Select Committee on Seattle Transportation Benefit District 6/18/2026

All right, good morning.

The June 18th, 2026 meeting of the Select Committee on the Seattle Transportation Benefit District will come to order.

It is 9.32 AM.

I am Rob Saka, Chair of the Committee.

Will the Committee Clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Foster?

Here.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Councilmember Juarez?

Councilmember Kettle?

Here.

Councilmember Lin?

Here.

Councilmember Rink?

Councilmember Rivera?

Councilmember Strauss?

Here.

Chair Saka.

Here.

Chair, there are five members present.

Slim margin on the quorum side.

Must be the day before a long weekend, but the council members who are not currently here are excused until they arrive.

So thank you.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing and seeing no objection, the agenda is hereby adopted.

Good morning colleagues, members of the public, welcome.

Thank you all for being here today.

Exciting day to talk about transportation, more specifically transit.

Exciting times, times to rally, celebrate and get this going.

But before we begin, I wanna take a moment to acknowledge something exciting and unique happening in our city right now.

Seattle is hosting the FIFA World Cup and people from all around the globe are experiencing our welcoming and vibrant city right now in our neighborhoods, in our communities, and they're also experiencing our transportation system firsthand.

Proud to share that Sports Illustrated recently ranked Seattle as the number two of 17 North American host cities for FIFA, number two.

and the first in the United States, based off of factors including walkability and transit.

We're the best World Cup host city.

That's something to celebrate and be proud of.

And today's discussions and those going forward are about making that experience even better, more vibrant for all.

going after that number one next time.

So like many Seattleites, I'll share that I often take transit to major events, whether it's to a Mariners game, a storm game, or now to a potential World Cup match in Soto or a fan zone experience along the waterfront, transit is often the easiest, most efficient, and most affordable way to get there.

Certainly the best from an environmental and climate perspective.

That reality underscores why our work today matters.

One of the most important aspects of our work, colleagues, begins today.

Our governing partners at the executive have completed their work on developing and transmitting a proposal.

Now, the council takes the next step of carrying out its deliberative body mandate that's effectively enshrined in our legislative branch of government.

Unlike the proposal development phase, our deliberations right now and going forward will take place in the public in full view of the people we serve.

Transparency is the hallmark of this approach.

Through committee meetings, public comment, central staff analysis and amendments, Seattle residents will be able to see this measure carefully examined, debated, refined and enhanced all in real time.

As a co-equal branch of government, we have a solemn responsibility, colleagues, to thoughtfully evaluate this proposal and ensure voters ultimately receive the strongest possible measure.

I'm sure our partners at the executive would like to see their proposal passed by this legislative branch in a completely unmodified form with no amendments.

Spoiler alert, Madam Mayor, if you're watching, ain't gonna happen.

Don't count on it.

But I appreciate the work from the mayor and the executive in getting us to this important stage because over the next month, This committee will consider one of the most consequential transportation measures Seattle has considered in years.

The decisions we make together will help shape transit investments and opportunities in our city for the next decade.

Made no secret about the fact that I've been personally riding transit for most of my life.

Growing up, my family relied heavily on transit, oftentimes because we didn't have reliable alternatives.

Today, as a council member, I still proudly ride transit regularly.

That experience has helped shape my view that transportation, including transit, is ultimately about opportunity.

It's about connecting people to jobs, schools, healthcare, community, and economic mobility.

It's also about affordability.

At a time when many Seattle residents are feeling squeezed by the rising costs of housing and everyday necessities, we have a responsibility to carefully evaluate any proposal that would ask voters to approve additional taxes, especially a very regressive one like a sales tax.

We also must ensure that every dollar delivers meaningful public value and advances clearly defined public goals.

That is an important reason why today's discussion is so vital.

Last session, we welcomed our partners at the Executive to present their proposal firsthand.

Today, this morning, our own Council Central staff experts will walk us through a detailed analysis of the proposed Seattle transportation measure renewal.

Their memorandum, circulated yesterday and attached to the agenda, highlights several important policy questions that deserve thoughtful consideration, including the size of the proposal, the proposed 10-year duration, the allowable spending categories, spending limits, accountability and oversight mechanisms, and the long-term transit outcomes we all hope to collectively achieve.

As we carefully consider these questions, I hope we keep a broad perspective in mind.

We know that transit trips do not begin when someone simply boards a bus or a train, begins when they leave their home, and it ends when they safely reach their destination.

That is why conversations about accessibility, safety, rider and operator experience and connections to transit are so essential to these discussions.

That is also why I believe we should remain focused on outcomes.

How do we improve mobility?

How do we improve affordability?

How do we improve safety?

How do we improve accessibility?

How do we ensure public confidence in the investments that we make?

Those are the strategic questions that matter most.

Today's meeting represents an important milestone in this process, but it's only an important next step.

Council members who wish to pursue amendments should work with central staff over the coming days.

Proposed amendments are due to central staff by noon on June 24th.

Amendments will be published prior to our July 6th meeting, where we will begin reviewing and discussing them in detail.

Ultimately, if council members have amendments, of course, ultimately this committee will have the opportunity to shape a proposal that reflects our collective judgment, values, and hopefully earns the trust and confidence of Seattle voters.

I want to thank central staff in advance for the work on today's analysis and thank my colleagues in advance for their thoughtful engagement throughout this process, including during that first committee meeting we held.

Again, unlike the proposal development phase, the next phase of our deliberations will take place in public, in plain sight, in full view of the people we serve.

And I, for one, couldn't be more excited about that opportunity.

With that said, let's continue our vital work together.

All right.

Thank you.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda.

And within the purview of this committee, clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Chair, we currently have 19 in-person speakers signed up and there are four remote speakers.

Excellent.

Each speaker will have approximately two minutes where it looks like we're under the 30. So each speaker will have approximately two minutes.

And We will start with in-person speakers first.

Clerk, can you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they're registered.

Speakers will alternate between sets of in-person and remote speakers.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

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

Following Greg will be Noah Williams.

Good morning, Chair Sakwa and distinguished City Council members.

My name is Greg Woodfill, president of ATU 587, representing around 5,000 transit workers in our region, many of whom earn family wage jobs.

We operate and maintain the bus system, the light rail, and your streetcar system.

Those wages directly feed back into the community.

Our union is fully in favor of the STM renewal legislation and wants to thank Chair Sacca for initially introducing it with asking for the full three-tenths taxing authority.

And we encourage all city council members to support that.

We do recognize how difficult it is politically to vote to raise sales taxes.

We get that.

Unfortunately, that is the mechanism that we are stuck with if we want to continue investing in public transit.

Every dollar invested in public transit generates an estimated $5 in long-term economic returns.

Let me repeat that.

Every dollar invested in public transit generates an estimated $5 in long-term economic returns.

Seattle won't reach its full potential without a vibrant public transportation system.

It won't meet its targets on equity, mobility, or climate.

The message from the residents of Seattle are clear.

They want more safe and reliable public transportation.

Our union appreciates the decades-long support of Seattle residents and the Seattle City Council.

Please vote yes for utilizing the full taxing authority for public transit, and please try to limit the amount towards capital spending.

The public wants more service.

Thank you.

Thank you, Local 587. President Woodfill.

Our next speaker will be Noah Williams, followed by Bill Benner.

Good morning, council members.

My name's Noah Williams from the Seattle Transit Riders Union, and I'd like to start by thanking Chair Saka and the Transportation Committee for doing this important work and introducing this legislation today.

We have before us an opportunity, as my friend Greg put it, to reduce the cost of living, fight traffic, and fight the climate crisis all in one.

This measure goes big, doubling the size of the last measure and adding over 100,000 trips per year, and thank goodness, we badly need it.

Post-pandemic, Seattleites need to get everywhere at every time of day.

With the Iran war crime kicking off, driving has become brutally expensive.

This measure adds a lot of service on nights and weekends, making transit a viable option for more people to go more places more often.

It more than doubles the number of free ORCA cards given to Seattle Housing Authority members, and it funds expansion of speed and reliability improvements, which help us make more efficient use of those service hours.

When now Mayor Katie Wilson co-founded the Transit Writers Union in the early 2010s, Metro Transit was facing a fiscal cliff, and the Seattle Transit measure was the driving, no pun intended, reason that we founded our union.

Like today, the need for funding is a moral imperative, it is absolutely critical, and riders need it the most right now.

Please pass this measure and put it before voters.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Let the record reflect that Councilmembers Strauss and Foster have joined us in person.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Bill Benner, followed by Kirk Hoffenkotter.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

This is a little off topic, but this- Use the microphone.

Can you speak into the mic, sir?

Oh.

How's it- And, and, and Renellis, reset his time.

Are we working?

There we go.

Hang on.

Just a moment.

This is a little off topic, but this is a meeting that I was suggested to go meet at.

My name is Bill Benner.

I've worked in the Seattle area for over 40 years.

I work for a company called Ventilation Power Cleaning.

We have a fleet of industrial sewer, storm, and hydrox trucks that work on the city infrastructure.

We also, for the last 34 years, have operated a decant facility that the city services uses on a daily basis.

Recently, I was told that the city of Seattle is looking outwards to put in at their west of Seattle facility a new decamp facility.

And they've gone outside of the city, actually outside of the country, to look at equipment for doing this.

and it surprised me because inside the city here we have the people, the infrastructure, and we've already been committed to operate a facility in Seattle for the City of Seattle for years, over 34 years.

And then also We do have the City of Seattle that tour this facility and they recognize that the Decamp facility in Seattle is an operational and a very nice facility to go to.

Like I say, SPU uses it on a daily basis.

In 2015, SPU asked us to do a 3P program for them, a public-private partnership.

It didn't go anywhere, but now I think it's time that we look at that.

My question to the committee is that we have the people here to do this.

Why would SPU look outside of the country for this service, to have this happen?

It's a multi-million dollar facility that's going in.

We ask that the SPU and the City Council really look at this and take it from there.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Our next speaker will be Kirk Hovenkotter, followed by Lorena Soriana.

Welcome, Kirk.

Chair Saka, members of the committee, I'm Kirk Hovenkotter, the Executive Director of Transportation Choices Coalition.

Our organization was proud to help lead the passage of the Seattle Transit measure in 2014 and 2020. I would like to thank the chair for moving this proposal forward.

Since 2017, Seattle's added over 80,000 residents, but only 3,000 cars.

We need frequent, reliable transit to keep our city moving and keep our businesses strong.

The Chair's proposal is a bold investment in transit service in Seattle.

It gives us the opportunity to envision the city we want to be, not just the city we are today.

With the opening of Light Rail, people who live and work in Seattle want to get to our Light Rail stations with frequent and reliable transit.

The Council has been building towards this moment since April 2024. It was this council that approved the Seattle transportation plan and shaped the Seattle transportation levy that received 66% of the vote from Seattle voters.

This Seattle transit measure proposal furthers the goals in both that plan and that levy.

The chair's proposal will mean hospital workers in First Hill will not have to wait as long to get home at the end of their shift.

It'll mean the worker at the restaurant in the Roosevelt neighborhood can get back home to their kids sooner.

This proposal will also make our city more affordable.

The average cost of car ownership in Washington State is over $12,000 a year.

The fastest way we can put $12,000 back into someone's pocket is to make it easier for them to live with one fewer car or without a car.

And this proposal does that.

And the only thing more regressive than a sales tax is not having bus service to get to your job or get to opportunity.

I want to again thank the chair for this proposal and your leadership on this.

We look forward to working with everyone in the council on their amendments and bringing this forward to voters.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Kurt.

Our next speaker will be Lorena Soriana followed by Nick Sattel.

Welcome.

Hi.

I have a friend named Betty.

She lives in Seattle, loves the Pacific Northwest, transit, and indoor climbing, amongst other things.

She's fortunate to have a climbing gym with three locations, but two that make sense via transit.

One is in north of Seattle, and one is south of Seattle.

The first gym that's closest to her is 1.8 miles from her versus the 3.7 mile one.

However, when looking at transit time, the first is an average of 25 minutes, and the second is 26 minutes, so comparable.

Now here's where things get interesting.

She has three transit options to get to the one that's the first gym.

Lucky Betty, right?

However, the three routes pick up at different points, and each route comes with either every 20 minutes or every 8 to 10 minutes.

The second gym, the furthest one, with similar transit time, only has two routes to the gym.

However, one comes every 4 to 8 minutes, and the second comes every 6 to 10 minutes.

but both routes have the same pick-up point, which means transit is coming every three to five minutes.

Dear council members, my name is Lorena Soriano, I live in District 3, and Betty is me.

When the two-line connection opened, those of us living and going to where both lines passed instantly got more frequent trains.

I can't speak for everyone, but I'm at the point that I no longer check when the trains come.

I'm also fortunate to live where a rapid line is basically in my front yard and I'm a few blocks away from other rapid lines.

This access to frequent buses makes it so that I don't have to worry about when to leave or when the next bus is coming because you already know that the next one is right around the corner.

Now, the thing that I didn't mention is that while both of the climbing gyms are about a 25-minute transit time, driving would only be 6 to 11 minutes, respectively.

Frequent transit is still not the same as driving, but gives us the closest comparable opportunity to rival.

I'm here to ask that you keep the Seattle Transit measure proposal intact and allow thousands of Seattle commuters to have the opportunity that I have, because you shouldn't have to live in downtown to have frequent transit.

Our next speaker will be Nick Satel followed by Jason Lee.

First off, let the record reflect that Councilmember Rivera has joined us online, I believe, and then Vice Chair Rink has joined us in person.

Welcome.

Hello, council.

My name is Nick.

I help co-lead fix the late, and I'm here to support more transit service.

I want to thank everyone here on council and Chair Sacca for all the work you've put in on this.

I know this is a very complicated issue.

It's very convoluted, and the concept of having a transportation benefit district that's a different body than the actual city gets very complicated.

But we need more transit service, and I'm glad that the mayor's proposal is doing that.

And I support the increase in the amount of service that the city will be funding to increase the amount of frequency that we have on our buses.

We just heard how having more frequency is so powerful, making it easier to get around by transit, and changes the calculus against driving.

I want to call out, though, that this body has set so many goals over the years.

The Seattle Transportation Plan is part of it, the Frequent Transit Network, our goals on climate change, our goals on Vision Zero, there's goals on X, Y, and Z.

For the transportation level, we've funded many of those goals to see us make progress on them, but we didn't fund the frequent transit network.

We didn't fund all of the goals that lead back to having more transit.

Making a dent on our climate emissions leads back to transit as well.

This is the time we have to fund transit and make it more frequent, make it faster, make it reliable, to actually achieve all of these goals.

I asked you to dedicate more money to transit service and frequency the way that the mayor's proposal is doing it, and to fund it citywide.

People need to get around the entire city.

And I want to call out that this proposal makes Seattle more affordable.

Even though the median two-person household will pay $29 a year as part of the sales tax increase, that's only a couple gallons of gas now that we have this crisis.

And it's also only a couple hours of parking now that parking is expensive.

and as the cost of owning a car and the cost of having insurance skyrocket too, as we heard, it's $1,000 a month to own a car.

If this is the nail, the final nail in the coffin that gets people to drop their cars, this is the most affordable thing we can have.

An extra $1,000 a month, that's money going back into our economy that we're spending more on going out and having fun and exploring the city the way that we're seeing people are doing with the World Cup.

And that's the way I want the city to keep going.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Jason Lee followed by Avery.

Good morning, Council.

Good morning, Chair Saka.

My name is Jason Lee.

I'm here to speak in favor of the proposal proposed by Chair Saka.

Right now, like Nick mentioned, we have a lot of really ambitious goals in Seattle, but we're moving in the wrong direction.

According to the latest Commute Seattle report, the rates of people commuting to work by driving alone has increasing for the first time in a decade.

According to the Seattle Times in 2024, we added more than 13,000 new drivers commuting alone to work in just one year.

We've spent so much time and effort to get ready for the World Cup and the fans that it will bring, but we're doing that as a temporary measure.

But by the end of this 10-year measure, if these trends continue, then we would have added enough new drivers on our roads to fill Lumen Field, or sorry, Seattle Stadium to capacity twice.

Everyone right now that's worried about the World Cup traffic will experience even worse on an everyday basis, and we can't have a construction pause for the rest of Seattle's life.

This needs to change, and Chair Saka's proposal would do exactly that.

Thank you, Chair Saka, for introducing this legislation.

I think this goes in all the right directions.

It's really bold.

I'm really excited to see this transit measure get passed to voters, and then for voters to pass it, and I'm confident that it will pass because transit is popular in Seattle.

Hopefully that's the message you get today and that's the message I wanna send is that you just really want more buses, more transit service and I hope you keep that in mind whenever you're considering amendments because this is what is gonna fix that trend and get us back on track to meet our goals.

And transit is so popular in Seattle and I know at this point this is a couple weeks' tail but transit is so popular in Seattle and people are so excited to get on transit that a couple weeks ago a driver forgot to get out of the car first before trying to get on the link.

So yeah, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Lee.

I remember that, yeah.

Our next speaker will be Avery followed by Darzee Gould.

Welcome, Avery.

Hi, good morning, council members.

I'm Avery, and I hope we will allow everybody who wants to take the bus to be able to take the bus from wherever they want to wherever they want, whenever they want.

That's what freedom looks like and that's what accessibility looks like and that's what a progressive city should do.

And thank you for proposing an amendment or a measure that will do that.

I'm extremely excited that my fellow Seattleites and this council have been willing to tax themselves to get this freedom for everybody to travel freely.

And I know we will vote for it again.

In other places, like Bainbridge, they're upgrading their fleet to electric, but most of their people drive, so they get traffic, low coverage, and low frequency, which results in, of course, low ridership.

In Seattle, we're doing things right.

Let's get the frequent transit network built, get people out of their cars, and onto the bus.

And when we've built the frequent transit network, we can spend any extra money on the nice-to-haves like trolley buses, electric buses, or upgrading our high ridership lines to light rail.

but let's be real, Seattle shouldn't be the only city with more service.

Our neighbors shouldn't also be individually taxing themselves to get service only where there is sufficient wealth and willingness.

Metro is a county-wide agency and I hope you'll commit to stepping down this tax in Seattle when the county gets their act in order and increases the base service levels.

but I hope you'll demand that Metro keeps the frequent transit network fully funded in Seattle, even if we have to pay a little bit for it.

If the county doesn't wanna tax themselves, we can always tax the suburban people with congestion pricing and fund more transit that way.

Thank you for proposing this measure.

I'm excited for us to be able to vote for it.

Thank you, Avery.

Our next speaker will be Darzee Gould followed by David Hill.

Hi, my name is Daisy Gould.

The mayor's proposal is exactly what this city needs, as much transit as possible.

So going through the amendment process, I just wanted to emphasize the importance of a couple things to this council.

The first thing is the First Hill streetcar could be on the chopping block because Sound Transit, it funded the First Hill Streetcar as a mitigation to cutting the First Hill Station, and that funding will expire this year.

So it's vital that the city steps up and continues operating the streetcar, and we must do so if we ever want to expand it in the future, which we do.

Seattle passed the last Seattle transit measure by 80%, and that was during the pandemic when people were famously isolating and staying home.

For every $1 invested into transit, somebody said this earlier, but it's true, the local community and economy gets back $5, which makes it one of the best things to spend regressive tax money on.

The reality is this city only has a handful of funding levers for transit and with a 0.3 increase, we're reaching the upper limit of taxes that can legally be spent on transit.

So the city is going to need to work with state legislators to unlock new funding mechanisms for future transit measures to increase service and especially inevitably to continue operating existing service at the bare minimum to get ahead of inflation.

And so lastly, a reminder to the council, sidewalks and public transportation are from two different budgets.

They each have different sources of funding and any attempt to put sidewalks into a transit measure would unfortunately take away service from buses, which is just how that works.

Thank you.

Thank you, Daisy, and super dope fanny pack, by the way.

Love it.

Our next speaker will be David Hill, followed by Jonathan Gonzalez.

Good morning, council members.

My name is David Hill.

I'm a car-free Seattle resident of 15 years and a member of the Transit Riders Union.

TRUE and the MAS Coalition would like to thank Chair Saka for moving the Seattle transit measure forward, and we are calling on the council to approve this measure.

When the 2020 initiative passed with a staggering 80% of the vote, it proved that Seattleites have an immense, undeniable appetite for transit investment.

Reliability and transit times dictate whether people can choose transit, and with 20% of Seattle households owning no car, robust bus service is a strict necessity, not a luxury.

This proposal nearly doubles city-funded bus service, expanding our network from just nine high frequency routes towards a target of 30. And as someone who has had to wait 30 minutes or more for a bus to get home from downtown after a concert, you can imagine how that resonates with me.

Crucially, the measure also expands subsidized access for low-income riders and shifts investments to nights and weekends to match post-COVID travel patterns.

While we remain deeply critical of relying on regressive sales taxes that squeeze working people, we simply need this measure today.

We urge you to pass this measure, and we will continue organized to transition our city towards the progressive funding mechanisms our working families deserve.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, David.

Our next speaker will be Jonathan Gonzalez, followed by Blair Berry.

Hello, my name is Jonathan Gonzalez.

I'm an organizer of Save Ballad Rail.

I want to thank Chair Saka for all the work he and his staff have put into this measure.

Today I rode the 28X to get here for public comment.

I try to take public transit as often as I can, but I still get a little anxious when I try to take the 28X.

If I miss it, or even worse, if it doesn't show up, I go from hopefully being on time to being incredibly late to whatever I'm planning for.

Ballard is the only regional center without a plan light rail stop.

We need frequent transit.

We don't need it tomorrow.

We don't need it next year.

We need it now.

The Seattle transit measure will help get us there.

and while I'm happy to advocate for progressive revenue in Olympia, we've got to work with our options and that means unfortunately a sales tax increase.

So let's work together to get this measure on the ballot in November.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jonathan.

Our next speaker will be Blair Berry followed by Lisa Walters.

Good morning, council members.

I'm Blair.

I'll make this short and sweet.

I believe this ballot measure should be put to the people because it will be an important step to freeing us from the tyranny of the car.

Cars become tyrannical when they are the only practical way to participate in society.

Freedom increases when there are multiple workable mobility choices, and this gives us that.

Thank you, Blair.

Our next speaker is Lisa Wolters, followed by Rita Holzman.

Good morning Chair Sacca and members of the committee.

My name is Lisa Walters and I'm here on behalf of the Seattle Housing Authority and the 38,000 low-income people we serve in Seattle.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment today.

Since 2019, SHA has been proud to partner with the city to provide residents in SHA housing access to free ORCA passes through the Seattle Transit Measure.

Many of the people we serve have to make difficult decisions every day on how to spend on limited budgets.

The free Orca passes have made a tremendous impact for these families, alleviating one of those choices by opening the door to reliable and affordable transportation options that meet their needs without an added cost burden.

with these ORCA cards low-income families seniors veterans and people with disabilities that we serve can access essential services and reach medical care get to jobs and navigate our city safely we are thrilled to see the proposal before you continues to support free access to transit for these households and proposes expanding this critical benefit to more low-income households living with a housing voucher.

We look forward to continuing to work alongside the city to deliver this essential program for low-income people, and we're available to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Lisa.

Our next speaker will be Rita Holzman, followed by Justin Tu.

Good morning, my name is Rita Holzman, and I'm here today to talk about traffic safety.

I'm a lifelong resident of West Seattle, and a little more than two years ago, I came before this committee to speak about the need to prioritize safety for the most vulnerable people using our streets.

I spoke then about the devastating loss of my husband, Steve Holzman, who was struck and killed by an oncoming motorist while cycling in our neighborhood in December, 2023. I spoke because as a former cyclist myself, I know how vulnerable bike users are when they must share the road with cars.

I spoke because I feared that what happened to my husband could so easily happen to someone else in our neighborhood.

This past Monday, that fear became reality.

Another cyclist was struck and killed just half a mile from where my husband lost his life.

If my own experience is any guide, it will likely be months before the investigation into Monday's fatality is complete, and we understand fully how the cyclist was fatally injured.

but what I can tell you right now without any uncertainty is that another family is grieving.

Another family is asking how they could lose someone they love so suddenly and senselessly, especially after the passage of a major transportation levy in 2024 that included nearly $200 million for safety.

I understand that many of the improvements funded by that levy are still in planning or just beginning, but I am here today to ask this committee to work closely with SDOT to ensure that meaningful safety improvements are made at the site of Monday's fatal crash and that they are made without delay.

Until Seattle reaches zero traffic related deaths and serious injuries, we cannot honestly say that this is a safe and livable city for everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Holzman.

Our next speaker will be Justin Tu, followed by Lakeisha Jones.

Good morning, Council.

I'd like to thank Chair Saka and Mayor Wilson for throwing their support behind the transit levy.

The 0.3% over 10 years is a solid foundation to boost bus service and frequency for the city, and it also saves us money.

As a Valerie resident, and also everyone probably have noticed, Uber and Lyft has become very expensive.

A ride that used to cost $20 might be $30 or $50 nowadays.

And that's just maybe a two-hour ride from your home to the nearest light rail station or to the restaurant.

And that's really bad on our bank accounts.

So more reliable buses and transit services is not only sustainable, but also saves us money.

And for me personally, as I am a ballot resident, I rely on the 17 and the 40 bus to go across Seattle.

And I think...

Council Member Strauss would also appreciate more buses around Ballard as well.

So he can leave the car at home, so to save on gas, to save on parking fees, and just to be able to enjoy the neighborhoods without all the hassle and the extra costs.

So I urge the council to please support the transit measure.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Justin.

Our next speaker will be Lakeisha Jones followed by Wendy Kimball.

Good morning council members on behalf of SDOT's transportation equity work group.

I am here to support the mayor's proposal to renew the Seattle transit measure while a 0.3% tax increase is not our preferred funding approach because it places a greater burden on lower income residents.

We recognize the constraints of current state policy and available funding tools.

Given rising transportation and infrastructure costs, the proposal is necessary to preserve existing services and expand support for the communities that rely on them most.

We strongly support maintaining and expanding the transit access program, which now provides ORCA subsidies to more than 22,000 Seattle residents, more than double its previous reach.

We also support adding 100,000 bus service hours in equity priority areas, and at times when reduced fare riders depend on transit the most.

These targeted investments are critical.

Communities of color continue to be displaced farther from the city center.

At the same time, our older adult population is growing rapidly with many living on fixed incomes.

Youth, people with disabilities, and the immigrant communities also depend on affordable, reliable transit to access jobs, education, healthcare, and essential services.

Through the transportation equity framework and racial equity toolkit, we know that prioritizing these communities helps offset inequities.

including those created by regressive funding mechanisms like sales tax.

This proposal provides a stable funding source for the next decade.

However, sales tax is not a sustainable long-term solution, and we are already at the state cap.

We urge the City Council, the Mayor's Office, and our regional partners to pursue more progressive, durable funding strategies that meet the needs of a growing and changing region.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you, Lakeisha.

Our next speaker is Wendy Kimball, followed by Jack Nash.

Good morning, counsel.

Good morning.

I'm standing here as a private citizen.

I'm old.

I had a medical emergency that basically changed my life.

Ma'am, can you speak and pause?

So I have to work at speaking.

I lost mobility, I lost communication, but I haven't lost feistiness.

And Mr. Strauss can attest to that.

I am from Ballard.

I end up at Providence at least three or four times a month for check-ins.

there is no way that I can have an appointment at that place and not schedule two hours to get there on time.

I think that there is a problem in the city where there are transportation deserts where the elderly who have gotten outside of the peripheral of the access bus transportation, because we can pass certain tests, have to take or drive.

Take the bus or drive.

I drive.

Yesterday, I had to walk up basically from 33rd Street by Garfield to Providence because of parking.

OK, the doctor was a little excited about the blood pressure.

We need to look at what we can do to provide good transportation to these deserts so that the elderly can get to their physicians, not lose their appointments, not get into a lot of anxiety, and they can protect their health.

I have an example of all the bus schedules going to Providence.

There is none there for Ballard.

There's none there really for West Seattle.

And there's none there for upper east part of the city.

I think that this confrontation measure will possibly provide that.

But beyond that, I think that

Leave the literature in our box and that will be on the record and available for all of us to review.

Our next speaker will be Jack Nash followed by Greg Cannon.

Good morning, council members.

Thank you for your attention and focus on this important measure this morning.

My name is Jack Nash, and I'm here today for two reasons.

The first is to ask you to support the Seattle Transit measure with a full 0.3% sales tax.

I also don't like higher sales taxes, but this is really important critical services that families across Seattle rely on.

And when we are combining investments, so we are improving connections to light rail stations with bus service, we are getting even more value on these big investments the city has already made.

I live in Ravenna.

There's no light rail station in Ravenna, but there's one in Roosevelt.

So I often take the bus to Roosevelt, except it doesn't come very frequently.

So when I'm in a rush, I often just walk the mile to the station.

I much prefer to take the bus.

So these investments in more frequent connections to our stations have a big impact.

The second reason I'm here is because the Transportation Benefit District only has a couple ways that we can really fund this work, the car tabs and the sales tax.

And as Councilmember Saka pointed out, both of these are regressive.

So I ask you to work with Olympia, prioritize that work with Olympia to expand the options we have to fund our Transportation Benefit District.

by the time the next STM rolls around and we have to renew it in 10 years, we need to have some new progressive tools in our toolkit for funding it.

So in short, I ask you to fund this STM with a 0.3% sales tax and work so that our next one, we have some new tools on the table to fund it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jack.

Our next speaker is Greg Cannon, followed by Andrew Liu.

Good morning, City Council.

My name is Greg Cannon, and I'm hailing from District 7. I want to provide more testimony on why bus frequency specifically really matters.

In my own life, me and my girlfriend regularly take the four bus between our two apartments, but the 30 minute frequency on nights and weekends is brutal.

Every time we want to go between our apartments, it's a dice roll of, is there a four anytime soon?

Around half the time, the wait is 20 minutes, 25 minutes, 30 minutes, and that's just not usable in our use case.

We end up needing to always have a backup plan whenever we want to go somewhere, like scootering or driving.

Our transit system needs to be there for its riders 100% of the time, not only sometimes if there happens to be a bus anytime soon.

When someone's leaving a bar in Capitol Hill, they need to know that there is a bus to get them home without waiting for 30 minutes in the cold.

When someone who's car-free in Columbia City wants to go to the grocery store, they should know that there is a bus to take them there and back.

And when they're shopping, they shouldn't have to constantly check their watch and check the schedule to make sure that they can get home without a long wait.

As other people have mentioned, Seattle has set a lot of goals, including the 2023 climate goal to reduce car trips from 66 to 45% and increase transit from 11 to 24. If we want any chance of replacing car trips with transit, people need to know that they can get to where they go without advanced planning.

Car drivers don't look at bus schedules.

Car drivers don't do advanced planning of getting home exactly on the hour to catch their bus.

So high frequency is very important.

And the last thing I want to say is that the stakes are very high, even more than just our climate goals.

Every car that's off the road means less of our friends, parents, children, and community members dying in car crashes and pedestrian collisions every year.

We've had numerous incidents recently, including the biker that was killed in ID, and we need to see less of that, and that means we need to get cars off the road.

So I think we should back this measure for the climate, for our safety, and to make a more pleasant and connected city for everyone who lives here.

Thank you.

Greg, thank you.

Our next speaker is Andrew Liu.

Then we'll switch to remote callers.

Our first remote caller after Mr. Liu will be Brandon Der Blatter.

Good morning council members.

My name is Andrew and I'm a high schooler in the greater Seattle area.

I regularly use transit in the region and travel into Seattle.

I'm here to provide a new perspective on the issue.

Students, I know firsthand just how much we care.

On my city's youth advisory board, the first issue that was brought up was public transit.

Obviously, we care.

And here, I want to bring up two main issues, besides cost and everything that was talked about before.

First is traffic.

We all know how bad traffic is in Seattle, and that's due to the sheer amount of cars we have.

It's ranked as the seventh most congested city in the U.S., and public transit directly addresses that.

Second, the environment.

As young people, we're going to inherit the transportation system that gets built today.

Investing in transit means cleaner air, lower emissions, and a more sustainable future overall.

Giving people a real alternative to driving is one of the best environmental investments a city can make.

We are students and we care deeply about the future of our region.

I urge you to support the measure.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Andrew.

We'll now switch to remote callers.

Our first caller will be Brandon Der Blatter, followed by Cecilia Black.

Brandon, please press star six.

I want to voice my support for Mayor Wilson's transit measure.

Since the announcement, I know you've heard a lot about how sales tax is aggressive, but do you know what else is aggressive?

Southern part of transit service.

On average, it costs about $1,000 a month to own a car, which is too expensive for a significant portion of our neighbors in Seattle, as health included.

Our options are walking, biking, and riding transit.

It's vital to ensure high-quality transit, including higher frequencies, so accessible and affordable transportation is available to everybody.

Mayor Wilson's proposal will increase King County Metro service hours by almost 60%, This will allow us to not only return to, but surpass pre-COVID levels of transit service.

We'll also be able to more than double the amount of free worker cards we provide to our neighbors in need.

It's estimated this tax will cost lower income folks under $40 a year.

That means if this tax saves people one or two Uber rides or three or four Lime rides a year, they will already break even.

It will likely save people much more than that.

And they even enable some people to go car free, saving them hundreds of dollars a month.

When more people use transit, our air is cleaner, as cars cause over half of our carbon emissions in Seattle, so our residents will be healthier and require fewer medical resources.

Increased access will connect people to businesses better, strengthening the local economy.

In addition to all these benefits, increased bus service will make more progress toward Vision Zero.

So far this year, at least five people have died from automobile collisions in Seattle.

We need frequent and reliable alternatives for people to leave their cars behind.

Please pass to Mary's proposal to make our city healthier, more accessible, and more affordable.

Thank you.

Thank you, Brennan.

Our next caller will be Cecilia Black followed by Lynn Drake.

Cecilia, please press star six.

Good morning.

My name is Cecilia Black and I'm a wheelchair user and a sidewalk organizer with Non-Drivers Alliance.

We're a grassroots organization of non-drivers and people with disabilities.

And I really want to thank Chair Saka for the proposal you put forward We are so excited that the council is considering not just maintaining the transit service but expanding our frequent transit network and urge council members to pass this transit measure with a 0.3% sales tax that is focused on transit.

At least 25% of Seattle residents are non-drivers and this includes people with disabilities who are disproportionately do not have access to a car.

The availability of transit dictates so much of our lives and only 53% of Seattle lives within walking distance of frequent transit.

People who are transit dependent pay for this gap with their time and access to opportunities and, like previous callers said, medical appointments and health.

And so as you amend and pass this transit measure, I hope that you will think about all the trips you make from the commitments you've needed to get to on a tight schedule to trips after peak hours, whether it be a concert, a friend's house, or urgent care after urgent care.

These needs don't change when you don't have access to a car, but they can be impossible if you live outside Seattle's frequent transit network.

And as a sidewalk advocate, I have to mention sidewalks.

In people with disabilities, we depend on frequent and reliable transit that is connected by safe and accessible sidewalks.

In both systems, our sidewalks and our buses are in desperate need of dedicated funding.

So I just want to emphasize that as you move forward, we cannot build an accessible transportation network by defunding one critical service to pay for another.

So as much as I hope that we will have new sidewalk funding, especially as the city is investing $1.5 million in this new transportation funding task force, I urge the council to keep this transit measure focused on transit so we can

Our next caller will be Lynn Drake, followed by Alberto Alvarez.

Before we get to Lynn, thank you, Ms. Black, for joining us remotely.

Congratulations on your new role.

Look forward to connecting again soon.

Your presence is missed here in council chamber as well.

Thank you.

Lynn, please press star six.

Hi, good morning.

I'm Lynn Drake.

I'm a resident of Alki Beach.

I'm asking you to fully support Mayor Wilson's proposal for a sales tax increase for more buses more often.

In Alki, our transit, unfortunately, is not always fast, frequent, and reliable.

Tomorrow night, me and three neighborhood friends are going to the symphony, and it's not usually a problem getting there, but coming home at around 10, 1030 at night from Benaroya is we often take the light rail, but sitting at that famous bench in Soto for maybe up to 30 minutes waiting for bus 50, or if we take the C and wait for it for 30 minutes in the junction, most businesses are closed.

It's a little nerve-wracking at night.

So the option is most people do not want to take transit.

They want to use their cars.

unfortunately.

So I'm asking for something reliable for Alki residents and this transit measure will do that.

So I really thank you for taking consideration of this and anything without a transfer or anything that's more reliable would be much appreciated.

Thank you so much for your consideration.

Thank you Ms. Drake.

Our next caller will be Alberto Alvarez, followed by David Haynes.

Alberto, please press star six.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Better funding with car tabs and parking fees.

Traffic gridlock causes delays in bus service.

More people out of their cars and into transit.

A responsible funding mechanism should address both.

It's not just about building it and they will come.

Ridership remains low because the balance of driving a car outweighs taking two or more bus routes to the places people need to travel to.

A tax on car usage itself would be a more equitable way to fund our transit system.

Wealthy households own multiple cars.

Drivers from the suburbs can be taxed when parking on our streets and commercial lots.

There are better ways to tackle the issues of low ridership and unreliable bus routes.

I would like Council to draft amendments that will alleviate the impact of a tax hike and also entice people out of their cars and into buses.

We are stuck with regressive taxes, casting the wide net of a sales tax for limited improvements.

Responsible spending should inflict costs with care while also targeting the gridlock that slows down bus service across all bus routes.

Thank you all and have a good day.

Thank you, Mr. Alvarez.

Our final caller will be David Haynes.

David, please press star six.

Low ridership originates from criminals and the COVID concerns about sick people that are spit spraying inconsiderately on the bus, sneezing in front of you as the bus pulls away rapidly.

It's a concern, you know?

The thing is, perhaps if there was more frequent service, there wouldn't be so many victimizations and vulnerabilities waiting at the bus stop for too long.

The thing is, it doesn't matter how much you tax and spend virtually saving how you're doing people that favor driving a bus right up to their living space when there's sketchy, unsafe, creepy criminals with behavioral crisis that are camouflaging their underworld participations within and around transit-oriented world.

And it's unsafe for kids.

You want to give a bunch of free passes to people and leave them vulnerable to being victimized and raped behind the bus stop.

It's a concern, you know?

The thing is, we need to end the abuse of the bus union, who thinks that they're entitled to get off work 30 minutes early, at the end of their route, away from base, and then they drive past us at six o'clock, hauling ass during rush hour, bypassing every stop, just so they can get home without worrying about taking the bus system.

Because they've acknowledged, our bus union has acknowledged that they cannot take the bus like we have to take it because it doesn't work for them because it takes too long.

And yet we got all this money being spent on supervisors who sit on their smartphone acting like they're keeping the bus driver's timing schedules honest while the bus drivers are stopping two stops before they get to the transit to make sure they don't show up in time.

And by the time they get there and the supervisor's not paying attention, the other bus that you needed to transfer to takes off.

And the only way they communicate is to honk each other.

They need to like have radio say, hey bus, something says, hold up for 20 seconds.

Chair, there are no additional registered speakers.

All right.

We will now move on to our first item of business.

Will the committee clerk please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, briefing and discussion on Council Bill 121226, an ordinance relating to a sales and use tax providing for the submission to qualified voters of the city at an election to be held on November 3rd, 2026, a proposition to collect a sales and use tax to fund transit and related transportation programs in Seattle and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

All right.

Looks like our presenters have joined us at the table.

Welcome.

In a moment, please introduce yourselves and begin your presentations.

But before we do that, I wanna share a quick update.

We might learn a little bit more about this in the central staff presentation.

But my office work closely with the mayor's office to negotiate a slight revision to the mayor's proposal as it relates to accessibility and on one of the provisions there and making it easier for folks to safely access transit and resulting in, I think, a $5 million per year a total up to that amount versus the original baseline proposal of $3.5 million, both of which, both numbers, the original and the revised number, still effectively reflect a cut to both the legislative maximum amounts or the actuals that were spent on average every year for the same category.

but regardless, I think more reflect a better, more balanced approach and made offsetting reductions to the transit service.

Instead of 57% of expansion, the back of the napkin math that the mayor's office worked out was 47%.

which is still effectively doubling the level of service and providing more dollars so people can safely access transit.

So all that is to say, I wanna thank the mayor's office for their partnership and collaboration on that and their agreement and their alignment on there.

And then today, again, for clarity, we are considering the mayor's proposal.

That is an element that we worked on together, but this is our executive's proposal and we're gonna learn more about it today.

So central staff, welcome.

Again, please introduce yourselves and begin your presentation.

Good morning, council members.

Calvin Chow with council central staff.

Good morning, Amanda Allen, central staff.

So council members, thank you for having us.

I have a memo that was circulated earlier this week.

It is on the agenda.

I'll be speaking to it very briefly today.

I'll try to preserve some time for your conversations, but I want to make sure that I covered some of the high points of how we got here.

So I wanted to start with just a reminder of what the transit measure started from.

It has a longer history than just the Seattle Transit measure.

It started in 2014. when King County Metro was facing significant revenue shortfalls.

They went for a countywide sales and vehicle license fee proposal that did not pass in King County, but did pass within the Seattle jurisdiction.

Seattle voters approved a follow-up that just provided funding for Seattle Transit in 2014. So that was a 0.1% sales tax and a $60 vehicle license fee.

That measure took us through to 2020 when after COVID had started the lockdown, there was the proposal to extend it.

We had a lot less certainty about where transit ridership was going, what transit needs were going to be.

and so there was a lot more shift in what that spending could include.

So there were a number of changes to what Seattle Transit measure is allowed to spend on.

So in addition to transit service, metro service, as well as our own streetcar, there was a category for emerging needs and COVID recovery.

A large portion of this was used during the closure of the West Seattle Bridge to help deal with the sort of transportation demand management and other options for getting people to and from West Seattle during that time.

They extended the low income transit access program.

We included city staffing for sound transit three related projects.

And in part because King County Metro was running reduced service and was having difficulty in getting coaches and drivers during the ramp up following COVID, There was additional money that we directed towards transit infrastructure and the Council took a number of proposals over that time to increase the spending up to a legally authorized allowance of $16.4 million per year.

So the table one that I have up on top here is just showing what the 2026 spending levels look like for the existing Seattle Transit measure.

I wanted to highlight that if you add up all the planned expenditures here, that is significantly more than the 0.15% sales tax that the Seattle Transit currently funds raises in a year.

And so this does reflect some additional, essentially fund balance that was built up as transit service was not ramped up as quickly coming out of COVID.

There were two other items that I wanted to draw your attention to that Council took action on in last year's budget.

There was the proposal to allow Seattle Transit measure funding to be used to support private transportation services as well as public transportation services.

The idea at the time was to really focus on the waterfront shuttle and at that time or following that proposal, the The budget actually allowed for some spending from the Office of Economic Development to actually fund that service.

I understand that King County has actually taken over that service again as a sort of a pilot project for the next couple years.

So that is part of King County, now it's part of King County Operated Service, but that was something that the council weighed on during the last budget.

In addition, the council approved allowances to use Seattle Transit Measure funding for transit safety and security efforts, specifically to fund a chief transit security and safety officers in SDOT and to implement recommendations of the King County Transit Safety Task Force.

That position is currently not filled.

As I think was mentioned that during the Mayor's and SDOT's presentation, the base cost service that we do pay for Metro service does have sort of overhead costs that are related to Metro's transit safety and security efforts.

SDOT estimates that for 2025, that's about 9% of the cost or about $3.9 million.

The last thing I wanted to just call out about our existing measure is that we purchase service under a transit service agreement that expires at the end of 2027. That service agreement has conditions about how quickly we can ramp up and ramp down service more operationally for how quickly Metro can respond to the city's needs.

If this measure is not renewed, there is sufficient funding to We do the ramp down over a couple of service windows to meet our obligations under that contract.

If the measure were to pass, we would need a new service agreement with King County Metro.

So a couple contextual issues I think are useful for the council members to think of.

One is sort of the changing nature of transit ridership.

With COVID lockdown, transit ridership really came to, was essentially halved countywide and has been increasing since, but we have not reached transit levels that we had prior to the pandemic.

I know there are more recent numbers, but the numbers that I saw reported to the to the Federal Transit Administration said that we were still at about 75% as of last year countywide in King County.

Both King County and SDOT have noted that the increase in ridership has not been sort of traditionally where our ridership has been.

So the first measure was really focused on overcrowding and reliability and focused a lot on our commuter service.

And what we have seen is a lot of ridership coming back on off peak hours, shoulder hours, weekend hours, sort of more all day service.

And that has been reflected in some of the city's policy documents over the last several years.

The Seattle Transportation Plan transit element did focus on this.

It had been part of our transit master plan previously, but the idea of how to support all-day transit as part of our growth management strategies, as part of our comprehensive planning strategy.

One other effort that's worth keeping track of is King County's restoration of service effort.

They, a couple years ago, approved a plan, a guideline for how to restore service as they were coming out of COVID.

They've done a number of service restructures related to link light rail coming on board, and the next couple years they expect to do a focused effort around the Seattle service.

That also includes Vashon, but the vast majority of that service is in Seattle.

It's estimated to be around 100,000 service hours, so roughly the same level of service hours that's being proposed to increase with the mayor's proposal here.

and that's probably going to be about a two-year effort that has to be approved by King County Council.

Metro's operations are funded by a 0.9% base sales tax as well as fair collections.

And I know there was a conversation about revenue options under our authority as a Seattle Transportation Benefit District.

The two that we have used are the vehicle license fee, which is a per license charge.

We have authority to charge up to $100 per vehicle.

We currently charge $50 per vehicle, and that is used currently to support base transportation funds.

If we wanted to do anything beyond that, we would have to go to the voters to ask for their approval for the additional $50 million.

It is not, as has been discussed, the car We've increased population more than we've increased car ownership in Seattle.

$50 of VLF is projected to raise $22.1 million this year for our existing $50 VLF fee.

There are other options that are embedded in the state legislation.

They are largely duplicative of authority we already have.

So this is things like the ability to issue bonds and ask voters for property tax to support those bonds.

It's things like impact fees and one-year excise property tax levies.

We generally have those powers through other means as well, and they're not particularly well suited for ongoing operational expenditures.

like transit would be.

There is the authority to pursue vehicle tolling.

That does require approval from the Washington State Transportation Commission and would have to go to voters as well.

That is a much bigger discussion.

And then just to kind of highlight where we are with the mayor's proposal, the mayor has proposed a 0.3% sales tax to generate about $138 million annually.

That's the average over 10 years, so not necessarily the first year.

It's expected to increase the number of bus trips from about 180,000 currently to 280,000 compared to what we're currently spending.

And the broad changes that council member that the Chair responded to.

There was an increase from what SDOT and the Mayor's Office showed at the last transportation meeting that increased the transit and accessibility infrastructure column from 3.5 million to 5 million and articulated clearly that accessibility is part of that category of spending.

So currently the mayor's proposal does mandate, well, requires a minimum of 60% of the annual revenue raised to be funded for transit.

That is an increase from the current 50% that is in the existing Seattle transit measure.

It increases the amount of allowable spending on low income transit access up to 12 million per year.

And it adds a little bit more for the city staffing for ST3.

This was the table that I was hoping to, I was trying to put up.

Sorry, I've got my...

So just to highlight again, there are a couple things that are not included in the merits proposal that were previously funded by Seattle Transit measure, a category for emerging needs that was intended to be flexible and that was driven largely by the time of COVID and not knowing where we were going with transit.

The issue around passenger transportation services and the issue around a separate line item for traffic safety and security.

I've just highlighted a very high level, a few considerations, knowing that there's a lot of different perspectives.

The size of the proposal, which could include other sources of revenue in that issue.

The mayor has highlighted that a 0.223% sales tax is necessary to maintain the level of funding necessary to maintain what we're currently purchasing.

So that's one consideration.

The term is something you could consider.

The 10-year term is the maximum allowable term we could ask voters for.

Both the previous measures were for six years.

and of course the spending categories, the authority on spending, and the allowable legal amounts of spending that could be used for the different categories.

Legally, this source of funding can be spent on any legitimate transportation need, so this proposal is to ask the voters to specifically focus on just the transit-related needs.

And very quickly, next steps.

We do have a number of following this meeting, there will be a July 6th meeting followed by a public hearing and then hopefully final action from the committee for July 16th.

That would give us two opportunities to have the full council discussion and vote.

We would have to pass the final excuse me, pass the final ballot measure, get the mayor's signature, and have the city attorneys write the ballot title in time to make the August 4th final deadline to file with King County to make the November ballot.

And as mentioned previously, the chair has asked that council members engage with central staff by next week, June 24th, to help facilitate development of amendments so that they can be published prior to the July 4th holiday.

And with that, we're happy to answer any questions.

Excellent.

Thank you, Cal.

Amanda, appreciate the presentation and the memo here, the thoughtful memo as well.

Colleagues, in a moment, I'll turn it over to you all, starting first with Vice Chair Rink for any comments, questions you all might have from your perspective.

But first, a few initial comments, questions to help kick off the conversation.

So in a moment, Mr. Chow asks you all what in terms of specific service hours that were promised or contemplated in the soon-to-be expiring Seattle Transit measure, what was promised versus what was actually delivered and where we're on track.

But I'll ask that in a moment before we get there.

Would love to better understand, or actually, can you just clarify which specific transportation-related investments are legally eligible or authorized under state law, but not particularly emphasized in the executive proposal?

I also remember it could be for anything that's related to our transportation system, any roads, asphalt, bridges, structures, stairways.

It could be related to our signal system.

It could do any of the things that our levy funding is going towards or that can be tied to a transportation use.

Essentially it's the same restrictions that are on the state's gas tax usage.

So it's very, very fungible for SDOT and transportation related issues, but we could not use it beyond transportation.

Thank you, that's helpful.

Can you help clarify whether, so the transportation levy that was generously approved by voters in November 2024, crafted by our city and this council, included a total of $9 million for transportation safety and security.

And a few short months after, a month and a half after it was passed by voters, King County Metro operator Sean Yim was tragically killed in the line of duty.

and serving our community on December 18th, 2024. And so those original investments, one would expire roughly halfway through this, if we continue at the clip of a 10 year proposal, so that was an eight year measure, roughly halfway through that would expire and then here's this.

So this is ultimately reflects the next opportunity to actually fund and invest in transit safety and security.

And two, those original investments that the city crafted was before the broader issue of transit safety and security was elevated, not just as a city priority, but as a regional priority, and would ultimately result in the King County Regional Transit Safety and Security Task Force, comprised of experts from across our region and various jurisdictions, all aligning on specific plans, strategy, recommendations, also aligning on the notion that transit safety and security is a shared responsibility.

It's a responsibility that is shared broadly, not solely one born or held by any particular transit agency or operator, whether it's King County Metro, Sound Transit, Seattle Streetcar, whatever it is.

So can you help me better understand against that backdrop can you help clarify whether, and I note that the executive's proposal and one of our partners when we were here last time around, one of the slides indicated that roughly up to 9% of the baseline of whatever we purchase purely for transit service would include or likely include various investments related to transit safety and security.

Can you help clarify whether the current executive proposal provides any additional dedicated funding to improve transit safety and security on top of that?

It does not.

Thank you.

All right, now circling back to the original query about what was promised expressly in the legislation and or contemplated at the time in terms of total service hours that would be or could be delivered during the soon-to-be expiring transit measure versus what was actually delivered or what we're on track to deliver very shortly.

Council Member, I don't have those figures readily available.

I can pull them out if you want to.

SDOT just released their last annual report and they keep all that information available on the website.

That includes their detailed spending, so I'm happy to do that if you would like me to in real time.

I would say that it's hard to say what was promised because the 2020 measure happened right after COVID as we were as we were looking at the city being shut down.

So I don't know that I have a good explanation for what people expected in terms of specific service hours.

They knew the amount of money that was going to be spent.

Clearly, we did not deliver as much transit service as we thought we were going to during that time.

We ended up spending a number of that on capital funding.

partially because King County Metro was not able to ramp up service to meet Seattle's request for more service, both because of coach availability and potentially getting drivers back following COVID.

So I'm happy to pull up numbers if that's useful to the committee, but I think in terms of what was the voter expectation, I think it was a little more transit in general and trying to make sure that there were still options to address the transit needs in an uncertain time.

Sure.

Now that makes sense and I appreciate that initial kind of reflection.

And Fairpoint all around, especially on the bit about the might not have been expressly promised.

And that's why the fallback language I intentionally used there was contemplated.

There might not have been a specific target number that was like, I'll share that.

I reviewed the voter's pamphlet information and I don't recall seeing it listed there.

I don't remember what was on the campaign election material at the time, but regardless, No doubt there was something that was contemplated, at least at a high level.

So yes, offline, no need to do it live here.

And apologies for not prepping you in advance for that question.

But yes, would definitely appreciate clarity on what was again, probably a better term, contemplated at least at a high level in terms of service hours versus what was actually or on track were likely to actually see delivered and which you preempted.

My next question, why?

Why the Delta?

Main reason, coach availability, driver shortages.

Can you help me understand So we'll chase down that information offline because I think it's a very important data point.

Can you help me better understand, at least from central staff perspective, in your conversations with the executive and based off of what you know, how should members of the public and us be confident that those issues have been fully resolved and we're able to still roll out effectively a 50% increase in transit service, 100,000 hours.

How should, again, how should members of the public and this body be confident that those issues were sufficiently resolved and have confidence that we're actually gonna be able to and well positioned to deliver on these new set of commitments?

Well, I think it's how it's looking at the performance over the last couple of years.

It's looking in to see just how much service has been delivered this year and presumably will be delivered through this service restoration effort that King County Metro is going through.

I think that's sort of the broader One of the long-term issues that we understand with King County Metro is that their long-term plan for service is not fully funded.

And so they are looking at longer-term structural transportation funding issues as well that will have to be addressed or they won't be able to deploy more service to meet their own needs too.

So I think there is Transportation funding is, everyone's under a tight scrutiny with transportation funding and funding in general right now.

King County Metro is going through the same issues and we'll be looking at some potentially new revenue options to help address their needs.

They have been able to respond to the most recent Seattle purchases and I think current practice is the best judgment we can have of whether they can meet that need now.

I understand that SDOT and the mayor's office have been working closely with Metro in terms of drafting this proposal to make sure that they would be able to support that.

But it still remains to be seen how they get back to a fully funded long-term proposal.

And that probably isn't gonna be, I don't believe King County's gonna be able to sort that out in the next several years.

I think that is a much longer term concern.

Thank you.

Appreciate the clarity there.

And then yes, please do follow up offline with the requested information, but helpful context for now.

So really appreciate it.

In a moment, I'll ask about some nitty-gritty, geeky, policy wonk-ish things related to Fairbox recovery ratios and include some self-reflections about the recent King County Transportation Benefit Districts for roads.

But in the meantime, I would love to turn it over to my colleagues for any comments, questions you all may have.

Starting first with Vice Chair Rink.

Thank you, Chair Sacca.

First and foremost, I want to apologize for being tardy to committee this morning and provide a little bit of background because, importantly, today workers at the embassy suites walked out on the job on strike calling for a fair contract, better pay, and better health care.

And I joined those workers on the picket line and ended up staying a little bit later than expected over a dispute where people can protest, but I needed to stay to ensure that we protect everyone's First Amendment rights to free speech.

So I wanna provide that context and apologize to the public commenters whose public comments I missed, I'll go back and watch.

But thank you so much for coming out and making your voices heard on this important effort.

But I wanted to bring this up for a critical reason, because Unite Here Local 8 is our local hospitality workers union, representing thousands of workers across stadiums and hotels, many of whom are immigrant workers, and many of whom work non-traditional work hours.

These workers are really those who don't just rely on our transit system alone, but rely on the late night bus service that this measure currently pays for.

So I want to center that in my consideration for the Seattle Transit Measure.

This is the kind of service that we're talking about, delivering for working people across the city.

So I am centering workers just like those who are on strike right now when I'm thinking about our investments.

And my highest priority is to make sure we are delivering as much additional bus service as possible because those workers deserve to go home at night without waiting in the dark for a long time hoping their bus will come soon.

So, delivering on a truly frequent transit network is not just how we reduce our emissions to meet our climate goals, which is tremendously important, but also how we create more affordable ways to get around our city quickly and safely.

So with that, I wanna thank central staff for the presentation for today.

Cal, I want to thank you for elevating the points about the King County Transportation Benefit District component in the memo.

And colleagues, I want to thank you again for signing on to my letter to King County Council to lift that arbitrary cap that would have only impacted City of Seattle.

And a special thank you to Council Member Lynn for your testimony at King County Council.

Together with our advocacy, we lifted that cap, which would have diverted about $3 million of funding away from City of Seattle.

But now we have about $5 million in new capital funding coming in for the city.

So I'm wondering if Central staff, can you help us understand a little bit on the process receiving those funds and what we can use those funds for?

Yes, it's a little unclear to me exactly how the administration of it works.

My understanding is that it would be an application process, that there would be essentially a number of, I guess, county-focused transportation plans and we would have to find projects that would be eligible to support those programs and then that money would be provided to us.

The idea, I know that for some smaller jurisdictions that may be difficult and the idea is that if it's not, if it does not, is not used by the local jurisdiction, then it could be used back by the Uncorporated King County Roads Division.

That won't be a problem for Seattle.

In any case, I think we will find projects that could make use of the money and then that, of course, could free up other monies that could be used for other capital purposes.

Certainly so with a new process we're learning how we're going to be able to bring in those funds but we do have funding and remind me the collections begin next year so theoretically we could start collecting that funding 2027.

I believe so.

So it takes the state a little bit of time to get the tax in place.

So my understanding is that it starts next year.

And again, I don't know quite what King County is thinking in terms of their administrative procedures for when that money would be made available.

Thank you, Cal.

That's really helpful.

As we heard in public comment too, there's a lot of appetite for capital projects.

And there was a note called out about our transportation levy and wanting to get those projects online.

So we are delivering on important capital improvements to create more pedestrian safety and safety for cyclists as well.

And on this point, I'm wondering if you can speak in broad strokes about just the current investments in the transportation levy as it relates to capital, what we're spending towards ADA accessibility through new and repaired sidewalks, curb cuts, and other capital improvements.

I do not have those numbers at the top of my available.

We do have a spending breakdown and requirements in that levy that went to voters.

So I'm happy to follow up with you and with the rest of the committee to call out those specifics.

Thank you.

And as was noted earlier, there was a change in what was initially proposed to the proposal before us, an increase of 1.5 million going towards capital.

Could you put in perspective and just color that trade off a little bit more in terms of what 1.5 million gets us in terms of bus service hours?

I think, well, I don't know what the increment is, but the $5 million gets about 15,000 hours of bus service.

5 million, it's 15?

15,000.

15,000, okay.

Well, I'll do some quick math, so hopefully we can get an answer here in committee to just translate that point.

But I am, just broadly speaking, a bit skeptical about increasing the capital budget in this measure, particularly if it's at the expense of service hours for buses or low-income transit passes.

And given the relatively high cost of our capital projects compared to purchasing additional bus service, how should we be weighing in those trade-offs and achieving greatest mobility benefit at this time?

And maybe this is for future community discussion, and again, I'll do a little bit of math to figure out what 1.5 translates to in terms of bus hours, How can you help us understand a little bit more of some of those trade-offs?

I think we can help provide information on what the cost of service hours are, what some comparable costs of capital projects are so that the council members have some sense of what the options are and then it is your prerogative obviously to direct us on what your priorities are.

Thank you for that.

Switching gears a little bit, it's my understanding that while safety doesn't have its own bucket, it is an allowable use for the measure and a non-insignificant amount of funding is being spent on safety improvements by city and county.

Could you give us a bit of a lay of the status of our efforts on safety improvements for transit and bus stops?

I think that's something I'll probably have to follow up with the executive on.

I think there's certainly it's a lot of the attention is more on behaviors and enforcement and cleanup and some other things that are not traditionally, not necessarily have been transportation projects themselves.

I think a lot of the regional conversation has been around how to coordinate law enforcement response.

So a number of different efforts that really haven't been a part of A lot of it has been sort of specific location-specific, a lot of economic development efforts as well.

So I'd like to take this back and engage the executive a bit to try to get you a better answer.

Thank you.

A lot to follow up on on this point.

I'll close with this note because now we have some math done.

So about 1.5 million is approximately 4,500 hours of service, just to put that on the record if our math is right.

Those conclude my questions for right now, Chair.

I might chime in with some additional questions just based on how our conversation goes during the rest of committee, but thank you for the time.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Any Additional comments, questions, colleagues?

I guess starting first with Councilmember Kettle.

And first off, let me let the record reflect and note, she joined us a while ago, but Council President Hollingsworth is here.

Thank you, Councilmember Hollingsworth.

Go ahead, Councilmember Kettle, you're recognized.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Central Staff, for being here.

I appreciate the staff memo and the rundown this morning.

I just wanted to say a few things.

My team has been working with various stakeholders, with your team chair, different aspects of this.

And there's all the various details that need to be worked through.

Just in a broad sense, I do believe in a strong public transit system.

One that needs to serve the entirety of the city to include its densest areas, of which obviously my district is the densest.

area.

And I just wanted to note there's, for example, there's no coverage, there's no transit west of Third Avenue.

You know, right now we have some agreements related to the waterfront but long term we don't have a solution for that.

And for the whole of the city, this goes for the different pieces thanks to the lady that I met earlier before the meeting highlighting some of the areas like with Ballard, but it's not just Ballard in terms of having access and that connection.

It's also happening here in District 7, particularly again west of Third Avenue.

And Because of the densest area, it also needs to serve the entirety of the city well.

And I bring this up in a sense, it's not really covered, but I just wanted to raise it, is that an impact for the greater downtown area, particularly in the D7 part, is that transit is not right-sized for the district.

I see this again and again in terms of essentially we have 777 buses when we need some 737s for the downtown area and this plays out in terms of impacting overall transit and I think this is something that at least should be raised and discussed as an opportunity because the right sizing really helps the overall system and in turn that helps everybody.

Big thing though, I wanted to kind of footstomp what the chair's comment is that, you know, the service needs to be safe.

And this is a little bit of a criticism, but the central staff doesn't talk about public safety.

You know, we throw around the term COVID and COVID is kind of like, this blanket neutral, almost like an act of God thing, in terms of like weather events.

And obviously this was related to the pandemic, but there was a lot of decisions made during COVID by the county, by the city that really impacted the service of our public transit.

It really impacted the safety on our transit system.

And so I don't think we can use the word general COVID.

We have to speak specifically to the public safety impacts of what's happened to our system because that's the reason why we've had lower ridership on the buses.

You know, I'm thinking about being at a school event.

I was there for an hour and a half.

We had Metro, but we also, King County Sheriff, we had SPD, and some others there, and I was there listening to these students who were primarily juniors and seniors, and they were talking about their experiences writing to the school as freshmen and sophomores.

and it was horrific.

Initially they started with people reading testimonials from other students, but then the students started standing up and speaking.

And these young women were talking about the experiences that they had to deal with, the endure on our buses.

And it was horrific.

And even young men, you know, these students were talking about their experiences.

You know, so if we want to wonder why ridership dipped.

Yes, COVID is definitely a piece of that, but that's just one piece of it.

And we need to account for the public safety aspects.

We need to have safe ridership.

We need a safe experience and a safe environment for everyone riding on our buses.

And I'll add, by the way, not just riding on the buses, but while waiting for the buses or waiting for a transfer, wherever it may be.

and it's incumbent on us as a city to work with the county because oftentimes we hear about jurisdiction, like where does the county's responsibilities ends and where the city starts.

You know, we talk about this all the time, Chair.

Little Saigon, I've been down there a couple times recently with Council Member Lynn on public safety walks and you see the issues related to public transit there all the time.

And that's not just Little Saigon, it's all over.

Obviously, we had a lot of talk about North Seattle, same thing.

Is that a safe environment?

for those using transit on Aurora?

No.

So that really needs to be added in.

It needs to be talked about.

And we also need to look back at the decisions made and make sure we don't make those mistakes again.

And then the last piece is, and this is point rightfully raised, like, hey, Sales tax is regressive.

That's our only way.

I understand that.

But there's a good governance affordability piece here.

And we need to be thinking, you know, as council members, we need to step back and think big picture as well.

And we need to step through these various aspects because we just had a meeting yesterday with Seattle City Light.

It's gonna be big increases from City Light in terms of rates.

I used to be on the Regional Water Quality Committee, and so I have deep background on what's happening with SPU and water rates, Puget Sound Energy as well.

Obviously, property taxes, various other taxes that we've done, but also the county and the state.

And we've mentioned the county doing its thing.

These are all cumulative, and who keeps the big picture?

I have nothing to suggest to me that the city and county and the state ever talk to each other and think about the impacts of what they're doing on the other levels of government and vice versa because the cumulative is immense and it goes to the affordability challenge and we need to be thinking about these things.

And I say this as much as to really hone in on City Light or SPU or the other elements that we have because at the end of the day, we talk about affordability like it's coming from the outside from different ways and we can talk about the Trump administration and its impacts on inflation from first the tariffs and now the Iran war and so forth.

But we have to be accountable to ourselves in terms of our role in creating this affordability problem as government.

and Chair, I just wanted to highlight, that's kind of stepping back from the transit measure itself, but just to highlight that because the various lenses that we use to look at these bills and specifically this one, we have to look at from that kind of good governance and with the idea of affordability because the impacts on everyone is incredible.

So thank you, Chair.

Council Member Cuttle, can I respond to some of your comments?

Yes, of course.

Go ahead.

You're recognized.

So your point about safety is well taken, and I would say King County Metro also shares your concerns.

They have, I think as was discussed earlier, Metro has more than doubled the amount of spending on safety and security over the past few years.

And not just in terms of Metro Transit Police and the transit security officers, but also with the inclusion of behavioral health specialists.

So that's a different way of looking at safety.

So not just with a stick, not just with surveillance, but launching and expanding Metro's behavioral health specialists and ambassador programs to provide non-officer presence in the system.

If I could just add, I mean, we have spent- Please do, because I look at public safety holistically across the board, and to include, it's in our strategic framework plan, the SEAM, the public safety, but also the public health, the housing, human services.

So everything that I said speaking to that, I bring from that comprehensive way.

not just with the surveillance pieces and the like.

So I just wanted to make that clear because it's implying almost that I'm just speaking like SPD or King County Sheriff.

Council member, I think you've been very clear over time of your interest in public safety and how it affects all these different pieces and how they're intertwined.

I think the reality is that past council action has directed some of these resources to transportation specifically how to piggyback on King County's own efforts, but to increase the amount of enforcement and staff support that's out there on the field to deal with these issues.

There is money in the levy to help address some of these things as well.

So you've been very consistent about identifying that.

And I think what we can do is we can go back and make sure that we're able to answer the question of what does that look like?

At what funding levels?

what do we know that the county is doing so that you have that information as you move this deliberation further?

Yes.

And I was speaking specifically to the transit ridership patterns on page 3 of 7, that section in terms of my remarks on COVID.

And yes, I'm well aware of what King County's doing or not doing.

This is something that I work in partnership with the chair on.

And at the end of the day, though, You can go by the bus stops at Little Taigon or some of these other areas and there's so much more work to be done.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Well said and appreciate, Ms. Allen, your comments and sort of the additional clarity you added there on what King County Metro is doing and with respect to how they essentially doubled their investments and I'm glad they're doing that and they need to do that and maybe there's an opportunity to do even more.

What this conversation is about today is what are we doing and this is our opportunity to invest more or not.

This is our opportunity to take another bite at the apple.

This is our opportunity to provide additional funding or not on top of those baseline what Metro is already doing today.

Are we up for the challenge or not?

I would like to think we are, because again, a central tenant and theme underlying the entire creation and the body of work product of the King County Regional Transit Safety and Security Task Force is that transit safety and security is a shared responsibility.

Responsibility is shared.

All of us.

Avoid the counterproductive finger pointing and deflecting of blame and we all own a piece.

So I'm glad King County Metro is doing that.

And I know they're committed to improving the experience of transit safety and security for riders and the workers, the operators.

I know they're committed to that work, but we have a responsibility too.

Anyways, thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Well said.

Councilmember Lynn, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the Mayor's Office, to all the advocates and members of the public who came to speak today.

This is an exciting opportunity as we look at things like our comprehensive plan and the need for us to reimagine the future of our city, making sure that we have strong transit investments that align with our growth.

Councilmember Strauss, I know that you've raised this issue, the importance of making sure that as we focus our density in certain areas that we have transit that aligns well with that to service that increased growth.

And I've heard it a lot as people talk about centers and corridors and making sure as we look at increasing density along our frequent transit routes, you know, members of the public are like, well, is this really gonna, you know, can we be confident that there will continue to be frequent transit on this route?

Because from time to time, some of our transit routes change.

And so having a, a 10-year dedicated fund to make sure that we do have that consistent transit, I think really helps us provide that confidence to members of the public as we do our comprehensive planning.

We know that this is critical for, as we heard people speak, for people to just get their basic needs met, to get to the doctor's office, to get to school, and so much more.

It's necessary for our climate goals.

It's also good for drivers as we know our roads are not going to get any bigger and as our population growth continues to grow.

There's only so much room and we've made great progress on growing our population without increasing car ownership.

And so just don't want to ignore that.

Thank you to Councilmember Kettle for raising the public safety.

I do think public safety on our transit is essential.

And I guess one question is, as we look at a 10-year kind of spending plan.

Just wondering how much flexibility is there as circumstances might change?

I mean, hopefully, knock on wood, we do not have another COVID type scenario.

But I noticed, I think we had to pass an ordinance to allow for some of the the dollars to go towards security a couple of years ago.

Could you just talk through, sort of as we are looking at a longer term measure, what flexibility is there or isn't there to anticipate changes?

And I'll have a sort of a follow-up question on this in terms of the revenues and looking at potential like a county-wide transit measure, but just in general, how strict are these buckets and what flexibility is there or isn't there and built in?

So there is provisions that allow us to, through a future ordinance, to change the allowances here and even the categories of what's allowable in the spending.

We have done, the council has done that in the past.

We have always stayed within the transit realm to make sure that we are still giving the voters what they requested, but we have done things like Off the top example is the initial measure to expand to give Seattle Public Schools students transit passes.

That was not part of the proposal at the time and it was expanded to include that until ultimately Washington State took on that responsibility through zero fare youth riders.

So we have that potential.

We've always wanted to stay true to the transit nature of it, if that's what the voters approved on.

And as a sales tax, the council would have approval or does not need to impose that amount, that full amount.

If, for instance, the county were to come up with a substitute countywide tax, we would have authority to impose up to, but we could choose to impose less.

That specific issue has been highlighted in one of the sections of the mayor's proposed legislation just to make that explicit and clear to everybody that if the county does go forward that we could reconsider and we could reconsider what the spending is for as well.

Thank you.

And on that point, I mean, it specifically calls out, so Section 4 specifically calls out the King County Transportation Benefit District possibility in a potential countywide transit measure that we reserve the right to reduce it.

Are there other, I mean, Could we reduce it if there was a different funding source?

So let's say in our conversations with the state legislature that we were able to find a statewide funding source for transit, would we still have that authority in other circumstances?

Yes, I believe so.

Okay, thank you.

Just a couple last points.

So just getting back to a little bit on the public safety, I do think there are real concerns there.

I think we see sort of the failures of our inability to meet the needs of our community in terms of mental health, in terms of substance use that sort of oftentimes play out in our transit system, which is a very public space.

And so on the one hand, we obviously, there's a lot of work that we are doing to address our mental health, to address substance use disorder needs.

And at the same time, while we do that work, I do believe that we need to make sure that our transit is safe.

But I also just wanna call out that public safety, we see public safety in other ways with other transportation modes.

As we look at, just for example, up on Aurora, people are calling for us to close down roads, due to buses, but due to people driving the neighborhoods to, you know, buy sex or because of drive-by shootings, right?

And it is often, it is not folks doing drive-by shootings hopping on the bus.

It is people doing drive-by shootings in vehicles.

So I just wanna note that, you know, I do think as we think about public safety broadly, sort of transitioning away from, I think we have to recognize the public safety issues with our reliance on vehicles as our primary mode of transit or transportation.

And we heard about the public safety concerns of, folks just trying to, you know, who are biking or otherwise who are unfortunately too often hurt or killed by vehicles.

So I just want to, you know, provide some points on that.

But as we look at sales taxes and we've heard it, I think we all have concerns about sort of the regressive nature of sales taxes.

And, you know, I do just want to point out for, for the record that, you know, I know that Transit Riders Union and, you know, Mayor Wilson back when previously, when she wasn't a mayor, was, you know, fighting for an income tax, specifically to find other revenues for transit in particular, and that this is an issue that we continue to struggle with.

And I do think as we look at the impacts of sales taxes, I mean, it continues to be something I'm learning about.

I think, you know, there's the measurement of how it impacts a household based on their direct spending.

I do think there are other impacts to Councilmember Kettle's point, sort of overall.

And I just want to highlight one of those potential impacts, which is right now we charge sales tax to folks who are building new housing.

on the hard costs of new housing.

And oftentimes the hard costs are around 60% and then we charge sales tax on that.

So that oftentimes gets passed through to people trying to buy the house or to renters.

And I'm not sure that that part is captured in our analysis.

So it's complicated to figure out exactly the impacts of these sales taxes.

and I'm not sure how as a policy, as we consider this, how to capture that full impact.

As we consider that, I also think that as we look at ways to address sort of the regressive nature of sales taxes, there are measures that the legislature has taken to, for example, exempting things like diapers and food, right?

So how do we look at sort of the major categories of spending of particular low-income families, things unlike housing.

So, you know, I think things like getting rid of the sales tax on housing construction could be a good thing to address the regressivity of sales tax.

When we look at things like childcare, I don't believe childcare is subject to sales tax, so that's good.

But, you know, thinking at those big ticket items.

I know that we're working on utility costs, and thank you to Councilmember Strauss for your proposal to address some of those utility costs for our low-income families.

So I think there's multiple ways to address that sort of regressive nature of sales tax.

We can sort of look at how exactly these sales taxes are impacting different sort of households and try to be more targeted in providing relief.

So I just mentioned that I think that that's an ongoing body of work.

The other thing that I think for us over the next potential 10 years if this passes is that we do just really need to look at our tax structure more generally.

So again, Council Member Kettle, to your point about sort of the overall tax burden, I just wanna call out a few things that, as we were looking at King County passing their sales tax measure, Unfortunately, a lot of the sales taxes here in the city are diverted to other parts of the nation, to other parts of the county, to other parts of the state.

So there is a report a couple years ago, you know, Seattle Times, Danny Westney talked about this back then, where, you know, it was reported about 22 billion of our state taxes go to other states.

And recently I was looking at a Facts USA that talked about 57 billion of our state taxes go to other states.

In terms of, you know, goes to the feds and then where the feds spend their dollars.

And, you know, King County and Seattle being sort of large generators of those taxes, that means a lot of our tax dollars are going to other states.

Similarly at the state level, King County submits about 12 billion in taxes to the state.

We get somewhere between six and eight and a half billion in return.

So that means billions of our King County, and again as Seattle is the largest sort of tax generator within the county, billions of our tax revenues are then being diverted to the rest of the state.

with the most recent King County sales tax measure.

Even though we fought hard to get as much as we could, still over, it's about 87.5% is still going to fund roads in unincorporated King County.

Those are our sales tax dollars going to the rest of the county.

We were able to get pass through similar to the other small cities or the rest of the cities, a lot of that is then leaving the city, going to other parts.

And so people are rightfully concerned about what they're getting in exchange for the taxes they pay.

And that is because the state taxes that we pay, and I just wanna point out that sales taxes, who collects the most sales taxes?

It's the state, 6%.

goes to the state.

And again, we are not getting our fair share in return.

And so one of the best things that we could do as a city is to work hand-in-hand with our businesses to get our fair share of our state, federal, and other taxes to get those back, because otherwise we are left without sufficient revenues to meet the needs of our community.

And the only revenues that we really control that we can make sure gets spent in our community are local taxes.

And so when our tax revenues keep getting diverted to other parts of the state, the country, the only option we have to meet the needs of our community is local taxes.

And so I hear the concern when our businesses say, hey, stop raising taxes.

And my message to them would be, let's work hand in hand, let's go down to Olympia, let's go down to DC to make sure that the taxes that you're paying to the states and feds actually stay in our region.

So again, earlier you mentioned it, but I just want to sort of reinforce a point that if we are able to be successful in getting back some of those funds from Olympia or DC, that there is the option to reduce the sales and use tax.

Yes, thank you, Councilmember.

We have control of how much of it we implement.

The one issue I just wanted to make sure, I know you mentioned this, but the idea of the recent exemptions that the state allows for different categories of sales tax, those are state-driven decisions, so that requires us to have a lobbying effort to do that, as a number of other folks have mentioned as well, but I just want to highlight that that isn't under our control.

Thank you so much, yes.

Thank you, Chair, for allowing me that time.

No, thank you.

Well said, Councilmember Lynn.

Appreciate you.

Councilmember Foster, floor is yours.

Thank you so much, Chair.

And thank you, Councilmember Lynn.

I really appreciated that.

And I'm going to follow up on a similar note.

So as we've heard folks talk about today, the balance between sales taxes, which we all know are regressive, as well as the need for service that we know that folks need.

and I'm going to first share an anecdote because this has been a really important piece for me to balance.

And I'll say our office met earlier this week with some poverty advocates and we're talking with them about this issue and said, hey, I'm grappling with this.

I want to get your input.

I just want to share an anecdote, which was they told me, you know, they had a similar issue come up at a board meeting and when they were discussing it at their board meeting and this issue of paying sales taxes, not for transit, for a different issue, that their board members were sort of split along economic lines.

and that it was the low-income board members who were in favor of the sales tax because they understood that it was buying a service that they otherwise wouldn't have access to.

So I've asked that group to get back to me with some more input on this particular measure, but I just want to make sure that we continue to be clear about who we're talking about, who's paying how much.

And with that, I want to turn to my understanding of the existing measure, and I want to just bring this back up, which is that For an average median household in Seattle, which is a household that's around $121,000 a year, that household would pay $58 per year under the 0.3% sales tax.

And that is an increase of $29 from what folks are paying today.

And I want to appreciate SDOT and the mayor's office for also bringing us information on what the increase would mean for a low-income household.

And so my understanding is that for a low-income two-person household at 30% area median income, which is $38,000 a year, that household would pay about $35 per year under this measure, and that is representative of an increase of $17 from the existing measure.

So then I want to just turn to some additional information.

So, you know, my understanding again is that, and I'll get a question in here for you, Calvin, at some point, but, you know, my understanding is that in order to continue with our existing levels of service, just to keep as-is status quo because of increased costs, inflation, the cost of buying service hours from Metro, that to stay as is, we would need to go from 0.15% to 0.233%.

Is that correct?

That was the mayor's office and SDOT's presentation.

They highlighted the increased cost.

We know that the cost for running our streetcar is also increased, so maintaining the existing programs and the like, that's the number that that Estad and the mayor has presented, yes.

Okay, got it.

And so- Just to be sure, you said 0.223?

I said 0.233, but tell me if I'm wrong.

0.223.

0.223.

Not that it's a big difference, but- I want to be correct, Amanda.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And so, you know, I just want to highlight that because we're talking about that level of increase just to make sure that our residents are not losing transit service because of the increased cost.

So when we're talking about our expansion, we're just talking about the change between 0.223 and 0.3.

And so I wonder if you can just share with us what that is in terms of cost impact for residents.

So the difference between 0.223 and 0.3, you had kindly asked me this question before, it's about 77% of the total amount.

So it essentially changes the calculus from $58 for a median household to about $45 for a median household.

Got it.

And I think that's important when we're talking about the need that we've heard from our residents and public comment today for expanded service levels.

and just putting in context, I've seen a lot in writing around the doubling of the sales tax for this.

And I just wanna, I think it's an important piece for the public to see, which is to maintain our existing levels of service, we would have to have an increase.

And we've already heard from so many people that that expansion is really needed.

So I just wanna make sure that's uplifted for folks who are engaging in this issue.

And then I wanna turn actually, Council Member Rink had a question that was really similar to something I was curious about.

So I wanna just turn back to that around the change from the 3.5 million to the $5 million.

And my understanding is that's an annual change, correct?

So that would actually be 1.5 million over the 10 years, or excuse me, 1.5 million per year for 10 years.

Yes, so the decision before the council is what sort of broad guidelines or allowances per year do you want to include in the spending.

The actual spending will have to be approved by the council through future budgets.

So if it's a up to, then that is a maximum that can be spent unless future ordinance changes that.

For something like revenue service, excuse me, transit service, the proposal currently is for a minimum of 60% of the revenue to be spent on.

Within those broad restrictions, that's what the mayor will propose for a budget and that's what you will be considering through the regular budget process.

The 3.5 to 5 million is presumably an annual spend plan for that amount of money.

Got it.

Thank you.

And I'm not sure if I got my notes correct.

I know Council Member Rank was doing some math up here on the dais earlier, which I really appreciated as somebody who's got a master's in social services.

But I wanted to go back and just make sure I got those numbers correctly.

I thought I heard 4,000 hours for 1.5 million.

Did I get that right?

I'm trying to get to the potential shift from services to capital over the 10-year period.

Sure, so SDOT confirmed that the 1.5 million is about 4,500 hours of service.

Okay, so that would be 4,500 hours of service annually over the 10-year period.

Correct.

Okay, thank you so much for that clarification.

Okay, and then I just want to turn to a question about our evaluation.

So, and I really appreciated our public commenter earlier talking about, we heard folks talk about transit frequency, but we also heard people just talk about their experience with travel time.

So I'm just curious, how do we evaluate, as we sort of look ahead to the annual reports, whether the service hour investments that we're making through this measure result in reduced door-to-door travel time for transit riders?

So especially thinking about those crosstown trips or our commenter who spoke about their experience getting to the hospital.

Yeah, so it is a little more complicated in sort of, we have a spending mechanism of which you buy service from King County Metro.

King County Metro has a broader service evaluation processes that we track and engage with.

We have annual reports that identify kind of what our spending has been and the characteristics of what that spending is.

And I know that staff work very closely with King County Metro to identify where there are problems.

That's where we tend to focus our capital spending to try to make transit priority improvements.

That's where King County looks at potential routing adjustments to make those adjustments as well.

We can follow up with you a little more directly about sort of what the best source of that information is.

I tend to look for King County performance.

I can't remember the name of the report they have, but they have an annual reporting document that provides a lot of that information on a on a more sort of system-wide level.

And just as a reminder, we are kind of obligated to use King County's routes as sort of the menu of what we purchase.

We don't really, King County has to, King County Council approves what the transit service changes are.

And from those offerings, we are using our revenues to help support where we think there is additional value for our residents.

Thank you for that, and I know there's folks from Metro here today, and I can see them nodding their heads, so I'm sure that we'll get that follow-up, so thank you.

And then I wanna just turn to my final point here, and thank you, Chair, for the time, which is just, we talked a little bit about provisions and the measure that are in place that allow us to sort of take a second look if there are changes to what the county is doing in their overall work.

So can you just share with us a little bit more, Calvin, about the process for that?

So if we were to see a change in investment from King County or additional hours from King County, what does this, the language that's in this transit measure now, either require us to do or allow us to do?

I believe that language in the resolution before us is really just a statement acknowledging that we have that authority.

So regardless of whether the language was there or not, this legislative body can decide at what level to impose this local taxing authority.

And so if the voters approve this, then the council will have to take a an action to ask the state to impose and collect the 0.3% sales tax.

Councilmember Strauss, I know, remembers that we actually ran into a timing issue in the past where it took time for the state to actually get that in place.

there was a certain amount of advance, it takes some time for the state to put those systems in place and start to begin collections.

So the process would be sort of the reverse.

The council would say, instead of collecting 0.3, we would collect 0.2 or whatever the amount is, and it would take some amount of time for the state to put that in place and change the collection amount.

Got it, thank you.

So the language is just a restatement of our authority to make sure that we have that clarified in the resolution.

I view it as a way to make sure that the voters who are gonna vote on it are aware that Seattle elected officials are paying attention to that concern.

Thank you so much, Calvin.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

Appreciate your questions.

Councilmember Rink, we're recognized.

Thank you, Chair.

And I wanna thank Councilmember Foster for her questions because now I have more math for everybody.

So thinking about a 1.5 million reduction annually, so 4,500 bus service hours per year, looking across the 10 years of the measure, that's 45,000 hours.

And I think it's a little bit ambiguous to be talking about bus hours, like what does that mean every day for people?

and so I think it's important to know that 4,500 bus service hours is about a week's worth of bus service.

So across the course of the measure as proposed, we would be looking at 10 weeks of bus service as the trade-off here.

So I thought that was particularly important to just name, just to close the loop on that point.

and I do have one additional question that's just kind of come up since we've heard folks today talk about the frequent transit network and the importance of being able to deliver on that.

I'm wondering how much would it cost to get 100% of the frequent transit network?

Is it possible to achieve that through reductions to capital spending?

What is the true delta there?

I think that's a little bit of a moving target depending on what you consider the frequent transit network to be.

It's a structural idea of these are our core routes and we want to have higher service.

What is that level of service that you mean when you talk about fully embracing that?

Is that five minutes headways on every single route?

What's the difference between the two?

There is a specific sort of proposal in the Seattle Transportation Plan, and we will go back and try to get a sense of how much of that is unfunded so that you have that sense.

But I don't know it off the top of my head, so we'll do a bit of research on that.

Okay, certainly.

Thank you so much for that.

That was just a point of curiosity I think folks are having and something that I want to center in our future discussions just broadly across all of our transportation investments.

One thing that I just wanna make sure is part of this conversation is genuinely what King County is gonna be doing over the next two years because bringing back 100,000 service hours is gonna be a big deal and could potentially address a number of concerns that folks have about where exactly are these buses going to go.

We haven't had a big restructuring look at this in Seattle for some time.

The most recent one was around Madison as that got implemented, the Madison BRT.

So it will be an opportunity to really raise a number of these sort of direct service issues.

Thank you so much, Cal.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Last but not least, with their hand raised, Council Member Strauss, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, colleagues.

I appreciate this transit measure being before us and we need to make this transit measure about transit.

The current proposal doubles the tax for fewer transit hours and we need to fix this.

We had better bus service in the pandemic than we do today in the Ballard Regional Center.

Metro's issues as discussed here during the pandemic caused funding diversions as Calvin Chow discussed here today.

We were literally in a place where if Metro, if we could have bought those hours from Metro, we would have, but we couldn't and we were just what's the next best option?

And so that's why I think that the 2020 proposal might not be the best apples to apples.

It might actually be that first proposal.

We can talk more about that later.

All that to say, if we were in a place we knew Metro could spend as many dollars as we provided, we would have even more transit hours in this plan.

Seattleites ride transit.

I would be in a place, we would literally buy as many hours as dollars could be collected.

I say that because if Metro is able to get these buses on the roads, these coaches on the roads with operators driving them, if that was just exponential, I'd be adding a VLF to the sales tax.

because Seattleites enjoy riding transit.

We're not there yet, but Metro is building back.

And as Metro builds back, we need to be ready to buy more hours, not fewer.

In Land Use Committee yesterday, Chair Lin had a discussion about the regional center planning.

Colleagues for your reference, the regional centers in our city are First Hill, Capitol Hill, Downtown, University District, Northgate, South Lake Union, Uptown or Lower Queen Anne, however you want to call it, and in Ballard.

Sorry, sir.

I'll do better next time.

Just to recap there, First Hill, Capitol Hill has the streetcar and the light rail.

Downtown has light rail.

U District has light rail.

Northgate has light rail.

South Lake Union has the streetcar, has a number of rapid rides.

and should have light rail and Uptown has rapid rides that are unencumbered that have direct bus lanes all the way downtown to the center of Uptown, sir.

What we heard in public comment today is that Betty who lives in a regional center has many options to get to her two gyms.

I mean, it's great.

There's a lot of different options.

But we heard that Ms. Kimball in a different regional center has to plan two hours to get to her doctor.

We heard Jonathan share that he literally has to gamble with their plans if they want to use transit.

This isn't different from my situation.

Colleagues, usually Thursdays are a day I work out of my District 6 office in the Ballard Regional Center.

Today I came down here for this, and I would rather be able to rely on transit to get back for office hours today, but I can't.

because to get from this office at City Hall to my District 6 office, it takes the same amount of time on transit as it does to get from this office to Tacoma.

So Ms. Kimball, if you'd like a ride back to Ballard, I'll be going back at 1 o'clock for office hours.

I'm happy to give you a ride, Jonathan, and you as well.

In the select committee on June 4th, we had a slide five.

The words on that slide said that this proposal is in line with the comprehensive plan.

But the map that showed the frequency of transit shows that it does not, through actions.

Words are hollow when actions are not followed through with.

The map on that slide shows that the closest to Ballard that the most frequent transit gets is Leary and 15th, which is in an industrial zone, It's not near housing, it's not near the center of Ballard.

And this is not about my neighborhood.

This is about our comprehensive plan.

If we are putting this type of zoning, if we are focusing job and housing growth in a part of our city, our transit needs to do that as well.

In that same committee on June 4th, committee staff stated that the only way this proposal will fund traffic to the Bally Regional Center is by Rapid Ride D or Route 40, again, which takes the same amount of time to get from downtown Seattle to Tacoma.

If slide five's words were to be accurate, we need to make sure that this transit measure transits.

In the Q&A, it was clear that neither SDOT nor Metro are interested in returning the direct routes between Downtown Regional Center and Ballard Regional Center.

the options that were provided at the last committee meeting were that we can fund either Route 40 or Rapid Ride D and that express buses for either of those two milk runs is not something that we can do.

So colleagues, I'm asking that we take a clear look at this and make sure that this proposal is in line with our comprehensive plan more than it was on slide five.

This must be fixed and we have to bring our transit plan in line with our comprehensive plan.

But just to be clear, I'm not asking for more than anyone else has.

I'm just asking for the same as everyone else has.

I'm not even asking for more coaches or drivers.

I'm not asking for the service that is serving your neighborhoods to be taken and put to the Ballard Regional Center.

I'm just asking to use our existing coaches and operators between the Downtown Regional Center and the Ballard Regional Center more efficiently.

If you take one bus off of the Rapid Ride D and one bus off of Route 40, it's a 50% increase of direct service between the Downtown Regional Center and the Ballard Regional Center.

Again, Miss Kimball could have taken the 17 bus directly here to get here, but then has no way home until 3.30 unless she wants to take a bus that takes the same amount of time that gets to Tacoma.

I had the same experience yesterday right in the 17 where somebody got on the bus and they were going to downtown and then to West Seattle and it was all direct until they had to get back to Ballard from downtown middle of the day.

So I don't have any questions for you, Calvin or Amanda.

I appreciate your analysis because it reflects exactly what my experience has been over the last six years regarding this.

And this proposal needs to be fixed.

It needs to be fixed to make it more about transit, to align with our comprehensive plan, to ensure that we are ready to buy ours from a reignited metro, and to serve our Seattleites with efficient use of tax dollars.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Well said.

Councilmember Foster, is that a new hand or is that a stale hand?

Looks like a stale hand.

All good.

All right.

Looks like there are no other comments, questions.

So let me finish my line of questioning.

And very rich Awesome discussion, colleagues.

Really appreciate you all.

Learned a lot.

And especially appreciate the conversation around what the proposed cuts to accessibility would mean and how it would impact purely transit service.

I have a different perspective, so I want to double-click a little bit on that conversation to hopefully help illuminate the full breadth of the various trade-offs at issue right here today.

So we learned the potential service hours that could be purchased with an additional $1.5 million annually.

In a moment, I'm gonna ask you about how many specific curb ramps, ADA accessible curb ramps, could $1.5 million purchase annually?

And the reason why I'm gonna mention that, colleagues, this capital bucket ain't just about sidewalks or new sidewalks.

It's one specific sidewalks and new sidewalks are one specific potential implementation of that.

But a better, I think more illustrative implementation of that is curb ramps.

What are curb ramps?

Earlier this year in committee, in our regular committee, we had a briefing and discussion from SDOT on the Reynolds and Consent Decree.

and for some contextual framing for colleagues who are not on that committee and colleagues who were, just a friendly reminder, I've asked our own legal experts, our legal team, to provide a short synopsis of exactly what the Reynoldson Consent Decree is in its current state.

Here it is.

In 2015, Disability Rights Washington filed a lawsuit in federal court, Reynolds et al. versus City of Seattle, alleging Seattle violated federal and state disability access laws by failing to ensure its pedestrian rights of way contain curb ramps to create accessibility to individuals with mobility disabilities.

In 2017, the case settled by creating a consent decree.

Through this Reynolds Consent Decree, Seattle made an 18-year commitment in these critical areas.

One, installing accessible curb ramps and new construction projects or alterations.

Two, meeting annual commitments in two categories.

Subpart A, installing or remediating at least 1,250 curb ramps annually.

And B, budgeting for the installation or remediation of at least 150 customer service request curb ramps annually, and three, annual reporting, and fourth, and finally, hiring an SDOT ADA coordinator.

It concludes that since the city began implementing the consent decree, there have been no further proceedings in federal court regarding the city's implementation or compliance with the consent decree, suggesting Seattle has met its mandates to date, its minimum required, legally required binding mandates to date.

In 2026, this year, both SDOT and Disability Rights Washington report being proud of the work that has happened.

with Disability Rights Washington stating, there is a long way to go.

End of the expert legal analysis.

And this is, colleagues, this is more than just a legal summation and overview of the of the Reynolds consent decree and the background and the context and its current state.

More than legalese that I'll read out, that I just read out loud.

It's about people.

I'll illustrate with the story.

Very recently, I was in an area of West Seattle, doesn't have a lot of sidewalks.

It doesn't have a lot of sidewalks.

It doesn't have a lot of curb ramps either.

And strolling through the neighborhood, encountered someone with different mobility needs.

They're in a wheelchair.

The topic of the transit measure renewal came up and they looked at me and said, how can I, as a voter, vote to approve a measure to raise my taxes with the goal of providing more access to transit?

And I can't even access transit safely.

Curb ramps.

I have fought for the rights of people with different abilities, differently-abled people to navigate our transportation infrastructure and will continue to fight because I believe everybody, regardless of your abilities or inabilities, deserves to safely access transit.

I got a bum knee.

from the military.

A couple of weeks ago, I head coached my son's, my youngest son's, well I was, his little league baseball team.

And during practice, I took a line drive shot to the right knee.

It's the hardest hit this kid has ever hit.

And I'm very proud of him as a father and as a coach.

But it hit me right in my bum knee from the military.

And for a couple of days, I had to navigate, as I sometimes do because of my flare-ups, around our city in a cane.

And colleagues, you might see me limping sometimes behind the scenes here.

Occasionally, it's because of a flare-up.

And I just experienced for a few short days what it's like to have a disability and not be able to safely navigate and access our transportation infrastructure.

Again, this ain't about sidewalks.

That's one specific possible implementation.

It's about protecting our neighbors with disability, making sure we have disabilities, making sure we have accessible pedestrian rights away, which is exactly the subject matter of the Reynolds and Consent Decree.

So I ask, again, with that $1.5 million how many curb ramps could that fund annually?

Thank you, council member.

That's a good question.

We will definitely have to get back to you on that.

I can only share that the consent decree requires 1,250 curb ramps a year, and SDOT consistently surpasses that.

Their average delivery is 1,352 a year.

and we're still a long way off from having all the curb ramps done.

2035 is the date when we would be able to have that done.

A long way off from being able to have the curb ramps done.

We're meeting our minimum compliance obligation.

This ain't about minimum.

This is about investing above and beyond what we're legally required and obligated to do.

This is more than an obligation.

Colleagues, I would submit this as a duty.

and as was noted on page six of the central staff analysis memo in that table three, it notes that the soon to be expiring 2020 measure is up to $16.4 million a year for transit and accessibility infrastructure.

The revised baseline proposal that myself and the executive aligned on is up to $5 million in college.

You guys are smart with your math, and I love it.

Inspired me to brush up on my math skills in the intervening time.

I actually became a lawyer, went to law school under the implicit guarantee and promise I didn't have to be good at math, but you all inspired me so much.

I learned that even under the revised amount, it still reflects a 69.51% cut to the legislative maximum amounts in the soon to be expiring.

70% cut.

So I would ideally have liked to do more for our neighbors.

We're differently able to make sure that they can better access transit.

I'm sure the mayor would ideally not like to, you know, have moved away from the 3.5 million annual amount that was included in the original proposal.

We came together in a line on a compromise solution, because this is about people.

Numbers on a balance sheet, service hours, even curb ramps.

It's about people.

Anyways.

Bear box recovery ratios.

Fairbox recovery ratios.

What is the current, so Fairbox, well, I guess as a baseline, can you help clarify what Fairbox recovery ratios are?

Well, the fare box recovery ratio, a couple different ways that people think about it.

Often it's, if you look at the amount of the cost of what it takes to provide a transit service, how much of it is funded through fare box recovery, sort of the classic piece.

Oftentimes we talk about sort of more like the enforcement, like of the people who are riding, how many people are paying fares.

So those are usually the two different ways that people talk about fare box.

Okay, that makes sense.

Can you help us better understand what is King County Metro's current fare box recovery ratio and how that compares to national averages or trends?

I don't have that information in front of me.

I'm happy to follow up with you.

Please do.

That's very helpful and important information.

We are being asked to put a measure before voters that would double the tax and to ensure the most accountability and oversight.

We need to have a better understanding of that important nitty-gritty, policy wonkish feature of this underlying work when we're talking about transit service.

And so please do follow up offline about that important issue.

And King County Transportation Benefit District, bring that up a moment, share a few thoughts from my perspective I was working the horns all last week and I wanna thank Council Member Lynn for sort of uniting a group of us and rallying the troops to lobby and get rid of that punitive cap that targeted solely the City of Seattle.

and I appreciate the King County Council for passing that.

I wanna thank Vice Chair Rank for organizing that letter.

I think all those things collectively made a difference.

And what they, the King County Council, ended up doing was passing their measure with a certain amount of pass-through funds, 4.5 million roughly is the estimated amount Seattle could expect to receive under that proposal.

The rest going towards roads in our unincorporated areas, which the need is significant there.

I share a boundary with unincorporated King County and White Center.

But here's a truth, maybe a little uncomfortable one, certainly a practical one, but here's the truth about transit.

Well, one, we all need it for so many reasons.

We need it.

We need more of it and we need more people to take it and then adopt it.

But second uncomfortable truth is that these heavy buses impose a significant strain on our transportation infrastructure, especially in including our roads.

And so while on the one hand, the King County proposal and measure is kind of separate and distinct from our own parallel conversations right now, I think they're actually directly related.

In my own council district right now, near Westwood Village in West Seattle, along Barton, SDOT is doing some major rehabilitation roadwork repairs of a specific portion of that road, because a lot of buses congregate there, park there, it's a bus stop, and the strain, they're not doing a full of the entire road, but just specific panels that where you could tell that the bus stops, the buses park.

And so buses impose a very significant strain on our roads.

and that is an acceptable trade-off from my perspective because they're overriding, more compelling policy interests and goals associated with mass adoption of transit, increasing frequency, reliability, and safety of transit, the climate rationale, all those things, but it does impact the roads.

So I think a lot of those funds, four and a half million, we should prioritize One, in areas that are heavily utilized along frequent transit networks where the roads are horrible.

Two, probably in the reverse order, along our boundary areas with King County.

There's a few of those.

I happen to have one, King County Councilmember Theresa Musqueda, was a pivotal vote and a thought leader and just a strong advocate for getting that measure done at the county level.

In her comments, she noted Roxbury.

That's the southernmost boundary of my district in the city of Seattle and it abuts, directly abuts unincorporated King County White Center.

And she was a decisive vote in that.

And I think we should start leveraging those funds and roads that are shared with the county.

In any event, I see those two things are separate, distinct, but also somewhat related, because what we're talking about here is the complete picture.

There are trade offs with all these things.

And I think, you know, we've been able to illuminate some of those trade offs further here today.

All right.

Last thing, go ahead Mr. Chow.

Just to highlight, we will follow up with you on sort of what some of these costs are.

I will say that the costs for an individual curb ramp are going to be minuscule compared to the cost of getting our roads up to the capacity necessary to handle the bus loads.

We know that buses are much heavier than they were 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 100 years ago.

and we have very old infrastructure.

And that's been the focus of a lot of our transportation discussions till now.

So I just wanted to put it out there that the cost of dealing with our road structural deficit is significantly higher than what we're talking about here.

100% agree.

Couldn't agree more.

We need more money for roads.

That's why I'm excited for the forthcoming transportation funding task force.

Look forward to learning what they come up with in terms of their report and recommendations and implementing some of those recommendations.

But for clarity, from a policy maker's perspective, my comments are two distinct things.

We shouldn't use any of the accessibility features for road repayments or even spot repairs.

This is about accessibility, pedestrian rights away, and safe access to transit.

So, all right.

That said, colleagues, any final questions, comments for the good of the order?

Hearing and seeing none.

Thank you.

Tomorrow, happy Juneteenth, everybody.

and also want to thank my own staff and team, Brendan, Michael, Eric and Hadia for not only helping out and getting us to this state where we're at right now, but also recently we passed, this body unanimously adopted and passed a council, joint mayoral council resolution, affirming our commitment to renovate the Seattle Center.

And during those comments, when we passed that, I thanked everybody named Mama, with the exception of my own team.

So really appreciate my own team for all the work they've done, are doing, will continue to do to support transportation, Seattle Center, and the waterfront.

So colleagues, thank you.

Hearing no further business to come before the committee, we are adjourned.

It is 12.14 p.m.