Committee on Governance, Native Communities and Tribal Governments 8/3/23

I apologize for the delay.

Anyway, good morning.

This is a special meeting of the Governance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments Committee.

Today is Thursday, August 3rd.

The time is 9.43.

As you can see, I'm on Indian time.

Just a joke there.

I'm Deborah Juarez, and this is my committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Present.

Council Member Sawant.

Present.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council President Juarez.

Present.

Five are present.

Thank you.

I was going to say that Council Member Strauss is excused, but he's here.

So thank you for joining us, Council Member Strauss, from wherever you are.

So let's move on to the agenda.

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

Not hearing or seeing an objection, the agenda is adopted.

Let's move on to the chair support, so we have 2 items on today's agenda.

Of course, item 1 is an ordinance regarding FIFA.

If a 2026 World Cup, authorizing an agreement between the city of Seattle.

And the local organizing committee, and I understand we have guests here today.

2nd, we will return to our consider will return.

To our consideration of the council rules, which we had in committee a couple of weeks ago.

as part of our biennial review.

Councilor Nelson is expected to join us to speak to her two proposed amendments, and as a courtesy, I'll be introducing them for her.

In total, we will consider four amendments to the underlying resolution.

With that, we will move to public comment.

Madam Clerk, how many folks do we have in chambers and how many do we have signed up remotely?

We have none in chambers and two remote.

Great, let's start with our folks and remote.

Let me just say this quickly.

I think you all know the rules.

We just ask that you speak to the items on the agenda and we ask that you be respectful and always try to be kind and each person will have 2 minutes.

So, madam clerk, go ahead and.

Bring up our 1st remote speaker.

Adam, please hit star 6.

I don't see his tile.

Good morning.

My name is Aidan Nardone.

I'm calling about Resolution 32096. Please support Amendment 1, 2, and 4. Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

It's time to reconnect with the citizens you were elected to serve.

I can't really comment about Amendment Number 5. The intent is not clear to me.

We'll be listening to the discussion about this amendment to get a better understanding.

Thank you.

Joe Koonsler?

Joe?

Thank you.

Hi, Madam President.

Can you hear me?

Yep.

All right, great.

I'm really excited about these new council rule upgrades.

They're really awesome software that will hopefully shine the light for the rest of our local governments and the best state in the union to handle the Open Public Meetings Act and fill the void that the state legislature, for multiple reasons, doesn't want to fill.

With that introductory remark, I endorse all four of the amendments, one, two, four, and five.

wonder where Amendment 3 went, but oh well.

One thing I really want to call attention to and ask that you support it is when you're on these federated boards, like Sound Transit, PSRC, or such, is, you know, take the rules about civility and such during public comment and ask that those federated boards adopt those rules and enforce them because You know, as you probably realize, I've had some experience testifying to federated boards, and it's very hurtful when people act inappropriately.

And I would really like to see some standardization of requirements as well, because, you know, I may go to one venue to speak about transit projects.

I may go to a dinner venue to speak about board rules today.

I may go to a dinner.

you know, then you would judge it.

Having standard rules is really helpful, and I really think these legally reviewed rules should be a template for everybody else.

Finally, on a point of personal privilege, I would like to see some effort to allow people to see each other when they testify, because right now I'm speaking to you over a phone, and, you know, it would be nice To have a visual, and I think that is my very 2nd Q really looking forward to see fair and hope to ride a bus on a Heidi will bus lane.

And that was our last commenter.

You would think after all this time, I would know how to unmute.

All right.

Thank you.

Joe.

Thank you.

Other color as well.

So, let's close public comments.

Let's go into our items of business.

Madam Clerk, can you please read agenda item one into the record?

Agenda item one, an ordinance relating to the FIFA 2026 World Cup, authorizing an agreement between the City of Seattle and the Seattle International Soccer Hosting Local Organizing Committee.

Before we begin, I think we have, there's Deputy Mayor Wong.

Hello.

Hello, Greg.

Before we begin, thank you, Madam Clerk, for this.

Madam Clerk put together for me some notes and a cheat sheet that starts in 1910. So thank you for that, Sarah.

1910 to 1920, the armed regional conflicts known collectively as the Mexican Revolution.

She literally starts at 1910 to bring us up to today.

So I'm just going to briefly, not everything, She talked about it.

Thank you, Sarah.

Sarah loves to do this to me, because she knows I like history and chronologies.

2009, Seattle Sounders first season breaks major league soccer attendance records.

2018, City of Seattle enters a host city agreement with FIFA and the United States Soccer Federation.

2021, Ole Rain set a National Women's Soccer League single game attendance record.

June 2022, FIFA announces Seattle will be one of the 16 host cities For the 2026 FIFA World Cup, February 2023, the city and the local organizing committee, or is it organized our organization committees executed a joint agreement, which we did.

making LOC a party to and jointly and severably liable with the city under the host city agreement.

Today, the city and the LOC wish to enter into an agreement delineating which responsibilities and obligations will be fulfilled by each so there is a coordinated and successful execution of the World Cup planning activities.

You all can thank Sarah Mays for this lovely snarky 1910 history of soccer.

Thank you, Sarah.

Former librarian at a law firm.

So with that, Deputy Mayor Wong, my friend, the floor is yours.

Introduce your friends and let's do this presentation.

Great.

Thank you, Council President, Council Members.

Good morning.

I just shared my screen.

Can everybody see that okay?

Okay, excellent.

So good morning to everyone.

Thank you for having us here today.

I love the history part too, so I appreciate Sarah's research on that.

I have a great love of law firm librarians and their vast knowledge.

And as everyone just heard, and as you likely know from your history with this, the city of Seattle back in 2018 put in a bid to be one of the host cities for the 2026 Men's World Cup.

And then last year, everyone was very excited to learn that we in fact were named as one of the host cities, along with other cities throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada.

So today I'm here with members of our local organizing committee to provide an update on where things are with World Cup.

and seek approval to enter into the formal agreement that essentially puts most of the responsibility for doing the organizing and the hosting of those World Cup games and activities, vests that with the local organizing committee, and delineates the role and responsibility of the city as we move forward.

You're going to hear more about that throughout the presentation.

With me today are members of the Local Organizing Committee.

I'd like to introduce them.

Many of you probably have heard before from Maya Mendoza-Ekstrom, who is both co-chair of the Local Organizing Committee, in addition to her day job as COO of the Seattle Sounders.

And she's actually so kind to join us.

She's in Australia for the Women's World Cup right now, and I think it's like 2 or 3 a.m.

So we thank you, Maya, for being with us.

She will be primarily on point for this presentation.

The other people on the line, we have April Putney, who many of you may know from her role with King County, but she's recently joined the LOC as their Vice President of Government Affairs and Transportation.

And we have Beth Knox from South Sports Commission, who's also one of the co-chairs of the LOC.

And I don't know, and then Dylan Ordonez, who is working with LOC as well, is on.

I'm not sure if I missed anyone who's online from the LOC, but if so, I'll let Maya fill in the blanks.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Maya to start running us through some of the presentations for today.

Good morning.

I'm so sorry for making you wait if I knew that you were calling from another continent.

I so apologize.

it's it's not a problem it's it's uh it's it's kismet we're calling from one world cup into the future for another world cup i see i'm i'm i'm ahead of you in the future already here so it feels it feels right uh good morning thank you deputy mayor um thank you council president was for uh sort of fostering and shepherding us through this process um i am going to go quickly through a number of slides um i will hand the baton to beth on a couple notes April will jump in if she sees fit on I think day whatever two of your journey now in the private sector with the LOC and then Greg will close us out here.

So I'm happy to take as many questions as we can at the end.

And I want to acknowledge the Council and Council Central staff.

You all have been with us on a very long process.

As Greg mentioned, this actually started way back in 2017, and we'll review some of that as well, just to make sure everyone's up to speed.

The objective today is maybe to scale out a little bit and paint the framework that we know from FIFA on the size of this event, now that we're gonna host this thing, and then try to drill down on some of the littler details that pertain to sort of where we're going next.

And really what the ordinance is in front of you today is that next step in the process to sort of say, okay, we've, we've, we've spent some time thinking about what what it would take to get this thing.

We've got this thing.

Now, as we look for the next 3 years of trying to bring this vision that you see on the screen.

To life that we've sort of been living in to fruition through this event and for Seattle really to put our stamp on this event in a Seattle way.

It's exciting and it's also a fast 3 years.

Go ahead.

Deputy Mayor, thank you for being my man to advance the slides here.

One of the things that is important to the local organizing committee as well is Seattle will be be written all over this event.

It is Seattle.

You see our moniker.

You've seen our branding.

That is what will be seen around the world, but it really is an opportunity to showcase the breadth and scope and vitality of the larger region that we inhabit, not only in the Metro Puget Sound region, but across Washington State and really as a part of our larger Cascadia and West Coast community.

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

And it really is the biggest event on the planet.

And I think there's no better picture.

Go ahead, Deputy Mayor.

than how 2022 ended.

Now this gentleman who's hoisting this trophy plays in MLS and is scoring crazy goals in the Eastern Conference, and thank God we don't have to play him anytime soon.

But this is a moment where literally the eyes of the world will be on not only this event as this tournament is that event, it's the biggest in the world, it is the biggest moment for this tournament.

And it really is a function of numbers.

You know, when we look, go ahead, Deputy Mayor.

When we look at what Qatar was able to do in hosting in one city and having a diverse cross section of people all in one place in mass, it fostered a different sort of legacy from this event.

I think that this is a picture of FanFest on the waterfront in Doha.

they built a new waterfront in Doha specifically for World Cup.

And it was a legacy investment, one of the legacy investments.

And it was a coronation event for that waterfront.

And obviously when the entire world is one city, this is the size of a fan fest.

This is not what we're attempting to do in the city of Seattle as one of 16 host cities, but you get a sense for sort of what it can look like.

Um, and I think it's important, you know, you started with history, uh, council president, go ahead, deputy mayor, you can go to the next slide.

This, this is a, uh, it is a global ritual and I, and I can attest to being here, uh, literally up the road from fan fest as the games.

I hope I'm not ruining this for anybody, but as Germany was knocked out tonight and Morocco advanced the first Arab predominantly Arab women's country to make.

the tournament as debutantes a 72nd ranked in the world and are advancing out of group based on beating Columbia tonight and to hear FanFest erupt and to have it be so full for the women's event for me personally is very gratifying just shows where this game is going and and it's going to be we're going to we're going to play home to the biggest version of this event in 2026. Go ahead Deputy Mayor.

I guess I will not watch the Germany game so

Oh, you can watch them.

They're great.

I'm so sorry.

It's all right.

I've only paid attention to the women.

I'll be honest.

Yeah.

Okay.

The games are fabulous.

So please get them on your DVR.

They're worth it.

They're worth it.

Especially if they show, if you see anything, the Moroccan players, they were waiting for the German.

Oh, God, I broke my heart.

I was crying.

So amazing.

Okay.

This is our cathedral for football, for proper football, for soccer in Seattle.

And we know that our stadium can do this.

We regularly put this many people in for big, big events in this venue.

And it's going to take this venue and it's going to take everything that we have, because this is the largest event.

Go ahead, Deputy Mayor.

We'll roll through these next ones pretty quickly here.

Not only is it three countries, first time ever FIFA has done three countries as we know, not only is it 16 host cities, but it's also 48 teams.

So the last tournament that ended in Qatar was 32 teams.

This will be 48. This will be an expanded tournament from the Asian federations.

So very likely having Korea, Japan, China, potentially India, all playing in this tournament this time around, and an expanded footprint opportunities from Africa and from South America.

Obviously, the three host countries all qualify, so the American men don't actually have to qualify for this one they're in, which is good, but it is a massive event.

And what we learned earlier this year as well, and go ahead, Deputy Mayor, to the next slide, is that the tournament format is going to be expanded as well.

And so it's 104 matches instead of 64. 16 host cities, rough math, the games have to be spread out a little bit.

It means more opportunity for matches in the United States, for sure, and so for United States host cities, and it means a tournament footprint that really is going to be predicated on alignment around quadrants.

So that west coast quadrant that we saw in the previous map of Vancouver, British Columbia, our neighbors to the north, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles on the west coast will function together, not only as a time zone, but as a quadrant in terms of how this tournament plays out.

And so you can see potentially um those are all easy easy transit on the west coast um fan bases traveling in sort of itinerant fashion up and down the west coast through this event depending upon where where their teams are based in play um go ahead deputy mayor um and just a reminder and and maybe maybe this point has been made and made a lot but um this is this is just by scale when we say seattle is going to be the branded reality and Seattle is going to be on the map.

It is potentially a bigger audience than the 4 billion viewers reached for the final.

I think they've actually, that number's gone up since they've done a little bit more math from Qatar.

And I think the other thing that's really interesting is that even the least watched match in a World Cup globally garners an audience of between 190 and 225 million.

So even the least watched match, even if Seattle drew the 74th team versus the 32nd team in the world, is going to be larger than a Super Bowl.

As of right now, we don't know how many of those matches we're going to get.

We hope that we're going to find out the match schedule later this fall, but we don't know yet.

And so we're planning for anywhere between still sort of three and eight matches in the time window of this event.

And it also means that we are going to have other places that need to be activated across Washington State and certainly in our region.

So not only is Lumen Field, the city of Seattle, going to be an important event venue for us, but Husky Soccer Stadium is a potential training site for teams.

As is now Seattle, Seattle, you, they've training site agreement.

And then the new sounders practice facility that we are building in long acres will very likely be a team base camp.

So, in down in Renton, and then star fire and as well as airport and very likely the larger transportation network now using pain field.

And then obviously King County airport, where, where most of the teams will travel.

So there are a number of other venues and locations and other jurisdictions that are important to this event.

And right now is exploring directly additional potential team based camps in Bellingham and Spokane and Portland that would further connect us geographically to the wider region.

Go ahead, Deputy Mayor.

And really, really, really truly the intent is to throw a massive party and to coordinate the waterfront.

We were intentional in the bid phase to place the waterfront or the future waterfront maybe foolish but maybe now in hindsight worth every penny of that foolishness in 2017 and 2018 to say that That we wanted to, to coordinate the waterfront and waterfront will be the place where people can gather and can be convene.

And so fan fest for us is, is the start here of of the party really fan fest will operate throughout the event.

I think, you know, even though their match day in Sydney was last night, France v Panama, tonight FanFest was showing those matches and it was an exciting electric atmosphere down there, right on the waterfront here in Sydney as well, and a joyous celebration throughout the month.

And the reality is that, go ahead Deputy Mayor, we can go to the next one, the reality is that, back up one there, sorry.

The reality there is that connectivity of the waterfront to downtown and to the stadiums and to really activate sort of the pedestrian corridor is really the platform that we have.

I think we all can, in our mind's eye, visualize what that beautiful June sunny day looks like.

But it also includes how people will move between the Fan Fest, the stadiums, and downtown.

and really what we can do in this platform to make this entire event a culturally vibrant opportunity to showcase everything that is Seattle and everything that is Washington.

And as we're starting to get our head around sort of, you know, planning assumptions, right?

We, you know, I said anywhere from three to eight matches a second ago, we're planning sort of in that four to six range.

That's sort of what we're planning for because That's probably a reality.

Interestingly here, we expect that we could have up to 750,000 unique visitors.

And the really interesting thing, and we saw that full stadium from MLS Cup from 2019 with 70,000 fans that are We're all sounders fans with the exception of those small contingent of Toronto fans up in the corner.

The reality is that all of those fans are locals and they all they know they come here regularly and they have, you know, their way of coming into market and their way experiencing soccer reality is.

We expect up to 70% of those 750,000 unique visitors to be international or first time visitors to Seattle.

And if you've ever had the chance, or maybe someday have a chance to go to a World Cup, I think one of the things that is unique is there are those remember when stories.

There will be people who will fondly remember the time they saw Morocco advance in Sydney Harbor and think fondly of Sydney and tell their friends about how amazing Sydney was because of FanFest.

That is just the nature of how soccer fans talk.

And so that's another opportunity for us to sort of think about the extensions of throwing an amazing party for people that maybe would never have come to Seattle and will take those stories out into the world.

And then we really do expect 100% of hotel nights border to border.

I mean, it is going to take everything on that transportation.

Corridor I-5 on our rail system using our extended regional network to access sort of the hotels between sort of Bellingham and Portland and then east along I-90 as well.

And go ahead, go ahead, thank you.

And I mentioned some of these other spots, but the idea for us is really to use the city streets as the template for where things are located.

a difference for me in experiencing Paris Women's World Cup four years ago and having a fan fest that was located outside of where people wanted to be for other activities versus this year where the fan fests in Sydney and Wellington and Auckland are right downtown on the water's edge, on the waterfront where people want to be anyways.

It makes the experience so much more convenient, so much more enjoyable to be in the city.

And I think that's something that we can take advantage of with the opening of Waterfront and the Waterfront Park.

And then we have, you know, we definitely are not going to be able to fill Pier 62 with tens of thousands of fans.

That's not the intent.

And so we have a concept that we're building as we go here, which is to take some other locations in the city and have pop up FanFest events as well.

So there'd be a companion event.

So you could imagine where that could be someplace where a Rave mini-pitch, which I'll talk about in a second, lives already, whether that's Yesler Terrace or whether that's New Holly, or that's Seattle Center, right?

And using some of the other places in the city to drive fans who are coming to want to be part of FanFest, but maybe don't want to go down to the waterfront every single day for that FanFest experience.

And then we can disaggregate and share share the opportunity, share the experience across the city and across the region.

So those are just some ideas at this stage about locations where FanFest might pop up for two or three match days out of the footprint.

We'll continue to noodle on that idea.

But the idea is to sort of take that excitement and take it out into the city.

And then we, we really think that having a centralized location and event and 1 really that is rooted to sort of transit micro mobility.

and public transit provides for not only a pedestrian ground floor experience for fans, but also it helps us manage our sustainability objectives and ensuring that we are keeping our footprint as close to zero as possible.

And that includes accounting, not only for our activities, but FIFA is working directly with us on those activities.

And so having folks be centered on the ground floor helps with that.

And then likely we've been working closely with neighborhoods, you know, the three neighborhoods around Lumen Field.

All of the teams that are in Lumen Field participate regularly in a community partnership forum on a quarterly basis.

World Cup has been part of that briefing schedule and our team and Kawasaki, who I think is sitting next to April, but not on camera, and Lisa Chin, who is our Chief Legacy Officer, April Kawasaki is our Chief Operating Officer, have been starting that work and outreach along with Beth Knox and the Seattle Sports Commission in neighborhoods, in the three downtown neighborhoods that are directly around the stadiums, as well as the Sounders and Rain on a regular basis.

Great.

And one more here.

Okay, this is just an overview of just we all should you all should know we all know this footprint really well but of the sort of pedestrian thoroughfares right and where we think just from a map and overhead view of how fans might travel on foot or using micro mobility if we were going to think about the pedestrian flow of traffic and The North South and East West that are going to be primary on a match day right out of the downtown core from where the hotels are to fan fest along the waterfront and then into into pioneer square to access match day.

So this would be a flow of traffic on match day of fans just to sort of see how these, these neighborhoods could work together.

And last, I've got a couple more here.

This slide should maybe be familiar.

This has been a piece of the puzzle for us since inception of the bidding process.

We were required to make some legacy commitments.

And what this, as we move towards execution, what this really moves towards is an alignment with sustainability and human rights framework that FIFA will be helping to deliver to all of the host cities later this fall for which Seattle and host cities and so Seattle, King County and Washington State will have an opportunity to respond to and sort of how we are going to bring those commitments to life.

The reality is FIFA brought all 16 host cities to Seattle as part of the Green Sports Alliance Summit earlier this year in June and had a convening to implement essentially international standards on sustainability, ISO 2012-1, which was the sustainability standard that came out of the London Olympics.

And they will be doing a similar framework on human rights based on some preliminary outreach and stakeholdering that was done by all of the host city candidates at the end of the bidding phase.

And then some additional work that FIFA has been doing at an international level Um, with some consultants to sort of look at the 3 jurisdictions of Canada, the United States and Mexico as as 1 complete event.

That's 1 bucket of how how the legacy commitments will come together.

The other 1 is really about our, our culture and about showcasing our culture in the city of Seattle.

And so.

whether that is how we bring small businesses into the fold, not just the ground floor small businesses that populate around the stadium and that we can drive foot traffic to, but how we look at procurement, how we look at services, how we look at workforce development.

Really, this is a sports and event industry that's on the rise, and if we can host this event and do it really well, it is going to take some additional folks, some boots on the ground.

And that's an opportunity for us to develop new jobs for folks in an industry that's growing.

And then the last big bucket for us is really this investment in free play.

And I know many of you are well aware of the 26 by 2026 campaign in partnership with the Sounders and the Ray Foundation, but the local organizing committee is committed to help drive the commitment through 26 mini pitches and small fields for free play around Washington.

And our showcase fields, the turf fields that we have built, so we've built footstall courts in Yakima, we're building a footstall court in Spokane, but the showcase fields we've built are in Seattle.

And that's Yesler Terrace, which was our very, very first small field.

And then the two that we just opened this summer at New Holly in partnership with the Seattle Housing Authority.

That commitment was made to kick off the 2026 campaign and those two were completed this year.

I think we're going to be closer to 30, don't quote me on that, in the next couple years.

And so the idea now is to use this event and the World Cup as a way to double that commitment if we can.

That's the new thinking because this is an opportunity to catalyze not only places for free play to take place but the work that gets done in building those mini pitches is really about community stakeholdering where we've been in a three-year process now with Concord Elementary School and are working closely with the with a Seattle school district on Concord Elementary School to be that next location similar to Yesler Terrace and it includes not only the work that we're doing that soccer can provide specifically around health outcomes for kids and the opportunity to play but the way in which soccer can convene other programs in equity.

And this work is not possible this local organizing committee all of this work that we that we have and building sort of plans for is not possible without partnership.

We have had the opportunity, FIFA has provided host cities the opportunity to find partners that are willing to step up and support financially, culturally, from just being a marketing perspective, the work that we're doing.

And we were really proud that we were able to sign a first supporter agreement with the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, and they have stepped up to become our official legacy partner.

So they are an official partner of this event.

They get to align with FIFA and our hosting of this event, and it's the first time in history that indigenous people have ever been a sponsor supporter of a World Cup and had that opportunity.

And it really is coming directly from the chairman who has said, you know, in every meeting that I've ever been a part of, and I know that our staff, you know, and team have been a part of, that it really is this opportunity to share through their own voice their culture and culture from this place and not just from the Puyallup tribe but from the entire indigenous community here in the Pacific Northwest and a recognition that just as this tournament will cross into three different political jurisdictions in Canada, the United States and Mexico, the reality of the Indigenous community up here in the upper left coast of that North America is a shared history.

And so wanting to invite the Indigenous communities from across the country to be a part of this event through their leadership and their storytelling.

And I think the last piece I have before I hand it off to Greg is the fun slide.

But Beth, I'm going to have you jump in here too.

What we wanted to do was sort of, this is a org chart, obviously.

FIFA, the last time they hosted an event in the United States, worked directly with US soccer to do so.

This for this event, they have set up their own entity, their own nonprofit.

I know it says Inc, but it's a nonprofit that's organized and has offices in Miami.

They are then going to set up direct subsidiary.

Organizations in each 1 of the 16 host cities, so FIFA, FIFA, Inc, if you will, will operate out of Miami and then FIFA inks 20, you know, Seattle will operate in Seattle.

And then FIFA asked after the host cities were selected, FIFA required that all host cities establish their own nonprofit entity.

To work directly with FIFA as the conduit to the host city and so that is where the Seattle local organizing committee was stood up and then it's the Seattle local organizing committee's job to work directly with all of the various stakeholders and partners, whether that is.

Uh, the tribe of Indians, whether that is sound transit, whether that is the governor's office, whether that is the city of Seattle, whether that is the sounders is a private.

Uh, entity operating a training site and so the Seattle local organizing committee plays that role.

Um, but I thought I might turn it over to Beth talk a little bit about the, the, how the city relates to this through region ready and some of the work there.

Great Thank you Maya and good morning everyone.

The.

The planning and preparation for an event, certainly of any large scale sporting event, we understand very clearly that we need coordination amongst a variety of stakeholders.

And the Sports Commission, in partnership with Office of Economic Development for the city, created an infrastructure called Region Ready.

And that is a structure of both public and private stakeholders, specifically for these large scale sporting events.

And it was to ensure that all key contacts are engaged in the process.

So, we, along with hold quarterly meetings for the city contacts in addition to meetings with associations, like the chamber or.

The DSA, as well as neighborhood groups, such as Pioneer Square Alliance, Chinatown International District, Soto BIA, and Friends of the Waterfront.

Now, in conjunction with these targeted meetings, the Sports Commission conducts a region-ready summit to offer more detailed information.

So, for example, with the Major League Baseball All-Star Week, we held a half-day summit in April for all of those stakeholders that I mentioned, plus-plus, where we had representatives from Major League Baseball, from the Mariners, Visit Seattle, And then other entities who shared plans for all star week, and then we also could answer questions that came up along the way.

Now, in this year, in particular, because.

All star week was really our 1st event that Seattle is hosted of any magnitude in 20 years.

We will hold a follow up summit in September to share what key learnings that we derived from the all star game and that week of activities while also preparing everyone for the upcoming NHL Winter Classic on January 1st as well as, of course, World Cup in 26. Now, we will work closely with FIFA on all of these things and continue to work with other host cities, et cetera.

But ultimately, it is about the local stakeholders that play such an important role in the development, the planning and ultimately the outcome of success for this, this event.

Maya, do I turn it over to you or Deputy Mayor Wong?

I'm not sure, next.

That's perfect.

Yeah, that's perfect.

The last slide is the chronology slide from me and then I'll turn it over.

This is the history so far of our work with the city to date.

And again, starting way back in the summer of 2017 when we were first asked to submit requests for information through the United bidding phase when the The FIFA was still selecting between Morocco and the United bid, which included the signing of all of the required FIFA agreement.

So that's where the host city agreement, the stadium hosting agreement, the port of Seattle signed an airport agreement, University of Washington, the Sounders, Starfire.

All signed agreements with FIFA in January 2018 before the United bid was even selected.

And then, as we shifted into post United bid, and then host city selection phase.

Obviously COVID was interrupted there.

I think the last time that we had the opportunity to do one-on-one briefings with some of the council members was right as COVID was hitting in February of 2020. We worked directly with various agencies and departments inside of not only the city, but the county and the state as we hosted FIFA for an official site visit in 2021. And then obviously we were selected in 2022 and then the last central staff briefing we did was right after that.

The bid committee met.

On September 15th of last year with with central staff as we were preparing to transition from the bid committee now to local organizing committee.

And so same same faces.

Beth and I are in the governance role on the board side, April and Lisa, as I mentioned, and obviously, Peter Thomas, our CEO are now on the executive staff side doing the work on the ground day to day.

Um, in, in, uh, underneath that umbrella of that Seattle local organizing committee.

So we've, we've done that.

We've done all that work.

We've got, we've gotten staffed up.

We've got the organization structure in place.

We signed the jointer agreement to, to be jointly and severally liable with the city, uh, under that, uh, 2018 document.

And that is, is procedurally, I think where we are.

today, Deputy Mayor, to now look to the next step in the process to get us going and move to execution.

Excellent.

Thank you so much, Maya and Beth.

We'll just wrap up the presentation with the next steps going forward.

We've certainly heard a lot of the lengthy history, which is amazing how much work already has gone into this, and we know it's going to take a lot more work.

going forward.

So today before you is an ordinance to authorize the transfer of all relevant host city obligations to the levee oversight committee as just described.

You know, it's a bit of a procedural oddity why we're here.

Usually these events, like if you take major league baseball all-star game, the city doesn't have any sort of planning role or responsibility to put on those games.

We treat them as special events, we contract with them to provide essential city services, and that's the normal course.

Because of the way FIFA operates, they require the city itself to enter into the host city agreement back in 2018. But with an anticipation that this local organizing committee would be set up and the local organizing committee would do those things like planning out fan fests, hosting games, contracting through with all the different governmental entities who may be at play, which is really a proper role for them.

So what this does today is the vote would be on an agreement that allows most of that responsibility to be assumed by the LOC in accordance with FIFA's requirements.

And that includes leading the efforts to raise funds to cover the costs.

On that it kind of returns us to the normal role as the city of being in the role of providing essential services by way of contract with LLC.

Now, as described this World Cup is a several times larger scale.

than anything we've done before, and one of the things that we'll be doing throughout the next few years is making sure we're working not just with LSE, but through them with all of our regional partners as, you know, the county, the state.

There's going to be a whole regional effort to put this on.

Again, while it's Seattle's World Cup on the name, it really is going to be a regional effort and a statewide effort to make sure it's successful.

And so we'll be one significant piece of that puzzle, but certainly not the only piece.

And moving forward, LLC will continue to coordinate with us, with all of those partners, with FIFA, and then with different stakeholders, with the community, with environmental groups, labor, business, all the other constituents that we have to ensure that this is a successful event, honestly, for the people of Seattle.

It's an incredible chance to showcase the city and welcome people from all around the world in a celebration of sport, but it's also an incredible chance for the people of Seattle as well.

So that is what's before you today and the end of our presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

So what we have in front of us, first of all, thank you for the presentation.

And Maya, you have a lot of energy for someone who's up at three or four in the morning.

We have the ordinance in front of us and also the exhibit a, and I want to thank Dan eater.

It looks like he did the summary and fiscal note that we had a chance to review and Mayor Wong or deputy Mayor Wong.

Thank you for your memo.

From July 20th, that we had a chance to look at for the LLC, the local organizing committee, and then the presentation in the ordinance itself.

I think the only well.

Everything's important in the audience, but it's always I always go to the, I always skip over the whereas doesn't go right to what we're supposed to be doing.

So, and that is basically what we said on the onset that the city of Seattle is going, we would be voting to execute a contractual agreement with the Seattle international soccer hosting local organizing committee, delineating which responsibilities and obligations in the host city agreement as amended will be fulfilled by the city.

And you're right.

Great.

These are, these are a little bit different in that normally when we have special events and big stuff, Um, we learned that with NHL and and sale storm.

We're not usually a partner in this stuff.

We, you know, we do the, the, the permitting the planning, the traffic, the ingress, egress.

The contractual stuff, the release, but this is more of a partnership and I'm really glad that we've had the tribe.

I saw Bill and Maggie and.

Sylvia and all them, I went to high school with all those folks that grew up down there.

So I know everybody on that in that screen and being all those folks.

So I'm really glad to see that and I'm not for lack of not asking tribes have been asking to be part of these type of events for at least 30 years.

And to be honest with you, it wasn't until we started getting casinos and money, then all of a sudden people start paying attention, but that's another story for another day.

So, thank you very much for being so inclusive, not only for the region, but for indigenous and tribal organizations where a lot it's, it's, it's government gaming.

So their money goes to education and sports.

And this, this council has been really receptive to working with groups like rise above and tribes and other indigenous organizations with sales storm and with the cracking.

To get young folks into sports early and with a specific.

Emphasis on young women and children and communities that normally don't have access to an ice rink or a basketball court or field.

So, thank you so much for that.

That actually means a lot to us.

And I think it means a lot to all of us.

So, I will end it there and I'm going to open the floor to see if my colleagues have any questions or comments that they would like to make before we move to a vote.

The floor is open.

Casper Peterson.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, everybody, today for your efforts that enabled Seattle to be chosen as one of the 16 cities to host the 2026 World Cup Soccer Games.

As a resident of Seattle and a former soccer player and current fan, let me start with gratitude for seizing this opportunity and the preparation for the big events.

Of course, as an elected city council member, I'm not hired to be a cheerleader by my constituents, so I do have questions.

And so, let me just walk through these questions.

Just like any piece of legislation, I'm interested in cost and safety, equity, so I'll work through these questions quickly here.

Starting up front, though, when I look at Exhibit A to the Council Bill, which is called Mutual Support and Collaboration Agreement, it references what's called a Host City Agreement, which I believe is an agreement that was executed several years ago.

And I just, for, I guess, transparency, when this item moves on to the full Council, I think it would be helpful to have the Host City Agreement posted on the agenda as well.

So I'm just making that request.

This document that the city would be signing, this mutual support and collaboration agreement, it's really the city and the other party is this local organizing committee.

Could we also get a list of the individuals currently on the local organizing committees, just so there's that transparency of who are we signing the agreement with?

I think that would be helpful.

We certainly appreciate those organizations stepping up to be a part of this.

We just, I think, for the public benefit, knowing who they are individually would be helpful.

Regarding cost, you know, I know there are economic economic you know the economics of this there people debate whether these produce net revenues or or net costs and So just all we can do is try to minimize the cost to the Seattle taxpayers and maximize the benefit so I see there is in here, in this mutual support and collaboration agreement, there is a reference to reimbursable costs.

And so, it also does note, just want to lift this up for the public, it does state under the reimbursable costs section that the Local organizing committees still can come to the city and ask for money.

So we are trying to be reimbursed.

The city's trying to be reimbursed for everything it can be, but do note that there may be a request later.

We don't know when and how much.

But that is allowed in this agreement that they're able to come and ask the city.

And I think that that's where we'd want to be cautious, is what do we think they might be asking us for.

So one of the issues with safety is whether we have sufficient city support, first responders, police department, adequate staffing.

I think with the Major League Baseball, that was centered around one big day.

But this, as I understand it, will be multiple weeks of events within the city of Seattle.

And if we were to try to host the World Cup today, I think that could be problematic with the staffing we have and the pace at which we're bringing on officers versus those leaving.

I'm a little bit concerned that within two years, you know, will we still have enough, will we have enough staffing at that point to handle weeks long events here in Seattle?

And so what are the plans for a mutual aid safety agreements with other jurisdictions like King County Sheriff's Department?

And are those costs, would they fall under reimbursable costs?

That's an actual question, not just...

Okay, I can jump in here.

Council Member, thank you for both your comments and for your questions.

I think they're very good ones and certainly ones that are important.

Let me just first touch on kind of the cost benefit concept here.

One thing that's really important to know about our hosting of the World Cup that may be a little different from some of the major events like when cities choose to host Olympics or even the last men's World Cup in Qatar, is that we're not actually building major infrastructure, like public works, right?

We don't need to build like an Olympic stadium.

We don't need to build a light rail line in order to get fans from one place to another.

Those things are significant capital costs that we won't have to do here.

We'll be using Lumen Field.

Lumen Field will have some adjustments it has to do, but in terms of public investment of dollars in order to put on the games, those are much reduced and more minimal than in kind of the normal calculus of studies of cost-benefit economics.

So just one thing to keep in mind.

On safety, and I'll let our friends at the LLC talk about this a little bit too, I think the thing to keep in mind is we definitely will be relying on other jurisdictions and on kind of that collaborative approach to addressing this as a regional benefit and a regional gain, even though it's being physically taking place, the games at least in the city of Seattle.

And so I think through those intergovernmental relationships that the LOC is building, there's going to be a lot of discussion about how to adequately staff.

This won't fall entirely on SPD and SPD resources.

They will certainly, again, be a piece of the puzzle, similar to how we do in current special events where there's SPD presence as required, and sometimes there's other resources too.

So those will all be taken into account.

And I don't know, Beth, Maya, if either of you want to add anything to that.

I can speak to a bit of that that we did.

Consider mutual aid for the all start.

However, it was not needed beyond the motorcycle escorts and another vehicle escorts for the players throughout that time period.

King County Sheriff's office was prepared to support as needed.

It just wasn't required for all star.

there is no question that mutual aid will be involved for an event the size of World Cup.

And that would be considered a reimbursable cost that would be paid.

Thank you.

That's very helpful.

In terms of...

Yeah, go ahead.

Sorry.

Council Member, I just wanted to also add that we have The former SPD chief John Diaz is our vice president of security.

So he is working on coordinating with the other police agencies and security organizations for all things staffing.

And the issue brought up directly is certainly high on our minds as well.

And that is why All of this work is beginning prior to 3 years before the event itself is happening.

And we are also coordinating with the other host cities across the country with ask relating to the White House and federal government as well, because security will be a big thing across all of the 16 cities.

Thank you, that's very helpful.

Last question is about equity.

We heard during the Major League Baseball All-Star Game some complaints from the Chinatown International District about how are they able to capture benefits from these big events when it's so close to their neighborhood.

So just didn't know if any thought had gone into that yet or that's something that'll come later.

Yeah, maybe I'll start that and pass up here.

So I just want to say to in regards specifically to that example of the all star game.

You know, I think that we were disappointed as well we actually had worked with the community in advance specifically to try to figure out how do we drive traffic to those small businesses.

we had some strategies in place, we did some events with them, some co-planning, and it did not provide the benefit that we all thought it would, which is disappointing.

And so we're going to be following up with the community and talking about how that works.

And just honestly, some of it is understanding how do these large special events flow, right?

Just because we advertise businesses, what we learned, it doesn't mean it means fans take advantage of that.

So there's a lot more work that will be done to try to unwrap that and figure out how we solve it in general moving forward, not just for events like All-Star Game or FIFA World Cup.

And I know Beth is going to be a partner in that.

And I'll pass it over to you, too, because I know equity is going to be really important and neighborhood involvement is going to be really important for the LOC here.

Yes, it's important for all large-scale sporting events that the Sports Commission is involved in.

And the only thing I'll add is that the next couple of months, two to three months, will be focused on meeting with all of the neighborhoods that were impacted or not, as the case may be, to learn about their experience and understand how we can make adjustments or how we can get creative with our strategies going forward.

Then it's also important that we collect actual data that we pair with the narratives from the neighborhoods.

Now that July is behind us, we'll be able to collect data on sales, revenue, traffic, transportation, ridership numbers.

All of that will play into our evaluation and assessment of how we can improve upon that going forward.

Thank you very much.

Those are my questions.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

I'm glad you brought your calculator, as you always do.

So, I am glad you brought that up, but I, I wasn't going to mention it, but I'm glad customer Peterson brought it to the forefront.

I had read the contract and was looking at that.

So I knew that there were no capital projects and no building infrastructure.

And I'm guessing from FIFA when they chose the city that they already had in mind kind of what the scoring would be why you would select a city that already has the infrastructure transportation.

And, but council member Peterson did bring up an important issue that we learned a lot from the all star game and the Taylor Swift concert.

So, again, 3 years lessons learned.

Now, we know we know that sound transit was a great partner having everyone right for free.

That was great.

We got for once we got nice letters to sound transit about good job and we also knew that with King County, and I'm guessing that's why April's here with the Seattle or with the public safety and public security issues that it's a regional.

It's a regional event.

So, all of those, that's why you have these kind of agreements to say, hey, it's regional everyone's involved, but it's also important to delineate what we're liable for what we're not.

And that's why you have contracts and that's why you have 3 years to lay all this out.

So it's done.

Right?

And we make sure we capture all these communities and everyone gets the benefit of such a huge platform.

And huge visibility, not just for the city, but what it's going to do for our downtown C.

I. D.

the I.

D.

and then bringing in all these folks and I'm guessing again, we still want to keep building the soccer.

I can't see soccer football fan base.

So we can start really filling up the stadiums with women's soccer as well.

So, with that, I see customer stress has his hand up customer Strauss.

Thank you Council President and thank you Council Member Peterson for your really good questions.

Maya, Beth, Deputy Mayor Wong, April for your great presentation.

I can say it is an understatement of how excited we are for the World Cup soccer football here in the city.

You know, we are gaining More momentum, OL Reign, an amazing team.

I would love to find them a place inside the city to play.

And I'd be remiss to not share, we are just this week, Ballard FC, a USL2 team, so way below, you know, MLS and World Cup, but still a semi-pro team, is headed to the national championship.

in their second season and so out of 120 teams nationwide our Ballard FC is going to the championship and we're hosting and so we're hosting again at Starfire outside of the city because it's the soccer facility that it's really the only soccer facility football facility that holds the number of people that we need to hold for such an event Um, it's just really front of mind for me that we need a place inside the city.

That's not Memorial Stadium necessarily.

It's not, um, uh, Seahawks stadium.

It's not, you know, we need a place here in our city.

And so really looking at that and just very excited and congratulate everyone from the Ballard FC team and us all to league for creating such an opportunity for everyday people to Enjoy soccer.

I mean, I look at Ballard, you know, we've had.

Ballard youth soccer started in the 1970s and we now have five generations of people playing soccer in Ballard and I think that that's what's contributed to the local success where every single game has been sold out.

I will get off my soapbox about Ballard FC.

I just want to congratulate everyone and if anyone wants to join Starfire 7 PM this Saturday National Championships.

Thank you for that Ballard plug, Council Member Strauss.

Is there any other comments?

Oh, there you go, Council Member Esqueda.

Well, I just want to say thank you.

I'm very excited that you were able to dial in, Maya, and please root for us down there.

Also really appreciate the early heads up and the transparent conversation around the partnership and the strategies that we need to make sure are connected both for Housing people and moving people and welcoming people and, of course, making sure people are safe, but supporting our local businesses as well.

I just, I wanted to say, thanks for lifting up the community events that happen outside of the field too.

I had the chance to go to the World Cup in Brazil.

We went to 2 games in Fortaleza and then again.

Oh, my gosh, I'm forgetting the name of the other stadium we went to.

Anyways, it was great.

Part of the experience was not just going into the stadiums, which we were able to go to two games, but really the experience outside.

You can't go to all the games and being part of the community that's watching on the big screen was just as memorable.

I wanted to say thank you for highlighting how that's going to be an accessible option for folks who might not be able to go to the game, whether they live here or coming to travel here.

I think that's a really great equalizer and in terms of experience, it was very much part of the experience of going to the World Cup just to be with the crowds and to be with the community that wants to celebrate the beautiful game and also be with folks who are so excited about their team or the team they're rooting for.

So I look forward to hearing more about where those like celebration places will be.

I wish we had a place that looked just like the Image you shared with the big screen down on the waterfront.

I'm sure we will be utilizing our brand new waterfront as well.

But thank you for both making sure our stadium is accessible and transit is running and we're coordinated and also creating opportunities for folks who might not be able to go inside.

Of the stadium, and just want to say how exciting it's been to be able to work with the crew here in supporting access to play soccer on free fields.

My, I mentioned that the opportunity for the sounders and the rate foundation.

To create new future generations of soccer players by not having to have scheduled play time on these open fields and especially couple that with Seattle Housing Authority, who is creating play fields next to affordable housing and mixed income housing across our city.

I think this is exactly how we create community.

And just want to say congratulations to April Putney and her new role and all the expertise you bring as deputy executive and your former work as chief of staff.

And we are so lucky to have you at the helm with this organization, helping to think through the vision of what it looks like in a few years.

So count me in as.

an ambassador, somebody to go to who's been able to be able to be at the games, but also at the outside events and the benefits that it brings to community and small businesses as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Mesquite.

Councilor Mesquite is being modest.

She's also a soccer player, so she doesn't like to tell people that.

Can you keep hyping that up?

And one day people will see me and I will let people down on that one.

Though Dylan and I, we've played together in the past.

Um, so well, and 2nd of all, we, we're hoping and Deputy Mayor Wang knows this.

Hopefully we'll get Memorial Stadium done.

How many seats do we got in Memorial Stadium?

13,000, 12,000.

I can't remember now.

Anyway, we're doing that too.

So hopefully when that gets done.

We will have a home for also our O.

L. O. L.

right?

So that's my hope.

All right, do I see any more hands before we go to a voters or anything else you want to add?

Deputy Mayor before we close it out and go to a vote.

Thank you so much for the good questions and comments, we appreciate it.

All right.

Okay, so we're going to move to a vote and I will move this now.

I move to recommend passage of council bill 120623. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

The motion has been moved and seconded.

There's no further discussion.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Sawant.

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Council President Juarez.

Aye.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you the motion carries and the committee will recommend to full city council, the passage of council bill 120623, and it will be in front of full council at our next meeting, which is next Tuesday, August 8th.

So, thank all of you and thank you.

Maya.

Thank you.

Beth.

Thank you.

April.

I know you guys, I see you all the time, Greg, so I'm not going to say thank you to you, but everybody else.

Oh, and Dylan, thank you, Dylan.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you, Tracy.

I see your tile up there and you showed up, so you're always there.

Good job.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Congratulations.

Thank you all.

All right.

Let's move on to item number two.

Madam Clerk, can you please read item number two into the record?

Agenda item to a resolution adopting general rules and procedures of the Seattle City Council superseding resolutions 32029 and 32051. Thank you.

So we have today with us Esther Handy from Council Central Staff, and she'll be walking us through the four amendments.

So with that, Esther, I'm just going to hand it over to you.

And then I will just note again that even though Council Member Nelson is not a part of this committee, I will be moving forward her amendments, which I believe are the first two.

So with that, Esther Handy, it's all you.

Good morning.

Thank you, Council President Esther Handy, Director of the Council Central Staff.

Happy to be back in front of this committee to, on behalf of the Council Rules Work Group, to discuss proposed amendments to Resolution 32906 that updates the council rules.

As a brief reminder on process, the current rules call for a biennial review of the rules.

That process was led by the city clerk's office this spring and reviewed recommendations both from the public and from council members and members of the work group.

The working group collectively recommended 24 changes that are in Resolution 32906, and we walked this committee through those changes at your July 20th meeting.

Today, we have four proposed amendments to discuss.

My plan is to take them one at a time.

I will pull them up on screen and we can walk through them.

Any questions on process before I begin discussing the amendments?

Great.

Can you see this all right, committee members?

Yes.

Great.

Council President, would you like me to describe the amendment and then have you move to have somebody move it, or would you like it moved and then described?

Why don't I have you?

Well, Madam Clerk, you tell me.

Can I allow Esther to just talk about it and then move it, or should I move it now and then open the floor?

That will be fine.

Which one?

That will be fine to wait till after the description.

Okay.

Go ahead, Esther.

Go ahead and explain it, then I'll move it.

Great.

Amendment 1 is authored by Council Member Nelson and it addresses in-person participation requirements for city council members.

The rules currently state that the council prefers to conduct its business in-person while practical, And then is not very specific about what that means.

And so this amendment would add specificity to say that council members shall attend regular and special council meetings in person.

This also applies later in the amendment to committees, so committee meetings and city council meetings, except for the six exceptions listed here.

in A through F, traveling for work-related business, working off-site to attend to the needs of a family or friend, staying home to prevent the spread of infectious disease, if a meeting is being held off-site, if it's being held outside of normal business hours, or if a council member or someone in their household is immunocompromised.

When attending meetings remotely, This amendment also requires councilmembers to have their video on for roll call and votes.

And that is the description of the amendment.

Okay, I'm going to move it, then I'm going to allow the person, Councilmember Nelson, to address it, then open the floor.

So I will move to amend resolution 32096 as presented on amendment number one on the agenda and authored by Councilmember Nelson.

Second.

Second.

Thank you.

Motion has been moved and seconded.

Council Member Nelson, the floor is yours on the discussion of amendment number one.

Thank you, Chair Juarez, for moving my amendment and also having me here to present it.

So when I spoke to this proposal at the July 20th meeting, I argued that attending meetings in person provides members of the public and the media better access to their representatives in the decision-making process.

And I'm speaking about people who are coming in person to chambers.

And it also allows us, council members, to see the constituents that are in person.

And this hews more closely to the spirit of the Open Public Meetings Act.

And I also mentioned that reducing reliance on Zoom will reduce the time-consuming and disruptive impacts of technological difficulties.

So that's the arguments that I made last time and I heard what was said in response to my proposal and I went ahead and brought this forward as an amendment.

Nevertheless, because I'm, I'm representing feedback that I've received from.

Constituents and individual conversations and at public meetings, like the, the July 18th, I think it was 18th meeting in Belltown that was put on by Belltown United in the West Precinct Advisory Council.

That was just the last time that I can remember.

But basically.

I don't know any other way to say this articulately, but people kind of think it's weird that we're not present in chambers or visible on video.

And it makes them wonder if we're taking our job seriously or if we're paying attention.

And they want to have the confidence that we're paying attention to the details on the laws that we pass that will impact their daily lives.

And they also say that we, as elected, should be leading by example to support downtown recovery, which depends on workers returning to the office to support the small businesses downtown.

And then finally, as elected, we are workers.

We're frontline workers in our democracy.

And we should be held to the same standards of other frontline workers and basically be present because we signed up for public service, and I always say public service is best conducted in public.

But anyway, this amendment has three changes from the one that I presented before.

Esther just mentioned one, which it adds people who are immunocompromised as an exception, and I did that following your comments, Chair, President.

Thank you very much for that.

I should have thought of that in the beginning.

And it also removes the notification for remote attendance requirement that I had before, as well as the requirement that presenters should be present in chambers whenever practicable.

So it is a bit softer, and I'm bringing it forward for your consideration yet again.

So thank you very much for hearing me out.

Thank you.

Before we I want to make sure I have the right 1 in front of me.

I think my.

You took out the section regarding.

Having their cameras on, you know, that's the next amendment.

There's a president if I might.

Yes, this, this amendment requires council members to have their video on during roll call and voting amendment to regards whether Seattle channel will broadcast the images of public commenters during public.

I should have been more specific in my comments.

Yeah, I. I was referring to Amendment Number 1 regarding that city, when council members attend city council or committee meetings remotely, council members must have their video on jury roll call and voting.

That's what I meant.

That's still in there, right?

Yes, and I'm willing to take that out.

That is secondary.

I understand that that is what other jurisdictions also do primarily for just to make sure people are who they are, and that's what they do at the state.

Okay, so I'm going to open the floor, but I'm going to state where I'm at on this, but I'm, I'm still, I'm still inclined to to hear more from my colleagues, but where I landed on this and where I've been being consistent about this.

Even the requirement about whether or not cast members should have their video on during roll call is that I will not be supporting this.

And I did share some of my issues and customer Nelson.

I understand why you want this.

I understand it.

We all get it.

But I think we also have to know that and be cognizant of this is 2023 and this is a different place in time with what we've dealt with.

not just health, but safety and other issues as well.

This is a part where, as an elected, I feel that I want to defer to the discretion, the judgment, and the integrity of my colleagues and other elected officials of their judgment of being there physically or via remote or how they handle their committees.

So for that reason, and I may add some more later, I have to hear some more because I have some more comments teed up, but I want to hear from my colleagues.

Um, we can have we've had discussions and.

Anecdotally as well, and looking at some of the other information.

I believe that we are still productive and in a perfect world, we should all physically be out there every day for, like, what used to be.

And I started here, but we don't live in that world anymore.

And I think we have to be cognizant of that.

And unlike the private sector, we can't we can't demand.

that people physically show up every day for five days.

And we've also learned from HR, particularly the unions, how they feel about other people who work on this floor besides the electives.

And so we have to balance all that with public safety, public health.

Also, as I shared before, and you've heard me say it, but I'll say it again, having remote and having the opportunity to have Council members be able to like right now Council member Strauss is calling him from somewhere else so he could be here to vote and to discuss.

And I think this is the shape of things to come.

And I know it's not comfortable for some people.

And for me. um, adapting that kind of change for me, government, I think has worked well.

It could be better, but government could always work better.

Um, and so I'm going to leave it there and I'm going to open the floor to my colleagues to see any comments or concerns that they have.

And then we will move on to a vote.

So with that, um, and I'll let you close this out to customer Nelson council member, uh, Strauss came up first and then Casper Mosqueda.

Uh, thank you, council president.

Thank you.

Council member Nelson for bringing this forward.

This is the first meeting that I've attended remotely in, I think, a year and a half or more.

As you all know, I am consistently on the dais or if I am taking the meeting remotely from Chambers, it's at my District 6 office at the Ballard Library.

I won't be supporting this amendment today, even though I support the intent and the underlying sentiment of it.

The reason that I'm not going to be supporting it is because the difference of codifying these rules rather than supporting our colleagues to meet the intent of what is being asked for and going through culture change.

We are going to have a very different council next year with or without this amendment.

And I think it is incumbent upon us to share at that juncture that these are the standards that we want to see met and by codifying these rules, it actually makes it more difficult for us just to do our jobs because, you know, I'm taking this meeting remotely right now and it falls within one of, you know, within the reasons that Council Member Nelson has put forward as a reason to take a remote meeting.

But the difference between codifying these changes versus making those cultural changes within our body or making these as known, um, expectations to meet is is a bit of a bit too far and these are going to be the same sentiments that I share with the other amendments as well.

You all may notice that I have pulled the one amendment that I was talking about bringing and that's again because it is being while it is my desire to have people only speak for 10 minutes total it's overly um to put it into these council rules to say that.

And that's why I pulled my amendment back.

I think that we can meet the intent of all of these amendments today without codifying them, because I think it's a little overly prescriptive.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Council Member Mosqueda and then I was going to say Ms. Handy, Esther Handy.

Go ahead, Council Member Mosqueda.

Sure, thanks council president.

I just want to thank you for even feeling like you had to share your story.

I think that that is.

A good example of why this amendment doesn't make sense and I just echo everything that you have said.

Already here today, and the presentation that I watched last week, or last time that the committee met, you know, it's, it's important to.

Be an example, as the sponsor said, but we can be an example in the right direction.

The city of Seattle has been an example for improving labor standards and being flexible about how we meet worker needs.

Over the last 10 plus years, and I've been proud to be 1 of the sponsors of many of the pieces of legislation that has helped elevate what new and improved labor standards and workplace standards should look like.

I think that, you know, when people talk about frontline workers, frontline workers have had to be exposed to many forms of.

Diseases and infections on the front line and unfortunately it took I think this pandemic for us to realize who is most impacted by that type of disparity that we have within our economy where it's mostly women and women of color.

who are in frontline positions exposing themselves and their family to higher rates of disease and contraction, not just of COVID, but of numerous diseases.

I am thankful that I don't have a compromised immune system, but like the council president and so many others, my sister has a compromised immune system.

If I happen to get sick and go see her, I am putting her life and her work and her family's Um, health and sustainability and jeopardy too.

So we have to make individual decisions as the council president as council member Strauss noted to allow for people to make these decisions.

The 2nd thing is, and I hope that we continue to lead by example by offering this flexibility, not just for council members, but for the staff that director handy represents and the staff that our city.

Um, want to support to ensure that people can continue to do their job and just to close and to underscore something that the council president also noted.

This body has been extremely effective, effective and efficient in continuing to respond to the community's needs in the midst of the covert crisis and the ongoing pandemic and the shadow pandemic.

In 2020 we passed four Seattle Rescue Plan legislation amendments.

We extended funding for small businesses and workers.

We deployed ARPA funds to the degree that we got national awards for how quickly we got those dollars out the door and into the hands of folks experiencing the crisis of the pandemic.

We have continued to be effective in moving forward monumental legislation in the last three years.

being remote and allowing people to care for themselves or their family, protect the health of their staff.

That is a good thing for us to do and another opportunity for this city to lead on what improved and enhanced and evolving worker standards should look like.

So I'm appreciative of the comments that have been made.

I also will not be supporting this amendment.

Thank you.

Director Handy.

Thank you, Council President.

I just wanted to clarify before the vote that the effect statement here says that this applies to both City Council and committee meetings, which is the intent.

When I was, I have a drafting error as I was making some edits to the last version, I struck the incorporation by reference to committee.

So if this amendment passes, we'll add that incorporation back to make sure that the full language reflects these effect statements.

Yeah.

Okay, good.

I thought that was just me having a moment.

Okay.

Good.

I'm okay.

I'm going to let council member Nelson.

Um, close this out, but before I, before I do customer Nelson, thank you for being so open and you and I've had offline discussions about this as well.

And I think it's great that you and I can talk and agree to disagree and things are okay, and we can move forward and keep government going.

So, thank you for that.

And you have been coming to work physically and I appreciate that our office has been coming since I've been council president 4 days a week and then the flexibility time when I couldn't make it.

So I want to thank you for that.

And also for HR and Karen and all the folks in comms and people.

That we've talked to and worked with and the stakeholder group who came forward and said, this is what we've learned under cobit and everything else.

And this is what we think what what works.

So what you were sharing with us today, I think had to be highlighted.

And I think you're right.

The public deserves a discussion about it to decide why we are going to do what we're going to do.

And I'm glad you brought up the open public meetings act, because our intent, I think we can still do our job and the intent by physically are showing up on camera or on the dias or in our committee, because we have been doing that.

So, with that, I will leave it there and I will let you close this out council member Nelson before we go to a vote.

Well, thank you.

I director handy.

This might be that might be wishful thinking that you might have to make this error if it should pass because I, I hear what everybody is saying and I am doing this because this is what are the public expects.

And because I've been trying to make it a practice.

I also recognize that leaving it up to the, the judgment and discretion of individual council members is also fair and and I respect that as well and we'll see what people do.

So, I hear all of this and just 1 last note.

I do have to say that.

I want to say, thank you to people who do come to.

chambers because sometimes when I'm walking in, that's when I can figure out what a nuance of a piece of legislation that's going to be discussed.

And so that kind of, it helps me in decision-making and sort of builds more collegiality.

All that said, I appreciate this discussion and I will, I'll be fine with whatever happens.

I just thought that it was very important to bring it forward formally.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

So with that, we're going to go to a vote.

Let's go for the discussion.

So Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on amendment number one?

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda.

No.

Council Member Sawant.

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

No.

Council President Juarez.

No, Madam President, can I just ask if anybody wanted to change his or her vote?

I just want to make sure that we're all voting on the right line here.

Yeah, go ahead.

I think we're OK.

I think everyone understands it.

Is everybody OK with the vote?

On it, what what Esther had shared with us?

That changes anyone's vote.

No, I don't see any hands up.

Say it again, I can't, we have fire engines going here.

Two in favor, three opposed.

Okay.

So the amendment fails.

Okay, let's do the same format with amendment number two.

I will let Esther explain it and then I will move it.

Then I'll open the floor to Council Member Nelson.

So Esther.

Great.

Amendment 2 is also authored by Council Member Nelson.

This amendment would give committee chairs authority to authorize the Seattle Channel to broadcast the video images in council chambers at city hall during public comment during their committee meetings.

So this is about when the public is commenting at a committee meeting.

The current practice right now is to, oh, wow, I've got blue angels flying over my head, so I'm just going to pause.

I heard that too.

While that is happening.

So whether we are broadcasting the images of people providing public comment in chambers during a committee meeting, the rules are currently silent on this.

The current practice of the council is not to.

There was originally a proposal from the public and then one from Council Member Nelson that was broader than this that the work group discussed that said the rules would say that the council always shall broadcast the image of public commenters.

The work group did not advance that proposal, but instead advanced a change that says the council president in consultation with the city clerk and IT will have the authority to determine how this happens.

Out of that discussion, Council Member Nelson has proposed this revised amendment that narrows the discretion to a committee chair during For their committee, the last thing I will add is it says that committee chairs will make a decision for a year at a time.

So they'll say, this is how my committee intends to operate for the full year.

I'll pause there, so I'm going to I'm going to go ahead and move it now.

I'll open the floor, so I moved to amend resolution 32096 as presented on amendment number 2 on the agenda and authored by council member Nelson.

2nd, 2nd.

Thank you.

The motion has been moved and seconded.

Council Member Nelson, will you lead us in the discussion in your amendment and then we'll open the floor.

Thank you very much.

Just to be clear, this does not impinge upon the ability of the council president to set policy for briefings in city council meetings.

This is about visibility and specifically applies to committee meetings.

So people come to City Hall to participate in the process of government and make their voices heard.

And just as the public has the right to see the representatives, I believe we have a responsibility to see them, which is currently impossible because the camera facing chambers is turned off or it's not broadcasting what's happening behind the dais, in front of the dais, but the cameras are behind us.

And I understand that the current policy is justified by an equity argument that because we don't have the technical capacity to show the faces of remote participants, we shouldn't show the faces of in-person participants.

But this is also about, to me, it's about respecting the efforts of people who go through the hassle of schlepping downtown to our chambers because an issue is important enough to them to participate in a meeting in person.

And if they want to make public comment or show strength in numbers by wait a minute, I'm going to pause here.

Yeah, angels are going overhead.

Okay.

If they want to make public comment or show strength in numbers by filling chairs and chambers, they have a right to be seen by the people who cannot be there themselves and are watching at home or on some other device at our award winning Seattle channel.

So it's not just about council members seeing commenters.

It's also about people who are watching the meetings themselves.

So this will benefit committee members who are joining by zoom because they will be able to see public commenters themselves.

So this is a benefit.

I think to folks that choose not to be there in person as well.

So, so this is simply providing committee chairs, the discretion to decide what is best for their committee and be consistent in it.

That's why it's a year.

I didn't.

say it had to be a year, could be two years, could be whatever, but it has to be applied consistently so the public knows what to expect when they come to a committee meeting.

That is the reason that I'm putting this forward and I appreciate your consideration.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

I will share with you that I will be supporting this and I will tell you why.

First of all, thank you central staff and thank you Council Member Nelson for making it more narrow in the consistency piece too.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

I believe, well, the rules say council members are the presiding officers of their committee.

And I always want to err on the side of giving them the broad discretion to chair their committee as they deem appropriate, including public comments, how many people are signed up, minute, two minutes, all of it is up to the discretion of the presiding officer, and that is the committee chair.

So I will be supporting this, but I just want to point out, There is an equity issue and that was my concern generally with general counsel.

And, um, we know that, well, I don't even have to start with, we know, um, people have a constitutional right to be heard and we are allowing that.

And that is absolutely guaranteed.

And we've done that sometimes to, um, to a fault, to a fault sometimes, but indeed, um, we are always telling people to, you know, be, um, to speak to the agenda.

To be respectful stick to the time limit, but people do have a right to come here and I'm going to, I'm supportive of the presiding officer of the committee chair.

If they want that camera on the actual speaker that shows up now, there will be some issues.

It's kind of not fair either for.

People that can't make it down here that can't be on TV and that that's the equity piece that I was really concerned about.

So, if we are going to narrow it to the committee.

I do not have a problem with that.

So I will be supporting your amendment on this 1 customer Nelson.

I'm going to open it to floor customer Strauss.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson, for bringing this forward.

I think it highlights an important issue, one that I have desired to see changed.

My question, though, here is, and I don't know if Director Handy or Deputy City Clerk Sanchez or award-winning Seattle Channel wants to pipe in, I don't think that we need to change council rules to make this happen.

And that's where I am having tension here.

I don't believe that we need to codify this just to tell Seattle channel to turn on the cameras when people are providing in person public comment.

And so, again, I support the intent of this.

It's something that if we can just ask Seattle channel to turn on the cameras.

For public comment, it's something that I'll start doing immediately.

I just don't believe we need to change council rules to engage in a practice that has always occurred until the pandemic, right?

And now we've had the pandemic, we've had remote testimony.

There's the equity issue of whose faces are being shown.

And I believe that we can just turn on the cameras.

Does somebody have the answer to that question?

Can they just turn on the cameras?

Can you hold on a minute?

I think that's why, and I'm just going to give Esther a hard time.

I think that's what they wanted to us and did not want to make a recommendation either way and say it was a policy question.

If I'm wrong on that, Esther, please correct me.

So, can we respond to Councilor Strauss's question?

Yeah, let me take a stab and I invite other folks from the working group to add in or correct me if you see this differently.

I think this is something that is not required to be in the rules that how Seattle channel broadcast or does not broadcast committee meeting is not necessarily an item for the rules.

I think absent it saying anything in the rules, the council president as the head of the council and head of the department is coordinating and making those decisions with the internal divisions, like the city clerk's office and it and Seattle channel.

Sales channels, not internal to the department about those operational issues.

So, if council members and committee chairs would essentially like to guarantee that they have this authority separate from the council president, it is appropriate to put in the rules.

Could it happen if it was not in the rules?

Probably.

Deputy city clerks anything you want to add?

I want to add 1 thing counselor structure, you raise a good point, but I think.

Esther nailed it that obviously, because she's great at her job and in the stakeholder group, it's having it there, though, gives you the discretion.

So I'm guessing if you have 1 year and you're the committee chair, and you let everyone know that you plan on having the camera on people at public comment.

Um, but that's always subject to if something happens, you can change that as long as you let the council president's office know to tell the clerks that it's going to be.

I guess you can notify people that, you know, you won't be on camera, but I'm thinking that you want to codify this.

So they, there's some expectation for 1 year.

Um, to allow the committee chair, the presiding officer.

To have people know that they will be on TV and they will be seen and not just heard.

So, I kind of see it as it no harm, no foul and gives again, the, the council member presiding officer committee chair, the discretion to do to do as they deem appropriate.

Thank you.

Council president.

That's helpful.

My, I guess, next concern here and.

I may just abstain from the vote rather than hashing out all of this on award-winning Seattle Channel.

But to say if this amendment passes, then does that bind the hands of a future council president in regards to full council as compared to committee?

And if there's a quick answer to that question, feel free to respond.

If not, I'll just abstain from the vote today.

Well, I will respond what I think and then Esther, you can tell us what you think and anyone else and Lauren Henry wants to chime in.

I don't think it binds the hands quite frankly, but that's just my opinion.

It does not.

Council president is still in charge of general council meetings.

And this just kind of narrows it because the original 1 wanted all of city wanted the city council meetings and council president.

to have the camera on and I was against that.

And that was not mine.

I know it wasn't yours.

I know that comes from Nelson.

I'm glad you checked it.

I was not for that.

Cause I, again, I'm looking for an eye towards the future and what, how we're going to move into the next year with new council members.

So I thought this was a great compromise.

And again, gives the committee chair, the presiding officer, the discretion and the breath they need to know how their committees are going to go, including when they have guests.

So that's where I was at.

And I would hope you would not abstain, Council Member Strauss, but I'll let that go.

Director Handy, is there anything else you want to add before I hand it back to Council Member Nelson to close this out?

I'll just confirm my reading of this is correct, is the same as yours, that this only applies to standing committees and does not, retains the authority for city council meetings with the council president.

Thank you.

So with that, Council Member Nelson, do you want to close us out before we go to a vote on amendment number two?

I would just like to say thank you very much, Council President, for supporting this.

And I have nothing else to say.

Thank you, committee, for considering.

I'm glad I can hear you after the Blue Angels.

I can't hear anybody.

OK, so with that, since it's already been moved and seconded and we've had discussion, I'm going to ask the clerk to call the roll on amendment number two.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda.

No.

Council Member Sawant.

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Council President Juarez.

Yes.

Three in favor, two opposed.

All right, so the amendment number two passes.

Excuse me, four in favor, one opposed.

Oh, yeah.

I was like, oh, let's see you guys.

I have an excuse to not know what's going on.

I'm old.

All right.

So, amendment number two passes.

So, number three was pulled.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Let's move on to amendment number four.

So, will you please read, and I don't have this in here, it should be here.

Can you please read amendment number four into the record?

Yes.

Amendment number four is sponsored by Council Member Sawant and Peterson.

And it clarifies in the rules that during committee meetings, members of the public may comment on items on that day's agenda as well as matters within the purview of the committee.

You may recall that at our last committee meeting, we had a discussion about proposed changes in the rules.

The current rules have an or down here in section 3 that says essentially comment on items on today's agenda or within the purview of committee.

there was a proposal to clarify that in a way that narrowed it to items on today's agenda unless there was an advance notice about items within the purview of the committee.

This amendment makes the standing practice that all committees will accept comment on items on that day's agenda as well as within the purview of the committee.

Thank you.

My understanding is that either Council Member Peterson or Council Member Sawant need to move it.

Sure, I'll go ahead and move it.

This is Councilmember Peterson and I'd like to move Amendment 4, Version 1 to Resolution 32096.

Second.

Thank you.

So the motion's been moved and seconded and so with that we'll open the floor and we will allow Well, let me just say what I'm what I think.

Well, no, I'll just open the floor, but can we speak to that?

I'm getting there.

I'm I'm headed there.

I'm just getting ready to say customer Peterson.

Perhaps you would like to share with us your amendment.

Thank you.

Thank you, and Council Member Swann and I agreed I'd go ahead and go first on this one, but I do want to thank Council Member Swann for advancing this point of unity.

Colleagues, if the two of us agree on something, then you all probably should too.

So I know a lot of us agree one of the most important roles we have is to hear from the general public and committee chairs have the ability to set the agenda, which is an enormous amount of power and control.

Limiting the free speech to what's on the agenda set by a chair's discretion could be viewed as a restriction of speech Especially because chairs have that discretion to keep items Permanently off their committees agendas therefore I believe it's important for the public to be able to Raise issues that they care about to say we'd like to see this on the agenda.

We don't see it on the agenda we We know it's in the purview of your committee, and so we'd like to see it on an agenda in the future, and I think that they should be able to have full public comment to express that.

I wanna thank central staff for how they, Director Handy for how she explained this because what we're seeing, the track changes that we're seeing is actually changes to the proposal.

But what's really happening is this amendment is actually just keeping it essentially as it is today.

So our amendment, Council Member Swan and my amendment is actually maintaining or restoring what is already in our council rules.

codifying something different.

It's just what's already there.

Public comment is already within the purview of the committee according to council rule section 11C.

So, and if any of my colleagues are struggling with this one, I urge you to abstain rather than vote no, because voting no could send the wrong signal about how we'd be changing something about free speech.

Thank you.

Well, that's interesting.

I didn't think you were a cheerleader, but I don't abstain, but okay.

I already set the tone for that with Council Member Strauss.

Director Handy, do you want to share some additional information and then I'll open the floor?

Actually, Council President- Oh, I'm sorry, Councilor Sawant.

I didn't know that you were going to speak as well.

I apologize.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson for your remarks.

I agree with your comments.

As I mentioned last week, I'm concerned about the base draft of the council rules, limiting public comment at committee meetings to items on the agenda unless the chair of the committee chooses.

Otherwise, as Council Member Peterson was saying, this change would give the political establishment the legal authority to refuse to hear advocacy for something they personally do not support and therefore did not place on the agenda.

There are also many times when people who are not experienced with City Hall's procedure come to public comment asking for help with something when it may not be the precise moment to make that request, but it is something, it may be someone genuinely attempting to contact their elected representatives or any elected representatives as best they can.

This has certainly happened in the Sustainability and Renter Sites Committee, which I chair, when renters have come to the committee meetings asking for help with some issues they're having with their landlords or with their rental apartments and staff from my office have talked to them after their comments and after the committee and been able to help.

I understand that this year committee chairs have the authority to accept or refuse to accept broader public comment and members of the committee are directly angry when committee chairs refuse to accept broader public comment.

People should be angry when council members choose to limit public comment to silence dissent.

And as Council Member Peterson said, and I agree that a committee chair could permanently refuse to allow some topics to be covered.

This amendment would require all committees to accept public comment on any relevant subject matter, regardless of the items on the agenda.

Of course, as a socialist, I know that when there is a mass movement or mass struggle, no council rules will prevent working people from demanding to be heard.

And movements have always been the true defense of Democratic freedoms, but I do not want to support a change in the council rules prohibiting genuine public comment on topics.

Committee chairs chair might find unpalatable.

So.

I urge the committee to support this amendment.

Thank you.

Thank you customer.

So I, uh, director handy.

Yeah, I'll just do 1. And a final clarification about what's in the rules today.

The edit in red here in the first paragraph of section C, that is restoring a sentence that is currently in the rules.

The language that is in currently in section A, the current rules has an or.

So it essentially says committee shall accept public comment on items on today's agenda or within the purview of the committee, which has been interpreted to allow some committee chairs this year to narrow their scope to just items on the agenda today.

And so the original cleanup was to make sure that there was not that sort of mismatch of the sentence above that says purview of the committee and the one below that had an or.

This amendment, as both sponsors have spoken to, clarifies that all committees will accept comment on items within their purview.

Thank you, director handy before I open the floor, let me share with you where I'm at on this.

And again, I've been looking at this stuff for 6 months and working with the stakeholder group and all of you offline.

Like, what do you think about this?

So I will be supporting this and I'll tell you why.

Besides the fact that, I mean, we changed it to the establishes that the committee shall accept public comment on items on the agenda as well as within the purview of the committee.

Again, it gives discretion and deference to the committee chair, the presiding officer to hear other issues.

And also council member raised a big issue, a major issue.

Sometimes this is people's only opportunity to come to public comment and bring up an issue that they feel very passionate about.

And that gives the council or the committee chair, the opportunity to hear that.

And I certainly don't want to stop the discourse on those issues where people can't make it to full council, but they either that's either their council member from their district that has an issue that maybe not be germane to the actual agenda.

But as their council member district representative, there may be an issue that they can show up and bring up those local issues, whether it's a crosswalk, or a bike lane, or a pee patch, or all those things that come up for us that represent districts, public safety, that they're concerned about, that maybe they're, because we don't, our communication could be better.

try to be as accessible as we can on the second floor.

But everyone can get to the second floor, unlike some other floors where you just can't get there.

So I will be supporting this, and I want to thank Councilmember Peterson and Sawant for bringing this forward.

So with that, I'm going to open the floor for other Councilmembers before we go to a vote, or then allow Councilmember Sawant and Councilmember Peterson to close this out.

Is there any other comments?

I see Councilmember Strauss.

Go ahead, Councilmember Strauss.

Uh, thank you council president.

I'm having trouble with this amendment because as council member Peterson said, this is already the practice at city council that allows a chair to make the discretionary judgment of whether to allow public comment on just the agenda item.

or on all items under the purview of their committee, as well as the discussion points that I provided at the last committee meeting regarding the role of full council public comment as compared to committee work.

Committee work is where the time is dedicated to going through the nuances of Of the policies before us, and that is why it is important to retain public comment for the items on the agenda for that day as compared to full council, which allows for public comment on all issues.

Under the purview of the entire city council, and that brings us.

All all council members to the table to hear those public comments.

So I have trouble with this amendment.

And I appreciate everyone bringing it forward because it is it is the current practice of our city council today.

Well, I just a quick response and I'll let the sponsors respond as well.

I kind of view it as an opportunity to kind of change.

How we run city hall and giving the committee chair the chance to, I mean, if I'm a committee chair, and some people bring some issues that aren't on the agenda, and there is a shell in there.

You know, we have a chance to say, okay, I'd like to hear from the folks that if indeed I'll learn from the clerks of my own clerks that there's some folks out there that want to speak to a couple other things to let them go 1st.

If indeed, you know, we can, we can cover it or find out who's out there and what their issues are and whether it.

if they can speak.

I just think it gives you more flexibility.

Maybe I'm just looking at it differently, but that's my read of it and that's why I'm supporting it.

I'll leave it at that and see.

I think Director Handy has a comment to make before I pass it back to anyone else that has their hand up before we close it out.

Director Handy.

Thank you.

I understand in this discussion and debate here people are seeing and understanding flexibility in different ways.

So I just want to be crystal clear that this would require at a committee meeting that a committee chair accept public comment on all items within the purview of their committee.

That's all.

Okay.

Is there anything else you want to add, Councilmember Peterson or Councilmember Sawant before we go to a vote?

Nothing from me.

Thank you.

Thank you, President Morris.

Just basically reiterating what Esther already said, which is, Director Handy already said, which is that the current council rules have been interpreted different ways by different committee chairs.

Some chairs read it to mean that they can refuse to hear issues that they did not place on the agenda.

And keep in mind, it still says in the purview of the topics that are covered by the committee.

It's already saying that it has to be relevant to the committee.

But what this does is, for example, in the Renter's Rights Committee, if you are a renter and you are facing an issue that you need help with, maybe you need help contacting STCI, filing a complaint, that sort of thing, and you don't know how to navigate the city system, but that particular item related to STCI is not on the agenda, you should still be able to come to the committee, And I as the representative has to have the responsibility to respond to them.

My staff have the responsibility to respond to that constituent.

So that's a concrete example of what will be enabled by this.

And it's not that I'm not able to do it.

As I already said, I already do it and I've done it a number of times over the last nine and a half years, but it's a question of whether the committee constituents of the city have the right to do that regardless of what the committee chair might prefer.

So that's the question.

The constituents should not have to rely on this or that specific council member who believes that that is the constituents right.

All constituents should have this right at all committees.

That's why this amendment is being proposed so that chairs do not, are not able to limit public comment in that way, which I agree with President Juarez.

I mean, it is undemocratic and this amendment will not allow chairs to censor public comment in that way.

And as I said, again, to reiterate, it's still within the purview of the topics.

Yeah, thank you, Council Member Sawant.

I was kind of being the, you know, the promoting that you want to have more access and more voices in chambers and again you're right it does say in the purview of the committee and you still have that discretion but i'm going to leave it leave it at that um is there anything else before we move to a vote okay i do not see any other hands so there's no further discussion so madam clerk will you please call the roll on amendment number four council member peterson yes council member mosqueda i council member sawant

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

Abstain.

Council President Juarez.

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed, one abstention.

One lonely abstention.

Okay.

So it passes.

Amendment number four passes.

All right.

Let's move on to amendment number five, and I believe Council Member Mosqueda will move this forward.

Amendment number five is indeed sponsored by Councilmember Mosqueda and it creates a new authority for the Council President that she may refer bills both to a subject matter committee and to the Finance Committee.

These would be bills with significant fiscal impact.

That decision of what is significant fiscal impact would be decided on a case-by-case basis with a guideline of fiscal impact over half a million dollars, tax-related amendments, or policy changes to the budget process.

That's sort of the presumed initial definition of significant fiscal impact.

The cadence would be that a bill would go to a subject matter committee, the subject matter committee would make a recommendation, and then a bill would go to the finance committee for recommendation.

A bill that has stopped at both committees goes to full council with recommendations from both.

I move amendment number five, Madam President.

Second.

All right.

it has been moved and seconded.

And Council Member Esqueda, can you lead us in a discussion on your amendment?

Sure.

Thank you very much, colleagues, and thank you, Madam President, for having this conversation.

I think that there's many things that we would all love to do as part of the rule changes here, but I limited some of the concepts today to just fiscal transparency and trying to get a better sense of how budget Future budgets and current budgets will be impacted by policy.

There's a number of really important policies that we've been able to pass, for example, in labor standards protections.

And I always say, during those meetings, we'll come back and we'll make sure the office of labor standards, for example, has the funding that they need to do the implementation.

But it's really up to the budget deliberations that the executive branch starts.

1st, they send the proposed budget down to the legislative branch and then the legislative branch in the fall.

finalizes the budget and sends it back up.

I think having a fiscal note along the process could help for ensuring that the really important thoughtful policies that we pass at council also have the necessary resources to ensure that they're successful and that they can go to fruition.

Um, you know, there's a number of folks who've, uh.

Worked within the halls of the state legislative body as well, who are familiar with the policy committee and that if they're budget documents, excuse me, if a policy proposal has a, um.

Budget impact over a certain level, then it goes to the fiscal committee before it goes to the full floor.

It's a similar concept here, but I recognize that we have limited resources and we don't have a full ability to have either central staff or all of us have the capacity to look at every single bill that has.

A significant fiscal impact all the time, so it provides discretion to the council president to determine if we have the capacity to bring this and do additional analysis.

We want to make sure that that is part of the thoughtful process that each legislation goes through.

I think it will help us as well with both bills that come from the executive branch.

And the legislative branch, so this is not wanting to single out any specific councilmatic efforts.

I, you know, I voted for a number of things that we all know we would have to square with the budget later, but there's also a number of things that come down from the executive over my tenure.

And I'm sure other colleagues who've been here for a long time as well, including council member Swann and council member Juarez.

are familiar with previous administrations where we need to know the fiscal impact and we might agree with the policy but not having the ability to sort of scrutinize it through that lens is is a barrier.

So again this is I think just a good governance practice and recognize that we'd have to continue to build the capacity to to set up the structure to do this in the future.

I just want to ask Director Handy is there anything else you'd like to comment on regarding like deference and authority versus a mandate.

Sure.

Yeah, we wrote this in sort of the broadest sense of it creates the ability for the council to do this but does not require it.

The second sentence in I also includes that the president in consultation with the central staff director and informed by staff capacity and available fiscal information is a way to acknowledge that one, there will be some considerable operational pieces to sort out should this pass of logistically how this moves through the process, and also some thoughtful conversation about how to support a finance committee discussion distinct from a subject matter committee discussion.

Are our fiscal notes adequate today to do that?

Do we need additional data or information from CBO?

If so, what might that look like?

And does the council have that today to support the kind of conversation that Council Member Muscata is signaling would be important here?

So, creates a path that this could happen, does not require bills to move on this path.

Thank you.

I before actually I, I have a few, well, I have a few comments, but I want to hear from our colleagues first.

So before I share where I'm, I believe I'm at on this council member Peterson, the council members to want.

Thank you, council president.

And thanks to our budget chair for bringing this forward.

Um, I am interested in this.

Um, I like aspects of this.

I just wanted to better understand how it might work in practice.

I know, you know, in the state legislature, the US Congress, they'll do similar things where you've got the fiscal committee looking at it or the tax committee looking at it in addition to the authorizing subject matter committee.

So, I guess for, this might be for central staff, but subsection C2, the committee with the subject matter jurisdiction shall have primary responsibility, but then it says, but it could be heard by the Finance Committee.

Is that regardless of what happened in subsection C1, or is it if C1 is triggered, then C2 would happen?

I guess what I worry about is the public thinking a bill's moving along in the Subject Matter Committee, and then maybe the Finance Committee doesn't like it, so that they are like, We will now we want to hear it because we didn't like the result of what happened out of this.

I don't I just.

Maybe having it more clear like it's it's it either does go to both or it only goes to one, but but this that C2 I'm confused how that would work in practice.

Thank you.

Well, let me let me just add a few things.

I don't think that the intent is to take any policy bills or subject matter bills into the fiscal committee in lieu of the policy committee.

So this would just be another analysis of the fiscal impact.

I think that it is important for there to be a threshold that's known, but to also recognize that given capacity, we can't really mandate this right now.

If we want to work towards the system and have some threshold that we draw the line at that makes sense to me, but we can't really determine before a bill goes to a policy committee what the dollar amount is going to be.

Because there might be amendments in the committee that change the fiscal note.

So, as, you know, we're working in our, in our fiscal committee in our, in our budget committee and our housing and finance committee to try to update those fiscal notes so that they are dynamic.

And in real time, we can see how amendments do affect the fiscal note projection.

So I would, I would.

I would suggest that, again, if we hit a certain threshold given amendments that are taking place in a policy committee, that should be the threshold for when the Council President makes a determination of whether it goes to a committee.

I hear what you're saying, though.

It needs to be, we need to take the objectivity out of it, if there is any, and ensure that there's a clear standard across the board.

Did I capture what your concern was?

Yes, may I ask a follow-up?

Yeah, go ahead.

So, would the finance committee, in that case of C2 happening, is there, I mean, would the finance committee be deliberating on it solely for fiscal matters or would they be able to be talking about the policy?

I guess I, thanks for the reminder about the fiscal note improvements.

I guess my initial thought is seeing how that goes and then, visiting this idea later, if we can make the fiscal note stronger, more detailed, then everybody could be looking at that for the fiscal impact.

I also, maybe there's a way of inviting the the budget chair to the subject matter committees to, you know, when they're concerned about fiscal impacts not being fully addressed or something, rather than having it go to a five-member committee that could just talk about anything related to it.

I'm worried about it dragging things out.

Thank you.

Okay, well, I just want to reject me or any future budget chair going to committees to raise concerns, right?

It's not about concerns on the policy.

I volunteered you for hundreds of hours.

No, thank you.

Um, but I understand a lot of people don't have the, we have 9 members at this juncture.

We don't have the capacity to sit on too many more committees, but it is clear that there are policies that are being passed where we do need to have a better.

Look at the, the actual fiscal note, and I just want to also reiterate this is not about council driven bills specifically.

Right?

We also have a situation where often the executive and not.

This executive specifically, but the executive branch throughout the 6 years I've been here has sent bills down with basically saying, don't worry, we'll figure out the cost.

Well, then it comes.

Down and we have to figure out the cost later and we're all kind of crunched at that point.

So, both for executive initiative bills and council bills, I think this is an important tool, but I definitely don't want it to be like, the budget chair is raising a concern.

That's that's too much.

You know, power in 1 person's purview, but it's also not about a individual concern.

It's just about looking at the fiscal impact over the years.

Thank you.

Catherine has her hand up.

Thank you.

Um.

I appreciate the questions.

You're cutting out, Council Member Sawant.

Sorry, can you hear me now?

Yeah, just speak up a little louder.

Okay, thank you.

Oh, good.

Great.

I was saying that I appreciate the questions Council Member Peterson asked.

I'm still not clear, honestly, what the purpose of This amendment is, in other words, what I'm trying to say is, what is the problem that it is trying to address in my mind?

And correct me if I'm wrong, Director, anybody?

Two problems, in my view, because fiscal questions are not apolitical.

They're not politically neutral.

They are extremely political.

What an elected body chooses to fund and what it chooses not to fund is very much a political question.

In most ways, it's the most central question and the most fundamental question, you know, the question of what is actually funded and what is not funded.

And so, in that sense, I would have a lot of concerns about this amendment unless I'm misunderstanding it, of course, but so I have questions and I'll go ahead and ask them and also give an example of why to explain my concern.

So the questions are, if a bill is voted out of the policy committee and is flagged in this way, does it need to go to the finance committee before it can go to the full city council for a vote?

Does the bill need a vote in the finance committee?

And I heard just now that it maybe doesn't, but it also doesn't sound confident.

So I'm not sure what that means.

So does it need a vote?

Does it require a vote in the finance committee?

In other words, if this amendment passes, that is.

And what if the bill is amended in finance committee?

And I heard, Director Handy, I heard you say that the logistics still need to be worked out.

I understand that.

But these questions for me are fundamental.

And the key question here also is, what if the finance committee never calls a vote and it stays in limbo?

I don't understand what if that situation arises.

And again, correct me if I'm wrong.

But I would be concerned about something, creating a structure like this, first of all, because I feel like there isn't a problem that is trying to address.

In my view, the problems are political, just in terms of what do elected officials actually decide to do, but they are not process-related.

And in the name of trying to address a problem which I don't understand that it exists, I think this could create a structure, this amendment could create a structure where progressive bills could get mired in endless committee meetings and never brought to a vote.

And as we know, the state legislature is infamous for doing this, and other bodies are also infamous for doing this.

Some progressive legislator sponsors a bill that's genuinely important to ordinary people, to working people.

And we see the Democratic Party doing this all the time.

And then there's lots of self-congratulation.

There's a lot of obfuscation.

that ordinary people are subjected to where you're supposed to think, well, if this or that progressive Democrat brought a bill forward, then maybe there is some progress happening.

But then the legislature, both the Democrats and Republicans, and they have this old process where the bill basically sits in limbo or that sort of thing.

It's sent to one committee after another until the session expires and then no votes have happened.

So if this amendment were to pass, potentially there's a danger of that happening in the city because the language of the amendment, as far as I understand it, is not explicit about scenarios where the finance committee is intentionally using, sorry, is intentionally used to hold a bill.

Like imagine a bill like the economic evictions assistance ordinance that was passed by my office through the Renters Rights Committee, which legally requires landlords to pay their tenants three months rent if that tenant is evicted directly because of a rent increase greater than 10 percent.

This bill had a clear fiscal impact because it required the administration from the SDCI.

That fiscal impact was clearly discussed in the fiscal note and at the committee table.

It passed the committee, the bill passed the committee, and then it went to the full city council for a final vote.

However, if this amendment had been part of the procedure, then that bill would have gone to the finance committee, as I understand, again, prior to going to the full council for a final vote.

So question is, what would have happened if the chair of the finance committee never scheduled it for a vote?

Would one single council member, the chair of the committee, have the power to stop the bill from advancing simply by never scheduling it for a vote?

Those are the questions I would have.

So I would appreciate clarification.

Thank you.

Thank you customer want customer scared you want to respond and then I have, I want to share my thoughts.

I see director handy's hand up too.

I mean, I, I want to make sure that folks understand that this is.

Good conversation, maybe it will be teed up for the future council to consider at some point.

I think it's a good practice to do.

And I'd offer 2 other policies that are current that are happening right now.

I think it would be very helpful to have a committee have a chance to look at what is the new.

Drug bill that's being proposed and how in the world that's going to be financed with multiple millions of dollars being projected and us having.

A funding question at hand about how we're going to close a 214Million dollar gap in 2025, a 207Million dollar gap in 2026. I want to know what the fiscal implications of any major policy change is being considered before council, whether it's councilmatic or executive and to actually do an analysis of whether or not the city is going to be able to pay for something in the future.

It feels like an important question to be asked, especially when we're running into a expenditure gap and a revenue gap.

Our population continues to grow and the services continue to be needed.

But when we're making policy choices without having a chance to see where the dollars come from in the future, it feels like a really important policy question to raise.

Of course, we have other policies that are being announced.

Weekly via press releases and if those policies continue to move through our existing committee structure, and we don't have a chance to see collectively how much those policies are going to be in the out years.

I think we end up compounding our existing situation without additional progressive revenue, which I've been very supportive of.

You know, a great example is everybody wants to activate downtown, but the downtown activation plan, do we have the funding for that over the years?

Where what's the impact going to be in the near term in the long term?

So, again, this is these are 2 examples that are executive led that there may be a lot of support for and, um.

We just need to make sure that there's a long term conversation around revenue for anything.

That's not councilmatic specific.

It's not executive specific.

It's across the board.

I'll stop because I see director handy has her question up.

Obviously, I don't think this is going to pass today.

Um, so let's keep the conversation going about how.

Policy conversations that have a budgetary impact are better daylighted for including for the executive branch so that they can build in those expected costs, including implementation and enforcement into the proposed budgets that the council receives in the future.

That way, I think we have a more sustainable budget over the, you know, what will hopefully be 3 biennial budgets that we will continue to be able to plan for.

Thank you.

Director Handy and then I'll share my thoughts.

Thank you, Council President.

I just want to provide a little bit of information on a couple of questions from the last Council members.

First, just noting that in the current city model, it is committee's practice to do both the policy and fiscal review of a bill.

And counselor Peterson to one of your questions earlier about sort of what is the additional data or information that the finance committee is looking at?

Or are they looking at policy pieces?

We would need to determine what additional data or information really.

sets up a finance committee discussion that is different than what a policy committee is looking at today, so that is a little bit TBD.

A couple of members noted that other bodies like the state legislature do this.

One thing I want to note that is different at the municipal level is that what the legislature and federal is often looking at are actual appropriation bills.

The way that our legislative process works is typically you are seeing policy bills during what I call the policy season most of the year.

And then the bulk of the appropriations bill come in the fall with the budget, the exception, of course, being the midyear supplemental and an occasional one-off.

But whereas the bills that are going from a policy committee to a finance committee at the legislature are bills with actual sort of appropriations in them.

And then Council Member Sawant, to your question about must the Finance Committee vote if a bill is referred to both committees, I think I have two answers.

One is that hasn't been defined here.

As I said, there's quite a bit of flexibility in this.

I think the operations we have envisioned in talking about this is that a council president would make a decision early in a process to refer it to both committees.

Under the current practice, if a bill is referred to a committee, it must take action on it for it to be advanced to full council.

The default would be yes, that both committees need to take action on it.

The rules are not specific enough at this point to specify as they're written with quite a bit of flexibility to sort out the operational pieces.

Council President, I think that those are the pieces I wanted to add to the discussion at this point.

Thank you.

My initial reaction was, and now it remains the same from we've been discussing this, is unfortunately, I will not be supporting this today.

Let me share why.

It isn't that it isn't a good idea.

I zeroed in on, okay, we basically want the council president to do a dual assignment for the budget chair and the committee chair, and I feel like it adds another layer of bureaucracy.

I think even today's discussion has shown and exemplified that there are more questions than answers because we're trying to see what, even though I understand the practicality of what Council Member Muscat is saying on the budgetary issues, policy issues, I don't know what we're trying to remedy that.

And Council Member Peterson raised a good point.

Perhaps we need to be more, and you know I don't like using this word, more robust on the fiscal note and financial obligations.

I'm not comfortable with having the council president In consultation with central staff and informed by staff capacity, being informed on staff capacity and available fiscal information, and then may assign.

And even though you tell us and define loosely significant fiscal impact shall be determined on a case by case basis.

I see problems right there because then some people are going to say, why did mine get assigned?

And.

There's didn't and I'm going to say, well, because it was over 500,000, or there's a tax related amendment, or there was a policy change.

There's too much squishiness in there.

And if we were really trying to remedy an issue, that is like, Larry, I could see it, but in practicality, and actually how we would apply it.

I think that we would be creating more heat than light.

Quite frankly.

I'm not comfortable, I don't think it's purely objective.

I think there's a lot of subjective decisions that have to be made along the chain of getting these two matters to a committee and then the budget chair.

Quite frankly, that's why we have a budget chair and we do have these discussions offline and obviously in committee.

We clear our calendars, so the budget chair has all the room that they need to have all these discussions.

I think Council Member Muscat to be quite frank, We've been bit spoiled by you because you, you're really good budget chair and you're very streamlined and you're very consistent.

But this is 1 area where I think we may have to just have a difference of opinion.

The other issue that I have is again, besides the additional responsibility to the council president, the discretion involved in the determination of a significant fiscal impact.

Beyond that definition, I'm not sure.

What problem we're fixing and also we don't have I'm concerned about capacity for committee chairs and I'm concerned about, you know, the precedent is that we've never done it that way before, which is not a reason not to do it.

But I don't want to.

Pick something if I don't think it's not broken and.

I'm concerned about this dual referral.

I'm concerned about the capacity, not only to the committee chairs, but also to central staff.

I'm concerned about the dual assignment and the definition of significant.

Fiscal impact, and I think we need more discussion on this, but I do believe.

The point that you raise that why we're having this great conversation.

Particularly in the last 7 and a half years that I've been here.

We do get stuff from the executive that comes down and the price tag isn't on there.

And they said, we'll worry about that later.

And then as the budget chair, you have to come to us and say, hey, the executive or one of your colleagues is asking for this and we're not sure, or it's well over 500,000.

I know that there's some instances where some council members have asked for $20 million in the budget.

And that's why we have a budget chair.

We rely on their discretion and their expertise and their professionalism.

To work with central staff and the executive and the council president's office, whoever will be here next year to do that.

So that's my concern there.

I don't, I don't think it's a bad idea.

I think it needs just more discussion and retooling, quite frankly.

Because, and you did this.

Well, council members can, I'm not just saying this when we went through the summer of 2020 and had to get millions of dollars out the door.

With the money and some other issues that came up, I guess.

Pardon the way I say this, but sometimes when people think that there's a pot of money available, or the city treasury doors are just open and, you know, it becomes a feeding frenzy and you have to pull people aside on that particular.

Issue or committee and say, hey, this is a great idea, but how are you going to fund this?

So I understand that that that makes sense to me codifying it the definition.

I don't I think it's much more subjective than objective.

The additional capacity, another layer of bureaucracy, those are the issues that red flags that are raised for me.

So, unfortunately, I cannot support your amendment today.

Okay.

Thanks.

Do you mind if I make a few comments?

Oh, absolutely.

I want to see if anyone said anything else.

I was going to let you close this out and respond to all those issues.

Okay, great.

I will respond to all of them.

I'll just agree.

The subjectivity is not something that was in our original draft.

I think we had a line that was drawing the dollar amount at the same amount that the state legislature has.

I can't remember what that is off hand.

Oh, you mean the state.

Yeah, and recognizing that we have less capacity than the state does.

They have an entire department dedicated to fiscal note analysis and the opportunity to staff a fiscal committee.

We do the 1 higher, but I think that the subjectivity that you raise is absolutely something that that should not be in there.

So that no matter who's sitting in the council presidency.

It's just a question that it gets referred in the future if there's the opportunity to draw the line and have the dollar amount trigger bill going to a fiscal committee.

I think it's a good practice and having worked in the halls of Olympia.

I understand how frustrating that is as well to have your bill have to go through 2 committees.

I get that.

And I don't want there to be any subjectivity over who who makes that determination of whether or not something goes so agree.

Agree.

However, I am really concerned that it sounds like we don't have a common understanding of why this is needed.

We have a 214Million dollar budget gap.

That is coming in.

2025, and but for jumpstart progressive payroll tax, we would have been dealing with a 200 plus million dollar shortfall this year and next year.

We have a 207Million dollar gap in revenue in 2026. I mean, 2020, 2026, and each year over the next few years, which is the only forecast we can see, it continues to be at the staggering amount.

So, obviously, you know, there is a work group that is looking at revenue stability.

There is an ongoing call for progressive revenue that I've continued to support as well.

And I have to just say, everybody continues to ask, how did we get in this situation?

We get into this situation by not seeing the long-term budgetary impacts of policy that's passed.

Whether you agree with the policy or you disagree with the policy is not something that I'm arguing right now.

I have voted for incredibly wonderful progressive policies that I knew would have a budgetary impact.

I've led on those policies as well, and thank you for your support, colleagues.

But we have a problem that people have Asked, how did we get in this situation?

And now I'm being asked what problem are we trying to solve for?

I'm trying to give us a better picture of what the budget impacts will be not just for our current.

calendar year budget, or even the goal of a biennial year budget.

But for six years out, I would love for us to better be able to analyze any proposals that come so that we're not in this situation.

I wish folks the best of luck with the future conversations around this.

I appreciate the council president has underscored that something like this is necessary.

But as we head into September and October and November, I hope that we can actually all come out of the next month's discussions about The revenue situation with a better understanding of the problem that we are trying to solve for 200 plus million dollar gap.

2025, 2026, 2728, 29 and 30. that is the problem that we are facing.

So I'll continue to support policy that has a budget impact.

I'm sure, but I just wanted to make sure that we were having a transparent conversation so that that gets folded into the budget and and we don't, you know.

End up in a situation where good policies passed without the funding to implement it or good policy is passed without the ability to keep that sustainable over the.

you know, future years.

Thank you for considering this.

I'll still be here.

I'm glad what you said, because we see this at the federal and the state level on unfunded mandates where everybody comes in wanting this great policy and you're right, it gets to where it, but Council Member Swann did raise the issue that it does get political.

And if it was just cut and dried as, oh, it's, it's over five, 500,000 tax related, That could be a lot or policy changes to the budget process.

So, that's where it gets squishy for me, but I understand what you're saying and you're right.

And if I can ask you a question, though.

You've been our budget chair and.

What has been your experience with people understanding the rules for the supplemental budget?

How how would this help?

This is less about the supplemental budget.

The supplemental budget rules are more regarding like, are there urgent issues that are popping up that are things that are time sensitive that we can try and deal with.

This is more about how do we look at the long term impact or planning for the next budget to ensure that the true dollar amount necessary for implementation is included in the proposed budget that we received from the executive as well.

Right.

But this wouldn't stop somebody, and people do it anyway, knowing that it's a supplemental to still come in and act like it's the general big budget and ask for big ticket items.

Sure.

And we are working on trying to change that.

That's where I would like to see some legislation where people follow the rules, but that's another issue.

So with that, Councilor Mosqueda, is there anything you want to add, or Director Handy, before we go to a vote?

I'm not seeing any.

Okay, so I am going to go to the vote, if that's okay with you, Councilor Mosqueda.

All right.

Madam Clerk, there's no further discussion, so will you please call the roll on amendment number five?

Council Member Peterson?

Abstain.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Sawant?

No.

Council Member Strauss.

No.

Council President Juarez.

No.

One vote in favor.

Three opposed.

No.

One abstention.

I'm happy with the abstentions, but I'm going to let that go.

The amendment number 5 does not pass.

That's okay, folks.

Thanks for the conversation.

All right.

I have to look at my thing here.

We have a little blurb here that's not making sense for me.

We did the amendment, the amendment failed.

Now we move on to the big vote of the whole resolution as amended.

Correct, Madam Clerk?

That's correct.

Okay, so before we go to the big vote on the amended resolution, is there anything else anyone would like to add before we go to the amended vote?

Amelia, you've been very quiet.

You didn't say anything.

You good?

Okay.

All right.

I do not see any hands up.

Director Handy, you're okay as well?

Okay.

All right, so Madam Clerk, do I move to recommend adoption of Resolution 32096 as amended?

Second.

Thank you.

Motion has been moved and seconded, and there's no further discussion.

Will you please call the role of adoption of Resolution 32096 as amended?

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Sawant.

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Council President Juarez.

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

All right.

So it looks like the resolution passes as amended.

And this resolution, this amended resolution will be brought forward for final action on August 8th at our city council meeting.

And before I adjourn, yes.

Because our discussion has gone on past 12 noon, you'll need to move to suspend the rules on standing committee rule H4 for it to be considered on the August 8th council agenda.

Do I really need to do that?

Amelia is saying yes.

Yes, Council President.

We modified the council rules to actually extend the time from 12 to 1 p.m.

because there are committee meetings that have longer discussions.

So yes, the council rules would need to be suspended.

And you can do that by anonymous consent to suspend the rule so that it can't be sent to the August 8th City Council meeting.

So what are the magic words I say, Amelia?

If there's no objection, the council rules will be suspended to allow Resolution 3-2, sorry, To allow the resolution to be sent to the August 8th City Council meeting.

Okay, so if there's no objection, what's the rest of it?

The rules will be suspended to send...

The rules will be suspended to allow the amended...

To send the resolution to the August 8th meeting.

To be sent to the August 8th.

Is that good?

Thank you.

Okay, so I think we're done there, correct?

Correct.

By unanimous consent.

That was a little rocky.

Before we adjourn, I have to share that this concludes our items of business and our next committee meeting is scheduled to be held September 21st.

With that, thank all of you.

Thank you all for your amendments and thank the stakeholder group too for all the work we put into this.

With that colleagues, I can't see what time it is.

I have no idea what time it is. 1217. Thank you.

It's 1217 and we are adjourned.