Seattle City Council Briefing 12/16/19

I'll just be in the back.

Do it, do it.

Good morning.

Thank you for being here for a regularly scheduled council briefing on December 16th, 2019. We're joined by council members Bagshaw, Juarez, Peterson, and O'Brien and myself.

And if there's no objection, the minutes of the December 9th, 2019 meeting will be approved.

Hear no objection, those minutes are being approved.

We should have a relatively short council briefing this morning.

There's one item up for this afternoon that I'll speak to.

It'll be resolution 31918, which is our 2020 state legislative agenda.

Again, I want to thank all of you and our OIR team, Office of Intergovernment Relations, for working so comprehensively on that document.

And I think it's going to be a good template for us to lobby and advocate.

and show some advocacy toward our agenda.

So thank you very much for that.

And I'll speak to it this afternoon.

That's it for me.

And so we'll just go around the table and yeah.

First, on our afternoon agenda, we have the regional government legislation that we all voted on last Thursday.

Thank you so much for your participation and really digging deep into that.

I'm grateful to you and I'm looking so forward to getting that out of committee today.

We've been working on that for about a year and a half now.

Thanks to all and I do really respect the fact that you guys and Councilmember Peterson diving in and learning about it I really appreciate that so much.

So as we said last Thursday, there's still some issues around our intentions.

We're working on those specific issues.

and Council Member Gonzalez had asked for a letter to be signed by our Mayor and the Executive.

So I believe that that's coming, but I haven't seen it yet.

But also, Monica, sitting out here in the audience, I just want to say thank you again for all your work for making this Council a better place, but also to thank you for putting together Thursday night's event.

That was our going-away event for the four of us, and I could not have been more proud and humbled by What an incredible group of friends, we have, but thank you for the work and I know that Jodi and Amelia and others were And Linda over there, thank you for that.

It was delightful.

And I just want to say thank you again, because I felt great.

My family was there.

My daughter-in-law, who is about as wonderful as she could be with the little girls, keeping them all under wraps.

So anyway, it was great.

So thank you to Gina Battelli for joining us, too.

Appreciate it.

OK.

We have a couple of appointments today.

And we have some items.

regarding the fourth quarter budget.

We'll talk about that later.

Right.

Thank you very much.

Okay, Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

Good morning.

There are no items on today's agenda for the Civic Development, Public Assets, and Native Communities.

I also want to echo Council Member Bagshaw.

Thank you so much for the event.

Saying goodbye to Council Member Pacheco, Council Member O'Brien, Council President Harrell, Council Member Bagshaw.

I can't say enough.

I'm gonna miss you guys a lot.

Council President, you've been a wonderful leader and it's been an honor to work with you for the last four years.

Council Member Bagshaw, thank you so much for your wisdom and experience.

You've been a good friend as well.

We don't agree on everything, but we agree on a lot of things.

I want to thank you for always letting me come in your office and ask questions and that meant a lot to me.

And Council Member O'Brien, I will never get on a kayak with you, but I appreciate and I make you a Bike you did see my bike from ocean shores your bike.

There's always hope there's always hope and I just want to just Truly from my heart.

Thank you so much for serving with you all three of you.

I'm gonna miss all of you so much So, thank you.

Thanks customer Morris.

That's Baron Peterson Thank you.

I'm very fortunate to have started this position early so I could sit briefly at the table with Council President Harrell and Councilmember Bagshaw, Councilmember O'Brien.

I'm very humbled to have this short experience being here with you.

Thank you for all your service to our city.

It's a lot to live up to.

There are no items on the full council agenda from the Planning, Land Use, and Zoning Committee.

This Wednesday, the PLEZ Committee will meet December 18, 930 in the morning here in Council Chambers.

We're going to have a briefing to get an update on the efforts to craft an ordinance next year to protect and increase trees here in our Emerald City.

And thank you to Councilmember Sally Bagshaw and also a Councilmember like Dan Strauss for their work to move the ball forward with the Resolution 31902. We're just gonna get a brief update from the executive on that, and also hear from some folks in the community who are experts on trees, the benefits of expanding our urban forest, which include addressing climate change, improving the health of people throughout our city.

It was a component of the Green New Deal, which Council Member O'Brien led on, and so we'll hear this.

This will be the last PLEZ Committee of the year.

events in District 4 real quick.

Last week I met with parents and teachers at Bryan Elementary School.

We were joined by school board members and state legislators and I heard from the PTSA there they They look forward to even greater coordination between the school district and city hall, especially on issues of growth, zoning, planning, et cetera.

And they look forward to getting additional capital funding from Safe Routes to School with an emphasis on accessibility for people with disabilities.

I want to thank community leader Samantha Fogg for leading that group.

This week, I'll be sitting down with small business owners in Wallingford to talk about the challenges of running a small business, how they can work with the city government better.

Small business districts are really important in District 4 and a lot of the other districts, so I look forward to meeting with them.

That's it for me.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

Councilmember O'Brien.

Thank you, Council President.

The Sustainability and Transportation Committee has two items on this afternoon's agenda.

The first is a resolution about the Commuter Benefits Ordinance and stating the intent to work on expanding that.

We discussed this and voted it out of Council last week.

Councilmember Peterson and I did.

There was one amendment that we discussed but didn't actually take action on because we wanted to work on the language and so I'm going to share with you all some revised language that our offices work together at so they'll be I'll be proposing that amendment on the dais this afternoon to that resolution.

The second is just an appointment, I shouldn't say just, the second is an appointment to the Sweetened Beverage Tax Community Advisory Board.

I am also, will be speaking to Council Member Herbold's agenda item, and I was hoping to show a lot of leadership today, Council President, on my last day, but Council Member Herbold has 20, six items, I believe, or 22 items on this afternoon's agenda.

So let me run through those really quickly.

There's a couple items related to Seattle Public Utilities.

One is a relinquishment and acceptance of easements.

Another one is a easement exception.

And then we have a number of appointments.

One to the Museum Development Authority, nine to the Arts Commission, four to the LGBTQ Commission, one to the Women's Commission, three to the Human Rights Commission, one to the Commission for People with Disabilities, and one to the Music Commission.

So, we'll be working through a lot of appointments, but I'll move swiftly this afternoon.

Very good.

Thank you for filling in for Councilmember Herbold, and we wish her well.

Okay, so that should do it, and we'll see everyone at two o'clock this afternoon.

Great, thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Yeah.