Seattle City Council Land Use Committee 5/11/22

We are recording.

Thank you, Mr. G. Welcome, members of the Land Use Committee.

The May 11, 2022 meeting of the Land Use Committee will come to order.

It is 2.01 PM.

I'm Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson?

Present.

Council Member Nelson?

Present.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Vice Chair Morales?

Here.

Chair Stroud?

Present.

And I do see Council Member Mosqueda here.

So just showing that for the record.

Welcome, everyone.

We have 13 items on today's agenda.

The first is a briefing from OPCD on their outreach and engagement plans ahead of the major update of the Comprehensive Plan.

We have seven appointments to the Urban Forestry Commission and five appointments to the Design Commission.

The previously scheduled vote on Council Bill 120287, which updates rooftop equipment regulations, will be postponed until the June 8th committee to allow time for reiteration of some of the amendments.

Before we begin, if there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

At this time, we will be moving into public comment.

at the remote public comment period for items on today's agenda.

Before we begin, I ask that everyone please be patient as we learn to operate this new system in real time.

As a reminder, public comment is limited to items on today's agenda, while it remains our strong intent to have public comment regularly included on meeting agendas.

City Council reserves the right to end or eliminate these public comment periods at any point if we deem that the system is being abused, or is unsuitable for meetings to be conducted efficiently and in a manner in which we are able to conduct our necessary business.

I will moderate the public comment in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 10 minutes and each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they were just around the counter.

would like to.

You can sign up before the end of public comment by going to the Council's website.

The public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.

Once I call on the speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate mic for an automatic comment.

You have been unmuted.

It will be the speaker's cue that is their turn to speak.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item in which you are addressing.

Speakers will cure time when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

Once the speaker will cure the time, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comments.

If speakers to not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided the speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.

Once you've completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line and if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via Seattle's panel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

The public comment period is now open and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

We have three speakers today.

Rob McVickers, Emily Evanson.

Emily, you are listed as not present at this time.

Please do know that you need to call into the phone number provided in the registration email.

listening, the listen line.

And so you can call in any time, but we only have three fellow commenters, including yourself, last year, David Mooring, Rob McVicker, Emily Evanson, Dave Mooring.

We'll go with Rob McVicker first, please, Rob, welcome.

And you'll need to press star six.

Thank you, thank you.

Rob McVickers, Build Sound, townhouse builder here in Seattle.

I would like to request that on one of the positions that you're going to confirm for the Urban Forestry Commission, I believe it is position number eight, development to Mr. Mooring that it at least be delayed if not taken off the table altogether.

And the reason I make this request is we assume when you created all of these positions on the committee, that they were there to be representative of that group of people.

Mr. Mooring, as far as I can tell, has no development experience whatsoever.

And through his history of actions, if anything shows to be very anti-development.

And the reason I talk about this is that he has a lengthy history of appealing land use applications all over the city, not just his neighborhood.

And a lot of these are short flats, which are density driven usually, but a number of them have been a lot subdivisions, which at that point, you can't stop the development.

It's already in place.

LUPA was not filed.

So at that point, it just becomes kind of a thorn in the side, a poke at the developer.

It's not accomplishing, stopping anything.

It's not accomplishing any trees from staying up, any development from happening.

It's just to cause chaos.

And in some cases, to be honest with you, it's, I know there's been a history of taking payments to drop these land, these appeals, which I find distasteful and disheartening and completely undermines the credibility of whatever committee he stands on.

And I'm worried that he'll use his position to further his anti-development stance within the city using the tree commission as kind of a guide to do that.

He's gathered neighbors in areas where he didn't have standing and believe things that weren't true.

And we are, we are at time.

If you'd like to submit any further comments, please do so.

You can send them to my email address, dan.scouts.cal.gov.

Up next, we ironically have Dave Mooring.

Dave and Emily Evanson, if you would like to speak, you need to call in now, because Dave is our last commenter if you do not come present.

We have Dave Mooring on the line.

Dave, I see you there.

If you want to press star six, you got two minutes to speak.

Dave, we have you in the meeting.

You'll need to press star six, not pound six.

Hello.

Hi, there you are, Dave.

You got two minutes.

Welcome.

Good afternoon.

Oh, thank you for taking my call.

I actually didn't anticipate Mr. Mr. Vickers to be calling.

So I actually have to change my topic.

But yeah, just to respond to Rob, I did appeal a property right next to me, which Rob developed about five years ago, actually.

And, um, I did take a concession from Rob to pay off my attorney and it was something offered by Rob's attorney, not something that I asked for.

So, uh, plus I also want to make sure that.

Mr. McVicker make sure that he's very honest about what he says about me.

Um, I am not, uh, as he says, anti-developer type of person.

I do, however, look at black and white issues when it comes to density.

And if, in his case, he developed four units rather than three, I'm gonna bring it up to the hearing center.

There's been, in Ballard alone, there's probably about 30 properties in the past five years where an additional unit has been developed beyond that, which was in SMC 23.45.510.

So my issues are to represent the city to represent the people of the city for terms of being honest, developing what's on the site, which is actually what's in the code, rather than looking for loopholes, and rather to have people like Mr. McVickers take advantage of others.

The reason I did want to call the original was because I am planning to submit two town plan proposals.

One is for trees and canopy.

because there's been a lot of that's covered within the comp plan.

It just needs another level of refinement.

And the second one is to add more density within the area of trend to stop over by Magnolia.

So thank you very much for taking this call.

And I am very disappointed to hear the first caller.

Thank you.

If you have further comments, please do send them in.

and lost the screen.

Emily, I believe is her name.

Emily Evanson, are you, Mr. G, could you confirm that Emily is not present and we have no further public comment registrants at this time?

There are no other public comment registrants.

Thank you, Mr. G. Seeing as we have no additional speakers remotely present, we will move on to the next agenda item.

Our first agenda item is Council Bill 1208287 until our next meeting.

So our first item is our, skipping, sorry, here.

We have a presentation from OPCP.

So we are now joined by interim director.

Rico Carandango, Michael Hubner, Office of Planning and Community Development.

So our first item is the briefing on comprehensive plan major outreach.

Gentlemen, if you'd like to introduce yourself and if you want to talk with the clerk, do we need to read this item into the record or are we good to go?

I can read into the record.

Agenda item one, briefing on outreach for the comprehensive plan, major update.

Great.

Rico, Michael, Jason, please take it away.

Thank you, Council Member.

Rico Kenendango, Acting Director, Office of Planning and Community Development.

We've got a pretty robust presentation, so I'm going to keep my comments short.

As you all know, We are embarking on a three year effort to update our comprehensive plan for the city.

And in that process, we are laying out a very robust community engagement plan, which includes half a dozen community-based organizations with whom we're contracting to help us reach out into community, and 10 community liaisons that are helping us also in that process.

Lots of moving parts and pieces, very excited about this work.

Huge implications for our city as we continue to grow.

I pass it on to Michael Huebner.

Thank you, Rico, and thank you, council members as well for having us here today.

For the record, I'm Michael Hubner.

I'm the Long-Range Planning Manager in OPCD and the Project Manager for the Comprehensive Plan Update.

We're also joined here today on the panel by Jason Kelly, who is our Communications Director.

So I'm going to start with a very abbreviated review of the Comprehensive Plan Update project, just to ground us, and that's been most of the time describing to you the different components of our approach to community engagement for this project.

So our comprehensive plan is a vision of how we grow and invest in our community over a 20-year time period.

It's a policy document.

It's a long-range planning vision.

It is grounded in four core values, race and social equity, environmental stewardship, community, and economic opportunity and security.

As a policy document, It contains numerous goals and policies that guide many city actions.

Nearly everything the city does is guided in some way by the comprehensive plan.

There are broad topics addressed in 14 citywide elements or chapters of the plan, many of which are required by the state's Growth Management Act, the GMA.

And overall, it's a blueprint for the location and design of new housing, commercial development, and industrial uses across the city.

and it informs how we make investments in communities to ensure that housing and jobs and their growth in those are supported as we become more equitable, livable and sustainable and resilient as a city.

Apologies, errant finger advancing the slides.

The update of the plan occurs every eight to 10 years under state law.

Our current plan CL2035 was completed in 2016 And we will be bringing a new plan for your consideration and adoption in 2024. So this effort, which we are branding the One Seattle Plan Comprehensive Plan Update was launched this March.

We're very excited about that.

We went live online and started getting information out there into the public and getting information from the public as we'll discuss this spring.

This is a two-year process though.

This is a lengthy process.

with several different phases, which we shall discuss as well, at the end of which is a new vision that will guide, as I mentioned, growth and investments through the year 2044. That's our planning horizon of this next update.

This plan update will respond to a number of major challenges, including racial inequities, past and current, housing costs, displacement pressures, climate, both in terms of mitigation and resilience, and the investments that are needed throughout the city to meet existing and future community needs.

We'll be updating our growth strategy.

Our current growth strategy for 20 years of housing and job growth is the urban village strategy.

And it's been roughly unchanged since 1994. That strategy focuses most growth in compact, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods linked by transit.

Areas outside the urban villages are predominantly single-family homes.

One of the presentations we brought to this committee or its predecessor last year was a racial equity analysis that highlighted the history of racial segregation and exclusion as part of the background to how we got to the planning framework we have today.

Looking ahead, we know from regional projections that Seattle will be approaching 1 million people in the coming decades.

And as we anticipate that growth, we will be exploring new ideas for where and how we grow to be a more equitable, affordable, and sustainable city.

I'm now going to turn to the community engagement, just to start with a quick flyover of the goals we have for engagement.

First and foremost, to be effective in communicating with the broader public, with key stakeholders in a way that is meaningful, relevant, using plain talking graphics, multiple methods of disseminating and receiving information, and to be accessible and multilingual.

The engagement we are endeavoring to do is meaningful in a sense of being interactive and inviting members of the public to co-create aspects of the plan as we go forward.

As Rico mentioned, we are reaching specifically out to partners in the community, community-based organizations, community liaisons, and others in this work.

And we endeavor to be transparent and responsive and accountable throughout the planning process.

We already have a public participation plan available on our website.

And our virtual engagement timeline connects the engagement outcomes to policy development.

It's something in a very live and flexible fashion we'll be posting on our engagement hub, which I'll be describing in a further slide.

And we are employing a racial equity toolkit to engage key stakeholders in community throughout the city in evaluating and setting racial equity outcomes evaluating the alternatives that we will be exploring through the update, and then moving toward a final plan going to council that we feel is doing the best toward moving the city toward being more racially equitable in the many ways that the comprehensive plan affects those outcomes.

This is very much an engagement strategy grounded in an equitable approach that prioritizes resources with, and you'll see on the list at top, BIPOC communities, limited English populations, youth, renters, the LGBTQ community, people with disabilities, low-income, and people experiencing homelessness.

But we also know that this is a plan for the entire city, and there are many other categories of stakeholders and residents, businesses, organizations that will be reaching through this process.

The timeline for this work progresses through several phases of engagement where there are different focuses to how we'll be engaging, how we'll be incorporating the input from engagement to correspond with key segments of the work we'll be doing in developing the plan and milestones.

We are currently in the project launch phase through the end of this quarter, where we're developing and sharing HUD project background materials and disseminating our public engagement tools.

During the remainder of this year, a phase we call shaping the plan, we will be identifying major issues and potential growth strategies.

Going into early 2023, we will be doing work to draft the plan, as well as completing the draft EIS.

During that time, we'll be analyzing public input and developing goals and policies.

During the remainder of 2023, we will be reviewing and refining the public comment received through the formal comment periods with the release of the draft plan and the draft EIS.

And the final plan and zoning phase toward the end of 2023 into the beginning of 2024, we will be finalizing the mayor's plan with a preferred growth alternative and also doing enhanced outreach to communities accompanying our zoning legislation proposals, which will implement the plan that we are also planning to move to council at the same time that we are advancing the final plan.

And then finally it goes on to council for plan adoption and council will be doing its own engagement with the community through the adoption process.

This next slide summarizes the partners that we have been reaching through our community-based organization partnerships, our contracts with five different CBOs.

They've each received $30,000 for 12 month contracts with engagement work plans They each developed that are responsive to the unique needs of their communities and that adopted a very broad range of different techniques and formats to get meaningful and deep engagement with the folks that they work with, the communities that they are rooted in.

This outreach approach centers equity in our engagement process, and we feel it is a more meaningful way of bringing communities that have not been directly involved in the update in the past into this process through these partnerships.

And you see the list of organizations at right, Khmer Community of Seattle King County, the Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association, Estalitos Library, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, and the Capitol Hill Eco-District.

This slide lists some of the many formats that they are employing to reach their communities, including surveys, use of the arts and artistic engagement and expression, video, social media, small group and larger group discussions and workshops, town halls, walking tours, tabling at community events, and in pop-up engagement and engagement in places where people gather, the places in their communities.

And they will also be collaborating with each other and with other CBOs in this work.

With the community liaisons, we have 10 different people who have been contracted through the Department of Neighborhoods.

They're out there in community right now, educating people in each of their communities.

And you can see the list at bottom, the different linguistic and cultural and other communities that each of the 10 that we have engaged are focusing their work in.

They're informing those communities about the comprehensive plan update and administering a survey to ask them about their vision, their needs, their concerns, as we are scoping out the main issues that we'll be addressing in the coming months.

Going into the fall, each of them will be convening and facilitating in partnership with us community conversations or discussions with a number of people coming together for a deeper dive on the issues that have been highlighted as most important to each community.

We have two project websites.

The first one highlighted here is our main Seattle.gov project website.

The main purpose of this website is to provide information.

You can get to this website directly through the OPCV site on Seattle.gov.

It provides background, project documents, element and issue briefs, video presentations, background report, and the public participation plan.

But we are complementing that with a second website, which we are calling the One Seattle Plan Engagement Hub.

There is a direct link to the engagement hub from our website.

And this is a tool that we acquired for this project that is much simpler.

as much as many different modes of engagement and interactivity for people visiting the site.

The very same information about the project will be provided, but there will also be tools to engage people in surveying, workshops and community discussions to view either live or as recorded panels or webinars.

to engage interactively with maps.

And then there'll be faces of the project where that is relevant.

There are the ability to comment and have conversations online is very similar to a social network site and provides a much more conversational and interactive and engaging way for the community to interact with this project.

And for us to hear what people are thinking about and saying, and to incorporate that into the policies that we're developing.

Importantly, there was full website translation into tier one languages, which is incredibly important to us as one of the key features of this tool that we acquire.

We will also be including report outs from the community-based organization work to make visible and transparent what we are hearing from that focused engagement in each of those communities and have that part of the conversation citywide on the engagement hub.

Some of the content that we anticipate hosting on the engagement hub in the coming months includes information and opportunities to comment on our scoping for the environmental impact statement.

We will be releasing a range of growth strategy concepts and inviting the public to review and to provide comment to attend events during that period, to learn about and ask questions and provide comment as we go into our EIS analysis later this year.

There will be a monthly cycle each month of presentations, webinar panels, and community conversations that people can sign up for and attend.

covering a range of topics that we think are going to be featured in this update are most important, starting with centering racial equity, climate and the environment, healthy, resilient communities, transportation, housing and displacement, and other topics to be determined to round out the remainder of 2022. We will have open houses hosted on the site during the public comment periods in 2023, And then the engagement related to our zoning proposals will also have a major presence on the engagement hub toward the end of 2023. We have a survey, an initial survey of the public, which we have been enormously pleased to see a lot of people responding to.

We have 1600 responses so far.

We don't have the final tabulated results from the survey, but we have been collecting some of the The right hand responses here and you can see on this slide we are hearing about a whole range of topics and desires and really that this is the visionary phase where we are asking people to envision Seattle 20 years from now they're talking about cultural spaces public spaces and inclusive and vibrant downtown a low carbon future for the city.

The ability to buy a home and live in a neighborhood that is both socioeconomically and racially diverse.

We're hearing about how people get around the city, seeking alternatives to having to drive.

That sort of tone of the city's communities is open and welcoming to all.

The ability to live in the city as a middle income household the health of our commercial spaces, and the way that people engage in this process in a way that the impact communities, most vulnerable and historically marginalized communities have a primary voice in the policymaking.

So that's just a little bit of what we've been hearing.

I do want to, before closing out, highlight a couple of things on language access.

I know this is something that the council members have asked about and been interested in.

As I mentioned earlier, the engagement hub, site features full site translations in all tier one languages.

We have translated the documents that are posted to provide information about the plan, issue briefs, an overview of the update, a short video that provides that plan update overview.

Our community liaisons are also doing in-language outreach in their communities and the community-based organizations several of them are developing in language events and translated materials to meet the needs of their communities as well.

So there's a lot going on for those who for whom English is not the primary language.

And finally, just wanted to highlight that we have been starting in last year, I've been reaching out to boards and commissions, this is a great way to reach folks who are volunteering to advise the city and a number of boards, commissions and represent a range of communities across the city.

We reached 18 different boards and commissions in the fall until the early part of this year, and are planning to go out to return to many of those based on their interests over the summer, as well as to reach out to additional boards and commissions.

We have a special relationship with the Equitable Development Initiative Advisory Board, the first one you see on this list, which advises our work in OPCD for our community development work.

And we are meeting with them on a monthly basis to guide and steer and inform our racial equity toolkit.

And finally, there are surely gaps in organizations and stakeholders we are not reaching through the above-mentioned tools and techniques and partnerships.

And that's where staff are coming in and reaching out to our extensive lists of neighborhood and citywide groups to inform them about the update, to find out how they want to and can be involved, and to make sure that they're part of this process over the next couple of years.

And that's my presentation.

I'll open it up for questions here.

Oh, I see Vice Chair Morales has questions.

And I know Vice Chair has been doing quite a bit of outreach regarding the major comprehensive plan updates.

Take it away, Vice Chair.

I've got a couple of questions after you.

Sure.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for this.

It's really clear to me that there's been some A lot of good thinking going into how to do this differently than the city has done it in the past so I really, really appreciate that.

I do think it's important, you know I'm looking at slide eight, in particular, all of the.

You know priorities that you listed of who to make sure that you are reaching out to so that you know the city is built for everybody all genders all ages.

You know for parents who are trying to get around with strollers, which is very hard to do in the city right now, you know seniors who want to age in place.

Folks with disabilities with mobility or vision impairments who need to be able to get around safely, poor folks middle income people who want to be able to stay in their communities and not get pushed out so I really appreciate this, this list.

You know, so I just wanted to say thank you for that.

First of all, The questions I really have, of the groups that you've listed, I know you've contracted with five community organizations, can you talk a little bit about if you know how or whether they will make sure to incorporate young people into their outreach strategies?

I think we've got something like, I don't know, 15% or so of the city's population are people under 18, and I want to make sure that We're building for them too.

So can you talk a little bit about what you know, if anything, about what they're doing?

I know some, and I'll defer to my colleague here, Jason Kelly, to the extent he can help supplement my knowledge.

We have actually a community engagement coordinator, Aja Hazelhoff, on our staff, who joined our staff right around the time we were ramping up this project.

She is leading up this effort.

The partnership from our point of view, the partnership with the CBOs is a really rich collaboration.

And she is the expert on all of their individual work plans.

But I do know that a couple of the organizations on the list have specific components that are youth oriented.

I believe the Khmer community I know is specifically focusing their work on both elders and youth, and they have standing gatherings of both elders and youth, but they are bringing this engagement to those convenings.

With the youth, I believe it's a dance troupe, they do art and dance and cultural activities with the kids of all different ages, and then incorporating a program related to getting input from them on the future of their community and the city into that.

And then they have a convening of elders, and they will be having multiple meetings with those with those groups and having very specific output from those conversations.

That's an example of a very intentional work around youth.

I believe, Jason, I am blanking on this.

If you could help me out, there's one other project we still have that has a very explicit and intentional youth focus.

Am I not wrong about that?

Duwamish?

I think there are multiple projects that- But Duwamish does.

Yes, that is correct.

Duwamish also has a youth group Again, bringing it to work that the youth are already doing, but focusing that work on the future of the city, the future of their communities.

And I believe they're also using arts in that case to sort of facilitate all the different ways that we'll get information from the youth.

We are also, in terms of youth engagement, that's a big emphasis of our own work.

We've had conversations, for example, with the Washington APA, there's a committee that seeks to support youth engagement.

We've met with them.

We've met with others who are very interested in pulling youth into this project.

We're hoping to get an SYEP intern over the summer as well from a high school age to be part of this process.

It's youth actually working on the project.

So we're doing a lot in that area.

And I'm sure we could do more.

Thank you.

I appreciate knowing that.

I know there's been, I mean, I've been doing some reading about how different communities have engaged young people too.

I know they've done.

created board games and TikTok challenges and drive-in movies.

And so, you know, I will probably follow up with some of the community organizations themselves to see how they're doing it, because it would be great to have, it sounds like a really creative process is already underway.

So happy to know that that's going on.

Thank you.

Thank you vice chair.

My questions also were about how to get residents engaged in your work and I'm not sure if the best way to do that is through community-based organizations or if it is, you know, through your site and the engagement hub.

If I have a resident reach out to me, what's the best place or I guess where is the best them to?

Is there the engagement hub or should I be identifying community-based organizations in my area?

Jason, why don't you feel that one?

Yeah, the engagement hub really is the place where we want to have people steer their attention.

It's where we're going to have the online presentations.

We're going to have opportunities to learn from our staff and from other community members And it's a place where they can pose the questions to our staff and to each other as we try to create a community conversation.

So yeah, we really would like people to be able to go to engage.oneseattleplan.com.

And we really want to foster a community conversation there where people can learn from us, we can learn from them, and we can all learn from each other.

Great.

I think Vice Chair's got another question.

Take it away.

Thank you.

So I do have a couple of questions about the data collection piece.

I know there's surveys being collected.

There's focus groups, in-person things.

For the online data collection, can you talk a little bit about what the collection tool is and how those findings Let me just big picture this.

I'm a little bit concerned or just want to understand better what data or privacy protections are in place.

That's one version of my question.

And then the other side of that is I just want to make sure that as we're collecting data from individuals from their use, you know, their However, we're collecting data and using it that we aren't sort of unintentionally using that data to recreate maps or tools that have historically led us to plan in a way that is inequitable.

If that's making sense.

Yes, great question.

I'll start with the survey, Jason, and then turn it over to you for a little broader view on this.

First and foremost, the survey information that we shared a little bit of with you.

That's an anonymous survey to begin with.

So that's not connected with people's names or locations.

We are collecting demographic information about who in terms of race and whether they're homeowners or renters and that kind of information, which will be part of our report out.

So, but pretty, far distanced from individually identifying information or even neighborhood identifying information in terms of the survey.

But more broadly, people will be engaging in the engagement hub.

Jason, you wanna talk about how the engagement hub handles anonymity and how people become involved and what they can expect?

Yeah, so one of the benefits of using the engagement hub is that the city is not collecting individual data any one of our users.

So we're not tracking individual users by location or collecting any of their personal information.

But we do allow people to control their own accounts there so they can stay engaged in the conversation as they see fit.

You can subscribe to updates so that if someone comments on a comment that you've made, that you're aware that people are responding to comments you've made, or you can tag your comments based on certain topics you're interested in.

So if you want to dip back into the conversation when there's updates around transportation or housing or issues you're interested in, then you can go back to the platform and stay involved.

But we certainly are not tracking any individual responses or data.

for any individual, but we will be reporting out aggregated data that shows the, you know, the breadth of the populations that we're reaching through these conversations.

Thank you.

and vice chair, and I see Councilmember Mosqueda has been on camera for this entire presentation.

I see Councilmember Nelson's off of mute and on camera.

So just checking in with you colleagues, do either of you have comments, questions, concerns?

And Councilmember Peterson also off camera, or on camera, off mute.

Now we're seeing the hands fly.

Councilmember Nelson's the only hand that's currently up.

So we're gonna go, Councilmember Nelson, And then I saw Council member Mosqueda and then Peterson.

Thank you very much.

It's clear that you've put a lot of thought into this process, and it's much more robust this time around.

So I'm just going to be chomping at the bit to see what some of the ideas are.

And that's a ways away here.

So it looks like Q3 formal public comment will begin.

Will there be any sort of, I don't know, teasers or smaller sections presented in advance of this reveal here?

In Q3 or Q4 of next year?

Thanks.

If you look back, I won't share my screen again.

You can share your screen so that we're all looking.

OK, great, great.

I'm going to call up the schedule.

And I think that'll help us to, yes, bear with me for a second.

Each of the phases, and that was something that I wanted to, pardon me,

Now, I've had the presentation up on my own screen kind of follow along with all these great questions.

There we go.

Oh, no.

OK.

Rika, why don't you speak to the reporting out and our sort of iterative call and response approach to engagement?

I'm going to call up the schedule and then put some flesh on those bones as you're doing that.

Yeah, absolutely.

As you know, so we've got the two website resources.

And one of the things that we've developed in this first phase of outreach are a series of issue papers.

So we have seven issue papers that are written in very simple language that address different subject areas of interest, transportation, housing.

what we've committed to is kind of in a, what I would otherwise refer to as a traditional call and response fashion to like every on a six week cycle, where you want to take each of those subject areas, lean into it, flesh it out, identify some questions that we want to put out into community and then through our community liaisons, our CBOs, our other organizations that we're in connection with, and in our partnership with all of you, be able to provide you those packets of information.

And what we really want to do through this process is connect policy ideas that we're trying to generate or think about and tie them directly to community conversations.

And in that way, inform our work directly, but also be able to be in a conversation with the community about what people's interests and concerns are and how that will ultimately manifest itself in the plan.

I think that what's critical in that is that people need to be able to see themselves in the plan and for our city departments that we can thread the needle and draw a direct line from ideas discussed with community, how they manifest as policies in the plan and how that can lead to implementation at a department level and by community.

Thank you for that.

I like the way you phrase it, call and response.

It's iterative.

Because there's always a tension between, all right, you put something out there to share, hey, this is what we're thinking.

And then people think, well, it's set in stone.

And what you're mostly trying to do is make sure that all voices are incorporated.

So thank you very much for explaining that process.

And if I may, just briefly, can everybody see the schedule here?

Yes, is each of the phases that you see, at least through to when we transmit the plan to council in the spring of 2024, each of these phases will have at least one major report out as to what we're hearing, what we heard during each of these.

And there will be multiple opportunities for some of them.

So for example, the work that our CBO partners are doing They will be providing us with deliverables from their work outcome, what they're hearing.

And we will be posting that on the engagement hub.

We'll be, this is all, you know, we're not going to sit on the information that we're getting either from our partners or what we are hearing directly from community.

The scoping for EIS this summer will have a formal comment period.

there will be a scoping report in the fall, September, October timeframe.

There'll be another more formal opportunity where we will be reflecting on what we heard during key milestones or phases of the project.

So if the impression here is that we were gonna get to somewhere going into early 2023 and then dump all the information we heard from the public at that point, That's not the way this is gonna roll out.

It's gonna be very much as things are happening, reflecting back what we've heard, reflecting how they shape key pieces of this work.

That's very helpful.

Council Member Naftali, if you have more questions, we'll come back to you.

would you like us to move on to Councilmember Peterson or I see you are taking the floor.

Take it away.

Well I might just tee up my question and then see if Councilmember Peterson has a follow-up to it because it's really within his bailiwick as well so I'll just put it out there and then perhaps turn it over to Councilmember Peterson if it's okay Mr. Chair to add to the theme I'm sure my interest was in understanding more about how the transportation plan that's underway by SDOT is going to feed into the engagement comprehensive plan and I'll hand it over, if you will, Mr. Chair, to Council Member Peterson.

Sounds good.

We'll fold that question into any and all questions Council Member Peterson has.

I think that OPCD needs to address that question.

The Seattle Transportation Plan, they're just starting their outreach right now, but I agree it needs to be incorporated because if the idea is to grow our city in a way so that people can afford it and get around with increased mobility options.

We need to, for example, expand our bus system in areas where it doesn't exist right now.

And so I think, you know, the expansion of transit needs to be addressed because One of the benefits of the urban village strategy was that that's where there was a concentration of transit.

And so if we're going to expand elsewhere, are people going to have to have cars or can they take the bus?

So I agree, Council Member Esqueda, that needs to be integrated fully, the transportation.

I was going to ask a question about displacement and those living on fixed incomes and how you're reaching senior citizens, for example, and making sure their concerns are addressed.

So I'm going to thank you for both of those questions.

If it's okay, I'm going to just reflect just and share some information briefly on the collaboration, the coordination with SDOT because and thank you for the question and that it was in my notes to to brief you on, and I skipped over that as I was going through the materials.

We are very much working hand in hand with SDOT as they are standing up the Seattle Transportation Plan.

We meet as staffs, our policy staff meet every other week.

Our communications teams are meeting at a similar frequency to make sure that we are identifying all the opportunities where we can learn from each other and leverage each other's work.

So examples of that are the CBO partnerships.

We are partnering with some of the very same CBOs for larger bodies of work that straddle the two plans.

We are identifying events on the calendar where either they, SDOT or OPCB, can bring information, can disseminate information about the respective plans of the other department.

and making sure those are identified on the calendar, opportunities to speak jointly, if that is appropriate.

And on the calendar for our monthly topics, the August into September cycle of the topical focus on our engagement hub will be transportation.

And we are doing that as a partnership with SDOT, so we can highlight how the two plans will work together and get input from the community on that.

So that's just for starters how we're trying to really seize this opportunity where these two plans are happening at the same time, which has not happened before.

This is really a unique opportunity for the city.

I'm gonna defer on the outreach to folks with respect to displacement.

Maybe I'll defer a little bit to Jason and to Rico to start on that and I could flesh that out as needed.

I think one of the really important conversations that we're having with our equitable development initiative advisory board centers on this issue of displacement.

So the board was constituted as a place where community members who are leading in this area come together to develop shared strategies and target investments to help fight the forces of cultural, economic, and residential displacement in our city.

So they are already leading in that conversation.

And we are engaging with them on a monthly basis to share our plans for public engagement and to get advice and feedback from them on how we can improve in the kind of public conversation we're having around these ideas, especially around this idea of displacement.

So they've already been giving us great advice about how we need to expand our reach of our engagement activities to more specifically address the needs of seniors in our community.

We've already mentioned the Kami project focuses on the needs of of seniors but there are other groups that we need to reach out to and and learn more about the pressures that seniors are facing, especially with housing costs and other issues.

But the racial equity toolkit work that we're doing with the EDI board is certainly another area where we will be focusing on the needs of BIPOC seniors as well.

So it's an ongoing conversation.

I think the EDI board has already been providing really valuable input in that respect.

I think the only thing that I would add to that is that, whoops.

The only thing I would add to that is that we are looking at what our anti-displacement strategies are and will be as we develop our next version of the plan.

But part of that conversation is also about how we get people back that have been displaced.

And, you know, even in the most recent round of EDI applicants for funding, like we are starting to identify who are organizations that are working with displaced displaced communities who are organizations themselves that have been displaced.

I think we're just at the beginning of this process, so we don't have comprehensive information at this time, but I think that we've got to We can't just talk about how we stop continued displacement, but also how we invite people back to the city and make it affordable for people to do that.

And Rico, I should mention that APALA, one of our community-based organizations, we selected them specifically because they are working with workers who've already been displaced out of Seattle but are commuting back in to work in the city.

And we feel like that's a critical audience.

We're going to understand how to respond to the people who have already left, but also those who are facing harshers.

That's really well said.

I think that it is important that we provide an avenue for people who have had to leave.

I mean, I'm in Ballard, I'm in my district office today, a holding committee, and a lot of the people that I grew up with have never been able, have not been able to get a foothold in our community.

And so how, you know, I think Jason, at one point he said the next major update to the comprehensive plan's not gonna be our grandparents' comprehensive plan, And with that, when I go down to the Ann Folk Art Gallery on L2 of City Hall, there's a picture of the 1957 Comprehensive Plan that had duplexes across the city, right?

And that's a way to invite people back, as well as I want to make sure, you know, with or without increased changing zoning, rising costs of taxes and all of the fixed costs of our seniors is becoming more expensive.

We have to provide seniors with ways to not be priced out of our community, because they also are on a fixed income.

And beyond that, we need to be able to provide them the tools that they can benefit from of having passive income, staying where they're at.

And I think that those are some common, the ability to help our seniors stay where they are is, needs to be included in this and in a separate conversation.

And I think that Councilman Peterson raises a really important point that we have to invite, and I don't know if he said this actually, but we have to be able to invite the people who grew up in our city back home.

Council Member Peterson, did I catch those correctly?

I really appreciate that issue being brought up because that's the difficulty of the public participation process is who are we asking?

And I agree, it's, we need to talk to people who have been displaced and find out what their needs are.

And not only ask them what their needs are, but ask them, why were they displaced?

When were they displaced?

Was it due to an up zone?

Was it due to something that we did previously that city policy put fuel on the fire or something, or is it some other externality or some economic issue that happened?

It's sort of understanding why each person was displaced so that that can inform us of doing this comp plan in a really mindful, thoughtful, intentional way.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

I think we can talk more about this offline.

As we know, private property sales are always a private matter.

And so we can talk about this more later.

Colleagues, any other questions for OPCB on this?

Councilmember Mosqueda, please.

Thank you.

I just wanted to appreciate the the lifting up of the racial equity toolkit and your outreach strategy.

And I think, you know, anytime we can reminding folks that that that is the guiding sort of documented this go around might make it feel like it's a different approach than it has been in the past.

And also I think mirrors what other larger cities have done as well.

But thanks for making that part of your commitment to community, but also internal strategy for making sure that our policies resonate with what we need now and in the future.

As always, well said, it's always hard to go after you speak.

Colleagues, seeing no further questions, any last thoughts, Director Quirindango, Jason, Michael?

I would just say we have a lot of work ahead, which I'm really excited about and looking forward to.

We've got a great team.

And I am very much looking forward to the partnership with all of you as you're out doing outreach in your communities and having community conversations, we want to be arm and arm with you in that effort and make sure that we're actually being responsive to both community and to your needs.

Wonderful.

We certainly can work with you to identify opportunities to return to the committee as the ideas start to roll out because Phil Kleisler, CoB, ESF-14): As someone said is surely they will and identify key points in this process, it is a lengthy one to have conversations with the Committee to keep you informed and we look forward to it very much.

And also.

Phil Kleisler, CoB, ESF-14): Some important suggestions on how we can better.

be in touch with the community groups and organizations, community members that we need to be in conversation with.

So, looking forward to getting your input and feedback.

Thank you, Ahoy.

We look forward to continuing to work with you as the comprehensive plan major update process continues and unfolds.

You'll be back here with us at committee often, I suspect.

And thank you for all your work.

Thank you.

Our next set of items are seven appointments to the Urban Forestry Commission.

Mr. Ong, will you please read the next seven items into the record?

Agenda items two through eight.

Appointments 02201 through 02207. Appointments of Howe Leong, Rebecca B. Newman, Leah Hall, Joseph Cisneros, and Kalisha Kurji, as well as the reappointments of David Michael Mooring and Joshua N. Morris to the Urban Forum Committee.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Patty, for joining us today.

How are you today?

I'm going to pass it off to you to introduce the nominees and have a chance for them to speak with us so that we can ask them questions and present for themselves.

So take it away, Patty Baker.

All right, thank you chair stress and good afternoon, council members.

Yeah, I'm Patty Parker interim urban forestry policy advisor with the Office of sustainability and environment.

And in this role I support the urban forestry commission, which was established by ordinance in 2009. to advise the mayor and city council concerning the establishment of policy and regulations governing the protection, management, and conservation of trees and vegetation in the city of Seattle.

And then the ordinance was then updated in 2017 to increase the membership to 13 members.

And we're pleased today to put forward for your consideration appointees for five of those positions, along with two reappointments for commissioners who have finished their first term and would be heading into a second term.

So again, the new appointees and going in numerical order, we have position two, which is the urban ecologist position.

We have Joseph Narrows for position three, the Natural Resource Agency representative.

We have Felicia Kurji, position four, which is the hydrologist position.

We have Becca Newman, position six, the landscape architect.

We have Hao Liang.

And for position 13, the community or neighborhood representative, we have Leah Hall.

Most of those folks would be serving the remainder of three-year terms that were vacated midterm.

And then position three was recently vacated by Weston Brinkley at the end of his second term.

So Felicia Kergey would be filling that position from the start of a new three-year term.

The reappointees we have are in position seven, the NGO representative of Joshua Morris.

And then in position eight, development representative is David Mooring.

We're excited to bring this slate of folks onto the commission and to retain the reappointed commissioners as together they bring a breadth of valuable knowledge, experience, and community connections to the commission at a time when their expertise is needed as the community and the commission tackle issues such as climate change, environmental justice, and tree protection needs.

So all of the appointees are here today, and I'm going to let them provide a brief introduction of themselves.

Again, going in numerical order, let's start with position two, Joe Ustisneros.

And Joe, I know you're joining from the field today on your phone, so hopefully you'll be able to unmute and provide an introduction.

Hi, can you all hear me?

Yes.

Awesome.

Hi, this is, my name is Joe, Joe Cisneros.

I am from Everett, Washington, and I've been living in Seattle for about I'm in the Fremont neighborhood currently.

And yeah, I'm super excited to get working with some really amazing folks on the commission.

I feel like I have a lot to learn.

And I think my passion for the people and the natural spaces and ecology of our really special city and region of the country is something I could, you know, Something that I think would be some very, forgive me, I'm really tired from a long day of work.

Just, yeah, I think I can move my passion to great effect for everyone on the commission.

And yeah, appreciate it.

Thank you.

I just want to raise up the fact that I see that Joseph is an ISA certified arborist.

It's not a fast task to complete.

As we've discussed here in this committee, it takes about three years of hours on the job and then a two-hour certification.

Joseph, anything you want to add about how your ISA certification helps you in the job?

Certainly.

Yeah, that's something I obtained at the beginning of this year, I think late January, early February.

And yeah, I think studying for that exam, you know, in the books and also just what I've gained through field experience and what, you know, what I've learned from other folks who have been in the arboricultural industry for a while.

You know, I think I think there's a lot of science, you know, over cultures, especially from the ISA's perspective is a very scientifically based practice and I think, you know, coming to the commission with that knowledge that you know other folks, of course, have but.

Is something that I think is critical when we're looking at these sort of, like Patty was mentioning, sort of these climate justice issues and these, you know, environmental justice issues, which I am personally very interested in working on on the commission here.

Well said, and I also see you're a member of the Washington Conservation Corps.

It's always great to see people in the state and nation.

Thank you for that.

Looking forward to having you.

Of course.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate your time today.

All right.

Thanks, Joe.

Next, how about position three, Felicia Kurji?

Hi, y'all.

I'm Felicia Kuruci.

My pronouns are they or she.

And I have lived in Seattle for a couple of years now.

I'm originally from Florida.

And I work with Seattle Parks Foundation.

So I'm really passionate about green spaces and intersections with environmental justice.

And very excited to learn alongside y'all and learn more about the process within the commission.

Wonderful.

And I'm sorry, Felicia, I'm having trouble finding your packet here on Legistar.

There was a misspelling on the agenda.

This was the amendment that Noel was telling me about that we will need to bring an amendment because at some point in this process, we had a misspelling.

So thank you for that, Patty.

I see, Felicia, your experience here as a community partnership coordinator with the Seattle Parks Foundation, Environmental Aid for King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks, and as an urban forestry undergraduate researcher, this is a wealth of experience.

This is like, you have worked in many different places both, you know, out Foundation being non-governmental entity, Department of Natural Resources and Parks being a governmental entity, and then Urban Forestry being a very well-respected school of forestry.

How will these three pieces of your experience and expertise help you most in this role?

Well, I think they would help me in that I have sort of a background in all sorts of places.

a little bit of everything, not an expert in any, or yeah, I wouldn't say that I'm an expert in any, but I think it'll really help to look at things with different perspectives as we're making recommendations and decisions about the urban forest in Seattle.

Wonderful, and I see Councillor Nelson has a question.

Councillor Nelson.

I thank you very much.

What caught my eye was your work with the Seattle Parks Foundation, because I always say that we have to make sure that we're protecting our own canopy on our own land.

And so I think that your perspective will be really valuable, because you're more of an insider than I am, of course.

And so you have some insight about that.

know, whether or not there is anything better that Seattle could do for our trees and parks and right of place.

So thank you.

Wonderful.

All right.

We'll make sure to pass that amendment at the end of this in a future.

Please accept my apologies on behalf of the city of Seattle for that error.

Thanks, and thank you, Felicia.

Next, we have position four hydrologist, Becca Newman.

Hi, I'm Becca Newman.

I'm a professor of civil environmental engineering at University of Washington, and I bring expertise in subsurface hydrology, biogeochemistry, and plant ecology to the commission.

And I'm excited to I don't know, learn more about how government works and kind of bring my scientific skills towards public service.

I mean, I can't say anything more than how excited I am.

I mean, we've had, Seattle has such interesting soil.

I know here in my district, Ballard, we tried to put in some rain gutters along 28th that was a streetcar street and nobody checked the soil.

Clay, they didn't work.

And so I think that when we forget to look at the soil and how hydrology works below the subsurface, if we don't have that understanding, we're not gonna be able to create enough soil space for a tree to either be able to survive or thrive.

Any thoughts about how Seattle's soil in particular is impacting how we need to be thinking about trees?

That's a good question.

I mean, I guess I think a lot about kind of, yeah, the water holding capacity of soils and the nutrient availability, which are obviously crucial for plants to thrive.

In my own neighborhood, you know, I notice trees really, you know, constrained by all the sidewalks and the streets, and I know that can also be a challenge.

in terms of having enough soil there even to catch the water to infiltrate in and having our rainwater not just go as stormwater, for example.

I'm also very passionate about the ability of trees to sequester carbon in soil.

So capturing trees both as a climate adaptation as well as a mitigation strategy for the city.

I'm very excited to work with you.

And please, if you, I love amateur level, trying to understand how our water flows through our space, both subsurface and non-topic surface, and how it's capturing, how trees retain our soil into the ground so that we're not having landslides, et cetera.

Anytime you want to reach out, I would love for that.

Thank you.

Yes.

Council Member Nelson, do you have a question?

Now would be a good time to plug a mycologist or thinking about fungi and the health of our canopy.

That's it.

That's your background?

Yeah.

No, I just amateur.

Oh, yes.

Yes.

Fungi, microbes, all very important to the kind of soil around plant roots and the health of the ecosystem.

I'll bring that in when possible.

Wonderful.

Welcome, Becca.

We're excited to have you.

Having important stuff.

Yep.

All right.

Next, we have position six landscape architect Howling.

Hi, my name is how long I will be if confirmed, I will be serving the commission as a landscape architect in position six.

i'm humbled by this appointment and i'm looking forward to working with other commissioners and our communities in the coming years, thank you patty and the Council members for having me here today.

Absolutely, we're excited to have you.

I think it's important to understand how, I mean, landscape architecture, for me, is just so very interesting.

I think, you know, we look at how City Light, even, or SPU has taken landscape architecture into the built public environment.

It's changed how we look at either drainage or public utilities work.

Because reading your resume, it's just a wealth of experience from across the world.

What are some of the best practices that you've noticed in the places that you've worked that you can bring to Seattle and Arboretum to preserve and expand the tree canopy?

I think it is important to have global view, as cities essentially compete with each other.

So I think the green infrastructure, canopy is part of it, is so important to promote our well-being.

And also, as you mentioned about SPU and the utilities, I think green infrastructure, trees, now we are trying to promote the concept of urban forestry is so important because we are thinking for long term.

perspective to counter great challenges like climate change and social inequality.

But in practice, in current practice of nanoscale architecture and other design fields we are essentially serving for human comfort.

which means many of our built projects are not aligned much with our long-term goals to serve in the great challenges, to counter great challenges.

So I think it is important to realize the great challenges from a global view and to understand the competition between cities across the country and around the globe.

and to promote awareness of urban forestry and to protect our urban forests in the city for a better city and for our future generations.

So well said.

That's why I love landscape architects.

I mean, in bringing your experience from Beijing and Cambridge, which is on the other side of this continent, we're very excited to have you.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Right, thank you how.

Next we have position 13 community neighborhood representative Leah Hall.

Hello, I'm Leah Hall.

I was born and raised in Seattle, and I spent a brief stint in New York City but I've pretty much witnessed Seattle's growth over the last 40 years.

I'm a mother of two small children.

I'm a small business owner, yoga instructor.

I was raised in an immigrant and mixed race household.

And I just have, because I've grown up in Seattle, I just have a deep seated appreciation for the greenery here.

I have a certification in permaculture landscape design and a passion for native plants.

I'm especially interested in this role to having witnessed kind of the The relationship between tree canopy loss and development and understanding the importance of affordability in housing and the importance of density.

we can strike a balance somehow.

And I'm also just interested in how tree canopy is important to human health, as well as how it can help mitigate energy costs and health issues, not just to our community here, but even my relatives abroad who will become you know, the first climate refugees likely due to climate change.

So I'm hoping that we can create a greener and more equitable future here in Seattle and retain what we have and appreciate all of the many benefits that trees provide, as well as have a great walkable and healthy, beautiful environment.

That's really well said Leah and what stands out to me about what you just said in your resume is born and raised in Seattle, moved to New York where you know that city is still a young city and is much older than Seattle and to have the understanding of permaculture With those three things combined, our city is still very, very young.

New York is more formalized, and yet we still see very old trees throughout the city.

And then how do we get from where we are in Seattle as a young city to where New York is now?

Because as time progresses, we will also age as a city.

I'm not saying the development standards, so no one freak out here.

I'm just saying that we are going to grow and age as a city.

use permaculture to create a place that promotes the canopy that you were just talking about?

Yeah, I think that's a great question.

I mean, I think part of it is just having both the hindsight of how development has gone thus far and how Seattle really became a boomtown from logging and When the First Peoples made contact with settlers here, how we greatly impacted the environment, we didn't have necessarily the foresight of, well, I think some folks had the foresight of how things could go, but I think using some of the permaculture principles of observation, seeing impacts of tree canopy loss, and then also having a systems view of how tree canopy affects all of these other systems like energy systems and human health and just the overall beauty of our city, right, our emerald city.

So I think having sort of being able to zoom out a bit and look at the city as a whole, but also seeing how the sort of networks, you know, someone mentioned mycology, and I think that when we look at the way that forests are structured, I think that we can learn a lot about how different systems, whether it be natural systems or organizations within the city can function and communities can function together in a cohabitating beneficial way versus, you know, antagonistic way.

So I hope that answers your question, but

It absolutely does.

You know, the ability to look back at time and say, oh, we should have done it differently.

I think it's also should be noted when settlers arrived here in the Northwest, it was a lush place, bountiful of food.

And that wasn't by accident.

That was because of the millennia of purposefully growing our forests in those ways.

So glad to have you on, Leah.

Thank you.

Thanks, Leah.

Also very well said.

You can see why this slate of new commissioners is so exciting.

There's lots to bring to the commission.

We're also excited about our reappointees, Josh and David.

So how about position seven?

Joshua, do you want to?

Sure.

Hi, council members.

It's great to see you.

Thank you for considering my reappointment.

My name's Josh.

I've been serving in position number seven as the NGO representative for the last three years.

My day job, I'm Urban Conservation Manager at Seattle Audubon.

And that organization has been working and advocating for the urban forest since its founding in 1916, when we called the city to act against illegal log removal at Seward Park.

So I'm happy to continue advocating on behalf of the urban forest more than 100 years later today.

I really enjoy serving on the Urban Forestry Commission, and I have stepped up into the chair role earlier this year.

It lets me kind of work toward three things that are really important to me as an urban conservationist.

One, conserving biodiversity within our city.

We know that the urban forest in Seattle supports at least 100 different bird species as well as many other types of wildlife.

We also know the urban forest will play an important role in how our city adapts to climate change.

And we know that redlining of the racist policies have affected the distribution of vegetation across our city.

So working to address those environmental injustices and making sure there is an equitable distribution of the environmental benefits of the forest, including opportunity to experience birds and wildlife in people's own neighborhoods is really important to me.

So thank you.

Joshua, and thanks for your service thus far.

Since you have already served and you're in the position, what are the things that you'd like to see through continue?

How has the work that you've done translate into the work that you're going to continue doing?

Yeah, I'm really excited to keep building and strengthening relationships with city leaders, city staff, and our elected officials.

We've already done some, some good work, reaching out to the mayor's office, and the council's office and staff at OSC and STCI.

I'm also really excited about our plans to improve how we engage with community, so that our policy recommendations are more reflective of and responsive to community needs.

And then just of course continuing to collaborate with with the city on policies that will help us achieve our canopy goals.

We see some real opportunities through the comprehensive plan that we heard a bit about today, as well as through the tree protection ordinance update the STC is proposed.

We've got some ideas for how we could track investments in the city in the urban forest through the city budget.

And we're excited to also explore improvements to the urban forest management management structures.

Wonderful.

Welcome back, Joshua.

Thank you.

Thanks Josh.

And it looks like David mooring is on the line as an attendee calling in.

Which is different from the presenters.

So is that the same process is it would it would it be a star six for him to be able to.

Mr G, if you could let David morning into the meeting, he is a panelist today.

There we are.

David, I see you are joining by phone.

That works.

Yeah, I guess that works.

Thank you.

If you don't want to join by camera, that works great.

Great.

David Moring, architect and a resident in the Bengali and the Bay Area.

Excited about the possibility and hopefully be reappointed for my second term as in developer architect position.

And I've been working in the past few years with the University of Washington here in Bothell and prior to that, University of Illinois in Chicago, but I have about over 20 years of other experience with architectural firms in Chicago for international and national projects.

Um, architecture, uh, offers an interesting insight, I think, to, um, our tree canopy situation, uh, because, uh, tree canopy and density looks at, you know, science, um, mathematics, budgets, and, and art, uh, to create, I think, a beautiful, um, city of Seattle.

And I know that our city council members are very passionate about, um, the tree canopy as well as providing for the city's density needs.

I know we have many residents as well, and I'm very excited about the diversity of the new panelists or the new commissioners that are also on the slate.

And they all sound like wonderful commissioners to continue to work with.

look forward to the opportunity.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Patty, can you confirm for me if we are not able to reappoint somebody today?

They retain their seat until that seat is filled.

Is that correct?

Yes, there is precedent for that happening.

Somebody continuing to fill a position until, yeah, action is taken.

Okay, because I'd like to take this into consideration today, David, you know, this morning, or I guess this afternoon, with two minutes each.

You and another individual had what I cannot validate to be true on either side within the last hour and a half.

I do just note that.

there were allegations made and they were serious enough that if the person alleging those things, if they are not valid, that is a big smudge on their reputation.

If they are valid, I think that we need to fully understand the situation there.

So with your I would like to hold it until the next meeting, understanding that you can retain your seat on the commission, because I have enjoyed working with you and I do appreciate your perspective.

So I just wanted to flag that and provide some space for you to respond.

Yeah, sure.

No, that sounds certainly reasonable.

Yeah, I.

don't need to get into detail here, but like I mentioned, I expect to leave with the public comments here.

The accusations I think that were made were probably based upon, you know, their stance.

I know that you may also want to look into their, you know, their being part of the appeal of the tree protection So they have an agenda, which is perhaps opposite of mine, which I consider my agenda to be density and trees.

I think from the appeal that they have filed, their agenda may not necessarily be towards those two goals.

But I'd certainly invite you to look into those allegations and look at the real matter of why those, what was being talked about.

And I can certainly ask more or answer more questions about that as well.

Thank you, David.

Yeah, I mean, in the two minutes back and forth this afternoon, if those are all of the details and it really was As presented, I won't have a problem moving your appointment forward if there's more.

And I think now is not the time to have this conversation.

Now is the time to thank you for your continued service to our city, sitting on this commission.

So that's what I'm gonna kind of center right here and now because these are volunteer roles and you've been volunteering your time to help us create better food protections in our city.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, David.

And I want to thank all of the appointees for being present today and introducing yourselves.

Again, we're excited about this slate of appointees and looking forward to these folks starting their terms as commissioners, pending your confirmation.

Wonderful.

So I'm going to go through a couple of iterations since we need to have the items read into the record.

I will move to hold appointment 0206 until the June 8th Land Use Committee.

Is there any objection?

Seeing no objection, we will hold that appointment.

And as we were alerted, there was a typo in one of the packets, so if there's no objection, I move to amend with the correcting Felicia.

Is there any objection?

Hearing no objection, the title of the appointment is 0305 is amended and on behalf of the City of Seattle, I do share my apologies for that mistake.

I now move to recommend confirmation of Appointments 02-01 through 02-05 and Appointments 02-07.

Is there a second?

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of Appointments 02-01 through 02-05 and Appointments 02-07.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Member Davidson?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you all for your, the motion passes.

Appointment 02-01 through 02-05 and appointment 03-07 passes.

Thank you all for your willingness to serve in these important roles, for your time as volunteers in these roles.

And I do look forward to working with you in the coming months to finally adopt a stronger food protection ordinance.

These appointments will be back before the full council on May 17th sitting to my Norwegian Constitution Day.

You need not attend that meeting if you don't want to.

And we will be back in touch to create a pathway and process forward to our June 8th meeting.

Thank you, Patty.

Always wonderful to see you.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, council members.

Appreciate it.

Talk to you soon.

Take care.

Okay, bye.

Our final items of business today are five appointments to the Seattle Design Commission.

Mr. Ahn, will you please read the next five agenda items into the record?

Agenda items nine through 13. Appointments 02196 through 02200. Appointments of Matt Alts, Erica Bush, and Pooja Chah as member of Seattle Design Commission, as well as the appointment of Vinita Sidhu as chair of Seattle Design Commission, and reappointment of Elizabeth Connor as member of Seattle Design Commission.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Mr. Onn.

Mr. Jenkins, the floor is yours.

Please take it.

And I have to just say from the outset, I can tell you folks all work in design because of their backgrounds are all better designed than anything that I can do.

I'm already looking forward to this conversation.

Well, thank you, Councilmember it's nice to see all of you again.

Let me just do a quick setup background for you again thank you.

Thank you Councilmember for your time today.

We are seeking for appointments, three new commissioners who I'll introduce in just a second.

and the appointment of our chair, Vanita Sidhu, who's currently in the landscape architect position.

She had a meeting that she was unable to get out of today, and she sends her apologies.

I see her right here.

Oh, did you?

Oh, great.

It took so long talking about everything else that she was able to join.

Hey, Vanita, thank you.

And finally, we have a reappointment of Elizabeth Connor, who is in the artist position.

Just a quick bit of background.

The Design Commission advises the mayor, the council, and city departments on the design and environmental implications of city-funded capital projects, public projects seeking approval from the city, and projects that seek long-term or permanent use of a right-of-way.

The commission activities are supported by a staff of five, including myself.

Commissioners are appointed for a two-year term and are eligible for a second two-year term.

The chair is appointed to a one-year term.

The design commission is comprised of 10 commissioners that are appointed to specific positions.

We're required to have two licensed architects, an artist, and an at-large position.

The remaining positions are selected from a slate of design professionals, including landscape architects, urban planners, urban designers, and engineers.

And finally, we also have a representative from the YMCA's Get Engaged program.

And for our recruitment, we're required to use context with professional organizations, but we've been quite successful with outreach using social media, posting with community groups, and partnering with city departments to expand equitable outreach.

I'm going to introduce commissioners in alphabetic order for their last names.

I'm going to start with Matt Alfs, who's joining us as one of our two architects on the commission.

Matt is the founder and principal of Building Works, a Seattle-based firm focusing on design, architecture, and preservation.

Next would be Erica Bush as our urban designer.

She's the founder and principal of The Central Collective, an architecture, planning, and design firm located in Seattle.

Erica focuses her practice on urban design, placemaking, and public art.

Next is Pooja Shah.

She's joining us as engineer, and she's a principal at KPFF's Seattle offices.

Pooja focuses much of her work on civil engineering and stormwater solutions that affect new commercial and industrial development.

And finally, Vinita Sidhu currently serves in her last year as landscape architect on the commission and now as chair.

She's a principal at Site Workshop, a Seattle-based landscape architecture firm, where she specializes in educational and medical facilities, as well as doing significant work with the Trust for Public Land, reclaiming public space for BIPOC communities in Central Washington.

That's my introduction, and I'm sure you have questions for each of the commissioners.

So if you don't have anything for me, I'll go ahead and mute and throw it first to Matt.

Sounds good to me.

Take it away Matt.

Thanks everyone.

Council members for this.

My name is Matt Alps.

I've been a practicing architect in Seattle for about 22 years.

I received my Master of Architecture from the University of Washington.

And throughout my, my work I found.

interest and focus in the public realm, both in the design of public facilities but also in buildings in the way that they meet and engage the public space in and around.

So, I have a great deal of respect and I value the work of local government and particular boards and commissions.

For many years I've been a presenter to other boards and commissions the landmarks preservation board, etc.

And through the work those working relationships I found that we've had better outcomes in a project so I value this opportunity to be on the other side of the table with the Design Commission, supporting better design outcomes, better equity, better quality of potential for better quality of life and I think the Design Commission.

is doing really important work in those regards to help make the city a healthier, safer, and better place for everyone.

That's really great, Matt.

And I can see from your resume, you've worked on a lot of libraries and schools, a lot of public institutions.

I'll also say that you worked on Round Hall at Camp South, where I ate many a meal during the summer.

Excellent.

help maybe add some light to how working on public institutions is going to influence or how you approach that work with public institutions.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of richness there.

But I think, first of all, when we work for public agency clients, we are trying to help the agency, if it's a library, for example, get the most for the investment in the facility that's going to serve the most people.

And then we think a lot about human centered design and the pedestrian oriented experience.

as opposed to an experience based on a vehicle or on other planning considerations.

I really think it's important to think about the human body and how the human interacts with the space, with the materials, with the building, coming and going, walking.

Is it generous?

Does it support good health and a good feeling for pedestrians in the city?

Because if it does that, then I think it helps create It helps improve the experience of living in the city.

So, the other thing that we do a lot as we work on historic preservation or adaptive reuse, and we felt that with the.

The really rapid redevelopment of much of the city over the past 10 years.

There's been a loss of public place and a loss of, I think shared resources in the built environment and so by finding ways to reuse buildings I think we can actually make a positive impact on the climate crisis, because of the embodied carbon existing buildings and and stopping the need to use new resources to build new.

But also I think it has a positive psychological and cultural impact in the experience of people that live in the city.

I could not say it better myself.

I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with this conversation because it is the built environment is what shapes our experience here.

in our life in so many consequential ways.

Really excited to have you, Matt.

Thank you.

Michael, is Erica up next?

And then I lost track of who goes after that, so we'll just pass the microphone around.

It's Pooja.

Erica, Pooja, and then Venita.

So Erica, take it away.

Hi, everyone.

Thank you so much for having me here, Commission.

So excited to be a part of this and to sit amongst, honestly, a group of people that I look up to and respect in so many ways.

So from my initial participation in commission meetings, I can already see so much of what value this group brings to this city and to those that then go on to do great things and I am very much looking forward to being a part of that.

So I have been practicing for about eight years.

I too went to University of Washington.

I received my a master's in urban planning and master's in landscape architecture there, as well as a certificate in urban design.

And I've always been a lover of cities.

I grew up in New York City.

I've lived here for 13 years now.

I also lived in Boston and Montreal.

And I just am drawn to the energy that cities provide.

And I see it as a luxury to be able to work in sharing that sort of feeling that we get being in shared spaces with others.

So that's a little bit about myself.

I am also an artist.

I do a lot of public art, particularly art that encourages people to spend time in public space and really think about how we use those environments differently.

And I think there's this beautiful collaboration between architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and art how they all kind of fit together into this sort of orchestration of public space that I think is really beautiful.

So that's a bit about me.

Well, we're really excited to have you.

I see that you were able to work for the Downtown Seattle Association during some of Seattle's most intensive growth, likely since the cold rush.

What can you tell us about that experience and how that can help you here on the Design Commission?

Oh, no, as soon as we asked the question, Erica has frozen.

I think that just demonstrates how much growth she witnessed in our city.

It froze the internet.

Anyway about it, we're really excited to have you, Erica.

And you're back.

I'm back.

Did I freeze?

You did.

OK, sorry.

I don't know how much of that you caught.

But yes, the DSA was absolutely wonderful.

I was able to start the public art program there and sort of work to kind of demonstrate to the city how much that type of collaborative partnership with BIAs could bring to our public spaces.

So it was very exciting.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you, Erica.

We're excited to have you.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Well, thank you all for having me.

My name is Pooja Shah.

I'm a professional civil engineer and a partner at KPFF Consulting Engineers.

I went to school at the University of British Columbia.

I grew up in Canada, and I moved to Seattle in 2000 and have been living and working here ever since.

I've kind of experienced the city in a lot of different ways.

I have been fortunate enough to work on some really cool projects and, you know, whenever I'm out riding my bike, I get to ride past all the fun stuff I've helped build.

I've also been a former member of the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board and also SPU's Customer Review Panel.

I'm super excited to be able to contribute my professional perspective to the review of the projects that come to the commission.

And I'm also really interested in helping the city consider equitable access to services provided to its residents.

So thanks again for having me.

We're really excited.

And the list of projects that you've worked on from King Street Station, the University of Washington, Mott Lake Triangle, and the Rainier Vista, I mean, these are iconic.

Yeah, it's really, it's super fun now to fly home into Seattle and see the stuff that I've worked on.

And I think one thing that stands out to me on your resume, which is extremely important, is the ability to improve what we've already done.

And I use the Burke-Dillman Trail and your improvements to mixing zones as an example.

the Burke-Coleman Trail was initially put in it was because we were there was no political will to have bike infrastructure on our streets so we created grade separated trails for multi-use but that did not take into consideration the day and age where we would then have protected bike lanes and other forms of transportation mixing with the trail.

Can you share how upgrading those, those aspects of the trail to include mixing zones, what you did and how that's going to help us with the commitment moving forward?

Absolutely.

I'm, you know, I'm an avid cyclist and so that has helped me kind of navigate the design of projects like that.

I can see things from the engineering perspective, but also from the perspective of a trail user.

And it's, you know, it's so common for there to be, you know, conflicts between different trail users, pedestrians, cyclists at areas where there's different junctions between trails.

So that's been, it's been a really great learning experience actually for me to work on things like that and to think about things differently, to think about things from, perspective of a wheelchair user.

Everybody's got different needs for these trails.

They're heavily used.

And one of my favorite things actually on that project was walking the finished product with somebody who was in a wheelchair.

And, you know, they they're super honest about some of the things that they wish we had done differently.

And they were appreciative of the things that we had done.

But It just helps you kind of see things a little bit differently the next time around.

So that is what I strive to do is make it better the next time.

I mean, that's all we look for.

I mean, that is excellent.

That is the most excellent response I think I've heard all day of just being able to see what we've done, fix it, and still be open to how to do it better.

We're really excited to have you.

Thank you.

Vanita, we took so long.

Now you're here at the community, I would say the first time ever here virtually.

So Lenita, welcome, please take it away.

Thank you.

Yeah, I was worried I was going to miss this, and I'm glad I didn't.

Yeah, I'm a landscape architect by profession, principal and partner at Set Workshop.

I've lived here in Seattle since 1998. though I am at East Coast Transplant, did my education out there.

And I've worked on a huge range of projects and currently I'm doing a lot of education facilities, including K through 12 within our Seattle School District and with other agencies.

And I have experience at University of Washington working on projects there, even with POOJA.

And I just have to say it's been an honor being on the Design Commission these last three years.

I've seen some great projects come through and I've seen how we've worked together as a group to make those projects even better.

You know, as a team, we adapted really well to the pandemic and going online.

And, you know, I appreciate Michael and everybody that supported that.

So we were able to keep our reviews going and I think continue to be effective.

And it's been a great period of partnerships in, you know, working with Sound Transit to think about how we're going to make that next phase of improvements the best they can be for the city.

So I look forward to my last year here on the commission and doing my part with all these new members.

So thank you.

Thank you for your leadership.

I mean, beyond just going to the landscape architecture school, just looking at some of the work that you've done, the Helms Summers building in Olympia, beyond being named after the long time 36th district representative, it is a beautiful building.

Working on Northwest Peak Park in Fremont, I mean, I love that park beyond, Beyond words, I mean, it's just looking at your block project block home number 10. You have some amazing experience and it's clear that, you know, your company also has worked on promissory pedestrianization for the Seattle Center, the Ballard Avenue Street Cafe.

You and your firm are leading the city and our state.

I guess, what other words of charge do you have for your last year here?

Words of charge.

One project I've been working on a lot for the last few years is a park project that started with a group called the Eli's Park Project that is looking at how to be radically inclusive, which is a challenging thing, and that gets into accessibility, as Pooja was mentioning, with wheelchairs, but it also gets into our diversity as a city and our diversity of our backgrounds from gender and race and ability.

And I think I like to bring that lens to all the projects I look at and it's made me think, challenge myself in my work and would like to challenge others too because sometimes we think know, you can only do so much, but often there's just another way of looking at a project, so.

And, you know, wellness, to me, wellness is a super important thing for our city as a whole, and it's In our projects, there are opportunities in the landscape, in the site, to really create these healthy environments that make us feel welcomed and comfortable and improve the quality of our environment.

So that's something I think about a lot.

Wonderful.

Well, we are grateful for your leadership, and we're glad to have you back.

Thank you.

And Michael, did we have Elizabeth Connor with us today or no?

No, she wasn't able to attend today, but I'm more than happy to speak about, the artists on the commission oftentimes provide one of many moral compasses for us.

And Elizabeth shares that and her advocacy for art, equity, things that matter to the way that people use space.

She carries that tradition.

All the commissioners do.

She definitely takes the commission into new places in those topics, and we appreciate the time that she spends and the commitments that she makes to helping the commission in realizing our work plan.

So I will send your best to her as well.

Colleagues, I've done a lot of talking here.

Any questions, comments?

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you very much.

And I like your questions for each of the nominees, Mr. Chair, for this slate and the previous slate.

So thanks for taking up the mantle on that.

I just want to say how impressed I am and excited when you all spoke.

It really underscored the importance of social cohesion and how city design can foster social cohesion and especially coming out of the pandemic and the consequences of so much isolation and stress.

how we can create a city that helps people yes move it in and out and around our city without having to use single occupancy vehicles but also how we can create more opportunities for public plazas and community gatherings and outdoor eating and all of these things so it just makes me very excited about the public health approach that you're taking towards building cities of the future and And my little public health heart is full and very excited about the work that you will do.

So thanks for the expertise that you're bringing to this body.

And I look forward as well, Mr. Chair, to having a future conversation about the way that this commission really has, I think, an important platform versus sort of how maybe it gets duplicated in other realms with the design review bodies.

And I am very excited about the overarching perspective that the commission and the commissioners can provide.

I look forward to having that discussion at a future point, but just very excited about the work and role that you all will be doing for our city, with our city, and how you can help create healthier communities and economies at the same time.

So thanks for your service.

So well said, and I dare someone to speak after Council Member Rosado.

I unfortunately don't get the option not to oftentimes.

here being one of them.

But really, I mean, Council Member Muscata, you nailed it.

And I really like the direction that you're going with those comments.

Colleagues, any other questions?

If not, I'd like to recommend confirmation of appointments 02196 through 02200. Is there a second?

Thank you, it has been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of appointment 02196 through 02200. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Nielsen?

Aye.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Vice Chair Morales?

Yes.

Chair Stroud.

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

Motion passes.

0 2 1 9 6 3 0 2 2 0 0 pass.

Thank you again for your volunteer public service on the design commission.

These appointments will be back before full council on Tuesday, May 17th.

Sitting to mine or we can constitute today.

And there's not a need for you to attend that meeting.

And I really want to thank you for your service to our city.

Thank you council members.

I appreciate the time and the interest in the commission and always look forward to seeing all of you.

Thank you.

Right back at you Michael.

Colleagues, any other items for the order?

Seeing none, this concludes the Wednesday, May 11th, 2022 meeting of the Land Use Committee.

The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Land Use Committee on May 25th will be canceled.

So our next meeting will be on June 8th starting at 2 p.m.

I thank you for attending and we are now adjourned.