Seattle City Council 6/11/2024

Good afternoon, everybody.

The June 11th, 2024 meeting of the Seattle City Council will come to order.

It is 2.01 p.m.

I'm Sarah Nelson, president of the council.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Rivera.

Council Member Saka.

Here.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Wu.

Present.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Council Member Kettle.

Here.

Council Member Moore.

Present.

Council President Nelson.

Present.

Seven present.

Thank you very much.

We'll announce people as they come in, if I can remember.

All right.

There's no presentation today, so colleagues, at this time, we'll open the hybrid public comment period.

Madam Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

We have seven in person and two remote.

Okay, we'll give each person two minutes and we'll start with the in-person speakers.

Would you please recite the instructions and begin?

Speakers will be called in the order in which they are.

Registered, we will alternate.

Well, maybe not today.

Alternate between sets of in-person speakers and remote speakers until public comment has ended.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

All right.

Our first in-person speaker is Jason Agulink.

Just a second.

Any person who works more than full-time hours and has their expenses trimmed as much as possible should unquestionably be able to cover their bills.

I work on four different apps, but the volume of deliveries is so low, I was only able to make $487 last week.

If I had worked the same hours at Seattle's minimum wage, I would have made $953.

DoorDash has publicly stated that they'll remove the $5 fee if the revision passes.

This will bring the cost down enough to restore order volume.

A new poll shows 80% of voters want the law revised or repealed.

Restaurants and couriers are losing their livelihoods, and customers are being punished.

We need the help right now.

I would like to note that Councilmember Hollingsworth has arrived.

Thank you, Council President.

Our second speaker is Arianna Riley, then John Stramstad, and followed by Kathleen Brose.

Good afternoon.

My name is Arianna Riley.

I'm a resident of District 1 and a delivery driver.

Between approving a SPOG contract that takes away police accountability measures, which is especially egregious given the man who was beaten at the bus stop over the past week, proposing freezing equitable development funds because projects are taking too long, and trying to ensure mostly immigrant and people of color workforce of delivery drivers are no longer able to pay their bills, It seems like many of you are here solely to increase inequities, take away what little progress our city had made on addressing structural racism, and demonstrate that immigrants and people of color are no longer welcome in Seattle.

This is unacceptable.

Seattle should be for everyone.

Also, surveillance does not make us safer, and I'm against license plate readers.

There has been some concern about high delivery fees.

Last week, Grubhub announced a partnership with Amazon to offer free food delivery for Prime subscribers.

What we are seeing now is the market equalizing and market-based solutions solving the problems that some have requested a legislative fix for.

I also want to address this strange notion some people have that food delivery should be busy every single second of every day.

Most restaurants in the areas that I work in close from 2 to 5 p.m.

because it's not profitable for them because it's not busy.

If delivery drivers work from 9 to 5, from 2 to 5 their available business is cut in half.

This is and always has been a split shift job that revolves around mealtimes.

Mealtimes continue to be busy.

Times outside of mealtimes have lower order volume.

This has always been true and this is true of every place in America, not just Seattle.

Please keep pay up in place as is.

Thank you.

Following John will be Kathleen Brose and then Shannon Bernier.

Before pay up and for more than three years, I never made less than $20 an hour.

There were certainly problems in the food delivery market that needed to be addressed.

But in my experience, everyone who was willing to work hard was making a livable wage.

Complex problems require humbleness and compromise.

The pay up bill embodied neither.

Food delivery employment is critical for vulnerable populations of people in the city.

They do not have much of a voice because of language barriers.

Many others don't have a voice because of mental health or substance use issues.

The people who speak before this council, including myself, are not representative of the food delivery market in Seattle overall.

Please make decisions based on what is best for the city of Seattle, not what is best for the loudest, best supported voices.

Last year, I made $1,231 last week.

Last week this year, I made $80 on Uber Eats, $20 on DoorDash, and $45 on Hungry Panda.

No one can live on that income in this city.

It's too depressing to even look at what my hourly wage is.

I'm confident that this council sees through the disinformation and will do the right thing for the city as a whole, which includes customers, workers, and businesses.

I know that Councilmember Rivera has entered.

Good afternoon.

I'm Kathleen Brose.

I live in Ballard, and I just returned from three weeks in Great Britain, and I want to say I love the transportation there.

I felt safe.

It was clean.

People weren't jumping over the turnstiles of a city of almost 10 million in London.

I look forward to, I know, why can't we have that here?

And I also want to say kudos to Dan there.

The Ballard Commons, since they opened up the park, with the play area for children.

It is just wonderful to see the children there.

And it's wonderful to see them play in the water area.

And yes, there's still some interesting characters there, but everybody is working together and it's just nice to see it so alive.

So thank you, Dan.

Following, we have Shannon Bernier and then we have Jared.

And then following Jared would be Calvin.

Thank you, Madam President, Council.

I'm here as a tourist experience.

So...

gravely disappointed in the experience that I had on Friday night, Saturday morning with my husband and I, ironically, on 6th and James.

We had actually gone to a venue at DeMoss to listen to a new young artist, and we were driving back home, and we were on James and 6th, turning left onto the freeway when a yellow taxi didn't know what he was doing.

He was trying to either be in the other lane, make a U-turn, or We really don't know.

All I know is he backed up into our car at a stoplight and I called 911 and I was telling, he wouldn't give us his information, he wouldn't do anything.

He was arguing with my husband.

I have video, I have photo.

And the long and the short of it is that we called 911 and three patrol cars drove past us and didn't even stop to see if we were okay.

Whether they had a suspect of some sort or some person in the back of their car or not, Three of them drove past us, and it was only a mile and a half, not even that, from the police precinct.

So then I was telling them this online, and then I was told that, oh, well, if you're blocking traffic, you're going to get a ticket.

And so as law-abiding people, we moved our vehicle to 6th right off the side.

I personally was very afraid of the gentleman.

He wouldn't give us our information still.

After we moved, he still wouldn't give the information.

And I called 911 again.

And those are both recorded online.

Again, the police did not come.

This gentleman has filed a false report with our insurance company.

He is not willing to, it happens to be a yellow cab.

I called his company.

He's a ghost.

He hasn't called them back.

He won't return their calls.

So that's the experience that I had as a tourist.

You can finish, hold on.

I have to apply the rule fairly, but the best way to finish your comments or just send them all to council is to send it to c-o-u-n-c-i-l at seattle.gov.

I have a loud enough voice.

I don't need a mic.

I have one volume on.

I'm visually impaired and I am, Trying to learn how to work with that and in that, telling someone who is visually impaired to go online and email, I can't.

My software doesn't recognize my voice and so that is an issue to continuously tell people to go online.

It's not accessible for people like me who are losing their vision and going blind.

But thank you for your time.

And thank you for all you guys have done.

I know you kind of walked into a rat's nest and you're trying your hardest to get it back to where people will come to Seattle and will enjoy it once again.

That will take time and patience.

And so I do commend all of you for working on that.

And thank you.

Thank you.

We have Jared and then followed by Jared will be Calvin.

Good afternoon, councilors and city of Seattle.

My name is Gerard Essig-Benoa, and today is the fifth day of the third month of spring.

It's called the month of Sivan in Chaldean.

If you thought today was 12th of June, that's because you're disoriented as to time and possibly to space as well.

And you might be able to be put on a gurney and put a psychotropic medication until you pay attention to the moon and what it says.

Now, I happen to intercalate, so I've transcended my condition.

And I can report to you as a fact that it is also the seventh week since the full moon of spring, which was the night of Passover.

Now, I want you all to join me in wishing our Jewish community here in Seattle a happy festival of the first fruits of the harvest, the Feast of Weeks, it's called, or Shavuot, Chag HaShavuot.

also known as Pentecost.

Most of the churches are also somewhat disoriented as to time, at least, if not as to space.

Also, this is not the promised land, and white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are not the chosen people.

But this is a settler colony of the American empire, and I resist efforts to scapegoat the Jewish people for our apostasy.

And I think we should all admit that Canaan is the promised land, and Jews have a right to return to their homeland.

Now, Palestine was a colony of the Roman Empire.

And by the way, June is the Roman Imperial calendar.

But I don't want to get into public safety issues until next week.

I just want you to say happy Pentecost to all of our community here in Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have Calvin next.

And following Calvin will be our last in-person speaker, Leigh Burnett.

Or Bennett, excuse me.

Hello, council.

Hi.

I just thought I'd acknowledge myself.

My name is Calvin J. Emerson.

I'm a student at the University of Washington.

I'm studying communication and journalism and public interest.

I wanted to acknowledge why I've been kind of holding my phone up to people.

I've been recording this.

I'm practicing audio journalism over the summer, and I needed a place to collect audio.

So I thought I'd come to the city council meeting.

So I just wanted to acknowledge that.

Thank you all for the hard work you're doing today.

I also want to acknowledge this for all the public audience members.

Thank you all so much for your input.

If it's all right, after the meeting, just to make sure for accuracy's sake, and I get all the information I need, if I could review the public review comment sheet, actually over there.

if that would be okay.

And that's all really.

I wanna thank y'all for your hard work.

If any of y'all would like to give your perspectives to student journalists about anything that's been addressed today at the council, I would love to hear from any of y'all.

That would be fantastic.

But that's all I have to say.

I return my time to the council.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Yeah, Bennett.

I believe it's Bennett Hasselstam.

Hi, so last week the community of migrants that are staying on the patch of land outside the county-owned motel in Kent, formerly the Econolodge, they held a press conference and I just want to replay some of what they said in the press conference which they posted to their Instagram.

And I feel that if it was them who were here, they will not be able to stay here.

But because it's Venezuelan folks, it's migrant folks, then that's why we're going through this.

We're not asking for money.

We're not asking for gold.

We're not asking for silver.

The only thing that we're asking for is we're asking for housing.

And we're asking for temporary housing until we're able to get our work permits.

No one is here because they want to be here.

They're not here because of their own actions.

People had to escape wars.

People had to escape a lot of things.

And all of these wars, all of this violence were caused by the US.

We are not here on our own behalves.

We were forced to leave our home country.

And it's very selfish to have an empty hotel while you have people sleeping outside.

This is a lot of incompetence from the US government.

I have nothing to add.

Thank you.

That was our last in-person speaker.

For our remote speakers, we have two speakers today.

And as a reminder, remote speakers, after you hear the prompt that you have been unmuted, please press star six one time.

Our first remote speaker is Emma H. And Emma will be followed by Alex Kim.

Go ahead, Emma.

IT, I'm not seeing Emma's phone number.

Do you happen to have it?

There you go, Emma.

Hello.

Council members, I want to thank you for not rushing ahead with the pay-up revision.

On Saturday, my e-bike was in the shop getting service to my brakes.

The types of orders I've been taking have changed lately, and I've been so busy that the replacement caught me a bit off guard.

Yet because we're finally paid a fair rate, I was able to walk out of the bike shop without cringing, knowing that I had enough set aside in savings from our mileage reimbursement to pay for the necessary expense.

This was a marked change from when I had unexpected service to my bike in January prior to pay up when I needed to ask for help from my parents because I was barely scraping by.

I'll also note that my acceptance rate has been decreasing lately because I'm being sent orders by multiple companies more frequently and because my bike is reaching its capacity more often.

Additionally, I had been on the Grubhub waitlist since December and was accepted as their contractor this week.

All signs show that the competition is heating up after their deal with Amazon, which is good for consumers and restaurants as well as us couriers.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Emma.

Our last remote speaker today is Alex Kim.

Go ahead, Alex.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, everyone.

This is Alex Kim, District 2 resident, GIGR supporter.

Last week, Council Member Wu attended the Ethics Commission meeting and was told not to discuss or vote on the proposed revision.

Her family owns the restaurant Cow Cow in the CID, which is the best neighborhood in Seattle, by the way.

So during this meeting, she stated that pay up does not affect restaurants, therefore she should be allowed to vote.

So a restaurant owner herself, your colleague, said that pay up does not affect restaurants.

She said small orders are down, but large orders are up, therefore it has evened out and her business is unaffected.

So if pay up does not negatively affect restaurants, why would you change it to Hurt Workers in Seattle with a much lower pay standard?

It makes no sense and seems to only benefit billionaires in San Francisco.

Seattle-based Amazon, a company that has had no problem with pay up, just made a deal with Grubhub to lower delivery fees.

In exchange, they now own 7% of Grubhub and up to 18% if they get enough orders.

Competitive forces are balancing out the market.

This is great for workers, customers, restaurants, and the city of Seattle.

Please keep the pay standard in place as it is.

Things can only get better from here.

Recently, DoorDash said they would remove the fees if council passed the revision.

As a driver that works every day, I can tell you this is not a big deal.

DoorDash is already by far the busiest app in Seattle.

The main problem is Uber Eats charging ridiculously high fees.

In fact, I'd say DoorDash is arguably cheaper than before because tips are no longer needed to get your order delivered.

So to customers, stop using Uber Eats and use DoorDash or Grubhub instead.

Restaurants that are only on Uber, if you added the other platforms, you would be getting a lot more orders.

DoorDash finally saying this also shows they are desperate, which means the council has much more power to bargain here than you think.

There's no need to let these companies have so many giveaways like underpayment with true up instead of paper offer, hiding delivery locations, or no codification of upfront tipping.

These are highly important, even to people who are against pay up.

If the ordinance must be changed, you can go back to the table with real workers involved this time and get a much better deal for us.

Thank you.

Thank you, Alex.

Your time has expired, and that is our last speaker registered.

Okay, thank you very much.

I will now close the public comment period and move on.

Thank you, everybody, for your comments today.

Moving on, we have no presentations today.

So that's actually for briefings this morning.

Anyway, if there's no objection, the introduction and referral calendar will be adopted.

Seeing no objection, the introduction and referral calendar is adopted.

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

Hearing none, the agenda is adopted.

And then finally, we'll consider the proposed consent calendar, which contains two items, the minutes of June 4th, 2024 and Council Bill 120794, which is the payment of the bills.

Are there any items that council members would like removed from today's consent calendar?

Hearing none, I move to adopt the consent calendar.

Is there a second?

Second.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to adopt the consent calendar.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of the consent calendar?

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Rivera?

Aye.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Wu?

Yes.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Kettle?

Aye.

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council President Nelson?

Aye.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

The consent calendar items are adopted.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the minutes in legislation on the consent calendar on my behalf?

All right.

There are no items from committees to consider today, and there were no items removed from the consent calendar, nor is there a resolution for introduction and adoption.

Are there any further items for today's meeting?

Seeing none, I would just like to...

Thank you.

Just a second.

Go ahead, Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Council President, I'd like to request to be excused for most of next week.

We'll be traveling to Vancouver for the AWC conference.

I will be here for briefing and will be at the Transportation Levy Committee meeting virtually, but the rest of the week I'll be out.

Thank you very much.

I'm not seeing any shaking of heads of opposition, so you're excused.

Thank you for representing the city down there.

Council Member Strauss.

Excuse me, Council President Nelson.

If we can have a motion to excuse you for the City Council meeting of June 18th.

Is that correct, Council Member Morales?

That's right.

Thank you.

I move to excuse Council Member Morales.

Is there any objection?

Second.

Seeing no objection, and there's a section.

All right, go ahead.

You are excused.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Council President.

Deja vu all over again.

As I mentioned yesterday in council briefing, I too will be representing the city at the Association of Washington Cities conference next week.

I may be missing council briefing.

We'll figure that out later.

I will be attending transportation committee virtually, and I am requesting to be excused from the full council meeting on June 18th.

Thank you.

Is there any objection to that request?

I move that that request be accepted.

Covering all bases here.

Okay, thank you very much for letting us know.

My last thing is that I would like our student journalists to know that this was a relatively short meeting today.

And I encourage you and invite you to come back some future Tuesday for more discussion on legislation.

But thank you very much for coming and to everybody else who attended.

Seeing no further business, this meeting is adjourned.

It is 2.25 PM.

Thank you very much.

Bye.