Thanks very much.
Good morning.
The April 14th, 2023 regularly scheduled meeting of the Neighborhoods, Education, Civil Rights and Culture Committee will come to order.
It is 9.30 a.m.
I'm Tammy Morales, chair of the committee.
Will the clerk please call the roll?
Council Member Lewis.
Present.
Council Member Strauss.
Vice Chair Sawant.
Present.
Chair Morales.
Here.
Three present.
Terrific.
Thank you very much.
If there's no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.
Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.
At this time, we'll open the general public comment period.
I believe we've got a couple folks signed up online and a couple people in chambers.
So I will ask Devin Silvernail, our clerk, to call the names of the folks signed up to speak.
We will give each person two minutes to speak for 20 minutes, up to 20 minutes.
If you have not registered on the council website, but you're interested in speaking, you can still do that before the public comment period is over by going to seattle.gov slash council.
We'll call a speaker's name and staff will unmute you.
You will have two minutes to speak.
You'll hear a chime when you have 10 seconds left.
If you're online, you need to press star six to begin.
Please state your name, the item that you're addressing, and as a reminder, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda.
Once you've completed public comment, if you're online, please hang up and you can continue to follow on the Seattle channel.
Okay, so we will go ahead and open up public comment period.
Devin, I will hand it to you to call folks up.
Okay, great.
I'm going to go ahead and start with the people that we have in the room.
We have three people in the room today.
Um, so, um, I will call up, um, first Ron, I'm sorry, I'm going to say your last name wrong, probably wrong Hornong followed by Tiffany McCoy and then Camille Gix.
Uh, go ahead, Ron.
My name is Ron Horning.
I live in North Green Lake along Aurora.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.
I am not in favor in either one of these appointees, mainly Julie, because of her affiliation with the University of Washington School.
During another attempt, which is going on again, to acquire eminent domain rights along Aurora, the school was involved in, the students were involved in in running the website, which misled the property owners of Green Lake.
So I would ask that she not be admitted for this job or this appointment.
Mr. Liu is here for Greenways.
Greenways is a great program for streets, diverting certain streets for bicycles and walking, and this has nothing to do with housing.
There should be somewhere, someone in Seattle that wants to do housing.
This is what this is supposed to be about.
These people are all part of this Greenwood group that started this thing.
They're all remnants of this same Aurora Avenue action agenda.
from 15 years ago.
I would ask that neither of these be added.
They're great people.
They are way overqualified, but I ask you not to admit them.
Thank you for your time and your consideration.
Thank you, Ron.
Up next is Tiffany McCoy followed by Camille Gates.
Go ahead, Tiffany.
Thank you, Devin.
And hello, council members.
I'm Tiffany McCoy.
I'm the advocacy director at Real Change and was the campaign manager for Initiative 135. Just want to clarify for the record that Initiative 135 was a product of Real Change and How's Our Neighbors, not Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.
They were an endorser and supporter but originated out of real change.
I sent to the council members of this committee yesterday a letter from community groups asking that you enthusiastically support without delay these two candidates to serve on the Seattle Social Housing Development Board.
I hope you all had a chance to look that over and see the organizations that support this.
I do have three new organizations just to add as of when I sent it to you yesterday.
Those are Beacon Hill Safe Streets, Transit Riders Union, and Rainier Valley Greenways.
I only have a little bit more time left, but I'll just say as to Julie being the appointee for the developer in the nonprofit development role, I've had the pleasure this past year of getting to know Julie and she was really essential in helping us come up with a draft pro forma to show that social housing actually does pencil.
Julie has shown a deep dedication to All innovative strategies to addressing our housing crisis in the city of Seattle and she would be a tremendous asset to this first iteration of the governing board in the city.
I also have the pleasure of supporting fully Alex Lou I've worked with Alex on the repeal of the.
King County Helmet Law, and they are a tremendous advocate.
They will bring the essential components of social housing, which is about creating neighborhoods and communities, not just buildings.
What that means is safe streets, pedestrian safety, bicycle safety, more public transit, having an urban planner that's going to be able to build out our city.
to be inclusive to all is going to be really critical to enacting the vision of social housing that the voters supported by a 14-point margin.
Please put these two candidates forward as soon as you can.
Thank you.
Thank you, Tiffany.
Up next is Camille Gix, and then we will go into our virtual public comment.
Good morning, council members.
My name is Camille Gix.
I am a part of the steering committee for House Our Neighbors, the campaign that passed initiative 135. I'm also a graduate student at the University of Washington studying social policy and housing studies.
I am here to also strongly support both of these appointees to the board of the Seattle Social Housing Developer, Alex Liu, as a transportation planner.
would be an excellent asset because we know that housing and transportation are deeply connected and we need people who are able to look at a city as a whole and not just looking at it in pieces and so Alex would be an excellent asset who's also very much supported by the social housing community that got this passed.
Additionally, I would like to support Julie Howe, who both having worked with her on aspects of the campaign to, as Tiffany said, create a pro forma.
I also was a student of hers in a class at the University of Washington, and she is an excellent teacher, professor.
I watched her teach both students at the University of Washington, as well as others, what very complex housing finance things as well as development aspects of housing and having someone who is so strong at educating and teaching would be a really, really important asset for this board, which has a wide variety of experiences, including lived experience.
And so having someone that's able to break down these really complicated components of housing development.
for a wide variety of backgrounds will be very important.
So strongly support both Alex Liu and Julie Hao for these positions.
Thank you.
Thank you, Camille.
Now we will transition over to virtual public comment.
We have two people present.
First will be Alice Lockhart followed by Renaissance.
Alice, feel free to go ahead.
Just press make sure to press star six on your phone to unmute.
Thank you.
Thank you, Devin.
Good morning, committee members.
I'm Alice Lockhart speaking for 350 Seattle.
Council Member Morales, thank you so much for bringing these community supported nominations to the Social Housing Board, to the committee today.
Julie Howe and Alexander Liu together bring a wealth of affordable housing and planning experience, strong technical backgrounds, as well as deeply grounded equity perspectives and deep knowledge of social housing.
We are grateful that they have stepped up to serve and strongly support these appointments.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Alice.
Up next, we have Renaissance.
Renaissance, feel free again, star six, and then you can start whenever you're ready.
Good morning, council members.
My name is Renaissance, and I have a few roles I'd like to speak on behalf of.
two different organizations that I'm a part of.
First, I am the co-director of campaigns at 350 Seattle, and I'm also on the board of 350 Seattle.
And 350 Seattle is in support of both of these candidates, Julie Howe and Alex Liu, being appointed to the Seattle Social Housing Developer Board.
We think that they are great candidates.
And speaking on behalf of Whose Streets?
Our Streets, We would like to endorse Alex Lou, in addition to all of his technical expertise and working with Seattle transportation as a planner.
Alex is also connected to our community through his work in both Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and Whose Streets Are Streets.
Alex is caring, thoughtful, pragmatic, and ethical.
Alex is very good at working on a team and has a keen understanding of equity.
With Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and Whose Streets Are Streets, Alex has also helped to identify both structural and social issues with our infrastructure and helped us to develop solutions that not only help to improve safety, but livability and enjoyability.
We think that these are the qualities, the skills, and the values that are vital to the success and well-being of the Seattle Social Housing Developer Board.
So we fully endorse the appointment of Alex Liu to that board.
Thank you very much for my time.
Thank you, Renaissance.
Chair, there are no more public comment speakers.
CoB, Jean Gatza, Moderator she-her-hers is on mute.
Agenda Items 1 and 2. Appointments 2-5-2-3 and 2-5-2-4.
Appointments of Julie A. Howe and Alexander Liu as members of Seattle Social Housing Developer Board for briefing, discussion and possible vote.
Terrific.
Thanks very much.
Colleagues, as you know, I've been convening the appointing entities for the 13 appointments to the initial social housing board.
Those 13 appointments are required by the initiative language.
They represent experience in affordable housing development, housing finance, renters experience, passive house experience.
Each of the different appointing entities has had their own application process, and they will be submitting clerk files for the candidates that they've chosen by April 25th, April 30th is the deadline.
So of the 13 appointments, 11 of them are being appointed by different bodies, including the Green New Deal Oversight Board, the Seattle Renters Commission, and the mayor and others.
There are two of these positions that are council appointments, and those are the two candidates that we have before us today.
I've been working with members from the campaign, with coalition partners like Puget Sound SAGE, different affordable housing providers, our own equitable development initiative team here at the city, and the University of Washington to reach out to potential candidates who meet the requirement for an appointment with nonprofit housing experience and an appointment with urban planning experience.
The appointing entities had a chance to meet with these two candidates to interview them and ask questions.
And the group is recommending Alex Liu and Julie Hao for these two council appointments.
You've received their packets, but just for the record, I do want to go ahead and read their bios into the record.
So, and then I'm going to ask them to go ahead and introduce themselves and tell us a little bit about why they want to be here.
and open it up to questions if there are any.
So Julie Hao has over 25 years of nonprofit housing experience and is currently a doctoral student at the University of Washington in the Department of Real Estate.
She has deep knowledge and experience in affordable workforce and intentional community real estate development.
Julie approaches real estate development and building healthy communities from what we know about neurobiology, child development, and healthy aging.
So it's very interesting, this intersection of housing development and the mental health of our communities.
I'm looking forward to having a little bit of a discussion about that.
Alex Liu has a master's in urban planning from Harvard University and currently serves as a senior transportation planner at Sound Transit.
Alex approaches planning with a multidisciplinary toolbox that includes data visualization and analysis, geographic information systems, graphic design, and coding and programming.
Alex has been active in multimodal transportation advocacy and is a former member of the Seattle Bike Advisory Board, a mayor and city council-appointed board that advises city departments and elected officials on bicycle transportation planning and policy issues.
And I agree with what Camille and Renasant said.
As a planner myself, I know that though there are different sectors of planning, different focuses people have, what we're really talking about is the intersection of all of these different things in creating healthy and vibrant communities.
And we know that without somebody focusing on how people move around their neighborhoods, the kind of housing we have is just one piece of that conversation and a piece of that puzzle.
So I'm excited for these two candidates to be here today.
I will hand it to Julie first and give you a chance to introduce yourself and then see if we've got any questions for you.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm honored to be here.
I, as, as Councilmember mentioned, I do now do research on housing and mental health.
And after 25 years of kind of being in the weeds and knowing kind of all of the details and the levers and and such that we have to kind of pull and manipulate and put together in order to create housing.
I really enjoy as an educator helping other people kind of understand those details as well, understand how things work together, and then also putting those pieces of social connection with our housing, making sure that's kind of front and center so that we potentially can have better kind of well-being of all of our residents, all of our neighbors and community members.
I'm excited about Seattle's endeavor into social housing, because I think it is ripe for being able to do housing in a new way.
Thank you very much, Julie.
Colleagues, are there any questions for Julie about her interests?
I am not seeing any.
Okay, let us go to, thank you very much, Julie, and I really appreciate you being here.
I know you're not feeling well today, so I appreciate you spending some time with us this morning.
Alex, I will hand it off to you.
Please go ahead.
Is this my, oh, it is working.
Hi everyone, I'm Alex Liu, and I am really honored to be considered an appointment to this board.
As mentioned, I really think transportation and housing are very much related.
We're talking about building communities, and it's really important to think holistically about cities and neighborhoods, how people get around, how people access job opportunities, education opportunities by getting around their neighborhood and the city as a whole.
And so I think joining this board, I can give that lens of thinking about the city as well as transportation options and holistically about what it's required to build livable communities.
And yeah, this is very exciting.
We have a lot of work to do and I'm looking forward to getting started.
Great.
Thank you so much.
Are there any questions for my colleagues or Mr. Liu?
OK, I'm not seeing any.
I do appreciate you coming just for the for the sake of the public and my colleagues.
Our next steps here will be to vote on these two appointees today.
Assuming passage, this will go to full council on April 25th.
As I mentioned, all of the appointments have to have their process complete by April 30th, and then this new board will have their first meeting by May 30th.
and will begin the process of creating bylaws and hiring staff and doing all the things that they need to do to begin the creation of the PDA.
So if there are no questions for our candidates, I will move that the committee recommends approval of these appointments.
Is there a second?
Second.
Thank you.
It's been moved and seconded to recommend approval.
Will the clerk please call the roll.
Council Member Lewis.
Yes.
Council Member Strauss.
Vice Chair Sawant.
Yes.
Chair Morales.
Yes.
Three in favor.
Thank you so much.
The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the council approve these appointments will go to the April 25 2023 city council meeting.
Thank you both again for being here so much we're looking forward to this and appreciate you taking the time to come talk with us.
If there is no other business.
Then this concludes the April 14th, 2023 meeting of the Neighborhoods, Education, Civil Rights and Culture Committee.
Our next scheduled meeting is for April 28th.
Thank you for attending everybody.
It is 9.51 and we're adjourned.
Thanks so much.