Seattle City Council Budget Committee 10/24/18 Session 1

Good morning, everybody.

It's October 24th, 2018. This is the Budget Committee meeting continuing.

It's 9.36 a.m., and I want to first say thank you to all my council colleagues who stuck it to the end last night.

We had a five-hour public hearing, and I really respect the fact that we had council members.

Juarez was on her TV.

We know that she was there because she was texting me.

Council Member Mosqueda, council member.

O'Brien and Councilmembers Gonzales and Councilmember Herbold were here to the bitter end and I know that Councilmember Johnson and Councilmember Harrell were there watching us as well.

I was watching at home in my pajamas.

I like that.

Five hours, that's like a plus public hearing.

Yeah, that was a good one.

But I really respect and want to say thank you to all the members of the audience that were here too.

It was a very respectful hearing where it was calm and we didn't have a lot of negativity between the speakers.

I appreciate that very much.

So, today we're moving on with our continuing of our deliberation stage of the budget calendar.

All of you know that earlier this week we have reviewed a number of departments.

And thanks to Council Central staff for your good work.

Tracy, you're going to be up today and we appreciate your focus.

And the point about this is that a number of us have identified issues that are high priority for us and that we will be delving into.

how we can fund those, but because we have the need to have a balanced budget, we're going to have to defund other areas.

So part of the presentation today, we're gonna be focusing on Department of Parks and Recreation and Department of Transportation this morning, and then this afternoon, we get into what's called cross-cutting budget issues.

Those are actually cross-departmental and collection of items and either funds or refunding that will deal with multiple departments.

So I thank you for that.

Again, we will have public comment at the end of the day today.

And I appreciate everybody being here.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Gonzalez, you got the prize last night for staying to the end when you were feeling as lousy as you were.

So thank you.

I hope your cold's better.

Okay, with that, Eric and Tracy, do you wanna do introductions and let's dive into parks?

Hi.

Let's go.

Good morning Fairbanks shop members of the committee.

I'm Eric Sund of your council central staff.

And I'm Tracy Ratliff from the council central staff.

Thanks.

So council members you have in front of you the budget deliberation memo for the Department of Parks and Recreation that details the most significant changes to the operating and capital budgets in 2019 and 2020. I say the most significant because this year's budget from Parks included more changes than I can remember actually ever seeing in this department.

I would not bore you with all of the small details of those changes, but have picked out ones that I think are most significant, either in monetary value or in potential policy discussions or decisions.

Tracy, do you think it's because there's different park leadership at committee?

Oh, because of your leadership?

Oh, I'm sure that might have something to do with it.

I think they were willing to look for efficiency.

You've always spoke about efficiency, and I think they really dug deep on the efficiency side of the equation, for sure.

Thank you.

Oh, you are so welcome, Council Member.

So moving to the operating budget, the 2019 proposed operating budget for DPR is $163 million, an increase of $1.9 million or 1.2% over the 2018 adopted budget.

The 2020 proposed operating budget is $166 million, an increase of $2.7 million or 1.7% over the 2019 proposed budget.

The table in the memo shows you the changes in DPR's budget by the budget summary level.

So moving to item number one, the proposed budget would reduce general fund appropriations by $10 million in 2019 and 2020 and would add $10 million in REIT in both of those years used to backfill the general fund cut.

Now this happens by using the REIT to fund Park District supported capital projects, which then frees up that Park District capital funding to cover the operating costs that have been funded by the general fund.

And just to remind folks, the ASPD, the Seattle Park District funds are very flexible funds.

They can actually be used for operating costs or for capital costs.

They are very much like general sub funds.

So that is why the executive was able to facilitate this kind of swap using the Park District funds.

Table one sort of details the backfill and the swap that's happened.

And I'm happy to walk through that with you.

I think it's fairly apparent what is happening there in terms of the REIT dollars in, general fund dollars out, and the Park District being used to backfill.

The general fund operating costs that are being shifted to the park district are consistent with park district funded operating initiatives, except for zoo operations, which is one of the new categories that they have taken relief from the general fund to move to the park district.

Attachment one to my memo shows you the gory details of the costs that were funded by the REIT and then the cost from the operating budget that are being moved to the Park District.

It's there for your information.

I'm happy to walk through it if you need to.

But needless to say, the cost shifts are all very consistent, particularly on the operating side with Park District funded initiatives.

So this funding proposal implies a couple things.

One, that we need to provide an ongoing allocation of REIT in future years, or alternatively to cut the spending in future years if we don't have the REIT, the $10 million of REIT that we're going to use every year, or to come up with another revenue source if by some chance REIT is not available or is not desired to be used for this funding proposal.

No questions about that?

I don't think so.

I think you just have stunned us all into silence.

I'll move on to item two then.

The proposed budget would appropriate $1.7 million in 2019 to support tenant improvements at the new parks office space at 6th Avenue and Wall Street.

113 DPR employees will be relocated from the RDA building where they are currently housed.

That lease is ending in 2019 and They were not able to really reach agreement with the existing owner of that building.

And so they worked with FAS to look at a range of potential options for replacement space and found the office space on 6th and Wall, which actually puts them within walking distance of their main headquarters on Denny.

And I think Parks is pleased about that relocation that will put staff much closer to one another.

I do have one question about this.

I love the concept of moving them closer together.

It does strike me that tenant improvements of 1.7 million for 13 employees may be a bit excessive.

You know, we keep and we've spent for the last several days looking at how much we're spending for people who are homeless and trying to get folks into situations where they have a respectful place to live.

I just found that that strikes me as a lot of money to be spending.

for a very few number of employees.

So the space is 28,000 square feet and could actually house up to 143 employees.

The total TIs are going to be- 1.5 million.

Are going to be higher than the 1.7 because the landlord is paying $2.5 million of those expenses.

And we're not sure that actually even 1.7 million is going to be sufficient.

I'm certainly happy to ask the question of Parks about how they got to that.

and what all goes into that total amount for the TIs.

And just, you know, the plan for the building itself, I think that if we're taking over, what, a whole floor or two?

I can't remember how much.

I think that's right.

Second or third floor.

Anyway, would you just check that out?

Check it out with the FAS because it just feels like a very high number to me for not a lot of benefit.

Madam Chair, did you say 13?

Because it's 113. It's 113 employees.

Just one moment, please.

I thought she said 113. It is 113 up to actually 143 employees who could be housed in this space.

I'm on number two.

113.

Thank you.

I missed that 130. Oh, and I thought you said 113. No, that's what I said.

I'm so sorry.

I saw the 13 DPR employees.

Yes, that would be really high.

It's actually, yeah, a few, all right.

Did you not hear it?

I was wrong, so thank you very much.

Thank you for that.

I appreciate it.

Let's just move on.

So I can take that question off my list?

I still want to know if it's consistent with other things we're paying, but go ahead.

The hard work is still in front of us, which is where we're trying to balance these things.

Now, this is capital money or operating money?

This is capital.

This is capital money.

Yes.

And has this been a need for several years, or is this need recently developed in the last year?

Has this been an ongoing request for several years?

No, this is a one-time request because they're having to move out of their existing office space at the RDA building to this new office space.

So this is a one-time.

The lease is coming to an end in 2019. And so when they got a sense that they were not gonna be able to reach agreement in this past year, that's when they started looking for a new office space.

Thank you.

And I should be clear, this funding is for capital improvements.

I'm going to now describe to you the sources of the funding that are proposed to be used for the $1.7 million.

So $700,000 in unexpended interest earnings on Park District funds, $500,000 in unexpended, unreserved Park District operating fund balance, and $477,000 of Park District major maintenance backlog and asset management capital program funds that are actually being backfilled with a King County Trails Levy will be used to fund this work.

Again, the landlord will be contributing $2.5 million.

And as I stated in the memo, the costs may go up from the 1.7.

We expect that it's likely to go up when they get a little bit further into the lease negotiations and perhaps the solidifying of those costs.

They're expecting it's going to be a little higher.

And if so, they'll come back to us in a 2019 supplemental to ask for additional funds.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold down there.

I appreciate it.

Just wondering whether or not there are any financial policies related to how we are supposed to or what our goals are for using unexpended interest earnings from the Park District?

We're going to actually talk about that as we move along.

But no, because we actually, I wasn't staffing it at the time when the NPD went through.

How'd you been staffing it?

I might have suspected that we would have interest earnings because of the split between operating and capital.

Just as with the housing levy, when we talked about the housing levy, we always made an account for expected interest earnings.

We know that those are generated from particularly when you have capital dollars.

So when the Park District Six-Year Spending Plan was approved, They didn't account for or think about interest earnings being something that would be generated.

And so, obviously, as we've had this last few years of the lag that we know about from the capital spending on the Park District, they've generated $700,000, about $350,000 a year in interest earnings.

and we're going to now start to show those in the spending plan, both on the revenue side and on the expenditure side.

This is the first time that we will actually recognize those interest earnings in the spending plan that we'll adopt in November for the MPD.

We will show those interest earnings coming in and we will show how they're being expended.

We will also, I'm kind of, tipping the hand here on what we're going to talk about later, but we are going to also talk about this as it relates to those being recognized as Park District revenues, separate from being other revenues that have implications for the way that we set the tax rate in frequent years or in forward years.

So your bottom line is, no, we don't have policies, but we're going to have policies and we're going to actually start to show it in the spending plan.

and my druthers would be particularly as we move into the next six-year spending plan that we do a ballpark number there every year based on our experience of our spending on the capital side that will account for those and then the expenditure as well.

Okay, thank you.

So, just quick follow-up on that, Tracy.

I thought that we had agreed when MPD was passed and submitted to the voters that we had a whole set of principles and policies on how we were going to raise the money, how we were going to expend it.

We knew what we were going to spend it on.

So, Council Member Herbold, what are you looking for specifically?

As Tracy said, in other levies, for instance, the housing levy, when we have interest earnings, we typically have policies for how we invest those earnings.

And in this case, it doesn't appear that we do, and I think that would be a good thing to talk about.

Moving on to item number three.

In addition, but separate from the rate shifts that I discussed previously, the proposed budget would shift $1.5 million in 2019 and 2020 in general fund appropriations for parks utility expenses to park district funding.

Reserve fund balance for park district programs is available to use for this purpose over the next two-year period.

However, this proposal will create a new expenditure for the Park District that will need to be addressed as part of the next six-year spending plan, which, again, to remind you, we will have in front of us in the fall of 2020.

Tracy, maybe we should note on the utility cost.

We are going to have a meeting with the Metropolitan Park District meeting that will be addressed November 13th and November 19th, correct?

So we'll be addressing that at the next meeting.

Okay.

Moving on to item number four, the proposed budget would increase the general fund appropriations by $580,000 in 2019 and $1.2 million in 2020 for expected increases in utility costs.

Those utility costs include sewer, which is I think going up on average of 7.5%.

drainage going up on average by 8% and then water, electricity, gas and recycling.

The Parks Department is not immune from the increases that we are seeing in those utilities and every year we have this expected increase that they have to be provided to cover their utility costs.

Just for your information, this is always a shocking thing to me, their utility costs were $12.5 million in 2018. So it's a significant impact on their budget in terms of the utility costs.

So do we know whether or not usage has increased, usage of water, usage of electricity?

I don't know that.

I can ask them whether they can track that or not.

You know, this expense covers not only parks, land and community centers, but it's all the leased facilities as well at Magnuson Park and so forth.

So I will see whether they have information on what those utility expenses look like.

It would be interesting to me to see by the category of activity from the parks property to community centers to these lease facilities.

I do not know if they have that information, but I'll see if they do.

Thank you.

So moving on to item number five, the proposed budget would reduce general fund appropriations for tree maintenance by $881,000 in 2019 and $892,000 in 2020. and provide $1.4 million in Park District capital funding from the Saving Our Forest Capital Initiative to support these maintenance activities.

Seven additional FTEs will be hired to carry out the additional preventative and ongoing maintenance work.

The proposed funding does include an increase of almost $500,000 to support the maintenance activities required due to the accelerated rate at which reforestation has occurred.

To date, 1,500 acres of the targeted 2,500 acres of urban forest have been restored.

This is about 40% of the goal that we've achieved in two and a half years.

for what is a nine-year goal.

It's quite remarkable actually that we're making such good progress.

But because of that, you have more trees that have to be maintained.

And so we're going to be hiring some more tree trimmers and some other folks that have to maintain those trees that are being planted and hopefully thriving.

Realignment with SDOT arborist as well, how are we working that?

Because we know Seattle Public Utilities has arborists, Seattle Department of Transportation has arborists.

How do they coordinate with one another?

I have no idea and I don't know whether they do that on parks property or not.

Only the reason it came up was because of the work we did around City Hall Park this summer.

And I once again want to give parks and their employees just major kudos and thanks for coming in and trimming some trees that hadn't been trimmed in decades.

And SDOT had their arborists out at the same time looking at the SDOT property right around the edges and then also in Fortson Square.

So I know that they're talking, but I don't know how resources work.

Yeah, we'll see whether there's jurisdictional separation between them on, you know, SPU or right away versus

And if one group is out in a particular area, does the other group have to come to do inside the park, or can we do just to make sure that we're being as effective with the money and the staff as possible?

Madam Chair, if I may, Tracy, I would suggest you connect with Yolanda and Eric to talk a little bit more.

In our one year or so of working on the tree protection ordinance updates, I can tell you that we have had real difficulty in finding coordination between different departments about how they spend their budget on trees.

So with the nine different departments that touch trees in some way, shape or form, we have found it to be almost impossible for us to aggregate all of that, both set of responsibilities and So if you, Tracy, can help unlock that logjam, I will be eternally grateful.

And I would love for us to be able to tell a more full story as part of this tree maintenance realignment about how we're spending all of our tree dollars.

But right now, it is a murky story in a dense forest.

This also might be a candidate for a work program for next year.

I'm not certain that in the next three weeks we can get resolution to that question.

No, it's great.

I mean, even being able to paint the picture like Council Member Johnson just described, because he is confirming what my experience has been.

And what is it we're trying to accomplish?

Well, we want the trees cared for.

Of course, we understand and appreciate that there's turf, You know, I think we can do a better job of coordinating.

So, thank you Councilmember Johnson for bringing it up.

Sounds good.

Moving on to item number six, the proposed budget would appropriate 1.2 million dollars in 2019 and 1.7 million dollars in 2020. in general fund and park district funding to support the operations and maintenance of new trails, green spaces and parks.

Seven FTEs would be added in 2019 and two additional FTEs in 2020 to carry out this work.

So the parks that are being funded by this are many of those 14 new parks that were developed with park district funding.

And my memo was incorrect.

There's actually six that are gonna be coming online and opening in 2019 and seven that will be opening in 2020. So if you're wondering why all of a sudden we're seeing a lot of these FTE increases, it's because we're gonna have 14 new parks, 13 new parks, because there's one in operation now that's gonna need to be maintained in addition to the open space acquisitions we've done in the green spaces.

We see this every year in the budget, the amount that they need for these new facility costs.

This year is, these next few years are gonna be a busy year because of those parks finally opening.

Are they taking internal employees and moving them around or are these outside ads?

These would be new.

So I also remember that and have heard from within parks and some of the employees that that their jobs or their positions are being abrogated.

So I don't know how this is all working.

So well the next item we'll talk a little bit more about that.

All right.

I'm sure.

Oh, please.

Thank you.

Two quick questions.

One is my question on number five and six was just I assume that these are in line with the six year spending plan.

All of these.

I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you.

You need to talk.

There we go.

I assume that these changes are in line with the six year spending plan.

They will be.

We will make modifications to reflect these changes in the spending.

OK, great.

And then as I was reading the mayor's proposed budget, especially in the introductory and summary comments related to the Parks Department, it really stuck out to me that at the Fort Lawton facility, we're spending a large amount of money on security, which is a requirement from the U.S.

Army, if I'm correct on that.

I'm wondering if there's any attempt to try to reclaim some funds from any of our federal partners given the requirement that we have what I would perceive as unnecessary security as we work to try to develop that land.

So we are not trying to recoup, I think, security costs.

We are in discussions, I believe, with the VA that has a building next to the Fort Lawton development about some of the utility costs.

which apparently we may have been paying over the years.

We are also looking at sharing those costs with the Seattle Public Schools that's going to be developing a couple of parks out there.

They've actually agreed to pay for a third of all of our costs that have actually accrued over the last two or three years.

So our costs to the city actually will be in part recouped from the public school district coming on board with us.

in terms of helping to maintain that property.

So you just said the school district is going to be developing parks, they're developing playgrounds, or ballparks.

Ballparks, yeah.

Or athletic fields, I guess we're calling them.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay, moving on to item number seven.

The proposed budget would reduce appropriations by $1.2 million annually in 2019 and 2020 by eliminating funding for staff in several different program areas.

This includes the volunteer coordination, activating greenways, gardening, and park maintenance.

A total of 13.6 FTEs are proposed to be abrogated.

Of these, nine FTEs are vacant and 4.6 FTEs are filled.

Of the filled positions, it is anticipated that three will result in actual layoffs.

DPR does not believe that there will be direct service impacts from these abrogations.

Moving on to item number eight, the proposed budget would reduce the appropriations by $134,000 in 2019 and $135,000 in 2020 and abrogate 2.5 FTEs with the planned closure of the Belltown Community Center at the end of 2018. Low utilization of the community center led to the executive's decision to close this facility.

My understanding is that park staff are working with the community, particularly as it relates to community meeting space, and they're gonna try to make the Dexter building available to meet at least the community meeting space needs over the next few years.

I know there are also discussions going on about the potential of a new community center.

And I think those discussions are going to be ongoing to meet perhaps not only the needs of Belltown, but also South Lake Union.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think for those of my neighbors in this area who really want to see the community center of some sort, the disappointing thing is that it's going to be years out.

If we find a spot, and we've talked about the potential of co-locating with the downtown elementary school, that's probably five years out if we're going in that route.

a possibility of putting something new at Denny Park, which requires new space for parks and a community center.

Again, that's a half a decade away.

So I don't know what they're going to do for Belltown other than just shut it down and say, you know, sorry, we're done.

So I think that we need to continue to raise this.

This has been a challenging proposition since 1999, believe it or not, and I remember Lots of efforts being made to try to locate a potential space.

We had a low-income housing project that we thought was going to be a potential eligible site that fell through.

The price of land in that area had really impacted their ability to find affordable space to build a community center.

And what they came up with was the best that they could come up with.

And it was a great little spot.

And a beautiful building, and they spent a lot of money getting that restored.

And it has been used for a lot of things, but still, the numbers of people that use it don't really, it doesn't make sense for the amount of money that they're leasing.

Yeah, Council Member Herbold.

So what typically happens when the city decides to close a space like that?

What will it be used for?

what will that space be used for?

It's privately owned.

So they'll...

So we're not closing it down, we're just no longer leasing it.

No, we're letting the lease end, yes.

All right, thank you.

So I want to just return quickly to number seven about staffing efficiencies.

The last statement is that there's no direct service impacts to the public from these staff reductions.

I would...

I'd like to know a little bit more about that conclusion.

And specifically, if 4.6 FTEs are, so nine are vacant, I get that.

4.6 FTEs are filled, but all the things that they're identifying here, volunteer coordinating, we know that volunteers need coordination.

I mean, when we go out and do the work wherever in the parks, it's not like a free thing.

And there's still, to be clear, there's two other existing volunteers plus a manager in the volunteer coordination office.

So we're not gutting that office.

There's still people.

Unfortunately, we are seeing a trend in which volunteer hours are going down.

And what I understand is, in part to explain that is, we have our volunteers who are getting older.

And they were ones who actually liked to continuously volunteer.

And what they're seeing now with the new wave is folks who like to do one-off kind of events.

They don't want to do ongoing commitments.

They want to do one-off kind of events.

So I think it's a combination of, you know, seeing that the number of volunteers beginning to go down and knowing that they have some existing staff to continue to meet that need that justified for, in their mind anyway, the reduction.

So I do also want to point out that activating greenways and gardening and park maintenance are all things that we feel really strongly about.

So if we're losing 4.6 FTEs and there's no direct service impacts to the public, I really want to know how did they reach that.

I can get you information that they provided about that.

And I just want to say one more thing, and then I'll let whoever.

When you were saying that volunteers have been older, I want to jump in and say thank you to the very young volunteers that were working with us at Denny Park a couple of weeks ago.

A lot of folks from the software companies were there, a school, the kids.

I would actually want to suggest that if that's a problem, We need more volunteer coordinators rather than fewer if that is something that we're really banking on for the park.

So I want to say thank you to the volunteers that are showing up even if it is a one-off.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Moving on to item number nine.

The proposed budget would make two separate changes regarding the funding of the Smith Cove park project phase one.

It would authorize parks to use $1.25 million in 2019 and available park district reserved fund balance to support construction of phase one of Smith Cove.

This would be in addition to a total of $2.7 million that they will have borrowed in 27 and 2018 for this project.

Annual park district revenues of $697,000 are designated for this project from 2020 through 2025 and that will be used to repay the Park District Reserve Fund.

So this is a case in which, unlike the utility, there's actually revenues that were planned to be used to repay this temporary use of reserve fund balance.

Council Member Muscata.

Oh, thank you.

I did have a question about number eight, but I'll ask it about number nine real quick and maybe we can go back.

I just want to make sure, my preliminary understanding of Smith Cove is it looks like it will be very expensive in the future.

Are we going to be in a pickle in a few years if we borrow money from that project for other activities this year?

I'm sorry, were you talking about number eight or about the Smith Cove?

B, 9B.

I haven't gotten to that yet.

My apologies.

You mentioned that the property in Belltown is pretty expensive.

You guys have looked at other alternatives for community center in the past.

Obviously telling folks to go up to Queen Anne is not a solution.

Asking them to wait for a park at Denny is not a solution.

Asking them to play or meet outside in the open air is not a solution for our elders.

So is there any property that we are currently looking at through Office of Housing that we may have as a parcel that's vacant or underutilized where we could apply the new land disposition policies and create a community center on the first floor and housing above?

Is there anything potentially in the works that we could start looking at?

So, I don't know that anybody's been asked to do that, but I can certainly ask the broad question to say, is anybody, is Parks looking at that, the executive looking at that as a possibility?

Great, thank you.

I know that Marshall Foster's team is looking into this, but as I mentioned, we're half a decade, if not a decade out to seeing something replaced.

So the second part of the Smith Cove proposed changes is to reprogram $221,000 of Park District operating funds that were designated to be used for the maintenance of the new Smith Cove Park, and moving that to the Park District Smith Cove Park Capital Program to support the construction of phase one.

Obviously, since that park has not opened, there's not need for the maintenance funds, so it seemed prudent to go ahead and reprogram those funds to actually help with the construction costs, and that's really what's going on here.

So I do want to say thanks to parks.

One quarter of the west side of that park is now open for the mod soccer.

And it looks like Walsh Construction has completed the sewer pipe replacement.

I just was happened to be there last weekend and checked that out.

So it's moving along.

But we've still got so much more to go on the west side.

We haven't touched the east side yet.

So right.

And I think they are planning to issue the bid in early 19. for the phase one of the park.

So they are- For the west side.

Yeah, yeah.

So they're making progress.

Moving on to item- In this lifetime, we're hoping to see that.

Yes, before retirement.

That's what I say.

So moving to item number 10, the proposed budget would increase annual appropriations by $150,000 in 2019 and 2020 to support funding for youth recreation scholarships.

The sweetened beverage tax is the source of funding for this appropriation.

The base budget actually of parks does include $400,000 a year in park district funds for recreation scholarships.

Those scholarship funds were fully expended in 2017. And my understanding is that they're on track to fully expend in 2018 as well, which I think is probably the reason why there was a desire to add some more money there.

Madam Chair?

Yes, thank you.

Tracy, this isn't about the drop-ins at community centers, is it?

This is just for kids who want to participate in a parks-led soccer team or basketball team?

Or a recreation program, day camp, you know, some other kind of class that has a fee attached to it that they can't afford.

Great.

Correct.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, were you waving down there?

Moving on to item number 11, the proposed budget would increase annual appropriations by $91,000 in 2019 and 2020 to support continuation of the Saturday night program for youth and the additional operating hours on Sundays at the South Park Community Center.

These enhancements in terms of hours and programs were implemented as a pilot at this community center in 2018, and this funding would allow that to continue in both years.

Nothing more to add.

Thank you.

And then finally on the operating items of significance, the proposed budget would increase appropriations by $99,000 in 2019 and $44,000 in 2020 to provide maintenance services for a new public bathroom that will be built in the Pallid Commons Park in 2019. The 2019 appropriation includes $70,000 for a one-time purchase of a vehicle.

Annual maintenance costs, excluding the vehicle purchase, are estimated at $80,000 a year.

The baseline budget does include $36,000 in each year for the maintenance activities, which is what gets you to the difference between the the 2020 number and the 80,000.

The only issue I will raise here with that is it's not clear to me that a vehicle is actually needed to maintain this park bathroom.

Initially, we were looking at actually installing two bathrooms, one in Ballard and one in University District.

The University District one has now been delayed because there's development activity going around the area where we want to actually place the bathroom.

So I think for the next several years, we're not gonna have two, we're gonna have one bathrooms.

And so I would just raise for you whether that $70,000 might be better allocated to other council priorities.

And that's all I'll say about that.

Chair Bagshaw.

Oh, sorry.

Mr. O'Brien and then Council Member Gonzalez.

He might cover it.

All right.

There's a scale question here that I think I appreciate you raising, Tracy.

Is there a way to do the cleaning without the vehicle?

I think yes, especially for the Ballard bathroom, which is going to be in the Ballard Commons Park.

It seems to me they're going to be out there doing spray park maintenance and other general park maintenance that might coincide nicely with also cleaning the bathroom there.

Yeah, I appreciate that and I think we want to be I'm interested in figuring out how we can be as cost effective on this.

I want to be cautious to not do something that causes the folks running this to say, well, let's take another two more years and study it, because it's already a couple years slower than I had hoped.

But I think that...

You know, if we get to the point where we have a dozen of these around the city and there's a team maintaining them and that is their body of work and they need a vehicle to do that, that makes sense.

If that's not the case, I mean, I'm curious how the two are maintained in Rainier Beach.

There's not a vehicle for those, I'm pretty sure, so.

That would be great to know and if we could use that model at this time with an understanding that if this is successful and expands, that we could explore a different path.

Yes.

Great.

May I, Chair?

Okay, so I have similar questions about the need for a vehicle.

So I appreciate you, Tracy, highlighting whether or not the purchase of an additional vehicle is required to sort of the core function of maintaining this restroom and would like to just get more information about whether or not it is actually necessary for that.

I think that Ballard Commons Park has some uniqueness to it in terms of where it's situated, the spray park, and just sort of being surrounded by a library, by a food bank, I believe, and a church that serves meals to unsheltered people experiencing homelessness in Ballard.

And so I think what I have heard from folks in Ballard is that they would much rather prefer having dollars allocated to having some form of So I would just be interested in seeing if there's any sort of cost in the park doing maintenance on a more regular basis.

Can I just follow up with that?

Sure.

Are you talking about like a park ranger person or somebody that is...

I don't know what the title would be.

I think it just needs to be a human who is available to do maintenance or just monitoring appropriate use of the bathrooms.

Yeah, and I appreciate...

That has been a very strong preference expressed to me from folks like Mike Stewart over at the Ballard Alliance and others.

So we know that with, as we're trying to put in things, whether it's a Portland loo or whether it's a pit stop like what San Francisco has done, that the key to success in this is to have somebody who's managing like what Council Member Gonzalez was just mentioning, is that having oversight there and who's coming in and out of the Portland loos.

Portland, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, has had tremendous success with their loos in terms of not being vandalized and not being a crime magnet.

San Diego, in contrast, just pulled theirs out, but they were more focused on that the location was bad, not that the loo was bad.

So I think your point, Council Member Gonzalez, is a really good one, is having somebody there that's watching, monitoring, caring for the park.

It's gonna make a difference.

And you know, there's some models that I have seen that I feel work really effectively.

So in Santa Monica, they have We have a lot of people who are in the public parks and walkways and greenways, and they have somebody who is stationed in the park whose sole purpose is not just to do maintenance and cleanliness work around the restrooms, have their questions answered about the neighborhood or whatever the case might be.

So they're a little bit like a neighborhood ambassador, but also their core function would be to make sure that the bathrooms are maintained in a way that is consistent with expectations from both the city and folks who want to use it.

So I'll ask about this.

I would be surprised if you could get one person who would be both an ambassador and a bathroom cleaner.

And the reason why I think that's gonna be problematic is I think those are kind of slightly different job descriptions.

You also have the addition of some of the public health issues that are gonna be connected to that bathroom.

There's gonna be, I think, a sharps disposal box, some other things that- Tracy, I just need you to get to yes.

Okay, all right.

I'll do my best.

I know that there's a lot of complexities.

There's always a lot of complexities to everything we do, but you know, this, this, the dollars that are currently allocated in this budget to support the Ballard Commons bathroom will, no pun intended, go down the toilet if we get it, if we end up in a situation where there is incredibly harmful negative behavior occurring in the bathroom.

So I think it is worth the investment to have somebody there to doing both maintenance, but also just to be monitoring the effectiveness of how we are deploying this program.

And I feel very strongly about that.

We'll see what we can can get from the exam.

I trust that you will help me Yeah, I don't think I don't think councilmember Gonzalez is gonna give up on this and neither will I so thank you Okay, let's move on past the lose

Okay, so moving on to the capital budget.

So Park's proposed capital budget is $72 million in 2019, a decrease of $20 million compared to 2018 adopted budget and $83 million, an increase of $11 million or 16% over the 2019 proposed budget.

Just so you know, the Delta change between 2018 and 2019 is because if you might remember in 2018, we had the big $15 million SAM contribution.

that obviously gets pulled out of the budget for the next year.

So that accounts for kind of a big drop there.

So moving to the most notable changes there.

Item number one, there's $4 million in REIT in 2020 to complete the comprehensive site plan and design for a new Lake City Community Center.

Council Member Juarez is not going to speak.

Do we hear a big whoop for D5 down there?

I'm going to hold my comments until we get down to the budget actions proposed, which is number six.

And there's really not a whole lot more to add to what you've all been hearing me say for the last two and a half years.

Okay.

Moving on to item number two, there's $3 million in 2020 to convert the West Queen Anne.

I think Council Member Mosqueda has a comment here.

Just a few questions here.

And Council Member Juarez knows how supportive I am of additional community centers and housing in D5 and across the city.

I'm just wondering if there's been an opportunity to look at how investment in the much needed Lake City Community Center might be coupled with affordable housing above.

There is a feasibility study that's being done right now on the Lake City Community Center that in fact looks at that option.

And then do we have the flexibility then when the feasibility study comes back to alter our plans if it is possible, which I assume it is.

I expect that there's going to be a couple of different scenarios that might be discussed with the council about Lake City Community Center.

We will also, you know, have to look at some of the legal implications potentially of using park property for a non-park use.

I'm not sure that that can't get, you know, worked through, but there are going to be some potential issues there to be addressed as well.

We should, I expect to see the results of the feasibility study by the end of the year is what I understand.

So I think there's going to be more conversation about what that project looks like.

I may comment, Madam Chair.

Please.

Thank you, Councillor Muscat, for bringing that up.

That is one of the main reasons why we were, well, there's been three main reasons, but that certainly was in the top three, about putting low-income or affordable housing with the community center and working with Speaker Frank Chopp on that.

However, My understanding, it's further down in your presentation, when we talk about, I believe it's first quarter 2019, we'll have the feasibility study, correct?

I thought it was the end of the year.

Is it the end of the year?

I'm sorry.

But you may have more updated information than I do.

Okay.

So, and your instincts are absolutely correct, but the issue was letting the community, part of that group, let that be more organic, that that is something that they want as well.

That is something myself, Senator Frock, Representative Valdez, and Parks, quite frankly, are exploring.

Madam Chair, thank you.

Maybe we could continue to talk about if this budget does not need to earmark any funding for the possibility of doing housing in the future, perhaps this is an opportunity for us to look more at the co-mingling of funds when we think about the ways that we could use future revenue for how we pair equitable development initiative dollars with park dollars with housing dollars.

I think this is a great example of where we would want to do that type of co-mingled fund on public land like this.

So I look forward to working with you all on that.

All right, thank you.

Oh, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

You guys have to be noisier.

We mentioned at the start of the presentation that our switching out of REIT funds, as it relates to the Park District, is going to result in a, I believe, $10 million ongoing commitment of REIT funds moving forward.

How does this commit, is this commitment in this line item for additional REIT funds in 2022?

What is it, 20?

20. 20?

Is that part of the 10 million that we're talking about or is that on top of it?

$1 million of the $4 million is involved in that REIT swap.

And part of what's getting swapped in and paying for with the REIT is capital rehab money for the community centers.

There's a line there in the Capital Parks District spending for community center renovations.

And there was a million dollars that had been earmarked of those monies for the Lake City Community Center.

When we brought in the $10 million, one of those million dollars got swapped to the REIT dollars.

So at minimum, we're going to need $13 million in REIT dollars.

No, it's part of the $10 million.

That $1 million is part of the $10 million swap.

It is part of it.

And the remainder, the $3 million, is, you know...

Right, so it's $10 million and then three of the four.

So it's 13 for next year, right?

Yes.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

I thought I was following you.

So we know just to cover these parks related REIT projects, we'll need 13 for next year.

How does this, just sort of in the big picture, impact our commitments to non REIT, I mean, non-Parks REIT projects, we use REIT for a lot of different capital projects.

We do.

And I'm worried that, you know, with the $10 million commitment that we're having to do for structural reasons, I mean, as far as how we're structuring the MPD moving forward, if we're layering on more REIT commitments, I'm just worried that there's going to be a cumulative impact of our ability to use REIT for other important projects.

I thought you were going to ask this question earlier on.

That's why I was looking for my material.

So we know that as it relates to REIT.

So we've looked historically, I've looked historically at what we've brought in in terms of REIT.

So in the most recent 10-year period, which has been, of course, a robust period, we brought in, on average, $57 million of REIT every year.

So if you get outside that 10-year period and you start looking back, 2009, 2012, there's where you start to see, 2001 I think it was, you know, just about $20 million.

So you look at that and you say, okay, worst case scenario might be we're looking at $20 million a year if we're, you know, back to the 2001, you know, period.

When you look at what we have in terms of what I would consider to be hard commitments for the use of REIT, for the next few years, we know it is about, on average, about $9 million.

And you are absolutely right, we have made commitments for debt service for things like the fire stations.

public safety SPD facility, Northgate acquisition, the aquarium, Fremont bridge approaches.

So we have some commitments that we are using REIT to pay debt service on that will continue for the next few years.

Those, again, total about $9 million.

We have an additional about $8 million of what I would consider to be kind of softer commitments.

There are things that we could, by policy, by budget, decide we're not going to do.

Those things include about $4.5 million a year in the OSC's energy efficiency program, $2 million for your voice, your choice program.

$500,000 a year to help the library with various library levy agreements, $600,000 to fund the design commission, $360,000 for tenant relocation.

So you add those all up and it's about $8 million.

So you get to a total of about $17 million not including the commitment to the parks department.

So that brings it up to 30 for next year, ballpark.

And you said the low point of our REIT has been?

$20 million in 2001, I think it was.

And recent years, it's more around 50?

$57 million.

And then there's the added issue that for as long as I've been around, we've used the flexibility of REIT during budget time to allow us to get out more general fund dollars.

And I think this, again, structural change that we're making with the NPD is going to put some limits on our ability to fund the things that we care about during budget time in limiting our ability to do that kind of a swap.

Is that the case?

They took $10 million and did their own swap.

But the more long-term commitments we make to re-exclusively funded things, the less we will be able to do that kind of swapping.

That's absolutely true.

Thank you.

Did you have a period on that?

I have a period on that.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Moving on to item number two, $3 million in 2020 is allocated to convert the West Queen Anne Playfield to turf.

The allocation of these funds would help to cover approximately half the total project costs.

My understanding is that parks will be working in 2019 to identify a funding strategy for the remainder.

of those conversion costs.

This project doesn't only include the conversion to turf, but also the addition of lights, and then also doing some path and other accessibility improvements.

Moving to item number three, the proposed budget would appropriate $5 million in 2019, $5.2 million in 2020 of a combined Reed and Park District funding for the replacement of synthetic turf.

So the expected life of turf fields is about 10 years.

We currently have about 19 turf fields and four baseball fields that have an infield that's synthetic.

Most of the turf fields that were built, 16 of 23, were installed between 2008 and 2010. And obviously that means that these folks, these turfs are coming to the end of their useful life.

The cost of replacing a turf is usually $1.6 to $2 million per field.

So given the number of fields and the cost of replacement, Parks is planning to use funds to try to replace two to three of these fields per year in the coming years.

And Parks is doing a condition assessment now of all of the fields that are reaching the 10 or 11 year mark to essentially figure out a priority list for which fields will be replaced and when.

I think Council Member Mosqueda has a couple of points here.

More questions that are sort of impromptu.

I remember playing on these fields when they were sand and dirt and turned to mud very quickly in the winter.

And it doesn't seem like that long ago that I was still playing on those fields.

And I love the turf fields.

However, I am concerned about the emerging data around cancer causing rubber pellets that fly up, especially for our keepers and my husband's one.

Care about protecting their health you keeper councilmember Johnson.

All right But I'm I'm wondering if we've done any analysis on whether or not it's there's a more cost-effective way to have Synthetic fields that don't include those rubber turf pellets.

I'm also interested in whether or not we've explored any partnerships with some of our Really impressive community partners at the Rave Foundation who work with the Sounders.

There was a few of us who went up and saw the Yesler Terrace project where they've installed a schedule-free play field so that there can be more unstructured play, especially for many of our immigrant communities and low-income communities who do not play in organized teams.

I'm wondering if there's a partnership there, because the turf field that they use there does not have those rubber pellets.

And as the mayor and I walked on it, you didn't see those rubber pellets flying up.

So I would like to know if that's been explored.

And then perhaps if not, Madam Chair, I might be interested in impromptu analysis of what might be possible.

Thank you.

And I think we, a year or so ago, had talked with the University of Washington.

They were taking out some field and some of the turf, and I don't recall whether it was out of Husky Stadium or one of their practice fields, but it wasn't up to standards for NCAA, but it might be available for some of the practice fields.

I don't know whether we just decided that wasn't worth it, it was too much trouble, and there was more wear than we thought, but I think we should take advantage of that resource because undoubtedly they have done some significant deep dive into how it's impacting their athletes.

So I'll be happy to ask the department about the look at partnerships.

You're going to hear a little bit later on in my presentation here about one partnership that actually is being explored in South Park that's going to help with turf conversion or play field conversion.

Did we end up putting the turf down in the Georgetown fields?

Did we?

Yes.

I think we, I think we funded that.

Because I think that was another.

Oh yes, there is turf there.

I think it is.

And I think it was us, but I'll check on that.

Good.

It's beautiful too, I'm hearing, so thank you.

So moving to item number four, the proposed budget appropriates $2 million in 2019 and a million in 2020 to comply with the Department of Justice mandated ADA compliance improvements at DPR facilities, including community centers, pools, and parks.

This is a perennial allocation that we make to try to bring down the number of the deficiencies that the parks has.

They have a disproportionate number of the total overall city deficiencies that were noted by DOJ.

And this is just a continuous commitment to try to work down that list of deficiencies.

So it's 2 million.

And then so it's a total of three million during the biennium.

Is it anywhere close to what's needed to comply with the DOJ?

Because I think there was like 700 deficiencies.

Oh no, it's 7,000.

7,000.

I keep dropping zeros today.

I caught that one though.

So is it anywhere close to enough?

And do we have a schedule for this and priorities?

I think that they have priorities.

I don't know if they have a schedule and I don't know if they've costed out those ADA improvements, but I can ask them.

Yeah, interested.

Sure.

Moving on to item number five, $2.3 million in 2019 and $12 million in 2020 are proposed for the aquarium expansion project to remind folks the memorandum of understanding between the city and the Seattle Aquarium Society regarding the funding for this expansion.

would commit the city to about $34 million for the project.

This, of course, is in addition to private and other public sources that the Aquarium will be pursuing to fund this project.

We had our public hearing last night on this.

We had one person sign up and comment.

And I just want to remind everybody that $34 million is something we've committed to.

five, six, seven years ago, so.

That's part of the MOU, I believe that's right.

So I appreciate you moving forward with it.

Yep, and this does get us by the way to $17.5 million in terms of that $34 million commitment, so we're making progress on that.

Moving to item number six, the 2019 proposed budget would appropriate $1.5 million for the debt service payment for the golf program.

2014 King County levy dollars would be used to fund this proposal.

Park District and REIT funding would be used to provide full or partial backfill of what had been planned for the King County levy funded programs.

This proposal would allow payment of the golf program's debt service in 2019 only.

The 2020 proposed budget does assume that revenues from the golf program will be sufficient to pay the debt service.

And to remind council members, DPR is in the middle of a comprehensive review of the golf program to examine and address ongoing issues with the financial performance of the golf program.

And the recommendations from this review are expected in early 2019. Moving on to item number seven, the proposed budget would appropriate $1.8 million.

Hold on a sec, Council Member Mosqueda.

So I just wanna signal my concern about this component as a whole, and I'm sorry, I haven't had a chance to talk to the Chair of Parks about this recently, but in reading the Mayor's proposed budget as it came down, it does look like that analysis is really looking at whether or not there would be the closure of one of the four golf courses.

And I'm concerned that we do have four golf courses that we're still in many ways subsidizing given the attendance that golf courses continues to go down.

I know there's been a lot of conversation about how do we scale back parts of a golf course to create more housing, still create public space.

I'm just wondering if there is any equity analysis that is also accompanying this analysis that you mentioned that is forthcoming?

Are we preventing more people from living in the city by having such large parcels be just used for golf courses versus used for housing and public spaces?

Do you know if that equity analysis, is there an RSJI component of what is forthcoming?

I am certain that equity analysis about the issue of whether those open spaces being used for golf are precluding people from moving into the city.

That's not the subject of the review.

I think there is some equity analysis that is looking at the use of different golf courses because frankly, there is a difference.

If you were to look at Jefferson and who plays golf there versus some of the other golf courses, I think there are some differences in terms of utilization there.

They also have some very targeted programs at Jefferson given the surrounding community.

that address some of those equity issues related to, again, other recreational activity.

So I think there is that part that is likely being looked at as part of the review.

I think that, Council Member Muscade, thanks for bringing this up again, excuse me.

I thought that we were discussing whether there was areas like on the north end of Jackson, as an example, along 145th, whether there was actual room for housing right along 145th, north end of Jackson, and whether or not the golf course could continue to be used as a golf course, but that we could capture some property that would allow some affordable housing to be built right along there.

Do you know whether or not that's continuing?

So I don't think that's part of the analysis.

This was really looking at the kind of the history of the performance of the golf program, financials, and then kind of new practices.

and then trying to, the last part being kind of looking at different models for addressing the deficiencies.

Although I believe there are options, one option that may look kind of at the, if you just kept one or multiple golf courses as just open space, then there are going to be costs associated just with that being maintained as open space.

I think that is going to be part of the analysis.

But I'm certain they're not looking at the issue of being able to put housing on there.

I will suggest to you that there will be some legal issues related to that.

We have an initiative called I-42 that talks about maintaining parks that have been designated as parks.

And you certainly have the ability to supersede that.

But I think there have been history on this issue that was not necessarily positive related to that.

But you will have that as a potential future discussion item.

Well, this study was initiated by us and in getting at the elephant in the room is that yes, we need to look at the golf courses.

We need baseline data.

How much are we subsidizing?

Which ones are making money?

Which ones are not making money?

What is the history for all four golf courses when they were created?

And as we know, A lot has changed since the 50s and 60s when these golf courses were created.

It hasn't escaped anyone that we are looking at our second light rail station on 130th, and there's a very good chance it's going to come in seven years earlier.

However, that being said, I don't want the press to run off and say Councilmember Juarez is getting rid of four golf courses for housing.

That's not happening.

This is why we are taking a measured approach to getting all the facts first, all the data, talk to community members, and that is one of the top five issues.

So I'm glad you brought that up.

And maybe we can move on.

No.

I don't want to move on.

No.

I think Council Member Herbold doesn't want to move on.

I'm just kidding, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I just have some questions about this item generally, not about the study.

The way I read this, and tell me if I'm wrong, there is currently 2014 King County levy dollars that are being used to pay, that we're switching that money out to pay the debt service.

And so that means $1.4 million for play area renovations and comfort center renovations will not be spent.

No.

A million dollars of REIT is allocated in 2020 to make up a million dollars of the amount.

And then about $400,000 of Park District funds are actually being used for comfort renovations in both 2019 and 2020.

Okay, so both of those things are going to be fully funded.

There's not going to be a reduction because of what we're doing here.

This is debt service for operations?

No, it's for the Gulf.

So to remind you, we made a number of capital improvements.

We built a new clubhouse at Jefferson.

We added a driving range at Jefferson.

Right.

It's to pay the debt service on those improvements.

Thank you.

Are we ready to move on?

Wonderful.

Moving to item number seven.

The proposed budget would appropriate $1.8 million in 2019 for the South Park Campus Improvement Project.

This project will include a new play area, and spray park and conversion of the grass play field to turf and to include lighting.

The total project costs are $9.8 million.

Funding from community partners, a school that is very interested, I think, in investing in this turf field.

And other sources are expected to fill the financing gap for this project.

So this is the example I was talking about in which we are working with.

community partner, a school that is interested in helping to develop a turf field and one of the creative ways to help fund some of these parks improvements.

And I just want to note, it's not clear that the community partner will completely help us fill the gap.

And I want to note that there is no city CIP appropriation for 2020 in the CIP.

And that might be something that I'd like to take a look at.

Okay.

The proposed budget, moving to item number eight, the proposed budget would appropriate a million dollars in 2020 for the Bitter Lake Park play area renovation project.

This project will include replacement of play equipment, access improvements, and other related work at the existing Bitter Lake play area.

This is a question for my council colleague, Ms. Juarez.

Is, this is different from what you've been talking about about capping the reservoir.

Completely different.

Completely different.

Thank you.

Please go on.

Moving to item number nine, a million dollars is appropriated in 2020 for the North Rainier Park development.

This is one of the 14 land banked parks funded by the park district.

The city was able to acquire some additional parcels down in that area to provide more open space than was originally envisioned with this park.

So the scope has changed a bit and so then has the project costs by about $1.3 million.

So the estimated total project cost is now about $2.1 million.

And I just want to add a thank you, Tracy, and park staff who worked really hard to buy this last piece of land, and you too, Council Member Bankshaw, and Council Member Gonzalez, who helped pass this legislation for us.

This is a really nice success story with the 14 land bank parks and setting money aside and being able to buy that property quickly and make it into a park.

So go ahead.

Oh, go ahead.

Did you have something?

Oh, I thought you couldn't hear me.

You can hear me now?

Oh, OK.

Oh, that was it.

Use my inside voice.

I'm just saying that this is really a good thing.

We worked really hard on this, 14 land bank perks, got the money, we got in there quickly and we finally bought it before the seller could find a better buyer.

Is that fair to say?

I think that is fair to say.

Thank you.

Yes.

OK.

Moving on to item number 10.

Hold on, Council Member O'Brien's moving his mic.

Oh, sorry.

In anticipation of number 10.

Of the next one, I was thinking, yes.

Yes, so there's $500,000 in 2019 and 2020 to conduct planning and schematic design work for a new Green Lake Community Center and pool.

It's anticipated that funding for the construction of this project will be considered for inclusion in the 21-2027 Park District six-year spending plan.

I'll just say I appreciate this in here and specifically as we look to what that next iteration of the Park District Spending Plan is, I think one of the lessons learned from the Move Seattle Levy, which is slightly a different beast, but is having projects that are ready to go when we start allocating that money.

And so I appreciate putting this relatively modest amount of money to have the planning work so that we have some projects that are ready to go in 2021 when we're considering that.

So thank you, Mayor.

Madam Chair, if I could just add one quick point for Council Member O'Brien.

First of all, this is great because we really want to look at, as you know, Green Lake and Lake City, when they did the study in 2016, they basically said need to be demolished and redone.

And they set price tags to what that would be.

So I'm glad that we're going to have the money in the budget to study how we look at.

It's the Poole and Evans Center.

Is that correct, Tracy, for Green Lake?

Yes.

That was what they had suggested.

So this is actually pretty exciting news for Green Lake.

The final item is- The next one's mine.

The next one's yours.

$500,000 in 2019 for planning and design work associated with the Yesler Crescent area, which includes City Hall Park, Prefontaine Plaza and Fountain, Fortson Square, the Plaza at Washington and 2nd Avenue and other areas along 2nd and 1st Avenues.

I think the council is interested in imposing a proviso on this money and having parks as well as S.DON and the community come back with a spending plan for how they want to use the $500,000 just to make sure that those funds are expended consistent with the council's desired uses.

So I have a couple of proposals and I think when we're actually drafting this that all of these departments have been super and I want to acknowledge the folks that have been engaged with me on this.

But we want to have a two-stage plan.

We're working with the Pioneer Square Alliance that the initial proposal for how we're going to use this money for design and activation, we're talking about having, getting ready to go right away in 2019. So, the first phase would be by mid-January that we would have a plan, we would have something back to us by May 1st, and then the second part about how we're going to actually dive into this Yesler Crescent.

And I hate to say this, but I thought it was hilarious.

Somebody was saying the Yesler Crescent keeps getting larger as people want to be part of it.

So it's now, somebody said, well, we're now going to call it the Fertile Crescent.

If you remember your seventh grade history, it's kind of funny.

Okay, moving right along.

So I'm just going to say that the timing on this is going to be much more fast track than anybody would have thought.

And I hope that the council will be included in this, that Council Member Juarez's arena work is now going to be a real prototype.

Is there anybody talking down here?

Okay, please, go ahead.

Let's move on to budget legislation.

So you have in front of you a parks fee ordinance that would adopt fee increases for 2019 and 2020, estimated to generate $857,000 in 2019 and $1.5 million in 2020. These fees are expected to cover the increases in labor costs.

My understanding is we have a number of labor contracts that we are expecting to be settled in 2019 that will impact the cost, and so these fees have been generated to, in fact, cover some of those costs, as well as supply costs.

The fees that will be increased include the Japanese garden, AME tennis, aquatics, athletic fields, event scheduling, as well as some of the room rentals and use fee permits at community centers and other park facilities.

Item related to this, the fees are generating about $15,000 in revenues that the mayor has proposed to fund a new program to offer free swim lessons for low-income youth at certain pools.

It's estimated that 400 young people might benefit from this new initiative.

Madam Chair.

Council Member Johnson.

Thanks.

So Tracy, is this two separate fee increases, one in 2019 and then a separate one in 2020 that accounts for the growth?

Correct.

Okay.

And then are we using any of these to continue the free drop-in community centers or is that now just assumed as part of the base cost?

It's just assumed as part of DPR's base cost.

Great.

Yep.

Moving to the second piece of legislation, this is again the new office space at Sixth and Wall.

We will need to authorize the lease agreement.

So we will have that in front of us as budget legislation.

It's a 15-year lease with the potential to have two extensions of five years each.

for a total of 25 years.

The annual lease rate for the first year will be $924,000, and that will include operating costs for the first year.

The lease rate will be adjusted in future years by a dollar a square foot a year, plus any proportionate share, if there are any, in terms of increases in the operating costs.

Okay.

Good enough.

Council Member Johnson.

Good.

Okay.

Okay, moving on to the next item.

This next piece of legislation is an ordinance and a companion park district resolution that addresses this issue about interest earnings.

So when we signed that first interlocal, we have a provision in the interlocal that talks about if we bring in more revenues than expected and needed to meet our spending obligation in a given year, then we will essentially reduce the tax in the following year to account for those excess revenues.

What we didn't do is address this issue, well, what about interest earnings?

And a literal interpretation of revenues, one would say, would have to include interest earnings.

We feel like that's not really the spirit here, that those interest earnings that are generated off of Park District funds should be excluded from additional revenues.

That we are now going to treat them like Park District revenues.

We're going to show in the spending plan every year that they're, you know, going to be expended and revenues are coming in.

But we just need to make this change to the interlocal agreement to clarify that.

Council Member Herbold, you okay with that?

Okay.

And then...

Sorry, we're good.

I'm just getting to...

So moving on to the final piece of legislation.

So we will have a 2018, essentially supplemental resolution for the Park District to pay off the Interfund loan.

So to remind folks, when the Park District was approved in 2014, we took out a $10 million loan from the city's cash pool.

to enable parks to begin to start the activities of gearing up for the park district, because we weren't going to be collecting taxes in 2015, frankly, to be able to do any of that work, and we wanted them to get going on that.

So because of the available reserve fund balance in the park district programs, we're able to actually pay that loan off early.

That'll be a $5.7 million payoff.

It'll be about five years earlier than what we would have been proposed to actually have in the way of a payoff.

Park District revenues are anticipated to come in and to pay off over the next one and a half or five years, the one and a half million dollars per year.

So we will actually be paying this off early and that will generate about $500,000 of saving to the Park District at the end of the payoff, which is about 2022. And Council Member Juarez wants to take full credit for this.

Moving on to issue identification.

So again to remind folks, when we adopted the Metropolitan Park District, there was concerns raised by the community about whether parks was doing the best and most efficient job at spending their resources.

So as part of the spending plan, the council allocated about $300,000, $340,000 to do some deep dives into some of the activities and divisions at parks.

We did one of those reports on park maintenance activities.

And then we just recently finished the evaluation, performance evaluation on the recreation division.

Because we have, you know, been having these kind of ongoing differences between the spending and appropriations and actual work that's getting done on the capital projects on Park District, staff is suggesting that perhaps one more performance evaluation might be warranted and that is is to, in fact, look at capital development and planning and to see if there aren't some improvements that might be made to the work that's done by that.

The Park District, you know, 70% of the funds that we generate go to capital projects.

And it seems like this is just one more area that might benefit from an outside look.

to see whether there's some efficiencies and improvements that could be made.

Estimated cost of that evaluation would be $150,000.

I think we probably could use some of the existing Park District Reserve fund balance to fund that evaluation, but staff thinks that might be a wise investment.

Yes, two things and this goes back to what I'm glad Councilmember Herbold raised earlier.

The two studies done on the park maintenance activities and the recreation programs were well worth it.

We learned a lot from that are implementing a lot of those changes and working with Christopher.

Superintendent Williams, and certainly with former Superintendent Jesus Agare.

So, as Councilmember Herbold astutely brought up earlier, next we want to do that study on the capital planning and the development study on the performance review, and that is around 150, because as Tracy just said, 70% of our Park District funding is allocated to capital projects.

And so we want that accountability.

But more importantly, we want to see what we're saying we're putting money aside to build and whether or not we're actually getting it built.

And instead of these capital projects just rolling over each budget session, we want to see what brick and mortar actually gets built.

So I want to thank Council Member Herboldt for raising that issue.

Councilmember Johnson.

Just briefly, Tracy, I know you remember, but we, Councilmember Herbold and I, last two years ago put some money into the council consulting budget that took a look at capital project delivery in four different departments.

Parks was one of those four.

So we've got a little bit of a baseline to work with, at least in terms of some interviews that are already started with staff.

And so just want to make sure that that information is not lost as we contemplate hiring additional consultants to do more work.

Makes sense.

Good.

Okay, moving on to budget actions proposed by council members.

So moving to item number one, $140,000 in ongoing funding would be proposed to increase staffing and public operating hours at Magnuson Park Community Center.

This is Council Member Johnson's proposed addition.

If I may, Madam Chair, Building 9, which is a really exciting project with Mercy Housing, Susan Yang, and the Denise Louie Education Center and Neighbor Care is set to open next year.

That's going to bring 125, 130 new families to Magnuson Park.

We think it's probably 300 to 400 new people who are going to be living in the park.

If you spend any time at that community center on nights or weekends, you know how oversubscribed it is by residents and neighbors.

And it's a great vibe in there, but it is a very crowded place.

A couple of years ago, we put some one-time funding into operations in Magnuson Park.

And the mayor's proposal takes us back to the earlier staffing levels.

And as we contemplate a lot of growth here in Magnuson Park, It seems like it's inconsistent for us to then be walking back the number of hours that this community center is open.

So this request comes directly from the Magnuson Park Advisory Council, the neighbors, and other folks who live in community who really want us to stay open for those 60 hours a week.

Thank you.

Okay, moving on to the next item.

$490,000 in ongoing funding for the daily operation of 22 wading pools.

This is Councilmember Johnson's proposal.

Again, if you look at the similar cities of similar size, Seattle, Portland, Washington, D.C., we all have about the same populations, about the same number of wading pools and spray parks.

But we're the only one of those who are not open every day.

And so we know as climate change continues to occur and as we get hotter and hotter and hotter as a city, how oversubscribed a lot of our wading pools and splash parks are.

So this budget ad would allow for us to keep all of those wading pools open every day in all 22 wading pools and all 11 spray parks, which would get us a lot more in line with what our peer cities around the country due for their operations.

Are you talking 365?

No, just the summer months.

So it would be the three summer months.

I don't expect us to have a lot of utilization of those wading pools in December, but they are very highly utilized in the June, July, and August months.

This proposal would allow us to basically have all those wading pools and spray parks open from mid-June to mid-September.

Good.

Okay.

Okay, next one is $60,000 in ongoing funding to open Coleman Pool for one additional month in the summertime.

And this is Council Member Herbold's proposal.

You want to speak to it?

Yes.

So I've been contacted by a lot of constituents who are really interested in having additional hours of operation at the Coleman Pool and have expressed a desire to see me advocate for it to be open longer.

And the proposed ad, ideally, would be paid back to the fund through an off-season user fee.

So the intent is for this additional $60,000 add to be fiscally neutral.

And the $60,000 ad would keep the pool open for four additional weeks.

I'd, of course, defer to the Parks Department for the exact hours of operations.

Not committed to it being open daily, weekend hours I think is a good option to consider as well.

Question?

Not on this particular, but just on the last two ads.

I'm not going to get in the way of people wanting to get in swimming pools and waiting pools, by the way.

But when you take Councilman Johnson's proposal as an example, 490,000, are those employees we would add to increase the number of hours?

Or what do you do?

Because it's just for from June to, it's just an additional hours from June to September.

So how does that play out in terms of what we're buying to get to where he wants to go?

So if you're talking about the waiting pools, I think it's staffing, but it also may be the cleaning of the waiting pools that has to happen.

I can check to see kind of what constitutes that $490,000 expense.

It seems like it'd be more, first of all, I'm just sort of curious that when we have a bad day in June or July and it's closed, it seems like a lot of money just to have

couple more days and then does that go is that ongoing for the next in perpetuity or just sort of how it plays out so so to be clear this proposal not only opens up 22 waiting pools but it adds back in the expense from the seven waiting pools that had been a part of last year's budget that was cut in the mayor's budget this year.

So it's a combination of adding those seven additional waiting pools in and then having all 22 of them open on a daily basis.

You're absolutely right, Council Member Harreld, they don't open those waiting pools if it doesn't get, I think the temperature has to get to above 70. But they do a calculation on average of what the cost is and so they just did a modification to kind of what they expect to be the average cost for the waiting pools, not including the seven.

And then to get you to the 22 open daily.

While I'm supportive of both of these efforts, let me make that clear.

What I am concerned about, and I've done this every year, that when we're looking at the fee structure of our parks, and I know that's part of the budget process, and we anticipate new revenue.

Again, we have to be keenly aware that we have to keep these public facilities affordable.

And so as we do these any ads, and we look at what any increase in a fee.

I think, number one, I know we have scholarship programs and other discount for lower income people, but I think we have to be even equally aggressive on making it affordable, particularly when we're trying to do more.

And so I'm just, I think we're all sensitive to that.

There is not a charge, I don't believe, for wading pool use and there is not a charge for...

Well, there's $490,000 that's going to be charged.

Yes, you're right.

It's a charge to the general fund.

The money has to come from somewhere.

Yes, it is.

The money has to come from somewhere and I just think we went through a fee schedule earlier where we talked about increasing fees for athletic fields as an example.

So the money just doesn't come from nowhere.

Yes.

If I just may briefly, Council President, you know, we have about 30 waiting pools and spray parks in the city.

Only four of those open every day, and the rest of them are staffed in sort of a shift model.

So we may have, we have seasonal employees who may work one waiting pool on Mondays, a different waiting pool on Tuesdays, and a third waiting pool on Wednesdays.

So if your waiting pool is only open on Wednesdays, and that Wednesday is that cold day, you're not going to have it back available to you until the next Wednesday.

So you're going to go six potentially hot days without a waiting pool because you were closed that one day that it was a little cold.

And you're right, Council President Harrell, mine is not budget neutral like Council Member Hultz's.

So this is a request that we'll be looking to talk to folks about and seeing whether or not we can find offsetting cuts to pay for it.

I do think that there's an opportunity here for us to really be equitable and have all those waiting pools open, but I'll stop making my pitch and I'll save that to when I might be able to have found the money.

Well, I grew up in these waiting pools in Camp Long when I grew up in that thing too, so I can't wait to hear about that one.

And there were some cold nights I went through by the way.

Nice segue.

So moving to the next proposal, this will be one-time funding to winterize the cabins at Camp Long, and my understanding is to allow then folks to actually use those cabins, to sleep in those cabins year-round.

This is Council Member Herbold's proposal.

Yes, thank you.

The proposal would add one-time funding to make the cabins at Camp Long usable during the winter months.

There's a great need and interest in having those available for generally for youth and school activities.

None of the cabins currently have heat or insulation.

In order to do that, the department would need to get a required energy code exemption prior to initiating upgrades.

And there is a question around the ADA requirements that might be triggered.

I'd be interested to know, you mentioned the parks list of non-compliant, non-ADA compliant facilities.

I'd be interested to know if this particular facility was listed.

I would expect it to be.

And this is a recommendation of the North Delridge Action Plan as well.

Okay.

Chair?

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you so much.

For what it's worth, I was ready to wade into the wading pool.

Okay.

Got it.

Just a few questions on Camp Long.

Some preliminary research that my team has done, has a similar style analysis already been completed on how much it would cost to winterize these cabins?

I thought that there was some earlier work.

It looks like about $200, but that's why I'm asking.

And I got this information actually from your staff.

Okay.

They're good, aren't they?

Shout out to my staff.

Parks District folks had actually previously identified this as one of their priorities, but the issue around the ADA compliance raises this question of the expense of the improvement and how, given that it is rather expensive, how it weighs against other priorities.

And so that's why I'm asking whether or not this facility is on the list of ADA non-compliant facilities that is included in this year's budget.

Funding is included in this year's budget to help pay to make those facilities ADA compliant.

And I think we mentioned that we were going to give a list of the ones that are planned for the next two years funding.

Thank you.

Anything else, Council Member Mosqueda?

$2 million was the estimate that Parks provided in terms of winterizing the cabins.

for the very reasons that Council Member Herbold said, ADA compliance.

They're not up to the current building code.

They're not insulated.

So there would be a lot of work there.

So do we think that we're going to get the cost estimate back in time for our conversations next week?

The best we got is the $2 million.

They're not going to give us much more.

I can certainly find out whether they're on, whether the ADA improvements are on the list for...

Yeah, I mean, there's, we just,

Discussed the proposed budget appropriation of two million in 2019 and a million in 2020 to address ADA compliance in parks facilities perhaps a contribution to this project Might come from from there and that's what I'd like to explore not the whole amount but perhaps a contribution to deal with the ADA parts I'm sorry.

I interrupted you.

Um, how many cabins are there?

You know, I couldn't tell you off the top of my head.

I would guess about 30. I don't know.

What's it going to do?

Yeah, you could do the Google image aerial shot.

You don't have to wonder anymore.

Thank you.

That's a really great question.

How many cabins are there?

And then also, if we have a sense of how many folks use the cabins in a year would be helpful.

All right, thank you.

Oh, wow.

Thank you.

Once again, I'm just looking at, you know, bang for the buck, we're putting $3 million into 10 cabins, is that?

$3 million into two cabins?

But didn't you say two one year and one the next year?

No, I was referring to the money that- $2 million in for 10 cabins.

That's $200,000 a piece.

It is, it's a lot.

That's a lot of money.

Okay.

All right, moving on.

$50,000 in one-time funding would be proposed to engage the community on plans for enhancing trail access points on Southwest Brandon Street.

This is Council Member Herbold's proposal.

Oh, and I've lost track of my notes.

Yeah, this is another high recommendation from the North Delridge Action Plan, and it would basically add $50,000 to begin a community planning process.

to examine enhancements to the trailheads along Southwest Brandon Street, which borders Camp Long and the golf course.

One of the high priorities related to this particular proposal is that it would facilitate an increase in access from North Delridge to the junction, as well as the trail system along Longfellow Creek.

Okay, we're getting close to the end of this.

We've got the final one.

Yeah.

So the final item, this proposal would amend the 2019-2024 Capital Improvement Plan to add $5 million in Park District funding for the new Lake City Community Center.

This is Councilmember Juarez.

Yes, I will be brief.

Let's see.

So this is, as you all know, we did the study in 2016. Lake City Community Center was built in 1955 and that and Green Lake were designated for basically for demo and rebuild.

And that's after we looked at all 27 community centers across the city.

The Parks Department recommended replacing the 1955 Lake City Community Center with a full-service community center.

Lake City Community Center does not have a pool and would not, in my understanding to this point, is not advocating for a pool.

So the Lake City Community Center does a lot in our community.

Besides doing the after school and preschool programs, we do the food access.

We have a huge kitchen where we feed our elders and our low income communities.

The after school, I already said that, after school youth services.

We have our parenting support programs, our elder care program that is, the only issues that we can, only thing we can really provide for our elders right now is to feed them.

D5 is the only district that does not have, and please, anyone correct me on the dice if I'm wrong, does not have a senior citizen center.

We simply just don't have one, and this building has acted as that with the help of parks.

We also have all of our organizations and services for our community for mental health, food access, and more particular, and the one that's most pressing for us, of course, is looking at housing and working with our mental health providers in the area and the food banks in our area.

which would be the McDermott House, North Helpline, God's Little Acre, and I could go on and on with the service providers that are in that area.

One of the issues that I wanted to draw your attention to, though, and I'm glad Councilmember Mosqueda brought this up, Right now, what you're seeing is a whole new growth in that civic core where we have the Lake City Community Center.

We are now re-renovating the Lake City Library.

We just opened the Tony Lee House with 80 units with 30 to 60 AMI, I believe.

with four pre-K classrooms, and that is also where we have our farmer's market.

So that core area is all within one block, and that was done by design, certainly not by accident.

And of course, all that grew because of the Lake City Community Center.

We have been in discussions with and working with the people that we would love to see and who are part of the community group in designing the new Lake City Community Center is the Children's Home Society, Sound Generations who already provide the food to feed our elders and want to pitch in to buy help with the new kitchen.

the Boys and Girls Club, and I'm hoping at the end of the day, when all things get settled, that that will be a home for one of our navigation centers, because the last three runs I've made it budget and lead in trying to get brick and mortar up on the other side of I-5.

I know that we have that now on Aurora, but we really need those type of outreach center and services that the navigation team provides on the other side, on the east side of I-5, which would be Lake City Way.

So with that, I just want to point something out, though, for people to, I know that there's been some questions raised about the community centers in this city.

And we have 26 community centers, or 27, but I'll explain why one is kind of a 27. District 1 has five community centers.

District 2 has five community centers.

District 3 has three community centers.

District 4 has three community centers in which Laurelhurst and Montlake has landmark status.

My district, of course, has three community centers.

District 6, Councilmember O'Brien's district, has three community centers.

And District 7 now originally had three, but now with the closing of Belltown, will only have two community centers.

And so the reason why I lay this out, and I can share this with you and I had my staff put it together, including not only the districts and how many community centers, but when they were built, when they actually got more money for remodeling.

So, when they did the 2016 study, very comprehensive, I have a, obviously you guys all remember we all got a copy of this when we voted on the next six year plan that's going to come up, the community center strategic plan for 2016. As you know, the new strategic plan is coming up again for the next six years.

There's different ways that I'm learning that community centers operate.

Some of them are actually community centers with pools and are more family-oriented.

Some of them are more like Lake City Way, where they feed people, they shelter people, they provide housing, they provide other services, much like what we see with what's happening with our libraries.

They're not just libraries anymore.

They actually have a social worker there that are doing other things.

And I think in 2018, and certainly now under the issues that we've been dealing with in this city, We and I have learned in the last two and a half years that community centers and libraries are doing way more than they used to, and it's pretty clear to me that in the future, 2018 and beyond, we are going to be leveraging the services not only of the brick and mortar, but the actual people that are in those buildings that are providing these services and are doing more than just checking out books or providing a space for people to come swim or play basketball.

And so that is kind of the lens in which I've been chairing this committee.

So with that, I'm hoping that I have my colleagues' support on this last budget request.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So, we're going to, anybody else?

Okay.

We almost got to transportation.

Sorry, I just want to understand the implications of making a CIP related commitment outside of, I mean this isn't, 2021 isn't a year that we're budgeting for during this biennium.

So, if we, support this proposal we're saying now what we're going to do next or in two years.

If I can respond briefly before you do Tracy.

I actually did this by design because I did not want to hear people say well If we give you money now, you're not going to spend it, and you haven't even had the design out.

So basically, it would be pretend money for a pretend project.

And Tracy, I was getting it confused with the Gulf study.

So it's the end of 2019 that we'll have the study out with the community groups meeting for the Lake City Community Center.

Am I getting that?

I thought the feasibility study was due at the end of this year, not 2019. I'm sorry, yeah, at the end of this year, I'm sorry.

Yes.

So, what I tried to do was think, okay, why don't we, we can, and I'll let Tracy answer the more technical, put the request in the 2021 CIP, because we know that we have to have the study to come out and the planning, and to date, we have 9 million raised, 8 million raised, 8, 9, 10. Is it nine?

Nine million raised.

And that was a combination of the last two mayoral budgets and we got two million from the state.

And again, if we're gonna be looking at housing, which I'm hoping we will, we're looking at more assistance from the speaker and our city or our state delegation.

But that's a really good question.

And that's what my thinking was.

And then Tracy and I put our heads together and decided that Perhaps the more strategic way to go about it was to put it in the 2021 CIP for the Park District money.

So, do you want to take it from there?

Or is there any more?

If you look at the CIP, our CIP, you will see that there are, in fact, on many projects, amounts put in out years.

It's a planning document.

we can change that planning document when it comes to the adoption of the actual budget.

It just feels like we're making a commitment to an allocation today for two years down the road.

And I noted, for instance, the $10 million South Park Community Center project doesn't have any money allocated for the second year of this biennium associated with the much needed renovations associated with that project.

It's interesting to me how we strategically plan for the capital needs over many years and the city's investment over many years for some projects but not giving the same attention to other projects.

Okay, well, one thing I can speak to is a study that was done in 2016 that looked at 27 community centers and said two of them need to be torn down and rebuilt.

And so based on that, and I've been working on this since 2016, It isn't that we're paying particular special attention.

It's going by what the report said and what the needs are.

And so it's kind of a catch-22.

On one hand, it's, well, we don't want to give you the money because you don't have a plan and you're not going to be turning, you're not shovel-ready.

Oh, but by the way, if we don't, if we ask for the money later so we can make a plan to be shovel-ready, well, then you can't have the money because you're not shovel-ready.

So at some point, you just have to make a decision and say, this is the plan, and it's still flexible.

And that doesn't mean that it takes away from other projects that may come up in between there and when we start looking at the six-year plan.

So correct me if I'm wrong, Tracy.

Which you will be doing in 2020, fall of 2020. So you will have the opportunity to say yes or to no to this project, as well as a whole host of other projects that will be included in that proposed spending plan in the fall of 2020.

And so my thinking was, why would I put, ask for, or try to push for another five million in this budget when I know the five million in hard dollars needs to be used now because our focus is sheltering the unsheltered?

So I was trying to prioritize what our goal is for this budget and then be realistic about my own determination that this is gonna get built and make sure that it's in the park district budget, if that makes any sense.

Councilmember Gonzales, did you want to weigh in?

Yeah, no, I wanted to weigh in because I'm suddenly feeling like I'm fulfilling, potentially fulfilling my middle child propensity, so I feel like I need to, I need to mediate.

So, you know, I think, I think really, I don't think that either Councilmember Herbold or Councilmember Juarez are you know, competing or trying to prioritize their district needs over the others.

I think what I'm hearing Councilmember Herbold raise is just a concern about practices related to fiscal policies and procedures that we ordinarily would use during the capital improvement process to fund a project that I think Council Member Juarez clearly feels very strongly about and that clearly has the support for needing some capital dollars to it.

And so I guess for me the question would be, Do we have a history within the budget process, particularly as it relates to the CAP budget, to budget in this way?

In other words, we're doing a 2019-2020 biennium budget.

Is this out of practice or not?

I don't think so, because again, when you look at the, if you open up any page of the CIP, you will see out year commitments.

So in the parks department, we have commitments for the central waterfront that go out many years.

I can name other projects where even some of the conversions are, we've made commitments like in, like 10 years out.

So the CIP document, because it's a planning document, we kind of use that as a thing to say, this is what we are planning to do.

Knowing that every year when you have the budget in front of you, you have the ability to say, or the executive proposes to say, we might change that and we might do something else as a priority.

This year is another example of that where they decided to reallocate some monies that were going to be funding some ongoing capital programs to do some more of the ADA improvements.

So they made that choice in that current budget year that they needed to reprioritize some of the funding that was going to some of those other projects to do the ADA improvements.

Every year you have that ability to take a look at that CIP and decide, we said what we were gonna do, but when we come to the current year, what are really the priorities and have those changed for whatever reasons that might happen.

That's really helpful to know and to get a better sense of how we ordinarily deal with some of these planning issues within the context of the CAP budget.

And I think it just means that if we are able to persuade the chair to do that in some other scenarios or situations, then it would, the rationale and logic that has been so well described by Council Member Juarez would apply equally.

Let me just add this though.

Two examples, Seattle Asian Art Museum.

when we had 18 million that we held over for six years, four years.

Aquarium, 34 million, that's been in the CIP for four years, three, six years.

Yeah, I mean, so this isn't anything new.

I mean, I was just trying to be practical about how we plan, because it is a capital CIP.

And others can be practical as well, if they so desire.

Thank you, Middle Child.

Call it the pathway for practicality.

I might like to get practical with the Green Lake Community Center.

I think, you know, when we refer to the two that needed, that were on the list, this is the other one.

And I think if we're going to do this, I would actually propose, I mean, we don't have a dollar amount that we know what it's going to be, but I think putting a placeholder in there might be useful if that's the path we're going to choose collectively to go down.

So.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Great.

All right.

I'm going to propose.

I just have one more point.

I'm sorry.

I just don't want to, I want to make sure we're.

I think we're real clear, but you got one more point.

All right.

Thank you.

My comparison was about the fact that we are committing to out-year funding beyond this budget cycle, and I was comparing it to a project that there is a plan for, and there isn't city dollars committed for the second year of this budget cycle.

So that was sort of the comparison I was making.

Not so much that it's inappropriate to make out-year commitments, but more that when do we not make commitments within a budget cycle for a capital project that we've made a commitment to move forward, that we have a plan to move forward.

And it just, it seems like our approach for when we allocate dollars for every year of the capital projects from planning to construction is a little bit inconsistent across the board.

So in some cases, we're planning for six years and and putting the money, the city dollars towards it for the entire six-year life of the project.

And in other instances, we're only committing city dollars for a single year.

And that's the point I was trying to make.

I just have to say this.

Let's take the North Precinct, where in 2015 in August, I wasn't here, but the council voted three times to build a police station and allocated something like, I don't know, $140, $150 million.

Fast forward a year, then everybody changed their mind, even after we spent $16 million on buying property politically, and then now it didn't get built.

So that's another example where people changed their mind.

It's a new political agenda, and people felt differently.

That was something that people planned out eight years, did a study for, looked at it for 13 years, voted three times for it, spent $16 million for property for it, and then literally one year later changed their mind.

Happens all the time.

Okay.

We're not going to solve this.

I would like to move to transportation.

It's now 1125. And Calvin, I'm going to ask that as you do your presentation, if you would please discuss the signal not prioritization.

What was the topic that you wanted?

Adaptive signal stuff.

It's not.

Okay, so Okay, so councilmember O'Brien has a hard stop at noon.

And so I would like to have the Adaptive signals discussed beef, you know with plenty of time before he leaves Okay, Calvin child with council central staff.

Thank you Today, I'm here to talk about the Seattle Department of Transportation's budget.

I'll do a quick overview of what's in the budget, and then I've identified about eight items for discussion.

I think the adaptive signal question, I haven't called that out as a specific issue, but I think maybe that can be talked about as part of the Move Seattle discussion, if that would work.

So Table 1 in my issue paper summarizes SDOT's budget, and you'll see the top half shows the appropriations by BSL, and then the bottom half shows the revenues.

It is an increase over 2018 spending of about $128 million, or a 27% increase.

And most of this is due to planned capital spending increases, about $101 million, a 42% increase in the capital program.

This is actually less than what we thought we would be spending from last year's CIP program, and that's largely due to scheduling of some big projects like the Madison BRT project, Lander grade separation project, and of course the Seattle Center streetcar.

The operations and maintenance BSLs increased by about $29 million, about 11%.

And most of this is shown actually in line item B, the bridges and structures BSL.

This is related to reimbursable spending for the waterfront and pier 6263. So there is an increase in budget.

Most of this is due to the capital program.

The budget also includes general fund contributions to transportation, $44 million in 2019 and $45 million in 2020. It's line J.

And this meets the Move Seattle floor for collecting the Move Seattle property tax levy.

The budget adds 27 positions and eliminates 14 vacant positions for a net 13 add in Seattle Transportation Department.

20 of these positions are from Move Seattle.

Two are converted long-term, or excuse me, term-limited positions to permanent positions related to private-public construction coordination.

There is one seawall maintenance position, and there are four positions that were previously approved in the first quarter supplemental.

So the first item I'd like to talk through is Move Seattle Levy.

To remind you that voters approved the levy in November 2015. It's a nine year property tax levy that generates about $100 million a year.

And the initial plan for this levy identified 930 million of levy funds, 285 million of local transportation funds, and 564 million of grants and partnership funding for a total of 1.77 billion over the nine years.

Earlier this year, SDOT began an assessment of Move Seattle, and it found that the department would not be able to deliver the planned projects with that initial financing plan.

And they called out three specific reasons, the rising construction costs, emerging transportation needs, and uncertainties in federal grants.

The council adopted resolution 31830, which requested that SDOT report back to council by December 1st on a revised work plan for the Move Seattle projects.

And SDOT is currently working with the levy oversight committee and the modal advisory boards to recommend changes to the work plan.

There are a lot of changes with the proposed spending in this year's budget, but the executive does believe that with the work plan reset, there will be additional changes in next year's budget cycle as well.

Table two in the paper shows, summarizes all of the spending for the projects that are included in Move Seattle.

So this includes the levy spending, local transportation dollars, as well as the outside funding.

And the first part of the table shows this broken down by the programmatic CIP programs.

The next page shows some of the individual CIP projects that were identified in the levy.

And the grand total for these projects over nine years is now $1.89 billion.

The line shows one of the conversations.

Hold on, Calvin.

Councilor Johnson.

Just to make sure that I've got this right, the table two, there's no double counting here, right?

So a project like Lander, which is a bridge structure project, isn't counted twice, right?

It's counted individually.

That's correct.

It's only counted once.

Attachment one has a breakdown of what those programmatic projects are.

So if you need to know explicitly which CIP project is there, it's categorized at the end.

Thank you.

And Calvin, I have a question as well.

Do we have a more granular breakdown of Table 2, 2016, 2017, and 2018, sort of like an annual report of projects?

By individual projects, if you look at the attachment one, the last page of my paper, you'll see all the CIP projects listed.

So that's the closest granulization I can give you easily.

But that has all the items for what's in those programmatic line items.

And is it possible for SDOT to plot these out by district so we can get a sense of how much is being spent in each district of the MOVE levy funds?

It's, I think it may be more useful to focus on the individual type of the program.

So if we're talking about the pedestrian master plan or the arterial pavement program, and trying to look at how that individual program is distributed, that we might be able to get some headway there.

I think that gets a little more complicated to layer it all together.

Okay, I'll keep thinking about the question.

Appreciate it.

I think on that question, Council Member Herbold's question, I thought that there was something on the city's website related to sort of dashboard and performance in terms of investments for the move Seattle levy investments that I think allow us to sort of drill down a little bit about where the dollars are being spent throughout the city.

So while I recognize that it's not just a straight up District 1, see here, I do think that there are dashboards out there that sort of explain where some of the infrastructure is going.

And that's certainly easier for the named projects.

There are several projects that are programmatic in nature that are spread out across the city and depending on the executive's plan of how to do that.

Depending on what we're interested in seeing.

Well, and how the executive is proposing to deliver on that program, it can look very different from year to year.

So there may be one year where the focus is in one part of the city where that's the need and the next year they move to another part of the city.

So I think it requires a little bit of which program, which are the key programs that council is interested in to be able to give a fuller picture of what's going on.

I, one of the comments that came up in the department presentations was about sort of the overall spending and how that, whether there was a crest in spending.

And you will see in the grand total line for 2021, there is $415 million of spending there.

And that is the highest number across the nine years.

This is largely due to the transit project line, the transit corridor projects.

in 2021 and those projects are also the ones that are most dependent on external funding and require close coordination with King County Metro for how they're going to be delivered.

So in some ways this is I think very much another one of those placeholder issues where we're showing those dollars in 2021 knowing that those may move as we go into implementation later on.

The budget does add non-levy funding to Move Seattle projects to help deliver on those projects.

So there is about $7.1 million of REIT in 2019 and 2020 for a number of specific projects, sidewalk safety, ADA, and arterial maintenance.

There is an additional $8 million and $3.5 million in 2020 of red light and school zone camera ticket fees.

And there's also about $1.2 million of other transportation revenues for bridge rehab and arterial maintenance.

There are 20 positions that are included to support Move Seattle projects.

This includes a signal crew of four positions, a sidewalk pavement crew of 12 positions, three positions to support real property acquisitions, and one position to support the ADA program.

And I think maybe if there were specific issues about the adaptive signal program, this might be the time to talk about them.

Yes.

Thank you, Chair.

I will take that.

Go for it.

We've heard a lot, frankly, over the last couple of years about adaptive signal technology, just for folks in the audience.

The idea is instead of having signals on simple timers, that they can monitor how traffic is coming from which direction, coordinate with other signals in a corridor, and try to manage throughput.

The question is, throughput of what?

And how well does that technology work?

Mercer Corridor is the corridor that this has been.

being kind of piloted it in in the city for the last few years and folks in the Pedestrian advocacy community and other folks have raised concerns about how effective that has been Colleagues we received a letter I think today from the Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board that highlighted an example of how this could be used and how it may not work to the advantage of pedestrians the The challenge is we're really good with the tech.

The technology is really good at measuring cars or vehicles.

And because it's so good at that, it tends to emphasize the movement of those vehicles over folks that may be walking or on bikes.

It also doesn't do a great job at distinguishing between a bus that has 80 people on it or a car that has one person on it.

And so how we prioritize moving vehicles versus moving people is something that has been raised.

And in the letter that we received from the Pedestrian Advisory Board, they showed an example of the intersection of Mercer and Westlake, where it said if you're measuring vehicles, two-thirds of the traffic at that intersection is moving east-west along Mercer.

If you're measuring people, so excluding folks on the streetcar and excluding folks on bicycles because they don't have measures for that.

But just pedestrians and people on transit, what you see is that actually a majority of the folks are actually having Northwest along West Lake.

And so depending on what our algorithms say, depending on what we're capable of measuring, we may have very different ways to measure these intersections.

And the frustration from the community has been that it feels like policy decisions are being made based on available technology that is overemphasizing cars, plus in general we tend to have a bias towards vehicles or cars.

And so what I'm interested in doing is taking some sort of budget action that would not allow the city to implement additional use of adaptive signal technology, which is just a subset of modernizing our signal infrastructure, to be clear.

So there are a variety of reasons why we may be continuing to modernize signal infrastructure to have, you know, the lights that can communicate with each other, but just not using an adaptive signal technology until the community better understands what technology we're using, how it's being used, what those algorithms are prioritizing.

And so I wanted to flag that.

That's not a form A that we're going to be discussing today, but it is something that I'm likely to bring forward next week.

Councilman, if I could just clarify.

Modernization, I mean, some of these signals may be ready to do this type of thing in the future, but the intent is mostly about the implementation of it.

Is that correct?

Correct.

So if we're going to replace a signal somewhere, and we have a choice of becoming with a, I'll use a generic term, but like a dumb signal or a smart signal, If it makes sense to use a smart signal, let's put it in.

Let's just not hook the software up that says we will use a camera to isolate cars at this intersection to determine when it turns.

We can simply use, we can use modern, my understanding is we can use modern signals that's still used just to simply, you know, go for a minute and then go red.

Council Member Mosqueda.

And then I'm going to hand it back over to the Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for the moment.

I just want to say how much I appreciate you bringing this up.

This is an issue I'd very much like to work with you on.

Not only am I concerned about the dollar amounts that are going into this, I'm very concerned about the efficiency.

When I travel other cities and I see stop lights accompanied by walk signs and bike signs that allow for people to cross the street for upwards of 80 seconds, 70 seconds is what I just saw in DC recently.

we should be able to figure out a technology that allows for our elders to cross the street safely, those who are walking, biking, or pushing strollers to cross the street safely, and recognizes that the frequency in which a vehicle may show up might not mirror the frequency in which people show up on their bicycles waiting for that light.

So in addition to the potential slide that you're looking at, I'd be very interested, and perhaps you've already provided this, I'm sorry, in knowing more about what type of technologies other cities have deployed when it comes to this type of technology and how we are including the prioritization of pedestrians, bicyclists, and multimodal transportation.

My understanding is that at least in the United States, there is not, I don't believe anyone is using technology to measure pedestrians.

You know, we have the buttons you can push, which is a signal of somebody standing there, but not much more than that.

But the department is looking to pilot some technology.

I believe there's some stuff evolving out of Europe that is maybe ready for to be tried in America.

And I think folks are interested in understanding how that works.

I think there's also a concern because this last iteration certainly doesn't feel like, to the community, that it's improved the pedestrian experience.

It feels like it's hurt it at the expense of vehicles.

They want to move cautiously with that.

But again, I personally am open to understanding what the technology is, make sure we vet it with some of our pedestrian advocates to make sure they understand what it is, get some feedback on how it's going to be used.

There's the technology and how it works, and then, of course, how we use that technology, what we tell it to do, and what we have it tell the system to do, so.

Can I just ask a quick question?

And maybe you went over this while I was out of the room, but what is the problem we're trying to solve?

So I appreciate the fact that we're trying to have a really multimodal approach, but as both a pedestrian and somebody who rides a bike downtown all the time, As long as I've got a button to push and it gives me priority to cross, where are we having the difficulty?

Is it that people feel that those signals don't move fast enough or that I can't adjust how much time I need to cross?

If I'm by myself, I get across pretty speedily.

If I'm with someone who has walking difficulties, then I need to have more time.

And I think there was an app that I heard about the other day that an individual who does need more time can just essentially touch a smartphone or a smartwatch and get a few more seconds as needed.

So I'm just wondering, are we mixing up the problems we're solving for?

This is a very complex issue about where the traffic signal industry in general is and how it's dealing with all kinds of different needs.

I think there's the issue about how you handle with ADA access and how do you give extra time to folks who may need it to cross the streets that is in and of itself is a whole separate discussion from the conversation of, are modern traffic signals only currently really able to account for vehicles?

And I think it's worth a much longer discussion, and maybe I can work with your staff to try to get some broader account.

attention with the department to get everyone up to speed on what we're talking about here and what the different, you know, give us some language to even use because I think there's a lot of different ways we could be talking about these signals.

I think this is a bigger conversation than we can really have at the at the dais right now.

Chair Baxter, if I may.

So I have a couple of points to make.

One is that I think that there is fundamental disagreement as to who is prioritized when these types of technologies are used.

So I think that what we're hearing from people who don't always use cars as their primary transportation, that they feel that these technologies deprioritize people who aren't in cars.

And that is an issue for a lot of reasons, but primarily because we want to, one, encourage people to use the pedestrian infrastructure and the bike infrastructure that we are making available to them.

for climate change reasons and for other reasons.

And then also there are the ADA complexities that Kelvin is describing related to how does that impact people who aren't fully mobile to actually use the pedestrian infrastructure that were created.

And we have legal obligations under the ADA to make sure that we're not encumbering uses of our public infrastructure for those who aren't fully mobile.

And then the second thing is just sort of the concept around just basic infrastructure and how we're designing our roads.

And in conjunction with the reality that we want to be a more multimodal city.

So, I mean, I gave Calvin an earful on this topic just a couple nights ago, and we spent a lot of time talking about this, so I appreciate Council Member O'Brien, you taking the lead on it.

But I think, you know, the thing that I think about is sort of we don't have to create a situation where it's an either or.

It could be a both and, but we have to try to figure out what that looks like.

And so the thing that I think about is intersections that, for example, allow pedestrians to, you know, to occupy the entire intersection when they're crossing the street.

So, you know, in some places they call those scrambles, which I think is really cute.

But basically here in Seattle we call them, you know, all walk, all ways walk, cross walk.

or something like that.

And so I think, you know, thinking about sort of how do we become more deliberate and intentional about allowing people who are not in vehicles to move throughout high congestion areas where the congestion is being created primarily by vehicles and where we're asking pedestrians and people on bikes to wait for sometimes really long periods of time before they can cross the street.

And then when we do allow them to cross the street, it's really, really fast.

And I think that that's not an equitable way to design our city.

I do think that in fairness to the department, I do think SDOT is aware of these concerns and shares them.

And part of this is the limitations of where industry is currently and its ability to have to we have some of the infrastructure, but we don't actually have the the IT or the the algorithms that can do this, that align with the policy goals that people, that we want.

So I think there's also a conversation of where are we, you know, what have we learned in this pilot project?

How, you know, have we learned the limits of what we can do currently?

And that gets to your question now about what are we implementing today versus how do we improve this so that we can actually get the benefit of having more informed control over our system?

Because it is true that we need to get all of this.

And, you know, and I appreciate that we're not going to be able to fix this conundrum, this issue on the dais today, but would like to see some effort through this budget process to sort of create the pathway for us to be able to get to a solution.

I've reached out to, I want to second what Calvin said about the department.

I've had a number of conversations with the folks that are implementing this technology and, you know, these are folks that certainly understand multimodal movement and they are not here to destroy the walking or biking environment or transit user's experience.

And they acknowledge that there's some challenges with technology they're trying to figure out.

They are very open to sitting down and having conversations with some of the advocates.

And so I am in the process of trying to create a table for folks to sit around and have some discussions.

I think through just sharing a little bit, creating a little more transparency about what is in the algorithms, how they work, I think that will both help give the public some feedback about how some decisions are made, and I think also give the department some feedback on like, you're prioritizing X over Y, and we think you should do it the other way, and like, great, we can fix that.

And I think there's just some open questions about how swiftly we deploy the technology of, hey, we have some stuff, you know, we have a partial suite of tools here.

Let's deploy this and start figuring out how it works.

And I think what the community is saying, no, let's talk about how you're going to deploy that and let's wait to deploy it until you have a full suite of tools.

And we really want to understand what that works.

And so I think through some communication and some transparency, we can probably resolve some of this.

And I think there's probably going to be some policy changes on how we move forward too.

May I pile on, Madam Chair?

Thank you.

I just want to sort of echo those comments from both of you.

And I think part of the frustration here is that we recognize that these projects are millions of dollars.

And those millions of dollars sort of go into the ether and are not as tangible as the construction of a sidewalk or an ADA ramp or a protected bike lane.

And to your earlier point, Council Member O'Brien, when we make these investments in technology that cost millions of dollars, we then oftentimes have to make reinvestments in that technology to continue to update and maintain it that also cost millions of dollars.

So there's a frustration, I think, about the who benefits element, as well as that we can't really see this investment and we don't really know who benefits element.

So having some more space to allow for that conversation to play out while recognizing the modal hierarchy that we all have adopted as a council about who is prioritized in our transportation system and what is to our mutual benefit I think is going to be really important and some policy and some funding direction from this council as part of this budget I think will go a long way to alleviating some of those concerns.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Thank you for that good discussion, everybody.

I know, for me, this is a really important issue that it's not an either-or.

Oh, Council Member Gonzalez just talked about it as a both-and, and that's really what we're trying to accomplish is to move the most people as we can and in a safe way and provide movement and space for goods to be moved by freight.

And I'm really hopeful that as we're having these conversations that we're recognizing that there's space for everybody.

And it's about making that space as efficiently as possible and not putting competition between the modes to the extent we can reduce that.

So, thank you, Calvin.

Oops, got something else going.

Can I ask a high-level question?

Council Member Begich, I just want to float the unrelated to this specific policy objective.

As you mentioned, I have a hard stop at noon and we're barely through this.

And so I don't know what everyone else's schedules are, but I have, I'm booked between noon and two, but if there's, if there were folks that wanted to hold some of the transportation conversation to the afternoon, I know the afternoon is pretty full too, but I certainly have more flexibility then.

So I will defer to you, Chair, on how you manage that, but I just wanted to suggest that.

Well, I would love to, and I probably should have cut us off earlier when we were talking about parks, but there was so much interest in that as well.

Council Member O'Brien, I don't see that we can swap this.

Unfortunately, everybody else's schedules are also dealing with what's going on this afternoon.

So, are there particular issues you'd like to delve into?

I think we'll just have to work through it.

I just, I don't know if everyone has to leave at noon or if I'm the only one.

I know I can stay longer at four.

Okay.

But I can't stay longer now.

I'm sorry about that.

Well, I think we should continue.

Let's at least go until 1230 and then at that point see where we are and then if we can pick it up.

In fact, why don't we just make that the goal?

We'll work through transportation until 1230. If we still have transportation, we will just carry that over.

Is that okay with everybody?

Good plan.

Okay, great.

We got a plan, let's go.

Okay, item number two is the Seattle Transportation Benefit District.

This is a reminder that voters passed Proposition 1 and it's a six-year transit funding initiative that expires in 2021 and generates about 55 million dollars per year.

In June, council expanded the use of STPD funds to include school ORCA passes, capital investment for transit, and change the threshold of routes to 65% of stops in the city of Seattle to qualify.

So with these new uses, the budget has appropriated additional money for those purposes.

The budget also includes $2 million for a first mile, last mile service to be purchased through King County to extend the reach of the West Seattle Water Taxi and also to connect to the Rainier Valley light rail stations.

I wanted to highlight this for you because this was one of the examples of microtransit service that council took out of the June proposal that relied on private shuttles.

This would be purchased through King County as a service that they would provide.

The mayor's speech also described a 30% increase in transit service purchases over the next two years, another 100,000 service hours.

There isn't additional budget authority.

The baseline budget does accommodate that additional purchase, and that's predominantly because King County has not been able to, we have not been able to expend the full amount of money in the last several years, which is part of the reason why council was able to expand the uses of the resources earlier in June.

The additional services are included in the King County Executive's proposed budget and the additional routes, the additional service is likely to focus on sort of the edge of city routes that fill up that new 65% of stops as well as non-peak service.

I've included Table 3 which has a summary of the spending over the six-year term and I don't know if there are any other questions on this item.

Madam Chair?

Please.

Calvin, when we had the SDOT presentation on this, we're proposing to add new bus service as part of the September 2019 and then again as part of the March 2020 service additions.

This is currently funded by voter approved levy that would be up for renewal in 2020. Do we have a plan for what might happen in the event that the voters reject for some odd reason that plan in 2020?

I would love for us to have a little buffer space.

in 2020, 2021 so that we can be in a thoughtful position as opposed to be in a position where we're all of a sudden cutting 40. $3 million worth of bus service?

The financial plan does hold $20 million for that last year, for the beyond the last year, as a fail safe, if you will.

It lets us ramp down to that first service window in March.

But to some extent, that's about as much as you can get out of it.

$20 million feels like an appropriate set aside, so that's great.

Council Member Herbold, then Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you.

So as you noted, Calvin, we've been told that the ability to add service has been limited because there's no physical space left for buses to park at the bus bases.

And so what I'm trying to understand is does the city's proposed approach to additional service purchases to focus on routes at the edge of the city limits, is that designed to address that, the limitation that King County Metro has?

That's my conclusion about where we would be able to get those services.

Is there just more room to park the buses in those areas, or what's the thinking?

I think the thinking is that whenever we've tried to get additional peak hour service, particularly in the center of the city, we run up against these constraints.

Bus capacity at the bus bases, as well as throughput through our corridors as well.

It seems that if we are going to get additional service it would be off-peak where some of those constraints are lessened.

And at the exterior of the city where those buses are, there may be more opportunities to adjust regionally, but I have not looked into the King County proposal to be able to give you much more than that.

We confirm with King County that our approach actually will result in the ability to add more service.

I would hate to move forward with a plan and have them tell us, well, sorry, no, this doesn't address the problem that we're struggling with.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank You madam chair councilmember Herbold's question was the first question that I had I'm not sure I Fully understand the answer that you just gave so checking in with King County is going to be helpful And then will there be just a summary memo that you can provide for us so I can okay?

The second question that I had was related to the labor issues that came up the first time this concept came around about Purchasing micro transit services from a private company Does this?

middle paragraph here still contemplate using a private company, or are we for sure going to be working with King County Metro Transit providers?

The proposal is to use the existing contract with King County.

However, King County, as I understand it, has been exploring the use of other services to deliver these services.

So, in some ways, it is deferring to King County to deliver on its contract.

Okay.

It seems like we might be in the same situation then.

Appreciate that.

And maybe that could be part of the questions that you ask of King County for following up with them on their capacity here, what the potential plans are to fill this need for the microtransit services.

I agree we need these.

And I also just want to make sure we're not recycling the same debate that we had earlier this spring and summer.

Council Member Skeda, the operator that the county just elected through the RFP process chariot has a labor peace agreement with the Teamsters on this topic.

I was handed a copy of that, gave a copy of that to Council Member O'Brien's office.

I'm sure we can make a copy for you too.

Wonderful, thank you.

Thank you.

Next item is the First Hill and Southlake Union streetcars.

King County currently operates service on the First Hill and South Lane streetcars on behalf of the city.

Earlier this year, King County requested reconciliation of bills for 2016, 2017, and 2018 streetcar operations.

And the combined bill for those years is about $6.5 million.

So additional funding is included in the third quarter supplemental and in the proposed budget to pay these, essentially these back bills.

To account for the higher costs going forward in 2019-2020, The proposed budget also includes funding for operations, increases it by about $4 million each year.

The current operating agreement expires at the end of 2019, but it does allow for a one-year administrative extension to renegotiate the renewal, and a new operating agreement would require legislative action.

The SDOT has some outstanding loans related to the South Lake Union streetcar.

There's an outstanding 4.8 million capital loan and an outstanding 3.6 million operating loan.

The budget makes a $300,000 payment on the capital loan as specified by ordinance, and the executive is proposing to retire the operating loan in its entirety with a portion of the sales from the Mercer Mega Block.

There is proposed budget legislation to extend the term of the operating loan to coincide with the timing of the property sale.

SDOT is required to, by ordinance, to report on the financial and operating performance of the streetcar lines twice a year.

And I just wanted to highlight for you that the last formal report transmitted to council was dated in June 2017.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I first off just want to thank the Mayor and Scott, Interim Director, for providing this accurate information about the operating costs.

It's information that the Council requested in September of last year, and I think it adds a lot of value and transparency to what the true costs are of operating these two streetcar lines.

There's $5 million in additional operating costs for 2017 and 2018, in 1.4 million in 2016. And as Calvin noted, the proposed budget moving forward has an ongoing increase of 4 million for the First Hill and South Lake Union streetcar operations.

Can you give us a sense of what percent of an increase that represents?

I will have to get back to you on what that represents and to the total cost of operations.

And then as it relates to the last point that you raised, Calvin, in the fact that we have not received a semi-annual streetcar report since June of 2017, I think it would be useful to consider an option of strengthening that requirement and that obligation to provide that report perhaps by a proviso on the spending related to streetcar operations.

Thank you for bringing that up and Councilmember Herbold, I want to also recognize that you had raised some pretty important questions last year about streetcars and thank you for your continued engagement on this.

I'm interested too because I understand that operational costs will shift from sound transit to us.

in 2023, I believe you've mentioned before.

And that's, I believe that Ben Noble said it was like a $10 million addition that we were going to have to pick up if we don't negotiate something differently.

And so I hope that as we're looking at the big picture of all this, that we acknowledge the additional operation costs that we're going to have to pick up.

There is currently, as part of the agreement with building the streetcar, Sound Transit was contributing through 2020 three, until 2024, $5 million per year, and that funding will go away at that time.

The county contributes about $1.5 million, and that represents some of the, when the South Lake Union Streetcar went into operation, so there was a allocation of Metro Transit Service that that basically represents.

So that has been maybe a more, consistent contribution over the years, but both of those are up for discussion as the current agreements expire.

So I'm just hopeful that as we're getting reports that we have a big picture on what it costs us to operate the system.

And I think it feeds into what we've been saying about Center City Connector, which is next, of what is it actually going to cost us to run.

And are the ridership numbers accurate?

Because I think we talked about this last year, ridership numbers were so much more aggressive and optimistic than they turned out to be.

So the next item is the Center City Streetcar Connector.

This is a project that in March of 2018, the executive paused and hired an outside consultant, which was KPMG, to review the project costs.

In general, KPMG found that the project costs to construct had increased from the budget of $187.7 million to about $252.4 million, and they also estimated that the cost to terminate the project was about $55.4 million, including $31 million that had already been spent.

The executive also reported that the vehicle procurement contract had specified longer and heavier cars than are currently operating on Southlake Union or First Hill, and the potential cost impacts of that are not included in the KPMG report and aren't currently known.

The executive has engaged a separate consultant to review those impacts.

The KPMG report did estimate a range of operating costs for a consolidated streetcar system.

They estimated between a $2.6 million deficit and a $1.9 million surplus.

And this estimate did include the partnership funding from Sound Transit and King County.

Without that funding, KPMG estimated a range between a $9.9 million deficit and a $5.4 million deficit.

The actual contract terms for operating the Center Streetcar have not been negotiated.

The Seattle Times reported back in March that King County and SDOT were about $8 million apart.

SDOT and Metro anticipate completing a draft agreement in the spring of next year.

The KPMG analysis did find that those cost estimates, SDOT's cost estimates, were reasonable in the context of heading into negotiations, but they also analyzed an alternative service plan that would focus more on peak hour service delivery, which had the opportunity to improve operating costs by about $5 million.

I've included a summary of the KPMG analysis on table four.

The executive hasn't made a decision on the Center City Streetcar.

The budget retains the capital funding for the project, though it's pushed out a couple years.

And it also includes $500,000 to continue evaluating the Center City Streetcar in 2019 or to investigate an alternative if the project is stopped.

And with the downtown construction and the anticipated federal review of this project, if the project were to move forward, it probably could not begin construction until at least 2020.

Any questions?

On the operations side, are we considering how the increased operations for First Hill and South Union might affect the projections for operations costs?

A lot of the operating assumptions for a combined consolidated system are very different than how the individual systems operate independently.

in general the idea is that we have two sort of limited assets and combining them is supposed to increase the utility of the entire system.

So it will have an impact but it's going to be how that translates into the modeling probably needs more investigation because the concept of how this works as a system is supposed to be very different from how the existing systems are operating.

And then as it relates to the difference between the SDOT CIP project cost of $192 million and the KPMG estimate of construction of $252 million, have we begun conversations about how that gap might be filled?

No, as far as I'm aware, there has not been any proposal.

The existing funding has been retained and it's essentially just put the entire project on hold.

And if we approve this budget, it'll essentially be the mayor's call on whether to proceed.

The funding is generally, I want to say that the bulk of it has been pushed out into 2021, so it's like many of our other projects that are in that same space where we will get another shot at this next year.

We'll get another shot at next year.

The spending isn't expected to happen until 2021.

Council Member Johnson.

I just want to say I think this is a prudent course of action while we continue to wait for the KPMG report.

As Calvin just outlined for us, because the capital construction likely is in the 2021, late 2020, early 2021 time frame, I think it's prudent for us to keep this sort of $500,000 to hold Pat and wait to see what additional analysis says.

And I'm going to use this as a chance to say adios.

I have to sneak down the hill to the Regional Affordable Housing Task Force conversations for our final set of recommendations.

I do have a couple of small things that are included in this later on.

One around additional signage for suicide prevention hotline, work at bridges throughout the city, and some other stuff around efficiencies in downtown.

Calvin will expertly walk you through those options as we get to them.

And regrettably, this Affordable Housing Task Force meeting will last the rest of the day, so I won't be able to join you back for the afternoon.

But thank you to central staff for the good work on transportation.

Looking forward to seeing more of this come to light through the Form B green sheet.

Great, and thank you for attending and participating with the regional task force and look forward to hearing what comes up out of the recommendations.

Good.

First, Council Member Mosqueda.

Oh, Council Member.

Thank you.

I just wanted to suggest that we do, we replicate basically what we did last year as it relates to requiring an operations cost plan proposal and requiring a proposal for closing the funding gap if the project proceeds and using a proviso like we did last year as a mechanism to effectuate that.

Good, thank you.

All right, any other questions?

Five is related to efficiencies that the executive has identified in the budget.

The proposed budget includes a reduction of $1.1 million of general fund from a number of different projects.

This includes reducing the paid parking maintenance program by 540,000, eliminating the subsidy for the e-park system, which is 320,000 a year, reducing the travel options program, $100,000 per year, and reducing the engineering services support to SPU, another $150,000 per year.

There's also about $1.9 million of transportation funds that have been proposed for reprioritization.

This includes eliminating the Summer Parkways Open Streets Program, $110,000 a year.

Eliminating the Permanent Play Streets Program or the pilot proposal, $75,000.

Can I stop you there for just a moment?

I am more than happy to eliminate the Summer Parkways project that was something that we started a few years ago, and I was the primary sponsor, but it has not worked, and I'm sorry, but I don't think we should pursue something that SDOT doesn't have his heart in.

But the permanent play streets pilot and how we can encourage and make it easy for neighborhoods to make play streets, I think it's really important, and I'm now channeling Councilmember Johnson.

Sorry, he left on this.

But figuring out and continuing to have ways that neighborhoods can say, hey, look, we want to close these for even temporally, like one neighborhood wanted to have their street closed from after school hours until the time people were normally coming home from work.

So it was like 2.30 p.m.

to 5.30 p.m.

in daylight hours.

I think those are great ideas.

I'd like to make sure we can continue to do that, and I'd hate to see the pilot just end or not continue it in some way, whether it's Department of Neighborhoods or otherwise.

So I just would like to start that.

Please, go ahead.

I just want to underscore my support for that comment as well.

In fact, items E, F, and G, I think that these are really good ways for us to make sure that individuals, especially families and kiddos, get a chance to get out and play.

As we try to encourage more people to live in the city and live in dense neighborhoods, these are their backyards, creating opportunities for play and community engagement and social cohesion.

These are critical, I think, for public health, but also to make sure our community is livable.

And that's what we also promise when we promise density.

So I'm really interested in working with you specifically on the play streets, but also these other components as well.

Great.

Thank you.

Mmmmm.

A couple of the other items that have also been proposed for reduction, reducing the area and transit-oriented development planning program by $250,000, reducing discretionary contracting sort of across the department by 750,000, and eliminating 14 vacant positions, which saves $400,000, which is the portion of the associated savings that could be redirected to other uses.

And so the PRO's budget directs this specific $400,000 to the arterial major maintenance program.

So, Calvin, with this H, where you're reducing transit-oriented design planning program, will it continue in some fashion?

Do we have other SDOT funds or something?

Because this ties back in with what Councilmember Muscata and others have been leading here, which is trying to have multi-use for anything like this with public property where we can consider affordable housing?

There is still staff assigned to this body of work.

Essentially what when this program was created they had essentially their own separate budget and now they are charging their time directly to projects.

So it does make it a little more connected to it's spending money off of a specific transit project as opposed to having a separated budget.

Okay.

Yeah, please.

I don't quite understand what it means to charge it to a project when these multimodal corridor projects aren't fully funded.

I think that's going to create a problem for ourselves if we really want to plan for transit-oriented development.

And, you know, again, in my district, Delridge is really, really interested in doing some of that planning.

And the RapidRide project on Delridge is not fully funded.

And it also means that the focus is maybe less on the broader planning conversation and more on how it gets implemented and delivered as part of that project to be eligible as a cost for that project.

So it is representing, again, Sort of focus on delivery of that project as opposed to maybe the more policy based portion where this original ad came from.

So is there anything else on Delridge you want to discuss?

Are you saying the funding that remains is focused on the project?

Or you're saying?

Well, in order to charge on a project, the staff would have to be working on something that's germane to the delivery of that CIP project.

So I think it has a little bit of the effect of focusing the work that they do much more specifically about how that project gets delivered.

We can't charge sort of broad area TOD policy to individual projects in that way.

It's not...

And so, you know, again, just underscoring what I already said, this kind of work, this TOD planning around a particular project could go by the wayside if you're trying to deliver a project that is, that we don't have all the funding for.

So this is something, this is a planning element that I could see getting cut in order to deliver a project, and I think that's a problem.

There are other elements of the, basically the policy division of SDOT that do do some of this work, but it's not as explicit in terms of the work program.

So this may require some some follow-up with you and your office about sort of how they're prepared to staff these types of issues.

Let's talk more.

Okay, please continue.

So unless there's other specific items, I just highlight that these are the ones that are the proposals that are gonna fund some of the other items that the mayor has included in the budget.

Item number six is one of those items, it's downtown mobility.

So many of these redirected cuts go to address the transportation impacts during the period of maximum constraint in 2019, 2020. And this is the two year period where we will be There's a lot of work going on in terms of sort of addressing the cumulative construction impacts of the Alaska Way Viaduct, SR 99 tunnel opening, waterfront construction, the convention center expansion and Coleman dock renovation.

two amounts of funding that have been proposed.

One is for specific improvements, things like signal timing, the Transportation Operations Center, and a data management platform.

This is $1.7 million in 2019 and $500,000 in 2020. And then in addition, they've identified about $1 million in both years for essentially staffing to help address mobility issues in real time through the next two years.

So this is something obviously we've talked about a lot this year.

We're going to be hearing a lot more from constituents in the next couple of years as we're dealing with all these transportation issues.

This morning in the front page of Seattle Times once again there was a an article about a group that's come together that are both environmentalist and folks that are advocates for bike lanes and pedestrian crosswalks and some of the things that Councilmember Gonzalez had raised, you know, looking at other options, whether they're scramble signals.

And I always know that our SDOT friends have done the work before I've called them.

Yet, I'm wondering whether we have the communication outreach set in such a way that rather than us responding to a hundred emails a week about people who are mad about transportation and congestion downtown.

if there isn't a mechanism that we can have set up in advance and that we're thinking about, you know, from the waterfront to Western to First all the way up to Sixth, as we're thinking about that little hourglass, I think we counted that there was a ridiculously few number of lanes in that whole corridor that could be used for freight and buses and bikes and parking and cars.

Yet I think we've got to be able to have a way of describing what's going on.

And I believe Heather Marks has been identified as the person in SDOT who's going to be taking over that job.

I just think that we ought to have be real clear about what we're doing and how we're communicating and what good ideas might come in and how we're responding to that, rather than having a year-long plan to be able to say, hey, let's try some things.

Let's see if this can work.

Let's pilot things.

Be nimble.

And that's what I would really like to be talking about more with you, with SDOT, with our council central staffers.

How can we be that nimble body that we want to be?

And there has been some work over the past several years.

It was under the name One Center City as a model that included a number of these strategies and outreach strategies.

And we should absolutely engage with the department to kind of make sure we're aware of what's going on.

We had anticipated that SDOT would be doing some portion of that when they talked about the VITA closure as a presentation to full council, but that has been deferred until the end of the year when we're closer to the actual closure happening.

So thank you for bringing up one, Senator Citty.

Tons of work has gone on and a lot of engagement.

What I don't know is where we are now.

What are the recommendations that we're following through with?

What are the recommendations that are not going to be prioritized?

Again, the communication about not just what's open and what's closed, but what are we trying, I think is going to be really critical.

Thanks.

Yeah, Council Member Gonzales.

Thank you.

Calvin, can you help me understand whether this budget includes funding for the announcement that I read in the news this morning that the mayor is implementing or standing up a rapid response team to help address issues related to the period of maximum constraint?

Does this downtown mobility bucket hold those dollars, or is that more diffusely represented in the budget?

It is not explicitly called out that way in the budget, but it seems consistent with how it's described.

So I haven't heard it described explicitly that way, but that seems consistent with the types of resources that they're compiling.

I'll have to investigate this more.

Yeah, if we could just sort of make sure we get a clear understanding of how those efforts, the rapid response team is being funded and just a little bit more details around how that rapid response team is actually fitting into the city's overall strategies for preparing for the period of maximum constraint, that would be really helpful.

I think the way that I've heard the news reports report it, which, may or may not be the full package of details is that it's literally going to be designed to respond to critical accidents that can result in significant congestion in our streets.

So I would just like to get a better understanding of what those dollars are going to fund and how much of SBOT's budget is going to those efforts.

Just briefly, Madam Chair, I'm wondering as well, does this downtown mobility funding bucket include any opportunities for SDOT to do painting of bike share corrals?

So when we encourage people to get on the bus, we're also encouraging them to think about multimodal transportation using bike shares.

maybe using scooters.

We want to make sure that those scooters and bikes are placed in a way that don't interfere with people walking or wheelchairs or strollers.

I've seen some of these bike corrals already painted on the ground in Ballard.

I'm wondering if there's the opportunity to include that in the downtown corridor as we ask more people to ride bikes and scooters and to take the bus and walk.

There is a program that's tied to the renewal of the bike share permitting piece.

The SDOT is proposing to increase the permit fees for those, for bike share in general.

And one of the things this would fund is the delivery of more bike corrals.

So that is part of it.

It's not specifically tied to this funding, but it is tied to a separate proposal that's in the budget.

Okay, great.

Would that be throughout the city then?

Yes, it would be throughout the city.

Okay, thank you.

I'll look at that and maybe you can point me in the right direction.

Sure.

Thanks.

Thanks.

The next item, item number seven, is related to congestion pricing.

So in 2018, council included $200,000 to study local diversion related to tolling on State Route 99. The executive is called for developing a congestion pricing proposal by 2021. The budget essentially adds $1 million for community engagement and concept development along investigating congestion pricing for 2019. And the financing plan anticipates an additional $800,000 necessary in 2020, but it does not appropriate those funds at this time.

The city has received a Bloomberg Climate Challenge Grant to support this work, but that grant provides in-kind services and does not provide any additional funding.

There is no implementation funding tied to this proposal, so this $1.1 million is strictly for concept development.

And that's what I have to say about that.

And I appreciate the concept development is going to come with its set of opponents and proponents.

Do we have any more information about how we're going to proceed with this?

There is a more detailed work plan, but, well, more of a conceptual work plan.

I think the executive's proposal has been to use the rest of this year to develop a more concrete work plan, and I think that's part of the idea of holding, of only appropriating a million dollars at this point.

It is still a million dollars for 2019, but we can follow through with how much progress they've made to date on developing a work plan.

Chair?

So if the decision after all of these studies at the end of the day is to move forward with congestion pricing, is that something that would be authorized by a council vote or by a vote of the public?

How would that work?

I'll have to get back to you on that, on what exactly our authority is on those.

I think that we have some authority on local streets, and it's a question maybe of where, I would have to do some more research into where our authority lies.

I'd like that quite a bit.

Thank you.

You know, again, the new tunnel on the waterfront will be mostly used by residents on the west side of the city.

And so if those residents want to avoid the toll, it will be more of the folks on the west side that will be bearing more of their fair share for the burden of the closure of the viaduct if congestion pricing were to move forward.

So that's something I want to take a look at.

The last item I have is capital oversight, and this is an issue that has come up in past budgets.

Just wanted to highlight for you a couple of items that we've done in the past and council may want to do again.

Council may wish to consider legislation to conditions SDOT's grant applications to ensure that you are on board with what they are when they're making financial commitments on behalf of the city.

And as well, council may wish to consider stage gate provisos on select projects.

Anything?

Please.

Yes.

I have a capital oversight proposal related specifically to option B for the stage gate provisos.

And this is a proposed bill for capital projects, including stage gating.

And we'll talk a little bit more about it in the afternoon session.

Great.

So if you've got something else to add to that, Calvin, otherwise we've got, we have 12 items that we will pick up at two o'clock with the proposed budget actions that our council members have brought forward so far.

So if everybody's all right with this, I'm going to recess this meeting.

We'll pick it up at two o'clock starting with the budget actions as proposed.

Good?

Anything else for the good of the order?

Eric?

Calvin?

No.

Okay.

Council colleagues, you good with this?

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

We're on recess.