Good morning, everybody.
Thank you for being here for our regularly scheduled Monday briefing on September 16th.
Let me start the meeting by stating that we are joined by Councilmember Sawant, Bagshaw, Pacheco, Mosqueda, and Councilmember Gonzalez.
And if there's no objection, the minutes of the September 3rd and September 9th, 2019 meeting will be approved.
Hear no objection, those minutes are approved.
So let's go around the table and talk about a preview of today's full council actions or this week's activities.
I'll start off by saying that the Governance, Equity, and Technology Committee will meet tomorrow at 930. We have three items up for discussion and vote.
The first one will be relating to crimes and offenses concerning animals, which basically is amending Section 925-100 of the Seattle Municipal Code to make it consistent with what was changed in state law, sort of a reconciliation, if you will.
And as many knows that the state legislature sort of changed and reclassified and changed the penalties for certain animal control crimes to make basically increased them and the maximum penalties were increased.
So we'll change the municipal code, reflect the changes in state law.
And the second one is similarly a reconciliation with state law that has to do with the sale and use of tobacco and marijuana products to minors.
As you may recall, again, our state legislature changed the legal buying age of tobacco and vaping products to 21, and that will be effective in January of 2020, and we will make sure our city law reflects those changes in state law.
And then last will be a surveillance technology implementation in Ordinance 119519. I want to thank all of the departments and the working groups and the ACLU and many council members.
And particularly the departments are putting in so much time on trying to get the surveillance ordinance tight and effective.
And we think we have legislation ready to present to the committee again for approval.
So those three items will be presented this Tuesday at 930. And Council Member Gonzalez may say more about it, but I did want to announce that this Wednesday, At 6 o'clock, we'll have a special joint meeting with the Select Labor Committee and Community Police Commission, which is a public hearing notice as we go through the process of looking at labor agreements and what we're trying to do in the world of public safety.
That's all I have for now.
We do have two executive sessions after this meeting, so I'll just throw that out there as we discuss things this morning.
Council Member Swanton, you have the floor.
Thank you, President Harreld.
Good morning, everyone.
There are no items in today's City Council agenda from the Human Services, Equitable Development, and Renters' Rights Committee.
The next meeting of the committee is scheduled for a special time, which is next Monday, September 23rd at 6 p.m.
here in Council Chambers.
At that meeting, we will discuss the draft rent control ordinance that my office is preparing alongside the City of Seattle Renters' Commission and many organizations, and we will hear from, hopefully, from many community advocates who support rent control in Seattle and why.
At today's city council meeting, we will have the resolution in support of the global climate strike which is scheduled for this Friday, September 20th.
It's a global strike in Seattle.
We will be seeing the march leaving from Cal Anderson Park at 9 a.m.
It is not a coincidence that cities around the country are passing Green New Deal legislation this year.
It's clearly the science as indicated and because regular people, especially young people in schools and colleges and young workers, have started building a movement to force political establishment everywhere to take up these issues.
And it's really heartening to see that this global call for student walkouts has been joined by workers as well.
And nearly 1,000 Amazon employees have announced that they will be joining in solidarity with the students.
And it's also important to note that the Amazon workers are demanding that their own company, Amazon, stop donating to climate change denier politicians and lobbyists.
stop working with oil and gas extraction companies, and they're calling on their own company to achieve zero carbon emission by And the resolution that we will be bringing forward is, of course, in solidarity with the advocacy by 350 Seattle, God Green, Puget Sound, SAGE, and is supported by urban activists, affordable housing advocates, socialists, and labor unions.
So we'll have that this afternoon.
And also, it'll be alongside the Green New Deal Oversight Committee ordinance that I'm sure Council Member O'Brien will be talking about.
Thank you, Council Member Schwan.
Council Member Herbold.
Thank you.
As far as what the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, Arts Committee has on the full council agenda today at 2, we have two Museum Development Authority governing board reappointments for Women's Commission appointments.
and two Human Rights Commission appointments.
There is no Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development and Arts Committee meeting this week.
The regional committee that I will be attending this week is the Regional Transit Committee and I'm looking forward to hearing a presentation on the equitable mobility framework at that committee meeting.
And I'm just calling it out because one of the District 1 constituents has been really active in participating in that, Paulina Lopez, and she'll be leading the presentation.
I'm excited to hear what she has to say about more equitable transit access.
In addition, we have distribution of a couple of proclamations and letters.
One is for next week's Diaper Need Awareness Day, sponsored by Westside Baby, and my staff will be sending around a proclamation for signatures this week.
And I want to thank Council Members Gonzalez and Mosqueda's office for their support in hosting the diaper drive through the end of next week.
Thank you, Council Member Herbold.
Council Member Bagshaw.
Thank you very much.
Good morning, everybody.
I've got my own announcements for this morning, and also Council Member Juarez, who will be joining us this afternoon, but not here this morning.
So I know we have a big agenda today, 35 items.
11 of those items are from my committee, so I want to apologize in advance.
It's going to take some time, but we're going to be covering Not only 11, but two others that I understand have been directed to Seattle, this full council for around a collective bargaining agreement and the information technology professional discretionary pay program.
We're also going to cover the Second Quarter Employment Ordinance, the FAS Emergency Procurement Ordinance.
All of these have gone through my committee, and I want to thank Council Member Gonzalez for joining me at this last meeting and going through all these.
We'll hear about the Sweetened Beverage Tax Public Awareness Campaign Proviso Lift, which again came out of our committee.
Sandpoint Ordinance that will authorize our Office of Housing to enter into a 30-year lease agreement with an organization at Sandpoint Magnuson Park.
Lehigh will be taking over the lead to develop 20 to 25 apartments there.
And these are actually going to be one-bedroom cottages for people who are formerly homeless.
Also, some of those cottages, what I like about these is that they take our tiny homes a step to the improved basis with having toilets and shower and a small kitchenette in each of the cottages.
So they are $150,000 a piece to build, but far less than having a single unit built in a multifamily entity.
So I'm excited about this.
Frank Chopp, our former speaker, has been pushing this and this will be the first one, the first pilot we've got.
We'll also have an opportunity to vote on the K site that's in Uptown, the lease agreement that's right across from Seattle Center.
Plymouth Housing, I'll be taking over that.
We'll have another Sandpoint Resolution that's just simply a cleanup.
Another big item is the Tree Resolution.
I've been working with the Mayor's Office and the Urban Forestry Commission for many, many months, so we're going to introduce this resolution that prepares for a work plan.
and the Mayor's Office has committed to getting started later this year and into 2020 to develop an ordinance that will protect our tree canopy on both public and private property.
We also have four appointments to our Youth Commission Naftali, Marie Gonzalez, she goes by Nicole.
These four youth are just amazing and the work they've done.
Danani Hassan, Parisa Harvey, and Kevin Jackson, who, and I'll tell you a little bit more about that this afternoon, so those four notes.
We also have a proclamation circulating.
This is in honor of Greg Rosa, who is the owner of Ludie's Restaurant, used to be on the corner of 2nd and Pike.
It had been there for 41 years.
And he is the brother of our very own Marina Rosa, and we're circulating this proclamation in order of his good work.
I'll be presenting that this afternoon.
We're also going to have a special finance and neighborhood committee this Wednesday during the lunch hours.
It'll be at noon and we'll hear the RV legislation and we will review and decide whether we're going to vote out the condemnation ordinance and the condemnation resolution for the cannery building down in Pioneer Square.
Many of you know that I've been working on this for the better part of a year, working with the owner of the property And as I've stated many times, my goal is to get him to deal with the blighted property.
We're not interested in condemning the property, but if he fails to move forward this year with a plan, we will have the authority to do so.
So lastly for Deborah Juarez, she has an appointment to the Parks District Oversight Committee.
Parks ordinance that authorizes the superintendent of parks to extend the 10-year lease with the children's play garden and ordinance that authorizes SPU to execute a memorandum of agreement between the city and the Muckleshoot Indian tribe for the Chester Morse collection, and lastly, an ordinance that authorizes Seattle Center to complete negotiations with the monorail.
And I want to acknowledge Robert Nellum's and I think Marshall Foster was working on that as well.
But Tom Albro, who operates the monorail, that's taken many, many months to reach this agreement, but ORCA cards are going to be accepted.
It's a big opportunity to get people to Seattle Center without having to drive their cars.
So I'm delighted with that.
Deborah's next committee will not be until December 4th at 2 p.m., so she is wrapping it up.
And then the very last thing I have to say is thank you to our police department who came and responded yesterday.
My e-bike was stolen.
Nothing makes me madder than to have lost my e-bike.
But it was broken into in a secured garage that requires a fob in two different places.
So we're looking at the tapes and seeing what we can do about finding my bike.
But thank you to the police department.
I really appreciated their fast response.
Yeah, that's tough.
Council Member Gonzalez.
Thank you.
I just wanted to, first of all, sorry, Council Member Bagshaw, about the loss of your bike, if it makes you feel any better.
That happened to our household as well, and it took us two weeks, but we were able to recover my husband's bike, so not all hope is lost there.
But on a substantive issue, I do have an amendment that I will be presenting at full council today that I circulated, or that Allie Panucci, thank you, Allie, circulated via email to all council members, but this is with regard to an item on the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee report.
And so that is an amendment to Resolution 31902, which is the tree resolution that Council Member Bagshaw I'm going to go ahead and circulate it here at the table.
At committee, I flagged my concern with regard to the community engagement component of the tree resolution.
There was some language in the recitals about recognizing the need to prioritize the needs of low income and low canopy neighborhoods, but unfortunately that language did not make it into the actual section, which provided direction and council's intent to the mayor's office around community engagement components.
So this is language that was lifted from the Green New Deal ordinance that really sort of recognized that tree canopy is an important part of adaptation for in this period of climate change.
And this was an opportunity for us to, I think, make sure that we were threading the needle in terms of making sure that when community engagement does occur in this body of work over the next several months and next year, that communities that are low income and currently residing in low canopy neighborhoods are prioritized in the efforts around community engagement to make sure that community engagement is as robust.
meaningful and targeted as possible towards addressing the resilience of those communities who are the greatest at risk in terms of climate change and poor air quality.
So the amendment is pretty simple.
I also included some language to incorporate the need to make sure that community engagement not only prioritizes that part of the community, but that the community engagement is also done in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner.
So these shouldn't be new things.
To the chair, I chair Bagshaw's support.
during the committee.
I certainly don't want to speak for you, Chair Bagshaw, but this is where I ended up on the final amendment language.
No, I think it's great.
Thank you for bringing it forward.
And I also wanted to acknowledge something that you advocated for very strongly during our last budget session and I think bringing it up again prior to is that language about culturally and linguistically appropriate and prioritizing engagement with residents of the low income and low canopy neighborhoods and I very much respect that and I'm happy to support you in that amendment.
Thank you for your support.
Appreciate it.
Very good.
Council Member Pacheco.
Good morning.
Good morning.
There are two plus related items on introduction and referral today.
Council Bill 119-649.
It's a plat approval ordinance for Raymond Place and Council Bill 119-651, a contract rezone of 4730 15th Avenue Northeast from low rise three to neighborhoods commercial two with a 65 foot height limit.
There is one PLEZ related item on the full council agenda today, which is Council Bill 119597, which amends open space policies in South Lake Union to facilitate the preservation of the Seattle Times Park.
The PLEZ meeting this Wednesday is canceled, and the next PLEZ committee meeting is Tuesday, September 24th at noon.
Very good, thank you.
Council Member Esqueda.
Good morning, Mr. President and colleagues.
Good morning.
Today's a really exciting day.
We have four pieces of legislation from the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee to bring to full Council's agenda, and that is, without further ado, our four pieces of legislation on hotel workers.
That's Council Bill 119554, Protecting Hotel Employees from Injury.
Council Bill 119556, Hotel Employee Job Retention.
Council Bill 119557, Hotel Employee Safety Protections.
And finally, Council Bill 119555, on medical care and access to purchasing health care.
I want to thank Councilmember Gonzalez, who is co-sponsor of all four pieces of this legislation, and all of you.
I think every single one of you have participated in our council committee discussions.
We have had no less than nine official committee briefings on the four pieces of legislation.
And after nine committee hearings and robust discussion with both the industry and advocates and workers themselves from the hotel worker side, we are bringing forward these four pieces of legislation that have been, frankly, edited and amended and improved because of all of your participation.
We want to thank folks from the Hospitality and Restaurant Association, Unite Here, the folks at Central Staff, Office of Labor Standards, Executive's Office, as we have been working to make sure that we have strong protections for workers.
against harassment and retaliation, making sure we provide them with the ability to access healthcare, disincentivize workloads that create injury, and promote job retention.
So all four of these pieces we really feel are in line with 77% of what voters want, in line with the 77% of voters who voted to support the legislation, Initiative 124 to begin with.
But here we are as the legislative body and we've had the chance to learn from that language in the past and improve upon it quite frankly.
What you see from us is an intent to try to include a lot of voices that we heard specifically from the small business community.
I think it's important to note that three pieces of the legislation really do take into consideration the smallest businesses and their feedback.
For example, on the harassment retention and health care bill.
I want to make sure that folks know that these bills only cover businesses with more than 50 employees and if the business leases and contracts with the hotel and has between 50 and 250 employees, they have five years to get into compliance.
This is really important as you think about potentially people who currently have a lease and If they need to renegotiate their lease in the future or think about a more workable workplace for them, they do not have to immediately rush into the harassment, I'm sorry, the retention, health care, injury sections.
It is important to note though on harassment that we did want to have a conversation with workers both in the industry and the businesses themselves.
I think everyone can agree that when it comes to protection from harassment, intimidation, we want to make sure that from the get-go those same protections are applied.
But there are some important changes that we've made to the harassment legislation.
So the harassment legislation now focuses on protecting the worker as opposed to legislating around the accused harasser.
It focuses on providing a support system for the survivor, extra time off to deal with harassment or violent conduct, That makes sure that all employees at the hotel are protected and making sure that they don't have to, for example, deliver food or clean a room if they have been in a situation where there is someone who has made them feel uncomfortable, has harassed them.
or intimidated them.
And really this language has been heavily informed by the King County Crime Victims and Sexual Assault Survivors Coalition, the Public Defenders Association, and as you heard us say at the last committee meeting, by the ACLU.
We really appreciate the ACLU's willingness to work with us and make sure that this was a workable protection that we provided for workers in and around this industry and that it really passed legal muster in terms of how we ensure everybody's rights are protected and that most importantly those who are more vulnerable workers and remember this is mostly women, people of color, and immigrant workers, that those folks have the right to speak up when they experience that kind of behavior and know that there will be a process to make sure that their safety is protected.
Also important to note, to clarify in case anybody was listening to the radio this morning, there has been significant changes made on the ancillary business definition.
I really want to thank Council Member Baggion and a number of you who've provided feedback over the last few months.
It is important to note that this definition has been scoped pretty dramatically.
We are now talking about businesses that either have a direct tie into hotel purpose, or for those restaurants that are located at the hotel that there is an inside entrance.
That has been pretty changed dramatically from the initial conversations we've had and that is absolutely reflective of the feedback that we heard from folks at the table.
and in public testimony in small businesses.
So I'm happy that we have a scope definition and I still believe that it is very much in line with the intent of the voters and the will of the initiative.
Finally, there is an amendment on health care that we will be bringing forward today and that includes some language that we have run by stakeholders, including the Hospitality Association and the worker advocates, but mostly the Hospitality Association.
We wanted to make sure that if there is any chance that a worker decides that they don't want any of the health care aspects afforded to them under the law, which means either healthcare that's being offered by the employer, a combination of healthcare and a cash equivalent, or a cash equivalent all by itself.
If there's any chance that a worker says, you know what, I really don't want any of that, and they decline, then the employer is deemed to have fulfilled its responsibilities under the law if the hotel can obtain a signed waiver.
And then in the situation that a hotel employee does not want to sign the waiver, we've now included protections to make sure that it's very clear that the employer has fulfilled their obligations under the law.
So this is something that has come up repeatedly over the last few months, and we do think that this language, which, by the way, has been reviewed by law.
Our friends at law, I know everyone's going to ask that when it's a Monday morning amendment.
But yes, it has been reviewed, and it has also been discussed with stakeholders.
So looking forward to bringing that language forward to offer that clarity.
Again, I just want to thank all of you for your feedback and for the opportunity to really fulfill, I hope, the will of the voters through these four pieces of legislation.
Great, and just to clarify what I think you just said, that is if the hotel offers health insurance to an individual and the individual chooses not to for whatever reason, let's say they have a spouse that has better, equal or better insurance, no cash payment is going to be required.
That's correct.
And there's three options that still exist for the employer.
It's either an offer of health care, it's an offer of health care plus the cash to equal the health care expenditure in the law, or it's just the health care expenditure amount if they're not choosing to offer any health care.
So they still have the option of any of those three, which is really important as we defer to the employer to choose their own adventure in that section.
I have just one.
slight nuance clarification to that response that Councilmember Muscata just provided which is it's not just an offer there has to be a written waiver Received by the employer from the employee, so it's not just the mere act of offering a waiver, which would be sort of, you know, unfortunately, it could potentially be sort of an exception that swallows the rule in that situation if all it takes to comply with the code is a mere offer, whether it's meaningful or not.
So the only caveat I would add to that is that it's not just an offer of a waiver.
It is a obtaining a signed waiver from the employee.
If the employee chooses not to sign the waiver, then it's a choose your own adventure under the code for the employer in terms of enrollment of the employee in healthcare.
I need just a little clarification on that.
So I can't imagine this is going to happen very often, but let's say the individual chooses not to, but doesn't want to sign the waiver either.
What does the hotel
in that point?
Register the employee for health care.
Okay.
Or risk being out of compliance with this ordinance.
What's really great about the language that's included here on page three of the amendment, the last paragraph there is that if the employer is offering one of those three, choose your own adventure options, and the employee for whatever reason decides that they don't want and they decline to sign, we have now clarified that exact question which has come up a few times, which is the employer would then go ahead and offer exactly what they had made an offer of to the employee, but the written waiver must still be asked for and obtained so that there's a clear record of that.
And if that doesn't happen, then the worker goes ahead and gets what the employer was originally offering.
It helps to offer clarity, even though I might not be making it sound so clear right now, it helps to offer clarity for that very rare situation in which the employee decides that they don't want to sign.
Okay, thanks.
So it defaults to the hotel registering the employee for health care.
And it may be a robust, maybe a health savings account plus some cash.
It defaults to the employer's choice.
And I think the intent there, so folks understand what the intent is, is that it's This language should be read in combination with the anti-retaliation and coercion provisions that are also included within this piece of legislation and all of the legislation.
So this is just another layer to make sure that employees who may not be familiar with their workplace rights aren't put in a situation where they are unduly influenced or otherwise coerced into waiving health care opportunities as provided by an employer.
So that's, I think, the true intent behind this legislation.
I wanted to provide just two more pieces of clarification, I think, around the sexual harassment bill, which is referred to, I think, in the legislation as safety protections.
which is to be distinguished from workplace injury protections.
I just want to be really clear that that legislation is going to apply to all businesses regardless of the size of the hotel.
So that piece of legislation only applies to hotel workers.
It is important to acknowledge that that is the one area where we did not create a sort of hold harmless aspect based on the size of a business, largely because we believe that it is important to protect all workers from sexual harassment and require employers to take measures to protect all workers, regardless of the size of that business, from sexual harassment and assault in the workplace.
I think if folks also look at the Washington Law Against Discrimination in the state statute codes, there are also no exemptions in that category for employer requirements around sexual harassment and investigations of sexual harassment.
I don't think that this is, the ancillary business definition is going to be a monumental shift in terms of employers' obligations as it relates to protecting workers from sexual harassment, regardless of the size of their business.
So I wanted to provide that clarification in terms of the scope of the applicability of these four pieces of legislation, but the sexual harassment bill in particular.
And then the second, Council Member Muscata did a really good job of laying out where we ended up in terms of the question around ancillary businesses and which ancillary businesses would be included in this legislation.
And I just wanted to remind folks that In the original initiative 124, 100% of all ancillary businesses were included in the legislation for all four bills.
And so we have come a long way in terms of the work that my office and Council Member Musqueda's office has done to really engage stakeholders to get a better understanding of how we can create a regulatory framework here that is not going to be overly burdensome while still maintaining the intent of the voters to provide important coverage in these four distinct areas.
So we recognize that we are taking a big step away from voter intent in a way because we are not incorporating 100% of all ancillary businesses, but we are also, as policymakers and legislators required to be, responsive where we can while not compromising our policy goals in terms of the modifications to the ancillary businesses, which is why we have created different levels of inclusion of ancillary businesses depending on your location within the hotel.
and the type of service that you provide, which must be closely tied with hotel purpose.
And we've also included now a definition of hotel purpose based on industry code definitions and some state statute definitions.
So I feel pretty good about where we ended up with the definition of ancillary businesses.
I think there will still be people who are unhappy on both ends.
Those people who have been advocating that we do a 100% elimination of ancillary businesses are not going to be happy with this definition.
And individuals who have been advocating that all ancillary businesses, regardless of point of entry or, frankly, even location, within the block, you know, sort of those folks are, some of those individuals will be excluded and I think those folks will also be not fully happy that we haven't included everyone who's even in proximity of a hotel.
So I think we've We have ended up in a place where I feel that we have been responsive to concerns of small businesses, and we have provided, particularly in the health care bill, an opportunity for folks to adjust to that regulatory framework by providing people up to five years to come into compliance, including addressing their current business model by potentially moving out of a hotel site to something that might be more conducive for their business model.
So really appreciate Council Member Mosqueda's work on this and our collective staff's work on this.
And I'm sure that both she and I will have much more to say about the underlying bills and the intent and why we're so happy to be here today at full council.
Very good.
You have more?
A few more items, Mr. President.
I apologize.
For Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights, we have two more meetings left on our committee agenda for September.
The next one will be September 19th from 9 a.m.
to noon.
We will be taking up a possible vote on the multifamily tax exemption renewal opportunity to interview Emily Alvarado, who is the nominee for the Office of Housing Director.
Thanks to all of you for sending in your questions.
We asked for those back on noon on Friday last week, and we have shared those with her.
As soon as we get those back, we will plan to share those around, I believe, tomorrow.
We have the Seattle Rental Housing Assistance Pilot Program and five Seattle Housing Authority appointments, as well as the Office of Housing, Race, and Social Justice Initiative Report.
All of those items are intended to focus on our Office of Housing, as this is our Office of Housing-focused committee.
We will also consider, discuss, and potentially vote on a piece of legislation that would repeal the underlying initiative 124 just so that we are in compliance if, assuming this passes today, we want to make sure that that other cleanup legislation does pass as well.
Our next committee meeting will be on September 24th from 2 p.m.
to 4 p.m.
Again an afternoon meeting on Tuesday from 2 p.m.
to 4 p.m.
on the 24th that's focused on Seattle City Light including the Seattle City Light Review Panel Commission reappointment, Northwest Seattle Property Sale Ordinance, Rate Pilot Authority, Burian and BPA rates, the Northern Grid authorization, banning power shutdowns, and emergency low-income assistance program.
So when I say banning power shutdowns, what I'm talking about here is a quick update from our Seattle City Light friends that we've been working with on what shut off policies look like.
Thanks to Council Member Herbold for your work in the past on this and also with Seattle Public Utilities.
We'll have an update from folks on an internal policy that we've been working on with Seattle City Light to make sure that confusing messages or threatening messages no longer go out to folks without a clear understanding of what the alternatives are to shut down.
and to make sure that we continue our policy of not sending folks to collections.
That's really important.
On Thursday of this week, I'll be emceeing at the Economic Opportunity Institute EOI Changemakers Dinner where we will have the chance to honor Jeff Johnson, past president of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO.
and other community partners.
I'm looking forward to that.
If you aren't coming yet, consider coming.
And then thanks to all of you for signing this proclamation on Latinx Heritage Month.
This is an opportunity for us to continue a tradition that has been celebrated in our country since 1968. This is a really great opportunity for us in the city of Seattle to continue to recognize the significant and fast-growing demographic of the Latinx community that is growing here in Seattle.
And as someone who identifies as Chicana, having Mexican-American heritage, I'm incredibly proud that we have the opportunity to bring this proclamation forward and that we have four council members on the dais who are representing Mexican-American heritage.
and looking forward to bringing forward this proclamation to recognize the growing population of the Latinx community, the ways in which the Latinx community has helped shape the city of Seattle through arts, culture, and festivals, including Fiestas Patrias that just occurred last weekend.
Thanks to CMAR Community Health Centers for sponsoring that in South.
Park and also at the Seattle Center festivities there and to really recognizing that in order for us to have true representation, continuing to promote civic and political engagement to make sure that people are represented from the Latinx community.
is present on Seattle City Council and abroad, I think is important given the ongoing attacks that we see at the federal level from the federal administration and the local attacks with the targeting of the shooting of the Latino community recently.
So thank you for signing this.
And last shout out is to the almost 50,000 General Motors employees who walked off the job last night at 11.59 in order to make sure that they had wages, health care, and job security.
It's the first time since 2007 since they've walked out and this is a nationwide strike.
So we stand in solidarity and look forward to continuing to raise up the voices of those who are fighting for middle-class and low-wage jobs to be protected and wish them the best of luck.
Thank you.
Very good.
Councilmember Gonzalez.
Thank you.
I have one item on this afternoon's full city council meeting agenda.
It is item number 27. It will be an appointment of, I am forgetting her name, Susan Lee, I think it is, to the Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise Levy Oversight Committee, and I'll talk more about that during full council.
I have two special committee hearings this week.
of the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans in Education Committee.
The first one Council President Harrell touched on, so I won't belabor the point, but again that's Wednesday at 6 p.m.
here in Council Chambers.
It will be a joint public hearing between my committee and the Select Committee on Labor Relations, and the subject of that special public hearing will be the Collective Bargaining Agreement with the Seattle Police Management Association.
We will be joined by Council Central staff who will provide an overview of our labor obligations consistent with municipal code, and we will also hear from the Community Police Commission for about 15 to 20 minutes.
about how they intend to prioritize community engagement as it relates to the Seattle Police Management Association impending labor negotiations.
So as a reminder, this meeting is being held in accordance and compliance with Seattle Municipal Code 4.04.120, which requires the city council to hold a public hearing at least 90 days before the city begins collective bargaining agreement negotiations with the Seattle Police Management Association in order to hear public comment on the effectiveness of the city's police accountability system.
On Thursday, September 19th, there will be another special meeting of my committee at 2 p.m.
here in Council Chambers.
And the first item we will consider will be a discussion and possible vote on a council bill that would amend the Seattle Fire Code to provide the Seattle Fire Department personnel with the authority to write civil citations.
to enforce the fire code.
The second and third agenda items both relate to the Seattle Police Department's hiring and retention situation.
The first is an update on SPD's hiring and recruitment efforts, including an interim status report on the hiring bonus, which the city council approved earlier this year for both laterals and new hires.
So we will get our quarterly update from the police department on what the hiring numbers look like and that's an opportunity for council members to ask further questions about whether we're going to meet certain targets or why we're not meeting certain targets.
The second briefing is a follow-up of a body of work that we commenced as part of the ongoing discussions around the recruitment efforts that SPD has been challenged with consistent with what we see law enforcement agencies across the nation struggling with, which is hiring officers.
So we will hear a report out of the recommendations to improve hiring retention and officer morale at the Seattle Police Department.
This is, again, follow-up from some work that the City Council has already been doing in this space.
So this is an opportunity for the executive to do their final presentation or rather their first presentation on a set of recommendations that resulted from a task force, a work group, if you will, that included City Council staff and executive staff and agency staff to really come together and identify some strategic recommendations that could support Chief Best's efforts to hire additional officers consistent with prior council and executive intent.
So looking forward to hearing that report.
These recommendations are also going to be partially related to the $1.7 million of investments that the mayor is proposing in her proposed budget.
So it should be a very rich an informative presentation and I look forward to hearing that.
And then I misspoke, the individual who we will be considering for appointment is Susan Yee.
So we will hear her presentation, I will present her nomination at full council later this afternoon.
And then really quickly, sorry it's getting harder for me to breathe.
This week is another busy week for me.
We will be, in addition to having two special committee hearings, I am really excited to continue to be out in community.
On Thursday, September 19th, I will be speaking at City Year's school year kickoff.
So City Year is a nonprofit community-based organization that primarily houses themselves within our Seattle public school systems to provide both before school and after school programming and during school support, primarily at Title I schools and certainly at FEPP-Levy Investment School.
So really looking forward to heading down to South Shore.
pre-K through eight school to share some remarks and help them get their year's worth of work done for the year on behalf of kids across the city.
I'll also have the pleasure of watching Council Member Mosqueda and her talents at being an emcee at the EOI Changemakers dinner, also the evening of Thursday, September 19th.
And then on Friday, September 20th, really excited about being able to join Plymouth Housing at their Key to Hope Luncheon.
Plymouth Housing, of course, has been doing tremendous work in our community, really excited about being there to celebrate all of the great work that they will continue to do.
That evening, happy to join SEIU 775 at the reception and awards banquet.
And then on the 21st, I'm looking forward to going to the Transportation Choices Coalition Transit for All Ball, and that should round out my week.
Good, excellent.
Except for Sunday, which I'm not even going to talk about.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council Member O'Brien.
Thank you, Council President.
Got a few items to discuss today for the Sustainability and Transportation Committee.
Starting with this afternoon's council agenda, there are seven items on the agenda.
The first is a piece of legislation that I'm actually going to be holding perhaps indefinitely.
It was a piece that came out of committee that was vacating a few square feet of land as part of the Mercer Mega Block.
It should be in the public right away.
I'm told that an alternate path for that has been worked out.
I don't know the details of that, but we'll be talking to the department to better understand that.
But in the meantime, I'm going to hold on voting on that piece of legislation.
But the next piece of legislation, item 30 this afternoon, is the actual Mercer Mega Block sale legislation.
And so, again, this is the piece of legislation that grants authority to the executive to complete transaction documents and execute the sale of the Mercer Mega Block.
This legislation includes the terms of the sale, so that includes money we will receive and other conditions and responsibilities that the purchaser will take on, things like a requirement to provide space essentially for free to the Seattle Parks Department for a community center, the commitment to affordable housing, a $5 million commitment to homeless services, completion of a bike facility along the south side of the property along Mercer.
So all those specifics around the sale of the property are included in that ordinance.
Of course, we will receive a significant amount of cash as part of that transaction.
And the expectation is that the mayor will have that in her budget, which we will see a week from today.
And so as far as how we invest the money we get from that, that is really at this point, it's really nothing binding has been done.
We've heard mayor's proposals.
We've had some high level discussions, but those discussions in earnest, I believe, will be taking part, taking place as part of the budget, so.
Thank you.
Can I ask one quick question?
I know this came up last time, Council Member O'Brien.
Council Member Mosqueda and I are pushing for child care every time that anybody can fog a mirror.
So I'm wondering, has there been further discussion?
Yes, thanks for bringing that up.
So in committee we made an amendment to the ordinance.
As you can imagine, this is somewhat complex in that there's an actual real estate transaction that is being negotiated between the purchaser and the seller, that being the city.
And we are authorizing the terms as a council of what needs to be in there.
Based on some advocacy from yourself and Councilmember Esqueda, we proposed some language changes in the ordinance, and that was accepted by Alexandria, the purchaser.
And so what we have now is a commitment.
There's really two pieces.
The space set aside for the community center.
needs to be done in a way that can accommodate a child care facility.
And Alexandria has said the language that we've agreed to is that essentially a child care facility in there is a permitted use as part of the community center.
We also will need our own department, the parks department, as they go through and do the actual design and build out of that space to do the feasibility study and figure out how to, first of all, assuming that it makes sense for them to do it.
Our intent is that it should, that they do the work to make sure that it happens.
And so there's some language about what we do with Parks Department requiring that they move forward.
And obviously internal to the city, we can continue to essentially require our department to do that.
But that's somewhat independent of the sale, and we have the commitment from Alexandria.
Thank you.
Thank you for bringing that up Councilmember Bagshaw and Councilmember Ryan.
Thank you for working with us and the developer to make sure that the language was prescriptive and not deferring to some future analysis and a study and sort of navel-gazing.
This is really important that we include child care on site and that we include it, you know, as the language says, looking at a minimum of three child care classrooms and that we include the construction of what the outside play area could look like and that could be a community amenity in the evening hours for families in the neighborhood.
So really excited that that language that was more directive in nature was included.
And I just want to thank you and quite frankly, the developer for accepting the language as well.
We know that this is a little bit of an 11th hour confirmation that we were able to get in and folks agree to it.
So that's huge and really appreciate it.
So thank you for your work on that.
Absolutely.
Thanks.
A few more items this afternoon.
We have a couple street vacations that we will be approving.
These are street vacations where we did conceptual approval a number of years ago, and so those projects are finally done, so we'll approve those.
We have legislation around the Green New Deal Oversight Board.
I'll come back to that in one second.
We also have a resolution opposing Arctic drilling and specifically saying the city will do what it can to not purchase oil for any of our fleets or other city uses that comes out of the Arctic.
The request from community members, Sierra Club is the one who's been driving this, is to try to make it clear to folks as they start bidding on potential oil drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
that there's not going to be a market for that product because cities like Seattle, and as you can imagine, there's an attempt to get numerous cities up and down the West Coast saying, no, we're not interested in buying that product.
So, you know, it's frankly a tragedy and a result of the Republican tax cut legislation that this was attached to it.
The fight to preserve the Arctic goes on, as it has for decades, and it's continuing, and I appreciate the opportunity to have this resolution before folks.
Finally, there's a piece of legislation that would authorize a term permit to allow a heating pipe to connect two parcels of the project at the former Seattle Times site in South Lake Union.
the developer has two separate sites and they are going to put essentially a district energy system in between the two buildings to share heat and cooling load back and forth and believe one's residential one's commercial and so They all have different times of heating needs and so this is a way to balance those loads and reduce energy consumption and reduce costs.
So that's on this afternoon's agenda.
I want to go back to the Green New Deal Oversight Board because Yolanda will be circulating in a moment an amendment that I'll be proposing.
I believe there might be some other amendments for you too, but I want to just walk through.
my amendment.
The Green New Deal Oversight Board legislation is a follow-up to the work we did about a month ago establishing a Green New Deal for Seattle.
This piece of legislation would establish an oversight board that would be housed within the Office of Sustainability and Environment.
My amendment does a number of things.
I'll just walk through it as we've gone back and forth with the executive and community members making further refinements to it.
One, it would remove language that requires the mayor to notify the board of any changes to city policies.
related to the Green New Deal.
Two, it would remove references to climate action plans and instead focus the efforts of the board and the proposed interdepartmental team on implementing climate actions.
Third, it specifies the types of items that should be included in the board's work plan.
Four, it reduces the frequency of reporting requirements and meetings between the interdepartmental team the board from four times a year to two times a year and then it corrects some typographical errors.
I don't know if folks want to talk about other amendments looking at Councilmember Herbold.
So yeah, I have three additional amendments.
And the first is in addition to asking the Oversight Board to identify recommendations on budget priorities, just in general of all the actions in the Green New Deal resolution, asking the Oversight Board to identify which are the priority actions.
What I was sort of getting at here is some of our other oversight boards, like the Pedestrian Advisory Board, the Bike Board, they actually enact implementation plans as part of their charge.
And so the idea is rather than the decisions around what we should be prioritizing as far as legislative and policy actions, we should defer to this board in not only the budget priorities, but what are the priority legislative and policy actions for this council and the mayor to act on.
The second amendment expands representation of labor unions from two to four positions with the idea that strengthening the relationships sort of on the green blue collaboration is really important and that Many of these actions that we are seeking to pursue and enact in the Green New Deal resolution impact different sectors of labor and want to have a broader representation of those folks on this body.
Again, with the idea that by strengthening that collaboration, we'll be able to move forward more expeditiously.
And then lastly, the amendment requests that the Office of Sustainability and the Environment quantify the impact of potential planned actions that are identified in the Green New Deal resolution as priority actions, to quantify their impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from sources identified in the 2016 Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report, and then identify estimated measurable progress each action would provide.
Again, I think this kind of information helps us figure out, together with the Oversight Board, what are the priority actions and what sort of gains towards greenhouse gas emission reductions we can expect by having those projected impacts measured in advance of our actions.
Thank you, Council Member Herbold.
Council Member Chico.
Colleagues, I too will have an amendment, and I apologize.
Law was still reviewing it before I could offer it to you all in paper.
But I want to really briefly be able to speak to the amendment that I will be proposing as I expect their approval shortly.
My amendment would clarify that the workforce development position be connected to either an initiative or organization, more specifically, I'm wanting to identify and call out the Career Connect Washington Initiative, which was passed this past legislative session at the request of Governor Jay Inslee.
And they would add four additional seats, one seat to labor, and more explicitly call out the three industries that are going to be most impacted, as we've heard repeatedly through committee, energy, construction, and transportation sectors.
And then lastly, adding one additional seat for philanthropy.
We live in one of the most philanthropic communities in the world, and so I want to make sure that we leverage that resource as well in looking to address issues related to climate change.
Another seat for a technology-based company.
I've been a strong advocate of scooters, and so as such, as these new technologies emerge, they provide an alternative or other technology-based companies that emerge, I think potentially provide an alternative for us to either move around our city without a car or reduce our carbon emissions individually or collectively, and so I want to be mindful of that.
And then lastly, to add a representative of a green business that operates here in Seattle, and that is defined as a business that preserves or enhances environmental health, as well as the economic and social well-being of people and communities, prioritizing communities most negatively impacted by climate change, and provides living wages and career pathways to its employees.
And so I wanted to include four additional seats that I thought would be most helpful and impactful as the Green New Deal takes as an oversight board and hopefully can be leveraged by other cities and become a model for other cities in Washington State, as well as for the county, as we heard I'm excited to try to be able to model something that could be taken to the county.
We have a reconciliation problem here, so I'm trying to see if we could somehow have a combined package.
I didn't hear any ideas.
I personally opposed, but I'm getting a little confused on the numbers of additions here, and maybe there's some overlap we can reconcile.
But go ahead, Councilman O'Brien, I'm sure you have some ideas here or some reactions you want to...
Chair with us?
I don't have anything to add to that specific item.
I agree that we'll have a few minutes between the end of this meeting and noon, and maybe we'll have to act a little on the fly.
But I'll see what I can do to coordinate with colleagues between now and then to see if there's a path there.
And it may just be that we play it out in real time a little bit.
Which makes it a little tough for the one chairing the meeting when we do that.
I understand.
I'm hoping Council Member Pacheco and Council Member Herbold might be able to share a little bit.
I'm sure we can work it out.
The one thing I'll note is this is agenda item 33 and I don't know if you want to move it up in case we do some stuff in real time and need a little work to do it.
So maybe between now and 2 o'clock we'll figure that out and I'm just thinking if it gave ourselves a little bit of a buffer there.
The thought being putting it first or second on the agenda such that we can have the colloquy and have it figured out and then
if we needed the clerk to amend some language if we hadn't quite gotten there and needed to have a more public discussion to see where the votes were.
Okay.
And we are all incredibly mindful of the OPMA issues and so we won't violate that, but hopefully we can have this reconciled before 2 o'clock.
But I really appreciate, at least I personally appreciate the amendments and sort of where we're heading.
I think these are some great ideas that are being set forth.
Council Member O'Brien, you have more?
I do.
I'm just getting started.
I apologize for that.
We have two committee meetings this week.
The first one is Tuesday at 1 p.m.
I'll try to move swiftly through this.
There are a number of agenda items on there.
We also have a meeting Friday at 2 p.m.
So Tuesday is a meeting.
We will take up a series of appointments to School Traffic Safety Board, the Move Seattle Oversight Board, Sweet and Sugary Beverage Tax, Community Advisory Board.
We will also be discussing legislation, healthy homes, healthy buildings.
This is a legislation that has been in committee a couple times regarding prohibition of gas hookups to new construction.
Not planning to vote on this tomorrow.
I actually heard a number of comments and concerns and continue to work with a variety of stakeholders on that.
And so we will have hopefully a good discussion tomorrow in committee about that.
And we'll take some time to continue to have those conversations with stakeholders who've come forward as part of that process.
We also have legislation on home heating oil.
Potentially voting on that at a committee tomorrow was planned for a vote a week ago, but we had a discussion and have some amendments on that.
And so we'll see how that goes, but that'll be up tomorrow also.
There's legislation around street cafes, about the fees we charge for folks that get the sidewalk permits.
We'll also have a street use citation briefing.
We'll have a briefing on ITS.
ITS, someone help me out, Intelligent Transportation Systems, I believe.
Sounds good.
It's basically the smart traffic signals types of things, so we'll get a briefing from SDOT on that.
We'll have some traffic law changes, so legislation to do that.
And then also legislation that would rename a small portion of a street in Ballard to Locks Street Northwest.
That's for Tuesday.
For Friday, we'll be back again at 2 p.m.
Sorry, let me just remind folks, tomorrow's meeting is at 1 p.m., starting a little early because we have a lot of items on that and trying to finish up before dark.
Friday, we'll start at 2 p.m.
We have another set of appointments.
I believe it's the Bicycle Advisory Board and Pedestrian Advisory Board.
We will have a resolution for sidewalk maintenance.
We will have a resolution related to traffic signals.
We will also have a discussion about a new campaign that's kicked off as part of the MASS coalition, the Move All of Seattle Sustainably coalition called Orca for All.
It's an effort to get transit passes to everybody in our community.
And so we'll have a discussion around that.
There's no proposed legislation or anything, but the idea is looking for ideas that we can accelerate access to transit.
So we know that Citi's done great work in partnership with the public schools in getting, you know, most of the students in middle school and high school free ORCA passes.
Obviously, through commuter production for a number of years, major employers, typically downtown, have provided a lot of their workers for free or subsidized transit passes.
What we have seen is those major employers tend to provide it to their higher paid office workers.
A lot of low wage workers don't have access to that.
So trying to understand some of that dynamic and what else we can do to ensure that everyone has access to transit.
And then finally, we'll consider a street vacation for Carr Street.
So that is what we got on the docket for this week.
And I'll talk about next week next week.
Thank you, Councilmember O'Brien.
As Presiding Officer, I am announcing that the Seattle City Council will now convene an Executive Session.
The purpose of the Executive Session is to discuss pending, potential, or actual litigation.
This gives us an opportunity to discuss confidential legal matters with our City Attorneys, as authorized by law.
A monitor from the city attorney's office is always present to ensure that we reserve questions of policy for our public open sessions.
I expect this session to last one hour, so that'll be 1136 a.m., and if it is extended beyond that time, I'll announce its extension and expected duration.
And with that, let's move into executive session.