Seattle City Council Land Use & Neighborhoods Committee 3/24/21

2021 meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee will come to order.

It is 9 31 a.m.

I am Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Member Peterson?

Here.

Member Lewis?

Council Member Juarez?

Here.

Council Member Mejia?

Present.

Mayor Stroud?

Present.

Four present.

Thank you.

The Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee of the City of Seattle has come to order.

And we begin our meetings in this Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee with a land acknowledgement.

And I was reminded this week that this is not something that should be seen or completed as a checklist or a rote behavior to give us a passport to proceed however we want.

This is an important moment for us to stop, think, and reflect on the fact that we are guests.

This is not just a thing that we do.

This is a moment for us to pause and understand that we are guests on this land.

So take this moment now to acknowledge that we are on the traditional and ancestral lands of the first people of this region, past and present.

represented in a number of tribes and as urban natives.

In honor with gratitude, the land itself and the people of this land, we start with this acknowledgement to recognize the fact that we are guests and need to steward our land as such as guests.

And as members of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee of the City of Seattle, it is important for us to stop, pause, and reflect on this fact that we are stewarding this land or many generations to come because it is.

We are only temporarily here, we are only temporarily stewarding it in the roles in which we are filling today.

And so we have three items on the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee agenda today, a discussion and vote on Council Bill 12021, the landmarking ordinance for the Swedish Club, a briefing from STCI and Office of Sustainability and Environment quarterly tree report and a briefing from SDCI on their first permitting report that will occur quarterly.

We plan to cancel the April 14th committee meeting.

So the next meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee will be on Wednesday, April 28th, starting at 930 AM.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

At this time, we will open the remote public comment period for the items on today's agenda.

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

While it remains our strong intent to have public comment regularly included on meeting agendas, The city council reserves the right to end or eliminate these public comment periods at any point if we deem that the system is being abused or is unsuitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently and in a manner in which we are able to conduct our necessary business.

I will moderate public comment in the following manner.

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

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website.

If you have not yet registered and would like to speak, you can sign up before the end of public comment by going to the council's website.

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

Once I call on the speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt if you have been unmuted will be the speaker's cue that it is their turn to speak.

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

speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are remaining in the allotted time.

Once the speaker hears the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your comments.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's microphone will be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to call on the next speaker.

Once you've completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via the Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

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

Allow me to pull up my list.

Just a moment.

on the listed today for public comment are Steve Zempli, Michael Oxman, David Mooring, Richard Ellison, and Jessica Dixon.

I see that you are not present at this time.

If you would like, make sure that you are not on the listening line and that you have called into the public comment line that has been provided once you registered.

Good morning, Steve.

Take it away.

and you may have to press star six, Steve.

I see you there, but I see you're on mute.

Steve, we cannot hear you still.

Eric or Son, let's move on to Michael and then David, and we'll come back to Steve at the end of the list.

Michael, good morning.

Hi, friends.

This is Michael Oxman.

I'm an arborist, and I just wanted to let you know that I filed three complaints recently with the Department of Construction and Land and Inspection, and all three of them are not valid because of your various problems with your lack of ability to enter a property to inspect it.

And there are some loopholes in the code that allow a developer to clear their land based on gaining access to the property or being able to survey the property.

And without the inspector's ability to enter the property, uh...

one of the uh...

items next door to put a guard has has been declared as uh...

no cutting observed when actually they are standing outside the boundary of the property so that's a real issue another one is the uh...

lack of records keeping by sdci for old projects at the westwood uh...

mall uh...

uh...

in west seattle where where they couldn't find the original planning documents that showed that trees were required to be there so that when uh...

small manager cut down the trees there's no record that he was required to replace them and uh...

so so what we've got this uh...

upcoming urban forest management plan that's totally slanted towards racial equity now whereas about a year and a half ago it was focused on how we should manage the trees in our city.

And we have a lack of data because our aerial photographs taken from satellites using LIDAR radar do not tell any information about the condition of the tree.

So I hope you guys can start to get a better tree inventory.

Thanks a lot for listening.

Thanks, Michael.

Up next, we have David Mooring, followed by Richard Ellison.

Jessica, I do see you are now present, and then we will finish with Steve Zemke.

Good morning, David.

Good morning.

I'm going to talk about the tree protection update and what's on the agenda.

It includes the tracking of tree loss, but it does not appear to be, I think, in the presentation for today.

Urban trees are our lifeline, not just human life, but all life.

Sandal has recognized this essential and critical role of trees by establishing a goal of 30% canopy cover in just 16 years from now.

If the tree is not planted in the ground today, it's probably unlikely we're going to achieve that goal.

By canopy cover, we are referring to cover over people and streetscape.

Only trees can provide overhead canopy and filter the air of an ever-growing population.

Your actions in this matter are not addressing just immediate need but a future lifeline.

Do we have those trees planted today that will provide a canopy for the next decade.

Are we maintaining the maturing canopy we have to stabilize our climate.

Records show that Seattle is losing about 600 to 900 street trees per year and replanting rate is fewer than its trees are being lost on the street.

However we are losing exceptional and significant trees.

And tree grows on private property at a high rate with about 800 to 900 development permits being posted each year and each of these properties removing one to a dozen trees without providing the space to replant large canopy trees.

Now this doesn't count single family projects.

I really appreciated Chair Strauss's examples of good and bad multifamily developments with and without tree canopy within his area that he resides.

We need more density and more canopy cover, and it has been demonstrated that we can have both.

That being true, accounting for tree loss on private property is not a trivial matter of simply individual's property rights.

It's a matter of social responsibility and equity for all in this, in every single neighborhood.

So please include tree loss, please include tree loss accounting in today's agenda.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, David.

Always great to hear from you.

Up next, we have Richard Ellison, followed by Jessica Dixon and Steve Zemke to wrap us up.

If you are listening and would like to provide public comment, you still have the opportunity to sign up now.

Richard, good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Richard Ellison, and I'd like to talk briefly about the SDCI OCI Tree Report.

I think it's great that we're trying to go forward on a new program.

However, I do not trust DCI, they have a long history of obstruction, and I would like to talk about two pieces of that.

One, I was a member of the Seattle's urban forest work group from 1998 to the year 2000 that was formed by the city council.

And it said the urban forest work group was convened in 1998, which included people active in tree preservation, people concerned with the ability to conduct business in the city, construction industry representatives, and conservationists.

The work group met several times discussing, many times, discussing and identifying specific ideas regarding the retention of trees.

In 1999, the Strategic Planning Office published a report to present a series of potential implementation actions.

This is, you know, decades ago, and this is a DCI, this is a former DPD, now DCI, from a 1999 briefing from Tree Protection Legislative and Administrative Recommendations from October 4th, 1999. Let's jump ahead to more current.

I was bike riding through the city and saw this beautiful tree in front by a development sign and I wrote a letter to the city and the tree is In the Greenwood area at 927 North 92nd Street, I sent the council a copy of my original letter.

Response back from the land use area was thank you for your comment.

None of these trees meet the threshold for exceptional.

Therefore, no arborist report was requested.

No protections are required.

And so then you go on the bottom layer, it talks about being stewards of the city and acknowledging the ancestral land.

This is hypocrisy.

And I can't believe that DCI is pretending to protect the trees when it appears to me that they are not.

Thank you, Richard.

Up next, we have Jessica Dixon, followed by Steve Zemke.

Jessica, I see you there.

Just press star six, not pound, but star.

I still see you there, not seeing you come off mute.

If you could press star six.

All right, IT, if you could leave Jessica there and also bring Steve Zemke up.

Jessica, there you are.

All right, Jessica, take it away.

Okay, hi.

Good morning.

Thank you for having us, allowing us to speak.

I'm speaking today on behalf of Plan Amnesty and our membership.

I'm urging the city council to pass an updated ordinance now and not wait one, two, or five years while we continue to lose exceptional trees, tree groves, and overall tree canopy over the entire city.

This loss is especially detrimental in areas of the city historically lacking in tree canopy.

So I'm urging the council, SDCI, and our urban planners to address this urban inequality by getting to work today to track, retain, and add trees in the face of development pressure.

We have lost tremendous ground over the last 12 years and longer, but I know our city can be both more accommodating and healthier for its citizens and for the planet as a whole.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jessica.

And to wrap us up, we have Steve Zemke.

Steve, I see you there.

Press star six.

There you are.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Steve Zemke.

I'm chair of TREPAC.

Good morning to council members.

So I am speaking on the tree regulations ordinance update 12 years.

That's how long this discussion of updating Seattle's tree protection ordinance has been going on in 2009. Council passed Resolution 31138 urging DPD to submit legislation to establish a comprehensive set of regulations and incentives to limit the removal of trees and promote the retention and addition of trees within the City of Seattle on both public and private property.

In March 2017, the City completed its Tree Regulations Research Project Report, which included that the current code wasn't working, to support tree protection, exceptional trees are being removed, development resulting in tree loss, et cetera.

You have Mayor Burgess's executive order in 2017, you have Resolution 31870 in March 2019, and Resolution 31902, all urging updating tree regulations in the ordinance.

The problem is evident.

There's a difference between regulations which use existing tree ordinance from 2009 and updating a tree ordinance which would expand the ability of SDCI to strengthen regulations.

You do not need to wait.

You can phase in, put in place certain parts of the ordinance that like requiring arborist and tree care providers be registered with the city like SDOT already does.

There's no need to wait to discuss further this system.

It's a system that already works.

You can direct SDCI to put in place a tree replacement system.

You can direct them to put in place an in lieu payment system.

The problem is you passed a resolution asking them to consider strategies.

You need to ask them to submit legislation or do it yourself.

We need to stop the delay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Steve.

And seeing as we have no further speakers remotely present for public comment, and Son, can you also confirm that no one else has signed up There are no other public comment registrants.

Thank you.

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

Our first item of business today is a briefing discussion and possible vote on Council Bill 12021, the Swedish Club Landmark.

Mr. Ahn, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

Item one, Council Bill 12021, an ordinance relating to historic preservation, imposing controls upon the Swedish Club, a landmark designated by the Landmarks Preservation Board.

Thank you.

We are joined by Aaron Doherty of the Department of Neighborhoods and Christine Lender.

And please, I apologize if I pronounced your name wrong, Christine, correct me in just a minute, who is the Executive Director of the Swedish Club.

Thank you both for being here today.

And as we were speaking before, committee started.

I brought in my grandmother's Dala horse, which she brought back from visiting family in Sweden.

For my Norwegian side of the family, I will be back at the sit-in to my parade this year, should we have it occurring in public.

So Erin, Christine, please take it away.

And committee members will ask questions at the end of their report.

Good morning.

I should just verify you can see the slides on the screen.

We can.

Thank you.

So I'm Erin Doherty from Department of Neighborhoods.

This ordinance is to codify the controls and incentives agreement that was signed by the property owner and the city historic preservation officer.

The landmark nomination was made by a community member and local historian Larry Johnson.

So I've included the designation standards for reference, and we can come back to those if we want to look at the specific language.

This is the Swedish Club at 1920 Dexter Avenue North.

The Landmarks Board designated this property on September 2nd, 2020, and they selected standards C, D, and F.

So essentially, they have recognized it for its cultural significance, its architectural character and style, and also its visual prominence in the neighborhood.

The controlled features include a portion of the site, The property is much larger than where the building sits, so there is a buffer of vacated alleys to the south and east.

You see that indicated here in the slide by the red line.

The entire building exterior is controlled as part of the landmark, and a portion of the interior, which includes the two-story lobby space, the floating stair, and the landing up above.

The club was founded in 1892 by Swedish immigrants living in Stockholm Hotel at First and Bell in Belltown.

The club built their first building in 1902 at 8th and Olive, and after World War II the club began planning for a new facility and completed designs for a larger building on a different site in 1953, but they did not move forward due to the costs associated with that.

Einar Andersson of Steiner, Theriot & Andersson was the principal designer of the subject building, He was a son of Swedish immigrants, and Mr. Anderson was a member of the club when they purchased this subject site in 1957. This is an example of mid-century architecture exhibiting a language described as the international style.

The building was clearly inspired by the world-renowned architect and native Seattleite, Minoru Yamosaki, and his design of the Reynolds Aluminum Building in Southfield, Michigan.

The Swedish club was originally clad on three sides with a cast aluminum screen of interlocking rings, similar in appearance to the Reynolds building.

Large sections were later removed on the north, south, and east facades to highlight sweeping views of Lake Union.

And now I'd like to pass this on to Christine so she can speak about their organization.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

I'm happy to be here.

My last name is pronounced Leander, but that's OK.

I answer to anything.

I want to tell you a little bit about Swedes, a little bit about our building, and about our club.

Swedes were known as builders, and Dan, Councilman Verstrauss' Dala Horse or Dala Hest is an example of that.

People had lots of wood, lots of lumber, lots of trees, and they had long, dark winters.

So it's said that the home is to Sweden what the waltz is to Austria.

Swedes are very proud of their homes.

In 1889, when the Great Fire swept through Seattle, it opened up lots of job opportunities for loggers, and carpenters, and bricklayers, and they came to Seattle in droves.

Christine?

After that time.

Excuse me, Christine.

It's a little hard to hear you.

I'm wondering if IT, could you raise the level of the microphone?

Are we able to?

Your IT?

I don't have IT here.

Can I move forward?

Does that help at all?

Yes, it does.

OK.

So the building is to the Swedes as the waltz is to Austria.

That's right.

The home is to the Swedes, but the waltz is to Austria.

They love their homes.

Visitors to our club from across the United States walk in the door and they say, oh, yes, the Swedes have the most beautiful clubhouses.

So this is a beautiful clubhouse.

But I want to tell you another interesting thing about the Swedish club.

In the time of immigration, those immigrants who came were poor.

Most immigrant groups established a club that was part social helpfulness, part healthcare, and part social, just getting together with people from the home country.

So you have Sons of Norway, which was originally a death benefit society.

along with getting together for socializing.

Many of the organizations have that same component of health insurance in addition to getting together to socialize.

The Swedes didn't do that.

The Swedes had a different model.

The very same men who created the Swedish Club started Swedish Hospital, but they did it separately.

So the Swedish Club has been, from its beginning, strictly social.

The first building was a place for the men to get together to read the newspaper, smoke cigars, play cards, and eat all the food that the women made for them.

This building came along, 59-60, when I-5 knocked our former building out It wasn't I-5 itself, it was the entrance ramps onto I-5.

So this building was built, and it was again built to be very, to serve a social function.

It had a dance floor on one floor, a first-class restroom on the top.

Membership swelled at the Swedish Club.

There were 7,000 members in the 60s and early 70s.

And people came for two reasons.

They joined for two reasons.

One is to take trips to Sweden, and another was to eat in the restaurant.

Times changed.

Membership dropped precipitously.

I became the executive director about 11 years ago.

And at that time, we had 500 members.

We took on a dedicated, let's save the club effort.

Just before the pandemic hit, we were up to 1,400 members.

It's gone down a few hundred, about 1,100 now.

But this club serves a purpose as a home for the Nordic American community and their friends.

It's a place to have celebrations.

It's a place to eat.

It's a place to take language classes.

And we're very proud of it.

We're very proud of the landmark designation as well.

Thank you.

Does anybody have questions for me?

Christine, that was a very good overview.

And I want to just take a moment to highlight the fact that in your history that you just provided, you mentioned it was a place for the men to smoke cigars and read the newspaper, and that you have leading the organization as a woman have swelled the organization's membership.

So while times have changed, we are trusting in you to keep us moving forward.

So I just want to highlight that, that times have changed and that we rely on your leadership in the club to move that membership level from 500 to 1,400 people.

That's very excellent.

Thank you very much, Councilman Strauss.

I've got some questions, but colleagues, any, and I do want to let the record reflect that Council Member Lewis joined us at 9.34 a.m.

just ahead of public comment.

Other colleagues, do you have questions?

Great, Aaron, could we move back to the slides with the control?

Yep, C, D, and F, just.

So C is associated in a significant way of a cultural, political, or economic heritage of the community.

I think that that has been described by Christine very well.

If we can move to D, embodies distinctive visible characteristics of an architectural style.

Aaron, you spoke about the international style.

And if the viewing public would be interested to look up the Reynolds building, I think it's very, Interesting to see the comparisons and what might be difficult to see is behind Christine is that some of those aluminum rings have been removed so that the view can has been improved to the lake.

And then F being the visual prominence in the neighborhood.

It is an easily identifiable visual feature in the neighborhood.

Speaking to the controls, which are the exterior, the lobby space, stairs and landings, either Christine or Aaron, could you, I mean, I've been in the club so many times that I know what it looks like and I can, I know why these spaces are special.

Can either one of you provide a summary of why that, what is special about that first floor lobby and the floating staircase?

Erin, can I jump in with a cultural reason and you can jump in with an architectural reason?

The lobby was built to accommodate a reception by the king.

I don't believe the king has been here, but I don't know.

I was able to be on the welcoming committee for the crown princess to come and to stand at the door, open the door and welcome her in.

So that's the cultural reason why that lobby is so magnificent.

Erin, can you jump in?

Sure.

When the board contemplates the designated features of a landmark, they try and determine what's character defining about a property.

And they're also trying to think about what are the things they would want to participate in review of were they to be changed in the future.

It's also to strike a balance between giving the property owner some flexibility.

So, um, initially, when the board reviewed this building, they nominated, I believe the entire interior of the building, or at least they contemplated that and then a designation.

They further refine that to be just that main lobby space.

Uh, the character of the lobby, um.

And it's the volume of the space, it's clearly a gathering space and it's the first thing you experience when you enter the building.

So they thought it exhibited both the sort of craft and character of the mid-century modern international style, but it's also a gathering space.

And it has beautiful artwork and other exhibits that the club shares in that space.

The controls in the agreement give them the flexibility to change those features in any way they want.

So it's really just the architectural materials that the board would review if there were to be altered in the future, or if they were to change the space by wanting to subdivide it or something, which seems highly unlikely, but.

Thank you both for that.

And Christine, that was an interesting cultural reference.

Hopefully, we will have the King of Sweden be able to come.

I was lucky enough to meet His Majesty King Harald V of Norway in both of his visits in 1995 and in 2015. So let's see if we can't pull King Gustav here as well.

We need to do that.

We should.

I love this.

Just real briefly, can you also share with me why we are including the alleys to the south and east of the building and not the parking lots adjacent to the building in this landmark designation?

From the board's perspective, if you can see the cursor on my screen, the site actually comes down.

It's an irregular shape and it has a parking lot to the south and east of the buildings.

Um, the board initially wanted to include those parking lots because it gives a large buffer around the building, but the property owner, the Swedish club wanted the flexibility to utilize those areas in the future, potentially without board review.

And so those.

vacated alleys became sort of a natural buffer.

They're roughly 15 or 20 feet from the face of the building.

So it seemed reasonable to allow them to have the ability to utilize those properties in the future because doing that may be able to help support the longstanding club that resides in this building and to help actually preserve and protect it because it needs to be maintained.

Thank you, Aaron.

And I know typically in historic designations, the property owner is the one who submits the initial request to have the historic designation placed.

In this case, we had a third party.

Could either Christine or Aaron speak to how that occurred?

I know that sometimes that can be a tenacious process, and it doesn't sound like that happened here.

But if either of you could give me a brief summary, that would be helpful.

I'm happy to do that.

Larry Johnson is a marvelous architectural historian in Seattle.

He used to be a member of our board, and he really wanted us to landmark it a few years back, maybe five years ago.

The time wasn't right for the Swedish Club at that point.

We were still working on getting our feet under ourselves in this new millennium.

So we did not move forward with it.

I believe that Larry's reasons for doing it now is that he's retiring.

He felt it should be done.

And we were quickly on board with him and said, yes, the time is right.

Let's do it.

No, I'll just add to that that we do actually see a number of nominations each year that do come from outside parties.

This isn't really that unusual as you say, they are occasionally contentious, but we, we do our best.

The staff does to work with the property owner to come up with an agreement.

that feels reasonable to them to continue to use their buildings and sites as they would like.

Two other recent examples would be the La Quinta Apartments and the Royview Apartments in Capitol Hill, where the residents of the buildings came together to form groups to nominate the properties and had some assistance from Historic Seattle to do that.

In both cases, I worked with the property owners and we were able to negotiate an agreement that I'm sorry, I've done that for the Roy view.

The La Quinta has just been designated last week, but the owner is actually very pleased.

And so I think those negotiations will probably also be successful.

That's really helpful context.

And thank you.

And Christine, again, thank you for sharing with us how the Swedish club split their civic duties and their social activities.

I was not aware that that was how Swedish hospital began.

And that was, it is very interesting to know that Swedish hospital was started by members of the Swedish club.

Yeah, we're siblings.

That's great.

Colleagues, any other questions?

Otherwise, we will put this to a vote.

Mr. Chair?

Yes, Vice Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, everyone.

Thanks for the overview here.

I have had the chance to go to the Swedish Center and I do have Swedish heritage through my mom's side on my grandma's side.

Very, very beautiful setting in there.

I appreciate the distinction about which areas are designated as landmarks.

I'm glad to hear it's not the parking lot.

It's a focus on that interior lobby.

So just want to double check.

Because I know we've done some strategies before where we've preserved facades or we've preserved certain components of a building.

If, for example, the Swedish Cultural Center wanted to build housing above the existing building and adapt some way, then the interior would be preserved, but that type of adaptation would potentially be allowed in the future if they so desired.

So the entire exterior of the building is also included on that portion of the site.

So there would be a process, the certificate of approval application process, where they to seek to build in addition.

And that they would work with the landmarks board through an iterative design review process to try and find a reasonable solution.

And We would ask them to look at alternatives to start that conversation, but then they would come back and meet periodically with the board to find a reasonable outcome.

Okay, great.

Thank you for that.

I think that's helpful to hear as we continue to look for opportunities to house so many folks who want to stay in the city.

I think about senior housing options and generational, mixed generation housing.

So wanted to just see how that would potentially fit in if that were a desired 10, 15 years from now or 15 months from now.

But thank you for that update and appreciate the overview today.

Thank you, Vice Chair Mosqueda.

And I'll just finish with my own comments for the viewing public.

If you have not visited the Swedish Club, please do so.

lobby area that Christine described is full of interesting artifacts, interesting cultural references and interesting bits of history about Swedish culture, as well as the stairwell or the stairway that we are preserving quite literally looks as if it floats from the second story.

So if you haven't visited, I urge I urge you to do so at your earliest opportunity that protects public health.

With that, colleagues, hearing no additional discussion, we can now vote on the legislation.

I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 12021. Is there a second?

Second.

Good morning.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend the passage of the bill.

If there are no additional comments, will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Our next item of business today is the quarterly report from Seattle Department of Construction Inspection and Office of Sustainability and Environment on their tree protection work in response to Resolution 31902. Mr. Ahn, will you please read the abbreviated item into the record?

Item two, Seattle Department of Construction Inspections and Office of Sustainability and Environment quarterly tree report.

Thank you.

And we are joined by Santro Pinto from Office of Sustainability and Environment, and Shanda Emery from Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection.

And Sandra, is this your last meeting with us before you move to DEAFE?

I am hoping it is not, but it might be.

I'm intending to retire at the end of May.

Well, hopefully this is not the last time we get to see you.

You've just stewarded such important work along the way.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

I don't know if Shanda or Sandra, if you are taking it away, but whoever is leading this presentation, please take it away.

I will allow my colleague Shanda Emery to get us started, and then I'll jump back in to talk a little bit about the urban forest management plan update.

Thank you, Sandra.

City Council adopted Resolution 31902 on September 16, 2019, requesting SDCI and OSC to explore strategies to protect existing trees, increase tree canopy cover, and balance city goals to support future growth and density as provided for in the city's comprehensive plan.

And so this resolution has asked us to consider strategies that allow for needed housing and other infill development, as well as balancing the needs of low-income and low-canopy neighborhoods and looking at other city priorities as well.

You know, for people that are new to this, we have been instructed to report quarterly to the chair of the land use and neighborhoods committee on progress made.

And so these next few slides are going to highlight the progress that we've made to date, including the latest update on the urban forest management plan, which Sandra will go over.

And then I will talk about our updates on the tree protections work.

Okay, thank you so much.

So the last time that we were together, we shared with you the kind of effort that we put in place to be able to widely spread the word around wanting to receive input from the public on the urban forest management plan update.

This is a multi-year effort that initiated in 2018. We share the draft plan for public input from October To November, and I just wanted to point out a typo in the report that says December.

My apologies, we shared the document through the end of November and received 178 public comments.

165 of those responses were to the online comment form.

That also include and then also 13 direct emails from residents and organizations, including the Seattle Green Spaces Coalition, the Green Cities, TRIPAC, Laurelhurst Community Club, and the University of Washington.

And all of these public comments have been posted on the Trees for Seattle website for transparency.

That is seattle.gov slash trees under the tab management.

So then after reviewing the public input in detail, the city's urban forestry core team produced a summary of those comments and provided also initial recommendations on how to incorporate the public input into the plan.

And something that I did want to point out is that the majority of the comments were related to the tree regulations update work currently underway.

And the team shared that information with Shanda and with me so that we could take it into consideration as we continue our work.

Thanks, Sandra.

Could on slide three, were there broad themes or patterns that you noticed from the

Yes, yes.

So, what we did is after, you know, like, and we really wanted to be respectful and appreciate that the enormous amount of involvement and investment of time and effort from the community.

So, we had several sessions where we discussed all of these input, and when we produced the summary, we actually grouped it into kind of themes so that we could address it.

So, thank you for that question.

Yes.

So, as I mentioned, the bulk of the comments was about three regulations update, and we made sure to share that with the working group addressing this issue.

We also had input into the plan structure in general.

An example is that people felt that it was a little bit difficult to discern what was the flow of the document.

So one recommendation was to maybe add an executive summary inside of the document or what we are recommending, a plan roadmap section where people could just look at the introduction and then decide whether they wanted to dive into the details of the plan or whether they wanted to go directly into, for example, the outcome section or the strategy section in the action agenda.

Another kind of theme that we grouped was plan content at different levels.

For example, people really wanted to make sure that we were balanced in our presentation of the benefits of urban trees compared to the challenges.

So we kind of are recommending beefing up that section of the benefits.

Also, you know, talking a little bit about the specifics of the work that we do.

So there were comments that were more having to do not so much with the plan update itself, but the way we do work.

And we, for example, a focusing city resources on tree care.

That's an example to fully fund inventories to also a, you know.

Look at performing a economic impacts and assessments from tree loss.

And then there was another theme that was a little bit more specific in terms of tree data.

And some people kind of providing their input and their opinion around the effectiveness of LiDAR as a measuring tool, looking at potentially using artificial intelligence and making recommendations of using Google Earth and other technologies out there.

And then I would say a last group would be kind of very general and high level, kind of like looking a little bit into how do we balance equity issues.

and environmental issues, and also some comments getting a little bit more into the detail of the comprehensive plan that has no short-term urban forestry goals.

So it was a broad variety of input.

And then, of course, the Urban Forestry Commission, being that is the technical advisory group, provided very specific, almost line-item comments and recommendations.

Thanks, and I believe we skipped ahead to slide 5. Are we I'm so sorry.

No problem.

Sorry.

This is the 1. So, after talking that, oops, Mike, I'm so sorry.

I'm just having a real hard time with this presentation today.

Here we go.

Here we go.

Yes, here we are.

My apologies.

So, um.

So what I wanted also to share is just kind of give a high-level idea on where we are.

So we have completed the engagement phase one, which was a very intent way to engage in culturally appropriate and in language with the BIPOC community.

So we did that.

We had inclusive engagement, listening sessions, and an initial assessment.

That helped us produce a very initial draft that then we took back to community For an exercise in reporting back wanting to know and ensure that we heard them correctly and that their priorities were presented in the document.

Then we did internal departmental review.

We went into public input and where we are now in next steps is we are in the process of incorporating the public input based on the recommendations that we are elevating internally.

We also are working on the SIPA checklist and SDCI will issue a SIPA determination.

And once we have a final draft, we are intending to bring it later this spring to council.

And with that, I'm gonna pass it on to Shanda to get a little bit more into the details of the three regulations update work.

Thank you, Sandra.

Yeah, so here, when trees are cut illegally, we're seeing that increased fines are working as a greater deterrent.

Our most recent and current reports indicate that the range of penalties that we've seen over the last few weeks and months has been $10,000 and up, with the most recent penalty that was $99,000 for the illegal removal of an exceptional tree under the triple penalty provision.

And then at our last briefing, we stated that our team had applied for a large federal grant to assist the city in our tree protection work.

And so this morning, I'm pleased to report that we were successful in obtaining the full amount and we've received grant funding from the United States Department of Interior to fund the city's canopy cover assessment.

So we anticipate that this work will begin within the next few weeks as we move into spring and the trees have a new foliage to allow for a leaf on canopy cover assessment measurement.

SDCI has briefed the Urban Forestry Commission on a regular basis throughout this process.

These sessions have provided another opportunity for staff to benefit on the expertise of commissioners and to collaborate on technical issues.

We've had five deliberative sessions to date.

We also briefed the Urban Forestry Commission on February 10th regarding the status of the updated draft director's rule.

And at this time, We continue to review additional feedback that we received on the draft rule, including the inclusion of a new requirement that all tree service providers will need to acknowledge that their company is aware of our tree codes when doing business in the city.

Yes, please.

I just don't want us to move off to the next slide before I ask about some questions.

Thank you.

Go for it.

Okay.

Thank you.

Next slide, please.

Actually, I think there's a question.

Yes.

Yes, please.

Thank you.

I just didn't know if you were finished, and I know that with the PowerPoint, we were having some difficulty.

So I just wanted to circle back onto item one on this slide, improved enforcement.

Thank you for improving this enforcement.

And the result in that first bullet point is the $99,000 penalty.

It's my understanding that this is a triple penalty.

Provision that led to this large sum.

Can you kind of speak a little bit more to what was the background?

Sure triple penalty provision and how does that all how does that all work?

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely So this is under that director's role that talks about willful and malicious cutting and so this is a clarification of our existing tree code that says that a a property owner or an applicant could be subject to a triple of the penalty, a tripling amount of the penalty if they found to have willfully and maliciously cut an exceptional tree or a protected tree.

So that refers back to our existing code 2511100. And in this case, staff has worked really hard to protect this exceptional tree.

They've worked many hours with the applicant trying to explain the importance and the benefits of retaining this large mature tree.

And as it turned out, it was an unfortunate situation where the applicant ended up removing the tree to allow for a two car garage to be built.

And then from there, they were reported, enforcement went out, and because of that background work, you were able to apply this triple penalty.

Is that correct?

Right.

Yeah, correct.

And has that penalty been paid?

I would have to check on that.

I believe so.

Great.

And I see a question from Councilmember Peterson.

Councilmember Peterson, please take it away.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

So for this particular example, as I understand it, neighbors noticed that the tree was being removed and had to inform the city government and then it was routed to STCI to do the enforcement action.

So I would say that the process was really driven by the community that had to to reach out.

And so I think this points back to the need to strengthen our ordinance and to make sure we're registering arborists and other reforms and improvements that we can make, a lot of which we heard from public speakers today.

So eager to get that revised tree ordinance.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Councilmember Peterson, you know, I will just flag whether it is a pothole, a site where people have been dumping a streetlight out, we rely on everyday people to report to the city government what needs to be fixed.

And not knowing the specifics of the situation, it does sound that SDCI was taking a fair amount of proactive work in unless we put an SDCI inspector living at that site.

I don't, you know, it sounds from your report that neighbors reported it as soon as it was occurring.

Is that a correct understanding?

Yes, however, the ability to get out there and prevent further cutting, and also, as I understand it, the way arborists are selected by the real estate developers, it sort of bakes in a biased process.

So we can go further upstream, so to speak, to prevent some of these things from happening by strengthening the ordinance.

I absolutely hear that.

And I heard maybe it was Shonda or Sandra saying that we are now going to begin requiring arborists to sign a document stating that they understand the code.

Has this already been put in place?

This is something that we are proposing in the revised draft director's rule.

So I think that that speaks exactly to your point, Council Member Peterson, and we know that a lot of the illegal tree cutting that's happened, especially in ecologically sensitive areas, are performed by arborists that maybe aren't necessarily from the city or that the developer or the homeowner selects these arborists because for the very reason that they know what they're doing is not not legal.

And that I don't think is a something that can necessarily be prevented by law being created.

But what is being proposed in the draft director's rule and at the end of the day with the ordinance is important.

But again, we're going to have to rely on everyday people to make sure that we're receiving the reports as, again, it's from dumping to potholes to streetlights.

We have to rely on everyday people to make these reports.

Shonda, those are all my questions.

Council Member Peterson, I see your hand's still up.

Do you have more comments?

Seeing no, thank you.

Take it away, Shonda.

Great, thank you.

Um, so, um, the trees for Seattle website together with tree protections website has featured improvements that we've made to tree protection best practices, including our internal arborist reviews.

And then links to our open houses and information about updated.

tree-related SDI tips will be posted there.

And as far as public outreach, our team has committed to dedicating resources this year to engage and connect in culturally and linguistically appropriate ways with historically underrepresented communities, as well as other stakeholders that we'd like to hear from, including homeowners, renters, businesses, builders, neighborhood groups, environmental organizations, climate and environmental justice organizations.

This past week, we've hired an outside consultant to begin with the preparation of a statistically significant survey that will be administered to stakeholders citywide.

And then on a parallel track, we're working with the Department of Neighborhoods to engage with BIPOC communities in culturally appropriate methods and in language.

We hope to use one or two community liaisons to do that work.

As you've heard in our previous briefings to Council, We have learned from our work in updating the urban forest management plan that many of our BIPOC residents have expressed that they want continued engagement from city staff on tree-related issues.

So part of this work is to dedicate resources to prioritize and center the needs of low-income and low canopy neighborhoods throughout this process.

We really want to make sure that we're centering and prioritizing BIPOC communities every step of the way to provide additional protections to help reduce and address environmental disparities.

Next slide, please.

As far as next steps, our team is moving forward expeditiously to use a data-driven approach to implement a comprehensive citywide survey to measure residents' attitudes regarding existing tree codes At the same time, we're working to incorporate feedback that we've heard in our racial equity toolkit analysis to help inform our recommendations.

So outreach and engagement is taking place from mid-March through the end of June.

Our team will document community input, which will be considered part of the tree protections update.

This summer in June, July, we will have developed further several of our recommendations focusing on the race and social justice implications of each.

And then later this year, as early as the third quarter, our team will be ready to share a public draft of our proposed legislation, as well as issuing a secret determination at that time.

Next slide, please.

So this concludes our presentation.

We're happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Shonda and Sondra.

Council members, any questions?

I had one question.

I got so wrapped up with talking about enforcement.

I had one question on, another question on slide five about LIHR.

Let me try and go back to, Light 5. There we are.

Thank you.

There we go.

Yeah, what's your question?

Yeah, it's great to understand that we've obtained funding from the U.S.

Department of Interior for a canopy cover assessment.

And my question here is, how would this assessment relate to or build upon the previous LIDAR study that the city conducted?

And can you remind the body what year that that was conducted?

Right.

So the last time that we had a LIDAR canopy cover assessment was in 2016. And best practices calls for an assessment to be done every five years.

So we're very excited to have the opportunity to do it again this year.

So I just want to clarify.

We, okay, Seattle is part of a consortium of municipalities that get together to be able to afford LIDAR data.

So we received, the group, the consortium, received funding so that we are able to actually acquire the data, which means a plane is going to be flying the region with the LiDAR technology acquiring data.

That is separate from the canopy cover assessment.

So, LIDAR, I just wanted to clarify, Shanda mentioned that it's leaf on, but the reality is that it's leaf off.

So, it takes place when the leaves on trees are off because there's a lot of uses beyond canopy cover assessment for this type of data.

You know, it helps plan for emergency response, and one example is like what happening also with liquefaction.

So, there's a lot of uses.

So what we do with canopy cover assessment is we use a protocol established by the U.S.

Forest Service where we pair the LiDAR leaf-off data with satellite imagery.

And what is exciting is that we now have a baseline, which was 2016, and we're going to be using the exact same technology, methodology, and protocol to determine canopy cover change over time.

And this is so exciting because in the past, I think I've mentioned before in one of our briefings, we have used what at the time was determined to be the best technology.

And of course, technology evolves.

So every time we did an assessment, we ended up using different technology that rendered past assessments in apples and oranges whenever we wanted to compare them.

So it was very challenging.

We tried to do an apples-to-apples comparison in 2016 with lighter data that we acquired in 2001 and 2002, and just the definition was just so different that it was impossible to do.

So this time, we have everything that we need, and we are getting the funding in place for the canopy cover assessment to happen this year.

And internally, the core team of urban forestry departments is working on that so that we can have, again, a canopy cover change over time.

And I think many different departments are going to be able to use this data to continue the work, including the tree regulations team.

Excellent.

Very helpful.

Yes, LiDAR is an incredibly important technology.

As you mentioned, it has many benefits, whether it's the landslide in Oso or the volcanic nature of our Cascade Mountains.

This is very exciting that we also get to benefit.

Our tree canopy assessment gets to benefit from this.

Colleagues, those are all of my questions.

Do we have any other questions?

Wanna just also check in with Council Member Peterson.

I'm seeing no further questions.

Oh, yep, there we go.

I knew if I waited long enough, Council Member Peterson and Council Member, Vice Chair Mosqueda, wonderful.

I'm glad that I, took that extra moment.

Council Member Peterson, take it away.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

So for Chandra, do we have a database that shows when exceptional trees are taken down?

Do we keep track of that?

I'd be happy to answer that.

We do have information in our system that tracks tree removals, hazardous tree removals.

And right now we are tracking trees through our tree tracking worksheet right now.

That data is still being put together.

So I don't have, you know, a lot to share at this point, but that's something we're working towards.

Okay, and then my last question is, when can we expect the tree ordinance to be delivered from the executive?

Yeah, I think as early as third quarter is what we can do.

I really want to make sure that we hear from everybody in this public outreach, excuse me, in this public outreach effort before we move forward with recommendations.

And Chanda, can you also confirm that that third quarter timeline is dependent upon appeals to SEPA?

Yeah, excuse me.

Yes, yes, that's correct.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Peterson, no further questions?

I'm seeing, great.

Vice Chair Mosqueda, please take it away.

Thank you very much.

Just a point of clarification.

Are we expecting two different implementation timelines again?

I'm sorry if you're needing to repeat some of the information you shared, but just to be really clear, we're talking about the tree protections as well as updates to the director's rule for exceptional trees.

Is there two different timelines that we're talking about?

No, the update of the director's rule is separate.

You know, that could go any time.

And then the ordinance is something that I was talking about in the presentation.

And if I may jump in Council Member Mosqueda.

So the director's rule effort is really to clarify existing code.

That is a way to continue moving the action forward as we on a parallel track are updating existing code.

So, so it's, you know, I, to me, it kind of sounded a little bit counterintuitive because I'm like, why are we updating a director's rule for the code that is hopefully soon going to be old.

But what I think has been a benefit is that we've been able to have, for instance, Discussions in deliberative sessions with the urban forestry commission that are very pertinent to the update of the code.

So, you know, it might seem like it's not moving forward necessarily, but the discussions are going to be very helpful as we continue to propose updates to the code.

that once that happens, it's gonna necessitate updates to director's rules to clarify it.

So I'm hoping that that created a little bit of clarity.

Just once I heard myself out loud, I'm like, oh, I don't know that this is helping.

Yeah, no, that actually helps quite a bit.

Thank you for validating that there, it does seem counterintuitive.

Does that mean then that you will come back after the potential legislation comes to us in third quarter after something is passed to then update the director's rules again?

Right.

Yes.

That's, you know, that's then clarifying current code, which will be what passes, will be an exercise that requires director's rules updates.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

And vice chair, your question was spot on, and it speaks to the fact that code changes and legislation are sometimes a blunt tool that can take time to implement, while director's rules can be more nimble and more quickly implemented.

And it also highlights the fact that SDCI continues to do work regarding tree protections, including what we spoke about earlier with improved enforcement.

So there is an iterative process of STCI continuing to increase tree protections in our city as we move forward to the tree ordinance, which is a bit of a bigger lift.

And then even after the tree protection ordinance is passed, then there will continue to be more work to be done because protecting trees and providing our city the development capacity that we need to house everyone in our city, both of these things have to continue happening long after a tree protection ordinance is passed.

Right, and if I may just I just want to give kudos to the team to SCI because as I know that a lot of people feel that until these three regulations are updated, there's really not much being done.

But I just want to give kudos to the team because they have done an enormous amount of training so that their staff as they are inspecting are much better able to determine what needs to be done.

when there are trees present.

And also the example that Shanda provided of this triple penalty, that also is thanks to SDCI kind of buttoning up implementation of current code.

Also the fact that they added two full-time highly experienced arborists and they are really supporting all of these efforts.

So I just, I know that the end, And, you know, we're putting our eyes on the end result, which is updating the 2 regulations, but there's has been a lot of quite good work done in the meantime as well.

Thank you for that summary.

Sandra.

Shonda Sandra colleagues any, any further discussion on this item?

Seeing none, again, just in case this is the last meeting we get to see you, Sandra, I wanna, again, raise all of the work that you've done for many years.

You are an incredible asset to our community.

And just really wanna thank you.

Thank you all.

And I really, I feel very proud of the work that the city is doing and will continue to do.

And I wanna thank you all for your support.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Moving on to our final agenda item for the day.

Our final agenda item is a briefing from SDCI on permitting process and review times.

Mr. Ahn, will you please read this item into the record?

And item three, Seattle Department of Construction Permitting Report.

Thank you.

We had this scheduled.

We had scheduled this report to be heard in committee two weeks ago and were unfortunately delayed.

Andy, I hope that you can give me. feedback on my white board exercise where I tried to memorize your presentation.

The report is in response to a statement of legislative intent that council adopted last year requiring quarterly reports following this preliminary report and for the viewing public to understand creating a permitting process, improving the permitting process for the city of Seattle is something that I'm keenly interested in.

I'm excited to hear this report from SDCI today.

And as I spoke to Director Torgelson yesterday, I'll likely be following up with a meeting in between these quarterly reports, just focused strictly on permitting, and then may have some more public discussions so that by the time we get to the budget season, we have budget actions that we will be looking forward to taking to help the department in the ways that they need to be successful.

So today we are joined by Director Nathan Torgelson, as well as Andy Higgins, both of Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection.

And gentlemen, I will let you take it away.

Great.

Thank you, council members.

I'm going to share my screen.

Okay, can you all see that?

Yes, we can.

Excellent.

So, SDCI's purpose is to help people build a safe, livable, and inclusive Seattle.

And just a reminder of our values, equity, we lead with race, and look at permitting through the race and social justice lens.

And our other values are respect, quality, integrity, and service.

Most people are familiar with our permitting and our design review program, but also a reminder to the public that we're also involved in code development, code enforcement.

We do a lot to help our rental and landlord community, and we do a lot of community engagement.

So let's talk about the permitting system.

So we have two overlapping permitting processes.

There's the master use permit process and the construction permit process.

And during a very aggressive market, when people are trying to get housing built as quickly as possible, these two processes tend to overlap and happen at the same time.

The key here is that the master use permit or the land use application has to come in first, and then the master use permit has to be issued before the construction permit is issued.

The applicant does have the option of going through the master use permit process first, and after that is completed, then applying for a construction permit.

And that's really up to the applicant, how they want to sequence their permits.

Uh...

Most types of our permit reviews are coordinated through our software system, Excella, and there are many review locations within STCI, as you can see in this PowerPoint slide.

I just want to point out that depending on the type of permit, many other city departments also review permit applications, and this can be SDOT, public utilities, city light, housing.

It really depends on the type of permit and the complexity of the permit.

There are additional development approvals as part of someone getting a permit that are outside of our system.

Examples of this include light hookups from Seattle City Light that would occur after we've issued a building permit, street use permits from SDOT, a water meter hookup permit from Seattle Public Utilities, plumbing approvals from King County, and special event permits processed by the Office of Economic Development.

So why are we integrating our permit system across the city?

The key here is that for the applicant, all transactions and applications can occur at one place, be available 24-7, and that the applicant only has to do one sign-on.

And the tool for the applicant here is that they have a to-do list, they have a shopping cart where they can pay their different permits, and they have renewal reminders, and they have a common scheduling tool.

So a recent example of this is that SDOT street use just migrated into the Accela system.

This provides for better data sharing across departments, better reporting and performance metrics, and it's much easier to integrate with the city's GIS system and also other existing systems within the city, for example, Summit.

So the old system, which was Hanson, we transitioned in 2008. The old system involved applicants bringing in paper plan sets.

This created a lot of challenges because staff had to manually move plan sets from one location to another.

It really limited our ability to track milestone data, and sometimes, frankly, paper copies would get lost.

With Excella, everything is done electronically, and it is automated, and it allows for us to track a much greater level of data.

And during the COVID pandemic, having a completely electronic system has been a lifesaver where our staff, a lot of our staff are able to work remotely and continue to review permits.

And just one project that's currently in the works that is going to improve the permitting process for applicants and staff alike is the Bluebeam project.

This is a new software that allows real-time collaboration between SDCI staff and project architects and applicants when they're reviewing corrections to plans.

So what happens here is that the applicant and the SCCI staff person are able to look at a screen at the same time and make corrections directly to the plan in real time.

This is a partial rollout, and we're hoping that that full rollout will occur later this summer.

And we've seen other jurisdictions that have adopted Bluebeam see significant reductions in the number of correction cycles.

And later on in the presentation this morning, I'll talk about correction cycles.

Just want to talk about some of the additional permitting support that SDCI is providing.

SDCI has a small business liaison that helps support small business permitting.

We know this is more crucial than ever as small businesses are struggling during COVID and we want to make sure that some of these empty storefronts that small businesses can occupy these spaces.

Our goal here is to reduce the permitting time for small businesses by 30%.

And the key goal here is to talk to the small business owners before they sign that lease, so they know what some of the permitting issues are for that space.

So we work closely with the Office of Economic Development on these issues.

We also have an arts liaison within STCI that helps support art-related permitting projects, again, working with those art uses before they sign that lease.

Finally, affordable housing.

We prioritize all affordable housing applications.

The mayor announced permanent supportive housing funding round last August that involves six projects and We have a monthly IDT made up of all those project applicants, STCI staff, and staff from other departments, including King County, and we go over every one of those projects on a monthly basis and solve problems in that meeting.

Also, I wanted to emphasize that we now have the 10 standard plans for detached accessory dwelling units to help shorten that permitting time.

The projected permitting time now, if someone chooses a standard plan for a DADU is 2 to 6 weeks to get that permit.

processed.

We're actively monitoring these applications and we currently have 17 DADU applications in the system that are pursuing the standard plans and we hope to get a lot more soon.

So, let's look at some of our permitting reports.

Some of the key takeaways up front is that STCI is meeting many, but not all of our permitting goals.

We issued fewer, smaller types of permits in 2020, such as tenant improvements, but we expect to see an uptick in that as we get out of the COVID pandemic.

We also received fewer master use permit applications in 2020, but we're still well above the levels that we saw during the last recession.

We've received fewer construction permit applications in 2020, but the estimated dollar value of those building permits has spiked significantly.

And this is because of the technical code changes, including the energy code.

The new standards went into effect on March 15th.

So we saw a huge surge of high value permits come in so they could vest before those new regulations went into effect.

Over the last 10 years, our construction permits are taking longer to review, but are spending a shorter percentage of that time in SDCI.

And the same is true for master use permits.

And in a further slide, we'll talk a little bit more about why that is.

And despite the challenges of the last year, STCIs review times and the number of review cycles has been fairly consistent for master use permit and construction permits.

But again, our goal is to reduce the number of review cycles, which should improve the permitting time pretty significantly.

And as I just mentioned, construction permits now need more review cycles before they can issue over half required for more review cycles.

So that's something that we really need to focus on as a department.

This chart just shows the number of permits issued over time.

You can see this is not based on dollar value, but on number of permits.

You can see the high volumes over the last five years.

And you can also see the recession back in 2009 and 2010, where not nearly as many permits were coming into SDCI.

A similar graphic, except this is for master's permit applications.

And again, you can see the recession back in 2009, 2010, and then the boom that we've seen in the past years.

So this graph shows the construction permit applications over time.

Again, this is not the master use permit, but the actual building permits.

The key thing here is to focus on the green bars, and that is the value of all those projects coming in.

And you can see in 2020, a huge increase in the overall value of those permits coming in.

You know, a little bit of a decrease in 2020, but again, the value of those permits significant.

And again, a lot of big projects coming in to vest before the new technical codes went into effect, which happened on March 15th.

So this chart shows the SDCI share of total review time for permits.

We've divided this into simple and medium construction permits.

This tends to be minor tenant improvements, ADUs, alterations, and then your more complex traditional construction permits.

This is new buildings, large tenant improvements.

And the black line on the top shows the percentage of time that the permit is in SDCI's hands.

But as you can see from the bar charts, which is in the blue and then the orange, that is the total number of days that that permit is in the system.

Permits are taking longer to get through the department, but the percentage of time that that is in SCCI's hands is actually decreased.

And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a slide coming up.

So similar type of chart, but this is for the master use permits, the land use process.

And again, this is from 2007 to 2020. And you can see back in the recession, just the percentage of time in SDCI's hands went way up.

And that was, of course, after we had to do all of the staff layoffs.

So this shows construction review performance, and I think the key here is to look at the charts on the right.

And this is the number of review cycles needed for the simple and medium construction permits, and also the complex construction permits.

And the blue bar is one to three review cycles, the yellow is four to five, and the red is six.

And as you can see for the complex building or construction permits, quite a few permits need four or more review cycles.

And that's what we're really focusing on now as a department is to reduce the number of review cycles.

Again, very similar chart, this time for master use permits.

This again is just looking at 2020. STCI's review time has been pretty consistent, but again, too many review cycles.

Again, we really need to focus on that as a department.

This chart is for construction permits, again, the building permits.

Our goal as a department is that 95% of those permits are reviewed, have their first round of reviews during a target time.

For those simple and medium permits, that's a four-week turnaround time.

And for the complex permits, that's a 12-week turnaround time.

From 2019 into 2020, through the end of 2020, we improved pretty significantly on getting that first round of review done.

You'll see a decline towards the end of 2020. This had to do with a temporary staffing shortage in SDCI, which we're addressing, and also a few other choke points in other city departments.

And the next slide just can show you the number of review cycles.

So what this is likely due to, we do have increasing complexity of code and more regulations.

Obviously now with the new technical codes being adopted, there's a steep learning curve for the industry and also for SCCI staff.

We have seen in some instances a lower quality of submitted plans from the private sector.

The private sector is also extremely busy and we have seen more applicants from out of town that aren't as familiar with our regulations.

And we've also had a lot of new city staff come on board.

So it takes time to train them and to educate them.

One thing I want to stress is when those corrections go back to the applicant and they come back in, they don't go to the bottom of the queue.

So they don't have to wait the same amount of time as when they first came in to our system.

We have been very aggressively hiring additional staff through contingent budget authority.

The budget office has been very supportive of us doing that.

Those are term-limited positions, but people who fill those positions are very competitive when there is an opening in our department, and those people in the term-limited positions are very competitive to then take permanent jobs, so that's helpful.

And also, the fire department that we work very closely with, they had some staff leave, but again, we were able to work very quickly with the budget office to fill those positions as well, as the fire department is also a very important review as part of the permitting process.

So, just looking forward to 2021 and our permitting priorities, we want to carry forward some of the best practices that we've been able to adopt during coven.

And 1 of the things that we are looking at is a virtual applicant service center.

Obviously, we will reopen our applicant service center, but we know that it is not always easy for people to take a bus or get in a car and come downtown during their busy day.

So we are working on a virtual component.

Right now, a lot of the communication has been through email and electronically.

But we want to be able to adopt a component where people can chat in real lifetime about their applications and ask questions.

And of course, we continue to have meetings with applicants.

We're also looking at in-person services at non-downtown locations.

We've had some preliminary discussions with the Seattle Public Library and also looking at some of our neighborhood service centers.

And we also look forward to resuming all of our standard services, including in-home inspections.

We do do emergency rental housing inspections, but a lot of our sort of routine in-house inspections have been put on hold because of COVID.

However, construction inspections and our annual elevator and boiler inspections, we have been able to resume.

So that's definitely good news.

As we articulated in this presentation, we'll continue to work on streamlining our permit processes and make reductions in our permitting times.

And, you know, we're working to create that cross-departmental permit system governance model with Seattle IT to improve that customer experience.

And that has to do with that permit system integration effort that I talked about as more departments get on board with Accela.

That concludes my presentation, and Andy Higgins and I are happy to take questions.

Thank you, Director Torkelson.

I've got a number of questions.

Do you want to just check with colleagues?

And I'll ask to circle back to some of the slides.

So maybe having that presentation up will be helpful.

OK.

Should I keep it up?

Yeah, that would be helpful.

I see Councilmember Lewis might have a question, Vice Chair Mosqueda, and Andy, do you also want to provide us any additional context before we launch into questions?

You don't have to.

No, I think Nathan covered it very well, and I think any questions that are outstanding.

Great, and your audio is a little low, so when we do get to your section, just highlighting that.

Councilmember Lewis, questions?

Yes, Director Torkelson, just briefly, it's sort of related, but a little bit outside of the confines of your presentation, unless I missed it.

I'm just curious, because we talked a lot about how the workload has been and the metrics for processing the MUC permits.

Can you comment at all on the volume of permitting that we've been seeing through the COVID period, people that are applying to build things, people that are applying to, you know, open businesses in Seattle.

There's been a lot of speculation in the media that, you know, but for the grace of God, we're going to lose every single thing in Seattle to Bellevue, including our mayor, apparently, according to Danny Westneat's column about Gary Locke potentially running.

But I'm just curious.

how what we're seeing in terms of the inflow of one of the biggest metrics of our economic strength, which is like, are people building here?

Are people applying for permits to use spaces?

I'm just kind of curious on what we've seen throughout the unique COVID period.

Yep, so we have seen a slight decline in the number of master use permit applications, the land use permits, and the number of building permits coming in.

As I did mention, the value of those building permits that came in, at least at the beginning of the year, has been significant and much higher than the past two years.

One trend that we are seeing is that a lot of applicants have made their way all the way through the building permit process, but have not paid their final fees and picked up their building permit.

I think that is because people are waiting for us to get out of COVID and see what the market does.

So there are a lot of permits kind of waiting in our system, waiting to get issued, and we're waiting for those final fees.

But I would say we have not seen a significant decrease in the number of applications coming in.

And we still, even though the new technical codes and the new energy code have gone into effect, we still have plenty of applicants coming in to apply for those building permits.

Just a quick follow up on that.

Did you say that since the beginning of this year, things have ticked back up again?

Did I hear that correctly?

Well, the number of building permits coming in has, you know, we've seen a significant number of building permits and the value of those permits is huge.

And to add to that, it's because of the code adoption on the 15th of March.

We saw, I think we took in 1.1 billion dollars of construction value just in the first two weeks of March.

And already to this year, we're already over 2 billion in construction value projecting out for what we already have scheduled an appointment value will already just through the July and scheduling will already be over 4 billion for the year, not even counting for what will come in after July.

So we are pretty confident that it's queuing up.

There's a lot of those applications come in the door that.

Just for example, earlier this week, I was coaching an applicant on how to keep their application alive for the two-year period.

An application can actually stay alive for the building code prior to them needing to pull that permit application because they're questioning their funding mechanisms right now.

And as soon as they're able to get their funding in place, they're going to want to move forward and proceed with those entitlements that they've already acquired.

What they were doing was responding to every correction outstanding, except for one really minor correction, so that when they're ready to get their financing, they can respond to that last correction, and then we can finish the processing of the permit and issue the permit.

And frankly, that's part of what we're seeing in those overall timelines Nathan was showing earlier, was that you'll notice there's an intake to issue timeline.

But SCCI's responsibility of that is only a portion of that.

It's checked out to the applicant for the other portion of that.

and those iterations between cycles is extending because applicants are holding on to the life of their application as long as they can because they know when they get the permit issued, the permit itself is only good for 18 months.

And so they can renew it as long as they're making significant progress on the app on the permit actual construction activity and they don't need to revise it to current code but if they get a permit issued and it goes 18 months and they haven't started construction yet they got to come back in and revise it on that date so it's really kind of a timing game right now and a lot of these applications that have come in the door to lock in the law in effect from the date they apply for the permit That's the strategy.

And now they're just holding on until they can actually get funding in place.

And we predict that there's going to be a massive influx of permits issued and a real burden on our inspection staff, frankly, to try to keep the inspections going, going forward.

So that's something we're definitely looking at.

Can I briefly ask, I mean, related to that, you know, the.

Implications in terms of fees coming in the door for for what we're seeing and then also the implications of.

to be able to realize those MHA gains, you know, faster and get that money out the door to help with our social housing deficit.

Anyone want to maybe touch on that real briefly?

Well, I think that is an issue we need to pay attention to because when we issue that final building permit, that's when we collect our final MHA fees.

So Council Member Lewis, a really important issue.

that I need to circle back with the Office of Housing on.

And a policy question to note on that too is that during COVID, that two-year life of an application, there's a provision in the building code that says if there's a circumstance outside of the applicant's control, we have the ability to extend the application life.

And we've absolutely said COVID is outside an applicant's control.

So there's a number of applications that are even in the system longer than that two-year period right now.

And we have told the public that we will not start proactively cancelling those applications until at least the end of the mayor's executive order or emergency order.

And that we would give at least 30 days as code minimum, but 30 to 60 days notice before we start proactively cancelling those applications to start to try to incentivize them actually getting those permits issued and out the door.

Well, hey, thank you guys for answering those questions.

I don't have anything else, Mr Chair, but really appreciate your diligent work and you know our road to recovery.

It's going to go through SDCI in a lot of respects, and you know, I wouldn't.

I wouldn't bet on any other city to come out of this on the other end and be as economically competitive as Seattle will be, and it's in no small part to your diligence and professionalism.

So thank you so much.

Thank you, thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Vice Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for the presentation.

Good to see you both again.

So I appreciate the presentation.

I think that in a time of COVID, everybody is doing the best they can to both work from home and do the inspections out in the field to the degree that they're safe.

trying to do some of those basic operations has been sort of a first priority.

And I appreciate that you showed what I took away from it is that there hasn't been a dramatic increase in the amount of time.

In fact, I think what you were really trying to emphasize is that SDCI hasn't increased that much.

But what I hear anecdotally is that there are significant concerns, especially with complex MUPS, the mitigation housing, and that it's spending way longer than the 120 days with SCCI.

So even if the biggest takeaway here is that we don't think that there is a huge increase in the percent of percentage of time that it takes for permits to be allocated.

I think the bigger question that I'm hearing from folks around the community is, what can we do to draw down those numbers?

How can we make this happen much faster, especially when we realize the consequence of COVID is manifesting itself in the street with more people living outside?

I want us to be doing everything we can to be building housing of all types as fast as we possibly can.

And some of that is obviously strategic acquisition, which I've been a strong supporter of, but we need to build more housing.

This is just not about preservation of existing units and converting existing units into affordable structures or more preventing those structures from being demolished.

This is about building, building, building more affordable housing, more mixed income housing, more housing of all types across the city.

So can you talk a little bit more about what we are doing to make it better and how we can make sure that this is complementary to the permanent supportive housing legislation that we just passed?

We heard a lot about costs associated with permitting there and the increased time is money.

And when there's increased time that's also a cost in terms of potential lost opportunities for people to live inside.

And during a pandemic that's potential cost in terms of lives.

So can you talk a little bit more.

Thank you for not having a presentation that talked about the increase in time.

But how can we actually draw down that time to address this crisis with real urgency.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

I fully recognize that we do need to improve the mass use permit permitting times.

I want to thank the Council and Council Member Lewis for leading the permanent supportive housing legislation, which for that type of housing construction will significantly improve One of the things that we're very hopeful about is that Bluebeam software, where the applicant and SDCI staff can do corrections to plans in real time, which will reduce that lag time.

I think that is super important.

And there are, one of the challenges we have is that a fair number of master use permits are getting appealed to the hearing examiner.

The hearing examiner, I don't want to throw them under the bus, but given their backlog, there are three or four months backed up right now.

So any additional support the hearing examiner can get to get to these appeals faster will also help our housing industry so they can get those projects constructed.

Yes, Vice Chair Mosqueda, floor is yours until you're done.

Okay, well thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for that, Director Chogolson.

So any additional support that we can offer to the hearing examiner?

Can you tell me what that means?

Right.

Do we need to waive something temporarily as we look to revitalize our local economy?

Does that mean funding?

I mean, I don't want to put you in a in a in a corner to talk about funding from a department to the council, but I think we need all ideas on the table.

And I'm happy to make sure that we're providing necessary support to hearing examiner.

But, you know, much like we've done with other permitting changes in the last year to make it more possible for our community to continue to interact, to have outdoor eating opportunities, to provide curbside spaces for innovative strategies to address the crisis that COVID has imposed on our community.

This feels very similar, and I just feel like we ought to be thinking of any outside-of-the-box strategies to both help SDCI and the hearing examiner.

Is there something that we could do if you had a magic wand?

Is there a specific code outside of revenue?

And we have revenue coming, right?

We do have federal support coming.

Um, after a long, long 4 years, we have funding coming and after a long year of covid impacts manifesting itself in the street, we have some relief on the horizon.

Not only that, we have jumpstart progressive revenue that includes.

a significant portion, I wanna say 10 to 15 million for economic revitalization.

And some of that must also include how we get people out of their neighborhoods, out of their homes, interacting with the local economy and allowing for that type of development to happen, which means to me, we gotta be building that ASAP.

So if you had a magic wand, is there a way for us to act upon the call for greater efficiency and support for the permitting process to expedite that?

Sure, a couple of things.

One is I talked to Council Member Strauss about this yesterday.

We are looking at urgent, possibly emergency legislation to allow for more flexibility for our street front retail spaces so we can get those vacant spaces downtown and in other neighborhoods occupied with vibrant industries.

We have pretty strict criteria in the code as to what types of businesses can occupy those spaces.

And I think it's time to allow for some more flexibility so we can get more street level and pedestrian activation.

I'd be happy to have a sidebar discussion with the hearing examiner about what ideas they might have to improve the leg time.

I know they're extremely busy right now.

There have been a lot of appeals of project decisions that we have issued.

I think a lot of people are home right now during the pandemic and are experiencing construction impacts.

So that's something that we all have to take into consideration.

But we are open to any ideas that you have to improve the permitting processing time, especially for master use permits.

If I can add to that too, I mean, you know, obviously it comes down to resources as well, and I'm not going to ask for resources for staffing, but defining what good looks like and what that applicable turnaround should be helps us define what resources we would need to achieve those goals.

So if our goals, our current goals aren't, even though we're meeting majority of them for the most part, if they're not good enough, then we need to know what good enough looks like so that we can adjust what our resources needs be.

And then to add to that, too, we also have a number, I mean, we're dedicated to the user experience and continuous improvement.

So we're actively pursuing continuous improvement with the customer first perspective in mind.

And so we're already have an outside consultant agency working on portal improvements for improving the flow of how things work in there.

So it's more intuitive.

And as more and more departments come on board, Seattle IT is really being burdened with a lot of requests for improvements to our technology system and unfortunately has become somewhat of a bottleneck in terms of us being able to achieve some of those enhancements to the technology on a platform-wide level.

you know, having ability to actually increase our IT capacity to be able to support some of these continued automation and workflow enhancements and workflow integrations across city departments, those kinds of things would also be extremely valuable in helping us achieve those goals faster.

We have a very complex land use code.

It's over a 1000 pages and it keeps getting longer.

So, I mean, 1 of my dreams is land use code reform to make the land use code easier for applicants and for staff and for the community at large to understand how zoning works in the city.

Thank you both very much.

You both touched on issues that I also would like to follow up with you and the good chair on.

Andy, you mentioned sort of the benchmarks and Director Cholosan, you talked about how you are striving towards decreasing the wait times.

So I actually look to you to help us understand what is that threshold?

What is your goal?

And then we can help work backwards from there to see what additional resources or support I think the city as a whole, the city family can provide, but I would like to have a better sense of, you know, what is your ideal timeline for increasing or expediting the permitting process?

And if you can get that back to us, that would be, that would be great.

I also think that, you know, I don't want to miss the point about the overall MUT permitting timelines.

I think that's a really big deal right now and having additional conversations about that we can address that delay I think would be incredibly important.

Thank you for the work that you're doing on the first floors and sort of the street use level ideas.

Very excited to work with you on that.

It's something that we've talked about for a very long time.

And as you think about, you know, more interactive uses, one of the things I just want to keep putting on the radar that I know is a priority as well for the chair is, how we can create more childcare space.

We're losing about 7% to 10% of childcare facilities that were already in this city before COVID.

And we already had childcare deserts and extremely high childcare costs.

So thinking about how we get folks out of their homes, one of the things they have to have is childcare, especially since we've seen record numbers of kiddos being born in the city in the more recent years.

So, you know, as we think about why do folks wanna stay in a city if they can work from home, childcare, interactive, you know, economic hubs, walkability, all of these things rely on us being able to permit it as fast as possible.

And in terms of your ideas about reforming our land use code and zoning policies, you know, I got a list of ideas.

So I look forward to working with you and perhaps with the chair, we can compare notes and share some of those ideas very soon.

Thank you.

Great, gentlemen, I have a number of questions and I'd like to refer to the PowerPoint if possible.

One, just kind of taking a step off of vice chair Mosqueda's comments about understanding what the goal is.

I understand right now the goal is 120 days to approval of a permit.

Is that correct what you told me at the last committee meeting?

That's for, yeah, for a master use permit.

And that would be 120 days in STCI's hands.

Gotcha.

And so that kind of leads me into another question that I had.

And Council Member Strauss, just to add to that, I believe that that was established like around 1995 by the state legislature, because back then, We used to not screen applications for quality intake.

We used to just take everything in.

And then our initial correction letters would often be, please provide structural calculations, please provide lot coverage calculations, please provide geotech reports, that kind of thing.

And the bottleneck back then was really that initial plan review.

And it was taking upwards of six months in some cases to just get the initial plan review.

So the state legislature implemented that statewide.

And that led to our process improvement regulating construction and land use effort in the early 2000s.

So we did a whole ton of process reorganization and created our screening, our application intake screening to raise the level of intake quality so that that initial review is really to complete a full and complete plan review and only identify the issues that are outstanding, not in compliance or substantial compliance with the code.

So it's the partnership at that point then that becomes the back and forth iterations with an applicant.

And we only have so much control over how responsive an applicant is either.

So we really are dedicated to trying to shorten the time in our hands as much as possible.

But total throughput time, we often hear a lot of complaints about intake to issue.

And we struggle with that because really we only have control over a certain aspect of that time.

So we're really focused on drilling down, not only on shortening and meeting our own expectations around initial plan review performance, but also shortening our correction plan review performance and reducing the total number of correction cycles needed, which again, with clarity of correction and trying to partner with an applicant on solutions, we think we have a certain amount of control over, but at the end of the day, we can only control so much about what the applicant provides to us in response to those cycling too.

So really our focus is to try to eliminate bottlenecks, increase our efficiencies, work with other city departments that also have a stake in each of those review cycles because it's not just SCCI reviews that holds up an overall review cycle depending on the scope of that application.

It could be multiple permit departments.

It could be parks, it could be fire, it could be SPU, it could be City Light, BON, et cetera, et cetera.

So we're really focused on that permit system integration as a key part of that, making sure that each of those review locations has enough capacity in place the deal with the unknown hits, the family medical leave, the somebody out with COVID or somebody, you know, just needing to take a sabbatical or those kinds of things to make sure that that bottleneck doesn't move around and that we can better control what the bottleneck is, which we feel should be our ordinance and structural group, because at least for construction permitting, that's the most complex review location.

So the more we can do to partner and have oversight across all of those various review locations and inputs, the better off we'll be in terms of shortening

Great, thank you, Andy.

That was very helpful.

It actually answered a fair number of my questions that I had listed.

And as you may have seen, I tried to pull up the whiteboard that I used last week.

It's not working right now.

All that to say is, I'll try and use my fingers here to demonstrate.

You have multiple different touch points.

Or actually, if you could pull up slide...

six, that would help this conversation.

I think I know what you're getting at in terms of the way we talk about milestones, where it comes in from an applicant, it hits a point at intake, and then it fans out to however many review locations it needs to touch based on the scope of that application.

And then once the last one is completed, it comes back to a point where it checks out to the applicant.

And then it sits in the applicant's hands, and then there's an intake point.

where we take it back in and fan it back out to all the review locations that had corrections outstanding from that initial review cycle.

And then if they're all able to approve, we're done, we issue the permit.

But if any of them have outstanding corrections left, it comes back, goes back out to the applicant and cycles over and over and over again.

And again, for the code revision concepts, the more prescriptive and easy it is to comply with the code, the simpler it is for an applicant to get to substantial compliance.

and nuance and site-specific and this, that, and the other thing that go on, the more discretion there is, the more challenge there is for an applicant to really understand the nuances for their given site and their given scenario.

So any kind of future revisions to code really, the more we make it design-specific and discretionary, the more correction cycles tend to occur because it's that back and forth of trying to find proper ways to comply or substantially comply

Exactly, that very helped your finger graphics were better than mine.

Could you pull up slide six, though?

Can you see that?

No.

I don't think you're showing your screen.

OK, hold on.

There we go.

Yep, there we are.

So what I see here is that it's SDOT's 120-day goal for MUPS.

It sounds like we need to be better about setting the goal, like Vice Chair Mosqueda said, like Andy, Director Torgalson.

We need to really have a more clear goal so that we can work backwards from there.

And then The graph, the black, and we don't have to move to that slide quite yet, but the black line that we saw on slides 17 and 18 of the days that it's in SDCI's hands, can I confirm that that is just in this bucket that says SDCI as compared to other departments?

Is that a correct understanding?

I can move to the slide if that's helpful.

Yes, this black line, is that only for SDCI and other departments are not included in that?

I believe it's SDCI, but I will confirm.

Great, OK.

If you could go back to slide 6, I just want to kind of focus in on here.

When we had our conversations, it was important for me to understand that it's not easy to necessarily contract out to backfill for these positions because it is technically complex.

Their work is technically complex.

Andy, you really pointed out an important fact to me is that if there is one person missing from a four-person team, that reduces the throughput by a quarter.

If there's one person missing from a 20-person team, there's not as much impact on that review time.

And as one, let's say there's a four-person team that loses one member, it creates a bit of a choke point.

And then when they hire that member back, then another node may have similar, I mean, because that's the life cycle of life, right?

You know, things change.

People either need new jobs, retire, what have you.

I guess the point that I'm trying to highlight here is that the choke point that we are trying to solve for can oftentimes be a moving target.

And so this brings me to an understanding of, is there a way that we can create a substitute class or a float team that is within SDCI that can, and maybe these are the more senior reviewers that who possibly have worked on other, in multiple nodes.

Is this a credible idea or am I thinking of this in too simplistic terms?

Yeah, the challenge is that each of the codes that each of these groups oversees is highly technical.

And so to have somebody that can float in between is the challenge.

We have a position called the permit process leader who originally envisioned was to be able to walk on water and do all of this stuff.

The reality is to try to train one individual at the depth of knowledge needed for every review location is next to impossible to expect someone could actually achieve that.

So really what we've found is that for some of the smaller review groups where, you know, if it's a four-person team or a six-person team and you do lose a major chunk of your capacity by losing a single individual at any given time, it's really just to have enough depth there to be able to absorb that hit and kind of understand that, you know, there's always vacations and sick leave and other stuff going on in people's lives.

So if you try to budget your capacity to your maximum potentially available, you're really always operating more at 80% capacity instead, some factor less.

So it's really about trying to figure out how do we minimize where that bottleneck jumps around throughout the entire permit system and try to localize it to one or two primary locations.

I think our largest teams are really in the zoning and land use discretionary groups, and then also in our ordinance structural groups.

And outside of that, the majority of these review locations are small teams, you know, somewhere between two and six people.

So it's really about can we get enough layer there to to make sure they never become the bottleneck, even when they do experience a capacity hit for one reason or another, and limit it to those groups where when they take a capacity hit in ordnance and structural, you know, it's a much smaller chunk of that.

That's really helpful.

So it sounds like for us to maintain capacity, it's almost as if we need to be hired and staffed at 120% capacity.

Is that?

Exactly, because that that excess capacity, that excess 20% is really something to just absorb that, you know, once once the unknown hits, which we always know there's an unknown, we just don't know what the unknown is going to be.

And so it's it's just planning ahead for that and being proactive in that.

So that in a case like last summer where one external department lost a reviewer, your bottleneck doesn't double in a three-month period of time.

Your backlog doesn't double.

So we really want to be able to absorb a hit like that and then be able to go out, recruit, backfill that position, and move forward by training them and bringing them up to a fully fully capable reviewer, but even that process can take a long time depending on each review location.

I mean, in ordinance and structural, we talk about it being a year to two years, really getting someone up to speed to be fully proficient as a plan reviewer.

So your comment about going to the outside and utilizing consulting staff is we've done that.

We did that back in the mid 2000s.

And the problem that we had was overseeing the quality of the work, the mistakes that came out of that work, the inconsistencies that came out of that work, and really just managing it and overseeing it was as much work as just having another layer or another team in place.

And so since that time, we've developed a core staffing model so that we don't have to experience as deep a cuts as we experienced in the last downturn, and so that we can have trained, capable, consistent, applicable codes, all in place as the economy recovers so that we can be in front of that economic recovery rather than chasing it up.

That's exactly right.

And for the other departments, I think I heard you mention an interdepartmental team.

How, you know, is this something that I, as the chair of the Land Use Committee, need to have more intentional oversight to make sure that everyone is, that these teams are being staffed at 120% as well.

I know that the silos of our city government mean that you, Director Torgalson, do not have control over these other departments.

I guess, is, Do you feel that there's good coordination going on right now?

Do I need to be asked?

Maybe don't answer the question.

Do I need to be asking more questions?

Maybe I'll just highlight that I'm going to be asking more questions.

There we are.

But if there's anything that you can speak to the IDT, that would be helpful.

I would just add that we we partner with these other departments and are committed to working together.

But I will say that there isn't one single authority outside of the executive's office that really has the authority to make significant change in those departments.

So, you know, we try to influence the process, and there's only so much we can do.

But we do partner quite well together, and as more and more departments are coming on board the enterprise platform, the more we're meeting in terms of an IT context, but we don't so much have a business enterprise structure in place quite yet, and that was one of the things Nathan listed as we're working on it.

It would be great to have it in Shelton.

The recent example I listed where the 6 permanent supportive housing projects that were funded back in August, we meet on a monthly basis.

That's obviously very staff intensive, but that's been a super successful model for departments working together in real time with the applicants to resolve permitting challenges.

Great, thank you.

And could you, you mentioned a couple times, could you slide to slide 17. Both of you have mentioned a number of times throughout the presentation, what happened in the last recession, where we had layoffs across the city, and the impact that that had on your permit review time.

I just, I guess I'm taking this opportunity to thank Vice Chair Mosqueda for her leadership with jumpstart proposal, because what we were able to do this last year is in the face of laying off many city staff, we were able to retain everyone, everyone's jobs, and that has immediate impact because if you were again asked to reduce your staffing, we would see higher amounts of time for these permits to be reviewed.

I guess that wasn't a question.

That was a statement.

Yeah, please.

And you're still a little bit low.

Sorry.

I don't know what's going on.

It's usually not that bad.

So let me know if you're not able to hear me.

If you look at this graph where it says staffing shortage after last recession, And then Nathan, if you slide back to slide 16, you can see here the value drop-off was significantly more than the volume drop-off.

So the value or the revenue, which is associated with the revenue we take in, dropped off by 62%, but the volume only dropped off by 30%.

So the number of permits that came in was only a 30% drop, but the staffing reduction that we had to take was nearly 50% because of that hit.

And we didn't have, we had a core staffing reserve, but not a very substantial one.

So we weren't able to ride it for very long.

And that's really what led to, you know, the volumes remain, but the staffing level really significantly dropped off.

And that's what led to that spike over the course of time.

And then in 2011, 12, when the economy really started roaring back with the, especially the apartment market, That's when we started hiring back up again And we were being able to recall some of the staff that have been laid off And then really kind of ramped up but at that point we were chasing the economy up the hill and we really wanted to avoid that happening again, so in that 2014-15-16 kind of time frame we revamped our fee structure and really created a more robust core staffing model so that we could hang on to staff during dips to make sure that we weren't basically cutting it, you know, it's last in first out in the in the union structure.

So we didn't want to have to cut all the brand new staff that we are just hiring over this last 10 year period and start losing them on the other industry or, you know, private sector, but be able to have them on board for just this just this moment where we're coming back.

We see the economy just queuing up as COVID is sort of slowly ramping down and we see and predict that the economy will be ramping up.

We have those staff in place and we're working even more on on backfilling some of those temporary staffing shortages we saw last fall.

So I think we've done a lot in the last economic cycle to try to get ahead of this current economic up.

That's helpful.

Vice-Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Again, appreciate the line of question and your leadership on sort of continuing to push the conversation around what's needed in terms of broad changes, Mr. Chair, and appreciate the initial responses today.

I think that it is absolutely important to have that cross-agency interdepartmental coordination as a good goal, and we ought to be doing that as we try to provide good services.

I think Director Triclosan, you mentioned that.

But a lot of these things I think we can make improvements on within SDCI, and I see the good director nodding.

One of those things that I think we would benefit from is having the data on where we're seeing the most lag among the areas that we see where there is a higher than normal delay.

It'd be very helpful to see what we can do specific in those areas where we see the slowest review processes.

I assume not all areas have to be beefed up and some areas take inherently longer.

So what can we do in that in those areas?

And I think it It's important to also note one of the biggest areas I continue to hear feedback on is the design review process and the delay that is experienced when you have to first pass your design review before you can get your master use permit.

So looking forward to hearing if there's any other ideas that you might have.

Very supportive of wanting to staff up in areas where we see the lag.

But is there any bold changes or suggestions that you can think of to make that specifically go faster, the design review process through bold changes instead of some of the minor adjustments that we all maybe want to do and should do.

But are there other bigger things that we should have on our radar?

Councilmember Muscata, that's an area where we need to do further exploration and more work.

I know there was a time period earlier in COVID where we weren't having any design review board meetings because they couldn't happen virtually.

Thanks again for the council that passed legislation so we could start up design review virtually.

That created quite a bit of backlog when we weren't able to have design review meetings.

We have course corrected on that right now.

And so we're able to schedule those meetings much quicker.

But I think your question is really getting to the overall process and we need to do some more work on that.

So we will get back to you on that.

One of the issues, and I've talked to Council Member Strauss about this, is when we do get out of the pandemic, are we going to resume in-person design review board meetings, or are we going to stay virtual, or are we going to do some kind of a hybrid?

And there are some huge technology costs if we try to do hybrid, but there are definitely pros and cons to all in-person or all virtual.

So we look forward to having that discussion.

with the executive and with the council as well.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Thank you, Director.

And for everyone's awareness, we are endeavoring to wrap this committee up in the next 15 minutes.

I do have a question, slide 10, I believe it is.

Let me circle back on my...

Yeah, so one concern I've heard is that in the past, a reviewer might have been able to pick up the phone and call an applicant to clear up an error, whereas now with higher permit volumes and newer staff, the reviewer is more likely to issue a correction rather than just pick up the phone, would Bluebeam allow for a more streamlined version of that picking up the phone approach?

How is this similar and or different to the virtual applicant service center that you talked about with the ability to chat live in real time?

Can you share how this will decrease the number of corrections that will be issued?

Sure, I can talk about that.

Back when we rolled out electronic plan review initially, I mean, before we took in paper plan sets, anywhere from three to nine sets of plans, depending on the complexity of the project, and we would physically route each of those paper plan sets to each of those review locations we talked about earlier.

And when we converted in 2014 with our pilot program to electronic plan review, we started using a different tool called Brava, and then eventually moved into using like Adobe Pro for a viewer for electronic plan.

And by 2016, we had incentivized intake for electronic plans, shorter intake appointment times to get people in the door faster if they submitted electronically.

And we had like 95% compliance by 2016 and just pulled the trigger out of a pilot program, never really intending to have pulled the trigger ahead of our Excel implementation.

But we pulled the trigger in 2016 and went fully electronic, utilizing those older technologies.

And unfortunately, what happened was at that time, Because of all these various review locations, reviewers lost the ability to just pen to paper, write their corrections on the permit set that they were reviewing and stamp off on their approval with a phone call to the design professional.

So what happened was since that point in time and through our Excel implementation up until now, we've been utilizing Bluebeam as a viewer now, but some people are still using Adobe Pro depending on the review location.

But what's happened is because each of those review locations doesn't have the ability to redline those plans with their corrections, we have to check that plans back out to the applicant to have them make the correction.

What this project will do is it'll allow us to get back to basically having an ability for every review location to have a layer within that plan that they could redline their corrections onto that layer within the plan set and stamp off on their layers so that we don't have to rely on checking it back out to the applicant to make the correction and checking it back in.

It'll also allow us to, while the plans are checked out to the applicant through any correction cycle, to hop online with them, just like any Google Doc or OneDrive Doc that you can share, and see changes in real time.

So you can have that conversation with an applicant before they ever resubmit.

The applicant can ask, am I addressing this correction correctly?

Will this solution work?

Or would this be better?

Have those collaborative discussions before resubmittal to try to get to points where we're actually getting compliant without having to go through further iteration.

This new technology integrated with our Excel, a platform will allow us to move forward in a way, move backward to what we were able to do capability wise, but move forward with technology to be able to do it better in the future and avoid some of that back and forth that was created because of a conversion electronic.

Very helpful, and can you remind?

I know that we discussed this before, but for the viewing public, can you remind me the difference between a correction and a review cycle?

They're basically the same.

A correction is an item within a correction list from any given review location.

And when we route out to all of those different review locations, each one generates a separate document or list of corrections or comments needed to have the applicant address within the plan set to show or demonstrate code compliance or substantial code compliance on the plan or within the construction document.

And that's what we, our reviewers, their basic mission is to ensure substantial compliance with the adopted codes in the jurisdiction.

Once we are able to verify that in each review location, they approve their review location.

And once all of them are approved, that's when we wrap up an application and get it out the door.

So in theory, if an applicant is so perfect there are no corrections to be made, there would only be one review cycle.

Is that correct?

In a perfect world, we would have zero correction cycles.

Every application would show full substantial compliance with the code, and we would be able to issue it on the spot and out the door.

Great.

And just kind of, you already answered this question, so I'll just summarize my next question, which is intake issuance, the factors are review desks within SDCI, other departments, and the applicant's ability to return that that correction.

And then also repeating what I already heard in the presentation today is that when an applicant brings a correction, they do not have to go to the back of the line.

They are put right back to the front of the queue.

We have a much shorter target timeline for correction turnaround than we do for initial plan review.

And simply because we want to try to get those out the door.

And theoretically, every cycle has less and less corrections because you're addressing at least some of the corrections each time, and you should be getting to a smaller and smaller list for each cycle.

And then my last, I guess, last technical question, then it's back to the general questions.

Slide 21, the target review Is the target review time for simple, medium, or complex, simple, medium being four weeks, is that target review time for the first look at the permit application or for a deep review?

Yes, it's the initial plan review.

And initially back in the early 2000s when we did our revamp The council goal was 80% in two weeks, but that just meant that we missed one out of five, which to me wasn't a good enough target.

So what we've over time been shooting for is within a two to four week period, we're gonna try to get 95% of our initial plan reviews done on our simple to medium complexity permits, which is about 80 to 85% of our volume of permits done within that two week window.

two to four week window.

And for the complex permits that take a longer period of time to review, anywhere between six, eight plus up to 20, 40 hours, depending on if it's a high rise building, those ones are the ones that fall into the more complex category, much, much smaller volume of permits, but much, much more complex level of permitting.

And that window is an eight to 12 week period of time where initially it was 80% in eight weeks.

we're striving to achieve 95% in that eight.

Well, great, thank you.

And so in my next class that I'll be taking from you, hopefully it will be permitting class 103. I had two classes so far.

Some some of the things that I'd love to focus in on what are what resources you need in order to improve permit turnaround times.

how we should be structuring these goals for turnaround times.

And then my last question, and I would love to have that meeting and maybe a few more in between now and your next report.

My last two questions, or my last real question here is what steps do we need to take in the next month, next quarter, and next year to improve permit review times?

I will let Nathan address that.

I think one of the things that we're looking at right now is design review, and this isn't directly related to the amount of time it takes to get through design review, but just how we are going to continue to do design review board meetings in the future, whether that's virtual, continue with virtual, hybrid, or back in person.

By the end of the year, we hope to have blue beam throughout the department, which should significantly reduce the number of correction cycles.

Hopefully we'll be back to in-person application service center, which just having that face-to-face interaction should help with overall permitting.

And hopefully, we talked about the contingent budget authority where we're able to hire people on a temporary, usually a two-year basis.

And hopefully, the people that we have hired will be fully trained by the end of the year.

including some of the staff in other city departments.

And some of the things that are longer than a year are just looking at the virtual applicant service center and then how we can provide services out in the neighborhoods, whether that's at our customer service bureaus or at our public libraries.

And just to add one thing, in the next quarter, we are going to see a continued below the line here, partly due to that continued staffing shortage.

And we're in the midst of hiring right now and interviewing actively as we speak.

But also that we just took in a huge slew of projects to the best to current code.

And we actually took in probably double the volume that we normally would have because we don't want to Law has said we don't want to be in the way of people actually being able to vest to the code they want to vest to.

So an applicant has a right to apply when they want to apply in terms of vesting, right?

So normally we have a consistent number of intake appointments and try to keep the flow fairly smooth.

But we just created a pig in the Python kind of bubble by taking in a number of projects just in the last month to help people vest to code.

So this number will look not good in the next quarter because of that.

There's just a slam number of projects that came in and our capacity didn't increase likewise.

So it will get better because of the staffing changes that we're working on.

And we won't continue that level of volume, but just a heads up that that won't look good probably in this next three month period.

Thank you for that fair warning because we know as policymakers for a policy to fully become implemented, it takes four years from effective date to to see that policy fully implemented.

What's important about this work and why I've requested quarterly updates is because we know the work that we do today is only going to be implemented in effective six months or nine months from today.

And so for us to stay on top of this, we have to have just a constant eye on it.

So I really appreciate both of your, Andy, I appreciate your tutoring of me in this area and Director Torgelson for all of your work here today.

Colleagues, do we have any other questions at this time?

Nope.

Seeing no further questions, I just again want to thank Director Torgelson and Andy for joining us today.

We look forward to continuing this conversation.

I'd like to take this moment to thank Council Member Juarez.

And thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And to all of our IT folks behind the scenes making government work in a virtual world and to award-winning Seattle Channel for also being behind the scenes and making this government work in virtual times.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

If there's no good, no items for the good of the order.

I don't know.

Council Member Mosqueda may have a question.

I don't know.

You know what, I do.

I'm looking forward to having our next conversation.

When is that again, Mr. Chair?

That will be on April 28th, starting at 9.30 a.m.

will be the next committee meeting.

We are skipping the April 14th committee.

And then we will follow up with the permitting conversations offline until the next time that they report at the committee.

And council member, Mr. Chair, I do appreciate your indigenous land acknowledgement, by the way.

Oh, thank you.

You always help me refine it because it is a constant work in progress.

We can't allow it to be a rote behavior.

We have to sit with it.

Yes.

Thank you.

OK, can we go now?

With that, this concludes the Wednesday, March 24, 2020 meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee.

As a reminder, our next committee meeting will be April 28, starting at 930 AM.

Thank you for attending.

We are adjourned.

Go Kraken!

Go Kraken!

Woo!