Seattle City Council Housing, Health, Energy, & Workers Rights Committee 1/17/19

Good morning.

Today is Thursday, January 17, 2019. The Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee will come to order.

It is 10.02, and I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the committee.

I'll be joined this morning by Councilmember Juarez and Councilmember Bagshaw.

I look forward to the conversation today and want to say Happy New Year to all.

This is our first meeting of 2019 and it's the first meeting during the Seattle Squeeze.

So we moved our time from 9.30 to 10 to help accommodate schedules.

I want to thank everyone for taking transit, for biking in, for walking in, for using alternate transportation modes than a single occupancy vehicle.

We have not yet seen the type of congestion that I think many feared.

And in fact, I'm hoping that this will really create opportunities for people to see themselves being able to commute into work using alternative transportation.

So excited to have you all here today.

We have four items on the agenda.

First, we'll have a general update from our new CEO, Debra Smith from Seattle City Light, and hear how the first few months are going, and also have a few opportunities to talk about advancements in workplace culture policy.

We'll have two council bills, one looking at Seattle City Lights and the Homewash County sale of sidewalk easement, and one looking at the Endangered Species Act land deed acceptance.

And the last will be an update from the Office of Housing, the 2018 investments, and an update on the news that we just heard yesterday about Microsoft's $500 million investment into our region.

So we'll get a quick briefing on that.

Guards, do you mind?

There's a lot of chatter right here.

Alex, I'm going to ask you to, if you're going to hear to testify, please go up and testify.

At this time, we're going to take a few moments for public testimony, and we have Alex Zimmerman up first.

And his time can start now.

I'm a little bit confused.

My name is Alex Zimmerman.

A little bit confused about you buy 10 properties.

around this we spend and I look this is talk about accuracy you know what does mean but nothing talking about how much cost is for my understanding is supposed to be cost a ton of money but somebody told me it's like a couple hundred thousand dollars but that's not a point oh okay so I want to speak about agenda number one about general city light Information.

I come to City Light meeting and talk about this for many time.

City Light stealing from people a million and million dollars.

Every Seattle Times have two article.

So City Light give to one old senior citizen family $2,000.

It's a ton of money.

So I spoke many time and talk to right now publicly.

I ask City Light and you council when they will be give back money what is steal from us.

We talking about million and million dollars.

I pay almost double right now for what I paid before for many years.

So it's a question, what is we having?

I went before class action for $100 million against Department of Social and Health Service who's stealing $100 million from 50,000 families, disabled, senior citizens.

So the situation, what is we have right now?

Why this happened from beginning?

Because council who is in this chamber, it's a crook, same crook.

Same three branches all cover one another.

For example, you, Consul Mosquitto, when you go to election, you promise open Bertha room in City Hall one day per week for open public conversation.

You never doing this.

For one year, I never hear from you.

It is very simple.

So when you will Not lie to us and not be a crook in doing everything what you told us before we elect you.

So open Berta room one day per week for open public conversation.

Maybe never will be stealing money from department.

Thank you very much for your time.

The next speakers that we have are from Seattle City Light, Silence Breakers, Denise Crownville, Alice Lockridge, and Doreen, thank you.

And just by way of reference as well, for folks who did sign up, we have three sign-up sheets.

This first one is just related to Seattle City Light updates, the CES report, and the general other items on the agenda, including Office of Housing Issues.

We'll have two other chances for public comment on the sale of the Sidewalk Easement and Endangered Species Act land deed acceptance.

So, Denise, thanks for signing up on the first sheet.

Sure, thank you.

And thanks again for the opportunity to comment.

Denise Crownbell with Seattle City Light.

I've been there 18 years and a shop steward for most of that time.

And I'm co-chair of the Seattle Silence Breakers.

And we're here today to speak out against the CES report that was released by City Light, the investigatory report in November.

With that report's release, many people in that department were re-traumatized, and I understand the utility said they had to release the report publicly, but it's been a concern for those women and other people in the department.

But my main talking point about this report is that it's indicative of investigations throughout the city.

And after that report was released, multiple people came up to me and said variations on this is the reason why I'm not coming forward to HR.

Oh, what a surprise that that came out to be that they were coming after essentially the women who brought forward the complaints.

And so it is having a chilling effect, and I'm afraid it will continue to have a chilling effect.

And on a side note, I've also had probably 10 people say to me, oh, I'm waiting for the Office of Employee Ombud, and then I'm going to come forward.

So that's what we're here to talk about today.

My compatriots also have other points they want to raise.

We've raised our concerns specifically about the report in previous testimony.

But I really just want to say that's our concern, that this report is out there.

It's indicative of how investigations are conducted, whether they're internal or external to the city, and that it very much is having a chilling effect on reporting.

Thank you.

Thank you, Denise.

Welcome, Alice.

Hi.

Thank you.

Thanks for coming back.

I'm here to read some comments from a current employee about the CES report.

I'm sorry, Alice, can you hold on?

Alex Zimmerman, I will not accept you standing up there and acting as if you're part of this group.

Thank you.

Again, I'm Alice Lockridge, I'm a former employee and I'm reading a statement given to me by a current employee related to the CES report.

In the investigation regarding the petition, I was asked by the city's hired attorney if I've ever directly experienced sexism and harassment at CES.

I answered honestly, told the city hired attorney I wasn't sure it was sexual harassment, but I said I did not file a complaint with HR and recounted the details of a very embarrassing conversation initiated by a senior male colleague when I first started at the city.

I provided the attorney with his name under the pretense of confidentiality.

I told her my whole story to document a pattern of unacceptable behavior by this individual who has harassed other women at CES.

I'm questioning City Light's decision to issue a press release on their Powerlines blog and Facebook page that included a one-sided summary of the events leading up to the city's decision to hire an attorney to investigate a petition signed by 42 people.

The excuse given for publicly releasing the report was that there was a standing public disclosure request and the city would have to give the report to the press anyway.

I feel this approach was dishonest and the report should have been given only to those who filed the PDR minus the city's biased and misleading interpretation of the facts detailed in the press release.

What has been extremely hard to forget is how naive I feel for believing that my comments about a male supervisor who still works in my section would be kept confidential by the investigating attorney.

After reading the report, it was very clear that the attorney directly asked that male colleague if the statements I had made were true, exposing me and my beliefs.

I have to see this person every day.

We don't look at each other in the eye.

We avoid each other at all costs.

If the attorney had informed me that everything I said to her would be shared with that supervisor, I would have withheld his name, especially knowing how the investigation was not to quantify the harassment issues at CES, but to use Beth Rocha as a scapegoat and relinquish any accountability by leadership.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing.

And Doreen.

Markeisha.

I'm so sorry.

Markeisha.

Hello.

My name is Markeisha Dixon and I'm going to speak.

Can you hear me?

In regards to the CS investigation as well.

This is a call for action.

Employees request for harassment training through petition.

SCLHR claims to have interviewed CES employees regarding the petition months prior to hiring Celeste Monroe.

To do the same thing, however, that information was not released in conjunction with the final Monroe report.

Tell us, how many people of 42 were interviewed by SCLHR?

the political, legal, and media pressure applied to the city.

With political pressure, Councilmember Mosquedo, the Seattle Women's Commission, and local 17 representatives, Annie Bowles, as well as mounting legal pressure, nearly nine months later, Seattle City Light decided to hire an employee an employer defense attorney out of abundance of caution?

Was this really done in preparation of their defense?

Do they not trust their own HR investigators' decision, who months earlier claimed that there was no need for further investigation per the petition?

The city's defense moved against the workers.

The scope of Monroe's investigation was to include harassment allegations raised to the attorney, but the employer's accusations were stated to be completed in a separate report, and other allegations were downplayed as possible violations of workplace expectations of mutual respect, rather than accurately as an assault in the workplace.

Where is this separate report?

Why separate and isolate serious accusations from the primary purpose of the investigation?

It took Celeste Monroe just under a year to complete the report for which the city paid over $47,000, and according to many, it was one of the most poorly written and biased reports.

Would $47,000 been spent on a manager and employee training and development have been a better investment?

City Strategy Under the Guise of Transparency.

In November 2018, Seattle City Light officials made an unprecedented move regarding confidential employee investigations, releasing a press announcement and redacted copy of an investigation report directly to undisclosed media outlets and redacted version directly to sexual harassment accusers.

accused employees of C.A.S. to all City Light employees and City Light log power lines, which also linked in on City Light's Facebook page in an attempt to reach their 98,000 followers in anticipation of a lawsuit filed against the city by a former C.A.S. employee.

The city decided to try to influence public opinion through the release of the biased and incomplete investigation report.

Markeisha, can I have you wrap up for us?

Okay, I'm just about done.

Perpetuating a culture of fear, retaliation, and wasteful spending of taxpayer money.

Prior to the report being finalized, an employee union steward and CS employee provided Celeste Memorial with pages of errors and omissions from the draft report, but the result of the investigation had no changes.

Then local 17 union representative Amy Bowles asked for the report to be rescinded and redacted but with no action from Seattle Sea Light, the silent breakers met with council member Mosquedo who agrees the report should be rescinded and redacted and you the taxpayer who did not want your money being spent to help the City of Seattle perpetrate a culture of sexual harassment and discrimination against its employees can act now and support the workers.

That's it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you all.

That is everyone I have signed up to testify for this portion of the agenda.

Is there anybody else that wanted to testify?

Okay, thanks again for coming and sharing your story.

I know you've had a chance as well to meet with our next guest to the table.

So why don't we have Farideh go ahead and read into the agenda record, agenda item number one.

And if you all want to join us at the table, whoever is interested, come on up.

Hi, just you.

Welcome Debra.

Agenda item one, Seattle City Light General Update for briefing and discussion.

Yeah, either way.

So welcome, General Manager, CEO, Deborah Smith, and also welcome, Deborah Juarez, Council Member, to the table.

I look forward to hearing from you.

I know we had a chance to chat just before the holiday break, and at that point, you were just a few months in.

I'm looking forward to getting an update from you on how the first few months have gone, some lessons learned in this short amount of time.

Thank you.

And also, specific to the testimony that we heard this morning, we know, as Councilmember Juarez and Councilmember Bagshaw, who were part of this committee, know well that Seattle City Light is sort of the epicenter where many of the issues of the Me Too movement have really come to light for us in City Hall.

Last year, when we saw Seattle City Light's strategic plan, one glaring omission, as Councilmember Juarez pointed out, was the fact that there was not a comment in the draft report related to workplace harassment, intimidation, or assault.

And we were very excited to work with your predecessors and this council to make sure that we included that language in there.

I think that what you're hearing from folks is a real strong desire to ask, what's next?

How do we change this culture?

How do we change?

not just the expectations but the policy on paper so that there is a true sense of what expected norms and behaviors are.

So we'll let you do an update on just generally what's happened and then if you could also comment on some of the issues that you've heard raised in public testimony today and before that would be very helpful.

Sure and so I don't forget just because I have some notes.

I will say that as we've been working on accountability agreements for city lights, officers and then those will cascade down.

One of the things we did, of course I have a different format that I've used before and so I've brought that to the table.

And so one of the things we've done is to create a set of foundational goals and we've actually put them at the very top.

And so some of the things in the strategic plan that were, Not in any way buried, but they weren't at the forefront.

They now are, and those are around workplace culture, diversity, fiscal responsibility.

There's another one I'm not remembering.

So I just want to be clear that we are really trying to elevate that and say that everything that we do is built on that foundation.

Excellent.

Before you get started.

I want to welcome councilmember Bagshaw and Eric welcome.

Did you want to stay with us?

You're welcome to And if you could introduce yourself for the record

I'm Eric McConaughey.

I'm the council central staff.

I initially stepped up here just to help with a PowerPoint, but that is being capably handled, and I do work for you all, as you know, on city light issues, and I'm happy to be here.

But I have, other than this moment, not much to say at the table today.

I'll be an active listener and take notes if you'd like me to do so.

And will you be here for a briefing on the two property pieces coming up?

I plan on being in this room for the entire time, and I will be at this table if you would like me to be here.

I'd be happy to do that.

Well, you are welcome to stay here and we'll look forward to also hearing more from you on items two and three on the agenda.

Thank you for joining us at the table.

I will say I have a cold, so my voice is a little, but we'll go for it.

So I just wanted to start by giving a brief update on what's been going on.

And so I think I talked with- We should add that you're a Husky now.

Yes, I- You're no longer a duck.

I ran into Council Member Juarez and I said, my husband and I bought Husky shirts that we wore for the game on New Year's Day.

And when they lost, my husband took it off and said, OK, do you think they'll take this back?

I said, I don't think they will.

So anyway.

So when I saw her, she goes, I'm a Husky now.

And I was also gifted with a Seahawks jersey, which actually was very exciting.

So that didn't work either.

Soon you'll get an NHL shirt.

And a Storm.

In a storm.

So anyway, my 100 days are not quite up, but we're rapidly there.

I did pass, I think, the three-month mark this month.

And I've really focused on talking with a lot of people.

I've talked with a lot of customers.

I've talked with a lot of employees.

I've talked with a lot of community members.

I really probably have spent probably 80 to 90% of my time in one meeting or another, and I actually look forward to kind of moving into the next phase where I have some time to engage in more forward-looking work and developing plans.

So, you know, I wanted to just touch on what I would consider the priorities that I have for moving forward into this first, I don't know, And it may be more or less than that, but this is, these are the things that have emerged to me.

So I'm moving, I'm dealing with rate redesign first, not because it's the most important, but because I'm going to park it.

Because I think as we've discussed, and first of all, I want to say Eric's been great, and we've really enjoyed having him join and participate in the review panel.

And actually, Eric, I think, One of the values that you've brought is that there's been a lot of turnover.

And you coming in with new eyes have asked questions that I'm sure others have had.

And so I've really appreciated you doing that.

And it's been helpful for me, too, because it's helped create the history.

So, we will be bringing, we have an initial report that's due to the council.

Council Member Mosqueda was gracious enough to give us a two-week extension, so January 31st, and then we are scheduled to bring that information, the review panel is scheduled to bring that to you on February 21st.

So, we've got refreshed priorities.

I think it's a good piece of work, and I think you'll be pleased with where we're headed.

So, let's put that aside for the moment.

So one of the things that I've talked about, and, you know, this is not around which comes first, the chicken or the egg, but I've talked a lot, and I talk a lot about our need to reconnect with customers.

And this is not unique by any means to City Light as a utility.

The utility industry is kind of a natural monopoly.

It's easy to allow distance to be between you and your customers.

In the public utility sector in particular, the notion that our customers are indeed our owners I think is critical.

It's really interesting right now, and I'm not prepared to talk about this in any depth, but the stuff going on in California with PG&E and as they're looking at Now public utility was in the paper today, and that's why, because there's an understanding and an expectation that public utilities are more accountable to and closer to their customers.

And so I think we're fortunate to have that here.

Washington State in general is fortunate to have a lot of public utilities and the majority of customers served by them.

And going into this time of great change, we have a real opportunity and a need to increase that level of connection.

And one of the things I talk about is, you know, since our customers have not been able to choose us in the past, number one, I think that actually holds us to a higher standard to behave in ways such that if they had the ability to choose us, they would.

And since they can't choose us with their dollars.

And two, I do believe that in the future customers will have ways of choosing how they get their energy services provided.

And I want to make sure that when that day comes, and in some ways it's here, that they do choose us.

So we're really talking a lot about our customer owners, maximizing the value that we deliver to customer owners, that that's a responsibility for each and every one of us.

And so looking ahead, you know, AMI, the bulk of the meters are in.

So, we chose a customer portal vendor at the end of the year, SPU, and SCL did collaboratively working with Seattle IT, and the bulk of that should be online by the end of 2019 and so we're going to start to see a time where customers will begin to benefit from that investment in AMI and I think it's pretty exciting.

I think actually it's really right around the corner.

There is a second level of integration that has to happen in order for us to take advantage of some of the really to have the data and the granularity of data that will allow us to do different and forward-thinking rate structures.

But we have a lot of opportunity to learn from our system and begin to implement it right away.

Working on industrial customer power quality, I've had a whole series of roundtables with customers.

And those have gone really well.

They've been great conversations.

In general, our commercial and industrial customers, even those who have issues, are extremely appreciative of City Light.

We have a great key accounts team.

They take really good care of our customers, and they've really formed strong working relationships with the people they serve.

And so that's a great, a great, It's great for us, it's great for our customers.

And again, so having lots of customer meetings of different types and sorts, and the picture up there was when I was out at Nucor and, you know, we're in continuing dialogue now with Nucor.

who has an interest in looking at perhaps some distributed energy resource kinds of pricing mechanisms.

And so we've connected them with Bonneville, and those conversations are ongoing.

So again, just really trying to be with our customers and help them grow gracefully.

How's that?

Last Friday we were in District 1 visiting with Nucor and they mentioned that you were out there and they had a good visit with you and they gave us some good examples of what happens when there's unexpected power outages.

They have to use welding tools, they have to chisel out steel that gets stuck in the machines if it's piping through at you know over 300,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

And then the power goes out, it just cools right there.

So that's a time loss for them.

It's a cost to them.

And they had some really great ideas that I'm sure that they shared with you about what's it called, intermittent outages, planned outages.

So that there can be downtime to save energy for you all and to make sure that they don't have the cost.

So would love to work with that.

And that's what I was referring to with Bonneville.

And so we actually have another meeting scheduled with them for February 1. So that's ongoing.

Yeah, you know, we are, our team is looking at a series of both short and long-term system improvements, particularly around cell substation, but also protocol and how do we communicate with customers in a way that gives them the best and most consistent information.

Sometimes we can actually even be our own worst enemy.

We're so interested in providing information and talking to customers, we can wind up getting out and providing an inconsistent message.

So Jim Baggs is actually working on that and pulling together some changes that will, I think, streamline the communication process.

So, you know, next slide.

Okay.

Okay.

We're there.

Good.

You know, so we're a community-owned utility, and we're here to serve our customer owners.

They pay our salaries.

But we can't provide that outstanding customer service without outstanding employees.

It's that simple.

It's not possible.

And so, you know, that's the chicken and the egg thing.

I think that, you know, employees are the most important tool or the most important resource for being the community-owned utility and providing the products and services in the way that we want to provide them to our customers.

And I'm gonna talk a little more in detail about the employee culture than would be indicated by these slides, but I just wanna say that I am absolutely committed to doing everything I can to make City Light a place where people just get up in the morning and can't wait to get to work.

I feel that way about it.

I mean, that's important.

We spend so much time at work.

I mean, there are so many reasons why it's important.

But it's also, you know, this is, we spend the better part of our week as people in our work environment.

And it should be a place where we feel appreciated and respected and where we leave at the end of the day and we feel good about our contributions and what that looked like.

And so, you know, I can't, I've said this before, I can't change what's, passed but I do take responsibility and I for for going forward and I'm in no way trying to shirk that responsibility.

So I just wanted to to say that.

So um I did get some questions that uh that were provided by Council Member Mesquita's office here just before we walked in this morning.

So I'm I'm not prepared to to answer them ladies but I totally am on it.

We'll we will we will We will get you responses.

But I want to make just a couple comments about the CES investigation and then talk about kind of the future.

So I do understand that the silence breakers do not consider the investigation valid, and not just silence breakers, but that some or many in CES do not consider the investigation to have been valid, and they shared that with me directly.

They came and talked with me, and we had good conversation about that.

I'm so sorry to interrupt you.

Just by way of reminder, the CES investigation stands for...

Oh, excuse me, Customer Energy Solutions, and that's the group within City Light that provides energy efficiency and conservation services.

And our office did share the report with the committee in November, along with the Seattle City Light coverage in the Seattle Times, November 16th.

Just by way of reminder, in case you're wondering what this report is that we're talking about, it's from two months ago.

This is really our first chance to check in on it, so just want to make sure folks had a reminder of what the report was, when it came out, and some of the report findings in it.

Great.

So after I met with the silence breakers, and I also met with Amy Bowles, and so I've had several conversations.

I think I understand, I think I do understand the nature of the concerns.

I mean, I will say that.

I did go ahead and in turn I shared that with, I shared the silence breakers concerns directly with the attorney who handles City Light employment issues out of the City Attorney's Office, so I did have that as a follow-up.

I shared the nature of that.

I want to say that there were important lessons learned for City Light from the investigative process, obviously, as well as the workplace culture issues that are underlying it, but the process itself.

in terms of, I'm not going to try and give you a complete list, but in terms of how we communicated with employees, how the release was handled, how I even had some conversation with SDHR, Seattle Department of Human Resources, with their investigator about what's best practice in terms of employees who are involved in an investigation, how you close that loop with them.

And so those lessons learned are important, and they will help us going forward.

And, you know, as referenced in the report, you know, there is ongoing litigation.

So I want to own that and acknowledge that.

And we're not in a position to talk about that.

And it is active.

But as that continues to unfold and as we continue to respond to questions and work through the concerns that employees in and outside of CES have, it's also important for us to move forward.

And so I'd like to make some comments about what that looks like.

And that's really coming at this from my 100 days.

So these are evolving thoughts.

And so this is a work in process.

So I really kind of thought of four.

There's four areas of focus that I have.

One is clear expectations.

So employees have to know what's required of them.

And yes, it's more than.

It's policy.

It's law.

It's workplace expectations.

It's making those things, all of them, known, transparent, educating employees and training them on them.

So we are doing workplace expectations training right now.

I will share, and folks in my leadership structure know that I'm not, the city of Seattle has workplace expectations.

I don't know that they've been formally released, but they've been working on them for some time.

City Light has their own.

Ours are quite long.

I'm not a big, huge fan of them.

I'd like to see them.

Honestly, I think if you're going to hold employees accountable for something, then it has to be something that they can grasp, understand, and hold.

So, yeah.

So, but the training that we're doing that was developed before I came is good training because it's really focused on four of them, and they're four fundamental workplace expectations.

And so, that's ongoing, and then we'll be revamping the workplace expectations themselves.

And so, that's work that we're looking at doing in the first quarter.

Number two is accountability, so we're all accountable for our behavior, and that means everyone, including me.

I think that we need to and must hold all employees accountable at all levels, managers, supervisors, officers, directors.

We need to support leadership in holding their employees accountable, and that is a two-edged sword, and it is a tough one.

We had a little bit of conversation about that yesterday.

It's hard to...

We want managers and supervisors to hold employees who are violating any form of policy accountable, and at the same time, we want to make sure that employees who are in a disciplinary or other process have support.

You know, it's not easy.

But just because it isn't easy doesn't mean we don't do it.

And I think that sometimes there's some stories and some history that's been hard, and so we need to reengage with that process.

And I think most importantly, we all need to understand that our behaviors have consequences.

So that means part of accountability means how do we follow up and what are the consequences and applying them in a consistent way.

Number three is around a safe environment.

So it has to be safe for people to bring issues forward.

And we need to provide the resources that they need to sort out and evaluate their options.

So, you know, there's, and I really appreciated when there was the presentation, I guess it was about two months ago, about the Seattle, Department of HR, Office of the Ombud, and Council Member Begshaw, you talked, well you all did, but you brought up several times the fact that not all issues rise to the level of a legal discrimination or harassment issue, but that doesn't mean that they're not important and they don't need to be dealt with.

It just means they may need to be dealt with in a different way.

And so making sure that we have resources in place to deal with all of those issues in the appropriate way, I think is clear.

So, you know clear violations of policy and law must be dealt with in the appropriate way And you know as as envisioned by the council and by the mayor's office Harassment and discrimination claims will go to SDHR either directly or through the office of the ombudsman And I think that's really important.

And I actually super support that.

I think that it's critical for, I've become aware that one of the nice things for employees about working for the city of Seattle is there's a lot of opportunity to move around and to have new and different opportunities.

And so having a consistent way that we deal with serious behavioral and policy violations is critical for employees who might choose to move into different departments through their career.

I'm going to be looking at organizational issues in City Light, HR, and elsewhere.

And I'm not going to say any more about that right now because it wouldn't be appropriate to do so.

But I do and I have talked internally.

I think I mentioned this to you when we talked in December about creating a City Light ombud, not to in any way take away from what SDHR is doing, but to create yet another avenue where people can go.

And that position would report either directly to me or to a chief of staff, but it would not, report into the HR structure.

And again, that would be more around helping people sort, is this a discrimination harassment claim that then needs to go to the city?

What are my options for dealing with it if it's not?

And so I think there's a lot of opportunity there.

And then last, Sue McNabb and I are actually engaged in a pilot project with SDHR investigating an employee discrimination claim.

So that work is ongoing and I know that they are working hard to set up that function, but we wanted to, when we had one that came up, it was clear that this was an opportunity to work with Sue and say, hey, can you guys handle this?

And so that's ongoing and I look forward to hearing how it goes.

My fourth is around new tools.

So again, if we acknowledge that policy violations and clear things that rise to the level of illegality are clearly handled in one way.

In many cases, employees lack the tools or skills they need to have the conversations with each other about how they want to be treated.

And I think this gets at the piece around, you know, we are all responsible for the culture that we work within and for creating a culture.

that allows us to do our best work, but we need a lot of help and support.

I believe that often issues develop over time and serious problems result of unresolved microaggressions.

So when an issue isn't a clear policy violation or a legal act, I want to make sure that employees have tools available to allow them to do their best work.

And I believe that's my responsibility.

So we're working on specifics, but I think there's a real opportunity to improve productivity, engagement, and ultimately employee morale by helping and supporting employees to have those conversations with coworkers, with supervisors, with colleagues, and to have places they can go to help them decide is this an appropriate conversation for me to have and do I need help having it.

So that's kind of my plan, and we're in the midst of fleshing pieces out.

I'm excited for the next hundred days.

So before I move on to my last area, which is transportation electrification, I had one more thing to add or to share, but are there questions from you all on what I've shared?

Sure.

Thank you for addressing this, and I appreciate your frame is forward-looking, wanting to make sure that you have lessons learned.

And I think the only way to make sure that people feel heard is to make sure that those lessons in the future incorporate some of the feedback that we've heard, not today, but throughout the last year.

One of the lessons learned, especially on this report, being that the report was released early with names included, and people felt like that trust was broken.

Having people feel like they had a body to go to and report what happened, and then to have a report basically say it didn't meet X definition of harassment, therefore it was nullified.

It might not be the exact words, but I think that's the feeling that it left people with.

And so having you say that these four components of your plan really will be to help center policy change on those who've experienced not just harassment and intimidation in the workplace, but also a sense of distrust and being let down because of the report's rollout and the words included, I think is really critical.

And I know that that actions, those actions that took place that have, I think, scarred many of our workers, took place before you got there.

And people are very, I think, optimistic about wanting to work with you to change the culture going forward.

It's clearly one of the core pieces you heard from us when we were doing the interview, how can you help center policy changes on what people have experienced and help us get away from this bar of whether or not someone felt intimidated, harassed, or assaulted.

If it's a sense of unsafe workplace, then that's valid in and of itself.

And so I appreciate you sort of hearing what folks had to say.

We have constantly tried to make sure that those voices are elevated as well so that people aren't feeling silenced, thus the name, Silence Breakers.

But we did receive those questions late last night, so I appreciate you taking those into consideration.

Don't expect you to directly address those today.

But do wonder on the four points that you outlined, and I think it's a pretty comprehensive plan that you have, do you have any plans in place to try to do listening sessions with some of the folks on the front line, PTE members, silence breaker members, to get feedback on those four components to see how we can evolve those final policies and strategies together?

Yeah, no, I hadn't really thought about it.

The listening sessions on the floor, I think that's a great idea.

We did do, I probably neglected to mention, we did do listening sessions as a result of the allegations and the very real concerns this fall.

And so we did a whole series of them.

And they were intended.

to create a safe environment for employees.

And there were 20-some listening sessions, I think.

And I think they largely wrapped up right before we got here.

Managers and supervisors weren't included, so it was meant to be a place where employees could share anything and not have a fear of repercussion.

And then it was interesting because then we did a similar At our leadership forum, we asked and gave the managers and supervisors group an opportunity to weigh in and answer similar questions.

Not surprising, the answers were very similar.

I mean employees are employees regardless.

We all have our position at work and then we bring our personhood to work.

And so as people we generally want the same things at least for ourselves regardless of position.

So I think that would be a good idea.

And I don't know exactly what that will look like.

Certainly as I create specificity around, you know, what does that training look like?

I've got models that I've used.

I don't, there's lots of different models out there in terms of the tools piece.

I would certainly be really interested in getting feedback from employees and finding a way to hear whether a model we might choose resonates.

And obviously, as we look at revamping workplace expectations, there'll be, there was, and there is a process that went out to employees inviting them to provide feedback.

I understand it was fairly In some cases it felt cumbersome to employees so we will look for a different way to do that as we as but I'm actually thinking that The revised workplace expectations will look very much like the city's I'm kind of a believer in consistency Yeah, I believe I believe that if there's opportunities for us to align with a city especially on the HR side again for the reasons I mentioned about investigations were because employees do move around from department to department So if the city, you know, if the city moves forward, I've looked at the city's workplace draft workplace expectations There's a couple of places where because of the nature of the work we do we might need to elevate safety or some things like that But in general there, you know, they're good

One thought I have, and we did this a couple of years ago.

I'm not like volunteering all of us, although if you'd like to join me, sometimes it's valuable to invite the council members to come.

And just even if we are there to say hello and see, because with many of the faces that we see here today, I'm very grateful they've been coming and they've been consistent.

But you have a thousand others that we never see.

So if it would be useful for us even just to be able to support you in your work, just know that I'd be very happy to join you.

That's great.

And you'll come next February or January to that?

Okay.

I'm not going very far.

I know.

So we'd love to follow up with you on how these four policy pillars are being shared and discussed with the frontline workers and the feedback that you get.

I think the outcome that you mentioned is not just to have these kind of principles, but to truly have workplace policies change.

And believe me, we have a lot of changes that I hope we will anticipate seeing in the upcoming years as well to make sure that we do things like bystander training so that people have those tools that you talked about, so people know what to do if they witness somebody else engaging in harassment or intimidation.

So we have a lot of work that we're working on as well.

And the ombuds office was just one tool.

It was just one step in a way to make sure that people truly feel safer coming forward.

We're also going to have an evaluation coming forward in June to see if it's actually a place that is truly independent, free from political influence, and a place where people are coming forward.

From my perspective, I'll just say this, I do believe that the report was not valid.

I don't think that it is an accurate assessment of workplace culture and harassment.

And the reason I say that is because people reported incidences of being touched, being kissed, having people comment on their undergarments.

We know that if that's the experience of the workplace and the conclusion is there wasn't harassment or intimidation, then it is not exactly an accurate assessment.

What it does tell me though is what part of what you said, which is that our policies are not meeting the expectations of today.

Those policies from 20 or 30 years ago no longer reflect the expectations and the norms of today's behavior, environment and society and frankly a lot of that's changed in the last 18 months two years and so if the report comes out and says Violations did not occur, but we know people felt unsafe then that means our standard of what a violation is needs to change And I think that's part of what we're doing within our own city as well and so if anything in terms of an outcome I think it reaffirms that we need to change our own policies and and procedures so that when something like that happens it's a clear violation of our policies for a safe workplace.

Yeah I completely agree and and yesterday I had the opportunity to talk One follow-up, yesterday I had the opportunity to talk with Lynn Best's group, which Denise is part of that group, the Environmental Land and Licensing group.

And I think it was Denise who actually asked the question, so I've been out there talking with all these people.

How do I take what I've been hearing kind of factor it into, you know, where I'm headed.

And, you know, what I would say is, like, even with the four pillars, you know, those were literally hot off the press this morning.

I mean, not that I made them up this morning, they've been evolving.

I mean, I shared, when I shared with them yesterday, it was very similar, but I am just now, I was really committed to coming in and listening and not creating a plan before I spent time listening.

So I think on the one hand, as I'm starting to now really develop what's my path forward, what does it look like?

It is in response to what I've been hearing from people.

And so I agree with you.

The one thing that really sticks out to me from the report too is that a lot of these were issues where people were sitting on them for a really long time.

I feel terrible for them.

I started out by saying, I want to work at a utility where people get up in the morning and they're excited to come to work.

Well, if I've been having an ongoing issue with someone for, in some cases, years, You know, I can guarantee you that I'm not excited to get up and come to work.

And so part of what I want is I want to give people tools so that the first time it happens, they have an avenue that's appropriate for given whatever it was, it's an appropriate avenue, and that it never happens again.

And, you know, the consequence, to the offending party is dependent on what happened.

But we're all, like I said, we're all accountable for our behaviors.

And the consequences vary based on what happened.

But I shouldn't, as an employee, have to put up with that.

So you also was a great segue, because I had a quote that I read this at.

I got to talk to the City Light has a group called Women in Power, which is a grassroots employee-led group, very cool.

I don't know exactly how many members there are, but it was a pretty good group, and I got to talk with them this week.

And I read this there, but I was really, I think it was last week when Susan Zirinsky, who'd been the longtime producer for CBS News, was made the new, Named the new president of CBS News and she's been with CBS for like 46 years or something Exactly.

Yeah, and so she you know, I read a number of articles about her and there was a quote that really stood out to me She was referring to the workplace culture and the instances of harassment that CBS News has really dealt with over the last couple of years and it's exactly what you just said councilmember she said there was some tough stuff that happened she said the whole world is going through tough stuff and Me too isn't behind us, it's part of us.

We are now a different people because of it.

And so I think that, you know, that's true.

You know, it was a pivot societally in terms of what we're willing to put up with and how we're going to deal with it.

And there's a lot of catch up to do in terms of policies, practices, you know, how do we support people in making good choices behaviorally And in reporting or dealing with it when they're the victim of someone who's chosen to make a poor choice.

So I mean, I think we have a responsibility to both.

We need to train people so they know what's expected of them and what isn't OK.

And then we need to provide an environment and a safety net for people who have experienced something that doesn't allow them to come to work happy to be there.

So thank you for that you mentioned there's ongoing litigation, so we will move on but my hope my expectation Is that this report is not used as a tool for defensive behavior at the time especially because we know that That this doesn't meet our expectation of what we want in the in the current workplace So as you look forward to creating that future-looking policy change there are three minds here but nine minds on council that would love to support you in changing those policies and we'll learn from you as you change your policies and expectations and we will be happy to offer what we come up with as well because this City of Olympia right now is packed with a room full of people who are working on similar policy changes and expectations so we're all learning from each other as we implement this and I look forward to that forward-looking policy with you.

Great.

And go ahead, I know you had one more section.

I got one more and then I'll be done.

So it's kind of a, you know, in the circle of life, transportation electrification kind of leads back to both customer service.

It certainly leads back to the work that the rate group, the review panel is doing because it, I think, represents an opportunity for revenue in the future for us.

And quite honestly, I think it's something that a lot of employees can get excited about.

And I think that having something to look forward to and some work that we can do together is a great tool for helping to bring folks together.

So I think that we've talked a lot about innovation at Seattle City Light.

And I guess where I'm landing and I'm Putting a stake in the ground is that innovation is electrification and for our community electrification is the path forward for deep decarbonization and if done well It can really first of all, I think it's the way that Seattle City Light can indeed be that utility of the future And I think it's the way that we can support the city in doing amazing things whether it's around the waterfront or whether it's working with other emitters of diesel and other fuel sources.

Ultimately, there are choices that have to be made and issues that would need to be resolved going forward.

you know, what does, you know, what does fuel switching look like in the future?

So there's just a lot of opportunity and a lot of open questions.

So, you know, I tell, when I'm talking about this internally, I'm saying, you know, we're not really talking about, well, we are, we're talking about electric vehicles and making infrastructure available and accessible to people all across the city.

And that's important.

It's critically important and it's important that we do it in an equitable way.

And I know there's a lot of work going on in that venue.

in CES, in Customer Energy Solutions, but it's also around electrification of public transportation, and it's the ports, it's working with the port, working with ferries, working with King County Metro, working across the broad range of people.

It's looking at public charging infrastructure as well as working hard to get the litigation or the legislation in place in Olympia that would allow us to begin to provide incentives for electrification.

So, you know, we're just starting to talk about this and really we've been doing work on the electrification side for a long time.

But in terms of really saying, hey, this is our future.

This is where we have the best opportunity to stabilize our revenues and to really help Seattle do that.

Move that 6% increase in greenhouse gas number the opposite direction is through really being a leader in electrification.

Deborah, have you met Paul Roberts by chance?

He is former mayor of Everett, and he had been the head of Association of Washington Cities.

He was director of the board.

He created something that was an adjunct with Association of Washington Cities called Economics.

And they're focused on four or five areas where the city and our region could clearly lead.

And it's investing in some really great options.

And part of it is focused on water and forest and agriculture on the east side of the state.

But locally, he had some ideas.

And when you just spoke about your leadership, I know that he would be very interested in meeting you.

So if you haven't yet, I'll connect you.

Yeah, I haven't, and I would love that.

Thank you.

Great.

Excellent.

So that's where we're at.

So that's the state of the 90 days, unless you have other questions.

I just have one question, Chairwoman.

I wanted to follow up, and I know you've only had 100 days, and I expect you to fix everything in 100 days.

But we have been having an ongoing conversation for the last three years about the apprenticeship program.

So we really wanted to up the numbers on women and people of color because I remember one time it started out where there were like 42 positions and two of them were one woman and one person of color and the other 40 were white males.

And the problem we were having is outreach retaining, keeping people alive.

It had to do with some of the earlier stuff we talked about, about culture.

But I'm hoping that hand in hand with this change of culture and a really more robust outreach to other communities in neighborhoods, community colleges, and not just focusing perhaps in some areas.

So I don't know what that plan is gonna look like.

They were doing it like at high school fairs and it just seems kind of spotty.

I wasn't sure how they were recruiting and we never really got an answer back on that on what the plan would be going forward to increase those numbers because the numbers actually went down in the three years that I've sat on this committee.

They haven't really gone up.

They've either gone down and correct me if I'm wrong.

No, I think you're right and I also do know that for certain the number of women in non-traditional roles, women in the trades has definitely gone down.

And I've had conversations with Alice about that, and I'm very aware of the problem.

I don't have a solution today, but it is on the list.

OK.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

So we understand that we put a lot on your plate for the new CEO General Manager, including the rate design, which you will be back and talking to us about I think on February 7th?

Okay.

Oh, 17th?

Okay.

We will see you in February.

And maybe I can ask our colleagues for as well, in addition to apprenticeship utilization, workplace culture, some of the work that you're doing around energy conservation, you know, if you'd like us to give you some ideas for things that we'd like to hear from you, maybe like on a quarterly basis or twice a year or something like that, we can get you a list in advance.

Okay.

Well, we're really excited that you're here.

Thank you for your honest assessment of where we're at, where we need to go, and let us know how we can be of help.

Okay.

Okay.

Good.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you.

And if you want to stay at the table, you're welcome to because we have two other items related to Seattle City Light.

If you have anybody else who wanted to join you.

At this time, we are going to take public comment because we need to have a public hearing on the two bills in front of us for consideration.

So at this time, we'll take public comment on item 2 and 3. Item 2 is Council Bill 119353, Endangered Species Act Land Deed Acceptance.

And item 3 is Council Bill 11954, the Sale of the Sidewalk Easement.

The only person that we have signed up to testify is Alex Zimmerman.

Alex, did you want to speak to these two items?

I can speak about number 2 and number 3 with one shot, yes.

Okay, thank you, Alex.

Because, yes, it's a very simple point.

Hi, my name Alex Zimmerman.

I'm president of Stand Up America.

Each time that I see something in agenda number two about money, like acceptance and payment of fair market value for assessment, when government buy something or sell something to somebody, you know what I mean, it's always confuse me.

In 10 years, as I come to this place and hear about this, I'm absolutely sure it's never will be equal.

Why?

Market value is like an ocean.

Look nice, but when you go deeper, it looks totally different.

In government, acting nice people, work for government in all three branches, acting sometimes very bad.

This is exactly what's happened.

So, who is supposed to be controlling this?

Commissioners.

Commissioners are supposed to be controlling this, but they control, no, for the city lies still a million and million dollars from the people.

So my proposition, how we can fix this, and for many years, with your support, Councilor Mosquito, you know what I mean, and you support this when you go to election, open Berta room in City Hall one times per week, one day per week, so people can go in talking.

We need the people who controlling us, government, of, by, and for the people.

We don't have right now.

Commissioner, for last 10 year, I mean, all commissioner, 300 people, all identical.

You choose same people like you.

So how this can be changed?

Nothing.

I never see one commission and also government stealing money.

For example, like my class action for $100 million.

So please, Consul Mosquito, you promise us when you go to election, open Beirut room, publicly promise this.

Publicly.

Open Bertha room one time per week for open public conversation.

It can be that forum.

We need something doing.

God, people, possibly control Tory government.

Thank you very much.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Alex.

So that is the only person I have signed up on these two items.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak to these two items?

This does constitute our public hearing process on these two council bills.

Seeing no one else here to sign up for these two items, this will close the public hearing on Council Bill 11935, I'm sorry, 11953, Endangered Species Act Land Date Acceptance, and Council Bill 11954, the Sale of the Sidewalk Easement.

Farideh, if you could read into the record item number two on our agenda, which is related to the surplus property needs for the sidewalk easement.

Agenda item two, Council Bill 119353, an ordinance relating to Seattle City Light Department declaring certain real property rights surplus to the needs of the Seattle City Light Department for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you very much, Farideh.

Welcome.

officer at City Light.

Thank you, Lynn Beth.

Hi, I'm Eric McConaghy on the Council of Central Staff.

Wonderful.

Nice to see you again, by the way.

Nice to see you all, too.

So this is an ordinance that would allow City Light to sell an easement to Snohomish County for a sidewalk, and it's on part of our right-of-way.

It doesn't affect us at all.

It would not affect our ability to maintain or operate our transmission line.

And it's part of Snohomish County's Sunset Road Pedestrian Improvement Project.

And it would be, the easement is valued at $500.

And we obviously recommend that you approve this.

Council Member Morris.

We were just making a joke offline that only 500 bucks, that's it.

Couldn't we get more from them?

Well, easements are discounted significantly usually, especially for something like a sidewalk, which doesn't have much impact on us.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Any other comments or questions?

No.

Thank you.

Okay.

If you don't mind, Farideh, I'd like us to read into the item, into the record item number three as well, and then maybe we can consider both at the same time.

Agenda item 3, Council Bill 119354, an ordinance relating to Seattle City Light Department accepting statutory warranty deeds to the SHU property in King County.

Maybe before I move forward, would it make more sense for the committee if we considered item number two just as a standalone?

Sure.

Okay, wonderful.

So if there's no objection, the council rules will be suspended to allow for the committee to vote on the recommendation for a council bill.

119353. On the same day as the public hearing was held Hearing no objection the council rules will be suspended and we will proceed with a committee recommended vote on council bill one one nine three nine five three

You all right?

Need water.

Yeah, sure.

Oh, go ahead.

So I will move adoption of Council Bill 119353. Second.

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

No.

And we have no abstention.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

I'm so sorry for that.

Yes, let's move on to item number three.

Item number three is council bill one one nine three five four and and Denise has joined us to help in the presentation here great Denise Okay, is your is your little light on?

On the stem there you thank you Denise Crown Bell senior environmental analyst with Seattle City Light She's so choked up that you're here at the table

Yes, thank you for preparing this presentation and let's go ahead and go through this.

So next slide.

So this ordinance accepts the deeds for all of the property that City Light has purchased in 2018 for the purposes of protecting endangered Well, listed threatened species under the Endangered Species Act in areas where we operate our hydro facilities, particularly in the Skagit and on the Tolt.

And we have 10 properties that were purchased in 2018. The intent is to protect spawning habitat for these listed species, Chinook, Steelhead, and Bull Trout.

And we have one property each in King County and Snohomish counties and eight in Skagit County.

And they're located in the watersheds in which we work, the Skagit River watersheds.

And in addition to our funding, we also received $299,000 $100,000 from the Salmon Recovery Funding Board, which is basically an endorsement of the quality of work that we do to protect salmon in these rivers.

And I want to say that this is Denise's project, and she has done the work of doing this, and she's going to talk a little bit about the properties.

Thank you.

So if we can have the next slide, so we have some, this is a map in the Tolt where we purchased the shoe property and it's a 38 acre headwater wetland and properties like this are particularly important to protect in light of coming climate change, since it's a headwater wetland.

It feeds cold, clear water into Stossel Creek, which drains into the Tolt and is an important steelhead creek.

And it also drains into Harrison and Cherry Creek, which drain into the Snoqualmie, which the Tolt joins to join the Snohomish River.

And again, in light of climate change, cold, clean water is going to be imperative, especially at low level, lower elevation like this area.

So this was a key piece to protect.

And next slide.

Next one.

And so this is a map of the properties that we purchased in, and sorry, there was an error on there.

It's the properties we purchased in 2017. And these are in the Skagit system.

And just showing that we're working in different areas and protecting different.

stocks of Chinook and Steelhead and Bull Trout in the Skagit.

And if I could have the next slide.

Thank you, this is the Shoe property.

It's 42 acres on the Skagit, and that's me being scale for the size of the large woody debris.

There's about 3,300 feet of shoreline on this property.

The property has, obviously it racks up large woody debris, which is important for providing habitat and creating habitat for salmon and steelhead.

It's also, property also has several small backwater areas which are important for juvenile salmon when the Skagit River floods.

Gives them low water, low velocity areas for them to essentially go hide and ride out the waves until the river level subsides.

And I think there's one more.

And this is the Goals property, also on the Skagit.

What's the property?

Goals.

Goals.

G-O-E-L-Z.

Goals.

Yes, and it is 15 acres.

It was about 1,500 feet of shoreline.

And one of the nice things about this property is that although this picture doesn't depict it further, inland on the property, but still in the riparian area.

And riparian area is what we consider the area that impacts the water.

Very large, mature cedars and other evergreens that will one day, well, currently providing shade and one day may fall into the river and, again, provide that large woody debris that you saw in the other photos.

So those are just some samples of what City Light Dollars and, as Lynn was saying, Grant Dollars is helping us purchase and protect.

But I just want to mention that with all of our programs to protect fish and wildlife habitat, we have now over 14,000 acres that we've protected.

You've been doing this a long time, Lynn.

I have.

I've known you for, what, 20 years?

Oh, maybe longer.

25 years.

You're an amazing public servant.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I know that the tribes really have a lot of respect for you.

Even throughout all the litigation in the day, I always saw you as a phenomenal advocate for the environment and for everybody, not just the people of Seattle.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Denise.

You're welcome.

Way too much about salmon and steelhead, and then I should know that it's all coming back to me like PTSD.

Is there any minor questions?

Thank you again for joining us.

Deborah, good to see you again.

Sorry, I had to step out for a second, but if there are no objections, the council rules will be suspended to allow the committee to vote on recommendations on Council Bill 11954 on the same day as public hearing was held.

Hearing no objections, the council rules will be suspended and we will proceed with voting on the committee recommendations.

You got this or?

I'm going to give this another shot here.

Thank you guys.

It's been a year and I still get hazed.

I move that the committee recommends passage of council bill 11954.

I think we've got a three in there too, 119354 on the bill number.

354. I don't have this.

Yeah.

I just saw it on the screen up there.

119354 version 1. Second.

Any comments?

None?

Nope.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None.

Unanimous passage.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

It matters so much.

I really appreciate your help.

Thank you for helping me get through that.

She's amazing.

Thank you, Denise, for joining us.

Good to see you up here.

And thank you all from Seattle City Light for your time today.

We know we took quite a bit of your time.

So thank you for getting us kicked off here in 2019.

Thanks for saving this deal, hence.

Farideh, if you could read into the agenda item number four, please.

Agenda item four, 2018 Office of Housing Investments for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

And if we could please be joined at the table by Office of Housing.

We also have today the opportunity to hear from my staff member, Michael Maddox, who did a quick memo for us on the news that we got yesterday on $500 million being invested from Microsoft.

From Microsoft.

Welcome, thank you guys so much for joining us Steve why don't you go ahead with your introductions, and then we'll get to the memo at the end Steve Walker office of housing Thank you, Emily, thank you Steve go ahead

So we are excited to be here.

We are here to share with you sort of a glimpse of our 2018 investments in our multifamily rental housing.

We have a list of projects that we want to walk through.

I want to begin by acknowledging who's not here, and that is Lori Olson, who is the lending manager.

in our office and her team of underwriters and analysts that review a swath of applications when they come in and really dig in deep and do a full underwriting and feasibility analysis.

And this is the result of their great work.

So I wanted to begin by acknowledging those great folks.

The way we have our presentation organized is I will provide, we'll do a little back and forth, but I'm going to provide initially just a high-level snapshot with some statistics, and then we'll dive into some of the projects highlighting in those projects some of the themes and policy objectives that are achieved.

I also want to acknowledge Although we're going to be talking about buildings, this is about people, and we want to make sure we're remaining people-centered as we talk about these investments.

So this initial slide, again, is sort of a high-level snapshot of our December announcements in multifamily rental housing.

This is the result of a fierce competition every year for the dollars that we have available.

I'm going to, Emily's going to cover some additional projects that aren't captured in these statistics, and she'll highlight those as we go, but some other notable investments.

But with this $75 million that's highlighted here, $75 million of city investment, we achieved a record number of units being produced, and that is sort of the top line takeaway, is we're really excited to be able to say that.

A reminder that every unit that is produced with these city dollars is a unit that is secured as affordable housing for 50 years.

And looking at that pie chart, you can see a couple of things.

One is the bottom two figures that are referred to as the 9% tax credit and the 4% tax credit, those two coming together, you can see make up a significant amount of what every dollar that the city puts in is able to leverage.

And you've heard us talk about that leverage and how our city dollars go to work to bring other dollars to the transactions.

Steve, can you remind us, I know that there's some questions about how much of the 9% and the 4% are going to be available in the future because there's now competition within certain areas.

The 9% tax credit is a finite amount that is very competitive in the sense that it is under its own policy There is a set amount that is available to King County and under that same policy.

They are driving towards a consistent with our policy trying to steer that very valuable limited resource to serve a most vulnerable population.

For us that usually means homeless and permanent supportive housing.

So that's the source that works most well with our resources to deliver permanent supportive housing and other housing for our homeless populations.

On the 4% side, those 4% tax credits get blended with tax-exempt bonds, and this is where it gets a little bit wonky in the financing, but that too is a competitive resource.

I would say at times it feels like that's where we might be able to leverage more opportunity with our dollars.

But those two are finite and they are competitive.

I heard recently from one of our providers that they were advocating for us to contact our senators because there was either some reduction in this amount or some new limitations.

I shouldn't be asking you this on camera.

I should at least have the decency to ask you off.

But if you could maybe let me know what the issues are and if there's something we need to do.

Yeah, maybe we could have an offline so I know exactly what you're talking about.

The big thing that happened in the last year was an increase to the 9% tax credit as well as some fixed, modifications to the program to make it more efficient.

But that may not be what you're...

No, and I wish I had more detail.

I will learn more so we can have a rational conversation.

But the point they were making was we won't have as much of the tax credits if we don't do something.

So with that something is what I'm trying to find out what we need.

Chase that down.

The last thing on this slide that just to add a little more context about what our dollar is able to leverage is I looked at the investments this year and the median figure is that $76,000 of city investment is going into each unit.

we're leveraging the balance of that.

And to close that loop, the median unit cost for us in this round was about $315,000.

So we're putting in $76,000, we're leveraging the balance, and the median unit cost number is about $315,000.

That's inclusive of the land.

Yeah, I appreciate you bringing this up because, you know, we're oftentimes cajoled and criticized that we're not insisting that as under MHA as people develop that they don't do on-site development.

And we want that.

There's no question we do and you have instructed us over and over again that you need both.

Because this, if we can leverage $76,000 into $350,000 per unit to get, you know, a percentage of that 1,400 units that you have just awarded, it makes a big difference.

So we need all of these tools.

It's not an either or.

So thanks for describing that.

Just to be clear, it was the figure I shared was 315. 315, yeah.

315. Thank you.

Let Emily.

Steve mentioned people, so centering back around people.

Obviously, this is really critical community infrastructure, the housing we invest in, but talking a little bit about the thousands of individuals and families who will call these apartments home for decades to come.

So 30% of the units that we created through the investments in this last year will provide homes for extremely low income people.

Those are mostly single disabled adults and seniors on a fixed income like Social Security.

One such senior is the woman you see on the bottom left.

She spoke at our announcements.

She lives in North Haven.

And she spoke about the dignity and stability that she gets through affordable senior housing.

The other 70% of units created through these investments are affordable to households at 50 and 60% of the area median income.

Those are working people and their children.

Preschool teachers, home health aides, restaurant cooks, retail workers, security guards, landscapers and their families.

A significant number of the units that we invested in this last year, 37%, provide the space for families in two-, three-, and four-bedroom homes, and that's disproportionate to what is found on the private market.

One other thing about the private market, we know that it does not provide housing affordable to these households.

So without affordable housing, people spend an excessive amount of their income on housing costs, risking homelessness, or eviction.

We know that with affordable housing and stabilized housing costs, these households have stability and dignity.

Workers live closer to their jobs.

For families, it is proven that affordable housing reduces child poverty.

And in fact, it can really create and provide upward mobility from poverty, leading to economic success, power, and autonomy.

So let's take a deeper dive into these projects.

Amelia, just before you move off of this slide, so 60% AMI, how many, which portion of the pie is that?

40?

You know, I think I might have to fix that pie.

It doesn't look exactly right.

The 60%, I believe, was if combined, it was about 62% was at 60% AMI.

About 8% was at 50% AMI, and the remainder was at 30.

OK, so that pie chart is more of a graphic and not a math equation.

It's for illustrative purposes.

I'll correct it.

I was wondering when you were talking that it wasn't adding up on the pie.

It wasn't adding up on the pie.

I didn't want to call that out.

I'll go back and fix that.

Like I did.

But so 60% AMI or between 30 and 60% AMI is about 70% of your investment.

And then below 30% area median income is 30% of your investment.

Correct.

OK.

I think we got that.

Thank you for that fix.

And then in terms of one bedrooms and studios, would you say that that pie chart is accurate?

Is that about 60%?

That one should be accurate.

But I can follow up too with tables.

OK.

That sounds good.

That breaks that down.

No, I think this is great.

And I wanted to call out the affordability percentages because I think it ties into the news that we received last night about some philanthropic loans.

So we'll talk about that later.

But I think this is really critical for us to see that the majority of our investments are coming in below 60% area median income with a real focus on trying to make sure that those who are the lowest income below 30% AMI are also getting those investments where the market might not be picking up.

And then as we talk about MHA, as we discussed yesterday, One interest area of mine is continuing to grow the portion of investments that are made possible through additional funds like the MHA dollars for two and three bedrooms, because I think you can see here as we grow families and ask people to live in the city, we're hoping that more two and three bedrooms are possible.

It'd be helpful, too, since you're going back and doing, redoing the chart, if you could put numbers, not just percentages, but with the numbers of 1,400 or however many.

Absolutely.

I'll do that.

Enhance our pie.

What we're trying to do here is grow the pie, so it all works.

And just because you mentioned the large bedroom sizes, that is one of our emphasis, and this pie doesn't tell the whole story because we are also building permanent supportive housing and other homeless housing, and often those are studios in one.

When you net those out, which we can do for you, you'll see that we are promoting and effectively building a lot of that family-sized housing that's so much needed in our community.

And at one point, it made sense because the people that you were trying to shelter was one bedrooms and studios.

It's often single people.

And now we know it's families.

And so this is the bottleneck we're seeing up in the north, and particularly Northgate.

And with all the booming and building, we're really trying to get people to build two and three bedroom and also include.

But we termed child, transit-oriented child care, so everything can happen there.

So that's been our big push when we've been talking to for-profit and non-profit developers up in Northgate, Holler Lake, Bitter Lake, and Lake City.

And then, of course, the ongoing discussions we've had about MHA.

And I think, are we, you're?

Are you looking down at some legislation, some possible amendment?

On the two and three bedrooms and making that not, how do I say that?

I don't want to put you out there again.

No, absolutely.

We are interested in working with you all for actually in this upcoming two or three weeks as we talk about MHA, what additional incentives would be possible for two and three bedrooms.

And I'll also put another plug in, what incentives might be possible for those developers who could build in child care facilities?

That's what we've been pushing too.

It's no longer an amenity.

So it's a sweetener if you're going to respond to an RFP.

If you provide pre-K child care, that's what we're pushing.

And we really have Frank Chop to thank for that.

He's been really big in helping me. do that in meeting with the developers, that should just be part of it.

I mean, everyone fights about parking.

I'm like, you know, what's a real issue is childcare and space for that, whether it's childcare or the pre-K.

So I'm going to continue to push that.

That's been our big push up in the north end.

We know, so going on to presenting our investments through a thematic lens, I should say that many of these investments could fall under many themes.

They're providing multiple public benefits, but here's just one way of talking about them.

We know that our investments really are there to help address displacement, and in a time of population growth and housing shortage, displacement is occurring, and that's disproportionately affecting communities of color.

This year, like in other years, we have a number of investments in permanently affordable housing in high-risk of displacement communities.

The first to highlight is Bryant Manor in the Central District.

There are 55 units already in place, family-sized units, dating back to urban renewal, and they're envisioning a phase A phasing of the property that would initially create what we invested in was 95 units, mostly family-sized.

Ultimately, 240 units there.

It's directly adjacent to Pratt Park and Washington Middle School, and it envisions child care center on the ground floor and retail.

What's really significant about this project is that it is community owned by a historically rooted organization, First AME Housing, and we know that it's both the physical building, the people who live there, and the ownership that helps to address displacement.

One thing, because we were talking about family-sized housing, there are a number of three and some four-bedroom units, and that's part of what is being preserved and created here.

Great.

And just a comment on Emily's last comment on who has site control.

That was a critical piece that you all helped us get into the disposition policy that we amended last year to make sure that as more land becomes available through our disposition policies, that we're really helping to center future development on the needs of communities in those neighborhoods who've been historically at risk of displacement.

And I think this is a great example of the type of partnership that can come from that type of policy change.

In Mount Baker, we made an investment in 166 units for working people.

This is a really exciting investment right at the Mount Baker Transit Station.

And what's particularly exciting here is that this is a pilot project with the Department of Ecology.

to support a new model to address urban brownfield development for affordable housing.

So this was an environmentally contaminated area.

City Council helped to support the environmental remediation here.

And by doubling down on affordable housing at that critical intersection of MLK and McClellan, the project will ensure that as you have the clean dirt, which makes that dirt more desirable and more costly, we don't just let that land go off for top dollar.

but it's reinvested to make sure that we're also addressing displacement.

We have a long-standing commitment to serving diverse populations, seniors, people with disabilities, working families, people experiencing homelessness.

And as you all just mentioned in your discussion, that's partially about the unit size and type, and it's also about the organizations that sponsor the development and the kind of, I shouldn't call it amenities, but community-serving essential functions that are incorporated into the building, some of which you'll see here.

So one of this year's really special projects is All All, located in Pioneer Square adjacent to the existing Chief Seattle Club.

This is a Chief Seattle Club project.

I know many people at this table had a hand in and longstanding support for this project.

We know that for a long time, since the arrival of the Denny Party, Native people have experienced homelessness at a disproportionate rate.

The arrival of the Denny Party.

Yeah.

For a long time, it was, you know, white people taking land and pushing...

But we should have built that wall.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

You might as well.

This is a modest effort to really address those disproportionate homelessness and housing needs that is led by community.

And what's again exciting here is not only the units, but also the ground floor that will include a primary care clinic operated by the Seattle Indian Health Board and a gallery and cafe operated by Chief Seattle Club.

This is a partnership.

It had money from other parts of our city, arts and culture, equitable development initiative, and a really wonderful project.

Can we just applaud Colleen Echo Hawk and her team and the board and also my colleagues here.

This really has been something that we have been working on.

And for me, what you were saying about what's going on down at the ground level is going to be really important, whether it's the health care clinic or I think Colleen was talking about having an apprenticeship kind of program, maybe with Fair Start or some entity like Fair Start, but also selling native-made jewelry, which makes it something new and different in Pioneer Square.

I want you to know that in my office, we've been working not just with Colleen, but also with SDOT, which is the Fortson Square, and with Lisa Howard, from the Pioneer Square Alliance and Thatcher Bailey.

The next step on all of this really is the housing is great and we've got to come and look back at what we're going to do with Fortson Square.

And we're working with art and culture.

I want to say thanks to Randy Engstrom.

But I would like to circle back after this meeting with you so you know what else is going on.

Because what Colleen is doing is fabulous and goes from her place straight out to the sidewalk and 2nd Avenue.

Jones and Jones and others, Estad particularly, are looking at what can we do with Fortson Square.

Housing and I know your money doesn't go into that kind of thing It is however an opportunity for us really to partner and make it a gathering space For this is what Colleen's vision is to have native trees and plants in a place where people feel welcome That corner right now is not welcome to anybody except the rats that live in the trees So we're we'll cut we'll come back with you just so you know, all the other things that are going on.

I

Thank you.

Chronic mental illness we know is a contributor to homelessness in West Seattle.

Transitional resources we supported at Yancey Street Project, which will create 44 apartments for adults that live with mental illness.

And these apartments, again, not just the units.

The agency will offer comprehensive behavioral health services to people who really may otherwise be on the street.

Human Good, this is the partnership to create 85 affordable senior homes being added to North Haven's existing campus in Northgate.

North Haven has owned and operated affordable senior housing in that community for over 45 years.

And this project really is designed to keep seniors independent and engaged in the community by providing on-site services.

Another exciting feature here, the ground floor will feature Providence Elder Place, providing comprehensive health care and social services.

And hopefully, like we discussed yesterday, if we have that up zone for North Haven, the footprint to expand it.

Hopefully, I'm making a plug for that up zone to happen for our North Haven folks.

We've been there many, many times.

You've got a second on that plug, by the way.

No, thank you, because they've been working so hard forever.

Steve's going to talk more about innovations.

One of the things that is an innovation for us now is the extent to which we continue to offer city-supported RFPs.

You may be flipping around.

I did change the order of this slide.

Sorry.

I did.

At least you have numbers.

Wow.

That's a big deal.

Wow, I didn't even notice that.

Sorry for that change.

Our innovation here is by offering city-supported or directed RFPs for affordable housing on publicly owned land, we're able to deliver not only housing, but multiple public benefits.

We know that public land offers two key things for affordable housing.

First, it can create a discount or free land, which is good for cost.

Or second, it can create locational access, giving us available sites adjacent to transit, parks, or other key amenities or locations.

One of our really exciting projects that we invested in last year was at the K-Site.

This was a Seattle Center-owned property.

We're grateful for them for the access to this property.

We issued an RFP, we're pleased to award it to Plymouth Housing to create 91 homes for homeless individuals.

This is a project that the ground floor is supported by our Office of Arts and Culture to create arts and cultural space, and it is piloting the use of our community workforce agreement.

So again, delivering multiple public benefits.

Capital Hill Housing in Skipta were awarded funds at Yesler Family Housing.

This is part of our ongoing commitment, the Office of Housing's ongoing commitment to the transformation at Yesler Terrace.

This is 158 new units that'll bring family housing to the redevelopment's border with the central area close to Bailey-Gatzert.

The development here, again, will include a child care early learning center to be operated by Denise Louie Education Center on the ground floor.

And it features common areas to support resident activities, community engagement, exterior courtyards to support the families, community gardens, and community gathering space.

Can I just say thank you, Office of Housing.

You worked especially on the K site.

Deborah and I were just sort of nudging each other here because all the work that we've done around the arena and Seattle Center.

But bringing that K site into Uptown, Uptown was just begging us for this kind of housing.

And as we are going through with MHA and collecting money, every single neighborhood says, we want that money used in our neighborhood.

You know, you've also explained that you want to go shovel ready.

This one was ready, but you really heard the neighborhood, too.

So thanks to you and thanks to our uptown community group and Robert Nellum's at Seattle Center.

This is a wonderful opportunity just to show what can happen when we put our brains together to solve a problem.

Thank you.

What you could have been on this slide, but you don't see today, is last year we committed $10 million in joint partnership with the county to support affordable housing in Northgate.

That award will be made soon.

So we didn't include it here.

So the RFP went out, it responded, it disappeared, and now it's back, and we're all OK again?

We're OK.

I don't have to make any more.

They're in negotiations, and we're looking forward to an announcement.

Yes.

That's a good smile.

I like that.

The other piece that you don't see here, what public land is critical for is our investments in permanently affordable homeownership.

We'll talk about homeownership.

Happy to talk about that at another time.

This focuses on our rental investments.

And just to pick up on that, innovations.

if it wasn't apparent, one of the ways we are innovating and it creates great opportunity is when we do RFPs.

So on a specific piece of property.

So Emily just listed a few of those, but different than the competition that produces great outcomes as well.

When we have a piece of property that we can focus on, we can look to partners with arts, to look to partner with health, to look to partner with a variety of parks.

So, doing RFPs on a specific piece of property is one of the ways that we have sort of it's been a bit of a game changer for us.

So one of the things we talked about in parks over the years and I've never heard whether or not we've been able to move forward with this is like some of our community centers are going through significant restoration whether it's in Lake City or Queen Anne is just examples there, older buildings, but Parks has been open to the idea of building affordable housing or whether it's like worker kind of, whether it's 60 to 80 or wherever it is.

But I'm wondering, have we done any further exploration around the community center?

We are in active exploratory conversations.

It's not for lack of want on either side.

So we hope to be bringing something exciting forward at some point.

We have a follow-up.

It just hasn't been released yet in discussions with housing and community centers.

And it's real positive.

It just hasn't been released yet.

So we're excited about that for the first time.

Because I remember two years ago talking to Parks and them saying, we don't do that.

I'm like, well, you better learn because that's our property and we have a housing issue.

And now it's happening.

I'm really excited.

I like city.

What we like to say is every housing project has a ground floor.

So what do we want to influence as to activating that ground floor?

The danger is Speaker Frank Chopp, any piece of building that goes up, he wants to slap 100 units on top.

I think the exciting way, and we've had a great partnership with Parks, Chip Nevins at Parks has been really great at not only thinking about our existing assets, but how do we do acquisition together in a way that co-locates these properties?

And that helps deal with some of the issues that arise during a redevelopment of an existing site.

So we're exploring some potentials, and one example is at Fort Lawton, where we would acquire property together and have a parks and recreation component adjacent to an affordable housing piece.

I'm almost thinking of proposing and teeing up some legislation, possibly through Councilor Muscaia's committee or my own, that we re-examine I-42.

Which people keep saying that that's a burden that that somehow it stops from putting housing on top of community centers and other Centers that parks takes care of that's always been their issue as you know 42 was passed so you can't take any land based from the people of Seattle and my argument has been legally and I believe I'm right and is that we're building up, so we're not taking away from that footprint.

In fact, we're enhancing it, and if anything, it's a revenue source and a needed essential governmental service and function.

So at some point, I think, when did that get passed, I-42?

A long, yeah, 30 years ago?

Yeah, it's time to revisit that law and tee up some stuff.

I'll put that on council.

I like what you're saying, which is the interpretation.

You're not saying that we want to take parks property for other uses.

You're saying this is expanding a use.

I look at Denny Park as an example, that if they're going to have to restore or rebuild park offices, they're putting at least some housing in that neighborhood.

I mean, just imagine the value of that to people who are there are putting the community center on top of the park property and building housing right across the street.

You know, looking at this as a whole system is so important.

Right, I don't think that was the spirit and the intent of that.

It was about being careful that we don't take away land from the public and we're not.

We're actually enhancing the infrastructure and quite frankly, I'm right on this one, so I'm not worried about it.

I'm good on the law on this one.

We cool.

I would love to work with you on that.

We've been talking a little bit about innovation and I want to Acknowledge that that we certainly see innovation as core to both our mission and our charge at the office of housing and that Our success over the years is due in part to making sure that we are evolving with the times The mayor too has been a constant voice for innovation and financing design and construction and so some of that is reflected here in these 2018 investments and They're listed here.

The Lehigh Othello Apartments is sort of borrowing a construction method that caught our collective attention in Portland where just doing some standardization in design, so beginning with architecture and carrying through to construction does create some efficiencies.

And so that's one sort of new innovation that's being piloted in this round.

Looking at scale, which is something that we have been doing for the last Several years now Obviously building more of the same on the same site create some some built-in efficiencies And so with the Polaris project where we're doing 330 units one of our larger investment one of our largest projects, not necessarily investments.

We are achieving great economies of scale.

Where's the Polaris?

Do you know what the cross streets are?

I can get the exact address for you.

I don't have it off the top of my head.

And our maps are zoomed out too far.

It's right near the Rainier Reach light rail.

I mean, it's a good TOD investment.

It's a great TOD investment.

And then the third one that we listed here, we could have listed a lot, but is representative of another innovation, a great opportunity, Encore Apartments, where we had the opportunity to quickly take off the speculative market a for sale fully entitled project in Belltown.

So this was a developer that took the So it's fully entitled.

We stepped in, were able to purchase it with a developer who's going to build it to that design.

And so that means that those units will hit the street that much faster.

So another unique opportunity.

you know, an example of an innovation that we're excited to be able to talk about.

And by way of reminder, the Office of Housing and Director Walker came to us last year and asked us for greater flexibility so that when opportunities like that came up, that they could act quickly to take property that would otherwise be sold on the market and allow them to act expeditiously and then bring those discussions to us after they've had conversations about an initial purchase, which I think especially in this market, that's really critical that we help free them up to have those conversations and then bring it to us so that we can have more projects like that.

Appreciate that.

Forget the number of the bill, but I might have gotten it wrong anyways.

As in past years, some of our investments are recapitalizing existing housing.

This is us going in and doing some of the necessary upkeep on the building, whether it's systems or roofs or what have you, but it's helping to maintain the quality of life for the folks that are living there.

As well, each time we come back in, we are resetting a 50-year regulatory clock, so it's ensuring affordability well into the future.

Can you tell me why some dots are red and yellow?

Or did you tell us that earlier?

If I didn't tell you, I certainly can tell you.

The red dots are the new investments.

The yellow dots are what I'm talking about right now, which are the handful of reinvestments.

The red dots and the yellow dots together are our whole portfolio of investments in 2018. The red dots are brand new units.

The yellow dots are us coming in, doing some recapitalization work.

And as you can see from what's listed here, the first one is four buildings in the Capitol Hill housing portfolio that we helped construct many years ago.

And we're coming back in doing some recapitalization.

The, uh, The third bullet there is Booth Gardens, which are 16 homes.

So that's why there's so many dots that are yellow.

They're individual buildings.

But those are us coming in, doing some reinvestment to address some capital needs of the building.

I'm sorry go ahead.

Oh, it's just that when I look up in the north end And I see all those yellow dots for reinvestments, which is great, but I only see one red dot yeah that obviously concerns me I think And that's North Avon.

This is a color scheme confusion.

So you're seeing sort of yellow dots in the background and brighter yellow dots.

The yellow dots that don't have those bright circles around them are representative of our portfolio, our 1,400 units that are scattered throughout the city.

And so being able to highlight in the background where our investments have been over the last 30 years is a way of us telling our story.

And I'm going to dive into that a little bit deeper.

just showing how we are invested throughout the city.

What we're trying to pop with the yellow dots with the black circles as well as the red dots are our 2018 investments.

Does that answer your question?

Lots of properties up here in the north end.

And unfortunately we couldn't put that nice red dot at our Northgate investment, but you'll see that soon.

I'm not over that by the way Miriam.

Also listed in this sort of second to the final two bullets on this slide are a couple of noteworthy acquisitions and this goes back to Comment made earlier about our the new program we have in our new levy to our acquisition and preservation program the first one links studios Which is right across the street from Franklin High School.

It was a building that was built just a handful of years ago went on the market and we were able to acquire that building and putting it into our portfolio with a 50-year regulatory agreement.

So being a very unique opportunity, but having the ability to use some of our resources to move nimbly like that has proven to be incredibly helpful.

The second one listed there is Mount Baker Housing, which is just right up the street, or excuse me, the Madison, I said Mount Baker.

The Madison, which is just right up the street, from where we are right now.

If you know where Vito's is, it is houses Vito's and upstairs, we're doing some renovations on that building.

That building was actually financed with many years ago with non-city financing, but was affordable housing that was at risk.

And because the regulatory term for that original financing was coming to an end.

So us going in and helping to secure that building puts it into the affordable portfolio for the next five plus decades.

So that's another great, that's a true preservation opportunity.

And then continuing up the road, up Madison, where you get to Madison, Boyer, and that's where I think Plymouth Housing is working with Capitol Hill.

Bellwether.

Bellwether.

What's the timeline on that now?

They are still lining up all of their financing.

And we have articulated a support for that project.

It's continuing to ripen in terms of lining up all of its necessary financing.

But that one will be coming forward before too long.

and happy to share more.

Thanks.

It's been something, of course, that I've worked with Paul Ambrose on around the edges for years.

I'm just glad to know it's happening.

Yeah, it is.

So this is our final slide.

And what we're doing here, again, is sort of gathering together both our 2018 investments with the backdrop of our investments throughout the city.

And we think it tells a good story and a compelling story that, uh, really at the thrust of what we do at the office of housing is promoting fair housing and fair housing is about choice.

Um, and for us that means that simply that we continue to do what we're doing, which is investing throughout the town and, um, making sure that people have an opportunity to live in a variety of different neighborhoods throughout our city.

And one thing that I would be remiss to let a presentation go forward without mentioning is that there are significant portions of this map where you see no investment.

And typically, although not exclusively, those are areas that are not zoned for multifamily uses.

And so the significant portions in parts of West Seattle or in Magnolia, for example, you simply can't invest in apartments.

So obviously land use goes in hand with the investments that we're able to make.

But to the extent that we can make investments, we are looking to do so in all parts of the city to allow people who have been in communities for a long time to stay in their communities or access other communities that present opportunities that have been previously closed off.

And I would say that we could make this map very complicated with a lot of overlays.

But if you were to overlay transportation, you would see that our investments align with where transportation is most rich, where depending on the type of project, if it's families, we want to understand where the schools are.

If it's seniors, we want to understand where the services are to the extent they're not on site.

So there's a lot of other variables that go into what makes a good financing opportunity for us.

But we've been able to touch, by and large, every neighborhood that has multifamily housing zoning underneath.

A very good point.

Thank you.

And what is the total number now of our inventory?

Are we at 14,000 over the years?

More or less?

Yeah, I mean when you include our multifamily tax exemption, we're closing in on, well I think we're now over 20,000.

So the one other overlay that I'd love to have on the previous slide is where we had requests for investments and where we were not able to serve this year.

I think we had around $280 million worth of requests, which does mean that there's land out there that folks are ready to build on had they had the funding.

and where we've been restricted because we had 75 million.

Again, the breakdown of the 75 million as we understand it is $25 million from the levy, $30 million from the work that you all have worked with us on to expedite the funding from the convention center, and $16 million from the incentive zoning and MHA and some federal dollars.

So I think if you guys can hold on real quick and we can wrap it up with questions in a minute.

One of the things that I asked Michael to tag on to the end of this presentation is what does the 500 million dollars in investment from Microsoft mean as the announcement came in yesterday?

What we know is that we can't do this alone and that this is a regional crisis.

As Councilmember Baggio and I continue to bring up, And we're excited to hear more about what the dollars mean because I think that they're complementary of what you just outlined They're not intended to supplement what the Office of Housing has done Especially when you look at where some of those investments are going so Michael has prepared a memo for us and we will make it available for all of the viewing audience as well, but Michael go ahead and walk us through you have about three or four minutes and

Thank you, Councilmember.

Per your request, I took a look at the information that was publicly available regarding Microsoft's announcement of $500 million in commitment for affordable housing, workforce housing, and homelessness response.

Generally, I think it kind of falls into three buckets.

The first is about $225 million in impact investing for affordable housing projects.

Specifically, what they are doing is taking cash reserves to provide below prime interest rate loans for production and preservation of middle income housing.

This is anticipated to be focused on the east side and really trying to get at the target range of 60 to 120% of area median income.

One of the things I think is really important about this component right here is it actually falls in line with one of the recommendations from the HALA committee.

I think a lot of people think HALA and they think of MHA, but there are so much more, 65 recommendations.

And one of them, recommendation R10, was to really incubate and encourage more impact investing throughout the city of Seattle, and I think that this is something that can and should spread throughout the region.

And I think it was Bellwether Housing has had some good successes with this type of investment that helps free up resources to go towards households that can't be served with this type of investment, particularly at 0 to 30% of AMI.

Another $250 million in market rate loans for rent-restricted units for households of up to 60% of area median income.

Again, this is targeting primarily east and southeast King County, as well as south Snohomish County.

And it's my understanding, and I'm looking over to the experts to my left here, that these types of loans are really a key component of the lasagna that goes into financing affordable housing development and ensuring that things can move quicker so we can get more homes online.

And then the final $25 million is philanthropic grants for homelessness response.

$5 million to the King County Bar Association's Legal Clinic for Tenants Facing Eviction, which will match additional funds that came from the Mariners.

And then an additional $5 million to support efforts between King County and the City of Seattle for the proposed consolidation of homelessness response services that we all heard about this Monday in the Mark Doan's report.

It's not clear at this point where the additional $15 million is anticipated to go.

Suffice it to say, I think that this is a very positive investment from the business community, particularly from one of our large local employers, and a regional approach to addressing the affordability crisis that's not just in Seattle, it's all across Western Washington, and from conversations that we've had with elected officials.

In Ellensburg and Walla Walla and Spokane.

It's all across the state really I think that there's another part of this so that has also been discussed and that's additional local efforts to be done in conjunction This is a letter that was released by multiple mayors on the east side in South Southeast King County where they are committing to continue some work that I think will be very important to streamline and ensure that these investments are going to have the most impact, including making it available at no cost or deep discounts, public lands that are no longer utilized for their intended purpose, something similar to what council did last year with the disposition policies, updating zoning and land use regulations to increase density near current and future public transit investments, You know, I think this goes to, you know, we do a lot of public investment in community assets, such as parks, such as transit and schools, and ensuring that all households can have access to that as a part of this plan of seven recommendations.

Reducing and waiving parking requirements to make more units, reducing or waiving impact fees or other development fees.

This is something that we have heard from the affordable housing community has, made it more difficult to produce homes in some areas is very high impact fees, streamlining permitting processes, providing tax exemptions and credits for low and middle income housing, and updating building codes for more innovative and low cost housing developments such as CLT, blockables, mass timber, new ways to do things more efficiently that mean more homes for people experiencing homelessness.

And then there's an additional component, which was efforts to have statewide investment in affordable homes, including doubling the Housing Trust Fund, reforming the Condominium Liability Act, allowing cities to extend the MFTE, the Multifamily Tax Exemption, beyond its existing 12-year limit, and providing incentives for cities to streamline land use policies and reduce zoning and permitting hurdles to expand access to affordable housing so it's not all concentrated in one area.

Broadly speaking, I think this is, again, an excellent, this is excellent news and really continues a lot of the really positive efforts, not just for public investment, but private investment in affordable housing and taking on a lot of the land use and zoning issues that create barriers outside of Seattle and oftentimes within Seattle.

I think, you know, the city of Seattle, we've seen some good partnerships between labor, between the business community and affordable housing advocates, and this extends that outside of the city for that regional approach that I know.

Seattle City Council has really been trying to focus on over the last year.

Michael, this is an excellent report.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for doing this and I know that when some of our larger corporations have stepped forward with money that they've been criticized as not doing enough, but I would like to say thank you to Microsoft, to Brad Smith, to his team for doing this and recognizing it's just one piece of the whether we're talking about a puzzle or a pie, it's one piece, but it is an important one and it demonstrates to our region that we're all coming together.

And I really do believe that over the last year, there has been much more of these kinds of conversations that we know that what is going to solve homelessness are more homes and they're helping.

So I just want to say thank you and acknowledge the good work and thank you for this memo.

Anything to add to that from your read on the investment that was announced last night?

Anything from Michael's memo?

No, I mean, I appreciate the breakout that Michael just made.

I think we are all actively unpacking this and understanding how we can turn this into fantastic outcomes for our region.

Excellent.

And the 60 to 120 or so percent AMI that the investment looks like it's targeted for in the region.

is really an area where it sounds like some of the nonprofit or smaller developers have struggled to get the capital that they need to begin investment.

And I think that applies to some of the community partners that you talked about that we talked about wanting to have site control.

Do you think that this is a good kind of substitute for us not having enough revenue per se generally to be able to have some quick investments into that?

Yeah, I think that by and large the subsidy that that the public sector typically is providing is at that 60 and below the tax credits being a prime example of that and so while we know we have great need at between 60 and 100 having some lower cost capital could be the difference maker.

And that, you know, travels differently in different markets, but by and large in our high cost housing environment, that could just be the difference maker to unlock sort of the financing puzzle for providing affordability at that income level.

So these are intended to be loans, not grants.

Do you see that a loan, a lower than prime loan, will help encourage developers that might not otherwise be able or willing to create some of this new development?

I think there is a very strong stable of developers that would look at an opportunity like this and say, I can build for that, and I will build for that.

And so by going to a bank and getting this rate and going to having access to capital that's at a lower rate, even if it's just blending those two, it's bringing down the cost of that capital, and that is what allows for serving something less than what the market is providing right now.

And so I think there'll be a lot of developers that will jump at this opportunity.

I'm glad you brought that up.

I think this is a phenomenal robust ignition restarter because rates are hovering around 6% now.

So if you can borrow money, anything under prime, well below prime, I mean, hopefully anticipated interest rates will not go up, but right now a 30-year fixed.

And just because I'm one of those people that still reads the Wall Street Journal.

So from my old days on Wall Street.

But my point is, if I were a developer, I would jump on this.

You can borrow money so much cheaper right now if they're going to offer it at a much lower rate than they're at prime or at market.

And two points makes a big difference.

And you know, we've also been talking about unreinforced masonry and some of the 700 buildings that have been identified in the city.

If we can access some of this money as well for that, it may help us move forward.

And many of those buildings are still housing folks, but not in a way that we feel in long term is going to be good for them.

So to anybody's health, either inside or outside the building,

So again we like like you and many others are anxious to get more detail and invite ourselves into as many rooms to discuss this as possible.

Excellent.

And it's a big deal.

You know in the last year we've had three major reports that said you know whether people love the number or want to challenge the number with the McKinsey report it was we need roughly 400 million dollars annually to catch up.

With the Eco Northwest study, we were underdeveloped by 175,000 units across three counties for the last 20 years.

And the work that Claudia Balducci, the stake in the ground she put was that we need 8,800 units annually across the region to be able to catch up.

This is a big good first step.

It also takes the pressure off of Seattle with, I was listening to, who is the CEO at Microsoft, who's on, Brad was on KOW this morning, that people are going to look at other places to live because it takes the pressure off of it.

It's just, I know 75% I think of are they're staying on shelter or in Seattle proper.

and then the number about King County, but I think he got a factor on the radio, but that's not here or there.

But my point is taking the pressure off that you can actually live on the East side and afford it, you know.

Yeah, and that's helpful because it highlights and underscores what we have been saying, at least since I've been here on city council for three years, that it's not Seattle's problem.

It's the county's issue.

And with sound transit and all different types of multimodal transportation, hopefully folks can get in without having to be in congestion, and we're going to make that more possible as well.

Thank you to the Office of Housing for your presentation and for getting back to us on that map that shows where the other investments were that we weren't able to make this year, the $200 million or so that we weren't able to make.

That's helpful.

Michael Maddox, thank you for this memo.

This was drafted in about a half an hour this morning to be able to bring something forward to our housing committee.

And part of this presentation, I think it's a critical piece of the puzzle, or as you just heard, a layer in the lasagna.

That's a really good metaphor.

I have not used that.

We will be back again on February 7th at 930 we'll have a presentation from the labor history archives group to recognize the hundred year Anniversary of the Seattle general strike.

We'll have an overview of housing levy oversight committee appointments domestic workers standards boards appointments our first appointment to that board and The Seattle City Light review panel that we heard about earlier today.

Are you sure it's a 930 not 10?

I think we're assuming that the Seattle squeeze will be done by that week prior.

So I think we're still at 930. Fingers crossed, but we will touch base with you if things look like they're not running smoothly.

So 930 on the 7th.

And thanks, Farideh, for clerking for us today.

This meeting is adjourned.

Thank you guys for pitching in.