that 68.2% compare with other, whether it's the state or Tacoma or Spokane, just in terms of the funding ratio?

Sure.

I can give you a sense.

The chart on the right of this page looks at other pension systems across the country.

and gives a distribution of what kind of funding ratio they are reporting.

So, our roughly 70% funding ratio falls pretty solidly in the middle of the pack of different pension systems across the country.

So, this is a little hard for people to read, I think.

Where would we fall?

So, at the end of...

Just slightly to the left of the tall blue in the center.

Yeah.

So, the range of 60 to 70%, which would be the 20% of the pension systems.

And that compares to what?

I think Tacoma came in at something like 90%.

Tacoma has a higher ratio.

Spokane has a lower ratio.

And the state is?

Between us and Tacoma.

They're over 80?

It depends a little bit upon the system.

at the state as well, because they manage multiple systems and the funding ratio differs between them.

So do you want to just describe this?

I've had questions come from retirees that say, well, if our total funding ratio is lower than Tacoma's, for example, are we in trouble?

Are we going to make sure that we have our payments monthly?

Yeah, I would say, you know, we're not concerned about being in trouble.

I mean, we have $2.7 billion in investments.

We have access to liquidity so we can make pension payments.

That's not a concern.

The lower funding ratio just means that you're more susceptible to, if there is another big downturn, that has a bigger impact on your portfolio.

And as we've talked all along, and Glenn, this is where you may want to jump in, is that the general fund backs this up so that retirees are assured of getting the monies that they have earned.

Yeah, so when, we'll get into this a little bit later, but when the city is required to make a higher contribution, that is spread across all department budgets that pay into the system.

So city-wide employees, those dollars come from city-wide funds.

General fund departments come from general fund dollars.

Great.

You were reaching for your microphone, Glenn.

In general.

The pension payments that employees have earned is a commitment of the city and the courts across the country have indicated it's almost as important as paying our debt on our bonds.

And so, from my perspective, even if this number is substantially lower, there is no risk to retirees to receive their pension.

And there are some systems in the country that are in trouble.

They're in trouble because it's costing them so much to meet those obligations, but no one's pulling back on the obligations with the exception of maybe Detroit and maybe Puerto Rico.

I'm not sure where they are right now.

But in general, certainly in the West Coast and certainly in the Seattle region or the Northwest, there is absolutely no risk.

And this is a measure really of figuring out where you all, the mayor and the council, how much you want to contribute to the system to make it even stronger.

Through the last several years, you've committed to bringing up this ratio to 100% over a specific time frame.

Through to 1940, right?

I mean, 2040.

2043, I believe.

2043?

2042. 42. We're going to get the number.

But we'll get into all that.

Right.

We should just let Jeff give his presentation.

Absolutely.

And I apologize.

But I wanted to.

You guys can talk all you want.

Be real clear about the risk.

All right.

Very good.

Thanks, Jeff.

So we'll get into some of those issues.

Over the last 10 years, the retirement system and the city have made a number of measures and taken a number of steps to improve our financial condition and our long-term sustainability of the pension system.

On the investment side, a couple of things I mentioned before.

Before 2008, there were no investment professionals on staff at the retirement system.

There was no investment advisor under contract.

So that changed in 28 when we hired our first investment professional.

But those changes and building out the capacity really started accelerating in 2014.

And that's when we hired Jason.

Well, everything goes back to Jason.

Yeah, that's right.

Everything got a lot better in 2014.

But no, we built out our team of four highly qualified investment professionals.

We contracted with NEPC, and we made a concerted effort to really recruit individuals onto our investment advisory committee that we thought would be value-add, that would provide good advice to the board and staff as we looked at different investment issues.

To the point that we were just discussing, the city has demonstrated a strong commitment to funding its obligation, it's making all the actuarially required contributions into the pension system.

And I'll talk a little bit more about that.

Every year, our actuary does an assessment of the pension system.

They look at our assets, they look at our liabilities, and they do what's called a valuation report.

And in that report, they say what level of contributions are needed to get to a 100% funding of the pension system by the year 2042. Because the contribution rates for employees are set through labor agreement, any change in that overall contribution is done by the city.

So to put it in perspective, before the big recession, The city's contribution level was around 8%.

Next year, it's going to 16%.

So there's been a pretty dramatic increase of the city's contribution over time.

But to Glenn's point, the city has demonstrated that commitment to fund its pension system obligations, even when it's been very difficult.

So that's one piece.

The other things that we've done to address the long-term sustainability of the pension fund, the first was closing the amortization period.

So I mentioned that we're, the goal is 100% by 2042. It used to be that every time we did a valuation report, we'd establish a new 30-year window for amortizing that liability.

And when it came time to do a new valuation, we'd move that 30-year window out another year.

In 2013, we closed the amortization period.

So, 2042 is the hard date.

So, when we do another year's valuation report, that means we have one less year to fully fund that liability.

And that puts more pressure on the contribution side to make sure When we do that report, we're staying on that path to 100%.

And that's a contribution from the city, not a contribution from the employees.

Yes, because those are established.

Right.

And I just want to point out to my colleague that what we had endorsed last year was a 15.46% rate, and that's applied against salaries.

It's going to actually go up, as Jeff said, to 16.14% for the proposed.

budget, and that's good, very good for the employees and for the retirees.

Just for those of us that are balancing a budget and scraping the barrel trying to find more money for housing and trying to deal with some of the homelessness issues, that just means that there's less money in the general fund for us to scrape.

Second thing we did as a city to address long-term sustainability is create a second tier for the pension system.

So what we call service two is in effect for new employees into the system after the start of 2017. So just like CSRS 1, it's a defined benefit plan.

Just like CSRS 1, when it comes time to retire, you have the same set of options that you can choose for your retirement.

But it's different mainly in the fact that the employee pays less into that system and the employer, the city, pays less into it.

And thus has a decreasing effect on that long-term liability that we have.

The last piece is reducing the expected rate of return on our investments.

Nine years ago, the assumed rate of return, this is the amount of investment return that we viewed the portfolio was going to average over a 30-year period.

That was seven and three quarters percent.

And five years ago, we dropped that down to seven and a half percent.

Last year, we dropped that number down to seven and a quarter.

And the goal here is to be as realistic about what we think those investment returns are going to be as possible.

So seven and a quarter represents our best view of what that lower return environment we're going into will result in.

And we're not alone in that.

Other pension systems across the country are all pulling down their assumed rate of return.

Right.

And I think Milliman had suggested we think about 7.0 percent, but that 7.25 was smack in the middle of the range of other pension systems.

Can you tell me over the last, remind me over the last 10 years, what has been our average annual rate of return?

I can.

But you might be able to.

It has been 9.3% as of the end of March.

So the dollar, I mean, the percentage amount that we've identified is actually lower than what we've received, but the last 10 years have been pretty good for the most part.

Yeah, certain years of last 10 years have been pretty good.

But again, this is a forward-looking view.

Like, we expect the next five to seven years' performance to actually be below our assumed rate of return.

But the expectation is that over that entire 30-year period, we will achieve the seven and a quarter rate.

Right.

Thank you.

And I think that's the vagaries of the market that we all recognize, is that the Edmund flow, and they've been flowing pretty well for the last few years, minus December of last year.

Or today.

Or today.

Did bad things happen today?

I don't want to talk about it.

So next, moving on to investment management issues.

And when we talk about the investment portfolio, the first topic on everybody's mind is what has been the performance of the portfolio.

So we get into that here.

And just to orient you on this chart, It's broken into three sections.

The first three bars represent the last 10 years experience, second three are the last five years, and the third are the last three years.

The blue bars here represent CSRS's actual investment performance over those periods.

The green bars represent our policy index.

So on that, it's looking at each different asset class and what is the benchmark for each one of those asset classes.

Collectively, that establishes what the policy index is.

And that's really the yardstick we measure our performance against.

The yellow bars that we presented here represent our peer universe.

So, looking at other pension systems across the country with over a billion dollars in assets, this is the median rate that those pension systems had realized.

So, just walking through this, at the 10-year period, you'll see that CSRS's performance lagged behind both the policy index and our peers.

The story changes when we look at the last five years where we're right in line with the policy index.

We're a little bit above our peers.

And a similar story in the last three years where we're a little bit behind the policy index but a little bit above our peers.

So that actual performance changes pretty dramatically in the last five or so years.

I will say that if you took the same view two years ago or three years ago, that gap in that 10-year figure between our performance and our policy index or our peers would have been much bigger.

Like the service performance lagged behind our peers and our policy index by a significant amount in that period, which leads us to our next topic that you mentioned before.

That's the issue of outsourcing investment management.

Over the past several legislative sessions in Olympia, there have been bills introduced that would allow the state's municipal pension system, so that's Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, to outsource the management of their investment to the Washington State Investment Board.

These bills have been billed as allowing the municipal pensions to leverage the economies of scale and the size of the Washington State Investment Board to result in lower administrative costs or have access to investments that they wouldn't otherwise have access to.

The last bill, Senate Bill 5240, was introduced last legislative session, and that bill didn't make it out of committee.

But in looking at it, the Seattle or the service board and the city thought that it was worth looking at as a matter of due diligence to see if, in fact, outsourcing investments is something that is in the best interest of the city.

So to do that evaluation, we reached out to our investment advisory board, our investment advisory committee.

And remember, this is the group of five investment professionals who volunteer their time to advise the CSRS board and staff.

And we asked them to look at this Senate bill and look at analysis that had been done around it and report back to us to see if they thought that outsourcing was in the city's best interest.

So they did that work and came back to us earlier this year and they, said no, they did not believe that outsourcing was in the city's best interest.

They said that sending the investments to the state to manage only removed responsibility for that part of the equation, that the city would still bear the responsibility for the risk of managing the liabilities.

And I'll read from their report They said the city would incur significant additional financial risk by separating in perpetuity management of investments from pension obligations.

They went on to say that CSRS has more than adequate scale to manage its portfolio effectively.

So again, they reported that in a presentation to the CSRS board earlier this year.

And I'd just like to take the opportunity to thank the members of the Investment Advisory Committee for the service that they provided the city.

Great.

Thank you.

And I will admit that I pushed to have that review and I appreciate the fact that both of you were willing to let that move forward because we do have in the record from these five independent advisors, their recommendation that it's not in the city's best interest to proceed and join forces with the Washington State Investment Board.

So I thank you for doing that.

And at least for this period of time, we're thinking what's better to stick with the program that you have all created.

And I'm thankful that you were willing to take a look at that.

Yeah, and thank you for pushing that.

The last topic is that of environmental, social, and governance issues.

And this appeared on our radar back in 2013 in the form of people petitioning the service board to divest from fossil fuels.

And at that point, we didn't have a environmental, social, and governance policy.

We didn't have a procedure for evaluating proposals like that.

But we developed them very quickly.

And over the next couple years, we received a number of different proposals to divest from fossil fuels.

And we did thorough analysis on each one of them, both from the investment side and from the legal side.

And the conclusion was always the same, that the pension system could not divest from fossil fuels and still meet our fiduciary duties.

So, that was the conclusion.

But I will say that these proposals really pushed us to evolve in how we thought about ESG issues.

So, we established an ESG policy back in 2013. In 2015, we created something called a positive action strategy.

a group of actions that we could take to address climate change while still meeting our fiduciary responsibilities.

So, the positive action strategy has three main pillars.

The first is shareholder advocacy.

Because we own stock, we have a voice, say, in the governance of corporations.

We have a very, very small voice because we don't have a big share in any one corporation.

But when we combine our voice with those of other pension systems, some are much bigger than us, or foundations, or endowments.

Collectively, we can move corporate boards.

And we've been doing that.

And we've been emphasizing things like pushing corporations to do risk assessments of how their business is at risk from different climate change scenarios.

to disclose those risks and disclose the measures they've been taking to mitigate those risks.

And we've been pushing regulators to emphasize that corporations should disclose those risks.

So that's the...

I want to talk specifically, I know that you've mentioned it to our board on a couple of occasions, but where we actually were able to move the needle.

Yeah, Jason, you want to hit that?

Yeah.

So there's been a number of opportunities over the last several years for us to do this.

We engage with a small number of companies.

One of them is Exxon, that I feel is actually one of the worst responders to sort of the climate crisis.

So we've done things around requiring them to do a climate risk assessment that they publish to publicly talking about how they're going to think about climate change when deciding which new projects to invest in.

We've also made sure that they open up discussions between shareholders and their board members.

It's been very difficult to move that company.

I still think we're several years away from having a real watershed event, but I think we're laying the groundwork now for doing so.

Another example of one where shareholders have had a lot of interaction many years ago is Shell.

Shell has done a lot of things recently, be it in the Arctic, they're now stopping doing that.

They're also around incentivizing their executives so that if they reduce their amount of greenhouse gas emissions, their executives actually benefit financially from that.

So our hope is to sort of move more towards that level and provide a greater say for shareholders and the management of these companies.

So I know that we talked a couple of times about this, too, that some of the private institutions, Stanford, Harvard, Bowdoin, as an example, have been able to divest or at least have a policy that moves them faster towards divesting.

Would you just explain again why they can do it and we can't?

And it has to do with the fiduciary responsibility.

It does.

So depending upon the mission of the organization, it has a big role to play around the fiduciary duties that the board members have.

And several years ago, we asked our outside counsel to do an analysis, outside legal counsel to do an analysis for the board, which is the board subsequently released publicly, that sort of talks about a lot of the issues related to state law and the problems that, or the inability for the SERS board to act in a way that is against the financial interests of the members of the system.

So because the SERS board is a trust, it abides by a different set of requirements than a university foundation, a private foundation, that are able to be more mission-driven in their organization.

Good.

Well, thank you for that.

And I know when I first became chair, I asked you that question repeatedly.

I think you finally handed me the legal opinion.

I went, all right, I get it.

So thank you for that.

And another point that came up on ESG, and again, that's environmental, social, and governance policy.

And I think I brought this up to you, Jeff, after we had the the national conference in Austin this year, I learned from the New York program that they're investing in some things that where they would make sure that workers are protected or that individual investments have not just worker protections, but some of the public things that we're looking at that we believe are promoting project labor agreements and others.

And I know New York City had been, they were one of the speakers, they were proud of their results and said that their returns had been great.

Can you talk about that and how it's something that we can take a look at too?

Yeah, sure, so this is related to responsible contractor policy, I believe is what you're alluding to, and it typically relates to real estate investments when you're constructing a real estate building, ensuring that you hire responsible contractors.

I think one unique difference for the New York City retirement systems that are approximately $200 billion in assets is that they're actually fully funding and fully constructing buildings themselves.

Whereas ourselves, we invest through funds, through the managers that Jeff alluded to, so we really are doing due diligence on the investment managers.

and the investment managers are running funds of many investors, ourselves being one of them, to make these decisions, so our ability to drive things ourselves is somewhat more limited.

But most of our real estate managers do have responsible contractor policies in place, and particularly those firms that do a lot of development.

So that was one area that we talked to our managers about, because it relates to the social element included in ES&G.

Great.

What you just said was something that I didn't realize.

If New York has $200 billion, we've got $2.7 billion in our account.

But I did not realize that they were funding their own some of their own development, that is darned impressive.

And I think we had looked at that through South Dakota, maybe, that they had created their own bank, their own pension system, that was funded, being able to fund some of their public development, and they were able to just essentially borrow from themselves.

So thank you.

Thank you for explaining that.

All right, you just have a little bit left.

I do.

We're in the homestretch.

Yes, we are.

So hold on.

I am.

So the second pillar of our positive action strategy is that of sustainable investments.

And so here we proactively evaluate investments that are expected to have a positive impact on climate change or address climate change.

Where this comes up most for us is in the area of infrastructure.

So we have infrastructure as one of our asset classes.

Again, we don't make investments directly.

We invest through investment managers, and they have a wide variety of projects that they are investing in.

But one of the more prominent areas of infrastructure investments and a growing area is that of renewable energy.

So, in investing through these infrastructure managers, we have a stake in that green future.

And I should note here that when we make these sustainable investments, it's not because we want to do good or that we have the environment first and foremost in our mind.

It is because we believe these investments are the best economic result for us, that they are equal or better than other options in the market.

So at what point can we begin shifting towards things like biofuels?

I know right now the rate of return isn't as much as Exxon or Shell, but at what point can we say we believe that for the greater good that the return is equal to the kind of investments that we could get by staying with fossil fuels?

You want to speak to that?

Yeah, I think it's, so about half of the new funding that's going to infrastructure right now in the United States is going towards renewables.

And that's largely due to the dramatic declines that we're seeing in solar panels, wind turbines, things like that.

So it's really as those types of power sources become more cost advantage is there's more money that can be moved towards those sources.

I see that that just continuing down the future.

One of the big catalysts that people are waiting for is a battery storage.

One of the real problems right now is you can only generate electricity when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.

You have no way of storing that for future use.

I think once that occurs, it's going to speed up the transition to more of a clean economy.

There's also been a movement from coal-based power generation to more natural gas power generation, which I think is, you know, marginally beneficial from a carbon intensity perspective.

But I think it's really just a trajectory, and we're going to continue to see this going forward.

I don't really see a point in time on the horizon where it's going to be 100% renewable, but we're moving towards that direction.

So we passed legislation on Monday, the Green Seattle Plan, and a lot of that was very aspirational.

The idea that we would be completely off fossil fuels in 2030 strikes me as being a wonderful goal.

I hope we are.

I think there's going to be some transition between now and then.

But to the extent that as our CSRS plan is making investments, if we have an opportunity to look at things that we believe are going to be green and for the better good of the country, I just hope that we're able to do that.

Glenn, did you have anything you wanted to add, Mr. Finance Director?

I think that the staff has done incredibly innovative work in this area relative to this really important legal constraint we have.

I'm very proud of their efforts.

And in particular, the last point, I don't know if you went through, is incredibly innovative.

And so Jeff, you want to explain?

I can go to that last point right now.

So the last piece of our positive action strategy is integrating climate risk.

And when we look at our portfolio and how it's constructed, we assess how resilient it is under different conditions.

You know, how does it respond to high inflation or low inflation or high volatility, low volatility, how do shocks to world events impact the portfolio?

Lately, we've been integrating climate risk into that assessment.

So we look at all of our different asset classes and make an assessment on how we think those asset classes will perform in different climate outcomes.

And that along with the economic factors Just add to the calculus on how we construct our portfolio and how we spread it across different asset classes.

So we are thinking further ahead than I would imagine any of our like retirement systems of cities and counties about what our portfolio should look like.

Again, we have this very binding legal constraint that we have to invest only to maximize our returns given an amount of risk.

And yet this portfolio of work, and in particular thinking in the future about what is a good portfolio, a profitable one, with climate change as a reality, is innovative and it's just terrific work.

Do we have that written up on our website?

It was part of our presentation at the investment committee I think last month.

So we do a quarterly report to the board on our ESG positive action strategy.

Our third quarter report will be delivered in September.

So it will be one of the items on that September report.

I think it would be really valuable if this was available to the public and to know all the good work that you are doing.

I think it would reduce the number of people and the angst where people are asking you to invest in things that you don't feel comfortable For a variety of legal reasons in doing but to have it on the website so that they could just click on and say You know why or why not and you've got some some really clear information one of the things that we're doing in almost every department is pushing for a dashboard and be able to say what are the investment, what are the outcomes we're shooting for, what are the measurements, how are we doing, and something like that I think would be very valuable to have.

We actually report on ESG issues quarterly and all those quarterly reports are on our website.

Let's just do it again and maybe have some for this next one coming up and see if we can highlight it.

Because as wonderful and clear as financial data can be, oftentimes people don't really understand it unless they can see some bar graphs, some charts, some things that just bring it home to them.

One of the last things I want to say besides thank you for coming, thank you for spending your time putting the presentation together, is I know Bobby Humes is now our HR director.

He and I talked again about making clear to people, you know, you are a member of the city employee family, and you get your retirement.

You vest after five years.

If you stick with it for 30, then things are looking pretty darn good for you.

How the 457 plan connects is something that, I mean, as recently as this morning, I'm talking with people who are saying, I don't get that.

I'm really confused about it.

And I think we take it for granted because we understand the retirement system and 457 is just something else you can do for deferred compensation.

But again, the earlier people can invest in that.

the more money that they will have at retirement, I think it just gets lost because it's confusing and there's a lot of information out there.

No, I absolutely agree.

Bobby and I have been talking about this.

In fact, we have a meeting next Tuesday, I think, to follow up on that.

Great.

And, you know, I think it's just like making it easy for people, having something that they could follow or some benefit link that they can click on just to have that information.

And it's, you know, basically it's a 457-101 we're looking for.

and how that connects.

And people go, yeah, I want to invest in that.

If it was even $100 a month to get started, it really matters.

Great.

Mike, council colleague, would you like to add any more things?

So I know you're going to be deeply, I suspect you're going to be deeply involved in this in the future.

So thank you for participating today.

Anything else you'd like to add?

Anything else for the good of the order?

That's it.

Jason, thank you for your expertise, too, and Jeff, your steady guidance.

I appreciate that.

Tom, you have anything else you'd like to add?

Just one thing, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Just to kind of have a touch point with the budget, since you did raise that point and how this all plays into the budget, I did check with CBO to get some data on the impact in 2018. So the total contributions from the budget into the CSRS fund was $118 million.

Say it again.

$118 million.

And so that's across all funds.

So the general fund, City Light Fund, SDOT.

That was 2018?

Yeah, that was 2018 actuals.

And so of that piece, $27 million is in the general fund.

So the bulk of that is $90 million roughly is coming from the utilities?

utilities, City Light, public utilities, and SDOT.

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

All right.

No, that's helpful.

Interestingly enough, I just got a call from the media that was asking that question today, and I was like, I'll get back to you on it.

Very good, Tom.

Thank you.

Thank you both for coming.

Really appreciate it.

Thanks, Glenn.

Okay, item number three.

I would like to invite our next presenters to the table.

And item number three is our 2019 citywide position list.

Karina, Sarah, good to see you, and all from HR.

So, Karina, would you like to start off with the introductions, please?

Yes, I am Karina Bull.

I'm with Central Staff.

Great.

I like the sound of that, by the way.

Sarah Butler, SDHR.

Joy Lichty, Seattle City Light.

Thank you.

And you can bring these things towards you, move them, so that it's just easier.

You don't have to lean forward.

Andrew Gann, SDHR.

and Brent Meyer, SDHR.

Great, nice to see you all.

Karina, are you setting this up for us?

Yes, I am.

So you are here to discuss a legislation that was submitted by the Seattle Department of Human Resources.

This is the 2019 citywide position list, and it is essentially a list of all regular full-time and part-time authorized officers and employee positions in city departments.

and this is an annual administrative procedure that will not have a substantive impact to city operations, employees, or funds.

This ordinance would become effective on January 1st of this year, once it is passed.

And interesting notes is that the attachment to this ordinance lists a total of 12,106 positions, which is a 0.32% increase.

That's 39 positions from the 2018 position list.

Does that include part-time as well?

It does.

And Lena, would you read this item into the record for me?

Yes.

For the record, Council Bill 119577, an ordinance relating to city employment adopting the 2019 citywide position list.

Very good.

I got the cart before the horse here, but go ahead, please.

That is basically a short overview of this ordinance.

as far as what I have to offer.

Sarah, would you like to add?

I don't have anything to add.

You're kidding me.

We've got five of us here at the table.

Does anybody else want to talk to us about the position list?

No.

So I know you came for a good reason.

To answer questions.

Well, I'm interested in Just what's next with this ordinance?

So we passed the ordinance today.

It's already included in the 2019 budget.

Sarah, what do you see in terms of just the number of employees?

Is everybody covered?

Anything else we need to know?

Nothing else need to know for this ordinance.

I just want to be clear, there's not a financial impact to it.

It's just a list.

It's just a list.

Okay.

This just sets the baseline for 2019. And so all the second quarter supplementals, fourth quarters get built on top of this.

And so we kind of reset to ground everyone at the beginning of the year.

And that's the purpose of presenting these and putting it together.

All right.

Well, I like that very much.

Do you have any questions?

So this is Council Bill 119578. And since we have reached the end of any presentation on this, I'm going to move adoption of this Council Bill.

Second.

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Very good.

There's no no's, there's no abstention.

That was the easiest thing that's come before us in a really long time.

Thank you very much.

All right so we'll just move on to the next items.

Would you please read the oh by the way I'm supposed to say that the motion passes and it's going to move forward to the full council next week.

So how about item number five?

How about item number four?

Yes council bill 119578 an ordinance relating to city employment, adjusting the pay zones for titles, and the city's power marketing compensation program.

Great.

All right, so this is another piece of proposed legislation submitted by the Seattle Department of Human Resources, and this legislation would adjust the pay zone for a supervisor position.

It's the power marketing lead in Seattle City Light's power to marketing compensation program.

So this proposed legislation follows the recent ratification of a collective bargaining agreement for The power marketer positions, these two positions, the power marketer leads were not included in that collective bargaining agreement because they are supervisor positions.

So this ordinance is being proposed to prevent wage compression that might happen if the power marketers get a raise and then the supervisors don't.

Very good.

I just realized that I made an error reading into the last vote we took that I was reading in Council Bill for item number four and not item number three.

So if I can correct that and then also recognize that our next meeting is in September and it's not this next coming Monday.

So if I may just take this again just for the record the item number three that Lena had correctly read in it was council bill 119 So I'll just take that vote again.

Those in favor of approving this council bill say aye.

Aye.

Thank you very much.

None opposed.

No abstention.

So council bill 119577 has been adopted and we will move this through to the full council at our first meeting after the break, which is early September.

Okay, now we're on to 119578 and item number four, back to you.

All right, so again, so this ordinance is adjusting the pay zone for these supervisor positions in the Power Marketing Compensation Program.

And the ordinance specifically would change these lead positions from hourly to salaried with eligibility for exempt status under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

That same status change also happened for the power marketers under the collective bargaining agreement.

So that's happening across the board, but this is memorializing it for the power marketer leads.

And it would make the power marketer leads eligible for a one-time base wage increase that would be dependent upon their performance.

So an employee that has unsatisfactory performance during 2019 would not be eligible.

But if the employee is eligible, then this ordinance memorializes the increased pay zone for them to get that.

So do I understand that this ordinance just applies to two employees?

Correct.

Seattle City Light, do you have anything you'd like to add to this?

No, nothing to add.

Do you have any questions?

I don't.

This is obviously something that you all have worked on, and if you're recommending it, then I just assume we move forward with it.

Council Member Esqueda.

All right.

So this is Council Bill 119578. All those in favor say aye.

I should get a second out of it.

Thank you very much.

So none opposed and there is no abstention.

So this too will move forward to the full council in early September.

Okay, so that was item number four.

Item number five is Council Bill 119591, if you'll read that one in for us.

Yes, in ordinance.

Don't you want to stay for the rest?

Catch you next time.

Is this our public hearing?

Okay, so let's describe what's happening with Council Bill 119591. We do have an opportunity to open this for a public hearing and take public comment on Council Bill 119-591.

Kevin Chow, is anybody here wanting to talk about our public hearing?

So I'm opening the public hearing.

Anyone?

anyone.

Seeing no speakers rushing to the microphones, I'm going to close the public hearing.

Debra Smith, nice to see you.

And if you'd like to introduce yourself.

Sure.

My name is Bill Devereux.

I'm the director of the Environmental Management and Real Estate Division with City Light.

Thank you, Bill.

And I'm Debra Smith, CEO, General Manager of Seattle City Light.

And we just really wanted to thank you both for accommodating us.

I know time is really tight right now.

And so getting these items through committee here couldn't have happened without your flexibility, so thank you very much.

Absolutely, it was a pleasure.

So Bill, do you want to introduce this after?

I'll read into the comment.

Council Bill 119591, an ordinance relating to the Seattle, excuse me, City Light Department declaring certain real property rights surplus to the needs of the City Light Department and authorizing the sale of portions of the property to Snohomish County for road purposes.

Very good.

And I just would like Council Member Mosqueda and Lena remind me before we get ready to the vote that I have to suspend the council roll so we can vote on the same day as our extensive public hearing that we just had.

That was supposed to be a joke.

Since nobody spoke.

Okay, Bill, go ahead.

So, did I turn my mic on?

Is it, do you have a little green light?

Halfway up the stem is a gray button.

There you go.

Sorry, thank you.

So this, the five that we have today are pretty basic real estate related type of ordinances.

This one just allowed Snohomish to widen their 35th Avenue Southeast roadway near our transmission lines.

We retained our easement with them, so we still will be able to operate fine with them.

And so we sold that property to them, but retained our rights.

Very good.

Anything else you'd like to add?

Is City Light always this easy?

Oh, I wish.

They're wonderful to work with, but we got some big meaty issues coming up in the next year.

OK.

So if nothing else, we've got four more parcels we're going to go through individually.

Well, I'm happy to make a comment just about all four of them together if that sounds good.

Okay, sure, absolutely.

Madam Chair, thank you so much for bringing these issues forward.

These next four bills really in combination are sort of what we see as the meat and potatoes issues that are usually dealt with in the Energy Committee and really just want to thank you publicly for your offer to bring these into your committee as I think they relate nicely to some of the other good government functions that you've passed today.

So excited to be able to work with you to get these through the committee and to make sure that we have items that are not major deviations from policy or program changes.

But really, our routine business items at Seattle City Light is required to pass forward so that we can gain authorization from City Council to proceed with them.

And I really think that this is a kudos to you and your team, Deborah Smith, for all the work that you did leading up to this to make sure that we were well prepared.

So thank you.

And I see Mara in the audience.

But really, they've teed up these items nicely so that we can just move forward and have these small real estate transactions in front of us.

Very good.

So did you want to say anything more on the Snohomish County 35th Avenue?

Nothing for me.

Okay, so what I'd like to do is go ahead and we'll vote on this one and then we'll take up the second, third, fourth, and fifth.

Okay, so at this time I'd like to move to suspend our council rules that relate to voting on legislation on the same day of our public hearing.

This will allow the committee to vote on this bill.

Second.

Okay, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay, so that just suspended the council rules.

So now I'm going to move the committee pass council bill 119591. Second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Very good, none opposed, no abstentions.

So the first one, check.

All right, so now we'll move on to the next one.

You'd like to read this in for me?

Council Bill 119592, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department authorizing...

Do I have to read the whole thing?

Yeah.

All right.

Just read it.

All right.

You're doing great.

Authorizing the general manager and chief executive officer to negotiate for purchase or lease up to two parcels of land and acquiring other real property rights as necessary or desirable for the purpose of providing temporary housing for City Light personnel and contractors at the Boundary Hydroelectric Project in Pend...

Ponderay.

Ponderay.

Ponderay.

Ponderay County, Washington.

I don't know that one.

Very northeast corner.

and for other municipal utility purposes.

That's new.

Very good.

Well done.

You're stumbling over pond red.

That's why you didn't want to read the whole thing.

Okay, please go ahead.

So this one is pretty straightforward.

We're looking, we have two different things going on.

One of the parcels would be purchased for the providing a place to stay while people are up there on implementing the boundary license.

Many projects over many years.

The second parcel is for specifically two projects where we'll be doing the rehauls on our generators and our transformers up at Boundary, and that will also give them a place to stay.

That will give us cost consistency.

We won't have to be relying on the market.

And at the end of the project, if it's still no longer needed, we can always sell it then.

Nice.

How much are you paying for this?

We don't know yet because we don't have authorization, so we'll go out and see what the market is.

Okay.

Very good.

Anything else you'd like to add?

Any other questions?

Okay.

Well, this is Council Bill 119592. I will move to pass this bill.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

No abstentions.

Very good.

So again, this motion passes and it will be recommended to the full Council in September.

Okay, it's item number seven coming up.

Council Bill 119498, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department accepting statutory warranty deeds to the Mesnick and Levins property in, oh my gosh.

Which one?

Ponderay.

Washington.

Both to be managed as project habitat lands as required by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission license order for the Boundary Hydroelectric Project and placing said lands under the jurisdiction of the City Light Department.

Well done.

A lot of words.

So this ordinance, as part of the boundary implementation, we're required under the Terrestrial Resource Management Plan to obtain about 158 acres.

This ordinance allows us accepting to the deed of two parcels that total 65 acres, so we still got some ways to go.

And each of these parcels are designed to protect wildlife as part of our license.

So we found some good places for it, and these are two different parcels, and the cost is about $192,000.

Very good.

Any other thoughts?

Anything else you'd like to add?

No.

So I will move the committee pass Council Bill 119498. Second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

There are no no's.

Nobody is abstaining.

So this motion passes and the committee again will recommend it to the full council in September.

Very good.

So item number eight.

Council Bill 119533 in ordinance relating to the City Light Department accepting various easements for overhead and underground electrical rights in King County, Washington, placing said easements under the jurisdiction of the City Light Department and ratifying the confirming certain prior acts.

Very good, thank you.

So these next two are just kind of housekeeping ordinances of past action that we've done.

So this one is 451 different easements that came into play when we did, whenever there was some land use permitting actions that we changed our easements.

So this is over a period of time, 451 easements were made for this.

Great.

Well, thank you.

Thank you for the technical and housekeeping effort.

I know when I was chairing Seattle Public Utilities, we would do the same thing periodically.

Some of them they found that were really old, but they were bringing them forward.

Thank you for that.

Any other questions or comments?

Okay, so we are looking at Council Bill 116. I would like to move that we pass this motion or this bill.

Second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

No abstentions.

Thank you for that.

So council bill 119533 passes and we will recommend this to the full council in September.

We got one more and then I have a thank you for you.

So go ahead.

Council Bill 119534, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department accepting various easements for overhead and underground electrical rights in King County, Washington, placing said easements under the jurisdiction of the City Light Department and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

Very good.

So this one's very similar to the other one, except this is for individuals when they need power brought to their home.

So this is another list of, over a period of time, 112 easements that we made with individual property owners or businesses that needed an easement for us to give them power.

I especially like, and aren't you glad that we're not making you read all of these in one by one?

We've had to read 112 of them.

And even better, none of them were in Pend Oreille.

Right, exactly.

And there's only 12 pages, so let's get going.

Do you have anything you'd like to add?

Anything else at the table?

So this is our last item for today, and I would like to move to pass Council Bill 119534. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed, no abstentions.

So this passes and again will be recommended to full council.

So thank you for that.

Thank you.

So anything else here for the good of the order?

So Deborah Smith, I have been singing your praises for weeks and weeks now, but I just want to express my gratitude for the work that you and your team are doing with us on Thomas Street.

I had another meeting today with SDOT.

The plans that came out of the design charrette, and we're only talking about five or six blocks, but your willingness to extend the sidewalks and put some light and some art on the Thomas Street station is seriously making all the difference in the world.

Because once people saw, oh, this is going to be great, SDOT engineers themselves said, look, let's just close off that last half block.

So traffic will not be coming in there.

The Skate Like a Girl parcel is going to extend all the way down.

You know, just right to the edge of where we're looking at having a pedestrian, bicycle, voodoo and priority before you go into Seattle Center.

The Seattle Center folks are thrilled because now we've got a whole kind of an almost a more than just a walkway, but a beautiful inviting space across Thomas and Fifth as an entry point.

But truly, it was your willingness to step forward and say, City Light will do this that really made things move.

So thank you for your work on it.

You're welcome.

Thanks to Lee Baraka and Tuan Tran, because they actually.

have been working behind the scenes to change things.

And I had a really good meeting, I think two days ago, with Randy Engstrom from Arts.

And so I shared with him the drawings that you had shared with me.

And he thought that was pretty cool, too.

So thank you.

Well, it's just remarkable what happens when people are willing to get to yes.

So many thanks.

OK, well, with nothing else for the good of the order, the meeting's adjourned.