Seattle City Council Planning, Land Use & Zoning Committee 5/1/2019

I am joined by Council Member O'Brien.

Moving on to the Chair's Report.

We have four items on the agenda today.

A briefing and public hearing on CB 119471, which clarifies the definition of a vessel in the Shoreline Master Program.

Two, an annual update from the Office of Planning and Community Development.

Three, an annual update from the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections.

And four, an OPCD and SDCI joint 2018 Race and Social Justice Initiative Report.

The next regularly scheduled PLEZ meeting is on Wednesday, May 15, starting at 9.30 a.m.

here in Council Chambers.

We will now be moving on to public comment.

At this time, we will take public comment on the items that appear on today's agenda.

We have 10 minutes today for public comment.

Just for, speakers are limited to 10, up to two minutes of public comment.

If a speaker's comment exceeds the two minutes, the microphone will be turned off.

Speakers are asked to begin their comments by identifying themselves and the agenda item that they wish to address.

As a reminder, public comment is limited to items that are on the agenda or within the purview of the committee.

We have first on our public comment list, first on our list is John Chaney.

Actually, I'm here for the public hearing on the ordinance.

Oh, sorry.

I got my sheets mixed up.

My apologies.

It's okay.

Own the jobs, right?

First we have Margaret Richard.

Yes, Ms. Richard here, and I'm here today because we have some unfinished business with this Office of Planning and Development.

And I noticed you talking about race and social justice, and I'm a real stickler when it comes to race and social justice, which I feel that we as a people, I'm black, we're not getting it.

And it's because of the corruption and conspiracy and racketeering that is going on at said time.

So I'm demanding that you do an investigation.

Just pull up my name.

I'm a Google now.

All the way to the Justice Department for fighting against all this stuff that you took a job to, I don't know what this little hand is because I could raise my hand too.

And it could be the other one, hands up, don't shoot, okay?

I'm talking about the conspiracy, all you co-conspirators about what you have done to me as an individual.

And we still have racism going on and discrimination.

So what's wrong with me fighting against it?

Do you fight against it?

So that's what I'm talking about.

This kind of stuff have to come to an end.

Just like that mess in Washington, D.C. You can be held accountable to for obstruction of justice.

So I'm demanding you, and it's no coincidence that that crane went down on the head of somebody that was working for planning and development.

And I don't have no mercy for it either.

Okay?

Until you fix it.

Fix it.

Fix it.

Fix it.

Fix it.

21, 22. Oh yeah, okay.

So what else can I say?

Oh, all those people that are up under Nathan and whatnot, you need to check them out too, okay?

Because that's called a collusion.

You know, when you go up in there and you take files and you shred them.

Just like they saying, where's all this stuff you redacted on the President Trump?

We want to see it.

We want to see what you can find out.

Thank you, Ms. Richard.

Next on our list.

I apologize.

There's Is it there I can't read the second name on the list Who's the second person after mr. Shard?

Oh The honorable Michael Fuller, thank you.

Yeah note that for the record let the record reflect that I got a problem with planning and development, where you're not doing inspection for the disabled, which violates George Washington.

that served in the United States Navy during World War II, June 6th of 1944, and Robert Sunrise, who served in the United States Army during World War II, June 6th of 1944, and Johnny Fuller, who served in the United States Air Force during both the Korean War and the Vietnam War, and my little brother that served in the Persian Gulf War.

I'm looking at this organized crime control act with y'all that took the oath.

RCW 2.48.210.

Y'all oath don't admit you.

RCW 2.04.080.

Y'all oath to opposite RCW 2.24.020.

Y'all oath.

Now you're violating 42.52.020, meaning activities incompatible with public duties, and 49.60.030, freedom from discrimination, and 59.18.020, rights and limited obligations in good faith imposed as being violated.

And the Americans with Disabilities Act, July 26, 1990, that was signed by President George Washington.

W. Bush.

I'm tired of being sick and tired.

I'm trying to send y'all to federal penitentiary for violating your oath to office.

And I'm not new to this.

I'm true to this.

And you're a labor-ready worker, only job trained.

In my neighborhood, Black Lives Matter, this is not to change it or to dream.

Black Lives Matter can't believe it.

Our new generation of unfortunate females and males who fought to make this country safe, free, and secure.

And that George Washington in 1889, he was the president in 1789 and 1797. And the 23rd president, Benjamin Harris, from 1889 to 1893. You hear what I'm saying?

Thank you.

Next is Megan Cruz.

Hi, is this working?

Okay, great, thanks.

Welcome, Mabel.

I want to talk about design review issues today since it's on the menu.

And two things that are going to come up later are specifically the early outreach program that was instituted this year and also Acela.

So first of all, my issues aren't with the people of DCI.

I think the planners are amazing, especially those downtown.

They have a huge workload.

and a lot of complex projects.

So it's about the process, not the people.

With respect to the early outreach, it was intended to broaden participation and focus on equity areas and allowing design review meetings to focus on design.

I think it was intended in that spirit, but it's not happening.

The early outreach meetings are not regulated in any way.

Designers are presenting their projects for the client.

The public can speak, but there's no real obligation on their behalf to take these suggestions into consideration and it's not done.

It's just checking a box.

So what happens is the public gets to design review and then design review board thinks it's already been taken care of and they don't want to deal with this.

So it gets passed to somebody's desk and it goes on for quite a while and if the public doesn't like what comes out at the end, their option is to go to the hearing examiner or to the appeals court and increasingly we're seeing that happen and that's not equity.

We really need better participation, so we need to fix that.

The second thing is Accela.

I think that was also intended as an efficiency, but it hasn't really worked out that way after a year.

Now there are two project portals that you have to check as a member of the public if you want to know what's happening on a project.

And they don't always jibe, and sometimes the info you want is not on either of the portals.

So it's something that's got to be fixed, and I hope that you could turn your attention to reforming this.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Next is Steve Rustello.

We still don't have a tree ordinance in Seattle.

We are a very, very green city that doesn't care about trees, or at least to do anything legislatively that might preserve trees.

I'm sure that you'll pass a tree ordinance after the last tree has fallen in front of the development community, because when it will be meaningless, you will be able to act.

Till then, it appears you have been unable to act or are certainly unwilling to act.

We have a carbon problem that we are willing to spend great deals of money on.

Big heritage trees do it very efficiently, but it takes a long time to get them there.

And as you knock them down for the mighty, mighty stakeholders, which of course are far more important than the citizens, because planning in this city doesn't really involve citizens anymore.

I'm so old, I remember when A lot of developers used to have to come to land use meetings because the committee did its business in public.

Now, we very seldom ever see a developer or pro-development people because they've already made the bargains with you, they've lined up the votes, and then we get two minutes at the end of the long process to say, hey, we've been excluded again.

Big, shocking surprise.

It doesn't seem to bother you that much.

But it does bother some of us in the city.

I'm actually for democracy.

I think that land use, like all the other things, should be bottom up.

And I haven't seen much of that in the last four or five years in the city.

Now, land use has always been special, and money has always had a bigger place, I think, than it should have.

But I see absolutely no fear of the citizens, whether it's processed or otherwise, and I think it's time to change.

Thank you.

Would anyone who did not speak like to speak?

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

Our first business today is a briefing and public hearing on Council Bill 119471, clarifying the definition of a vessel.

Noah, would you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

Agenda item one, Council Bill 119471, an ordinance relating to land use and zoning, clarifying the definition of a vessel and consistently using the term vessel in the Shoreline Master Program and amending sections of the Seattle Municipal Code.

I will now open the public hearing on Council Bill 119471. Speakers are limited to two minutes of public comment.

If a speaker's comment exceeds the two minutes, the microphone will be turned off.

First on our list is John Chaney.

My name is John Chaney.

I am the Vice President of the Lake Union Livermore Association.

I'm a little surprised that as an organization, we're limited to two minutes.

Is that correct?

Correct.

Really?

Okay.

We're extremely concerned about the proposed legislation.

This was truly, we think, is in keeping with what we tried to do the last time we were here, which was talk about saving our houseboats.

except that the shark that was down here then was DPD, but it's changed its name.

It's now DCI.

We're hopeful that you will continue this public hearing to another meeting so that more members of the public can participate in this.

This is a joint public hearing with the Department of Ecology.

We believe that it was not fully Noticed, both to our members and to those people most affected, there's a tiny group of people in this city which will be affected.

Perhaps 200 verified house barges and floating on water residences.

The city of Seattle has every one of our contact names, phone numbers, everything else because we're verified.

And the question to the city is, did you notify all of the people that would be affected by this?

We're hoping that that's pretty possible to do.

We're not talking about thousands.

We're not talking about hundreds, just 200. If I was to sit at the table today, I have some questions I would ask for DCI.

How many have been verified and legally established as flowers?

How many dead engine vessels have been verified as flowers or are pending as flowers?

Why does the Department continue to quote chapters 173-26 of the WAC, which is the Department of Ecology's statement regarding overwater residences, when the legislature changed that and change the SMA to include floating on water residences.

We think there are serious issues with this, and we would look forward to briefing the council members on this and briefing you as the new chair on this, since it's my understanding this is your first committee meeting on this.

Thank you.

And we're a little concerned that as an organization, you keep us at two minutes.

Next on our list is Steve Robsello.

Here we go again with something that comes out where the city has spent a lot of time and the citizens get their two minutes and it looks like right now you're only committed, this is it.

And you have a public hearing but what about the notice to the people who are most involved, let alone the rest of the city?

The city has not done a good job.

It's not done a good job of publicly doing business, and this is just another example.

Land use is not between you and the development community.

The citizens should actually be involved.

This is a democracy.

This is not a stakeholder-dom, although it has been functioning as such for the last few years, and especially in this committee, which has done a great deal to increase homelessness in Seattle by raising the cost of living in Seattle.

When you up the cost of the ground, the state law is highest and best use.

You raise the cost.

Someone has a one or two-story apartment house.

It suddenly becomes unviable because you've put up for 10 stories or more, and you just can't raise enough money to make it work.

So we're seeing a lot quicker movement of destruction of what is the affordable housing in Seattle.

But notice is the main reason on this.

I think that the floating homes community has been treated like everybody else, and I think it's about time you gave them a chance to explain their situation.

Seattle advertises floating homes.

They're really wonderful.

It's part of the uniqueness of Seattle.

But, you know, if somebody can make a buck, let's sink a few.

Thank you.

Next on our list is Rain Ataman.

Good morning.

Rain Ataman, Washington Environmental Council here in front of you today.

to thank you for your opportunity to provide public comments on the proposed amendments that would clarify the definition of vessel and the use of vessel in Seattle's SMP.

WEC has involved in passing the Shoreline Master Act in 1972 and has remained engaged on SMP updates throughout the region.

We consider these statewide programs important tools for municipalities to ensure environmental safeguards for shorelines, wildlife, human health, and clean water.

WEC supports this proposed code revision that amends several sections of Chapter 23.60A of the Seattle Municipal Code in order to clarify that the definition of vessel includes inoperable ships, boats, and barges.

It is our understanding that this is also necessary to help avoid misidentification of vessels as floating on water residences.

This is good policy that will eliminate an existing loophole that allows boats with broken engines or boats that haven't been used in long time for navigational purposes to call themselves floating on water residences, which means that they get, quote, preferred use, unquote, status or water dependent maritime use under the SMA.

This makes them difficult to regulate in order to meet the objectives of the Seattle SMP for protecting water quality, water dependent uses, public access to shorelines and the shoreline health.

This code revision will ensure that floating on-water residences will be referred to as vessels and will be subject to the regulations for non-water dependent uses.

So thank you for your work on clarifying this very important element in the SMP and here are our public comments.

Thank you.

Would anyone else who did not sign up like to speak?

Seeing as we have no additional speakers, I will now close the public hearing on CB 119471. Thank you to our presenters and to everyone who came out to the public hearing.

This item will be likely to be back before the Plus Committee in June for a possible vote, depending on the timeline and the necessary Department of Ecology work.

Our next item of business today is a...

Oh, sorry.

It was a presentation.

My apologies.

Sure.

Ketel Freeman, Council Central staff.

Misty Blair, Washington State Department of Ecology.

Maggie Glowacki, Department of Construction and Inspections.

And as Council Member Pacheco mentioned, today is an initial briefing and the committee already held a public hearing, a joint public hearing with the Department of Ecology.

This is on a bill that would amend the city's shoreline master program to clarify the definition of vessel.

Procedurally, this is a little bit of a different approach for the council.

We're using a limited amendment process that's authorized under the Washington Administrative Code.

So there's a hearing today.

responses to comments that will follow and as Councilmember Pacheco mentioned at the end of this process there'll be a committee vote sometime in June with a full council vote to follow after feedback from the Department of Ecology.

Good morning, Council Chair and Council Members.

Thank you for having us at your committee this morning.

I'm going to start with reminding everyone of SDCI's purpose and values, and I'll leave this up here for everybody to take a look at.

And my presentation is going to cover an overview.

I'll talk a little bit about the background of the Shoreline Master Program, the purpose and intent of the amendment that's before you, and the update process for this amendment.

So back in 1971, the State Shoreline Management Act was enacted.

And in 1972 was when Seattle had its first Shoreline Master Program.

And then back in 2015 is when Seattle comprehensively updated the Shoreline Master Program.

So the Shoreline Master Program is a result of the Department of Ecology Shoreline Master Program guidelines, and these guidelines establish the rules that the local shoreline, or the local jurisdictions use to create their Shoreline Master Programs, both for writing and implementation of the regulations.

It also establishes a balance of authority between the local and the state government.

Cities and counties are the primary implementers and regulators of the Shoreline Master Program, and the Department of Ecology has the authority to both review local shoreline programs.

They have the authority and the requirement to do that, and they can review individual decisions as well at the local level.

So within the city of Seattle, our shoreline includes the water bodies of Puget Sound, Schill Shoal Bay, Elliott Bay, the Duwamish River, Ship Canal and Lake Union, Lake Washington and Green Lake, and then the land that's adjacent to those water bodies and the land that extends 200 feet from the ordinary high water mark, as well as associated flood plains and wetlands and river deltas of those water bodies.

So the ordinance before you amends the definition of vessel within the Shoreline Master Program.

And the reason for this amendment is to address the unintended consequences of a 2016 Seattle hearing examiner's decision that ruled that an existing conventional recreational vessel with a broken engine was not a vessel.

And then as a result of that, instead it could be considered a structure and potentially be verified as a floating on-water residence.

And so back prior to the city's 2015 Shoreline Master Program update, the state legislators defined a category of new over-water residences, and these were called floating on-water residences.

And they limited the category of these floating out of water residences to those that existed prior to July 1st, 2014. The state also defined a floating water residence as a floating structure and that it's designed and used primarily as a residence.

So therefore, as a result of the state legislation, the city's 2015 SMP update included provisions for floating on water residences.

But as a result of the 2016 shoreline hearings examiner, this led to the potential of many more floating on water residences than were contemplated both at the state level and at the city council level when the shoreline master program was adopted.

Thank you.

Given that the definition of a flower includes the requirement that it must have been in a marina prior to 2014, how is it that we're worried about new vessels that are broken becoming flowers, applying to be flowers?

So if a vessel can demonstrate that it was broken prior to July 1st, 2014, as in this case, so it had a broken engine, then it was ruled not a vessel.

So...

Are there a lot of examples of that?

There are several.

I mean, we've got more...

Of vessels that have been in the water since before 2014 and have...

We have lots of vessels that have been in the water before 2014. But as far as demonstrating, that's a different process, but it's possible.

I mean, we just had three more last week.

Three more that...

have broken engines and are trying to certify as flowers.

They were verified as flowers.

They were verified as flowers.

Yes.

Council Member O'Brien.

So just so I understand, was it a city hearing examiner ruling or was it a state hearing examiner ruling?

So the verification process appeals go to the city's hearing examiner.

And so did the hearing examiner rule that these were flowers or simply said these are no longer vessels and they have to be something and so this is what they're trying to certify as?

Yeah, so the hearing examiner said they're no longer vessels.

Got it.

And I'm sorry, I can't seem to access the part of my brain that stored all this information from 2015, but can you remind me the different categories of types of liveaboard residences that we regulate?

So now there's floating on water residences, there's the liveaboards on conventional recreational vessels that we don't regulate, and then there's the, I'll call it the leftover category of house barges that were grandfathered in in the early 80s.

that as part of the 2015 update they had the option to either stay as a house barge or get verified.

So get verified as a house barge or verified as a floating on water residences.

There's very little, or there's actually no difference in the regulations between.

So basically that's semantics essentially.

And then.

There were a couple dozen barges, is that?

32, 30, I'll say 34. Okay.

And then the, what are the houses with sewer hookup and everything?

Those are- So those are floating homes.

Those are completely different.

Those are different and do not fall under to this amendment.

So we have floating homes, those are a completely separate thing, although those are the iconic things that people think about often.

We have vessels, so that's the sailboat that you go on sail to live aboard sailboat, but obviously it can be more than just a sailboat.

Then we have the floating on water residences.

And the barges, which is a smaller, we treat them, it sounds like, identically or almost identically.

But those are the four categories of things that are on the water that people live in.

like a vessel with a dwelling unit, which is a much smaller category, but it was the result of potentially those vessels that didn't end up in any category that came into existence between July 1st, 2014 and when we passed the 2015 Shoreline Master Program.

So we have, you know, probably less than five of those registered.

Were those the new construction things that were being created, like basically houses with a steering wheel kind of thing?

Or is that a different category?

No, that's a little different.

Yeah.

All right.

Thanks for drawing my memory a little bit, Maggie.

Sure.

So to describe the proposed legislation, it clarifies the terms designed for navigation and used for navigation in the definition of vessel in the Shoreline Master Program.

So there's a reference to the SMC.

And what this does is that it says that if a vessel has been So, if there are things that have been used for navigation in the past and can be used for navigation in the future, on the vessel kind of as a result of the current owner that's fixable, such as a broken engine that can be fixed, or even with a sailboat, if the sails have been removed, or if there's a damage to the hull, that that doesn't take it out of the category of a vessel, that those are conditions that can be fixed.

Or in the case of the ruling by the hearing examiner, potentially if you just haven't used your vessel, that it would be no longer a vessel.

So say you take an extended leave in another country and could demonstrate that you never used your vessel, that could be a potential way to demonstrate that you haven't used your vessel, therefore it doesn't meet the literal definition of used for navigation.

And then the other two amendments have more to do with that house barge category.

It's kind of, it's left over from our prior shoreline master program where we did call a house barge a vessel, but now with the update and the new category of floating on water residents and the state legislature defining those as structures.

We wanted to remove the term vessel when it was used with house parts to remove any confusion around that.

So that's what the last two amendments do with the amendment.

So then on to the amendment process.

So as was stated earlier, this is a joint review process with the Department of Ecology.

So right now we're in the 30-day public comment period with the Department of Ecology.

This is a joint public hearing with the Department of Ecology.

And then after the close of the 30 days, SDCI will review the comments and make any appropriate changes to the amendment and then submit the proposed amendment to the Department of Ecology.

Ecology will provide their initial determination within 30 days.

And then SDCI will work with Ecology on any needed changes.

And then Ecology will provide a written determination on consistency.

And at that point, that's when we can bring it to full council for a vote.

And then it goes back to Ecology for their final review and approval as an ordinance.

Thank you.

Council Member O'Brien.

So, Maggie, There's a lot of back and forth here, and I imagine that the timeline is maybe not totally clear, but are we talking like three months or six months for this process?

So, Ms. Did you want to?

It should be less than that.

June before.

Less.

June.

The hope is that we would pass something out by June.

A lot of those dates, those timelines are maximums, and so the city has 30 days to review and respond to their comments, but that could happen in less amount of time.

And once it's initially submitted, we have 30 days, could ask for an extension up to 45, not likely in this scenario because it's a limited scope.

You know, could be looking at 30 to 60 days after the comments are responded to, to have it back, I would think.

Yeah.

And we don't expect it to take long on our end because of the size of the ordinance, because it is small for short weather.

The joint 30-day comment period, we had a public hearing today.

Is this the beginning or the end or the middle of the 30-day comment period?

This is the end of the 30-day comment period, yeah.

OK.

So I appreciate the formal process.

Seeing some friends in the audience today that I haven't seen in a while, it's nice to have you back.

I'm sure it's not mutual, but I imagine that the city council will be engaging in conversations.

And depending on what we learn as we get re-educated on this issue and understand it.

Exactly.

If we have things we want to consider as amendments to the amendments that we're proposing, I recognize that this process isn't something that we can really, well, I guess we can do it unilaterally, but then ecology has a right to say, sorry, that's not consistent with the law and send it back to us.

And in the spirit of not wanting to spend too much back and forth, what is the timeline for us to get informed and discuss?

We heard a couple different viewpoints in public comment today.

to get up to speed on those different views and see if there's a path or understand it or a misunderstanding or whatever can be going on.

Sure.

So I think what we are envisioning here is a little bit atypical, of course, because we're using this process.

But normally, a bill, after it's voted out of committee, is almost immediately taken up by a full council.

So in order for Ecology to have some certainty about what they would be commenting on for the purposes of consistency, we're imagining that a June vote, contingent on Maggie's ability to look at the comments that we received, have received, and may hear additional comments from you all and from other folks as well.

The June vote would be a vote on a committee recommendation that could be informed by the comment that the council has heard, and Ecology would opine on that, would make a consistency determination on that prior to a full council vote, which would happen after Ecology has reviewed the committee's recommendation.

So in that scenario, we certainly wouldn't want to bring new amendments to the full council.

We want to finish our work when it comes out of committee.

Correct.

That would be the hope.

Otherwise, we would start that process over.

And so one of the comments in public hearing was about a question about whether some people that are living on these vessels actually know that this is going on.

Even if the public comment period is closed, I assume it's okay that the council continue to engage with folks and receive their feedback on this.

It's not like a quasi-judicial thing.

So the formal comment period is over, but we can continue to educate ourselves.

And if out of that process, we may, you know, based on my recollection of the variety of things, it may be that there's just some uncertainty and fear about what might happen, and so we can talk about interpretations, but there may be specific things we want to address.

Those would be things that we'd want to vet in advance of a committee meeting coming up in June.

But I assume it probably makes more sense, makes sense for us to be engaging with, with Megan Ecology throughout all of this to be vetting this as we go to see if we're on a path that's viable or not.

Is that correct?

Okay.

I was just going to offer some clarity that this amendment does not affect any floating on water residences that have been verified or any floating on water residence or house barge or any of the residential uses that have been verified.

And if that's the case, and again, I need to remember what verified versus not verified means and all those things, but it may be a matter of just convening some folks and having some conversations.

Or maybe that there's difference of opinions there, and so we'll just have to navigate that, but I appreciate your work on this, Maggie.

Council Member Herbal.

Thank you.

Just a little bit more of an understanding of who received the notice of the public comment period.

Did the folks who are registered as flowers receive notice of this?

It sounded to me like this is seeing this on the agenda was the first that they had learned of this.

So we have a listserv of the Shoreline Master Program.

I do not know who's on it.

It's people who have engaged in the past.

But we did not go into our records.

And I don't even think we've got email for every verified on-water resident.

So we did not.

look for additional people to add to the list.

So I assume some of those people have signed up for the Shoreline Master Plan, and some haven't.

And we know that Lula was notified of this.

Thank you.

Any further comments, questions?

Well, thank you.

I might have given a little bit of a sneak peek, potentially, but I appreciate your time and consideration.

Our next item of business today is our annual update presentation from the Office of Planning and Community Development.

Noah, would you please read this item into the record?

Agenda item number two, Office of Planning and Community Development 2018 Annual Update.

We are joined...

We'll be joined at the table today by Director of OPCD Sam Asafa.

Director Asafa, take it away.

Please, take it away.

Thank you, Council Member, and welcome to the committee.

I am Sam Assefa, Director of Office of Planning and Community Development.

I will give you a report on OPCD.

Nathan Torgelson is here with me as well.

We will co-present the RSGI part of the report after my initial presentation.

Let me see if I can get the presentation here.

Great.

Thank you.

So, just briefly, Office of Planning and Community Development, we celebrated our third year, January of this year.

The office was created in January 2016. Since then, as a new office, we've done a lot of work internally to build sort of the grounds up mission and vision.

As you can see on the screen, this was developed by staff consistent to the purpose of the creation of the office, primarily to help coordinate citywide on planning, growth, and development issues to address equity and how the office could help support planning to address the growth that we are facing over the next 20 years.

The department is organized around three primary work areas and supporting two commissions.

The organizations, so the three primary areas, citywide initiative, these are policies that affect the city citywide, such as comprehensive plans, land use policies, the recently adopted mandatory housing affordability program, which, again, affects citywide.

And then we also, this group supports research and data, including demographic data, housing data, annually, quarterly, in different areas.

Second area is community planning and action.

These are very specific community area planning work.

The new initiatives, such as the Equitable Development Initiative, which is primarily geographic-based, and some localized planning, station area transit-oriented developments, such as Mount Baker.

These are specific areas, specific neighborhood planning practice.

And then a third group focuses primarily what we are calling placemaking.

This is focused on how the built environment is built from a design perspective, including the public realm, the spaces between buildings, public spaces, but also a number of design guidelines that then accompany neighborhood plans and community plans that we develop.

And then the LPCD supports two commissions, the Design Commission, which is responsible to advising council and the mayor on any public projects, but also street vacation issues.

The Planning Commission, on the other hand, advises again both the Council and the Mayor on citywide policies, specifically policies such as the Comprehensive Plan.

The Planning Commission technically is an independent body, but it is housed, joined with OPCD to share staffing.

And the planning commission's director is hired by the commission and reports primarily to the commission.

So our 2019 staffing has about 44 FTE or full-time employees.

equivalency to cover the five areas that I outlined earlier.

The Planning Commission and the Design Commission each have three and a half FTE.

The rest of the staff supports the various activities of the department.

Just one thing to note, I mentioned it's a new department.

Part of, we'll talk about race and social justice issues on the next presentation.

But one of the objectives for the department was from the beginning that we worked to advance race and workforce equity.

And throughout the last three years, and I joined in June of 2016, we've made a deliberate effort to make our department more diverse and gender and race.

wise, what you see on that is sort of the reflection of where we are today.

About 30% of staff are identified as people of color, 60% of our workforce are female and women.

Last year, we added seven new employees, about 43% of them identified as people of color and almost 70%, over 70% as women.

We do that in promotions as well to really advance both gender and race equity within our workforce.

One thing you don't see there, we've also made an effort to actually have pay equity as well.

In the last two, three years, two and a half years, wherever the director has discretion, we've used that opportunity to advance and make pay equity in departments.

So for example, About 28 of our staff are what are called strategic advisors or managerial positions where I have discretion.

We have reached pay equity between, in gender, pretty much the men and women are paid equally.

In fact, women slightly age up, men, but that was a deliberate action consistent with our vision and mission within the department.

The next I'll talk about our 2019 adapted budget and endorsed 2020 budget.

Currently, we're just about 13.3 million for the budget for OPCD for 2019. It's important to know that between 2018 and 2019, there was a significant increase close to 6 million or more for OPCD budget.

This is specifically for the equitable development initiative because of the Initially, the one-time funding that came up from the sale of the Civic Square just across, and then to get the equitable development initiative going.

That was a significant increase.

You can see on the 2020 endorsed budget, you see some reduction.

That has specifically to do with council had put a $1 million additional for one time for 2019 for EDI, for Equitable Development Initiative.

That was a one-time increase, so that's what is reflected there.

We also have some budget reduction, but minimal amount, but when you see the discrepancy, that is primarily why.

Council Member O'Brien.

Sam, just so I'm clear, the $13 million in total budget includes the $5 million of grants that would go to EDI.

Exactly.

So that's money that passed.

I mean, obviously, you administer it, and you have a team that administers it.

Exactly.

And that's $5 million in 2019. We didn't restore the extra million, so it's only $4 million in the endorsed budget in 2020. Correct.

Until we get our hands on it.

Correct.

This is just a snapshot, an overview of our work plan.

On the left column, you'd see 2018 accomplishments.

On the right, a number of ongoing projects either started this year or continuing from last year.

The list is not exhaustive.

I just, you know, highlighted all the key projects.

Some of the Projects that you see on the right column are 2019 projects, started in 2018, but are ongoing as well.

And then on the right side, there's, again, it's not exhaustive, but I highlighted some of the key projects.

And I'll go.

Thank you.

I really appreciate seeing the Westwood Highland Park planning project highlighted as a 2019 work program.

I recall that in the OPCD slide response 135-1A1, My phone, I just got texted it.

A couple years ago, we had also asked about the station area planning in West Seattle as well.

And I believe the response that you gave us said that you would be start planning in earnest in 2020, but that you would be beginning some initial steps towards planning specifically for the junction and Delridge.

in 2019, and I know we're not getting too much into the weeds here.

This is a high-level overview, but I would very much like to learn more about, and I know your staff has been out to talk to folks in the Junction and have another meeting coming up planned, but would love to get a more of a handle on what the work plan looks like for those engagements for this year.

Sure, I'll talk briefly about it, the station area planning, but yes, you are correct.

We'll be scoping that work this year and we'll be working on that junction and other areas of station area planning in 2019, 2020, sorry.

Just about the accomplishments, of course, the biggest work has been focused on the mandatory housing affordability.

Thank you, council members.

They voted 9-0 to pass that this year, but a lot of the bulk of the work was completed from my office in 2018. The equitable development initiative, the second round funding was completed in In 2018, through that process, approximately $16 million were spoken for, for 15 different organizations with different levels of capacity and funding program.

That includes, so those 15 projects and organizations, we're working with them, managing their contracts.

So staff is working with each one of them.

All of them are in different stages.

Some of them are for capacity building, others for property acquisition or capital.

An example is the Refugee and Immigrant Family Center, which recently acquired its own property.

So this is an organization in Delridge that has been supporting the neighborhood for over three decades.

They were threatened by displacement last year.

The owner of the property had put the property up for sale.

The group applied for the EDI funding, and they got, I believe, $850,000 to be able to purchase the building that they were operating in.

Now they have a permanent home, and that's one of the good examples of where the EDI program has been effective.

And then another project, the Duwamish Valley Action Plan, which we completed last year, but this is also an ongoing project.

It's a multi-departmental coordinated project working with the community groups.

This is one of the example, the pilots that we used when OPCD started.

and to demonstrate how we work across departments.

This was a pilot for the capital cabinet structure that started late 2016, but now under Mayor Jenny Durkan, it continues as part of this capital sub-cabinet process.

So the Duwamish Valley Action Plan is one accomplishment last year, which will continue.

Now I'll go sort of quickly on 2019 work plan.

The comprehensive plan is the key project over the next few years.

We are required to adapt the next updates by June of 2023. We are going to begin early scoping of that work, initially looking at engagements, RET racial equity toolkit process and racial equity analysis this year as part of the precursor to some of the policy issues we'll identify starting 2020 where the full-blown comprehensive plan update process will be started.

And there is also Some comprehensive plan amendment work will be docketing by, I guess, this year, and that will also engage the comp plan process.

Another focus this year and a priority has been looking at housing choices issues.

This is putting together a data intensive analysis and background report we will complete in May to inform, you know, how the market rates housing is doing and what is missing and what is the market providing that we should start thinking about to address gaps in housing choices.

This is background information that's going to inform Mayor Durkan's Affordable Middle Income Housing Advisory Committee that is working to identify ways we can fill the gap where the affordable housing program or the market is not providing.

So the housing choices report will help inform that conversation and policy that would come out of that.

And 2019, we'll be having an EDI funding.

And the third round, we announced last April $5 million for this year.

We expect anywhere from four to six organizations to be supported through that program.

We have a June 5th deadline for applications.

That work will be significant this year.

But we also have a required monitoring program.

as part of the Equitable Development Initiative Implementation Plan.

So by third quarter of 2019, we'll be developing the Equitable Development Outcome Indicators Report.

This is a phase one of a two-phased report.

The second phase scheduled for 2020, it will highlight displacement risk indicators.

Those are kind of key project items for this year.

We'll also be putting together a permanent advisory board for the EDI by the end of the year.

Council Member Herbold, you asked about station area planning, so there's been a significant amount of work.

in community planning in the 130th and 145th station area that started this year, and it will continue through that.

This looks at station access, station planning, and land use issues.

We're working with SDOT on mobility, planning for the area, and then some potential relevant infrastructure investments there.

Another work that was initiated this year, if you recall, as part of the Washington State Convention Center approval process, entitlement process, there was a $1.5 million identified to conduct a technical feasibility study for potential lidding or putting a lid over the I-5 somewhere between Denny all the way to Madison.

This is a study that we have already initiated.

We've hired a local consultant firm, WSP, as a project consultant.

And there's a big community advisory group that was put together to help steer and direct a lot of the options and evaluation.

The purpose of the study is to have feasibility, mostly structural and engineering, and to a certain extent, potential park versus land development potential.

So we know what it would cost and what it would take to actually lid the I-5.

That study is expected to be completed by the end of the year or early 2020.

Can you outline who's in the community advisor group?

I can send you the list of their representatives from different, a wide variety of different, both technical, but also community representatives.

I'll be happy to send you the list.

Thank you.

So the broader station area planning as part of ST3, we've been working with multiple departments, primarily SDOT and Sound Transit, to scope out 14 potential new stations from West Seattle to Ballard.

By far, this is probably going to be the most significant investment in the city of Seattle, probably ever, that's going to impact and transform the city significantly over the next several years.

So we're working very closely with multiple agencies, specifically ST and city departments, to start scoping and outlining the work plan around station area planning.

Our work, ST, Sound Transit, is responsible for the station itself, the immediate surrounding, the transit-oriented development opportunities, including equitable transit development opportunities, land use, All of the things that land use related uses that affect how the station functions and how we take advantage of that is a critical component of that study, starting from junction to any number of station areas throughout the city.

Quickly, as part of the mandatory housing affordability as follow-up, we have two kind of areas of potential significant work items.

Council's companion resolution for MHA has a number of requirements that we have that affect OPCD, of course.

And this is not exhaustive.

Things such as monitoring changes in housing developments, tree canopy, planning in some specific neighborhood areas, and a number of other companion resolutions that would follow up on MHA.

The mayor has also been very much focused on, through executive order on displacement, but also a number of other actions that she wants to address relevant to MHA that will be a significant work plan.

for 2019 primarily, but will continue in 2020, probably beyond as well for some of them.

So that's kind of the high level overview of OPCD and 2018 and 2019 and 2020. So I'll be happy to take any questions you have.

Council Members?

Council Member Herbal?

Thank you.

So yesterday, coincidentally, I met with the residents of the Halcyon Manufactured Home Association, and they were doing the rounds with council members to find out where things were at with the development of the legislation that Council sort of sketched out a work plan for when Council passed the moratorium and I'm looking at both of you because the work plan that was in the legislation identified roles for both departments and specifically what's due right about now in order to do all the SEPA review and determination of environmental impacts and all that so that we have a bill before us before the moratorium rolls out or ends, which I think is sometime in the fall, is that right about now we are supposed to have an analysis of the current land uses, development trends, draft legislation, and have conducted SEPA review on proposed regulations.

And so that was in the work plan that accompanied the ordinance.

The mayor sent us a letter, sort of a, Decline to sign letter for folks Information and refreshing of memory The letter referred to that work plan in the in the ordinance as advisory in nature And I don't see reference to it in the your proposed work plans.

So can you just talk to us a little bit about what it is that you are looking to do?

It looks like the mayor is considering this work plan advisory, but she referred in her declined to sign letter to some other work that was happening that involves residents that residents are unaware of.

any other alternatives being developed.

So it would be great to learn a little bit more.

There's a lot.

This is an elderly community.

There's a lot of anxiety, a lot of concern that people are exhibiting mental health issues because of the housing insecurity that they're experiencing.

So we have started some of the preliminary work to understand what land use options exist and what other sort of mechanisms exist to address that issue.

We haven't reviewed it with the mayor yet.

We're preparing that as we speak.

And once I know in terms of the direction she wants to go, I'll be happy to tell you, but the work has started in terms of exploring.

Staff is looking at sort of what are the issues and the mayor definitely is concerned about that as well.

And I know some of her staff are exploring it as well.

But my office has started sort of looking at the site issues and what options, what are the guardrails, what leverage do we have or don't have, and what are the possibilities via MHA versus current land zoning.

So that early analysis has started, but we haven't reviewed it with the executive yet.

And is the proposing of a new zoning designation to protect the existing use, is that among the options that you're considering?

We're not even close there.

We have very preliminary analysis of sort of understanding what is there currently and then asking the question of Is that, you know, can you put that as a way to restrict?

I have no idea.

So there's a list of options.

The next step is publishing ZIPA threshold determination in June.

And as you guys know, there are legal timelines with all of these different steps.

And if we don't do them, then we run up against the moratorium and we run out of time to take final action if we haven't taken these steps.

So I'm sharing with you the anxiety of the community members that I met with yesterday.

I'll get back to you with timeline.

Thank you.

Councilor O'Brien.

I appreciate your attention to this council member Herbold.

I know that The intervention we did a few months ago was Was a great step and it was just an intervention The rest of the thing continues to roll on until we resolve it and I know it's a tricky issue, but thanks Any further questions, I'll just mention you guys got a lot of work you got a robust team over there I really appreciate the passion and dedication of your team, Sam.

And just the single topic of stationary planning with light rail coming to so many neighborhoods alone could keep 44 people overwhelmed.

And the EDI work, there's an amazing amazing opportunities that that provides and you got an amazing team there too.

And so just thank you and thanks for your team to keep doing that work.

And I know they're probably overworked, but really appreciate the dedication.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Director Torgelson.

Great.

Nathan Torgelson, Director of the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections.

Welcome and congratulations, Council Member Pacheco.

Thank you.

It's great to have you on board.

I just want to start out.

Sam's a technology expert as well.

Do you mind driving?

Sure.

So just to remind the PLEZ committee of SDCI's purpose and values.

Next slide.

Every day we come to work and adhere to this purpose and values, and this is something really important to our work.

Next slide.

We have 375 current employees in six divisions, and I really want to thank staff.

staff are working under unprecedented permitting levels and unprecedented code compliance issues.

And depending on who you're talking to, we're making decisions too quickly or not making decisions nearly quickly enough, or there's too much regulation or not enough regulation.

So I think staff do a remarkable job balancing those demands every day on the job.

Like Mr. Assefa highlighted, we have a commitment to diversity and equity in our department.

Just looking at the stats for 2018, new hires, 50% identified as people of color and 52% as women.

And promotions, 45% people of color and 32% women.

Overview of our department, we have a budget of almost $85 million.

And again, a reminder that 91% of that budget is funded by permit and other revenues.

It's not general fund.

We issued over 51,000 permits in 2018. We reviewed over 9,800 enforcement complaints.

We've registered over 31,000 rental properties comprised of 159,000 units.

Again, this is a very important, fairly new component of our work.

And we responded to over 1,700 tenant assistance inquiries, and that resulted in a lot of cases for our Landlord Tenant Unit and for our Tenant Relocation Assistant Ordinance Program.

So what we do every day, obviously we review and issue permits.

We're implementing 17 city codes.

We run the city's design review program.

We do inspections.

We do code enforcement.

We run the tenant protection and rental inspection program.

We work on a variety of land use code revisions in addition to the great work that OPCD does.

And we're out in the community every day engaging, especially in our tenant landlord unit.

In 2018, we issued almost 700 master use permits, 6,600 building permits, almost 24,000 electrical permits.

And last year, we permitted about 7,800 net new residential units.

And we are, just as a comparison, we are a smaller city than our city to the south, San Francisco, and they're issuing about 3,000 new building units a year.

So we're doing a little faster on production, and as we know, we desperately need new housing units.

And you've been at this pace for a number of years.

Correct.

What we do, again, over 195,000 inspections in 2018, and you can see the breakdown of the different types of inspections.

And as I mentioned earlier, we responded to about 9,800 complaints in 2018 in a variety of areas.

Everything from illegal construction, to weeds, to vacant buildings, which has taken on more importance in the past couple years, to trees.

Again, as Councilmember O'Brien referred to, permit intakes actually increased from 2018 over 2017. The intake value increased.

Our issuance value is actually down just a little bit.

And that permit count, 11,000, that includes building permits, mechanical permits, and tenant improvement permits.

So here's a graph that just shows the number of residential units that we permitted.

We're thinking that most of these units are getting built given the robust housing market.

Again, we are a little bit down in 2018, but the last four years are the highest in the city's history.

And then again, looking at building permit intake, the last three years, over 7,000 building permits coming in every year.

Council Member O'Brien.

Nathan, on the graph you show 8,353.

This may be the sum of both.

And then previously, you said 7821. Is the difference the red line there, the demolitions or something?

Correct.

Yeah.

So the net number is 7,800.

The total number of new units is 8,300.

But there are some demos as part of those new permits.

But as you can see, the number of units that have been demolished is a very small percentage of the overall number of new units.

There's a lot more blue than red on that map.

Right.

But probably about 85% of that blue is unaffordable.

Because I think I saw a stat in the Times recently, RealtyTrack, analyzed housing production in the region over the last 10 years and 85% of it is defined as luxury housing.

Yeah, I don't know what the term for luxury is, but we know that market rate in the city is beyond the reach of so many folks.

That's correct.

We are producing more affordable units than ever, given the increased affordable housing levy amounts.

The mayor is certainly now focused on the affordable middle income range, but a lot of the units that aren't being produced are at the higher income levels.

Can you speak briefly about the permit review times?

Yes, I will get to that and I'll explain what we're doing to address that.

That's a really important question.

So I just want to really thank the City Council for last year's part of the budget process adopting our new fee ordinance.

We did raise and restructure our building permit and land use hourly fees.

This helps support our term limited positions so we can have staff on board to respond to the levels of permits.

And it also helps us fully fund a core staffing reserve.

So what our department experienced in the past is when the economy cooled off because Over 90% of our budget is fee-driven, and we're in a position where we have to lay off a lot of staff.

And then when the economy comes roaring back, which it always does, we are always behind because we have to go through the hiring process, and then we have to train staff, and we're always behind.

So with these fee changes, we'll be in a position in the next downturn where We don't have to lay off as many staff and we'll be able to retain a core staffing reserve.

So those employees who are trained and have the knowledge will be ready when the economy comes roaring back.

So again, I just want to really thank Council for supporting us on that.

It's a huge investment for the future for our department.

Just briefly, from 2000 to 2016, our land use hourly billing rate was unchanged.

So we slowly started to change that.

And last fall, Council, you voted to raise that rate to $386 an hour.

which fully catches us up to the rate of inflation.

And then on building permit fees, we did raise the fees for projects of valuation of over a million dollars.

We did not touch those projects under a million dollars, just recognizing the smaller builders.

And we also sort of reset the building valuation data table.

So fees are based on the value of the project and we had not course corrected the values of project based on construction costs in this region.

So that was an important adjustment as well to more truly affect what's going on in the market in the Seattle metropolitan area.

So I just wanted to recognize that it was actually a year ago yesterday that we rolled out our new permitting system, Accela.

The previous system, Hanson, which a lot of people forget, was actually out of date, unsupported, and was failing daily.

So it was crucial that we migrated to a new system.

Accela does allow for a citywide platform.

SDOT and the Office of Sustainability and the Environment are using this platform as they make improvements.

And Accela will result in better process efficiencies, as I mentioned, increased coordination with other departments, and better automation.

However, we did have a really rocky rollout that negatively impacted our customers and also people who live and work in Seattle who are trying to track permits.

We have worked really hard over the past year to continue to make improvements to Accela.

I'm very sorry about the challenges that we've had.

We have invested over $3 million with Seattle IT to continue to make improvements.

And so we're getting there, but we're gonna need a little bit more time.

Council Member Hobel.

What are the top level improvements that you feel is really important for SDCI to focus on?

We just need to make the platform more customer-friendly.

I will say, sort of addressing Councilmember Pacheco's concerns, we are hiring additional staff.

Our master use permit land use times are way behind.

We've had some major retirements in land use this year.

We're quickly hiring additional staff.

We do have some additional steps as a result of the incentive zoning audit and the mandatory housing affordability.

We need to make sure that we're capturing the correct number of dollars as part of that.

So we're working to better streamline that process as well.

And we are using contingent budget authority to hire additional temporary staff for up to two years, and we've extended that.

So when we do have turnover or when people retire, those people who are in the contingent budget authority positions are well positioned to be competitive for those permanent positions.

I'd just like to get a little bit more of a flavor of what you define as making Acela more customer-friendly.

What does that look like?

So we have created short videos online to help people through the process.

We find that people respond much better to videos than to information online.

We have a help center that helps people get through that process in the beginning when things were so complicated.

We had a direct phone line that people could call in and get feedback immediately that day to help them through the process.

There's a drop down menu that we've just added to Excel so people can zoom in on the exact type of permit that they're looking for.

And I'd be happy to give you, there's been a ton of various improvements.

I'd be happy to pass that on.

More for what the customer service related improvements are moving forward.

It's primarily hiring additional staff to address those issues in Seattle IT.

Would you be willing to report back to this committee just in terms of permit statuses and customer service?

I'd be happy to do that.

Thank you.

The city's design review program that was updated in 2017 went into effect on July 1st.

And just as a reminder, The primary changes were to simplify and raise the thresholds for design review and to focus the board on larger, more complex projects.

We added the requirement for early community outreach.

That's a process that the Department of Neighborhoods oversees, and we did include some technology improvements and additional training for design review board members.

All the design review board members go through RSGI training, for example.

The early outreach process, again, is with the Department of Neighborhoods.

It requires developers to notify residents and businesses of projects coming up in their neighborhood.

If you can see the map on the PowerPoint slide, we have equity areas where we do require some additional steps for the developers as far as providing information in other languages and reaching out to underrepresented populations.

Our neighborhood, our list of neighborhood councils given to developers?

Yes, absolutely.

Council Member Havel?

One of the things that we heard in public comment is that there's a perception that the early outreach component isn't functioning as people had hoped it would.

You know, this was the position or testimony of a single person.

But the feeling was is that during early outreach, It's not perceived that there are actually changes to the project during that component.

And so when design review begins its work, in their minds, all of those issues that may have come up in design review have been addressed.

And so one of your bullets is that allows design review meeting to focus on design, which I believe was the intent.

But I think the perception was that there was going to be more happening that would actually affect a proposal during the early outreach piece.

So I would recommend that SDCI and the Department of Neighborhoods would come back to your committee and talk a little bit more about that.

This was, I think, one of the, I don't want to say experiments, but one of the things Council thought was worth trying as part of the design review legislation when you amended the legislation.

I'm sure there's room for improvement and we're learning through that process.

I'm sure there are examples where It hasn't been satisfactory to the neighborhood, and other examples where perhaps it has been helpful.

The idea is when the developer reaches out initially to the neighborhood, the project is still very conceptual.

And so it'd be interesting to talk to some developers, too, to see how they see the process.

Is it helping them in their ultimate design of the project, or do they just see it as a box they have to check?

the term that was used in public comment.

Council Member O'Brien.

I appreciate the opportunity to have that conversation.

I just commented anecdotally in conversations with community members and developers.

My sense is the frustration is less about, and even in the comment today, is less about the process necessarily and not the outcomes.

And I think there's a policy choice that we intentionally make which says things like parking are not subject to design review.

You know, when we zone something and says, you can build a four-story apartment building here, you can build a four-story apartment building.

And there are narrow things that we say, we would like community feedback on this.

We'd like this volunteer board to review that.

And I think a lot of folks are frustrated, the constraints at which they can do that.

And I think that's a fair policy question.

There are other jurisdictions.

I think San Francisco may be being one who's doing about a third as much housing as we are.

longer process that often results in projects not happening.

And I think we've intentionally not done that.

And so there's, I think it would be good to try to understand the concerns are like either I'm not getting notified or when I show up it's too early in the process versus I just want a different thing built.

And they're not listening to me and changing it and the city's not telling me to build something different.

You know, that's all along a spectrum, and so figuring that out would be good.

I appreciate that.

So last year, Council passed neighborhood parking legislation to provide more flexibility.

One of the great things about this legislation is that it allows owners of existing multifamily buildings who have unused parking, which we found there were quite a few, to be able to lease out that parking.

to people who live in the surrounding neighborhood.

And the legislation also requires that parking leases are separate from the leases for housing units.

So we do have a lot of people in Seattle now that don't own cars.

They shouldn't necessarily be paying for a parking space that they're not going to use.

Renting in Seattle, Council Member Herbold.

I just remember another piece of work around this that we had talked about, and I thought there was something more coming back to us.

It was the experiment that is going on up in Capitol Hill about public use of underutilized building parking.

There's like a...

Yeah, Capitol Hill Housing was working on that.

We'll check on that.

Okay, all right.

So next, renting in Seattle.

Again, I really want to thank council members for championing this program, Council Member Herbold, in particular, and other council members.

The idea here is that there are a lot of departments involved in tenants' rights and tenants' regulations and assisting tenants.

So late last year, we launched a sort of one-stop dedicated website for tenants and for landlords.

and established a dedicated helpline.

And so we are working hard to get the word out about this website and we're seeing sort of increased traffic on the phone line and on the website.

And I encourage you all to check out the website.

I think we did a great job and nice graphics and pretty easy to navigate.

So a great new tool and thank you to council members.

We continue to do a lot of outreach to our tenant and our landlord communities.

We did over 30 events in 2018 and we have over 50 planned in 2019 when the year will be We have a great partnership with our Office of Civil Rights on a joint training curriculum for landlords.

We do quarterly landlord workshops.

We're working with the Seattle Housing Authority at their voucher orientation.

And we've done targeted outreach in various neighborhoods, such as South Park and in New Holly.

And we've done quite a bit of advertising about these resources in various ethnic media publications in the city.

So looking forward to 2019, some of the legislation, the electrical vehicle charging legislation that Council Member O'Brien has been helping to champion, I believe just passed through full council.

Congratulations.

The vessel definition legislation that you just heard about.

We'll also be bringing to you some zoning changes for Seattle Pacific University as they want to expand.

Some of the issues that we're working with this year, we've awarded our tenant outreach grants.

This was money that council gave to the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections.

MHA implementation, again, we're working on that.

The program is in effect.

The vacant building monitoring program implementation under Council Member Herbold's.

leadership taking a more proactive role looking at vacant buildings in Seattle.

I just wanted to highlight two huge complex projects that have been going through our permitting process.

One is obviously the Seattle Center Arena.

The demolition and site work has started on that project for the NHL facility.

And then finally, Northgate has been somewhat under the radar screen, but Northgate is going to radically change over the next 15 years.

Light rail opening in 2021. Simon Properties is proposing over 1,500 units of housing, which is pretty significant, but that's exactly where we want housing next to the light rail station.

And the NHL practice facility, which at this point is proposed to be three rinks and will have public access.

So that'll be a great amenity in North Seattle.

We need to have on the light rail trains in addition to the bike racks, like a hockey gear rack for the folks going and taking their kids to practice.

So I know, sorry.

No, I just had a few follow up questions.

What proactive outreach are you doing with businesses and public institutions or some of the universities and colleges across the city with regards to outreach for, proactive outreach for students or for some of the young people that are moving to Seattle?

to promote the renting tool?

That's an excellent question.

I'll have to get back to you on that, like what outreach we're doing for students.

I know we have Get Engaged members on our various boards.

I believe we have a Get Engaged member on our design review board.

As far as outreach to students at our community colleges and our institutions of higher learning, I don't know.

We'll get back to you on that.

If you're referring specifically to the renting piece and letting folks know what their rights are, I know, and it's the fact that one of our universities has a program certainly isn't sufficient, but I know of one in particular, there's a program at the University of Washington that is focused on making sure that people who are becoming new tenants know what their rights are.

But again, this is really, as you say, important information for new tenants to have, regardless of what institute of higher learning you're attending.

Great question.

Then as a follow-up, just Given some of the delays that I think the backlog of permits, do you have any recommendations that you can report back to the committee with regards to trying to?

Yes, we're involved in a lot of discussions with the mayor's office about this.

It's something of great interest to the Affordable Middle Income Advisory Committee right now, so we're working hard on that.

Happy to report back to this committee.

I think you are going to move into another discussion that you were asked to, but just another work plan related question.

2018 after receiving a similar briefing before the PLEZ committee, members of the PLEZ committee including our alternate wrote to Mayor Durkin about our concern that a really high priority issue was not called out on STCI's work plan and that's implementation of recommendations related to unreinforced masonry.

So I'm just wanting to bring that up again.

There are 77 buildings with critical vulnerability.

The recommendations are to stage our responses by focusing first on those 77 buildings, which means we can't get to the other the other 200 or so buildings that are less vulnerable until we start moving on those.

It's estimated to get through the list of buildings between seven and 13 years, but the clock is, we can't get to a seven year time frame until we start it.

Thank you for Councilmember Herbold for bringing up unreinforced masonry buildings a very complex and difficult issue and really the one issue that keeps me up at night If you recall last year the city hired the National Development Council, which is a national not-for-profit community development organization To come up with a financing strategy for how to address these buildings in Seattle We are just completing that report and we look forward hopefully to coming back to council Soon with the results of that analysis Correct.

Yeah.

Thank you

Director Torgerson, I know I speak for everybody on this committee, I just want to take a moment as we transition to the incident over the weekend, just to send our condolences to all those impacted, as well as on Monday we learned that one of the victims was a former staff member and deputy director of your department.

And while I know that we have limited information at this point, I wanted to give you a moment to, Speak to the role that is DC.

I played in the aftermath of the incident Thank you, so

I just wanted to recognize that one of the victims was Alan Justed, who is the former Deputy Director of the Department of Planning and Development.

He worked for the city for 31 years, is survived by three daughters.

I'm in contact with the family.

We'll let you know when the memorial service is.

It's just...

he was also our media spokesperson, so it's just a tragic irony, so...

Both the Office of Planning and Community Development and the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections are really grieving through this loss.

Who is responsible for certifying and inspecting the tower cranes?

Is that SDCI or a different entity?

So under state law, state labor and industries is responsible for tower cranes.

So they have a very rigorous process for certifying the cranes and the setup and the removal of those cranes.

So SDCI has no regulatory authority under the current policy construct that exists?

That's correct.

Could we?

I mean, one of the things that's been suggested is that we might want to look at additional regulations above and beyond what state law requires.

One thing that has been suggested is that we could have our own regulation that would require that a technician, a company, the worker who's taking apart the crane.

There's been speculation that the pins were pulled going up instead of coming down at the end in order to save time.

but there is a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it.

And having a technician accompany the worker to make sure that it's being done the correct way is one thing that's been suggested.

Another has been suggested that we could potentially require via a Seattle ordinance that there be a flagger on the street when the crane is being taken apart itself.

Is that something that we have the authority to do or is it somehow preempted?

So I don't want to speculate on what happened on site.

I think we need to wait for the investigation of state labor and industries.

I would sort of recommend finding out what happened there before the city looks at additional regulations.

I don't know if we have the authority or not.

I think that's good advice.

We should find out exactly what happened before trying to make any sort of regulatory correction here.

I was more giving that as an example just to see whether or not we had the authority or not.

But I understand that's something we probably should have to take a look at internally to see whether or not the area is preempted.

Thank you.

Again, our condolences go to the family and those impacted.

Thank you.

As well as the workers, we have labor represented here in the audience today.

And we've lost a number of folks, and it's definitely very tragic.

I just want to stress that I have been out to the site.

One of our senior building inspectors has been out there.

One of our lead structural engineers has been out to the site.

We will begin working very carefully with the engineer of record and the building owner developer and the contractor on the path forward.

They will need several permits from our department.

Thank you.

Well, our final item of business today is the 2018 Race and Social Justice Initiative for both OPCD and SDCI.

Noah, would you please read this into the record?

Agenda item four, Office of Planning and Community Development and Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections 2018 Race and Social Justice Initiative Report.

Directors Torgelson and Salfa.

And we have additional staff coming up as well.

Thank you.

Could you please introduce yourselves and kick us off?

Hi.

Hello.

My name is Ian Dapiawan.

I'm with the Office of Planning and Community Development.

I'm Jared Bigelow.

I'm with SDCI.

Great.

Well, thank you for having us here again.

We're going to give you sort of an overview of our RSGI collaboration and where we are with our team.

Just to note, both SPCI and OPCD consistently collaborate to advance this rights and social justice, and Nathan and I work closely as well as our staff.

So we're going to give you sort of a general updates where we are.

Before we do that, I just want to say on behalf of SDCI and OPCD that we would like to actively recognize that we live and enjoy a land of indigenous people who lived here before us thousands of years ago and continue to do, specifically the traditional and current territories of the Coast Salish people.

This is very important, especially for our function as kind of custodians of city land policy.

It is important that we know the past in order to plan for the future, and we have been making a lot of effort in that area.

And the first point of starting for us is recognize the people who lived here before.

And as we talk through this, we'll also show examples of how we're operationalizing that thought and idea where it becomes a very effective act by our departments.

So with that,

Okay, and I just want to emphasize that we obviously used to be the Department of Planning and Development.

We're two different departments, but we have decided to keep a joint change team, which I think has been really effective, and we work together every day as two different departments, and it just made sense to us to keep one change team.

We do a lot of the current planning, and OPCD does a lot of the implementation and policy development.

So, council members, I know you're familiar with our home fairs.

We're focusing on 2018 accomplishments.

We had a South Seattle home fair in 2018. about one-third of the attendees were people of color, and we had 150-plus attendees.

I know I'm kind of jumping into 2019, and that's supposed to be part of my presentation next year, but this year we expanded.

We had both a home fair in South Seattle and one in North Seattle, and I know Councilmember O'Brien, I just wanted to thank you.

I know you were able to attend the home fair that was in your district.

And I know staff and the people who attended really appreciated having you there.

Thank you.

I appreciate being there.

I'm blown away at the attendance at the fair.

And I really can tell that you guys have committed to doing this work.

And it was a winter weekend, but it was a sunny day.

There are hundreds of folks that came through there, packed into the community center.

All sorts of information being shared and just, you know, it's a great face of the city to come into community.

So thanks for your work on that.

For the benefit of people watching on TV at the home fair, there are a lot of SDCI staff, but there are staff from many other agencies, both from within the city and outside of the city.

It's a relaxed environment where homeowners and renters can talk to staff.

And we also have presentations, for example, on landslide awareness.

and earthquake, retrofitting your home, and various topics like that.

So it's, I think we put a lot of work into it, but I think it's a really important service that we provide to the community.

And also, as I mentioned in my previous presentation, we continue to do more and more tenant outreach to various tenant groups and individual tenants.

So that's an important part of our work.

And then we also, OPCD continues to advance RSJI issues in community planning and in each of the areas.

Just some examples, Imagine Greater Downtown, we've been working on that.

In the last several months, we made extra efforts to actually get the voices of people of color who don't normally feel like they can come to downtown just to ask the right questions to really understand what we need to do as we plan for the downtown, how to respond to some of the issues that we have heard already through that process.

A lot of people don't feel comfortable to come to downtown.

We reached out to indigenous groups to really understand their perspective as well and how that then could help inform the future, either the waterfront planning and a lot of the focus in the downtown area to be affected by that kind of engagement.

And we continue to do that and increase our efforts, including with Department of Neighborhoods currently going through major transformation to advance and improve our engagement, especially in outreach to people who don't normally engage.

For the equitable development initiative, we assembled a 15-member advisory board to help determine criteria for projects receiving EDI funding.

And they're also going to help us review stories that will be in the EDI monitoring report.

We had two great events last year, an EDI mini conference at the Seattle Design Festival and a convening event at El Centro de la Raza in November.

Another accomplishment, our Indigenous Seattle Initiative.

So this was created last year, early last year, to educate our department and our communities about indigenous people, their culture, histories, and how they can influence our work in a meaningful way.

We had four trainings, events last year, as you can see on the screen.

In addition, in the office, we have a indigenous Seattle intern by the name of Owen Oliver, who's been excellent.

He recently organized a conversation circle at the University of Washington between OPCD and First Nations.

And he also co-wrote the land acknowledgement that Sam read earlier.

So one of the programs we started a couple of years ago at OPCD, this Urban Innovation Speaker Series, we hold about three events a year around topical issues that affect Seattleites.

In 2018, we focused the themes around race and social justice issues and the role of planning, zoning, and policies about land use and how that affects people of color.

Last, in February, we launched the Central Vision.

It's a documentary in the central district, in the central area, that we worked with local artists and local activists, and we funded the program to have them tell their stories about the impacts the neighborhood is going through as a result of displacement risks.

In May, we held an event, an equitable development investment focused, brought speakers from outside the city, from other cities as well as local, and we held it at the Ethiopian community of Seattle.

We started taking out the urban innovation speaker series to neighborhoods as well.

And then last December, held a color of law.

Richard Rothstein, it's a seminal book that he recently wrote about the history of zoning and its impact on how race-based it is throughout the country, and Seattle is one of them.

It was a very Informative discussion with other panelists as well, and it's a requirement for staff to read it as well internally.

And it is helping us inform our work in terms of, again, the history of it, and then what do we need to do to mitigate that as we're crafting policies as, you know, city departments.

The Urban Innovation Speaker Series would continue this year.

I'm encouraging Nathan to create one like that at SBCI.

We compete often.

But we're up here together.

Yeah.

Sounds like siblings.

Twins.

I do get you guys mixed up a lot.

As I mentioned earlier, late last year, our Renting in Seattle website went live.

The information on the website is available in 13 languages.

We also included voter registration information as part of that website.

And we have a central phone number, and we're getting about 100 calls a month right now, but I'm expecting that as we get the word out, that number's gonna tick up pretty significantly.

So for 2018, SDCI focused mostly on internal training to sort of rebuild our RSJ commitment.

We started out by getting about 75% of our executive strategic advisor and management teams into a more comprehensive implicit bias training.

Additionally, we made some revamps to our hiring process.

Now, we allow potential candidates to have access to interview questions 15 minutes before, which we found is a big help to applicants that don't speak English as their first language.

Additionally, we're requiring fewer cover letters for certain positions, which is also a barrier for access.

And then, finally, we're also withholding the names and resumes prior to the start of the interviews for certain positions, which has also helped us reduce the bias in the hiring process.

Finally, we also had the central vision showings.

We did one committee showing back in February with OPCD, and then we had four internal staff showings, I think, in October of 2018. It kind of got our staff thinking about the impact of our work.

I appreciate the range of things that you're talking about here, and the specific one about allowing interviewees to have access to the questions 15 minutes before is something My office recently did.

Someone picked it up from someone else doing this in the city.

And like a lot of things, when we focus on how to make sure that everyone has equal access, it makes the whole process better for everyone.

It does.

We've heard positive things about it.

It's a really great outcome.

So it's great to hear that.

And I'm happy to have stolen it from somebody in the city.

Us too.

Thanks.

Nathan.

Design Review Boards.

As I mentioned earlier, the Design Review Boards are going through RSGI training, especially as all the new board members come on.

Sam will refer to Sam's department oversees the Design Commission and the Planning Commission, the EDI Advisory Board, and of course the Dawn Historic Review Boards are all going through that RSGI training.

Are those trainings, like, will the Northeast Review Board go through it together, or is it more that there's a city to trainings and there's an expectation that members from these various committees should?

I think Jared can correct me, but I think we have multiple training opportunities, and board members go to the one that they're available to go to.

So you would probably have design review board members from Northeast and West Seattle going to the same training, for example.

And then both design commission and planning commission directors, staff have been working with their commissions on specific trainings for the commissions themselves as well.

And then we, OPCD, have been collaborating with Department of Neighborhoods, PACE program, People's Academy for Community Engagement.

We did a kind of a land use 101 urban planning as settler colonialism training.

It involved graduate students from UW, master planning program as part of that training.

One more piece there that I didn't mention is that the Rio program does allow landlords to hire private inspectors, and those private inspectors also go through the RCI training.

Director Torkelson, jump back up to the bullet that I was going to return to.

I'm taken care of.

I do, I am kind of curious though.

What is the split that we're seeing right now on the Rio program between landlords using private inspectors versus yours?

I don't know, but I'll get that information to you.

Yeah.

So in terms of workforce equity, we had our Seattle Youth Employment Program, as we have in years past.

Last year, we had four people join us.

It was three young men and one woman of color.

Basically, they spent, I think it was about a week and a half, going to different departments within the city, or excuse me, within our work groups, in our department, excuse me, seeing sort of the full scope of the work that we do.

They went with the inspections team, review teams, they went with our communications team.

And then at the end of that, they did produce a video capstone project, which allowed them to get some video editing skills as well.

Additionally, we also expanded the job shadowing program for SCCI employees.

This allows employees to sit with subject matter experts for up to two opportunities of eight hours apiece, so they can kind of see the sorts of jobs they'd like to advance in.

So both of our departments are engaged in racial equity toolkits.

Both OPCD and SCCI are gonna highlight one of those toolkits in the next slides.

So we're undertaking a pretty comprehensive communications plan with an RSGI filter.

And we are providing training for work groups that don't necessarily interact with people of color.

We're talking to historically underrepresented populations to figure out how they can better access our department, providing more materials in different languages, You know, in 2017 and 2018, we did have some unfortunate circumstances where some of our inspectors went out into the field, and there were immigrant and refugee groups who thought our employees were from the INS.

So we made up cards in different languages to give to those populations saying, no, we're from the city of Seattle.

We're here to help you with tenant issues.

So we experience those types of issues when we're out in the field.

And similarly with OPCD this year and actually started last year, we've been focusing on three racial toolkit areas.

One in Chinatown International District in collaboration with OCR and Department of Neighborhoods as part of the ST3 scoping and planning work.

And then Imagine Greater Downtown, as I mentioned earlier, we're also using RET for that project.

You can go to the next slide.

I'm sorry.

You can go to the next slide.

I did that.

So Imagine Greater Downtown, as I mentioned, A.M.

can talk about the specifics.

But this is, we have an, We've been focusing a lot about the public realm in the downtown and how it is used.

And for that, sort of the equity outcomes are an important component in outreach and engagement.

We've heard a lot of responses.

from multiple groups who felt what their needs are in terms of for them to be comfortable in coming to downtown so that we could take that into consideration as part of our sort of policy recommendations.

All right, for SDCI, the main thing we're looking at for 2019 is to initiate the staff training plan that we had developed in 2017 and had approved by our executive team in 2018. This focuses in on our change team members, just making sure that we get more training in implicit bias, things like that.

Additionally, we look to increase the amount of required RSJ courses for all staff.

We are planning on rolling out an Equity Innovation Workshop, which is basically workgroup workshops to look at RSJ issues on a smaller scale than would require a race and equity toolkit.

And finally, we're looking at updating our combined change team charter to better reflect the scope of the work that we're trying to do now, as well as better define the commitments from staff that we require.

For OPCD side, just strengthening our work practices and team building, I think putting our work to, working our plan and planning our work, putting everything into practice is important.

and to continue to support our indigenous intern.

And then we hope to take a field trip to the Wing Luke redlining exhibit.

So we're looking forward to that.

That concludes our update.

Thank you.

And thank you for providing an update on very important work.

And thank you, my colleagues, for being great allies in this work.

I really appreciate how you started off with how we design our city has a huge impact and how we've designed the city over the last hundred years has a huge impact on whose benefit and who continues to struggle in the city and I really appreciate the recognition of the importance of the work that you and your teams do on a day-in day-out basis.

We've added a whole host of things that your departments cover, but it's critically important work and it's great to see the commitment to the RSGI work and really want to lift that up.

And thanks for your team members for doing that.

Thank you.

Thank you for your leadership as well on these issues.

This concludes our May 1st, 2019 meeting of the Planning, Land Use, and Zoning Committee.

As a reminder, our next regular committee will be on May 15th, 2019 starting at 9.30 and here in Council Chambers.

Thank you all for attending.

We are adjourned.