Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee Session I 10/28/21

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Present.

Strauss.

Present.

Gonzalez.

Still here.

Herbold.

Here.

Flores.

Like the president, I'm still here.

Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Nye present.

Excellent.

Well, thank you all for being here this morning.

This is day three of three for the council's deliberations on possible amendments for consideration as we craft the Seattle City Council 2022 budget.

Today we'll conclude our conversation about the presented budget before we draft the We have a full agenda in front of us today.

Again, we will have an overview from the central staff on the categories that we've identified on today's budget, including transportation and human and Human Services Department.

We do have some walk-on amendments, just three for us today to consider.

So in order to consider those amendments, I will move the agenda so that we can amend the agenda.

I move to adopt the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you very much.

It's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda.

I now move to amend the agenda to add the following walk-on amendments.

Seattle Department of Transportation walk-on amendment number one, and Human Service Department walk-on amendments one and two, by placing these three amendments under the last item associated with that department on the agenda section today.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to add the walk-on amendments under the associated section.

Are there any comments?

Hearing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the adoption of the amendment?

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Peterson?

Yes.

Sawant?

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Gonzales?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much colleagues.

The agenda is now amended.

Are there any additional comments or questions about the amended agenda?

Hearing none, if there's no objection, the amended agenda will be adopted.

hearing no objections, the amended agenda is adopted.

Thank you very much, colleagues.

At this time, we are going to go into remote public comment.

We do have a number of people signed up to provide public testimony today.

We have committed to allotting 30 minutes of public testimony to every meeting that this committee has, and we also want to note the three public hearings that this committee has established as well.

We will not be able to hear from everybody on today's agenda, excuse me, on today's agenda.

sign-up sheet.

I do apologize in advance, but we want to make sure that we get through the rest of the amendments for discussion so that there is a robust public and transparent conversation about these amendments in front of us.

I do hope if you're not able to speak today that you do dial it, excuse me, that you do call us on our office lines or send an email to council at Seattle.gov.

And again, as always, we will have comments at the beginning of every meeting.

that you will have a chance to call in about as well, and a public hearing on November 10th.

We look forward to getting your public comments if you're not able to speak today.

I will call on the folks listed on today's public comment two at a time.

and you will hear a indication that you have been unmuted with our prompt.

That's your note to go ahead and hit star six on your own line.

Make sure your phone is also off mute so that we can hear you and appreciate all of the conversations that you are bringing to today's discussion.

But when you hear that 10 second chime at the end of your allotted time, we're going to ask you to wrap up so that you don't inadvertently get cut off.

If you do have the opportunity to continue listening in, please do so on the options listed on today's agenda and always you can follow us live at Seattle Channel.

At this point, I will open up public comment and it is 937 a.m.

So we will go to 1007 a.m.

and we will try to get through the first 25 people here.

If you are number 30 and beyond, please do note that it is unlikely that we'll be able to get to you today.

The first two people are Howard Gale and Tiara Dearborn.

Good morning, Howard.

Good morning.

Howard Gale speaking on the budget and failed police accountability.

So far, the council has only considered a possible cut of 3.65% to the SPD budget, leaving millions of wasted SPD dollars untouched.

including the monies for SPD's self-serving police investigating police force investigation budget.

Also untouched and unremarked on are the $10.8 million for our failed police accountability system.

Demonstrating a complete disconnect from the scandals now surrounding the OIG and the OPA and a stunning failure of oversight coupled with a blind belief in our failed police accountability system, the council is considering increasing the budget for the OIG specifically for a person to help with public records disclosure.

One of the many complaints that two high-level whistleblowers from the OIG have made is that OIG Director Lisa Judge consistently hides the actions of her office by demanding that the OIG staff not document in writing any of the concerns or disagreements with OPA investigations in an overt attempt to, in fact, subvert our public records law.

This is an abject failure.

Okay, thank you.

Tiara, good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Tiara Dearbone and I'm a project manager for LEAD in Seattle.

I want to thank the council for your continued support of LEAD.

As you consider expanding LEAD's capacity please consider my following statement.

We shouldn't have to choose between a pregnant IV drug user and a wheelchair-bound victim of police brutality.

And since reaching capacity we are choosing neither.

As you all know there has been increasing pressure to address crime related to poverty.

and unmet behavioral health needs without police and without prosecution.

LEAD does this.

We work with the folks nobody else wants to touch.

Those with the highest barriers and the highest needs.

If LEAD does not have the capacity to respond to all those across Seattle who fall into this category this means that either we will depend on police to respond to these needs or leave them unaddressed.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thanks for calling in today, Tiara.

Aina Abe, followed by Ala Hassan.

Good morning, Aina.

Good morning.

My name is Aina Abe.

I'm a Seattle resident and the CEO of the Tubman Center for Health and Freedom.

I'm testifying in support of SHD 055A001 this morning.

Our city has decades of data collection on health inequity.

I think it's time to invest in marginalized communities who are facing these inequities.

In order to solve for racism as a public health crisis, we must lean and look into our communities that know best.

This is the gold standard for public health practice and evidence-based practice And so this will be a meaningful investment with this amendment to really look at and support communities who have been disproportionately hit hard during the COVID pandemic, as well as decades of disinvestment in these communities.

I support SHD055A001.

Thank you very much.

And Allah, followed by Jimmy Hightower.

Good morning, Allah.

Good morning.

My name's Allah Hassan and I'm with the Low Income Housing Institute.

I want to thank Council Member Strauss for funding our urban rest stop program.

We're requesting $200,012 to increase support for our downtown location and expanding hours at our Ballard location which will result in adding another 10,000 showers 1,000 loads of laundry and another 500 to 600 unduplicated homeless clients.

The urban rest stop provides a clean safe and welcoming facility where individuals and families experiencing homelessness can come and use restrooms laundry facilities and showers.

Yet the Ballard location is running at half of its capacity.

This is during a time when there is a growing need in the neighborhood and the rest of North Seattle for the unhoused individuals to access basic hygiene services.

I have seen the impact this resource has made for our patrons.

It could mean a warm shower and clean clothes to prepare for an interview or restore their overall self-confidence.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And the next person is Jimmy followed by Whitney.

Oh each.

Good morning Jimmy.

My name is Jimmy Hightower and I live in Lake City.

I'm calling to express my support for bringing the LEAD program to scale so that it can serve all eligible and high priority clients.

Lake City's homelessness crisis became dire during the first year of the pandemic especially at Albert Davis and Lake City Mini Parks.

LEED's efforts were crucial in encouraging dialogue between folks experiencing homelessness and house neighbors and businesses in the area which led to more empathetic approaches and solutions throughout the community.

I interacted most with LEED by providing referrals and regular updates so that they could better meet the needs of folks who don't qualify or who have fallen through the cracks for other services.

By engaging in L.E.A.D.' 's process in this way I found their harm reduction model an effective way to respond to the public safety needs in my neighborhood while getting more people the services that they need.

I appreciate the council's ongoing support of the L.E.A.D. program and trust you will provide the funding and support needed to expand the program to provide necessary support and services to our communities in greatest need in Lake City and across Seattle.

Thank you and good morning to Whitney followed by Erin Workhother.

Good morning.

My name is Whitney Eich and I'm the Director of Adolescent Services at Youth Care.

I'm here to support the 5.8 inflation adjustment.

For the past nearly two years our youth counselors case managers and other staff have been hailed as essential workers and heroes.

And yet Seattle's heroes cannot afford to live in Seattle and must commute from Renton to Coma and sometimes even Puyallup.

Despite the long commute and risk of COVID our staff have continued to show up and provide services for our community's most vulnerable populations including children who have survived sexual exploitation children seeking asylum and children who are state dependent.

Please remember without staff there are no services.

As we face a continued staffing shortage I urge you to approve this adjustment.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And Erin followed by John Grant.

Good morning Erin.

Aaron, you are still on mute, just star six.

There we go.

Good morning.

My name is Aaron Burkhalter, project manager with the LEAD program covering the Southwest Precinct.

I'm calling today to tell you a little bit of our program.

And in December 2020, at the direction of our LEAD policy coordinating group, The lead expanded into West Seattle knowing at that time that we would have to be small.

We tried to focus initially on a single neighborhood.

But as soon as we arrived the pressure from many different sectors of our community and city pulled our attention in multiple directions all having specific and real needs.

The community has enthusiasm for the program but is facing the reality that we've shared that the program resources are stretched too thin.

There are spots across the Southwest Precinct in need of deeper and specific outreach that the program cannot address if it is not funded to fidelity.

Please meet the council resolution's commitment to forward and lead so it can address all eligible and priority referrals.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And John will be followed by Maureen Ewing.

Good morning Council Members.

My name is John Grant with the Low Income Housing Institute.

I'm testifying in favor of Council Member Herbold, Lewis and Sawant's budget proposals for tiny house villages.

The inequities and services across the villages will be addressed by Council Member Lewis's well thought out proposal by adding $1.9 million in funding.

This will add behavioral health at our older villages like Georgetown and Camp Second Chance and add 24-7 staffing across all of our locations to make sure expectations of the surrounding communities are met.

It will also address deficits in Rosie's Village, where they are short $234,000 in operating funds, and Friendship Heights, which is short $468,000 in the mayor's base budget.

Please also support Councilmember Herbold's walk-on amendment, which is crucial.

This $300,000 investment for Camp Second Chance will replace a worn-down kitchen and appliances, pave walkways for people with mobility issues, and add 20 new tiny houses.

Please support for both walk-on amendment and the other interconnected tiny house budget amendment.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

And Maureen, followed by Vendra Drakovic.

Good morning, Maureen.

Good morning, Madam Chair, Ms. Beda and council members.

I'm Maureen Ewing, Executive Director of U Heights, and on behalf of the U Heights Board, I'm voicing our support of several amendments.

We support the amendment to approve fire safety at U-Height.

Many thanks to Council Member Peterson for his leadership which allows us to expand much-needed early learning slots.

During the pandemic U-Height welcomed in early learning provider UTCS after they were displaced after 50 years in the U-District.

We also support the $10.2 million for early learning facilities and are grateful to Council President Gonzalez and Council Member Meceda for investing in upstream programs and supporting families during a very difficult time.

We also support investing in vehicle residency programs and are thankful to Councilmember Strauss for leading efforts to expand this program to support the unhoused population living in their vehicles that make up nearly half the population in Seattle.

Many thank you for all your support during this difficult time.

Thank you so much.

Colleagues, a brief interruption here.

I have just taken a look at our agenda one more time and because we have an fewer amendments today than we did the day before.

I had planned to go for another 20 minutes for public testimony here this morning.

I'm going to ask your permission if there's any objection with extending for another 20 minutes so we would take public comment all the way until 10 30. I believe we can do that and get through the agenda and hopefully that way we can get through everybody.

Is there any concern, any objection?

hearing no objection, we're going to extend public comment to 1030 in the hopes to get through everyone.

Thank you very much.

Vendrana, please go ahead.

Hi, good morning.

Can you hear me?

I am muted already, I think.

Hi, good morning, council member.

I'm Vendrana Drakovic with Sound Generations, so speaking in support of all of the Seattle Human Services Coalition budget amendments, but more specifically in support of HSC 011 amendments.

the 130K to fund the East African Senior Center aimed at providing wraparound services to a long underserved community, which is East African elders.

The need for a senior center that would provide social services, health promotion, socialization, education, and recreation to East African elders has existed for years.

Only now, thanks to some startup funding from Seven Generations, can we launch this program and hire full-time staff that will be dedicated to supporting and serving the community.

However, we do need funding from the city to ensure sustainability and continue a robust senior center that will help us make progress towards equity for this community, which faces multiple levels of systemic oppression and has been adversely affected by COVID-19.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Allison Isinger followed by Paul Patu.

Good morning, Allison.

And just star six to unmute, Allison.

And we'll have Paul Patu, followed by Jesse Freeman.

Allison, we'll keep you on the line here and look for you to hit star six to unmute.

And we can pull up Paul.

Good morning.

Can I unmute it?

Oh, good morning.

Go ahead.

Thanks, Allison.

Yes.

Good morning.

Thank you very much.

Good morning, Council Members.

Allison Isengar with the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness, here to support Budget Chair Mosqueda's CBA to adjust human services contracts an additional 2.8 percent to better reflect current inflation.

Public contracts for services should reflect the value of the work being done and true costs of doing the work.

Right now they don't even keep up with real inflation frontline workers experience when they buy groceries fill their ORCA cards or gas tanks or pay their bills.

It would be better if you didn't have to hear from me this morning.

I'd rather you heard directly from case managers janitors and managers at organizations whose essential workers keep hundreds and thousands of Seattle residents sheltered housed and connected to support.

of jobs that can't be done remotely.

But a major community provider of services told me they were unable to spare anyone to attend today because their agency is fully occupied managing COVID-19 outbreaks affecting staff and guests in two separate programs.

I'll send the rest of my comments via email, but I urge you to support this as a foundation.

Thank you, Allison.

Paul will be followed by Jesse Freeman.

Good morning, Paul.

Star six to unmute yourself.

And after Jesse would be Cory, Cory Parker.

It looks like you're not listed as present.

So we will go to Peter after that.

Good morning, Paul.

Hello, my name is Paul Patu, longtime community member in Seattle.

I'm here to advocate for continued funding for the Seattle Community Safety Initiative in the 2022 budget, which is a community alternative solution for public safety.

The amendment to include the $4 million is the investment needed for this critical initiative.

To date, the investment has been used to hire, train, develop, and deploy several community safety teams throughout Southeast Seattle, the Central District, and West Seattle to increase public safety with an emphasis on serving BIPOC communities.

We have had modest yet promising results in our first year and need the City Council to stay the course by continuing to invest and believe in community-led solutions for public safety.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And, Jessie, good morning.

Jessie will be followed by Corey.

If you pop in, Corey will see you then.

Jessie, hit star six, please.

Good morning, Council.

My name is Jessie Friedman, and I'm the Director of Public Policy for Youth Care.

I joined Whitney in support of Budget Chair Mosqueda's proposed 5.8% inflation adjustment for service providers.

because accurately capturing inflation should be the minimum necessary to support these essential workers.

Homeless service providers have been on the front lines of both the homelessness crisis and the COVID pandemic.

Our workers have been exposed to both secondary and direct trauma and many experience instability themselves in our astronomically expensive city.

The majority of our staff at Youth Care are people of color so providing a living wage and adequate leave both of which would be supported by this additional funding is a crucial part of our shared mission of anti-racism.

Thanks so much for your support of youth care in our workers and for your time this morning.

Thank you very much.

And Cora you're still not present so we're going to move to Peter Fink.

Good morning Peter.

Good morning.

I'm calling in support of the Low Income Housing Institute's Urban Rest Stop program.

This is a vital service for our community.

In particular I'm calling to ask that the City Council include a $212,000 increase to support the downtown location and also expand hours at the Ballard location.

Specifically, at the Ballard location, there's all sorts of needs such as two team members and one team lead in order to actually be able to establish services over the weekend and expand services during the week.

For those who don't know, the urban rest stops are a vital part of our community's efforts to make sure that all individuals in our in our city have access to clean and safe welcoming facilities and can also use the restroom and laundry facilities and showers throughout the week, just as we know that this is vital to human dignity in our city.

Please support the increase for the urban rest stop.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Dennis Sillis will be followed by Karen Salinas.

Good morning, Dennis.

Good morning.

My name is Dennis Sills and I work at Plymouth Housing.

Plymouth supports Chair Mosqueda's amendment to provide a one-time cost of living human services contract adjustment of 2.8 percent.

Homeless services and housing staff are essential workers who have been on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In most cases they cannot work remotely and all have worked tirelessly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This amendment supports those workers.

Competitive wages are essential for permanent support of housing.

Jobs in other industries can provide less stressful environments similar wages and enhanced benefits like payments for college.

We've had many workers who have left for those opportunities.

This makes it challenging for housing providers to fill positions.

We also support the separate proposal to fund and carry out wage equity analysis to bring human service provider wages up to compare with other essential frontline workers.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

And Karen.

Karen you're listed as not present.

So we'll go to Kelsey Beckmeyer.

Good morning Kelsey.

Kelsey will be followed by Chloe Gale.

And Nathan Ellis-Brown.

Good morning Kelsey.

Good morning.

My name is Kelsey Beckmeyer and I'm a senior manager with DESC commenting on the 2.8 inflation adjustment.

Our staff at DESC have been working tirelessly throughout not only the pandemic but the continued homelessness crisis in our community.

Unlike our essential worker partners, childcare, grocery store, and frontline city employees, homelessness and housing service staff have not seen the same kind of financial support.

Our workers have gone through 19 months of crisis, and they're rewarded to lose buying power.

We have staff working doubles and facing redeployment, which is not only taking a physical toll, but a financial one, as transportation costs increase.

The most impactful way for us to show staff we're providing support to high-risk populations is to pay them adequately.

Committing to a 2.8% increase is the least we can do.

While meeting inflation is by far our top priority, let me end by also expressing how grateful DESC is to the council for your support for funding of up-to-date permanent supportive housing projects and for enhancing our non-law enforcement crisis response system.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And the next person is Chloe, followed by Nathan Ellis-Brown, who's listed as not present.

Good morning, Chloe.

Hi, this is Chloe Gale from the REACH program.

We do daily street outreach for thousands of people living outside for over 20 years.

I'm calling in to advocate for the 5% inflation adjustment for human services contracts.

This is not a single organizational or program issue.

Our providers are interdependent.

Every day, we depend on our service provider partners to show up and support our staff and clients by providing services that top up outreach tenants, bringing culturally specific services and mental health care to people on the street and most of all by providing safe healthy spaces for people indoors.

REACH and LEAD staff have shown up daily in the face of compounding public health housing and mental health crises to make meet people where they are and join them to move indoors to safety.

Staff who have remained throughout the pandemic are incredibly passionate and committed to this work.

To continue in the face of trauma We need to sustain the workforce and give them necessary compensation for themselves and their families.

Thanks so much, Chloe.

Nathan, your list is not present, so we're going to go to Marsha Wright-Soyka.

Back to Cory Crocker and Karen Salinas.

Good morning, Marsha.

Hi, my name is Marsha Wright-Soyka.

I'm Executive Director of Family Works, which has food banks in Districts 4, 5, and 6. I'm urging you today to support Councilmember Herbold's amendment HSD005, which keeps essential funding for food banks and meal programs at 2021 levels, and Councilmember Strauss's amendment HSD006, which expands food banks' funding.

Right now, an $8 million cut to food bank programs is on the table, while residents of our city are struggling to put food on their table.

Data from HSC shows visits to food banks are up this year from last year, which shows how critical it is not to cut food resources.

Instead, please expand food bank funding.

This helps us pay and hire more staff who are on the front lines of the pandemic, purchase farm fresh and culturally responsive food for the most marginalized, and improve the facilities, equipment, and vehicles that we strained this year to meet spiking food insecurity.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Corey Cockerfrau by Karen Salinas.

Good morning Corey.

Good morning.

I'm a 30 year resident and the current president of the District Community Council and we ask you to please approve Council Member Peterson's budget action to add $150,000 to make the crossing safe over I-5 and 45th for all modes all ages and all abilities.

For the balance of my time here are some comments we received from hundreds of neighbors who signed our petition.

Ellie, I have a young child and this is the most dangerous part of most trips we take.

From Jessica, this overpass is unsafe and the cars are aggressive.

Thomas, I've been hit at 45th at I-5 as a pedestrian.

I avoid it as a cyclist.

It's too dangerous.

Dan, it's time to prioritize local residents traveling in their own neighborhood rather than solely catering to drivers traveling elsewhere on the freeway.

Eric, Surely, cycle safety is at least as important as vehicle throughput.

Sophie, this is a major disconnect between two very livable neighborhoods.

Justin, my family, including my five-year-old son, need a safe way to cross I-5 by bike and walking.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Karen, followed by Nathan.

Good morning, Karen.

Morning, my name is Karen Salinas.

I am the Director of Outreach with the REACH Program, and I'm here to testify for the 5.8 inflation adjustment.

We need to offer folks wages that allow them a good and fair quality of life that reflects the level of skill and complexity needed to do this work well.

We've been pulled into RV issues, mental health crises, requests for shelter and housing, legal mitigation and support, medical respite, bathroom access, food access, benefits and identification, and to provide input and consult to other providers and growing agencies.

We and our co-workers in agencies across the city must be paid fairly for our contributions to addressing homelessness and the exasperated impacts of COVID on low-income, at-risk populations, all while we have been providing excellent, trauma-informed, harm-reduction-based care and outreach to the most vulnerable folks in our society.

So pushing for that adjustment to be made to reflect the work that we do.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Nathan will be followed by Meryl Cousins.

Good morning, Nathan.

Star six to unmute, Nathan.

One more time, Nathan, star six to unmute, and let's tee up Meryl, and we'll watch for Nathan to come off mute.

Good morning, Meryl.

Go ahead, please.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Meryl Cousin, and I'm the executive director of the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence.

On behalf of our 35-member programs, we urge the council to support the proposed amendment, HSD 019, which allocates $3 million to expand community-based survivor-driven advocacy services.

This is an evidence-based program shown to increase the health and safety of survivors, especially those most marginalized by racism, poverty, and other systemic inequities.

In addition, we support the amendment to realign jumpstart expenditures with the spending plan, the amendment to fund the comparable worth analysis of human services jobs, and the amendment for an enhanced human services inflation adjustment along with the other SHSC recommended amendments.

And finally as we continue to divest from the criminal legal system we support the amendment for SOCR to conduct a workgroup to evaluate misdemeanor domestic violence prosecution.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you very much.

And Nathan followed by Mary.

Nathan, star six, unmute yourself.

Okay, it looks like you're still muted.

Mary, star six, unmute yourself.

There we go.

Please go ahead, Mary.

Thank you.

I'm Mary Steele.

I'm the Executive Director of Compass Housing Alliance speaking in support of the inflationary increase to service provider contracts.

I'm speaking on behalf of our 150 full-time and relief staff who are working at our several shelters and affordable housing units around Seattle.

Right now, we have about 10% of our frontline positions vacant, and that's putting tremendous pressure on everyone else who's left to cover those 24 by 7 shifts.

Being a nonprofit does not make us immune from market forces.

We need to increase pay or we won't be able to fill these very important jobs.

And frankly, our other costs are going up as well.

Just to give one example, our property insurance has increased more than 100% in the last three years.

And we're currently paying more than a million dollars a year in insurance.

For this reason, I ask that you support Council Member Mosqueda's proposed amendment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Nathan, please go ahead.

Nathan, we can hear you.

Go ahead.

Ellis Brown, go ahead.

Nathan Ellis Brown, can you hear me?

We can hear you.

It's asking for you.

Or whomever's on this line, if you'd like to testify, you can go ahead.

Hi, my name is Nathan.

Good morning, council members.

I'm speaking to you today in support of the urban rest stops.

Please support council member Dan Strauss' proposal to expand its operating hours.

The urban rest stop provides a clean, safe and welcoming facility where individuals and families experiencing homelessness can come and use restrooms, laundry facilities, and the showers.

Currently, the Ballard location is only operating at half of its capacity.

This is during a time when there is growing need in the neighborhood and the rest of North Seattle for homeless people to access basic hygiene services.

This proposal will add another 10,000 showers, 1,000 loads of laundries, and another 500 to 600 unduplicated homeless clients.

Thank you for your support.

I yield my time.

Excellent.

Thank you.

I'm just giving an update to folks.

We're more than halfway through, and we have about 26 more minutes left, so I think we can do this.

Let's keep going.

Gloria Hatcher-Mayes, followed by Terry Holm.

Good morning, Gloria.

Please go ahead.

Hello.

My name is Gloria Hatcher-Mayes.

I'm the executive director for Rainier Valley Food Bank.

Thank you for your time this morning, City Council.

I'm also the co-chair for the Seattle Food Committee.

It's a 27-member organization.

that provides food insecurity services and social services support to our most vulnerable community members.

I'm here to support the amendments by Council Member Herbold, number A001-005 and also Council Member Straus' amendment 005A001.

These amendments would help us continue to do the vital work necessary to make sure that those in need of food services in the city are being well served.

Visits have increased into 2021, and while we are at high risk for losing staff because of competitor employment salaries being offered to them, we are losing them at our highest point of need.

Thank you.

Please send in the rest of your comments, Gloria.

Terry will be followed by Corey Flores.

Good morning, Terry.

Good morning.

This is Terry Holmes.

I'm testifying today to encourage your continuing support for the proposed budget amendment introduced by Council Member Morales and supported by Council Members Straus and Lewis, providing $200,000 to conduct equitable community outreach for the Lake Washington Boulevard Keep Moving Street program.

In light of the rapid onset of the pandemic SDOT did an admiral job of implementing the keep moving streets and stay healthy streets.

They rolled out these programs quickly without the opportunity to carry out the normal Seattle process.

The proposed funding will allow SDOT and Parks to fully engage the public to build on what they've learned from the pilot programs and to conclude with a solid basis for determining the best permanent programming for Lake Washington Boulevard, Keep Moving Street from Mount Baker Beach to Stewart Park.

We all need to consider what our hopes for Seattle are for the coming years.

These are challenging times, but this COVID-19 experience has revealed this opportunity for Seattle Parks.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And after Corey, I just want to note Angela Balderma Good morning, Councilmembers.

I am testifying in support of safe spots and programs that support people who are living in their cars.

My partner and I were working and then we lost our housing.

Because of U-Hike Safe Spot, we were able to gain access to showers, kitchen, and a safe place to park.

When our car was stolen, we reached out to you, Hykes, and they helped us to find emergency shelter until we moved into our new apartment.

Because of the SafeBot, we benefited in these ways.

Please, people, invest in programs that support people living in their cars.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, and good morning, David.

David will be followed by Elizabeth Dickinson.

David, just star six unmute.

Okay, let's see if Elizabeth David Star 610 mute.

Elizabeth Star 610 mute.

There we go.

Go ahead, Elizabeth.

Good morning.

I am Elizabeth, the social justice coordinator at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in Ballard.

We've been providing safe parking for those living in their vehicles since 2012. And I'm here to speak in support of the amendments to increase funding for both safe parking lots and outreach and case management there.

As a church we try to offer a space of respite and healing to the many people who have stayed with us.

Right now we have 7 guests including a family with 2 small children.

This summer we received a letter from 2 former guests who'd lived in their vehicle for about 8 years all told.

They wrote to us.

that the road housing program was a true gift and a refuge from where we had been and gave us time to regroup and bounce back.

Being fresh they have now bought a home and have wonderful neighbors and are forming a new healthy community for themselves.

We want this kind of outcome for all of our homeless neighbors.

Thank you very much.

Please send the rest of that story in.

I appreciate it.

David, we have you on the screen still, star six to unmute, followed by Phoebe Takuda.

Good morning.

And Phoebe, if you'd like to hit star six, you're welcome to.

There we go.

Phoebe, go ahead.

Hi, my name is Phoebe Takuda.

I work at REACH as a housing director.

I'm calling in to advocate for 5.8% inflation adjustment for human services contracts.

I have the privilege of working with people whose life experience has prepared them for the world that they are in today.

They were incarcerated overcame substance use disorder lived with mental illness and racism.

We cannot do this work without them and they deserve to have prevailing wages.

Many of them qualify for financial resources available to our clients and other folks living in poverty.

Their wages don't reflect their skill set or the complexity of the work.

They need to thrive in the city they and their children live in.

it's essential to the quality of work we provide to Seattle's most vulnerable population.

They have worked throughout the pandemic putting their families and themselves at risk because they are passionate about the work.

We need to do whatever we can to retain them and that's through higher wage.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And I think for the last time David a star six unmute.

Si hablas espanol David.

Necesitas un primer estrella seis.

Okay.

Hi David.

Hello, this is David Heldy.

Sorry for my difficulty getting unmuted there.

Like I said, my name is David Heldy.

I'm a shelter case manager at DESC at the Red Lion Inn, and I'm a delegate with FDIU 1199 Northwest.

And I just wanted to say that we are a big fan of Theresa Mosqueda's proposal to increase the human services funding.

currently don't have nearly enough to do all of the work that is currently required.

When the main shelter closed down, the quality of care that is being provided for our clients in the new motel model has gone pretty drastically up, but the number of people that we're serving has gone down.

And that's simply unacceptable.

There are people that are literally freezing to death on the streets right now.

The women in black lists just came out a little.

David, I'm glad we were able to get you off mute.

Thank you for providing that testimony, and if you could send in the rest of your comments, that would be wonderful.

I apologize to Council Member Conlon.

We have Council Member Richard Conlon on the line here.

We usually do electives and form our electives first, so I'm gonna go to Council Member Conlon, and then we'll go back to Emily Penna, followed by Albert Schiffer.

Good morning, Council Member Conlon.

Just, oh, perfect, there you are, hello.

Hello, thank you so much.

I really appreciate the opportunity to speak.

I'm here to support the $200,000 that are proposed by the amendments and Council Member Morales for the equitable outreach for the keep moving strategy, keep moving streets on Lake Washington Boulevard.

You know, I've often been riding my bike on Lake Washington Boulevard and had a car following me closely and thought to myself, how can I communicate to this driver that this was built for bicycles?

in the 1890s.

And cars really are on their, on sufferance.

It's a very important part of our strategy to think about making Lake Washington Boulevard more accessible.

It's a way in which we can have community conversations, people talking to each other on the street, kids learning how to bicycle in a safe and welcoming environment.

I urge you to approve this.

I think it's a great start for this program.

Thank you very much.

And I appreciate the opportunity to speak.

Thank you very much, Council Member.

Emily Pena, followed by Albert Shiver.

Good morning, Emily.

Hi, Council Member.

My name is Emily Pena, and I'm calling on behalf of the Meals Partnership Coalition.

We support the Seattle Human Services Coalition's budget requests, and I specifically wanted to highlight an amendment included by Council Member Herbold to sustain current levels of food funding for the first six months of 2020 for meal programs in food banks.

I urge you all to support this and look at how we can fully fund them for the entirety of the year.

Meal programs have only seen an increase in need over the last two years.

Coupled with an increase in food and supply costs due to ongoing supply chain challenges it is imperative that they can rely on continued funds to purchase culturally appropriate nutritionally dense ingredients for their meals.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

And Albert followed by Stephanie Cassidy.

Star 6 Albert.

Star 6 to come on mute.

Perfect.

Hi I'm Albert Shriver.

I'm from Community Passageways and I'm the operations manager for the organization.

Thank you all for giving to this platform to use our voices.

I'm advocating for the Seattle Community Safety Initiative for continued funding through 2022. I'm here to show my support for the collective leadership initiative.

I'm witnessing life changing work that has been critical in changing and saving lives.

This work needs to continue because by not doing so we're telling our young people that their lives are not their lives are just a discussion amongst adults.

We must show them that we care, our actions, and continuing this work.

By not continuing this work, this year's past efforts may have all been for nothing.

And to do that would be detrimental to the Black and Brown community.

Katrina has shown us that resources for the Black and Brown communities are not as important as they are for other communities, or else we would be fighting.

We'd be here fighting for scraps.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And Stephanie, followed by Misty, Kenya.

Good morning.

McKenna.

Good morning, Stephanie.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name's Stephanie Cassie and I'm the gender-based violence program manager at the Seattle Indian Health Board.

I'm here today for a few things.

First I want to urge you to support the proposed amendment HFC 019 which allocates 3 million dollars to expand community-based survivor-driven advocacy services.

An evidence an evidence-based strategy known to increase the health and safety of survivors especially those most marginalized by racism poverty and other systemic inequities.

Additionally the Seattle Indian Health Board requests a total of $300,000 from the city budget for our Lake City Clinic expansion to support facility alterations and installations to ensure the highest quality of care to our relatives.

We also request $200,000 to conduct a community participatory design survey to aid in the pre-architectural design process for our Thunderbird Treatment Center, our inpatient behavioral health center.

Lastly the Seattle Indian Health Board requests $500,000 to launch a pilot program to address food insecurity and prevent chronic disease.

This will support our holistic approach to ensuring all our relatives' needs are met, including access to nutrition, medical, dental, gender-based violence, homelessness.

Thank you very much.

Misty, followed by Nakala Ali.

Good morning, Misty.

Good morning.

My name is Misty McKenna, Early Learning Project Navigator at Child Care Resources.

I'm here to ask for your support of Council President Gonzalez's Amendment 18 to expand funding for child care facilities.

It's exciting to see how the public conversation has begun to appreciate the essential role that child care plays in our community's infrastructure.

Child care providers have had their doors open since day one of the pandemic and have been constantly adapting to the changing landscape to continue to support children and families.

We have a workforce that is racially and culturally diverse and yet deeply underpaid.

The business of child care is not a financially fruitful one, and we owe a ton of gratitude to the providers who continue to offer these essential services.

The child care recognition pay has been deeply appreciated, but programs are continuing to struggle and much more support is necessary.

Investing in child care facility funding will allow programs to make improvements for their spaces when they haven't had the savings to build projects and create opportunities for new programs.

We know you're aware that 90% of a child's brain development happens in the first five years of their lives.

If we can have high quality, affordable, and culturally appropriate childcare in every community across the country.

Thank you.

And Nicola, followed by Beth Moncier.

Good morning, Nicola.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Nicola Ayala, and I am calling in in support of HSD055A001.

which would allocate $500,000 for the community-led design process for an anti-oppressive health care center.

We in marginalized communities are often distrustful of the current medical system because of all the harm that its racism and other oppressive ways of being have caused in our community.

They've led to the health disparities that we're experiencing now.

We in marginalized communities are actually the experts in our own care.

And with proper resources, we can design a high-quality, loving, culturally competent, gender-affirming, multilingual health care center for all the people in our communities.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

And Beth will be followed by John Rios.

Good morning, Beth.

Hey, Beth, good morning.

Just start, you are already start six, so don't push that again.

Just make sure your phone's not on mute on its own.

Hi there.

It went back on mute for a second.

Check that one more time for me.

Beth will be followed by John Rios.

Good morning, Beth.

Still muted on your end, I think.

I'm unmuted now?

Yes, there we go.

OK.

I'm a nearly 30-year resident of the U District in University Park, a former housing planner for King County and a legislative analyst for Housing and Human Services for the County Council and a University Heights board member since 2012. Since our executive director already spoke to our programs and capital needs to increase daycare space, slots at U Heights, I'm going to testify in support of programs to serve our neighbors who are unhoused.

Our programs at U Heights serving neighbors who are unhoused are critical, including hosting hygiene services, meal programs, and supporting people who live in their vehicles.

We have been a host for a site for people living in their cars for a year and a half now.

We know that providing safe parking is a temporary fix, but we know how critical access to hygiene services, washer and dryers, and case management is important to people.

We are support of the amendment co-sponsored by council members Lewis and Gonzalez to add $770,000 to the general fund for human services to maintain and expand programs for these.

Thank you so much and please send the rest of your comments in.

Good morning, John.

John will be followed by Josh Castle.

Good morning.

My name is John Rios.

I'm an intensive case manager in downtown Seattle and the North End, and I'm here to speak in favor of Councilmember Mosqueda's proposal for a one-time inflationary increase to HSB contracts, and I also spoke two years ago in support of the original proposal.

When the majority of the workforce left the city at the beginning of the pandemic, they left behind some of those most in need and the healthcare and social service providers struggling to provide the necessary services and keep them safe as well as trying to keep ourselves and family members safe.

One of the biggest issues we face amidst the pandemic is low and stagnant wages that have failed to retain workers and entice new employees.

This has created high turnover and jobs left unfulfilled, furthermore increasing the likelihood of burnout and departure.

These vacancies greatly affect our services that we're able to provide to people struggling.

During this time, we've also seen our jobs become increasingly more dangerous as police became less responsive.

service contracts that reflect the true collation seems like the bare minimum that we can do to help support the people who have continued to put themselves on the front lines.

So we strongly support Councilmember Muscat's proposal.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And the next person is Josh, followed by Kenneth Sinclair.

Josh, good morning.

Hi, good morning.

I'm Josh Castle, Community Engagement Director with Lehigh and a 16-year District 5 resident.

Thank you to Council Member Juarez for sponsoring and Council Member Lewis and so on for co-sponsoring the proposal to add $36,000 to our lakefront community house and hand shelter to provide additional staffing to help out the 50 people experiencing homelessness we currently serve here.

Lakefront provides shelter, hygiene services, case management, a path to permanent housing, and helps reduce exposure to COVID-19 to a very vulnerable population.

The shelter serves many people of color, and as we know, people experiencing homelessness are disproportionately BIPOC.

The systemic issues of racial inequity and the policies that drive that are woven throughout the city.

These disparities continue to show up in many ways.

Life expectancy and access to health care, access to affordable housing, education, jobs, training for family wage jobs, and so much more.

The enhanced shelter serves as a lakefront are a key resource to help undo racial disparities that exist and support people to get on their feet and into permanent housing.

We urge the entire council to support this.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And folks, we only have about seven minutes left, so I'm going to read the next seven names so that if you don't hear your name, you'll know that you are not going to be able to have a chance to speak today.

And thank you again for calling in.

So the next seven speakers will be Kenneth Sinclair, Norma Guzman, Clara Hunter, Christine Cano-Solicon, Katie Wilson, and Bill Karen Hackett, followed by Michael Buhn.

That's the last speakers for today.

Thank you so much for waiting, Kenneth.

Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, council members.

My name is Kenneth Sinclair.

I'm speaking on behalf of Community Passageways and Community Safety Initiative for continued funding for alternative incarceration, as well as homelessness, mental health treatment, drug and alcohol treatment, and to show a continuous unity building concentrating on the black and brown communities to reestablish foundation in an attempt to grow and uplift the community.

Thank you for your time and this opportunity.

Thank you very much for calling in.

Norma Guzman, followed by Clara Contar.

Good morning, Norma Star 6, Estrella 6. Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Norma Guzman.

I work for Consejo Council in the Referral Service.

I am here today to please urge you to support the proposed amendment, HSD 019-A001, which allocates $3 million to extend community-based survivor-driven advocacy This will show that there will only increase health and safety for survivors, especially for the marginalized population based on racism, language barriers, et cetera.

Funding for the program, even before COVID, was not adequate to meet accurate and complex needs of survivors.

And that need has certainly intensified over the past last year.

especially for marginalized populations, Latinx survivors of domestic violence, LGBTQ survivors, and survivors in general with domestic barriers.

To establish an extension of this budget will only ensure that our advocates will continue meeting our survivors where there are both literally and figuratively.

Thank you very much, Norma.

Clara, you are next, followed by Christine.

Good morning, Clara.

And Star 6 Unmute, Estrella 6, Star 6 Unmute.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, thanks.

Hi, my name is Clara Cantor.

I'm a community organizer with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and with Mass Coalition.

And I'm here to voice support for the solidarity budget, defending the police and reinvesting in communities.

I'd also like to speak specifically about Vision Zero.

So far, we've had 26 people who've been killed by speeding vehicles on our streets, including two people killed just in the last week.

And we still have two months of the darkest time of year.

And traffic violence, like so much else in our city, is disproportionately spilling and harming unhoused people, people of color, disabled people, and elders.

And I'm here to ask you to invest in Vision Zero immediately.

We can maintain the community-created DLS and plan proposal instead of raiding it for long-term car infrastructure projects, and also to support the commercial parking tax increase to fund Vision Zero.

I'd like you to support increases in sidewalk construction and the home zone program, which helps people trying to get around to their daily needs, improving safety and access for disabled people.

Thank you very much.

Christine and Katie, you are listed as not present.

We'll go to Bill, Reverend Bill Hackett.

Good morning, star six, please.

Thank you.

Council members, I support the addition of The proposal for adding money for vehicle residency, $770,000 to the general fund.

It would expand the program that we've done this year very successfully and provide mitigation and financial assistance for vehicle residency.

But more, it'll be a jumpstart for the Regional Homelessness Authority.

They're starting their meetings of a work group on Monday.

And we're part of that at the core of it, actually, I think, because of our experience.

We're building out of University Heights Center, also doing safe lots and expanding those, and beginning to help people get out of homelessness, get stabilized, and make the streets a safer place for the general public as well.

So I hope you will pass this and add it to the budget, and it is just the beginning of what's necessary.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Michael Buick, please go ahead, star six.

Perfect.

Hi.

Hey, Michael, you might be muted on your own phone.

Good morning, council members.

This is Michael Beyond.

I'm the executive director for Asian Counseling and Referral Service.

I'm here today to urge this committee to support the one time amendment of the 22.8% inflation adjustment for HSD contracts sponsored by Council Member Mosqueda.

In 2017, ACRS did a waste analysis survey comparing our entry-level positions to those of the cities, and we are about 21 to 47 percent behind what the city is able to pay their entry workers.

ACRS's colleagues, like other human service organizations, are supporting the most vulnerable.

Many of the clients that we work with confront cultural and language barriers.

They're immigrants and refugees.

They have lost jobs, dealing with food and housing insecurity, and under extreme distress.

And this is why it's so important for our frontline workers to have the resources possible to support these people.

So thank you, and I urge you to support the 2.8 additional increase in inflation support.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Michael.

And we do have We do have seven more people who are present.

I do want to thank everybody for dialing in and for our colleagues' patience.

I'm going to ask if there is any objection for extending this so that we can hear the rest of the folks.

Okay.

Hearing no objection.

We're going to extend one more time and we will hear the next seven people.

Susan, you are up next.

Good morning, Susan Gilson.

Good morning.

My name is Susan Gleason.

I work at Seattle Neighborhood Greenway.

I'm here to support increased funding for the city's Vision Zero program, specifically through retaining the vehicle licensing fee spending proposal created by community this past spring and increasing the commercial parking tax to fund Vision Zero, as proposed by Councilmember Lewis.

This issue is personal for me.

In 2014, I lost a sister-in-law in a preventable tragedy.

She was struck by a vehicle in front of my nephew's school and this should have been a safely designed route to school but instead it was an unsafe street that the community had spoken up about repeatedly.

She was 39 a mother of 3 and her loss will always be felt.

My family's tragedy happened in Arlington Virginia but I think about it every time someone is killed in Seattle due to road traffic violence on unsafe streets.

We tally and graph these deaths as numbers but I know that behind each of these deaths there's terrible It's unconscionable that we let these deaths mount up year after year without making the changes that could prevent these tragedies.

Please make the Vision Zero investments that are needed now and have been needed for years.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Rachel Schaefer followed by Joe Riley.

Good morning, Rachel.

Star six.

Perfect.

Hi there.

Good morning.

My name is Rachel Schaefer.

I'm speaking on behalf of Cascade Bicycle Club.

And thanks for continuing to squeeze us in today, Council Member Mosqueda.

We're glad to see amendments addressing safety in Vision Zero in this year's budget.

As others have mentioned and you may already know the city is moving backwards on its Vision Zero goals and the data shows that more people will die this year walking and biking on Seattle's streets than last year.

None of us want this trend to continue.

That's why we support the current spending plan for the VLS fund as it stands and for the amendment to increase the increase the commercial parking tax to be directed to Vision Zero work.

Even with these increases, the proposed dollars are not enough to fix all of our dangerous streets in a year, but it is a start.

We also support, as part of the MAPS coalition, other priorities, such as provisoring the $2.5 million for a citywide integrated transportation plan, establishing a city-run e-bike program, and as others have mentioned, redesigning the Lake Washington Boulevard.

Finally, we know that bridges are not just choke points for vehicles, but also for people walking and funding.

So where bridges are funded We need it to be studied and redesigned.

They need to incorporate multiple.

Thank you very much.

And Joe, followed by Eric Sisk.

Good morning, Joe.

Hey, good morning, Council.

Thank you for extending the comment period.

My name is Joe Riley.

I'm the Development Director at Seattle Subway.

I'm encouraging strong support for the 4th Transit Budget Amendment, Amendment S.004, that directs $2.5 million within SDOT to the Citywide Transportation Plan.

Many of you might not know that 76% of Seattleites believe we should expand light rail construction beyond what was approved when we found Transit 3. Seattle does really want Northgate-linked light rail to more Seattle neighborhoods.

Just lost you, Joe.

And free people from needing to own a car.

So we want to sincerely thank City Council President M. Jordana Gonzalez for your leadership and co-sponsorship on this amendment.

Thank you so much.

These three speakers are not present.

Perfect.

Can you hear me?

Okay, Chris, you might be muted on your own phone.

Just double-check that.

Thank you.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Chris Woodward.

I'm the business development director with the Alliance of Pioneer Square.

I am providing comment today in support of using the $2.4 million that the city center connector was allocated in the mayor's budget.

Sorry.

I'm surprised that streetcar is an important part of our downtown and city's economic recovery over the next decade.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an outside impact on Pioneer Square businesses.

It's an example of some promise to Pioneer Square and the communities along the proposed route for years.

Business owners in Pioneer Square have already weathered a long construction interruption with the promise of a streetcar would soon be type of downtown Seattle.

Many business owners along with Streetcar are looking forward to the connected, many business owners on the line are looking forward to the connected Streetcar as a business booth.

The city must follow through with its commitment to the Piazzini, Pioneer Square, and First Hill to connect the First Hill line to and through downtown.

Thank you so much.

Excellent, thank you.

Matthew, star six to unmute, followed by Amijah.

Good morning, Matthew.

Hello my name is Matthew.

I'm a graduate student at the University of Washington and I'm just speaking this morning in support of the budget action that would give SDOT the 2.5 million dollars for expansion of light rail.

And just as a student who does not have a car who relies on mass transit to get anywhere I think it's really important that we have expanded options and specifically as housing prices continue to go up near where we go to school.

My colleagues and I have to live farther and farther away from campus.

So more expanded options would better connect us, but also allow us to be able to have greater access to our jobs where we go to school and our friends.

So I hope you can support this, as I know many other students who cannot make it here because of class also support this.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And our last speaker is Emijah Smith.

Emijah, star six to unmute.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Emijah Smith here, community member, community queen advocate, and I'm here to support the amendment CBA HSC 055-8001.

I'm here to highlight the failing health system of our Black, Brown, and otherwise marginalized communities, and particularly how COVID has really opened the lid and has exacerbated the racist health systems and disparities and equities of marginalized communities.

So I'm supporting this amendment because I believe that this amendment is an investment of half a million dollars to a community-led design process for an anti-racist and anti-oppressive health center.

And I want to uplift the Tubman Center for Health and Freedom as an example, a model of a community organization that will provide a healthy, supportive, anti-racist healthcare system for our community.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, that does conclude our public testimony for today.

Thank you for your participation, members of the community, and thank you for your willingness to expand the public testimony, colleagues, so that we could have the full conversation before we get into The final amendments here.

Madam Clerk, will you please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, Seattle Department of Transportation for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

So we have 55 amendments today broken into two parts.

First, Department of Transportation.

We'll tackle that this morning.

And if we are able to, we will start going into the Human Service Department amendments.

If not, we will take those on in the afternoon.

Good morning, Calvin.

Good morning, council members.

I'm Calvin Chow with Council Central staff.

This morning, there are 18 SDOT items on the agenda today, five of which are statements of legislative intent, 11 are proposals for spending.

One proposal would generate new financial resources and a spending proposal for those resources, and there is one walk-on amendment that would cut spending to free up resources for other priorities.

I'll be introducing each item before turning the discussion over to the sponsor.

The first item is SDOT 1A1, which would add 200,000 of transportation fund to SDOT for redesign of Lake Washington Boulevard to further concepts of permanent improvements following the Keep Moving Streets implementation during COVID-19.

This is offered by Council Member Morales and co-sponsored by Council Members Strauss and Lewis.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Thanks so much, Calvin.

I'll be brief.

This is an amendment that came from community safe streets advocates, particularly the Rainier Valley Greenways.

There's been a big push to reshape and redesign Lake Washington Boulevard to better accommodate people who walk, bike and roll along this corridor.

As we heard in public comment this morning, there isn't any safe bike facilities on this road and the current shared use path is really narrow and very uneven throughout.

So this would support an engagement campaign that would allow SDOT to provide outreach in an equitable way and ensure that voices from communities of color in particular are heard from in the process of reimagining what this street would look like.

Additional comments or questions?

Please go ahead Council President.

I just wanted to signal that I'd like to add my name as a co-sponsor to this.

I want to thank Council Member Morales for bringing this important CBA forward.

We hear time and time again of to address those really significant public safety concerns that exist in

The next item is SDOT 2A1.

It would add $100,000 of transportation fund to SDOT for pedestrian safety study of Northeast Northgate Way.

This would focus on a stretch of Northgate Way from 1st Avenue Northeast to 5th Avenue Northeast.

It is offered by Council Member Juarez with support from Council Member Peterson and Council Member Strauss.

Thank you.

Please go ahead, Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

Good morning.

I'm going to go, you can probably hear this a little bit more than we normally do about the North End and D5, if that can actually occur.

Northgate, as you know, is booming.

We got the Kraken Community Iceplex and the Northgate Mall redevelopment bringing people into the area.

We have over 3,000 units of housing in the pipeline and the Northgate light rail connecting it all to the greater Seattle region.

So we, a few years ago, with the Seattle Housing Authority, thank you, Mr. Lofton and Mayor Durkin, bought the eight acres, which is known as the Northgate Commons, and so now we are doing the Northgate Commons project.

It's located across the street from the Northgate Mall and right next to the new light rail station, Northgate.

So this project, the Northgate Commons, includes 1,400 new units of housing.

And we're really, really excited about that.

422 of that will be affordable and low income with construction starting in 2025. The families that currently live in the 210 units will be able to return to the new units.

So that was great.

And I really want to thank the mayor's office and the former director, Mr. Lofton of the Seattle Housing Authority for working with us and providing the funds so we could buy those eight acres.

So our office has been working with Seattle Housing Authority and our Cultural Space Agency, that's a PDA, to build a performing arts center as part of this project.

And that's another attraction to the area, as well as you've heard yesterday, our indigenous market and our Native American health clinic.

So now that we know that we are inviting more pedestrians, we're going to have more foot traffic.

We are encouraging people to use light rail and not not drive their cars.

This this.

obviously suffice to say will increase the foot traffic.

So the city needs to anticipate how to keep pedestrians safe and how they can efficiently move about that space.

Those of you who are not familiar with the north end and that intersection, which has been a problem before, the Kraken and the Northgate and Liberl ever showed up.

I've lived in this neighborhood for 35 years.

The intersection is at Fifth Avenue Northeast and Northgate Way.

And it was a part of phase one of the Vision Zero project.

So we want to expand on those improvements by asking SDOT to take a holistic look.

I normally don't like that word holistic, but I'm going to use it because that's what they wrote down here.

But what we really need to do is drill down about my biggest concern about safety in the proximity of this cloverleaf.

This is a cloverleaf that has been there for 40-50 years that is four on ramps to get on I-5 North and I-5 South.

It used to be the major thoroughfare for pedestrians but now we have the John Memorial pedestrian bridge or John Memorial bridge So we've covered that piece.

So the next piece is I would like SDOT to kind of drill down and tell us how we can get some other safe modes to get through that intersection for Northgate, Kraken, John Memorial Bridge, and Light Rail.

As you know, D5 is split by 10 lanes of I-5, and that is the main intersection interchange.

And like I say, with the housing coming on board and more foot traffic and more children and childcare, that's what I'm mainly concerned about.

And as you know, D-5 consistently ranks either number one, almost always is the highest rate of pedestrian fatalities.

And that's because we have two, we have I-5, 522, 523 and Aurora.

So we have three state highways and the interstate in the district.

So, and of course we lack a lot of sidewalks.

That being said, I wanna thank Council Member Peterson and Strauss for their co-sponsorship and listening to me complain about this.

And in the end, at the end of the day, I just want to focus on pedestrian safety due to the tremendous increase in density, as I shared before, the housing, the health, the education, the employment and the child care.

And I want to really encourage the use of light rail and a safe 10 minute walk shed for the thousands of people that will be cycling, that are cycling through Northgate.

So thank you.

Council Member Juarez, are you saying that the Northgate local economy is cracking?

Yes, and thank you.

We are crack-a-lackin' up here in D5, so thank you.

I crack myself up.

Are there any additional comments or questions?

Just a lot of palm-to-the-head motions.

Okay, I think we can go ahead and move on.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

The next item is SDOT 3A1, which would add $25,000 of transportation fund to SDOT for adaptive cycle programs.

This would expand existing financial city support for program offered by Outdoors for All.

It is offered by Council Member Strauss and co-sponsored by Council Members Morales and Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Strauss, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, colleagues.

I just want to start by uplifting Outdoors for All.

All of their programming, they are able to bring people who would not otherwise be able to get into the outdoors due to physical limitations into places of nature, riding, cycling, skiing, all of it.

And so today's amendment is Outdoors for All Adaptive Cycling Center in Magnuson Park, which rents adaptive cycles of various kinds to provide mobility and recreation opportunities to people with disabilities.

The total as Cal said the total budget for the cycling center is $200,000 of which SDOT provides $50,000 from bike share and scooter share permit fees to allow the program to rent adaptive cycles for free for half the year from May 1st to September 30th.

Based on my account, my office's conversations with outdoors for all an additional $25,000 will allow cycling, the cycling center to expand their offerings, either by adding two additional months of cycle rentals for the year or expanding to seven days a week rather than five.

or providing additional offerings at the community events.

COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of providing opportunities to recreate outdoors, and this incredible program allows people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds to get outside and on a bike.

So for the low price of $25,000, we can add seven-day coverage during their months of rental, or maybe we can expand those months because we want to get more people outside.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Are there any additional comments or questions?

Okay, Council President, please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

I want to thank Council Member Strauss for bringing this forward and to his co-sponsors as well.

Outdoors for All is such a great program and a real jewel on the North End.

I've had an opportunity to ride their adaptive cycling bikes along with most of my team and the value that they bring in terms of accessibility to create a truly accessible, equitable city for those with all abilities is something we just can't understate.

So I would love an opportunity to add my name as a co-sponsor to S.003 and appreciate Council Member Strauss bringing this forward.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

Council President Gonzalez adding her name to S.003.

Thank you, President.

Any additional comments or questions?

Okay, let's keep going.

Next item is S.4A1.

This is a proviso only.

It would proviso $2.5 million in SDOT for the citywide integrated transportation plan.

The proviso would restrict spending to $1 million until SDOT provides a work plan and community outreach plan.

is offered by Council Member Gonzalez and co-sponsored by Council Member Strauss and Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

Please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

Really briefly, I want to thank Council Members Lewis and Strauss for their co-sponsorship and strong collaboration and partnership in the development of this proposed amendment and really appreciate an opportunity to bring forward this council budget action.

Over the last several weeks, our offices collectively have engaged with stakeholders to look at the budget as one way to ensure That the city wide integrated transportation plan will detail how non vehicle non single occupancy vehicle modes, such as walking or biking are prioritized and in within that integrated transportation plan.

and that the plan takes a broader view for what future transit infrastructure can look like across our city.

We did hear several folks call in during public comment testifying in support of this item.

We've also received several emails from Constituents advocating for adoption of this particular item.

So this plan for many of us represents really what can be possible when we take a moment to reimagine and envision.

The future of our of our integrated transportation plan across the city that is not just focused on single occupancy vehicles, but is actually intentionally integrating.

Integrating other modes of transportation that are carbon free, like walking or biking.

And in one of our conversations in our office, we've heard already from one very large employer in the city that they are really strongly supportive of this effort, certainly, and also of additional pedestrian-only streets around their campus as one way of making their campus better integrated into the fabric of our city and the neighborhood in which they are situated in.

So I'm hopeful that this plan will create a path to pedestrianize parts of the city that are truly ready for this kind of public space activation.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

I would like to add my name as a co-sponsor to this, please.

Wonderful.

Council Member Morales adding her name to S.004.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Council Member Peterson?

Same.

I'd like to add my name as a co-sponsor.

Thank you.

Great.

Council Member Peterson adding his name as a co-sponsor for Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Strauss?

Thank you chair and thank you Council President Gonzalez.

I just wanted to uplift another portion of this amendment and Council President Gonzalez and I got to work together on this and I really appreciate being able to work with you.

This, it is important that as we develop these comprehensive plans for transportation, we plan for future light rail lines, because as our region continues to grow and rail is critical to moving people and goods.

We currently have four different multimodal plans that interact with each other and this integration plan will allow those plans to be better coordinated together.

It's also crucial that we ensure that integrating these plans we do not step back from the promises in any one of the current modal plans and that we have future planning for additional white rail lines throughout our city so that we someday can have a true subway system here.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you councilmember Strauss and councilmember Strauss already a co-sponsor of the amendment.

Appreciate that.

Council President Gonzalez, I am going to add my name as well.

As you know I've been trying to not add my name but I also see the intersect here with the work that you sponsored last year for the work group related to the Superblock.

This is something that I have been very interested in as well, and I know we both had the opportunity to be invited to go to Copenhagen.

I couldn't go with you last year, but this is, I think, a great connection to that work that you had championed in last year's budget to get $150,000 to at least pull together a work group to see what we could do potentially for Superblock.

So as we think about pedestrianization and connecting communities and creating walkable safe areas, I'm hopeful that this will be an extension of that ongoing work to create super block or blocks in various portions of our city.

So thank you for making sure that this issue is resurfaced in a very comprehensive way in this amendment.

And I will add my name, Council Member Mosqueda, adding my name to the amendment as well.

Okay, anything else, Council President?

Okay, wonderful.

Thank you all.

Let's go on to 005.

Next item is SDOT 5A1.

It would add 270,000 of transportation fund to SDOT for design of pedestrian and streetscape improvements to Bowerd Avenue Northwest.

This would further design concepts for permanent improvements to Bowerd Ave following the cafe street supplementation during COVID-19.

It's offered by Council Member Strauss and co-sponsored by Council Member Peterson and Council Member Lewis.

Thank you.

Council Member Strauss, please go ahead.

Thank you chair.

While I shared with you yesterday, Seattle Conservation Corps is one of my most exciting budget amendments and mobile crisis team that we'll talk about this afternoon is one of my top priorities.

I have to say that Ballard Avenue redesign is one of the largest potential options that we have.

to change how we use our right of ways, how we change the use of our streets moving forward to make it a more vibrant neighborhood and more vibrant space.

So this amendment is, and I'll get into the details in just a second, but as a high level overview, this is our pilot place where we are piloting different understandings and uses of our street so that we can then do this in other neighborhoods throughout the city.

Ballard Avenue is a very unique street in the sense that there is no thoroughfare.

It is cut off on Market Street to the west and cut off by the Ballard Bridge to the east and so we have a very unique opportunity here.

One of the bright spots of the last two years has been the embrace by Seattle and cities across the city of outdoor dining and cafe streets.

When the pandemic began I worked hard to bring a cafe street to Ballard Avenue and for the past year I've turned my focus to creating a pathway to permanency for outdoor dining experiences that our community has come to value so much.

Ballard Avenue quickly became an example for other neighborhoods looking to establish their own outdoor dining streets and I believe it can again be the example of how we make those streets permanent and be the pilot and example that we can then replicate in other neighborhoods.

Earlier this year I hosted a design charrette to inform a future redesign of Ballard Avenue to better accommodate the outdoor dining and pedestrian-friendly nature of the street's current use.

In the supplemental, as you may remember, I was able to, with your assistance colleagues, secure $50,000 to begin the 10% design of improvements to Ballard Avenue based on this community-led vision, as well as to implement some of those interim steps to address immediate needs on the street.

Because as we try new things, sometimes you have to act quickly to to make it all work.

So this amendment would provide a small amount of funding to complete the 10% design with the bulk of the $270,000 funding the next stage of design work to get us to 30% design and to, again, make this the pilot for the rest of the city to use.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you very much.

I see Council Member Lewis.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I'm really thrilled to sign on to this proposal with Council Member Strauss.

I think of Ballard Avenue almost in a similar way to Occidental in Pioneer Square, which is a completely bricked in pedestrian thoroughfare protected on either end with bollards.

that really has become a great community gathering space and cafe street space for decades in the city and ways to emulate that kind of placemaking across the city might be one of the silver linings that comes out of COVID-19 as we've sort of seen this pilot program generally with the cafe street legislation and the streetery legislation.

that has made it possible to envision what that would look like and sort of given us a pilot period, in some cases, like Crockett in my district on Queen Anne, of completely banning vehicles for a period of time and seeing how the community adapts and adjusts to those changes in very positive ways.

And I do hope this project on Ballard Avenue is the beginning of pursuing this in other areas of the city.

I'm certainly interested in working with community members to pursue similar initiatives on Crockett in Queen Anne, among other places.

And really think that this could be a new way forward to have a urban design that centers pedestrians and pedestrian experiences in a safe and community developing way.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Council President Gonzalez.

I think that this particular item is very complementary to the Cafe Street legislation that I had an opportunity to work on with Council Member Strauss that he referenced in his opening remarks.

And as we just heard from Council Member Lewis, creating these opportunities for Street for positive street level use that really, really activates spaces for both.

Um, community convenings and also ongoing economic development of our of our smallest businesses in these areas is just so critically important, especially as we continue to.

recover and struggle with the realities of this ongoing global pandemic.

And so I really appreciate Council Member Strauss bringing this particular item forward.

I recognize that this is not a citywide approach and that it is very specific to his district, but I do think it's important for us to start somewhere and to learn some lessons about about how we can emulate this particular effort in other neighborhoods and getting a head start now through this budget cycle I think would be critically important in informing our comprehensive plan and informing that citywide integrated transportation plan that we just discussed and in many of the other items that follow here that are really focusing on creating spaces for people.

in our neighborhoods.

So I would love to add my name as a co-sponsor to this particular item.

Thank you, Council President.

Council President Gonzalez adding her name to 005S.

Any additional comments or questions?

Chair, I'm having trouble hearing you.

You're having trouble hearing me?

I'm sorry.

Is this better?

Is anybody else having trouble hearing me?

Coming through loud and clear.

Okay, just on my end.

Sorry.

We want you to be able to hear us because we're complimenting this amendment number 5 from thought.

So, thank you for your work and thank you colleagues for the discussion.

Really appreciate this and how this ties into the 004 that we just discussed as well.

I will note on this one, Council Member Strauss, I am interested as well in seeing where the overlap may be with some of the jumpstart economic resilience investments.

Those one-time investments, since we are creating the blueprint for 2023 and beyond, we've added funding for creating a table to come up with those recommendations starting in 2022. But I think that there might be some synergy with some of the economic resilience, activation, supporting small businesses, creating safe places for kiddos and families, and community to be, so I'm gonna look to see where overlap might exist.

Great, thank you, Chair.

Wonderful, thank you.

Let's move on to 06.

Next item is S.6A1.

It is a statement of legislative intent that requests that SDOT report on pedestrian and bicycle safety improvements to MLK Junior Way South.

The report will be due on September 1st.

It is offered by Council Member Morales with support from Council Member Strauss and Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Through this slide, we are asking SDOT to analyze and share their analysis on transforming Martin Luther King Jr.

Way, basically from the Mount Baker light rail station down to the Rainier Beach station.

I think the way that we worded it in the slide is a little bit confusing, but sort of north to south.

And the idea here is to see what it would take to make that a safe multimodal corridor to provide cost estimates for construction of such a redesign.

And this is another amendment that comes from Safe Streets Advocates in Southeast Seattle.

According to SDOT's own 2020 traffic report, this corridor in particular ranks 6th and 7th in terms of the highest speed percentile over the posted speed limit.

And on average, people went about 8 miles over the speed limit on this corridor.

And I can tell you that my staff and I were recently driving on this road and back to the district from an event.

We were stopped at a red light and we were buzzed by two people speeding down the road so quickly that my car shook.

These kinds of unsafe conditions come from the way that the road is designed.

You know, MLK was a highway, and after that it kept the highway characteristics.

Really wide lanes, long straightaways, long distances between lights, very few pedestrian crossings.

There are some places where this corridor is up to 100 feet wide.

And then with the addition of light rail in the center of the street, it just creates lots of inhospitable conditions for people who are traveling on foot, people who are trying to catch a train, people who are traveling by bike, and the high speed of drivers makes it that much more dangerous.

So we are asking SDOT to investigate what it would take to make this a safer corridor for people who aren't in their cars.

And providing this analysis would help keep the momentum going for changing this corridor to meet the needs of people of all ages and all abilities.

And really to help find a safe, flat, direct route into downtown, which we do not currently have in South Seattle.

Yeah, well said, thank you very much.

When I was pregnant and I was going to my classes, my birthing classes before delivering, I would try to get there by bike.

As folks know, I rode a lot of those jump bikes around at the time.

And it was very unsafe.

And I can absolutely understand the terror.

even of having been being seated in a car, let alone on a bike.

So thank you for bringing this up.

I just wanted to double check.

Has any sort of study like this been done given the statistics along that corridor previous?

Perhaps that's for Calvin or Council Member Morales.

Council Member, I think this is definitely one of the highest concerning corridors.

I think the spirit behind this slide is to Frankly, get a common understanding of where we are because it has been looked at so many times and we have not been able to fund the entire portion over time.

So I think this is a bit of a status report request as well.

I think it's trying to push the vision of it further, but also to kind of understand what has been done to date.

Okay.

And yeah, and to understand like what, what is it going to cost?

Let's, let's actually put some numbers down and get a sense of, you know, if we have to phase things in, we can talk about phasing it in, but I, I just want to have a clear understanding of what it would take.

Okay.

Council Member Juarez, anything from you?

No, I just want to know what you were doing riding a bike pregnant.

That's all.

Just wondering about that, but OK.

Maybe I'm old school.

Maybe I'm old school.

I didn't do that in the day, but what do I know?

Oh, those e-bikes were amazing.

That's the way they're out.

Still are, but especially as a pregnant person.

So OK, thank you very much.

Let's keep going.

S.7A1 is also a statement of legislative intent that would request that SDOT report on pedestrian bicycle safety improvements to South King Street.

This slide would be due on May 2nd.

It is offered by Council Member Morales and co-sponsored by Council Member Strauss and Council Member Lewis.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you.

So colleagues, South King Street is sort of the pathway between Southeast Seattle into downtown through Chinatown International District.

It's designated as a neighborhood greenway.

It's the main bicycle connection between Southeast Seattle and downtown, but there is no meaningful pedestrian or bicycle infrastructure.

And according to SDOT's Streets Illustrated data, the right-of-way is 60 feet wide.

That means that a route that should be a safe low-speed connection has the equivalent of 22 foot wide lanes.

And so as it currently stands, the safest, flattest connection between South Seattle and the biggest economic center in the city doesn't meet our own department standards for this type of connection.

And it really leaves people vulnerable who are walking or biking.

through this greenway.

So this slide requests that we understand what infrastructure improvements would be needed to actually make this a truly safe greenway and a place where people could make that connection between Southeast Seattle and downtown in a way that doesn't put them in jeopardy.

Thank you very much.

Is there any additional comments or questions?

I don't hear any, Council Member Morales, please.

Let's go on to the next one.

SDOT's 8A1 is also a slide.

It requests that SDOT report on establishing a city run direct rental service for electric bicycles.

The slide would be due on July 1st.

It is offered by Council Member Morales and co-sponsored by Council Member Strauss and Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

Please go ahead, Council Member Morales.

Okay.

Thank you.

So I do want to note, colleagues, that after discussing this with central staff, I think it might be more appropriate for this slide to be directed to the Office of Sustainability and the Environment.

Well, they are currently evaluating subsidies for electric bike use.

But just so you understand, my goal for bringing this slide is simple.

I want to understand how our city can achieve our stated goal of reducing vehicle emissions by 82% by 2030, just a short nine years from now.

in an equitable way, and I'm asking us to look at programs that do that in other places, including Mon Bicyclo, which is a program in our sister city of Nantes.

This isn't bike share.

This is different from Pronto and Linebike and Jumpstart.

The idea here is that you pay a monthly or seasonal or annual rental fee, to the city, and the city rents out bikes.

So you could rent cargo bikes, hand-pedaled bikes.

I have a brochure, if anybody can see that.

Cargo bikes, they're doing it in other cities, and the idea is that you, just like you might rent a car, you can rent a bike, but you're doing it from the city, and it's much cheaper.

We know that, I know that 49% of my constituents commute alone in their cars every day.

And it's not necessarily because they prefer cars over transit or because they don't want to use active transportation.

It's because people get around with the method that is most convenient to them.

And in this country, that means that most of us get around by car because through policy and through the kind of capital projects that we fund, we've made driving alone the most convenient form of transportation.

But that comes at a huge cost, a literal cost.

The average annual cost of car ownership is over $9,200 a year.

It also comes at an environmental cost, which we all know.

We've talked about that a lot.

So the idea here is a low-cost electric bicycle rental program.

And it's a program that would allow people to get more reliable transit options to get from point A to point B.

Here in Seattle, a peak price ORCA card is $99 a month.

In France, where this program is running, you can rent an electric bike for $120 a year.

We're interested in starting to look at how this might work here in the city.

And that's what this slide is doing so that we can meet our transportation goals, our climate goals, and our equity goals by looking at how to do this.

Excuse me.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

We didn't do this type of analysis when the bike shares came online earlier.

Well, I'll let Calvin answer that, but my assumption is no, because this was about the city, the rental happening to the city, with the city, not a private corporation.

Okay.

Yeah, I think the difference, this model was not looked at at the time.

It really was between the frequent ride rental of single-use trips that was being looked at at the time, and the change in the model was from a a city-funded model around bike stations to the permitting of free-floating bike-share vehicles that are privately operated.

But it did not look at something like this, which is more of a direct rental of equipment.

OK.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

It's not a bike-share program, so it's a city-funded rental program.

Much like we have ORCA cards, instead of having a pass to take the bus, you would have a pass to rent a bike.

Got it.

Thank you very much for that clarification.

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

I would like to add my name as a co-sponsor, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Lewis adding his name to S.008.

All right, let's move on to number nine.

S.9A1 is also a statement of legislative intent that would request that SDOT report on the impact of overweight vehicles.

The slide would be due on September 1st.

is offered by Council Member Peterson and co-sponsored by Council Member Sawant and Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chairman Skater.

This statement of legislative intent asks for a study to determine the estimated impacts to our city's infrastructure from overweight vehicles.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis and Sawant for co-sponsoring.

This includes damage to Seattle's streets and bridges by construction vehicles and other overweight vehicles that seek exemptions to the weight limits that are in place to maintain the useful life of our investments in multimodal streets.

This request came up during discussion of the comprehensive plan, but it was decided this is more appropriate to discuss it as part of a budget sly.

So understanding the relationship between the damage by overweight vehicles and the costs to repair our city's multimodal streets will improve asset management planning and budgeting, and could yield creative and cost-effective solutions to minimize such damage from some overweight vehicles in the future.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Any additional comments or questions?

Okay, thank you, Council Member.

Let's go ahead and move to number 10.

S.10A1 is a statement of legislative intent requesting that SDOT report on traffic safety analysis and incident reporting.

The slide would be due on September 1st.

It was offered by Council Member Morales and co-sponsored by Council Member Strauss and Council Member Lewis.

Thank you very much.

Please go ahead, Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Colleagues, you probably know that right now SDOT relies on SPD crash report data to help make decisions about where to invest in repairs or traffic mitigation.

And people involved in traffic collisions or other sorts of crashes report that experience.

you know, having to report, having to file a report, engage with police is not necessarily the way folks want to manage these experiences.

Not everyone reports accidents for any number of reasons.

And this practice leads to inaccurate data because we don't necessarily know what has happened.

So I want to know how heavily SDOT relies on these reports when they're evaluating streets for safety upgrades and how we can shift away from really from a complaints-based method to a more equitable analysis for how we make decisions about keeping our neighbors safe.

Councilmember Morales, thank you so much.

That last part, either for you as the prime sponsor or Calvin, maybe you can point me to it.

I didn't actually see that last part standing out in the summary.

So the real intent is to make sure that we're moving to a different system versus just asking how they currently use it.

Yeah, that might not be in there, but I will change it.

And perhaps it is.

And I just need to read it with that lens in mind.

But that's good to know.

Calvin, did you have anything you wanted to add there?

Well, I would say that there is some work that the department has done to try to highlight how they do their traffic safety analysis.

They did do a report, and they established sort of recommendations for next steps.

And part of the intent behind the slide, I think, was to get a status on how they are actually implementing some of the study.

This was part of the department's work to really try to focus more on an equity lens to their planning and design evaluation efforts.

But it's, you know, it is a couple years since they last reported on this and trying to understand where that work is now.

I think the issue of how they use existing SPD reporting and how other Are there alternative ways of getting information into the system and analyzed is a kind of a big focus of this slide of are there other pathways of getting reporting and information to SDOT that don't rely on crash reports?

Okay, that makes sense.

Thank you, Calvin.

Any other questions or comments?

Okay, great.

Let's go ahead and move on.

SDOT 102A1.

would add $655,000 of transportation fund to SDOT for the Market to Mohai project.

This would install a total of 11 pedestrian lights at three locations along Market to Mohai route.

It is offered by Council Member Lewis and co-sponsored by Council Member Strauss and Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Calvin, thank you for queuing this up.

I really appreciate the opportunity for us to revisit Market to Mohai.

This is a big priority of my predecessor, Councilmember Bagshaw, and in the spirit of a lot of the improvements we're talking about, today was really created centering the priorities of Vision Zero and pedestrian safety.

One of the galvanizing events in the early design for this was a really horrifying pedestrian fatality at Western and Lenore in 2018. that really centered the need for this corridor to have sufficient pedestrian improvements, including adequate lighting, which we know is so critical for visibility and build design in how we are making this an accommodating city for pedestrians and bicyclists.

And I think it's critical too, as we are going forward now, post COVID, as we're seeing our budgets start to recover, As we're seeing the effects of the brief but deep covid induced recession ebbing away on the impact to our budget.

It is important to go back to.

things where this council made a commitment to certain policies to feed them through, particularly ones that are leveraging nonprofit and private matching support from organizing in the South Lake Union neighborhood and throughout the city to bring this to bear and to incentivize people to engage in those partnerships in the future.

So I think this is a good opportunity for us to revisit this priority that was previously budgeted and understandably put on hold, given the constraints and the uncertainty of the COVID era budget, and really hope that we can get it back on track now that things are looking a little better here.

So appreciate the opportunity to bring this forward.

I also want to just really give a shout out to Councilmember Strauss for his previous work on this project in the Bagshaw office.

And of course, to Councilmember Bagshaw herself in retirement, who was a big driving force from getting this funded in the first place.

So thank you.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Lewis.

Any additional comments or questions?

Okay, thank you very much.

Council Member Lewis, let's move on to number 103.

SDOT 103A1 would add $3.75 million of Transportation Fund to SDOT's Neighborhood Traffic Control Program for implementation of additional home zone projects.

This would support project development and construction of approximately 18 locations that were initially identified as part of the Home Zone Pilot Program.

This is offered by Council Member Morales and co-sponsored by Council Member Juarez and Council Member Lewis.

Thank you.

Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Okay.

First, I do want to thank Seattle Neighborhood Greenways for their advocacy in getting a home zone pilot in the city.

We do have two right now in Broadview and in the South Park neighborhoods.

I also want to thank the SDOT team who really helped with getting these going despite some limited resources.

These are...

neighborhood driven plans for improvements that calm traffic, that improve pedestrian mobility, and improve neighborhood livability.

So this funding, as Calvin said, would expand the program.

for up to 20 home zones in the city.

And I will say I would love to see a program like this continue to offer this level of service in years to come until all of the sidewalkless streets in Seattle receive some treatment.

I want to thank Council Member Juarez for her co-sponsorship.

She and I both know that our districts have represent the most diverse census tracts in the city and also represent the areas with little to no access to safe street space for walking, rolling, or leisure.

And I've heard from constituents who are afraid to let their kids walk home from school or play outside because the roads near their homes, as currently designed, just aren't safe.

And I think it was Crosscut that reported it would take us 1,800 years at the rate we're going right now to build out all of the sidewalks needed in the city.

So we're looking for something that is not as expensive as building a sidewalk, but would still give our neighbors safe places to get around.

So as we said, we hear frustrations of constituents who try to get traffic calming in their neighborhoods, and they're told that they need to form a community organizing group, apply for grants, lobby the city over and over again.

But a community's tenacity shouldn't be the metric that we use to build safe infrastructure.

We should just build it.

So SDOT's already evaluated 20 areas for home zones.

I think they're ready to go.

And this funding would allow them to just start building so that we can keep our neighbors safe.

Thank you very much Council Member Morales.

Any additional comments or questions?

Wonderful, hearing none, let's go ahead and move on to 0104.

S.104A1 would add $150,000 to a transportation fund to SDOT's Pedestrian Master Plan Crossing Improvements Project for the Northeast 45th Street Crossing of Interstate 5 and oppose a proviso.

The proviso would restrict funding in the CBA plus $350,000 of existing resources for a total of $500,000 for this purpose.

It is offered by Council Member Peterson, and co-sponsored by Council Member Strauss and Council Member Mosqueda.

Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Colleagues, North Seattle residents and small businesses are very excited about the opening of the new Sound Transit light rail stations, including the new station in the urban village, or actually urban center of the University District near Northeast 45th Street.

Now we need to follow through on our promises to maximize access to that large investment in transit.

Unfortunately, getting safely to the new station from Wallingford and other neighborhoods to the west by pedestrians and cyclists requires crossing I-5 through some of the most hazardous intersections in the city.

The community has been working hard for years to get SDOT and the owner of that bridge, WSDOT, to solve this by installing safer passage for pedestrians and cyclists on the overpass itself, so we maximize that connection to light rail.

I'd like to thank the council for approving a budget ad last year for this issue.

After some studying of possible solutions, SDOT ran into some challenges with WSDOT, and then SDOT seems to have paused work on this project.

But the advocates have not given up, nor should we.

This project should not be that difficult.

It's worth the extra effort because it's for safety, and it enhances mobility for our expanding transit system.

This year's $150,000 addition would be in addition to the last year's unspent $350,000, and it is expected to be sufficient to make needed changes to the existing bridge, sidewalk, and roadway so there are no more hurdles or excuses.

I'd like to thank Council Members Mosqueda and Strauss for co-sponsoring.

As I understand it, just this week, over 400 people have signed a petition supporting this budget action.

I'd like to thank all the advocates and community leaders for their passion and persistence.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And I just wanted to ask Calvin a little bit more about the history on this item.

If memory serves me correct, this was one of the items from the Mass Coalition that we supported last year.

There was five major Mass Coalition asks.

We included those in the initial budget and then 45th Street was added.

We included that as well in the final budget, I think to the tune of $400,000 specifically for bike lanes.

Can you remind us sort of what some of these hurdles or barriers are that Council Member Peterson has also noted?

and where we stand with those bike lanes.

I think probably the biggest hurdle is coordinating with WSDOT as these locations really focus on the on-ramps and off-ramps to Interstate 5. The crossing is a WSDOT facility, and so we have to work with WSDOT on how we implement improvements.

I think there's still an ongoing question about what the what some of the in-road options are for this crossing.

And I think this is trying to focus on making sure there is some look at the sidewalks and other connections in this area.

But it's really kind of focusing that resources and keeping it dedicated for this specific purpose.

A lot of our previous work was maybe more generic to support the entire connection between Wallingford and U District, and this has been sort of the biggest outstanding issue in working between SDOT and WSDOT.

Council Member Peterson, anything else you would like to add to that?

Just that I know, Budget Chair, you're looking for, you know, are there, are these projects on additional lists?

You know, have they been vetted through additional process?

So this was something mentioned during the Move Seattle levy as well to improve this connection.

And so really, I see this as fulfilling the promise to optimize that connection and for both cyclists trying to head west and east toward the light rail station, also for pedestrians, making that safer, welcoming pedestrian thoroughfare to the light rail station.

Great.

Well, I appreciate that this issue has been put back on our radar again.

I know that this was a priority.

Council Member Peterson, thank you for flagging that.

level of interest from community members as well, signing the petition.

Um, I want to make sure that maybe we get the chance to follow up with office of, excuse me, office of intergovernmental relations to see how those conversations maybe could progress as well with wash dot and how maybe we could be helpful with wash dot and members of the legislature as well.

So perhaps we can connect more about that, but appreciate you flagging that for our budget investment and if we can do A dual approach on that to get some additional support at the state level.

That'd be fantastic.

Let's move on to 0104. The next item, I believe, is SDOT 105A1, which would add $2 million of transportation fund to SDOT's pedestrian master plan new sidewalks project for sidewalk infrastructure in District 2 and impose a proviso.

The proviso would restrict the funding in the CBA for construction of sidewalks to District 2. This is offered by Councilmember Morales and co-sponsored by Councilmember Peterson and Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I'll be brief.

We need more sidewalks.

We need them everywhere.

And while we are waiting for more home zones, I would like to offer this amendment.

The intent here is to fund sidewalks in front of the International Senior Center on 20th Avenue South and areas adjacent to Rainier View Elementary School in District 2.

Wonderful, thank you very much.

Any additional questions or comments on 105?

Okay.

I do have a few questions, Council Member Morales.

I'm wondering about some of these projects that are specifically listed in your amendment here, 20th Avenue.

South Othello Street and streets adjacent to Rainier.

Is it possible to get an update on what percent design they are?

Are they ready to go if two million were provided for these projects to complete them?

Any additional information on their readiness for completion?

That is not a question I can answer.

We can certainly find out.

Calvin, if you have...

I don't have that information available, but I can certainly follow up with the department.

Okay, great.

Let's follow up and see what the status of the projects lists are, and if there's been any planning or work design done, I'd like to know what percentage they are at so that we can see how far this $2 million can get us in the next year as well.

Yep.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, let's go to 106. Is that right, Calvin?

Yes.

S.106A1 would create a new Battery Street portal improvements project and add $500,000 of transportation fund to S.

for this project.

This would fund interim improvements at the site of the now decommissioned Battery Street portal site is offered by Council Member Lewis, co-sponsored by Council Member Peterson and Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

So as all of us are well aware, we've had the viaduct come down in recent years, opening up a host of new opportunities in the core of our city for reclaiming that space.

That impact has perhaps been most dramatic at the battery site in Belltown, which is now a large, grassy, several-acre space.

right in the middle of one of our densest neighborhoods in the city that is completely fenced in and not accessible to the public.

As people may have seen in the news over the last few weeks, there is an understanding with the Seattle School District to retain an option to eventually be able to build a school on this site.

which is really great and an excellent amenity for the center city to be able to have a public school.

But that is, as of this committee meeting, not until the very distant future that that would be realized and we'll leave this right away essentially vacant for, in all likelihood, more than a decade.

In the interim, that site is expected to remain as SDOT right-of-way, rightly so, to preserve the ability to have that option.

But it would be a shame for this large site in the middle of the neighborhood to essentially just be the equivalent of the hole in the ground across from City Hall, as Jim Brenner calls it, Civic and Confidence Plaza, or whatever his moniker for it is.

So it'd be good to jump on an opportunity to open up at least part of the site for some kind of city and public use in this dense neighborhood that is without a lot of public park amenities.

in the meantime while planning goes forward and this stays as SDOT right-of-way.

So this $500,000 would be an ability to put in certain improvements like benches, tables, lighting, waste receptacles, sidewalk improvements, perhaps constructing a physical deck that could be used by food trucks or or beer garden pop-ups or other kind of community activities.

I would note that there has been an arrangement made between the Office of the Waterfront and SDOT, a tentative arrangement where the Downtown Seattle Association would provide programming through the Metropolitan Improvement District for the site and maintain the site as an activation partner, much in the same way that the MID activates Occidental Park and Westlake Park.

So there is the possibility for an activation strategy to come together so that the space can be used and enjoyed by the community in the interim, instead of just sitting as a fenced-in site that is just occasionally mowed by SDOT.

And this is an opportunity to move forward on that, to leverage partnerships from other partners in the neighborhood and civic organizations, and hope we take advantage of this opportunity to really be able to make a difference here instead of being in a position where it's just a fenced-in space of vacant land.

Thank you.

Are there any additional questions or comments about this Battery Street proposal, number 106?

Seeing none, let's move on.

Number 503. Item 503A1 would pass legislation to increase the commercial parking tax to 14.5%, create a new district traffic safety project, add $700,000 for that project, add 1.25 million to the structures major maintenance project and add 1.25 million to the Vision Zero project.

This is a total of 3.2 million in 2022, which is based on mid-year implementation of the commercial parking tax increase.

And this is intended to be an ongoing funding, which would generate about 6.4 million annually in future years.

It is offered by Council Member Lewis, co-sponsored by Council Member Morales and Council Member Strauss.

Thank you.

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

I'm really excited about this.

about this proposal, because I think it really centers the ongoing need that we've been discussing within the four corners of a lot of our amendments this morning, which is the massive pent-up backlog of critical transportation infrastructure improvements, particularly to realize our Vision Zero goals as a city.

As a public commenter noted earlier this morning, We are very, very far away from realizing Vision Zero.

We have had two completely avoidable tragedies in the last two weeks of pedestrians and cyclists being killed and are on track to have dozens of our community members killed in situations where better engineering and better built environments and the exclusion of vehicles from certain right-of-ways could have saved lives.

And part of realizing Vision Zero is going to really need to be carving out new sources of revenue, carving out new dedicated streams that are going to be able to make considerable progress that's not at risk of being cut every year when we come back and do our budget discussions, but that we create an expectation that there will be a permanent stream of revenue that is not dependent on any levy, that is not dependent on a reallocation of budget priorities, but something that we all can make a statement on this year that there is going to be a dedicated amount of revenue put aside to make progress on our Vision Zero projects as driven by the data at SDOT of where those investments are most important and need to be triaged.

So, this by no means should be the only money we're spending on Vision Zero, but this can be a necessary and significant surge of $3.2 million annually when it is ultimately all realized in future years when it's collecting at full steam to make sure that we are making that progress.

The commercial parking tax has not been raised since 2010. It is a fairly underutilized source of revenue that can only exclusively be used for transportation projects.

This originally had been conceived by me as an idea to do a 1% increase to only have the dedicated Vision Zero fund.

In talking to stakeholders and talking to fellow council members, it seemed like there was support to double that and pursue a 2% commercial parking tax increase to also carve out dedicated ongoing revenue for another critical issue this council has been grappling with, which is the maintenance and replacement of some of our multimodal bridges that we know are in considerable and extreme disrepair.

This proposal would also carve 10% of the ongoing revenue to go to district-based traffic safety priorities, sort of similar in concept to what we're doing The previous budget at around home zone improvements and I do see that as something that could be exercising a complementary way for that dedicated 10% of this overall package to go toward.

But I really do think this is an opportunity for us to take advantage of an underutilized revenue stream and to move forward together on carving out some new resource to really start tackling these dual problems by expanding the pie and making sure that we're meeting all of our transportation obligations and infrastructure obligations as a city.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Are there any additional questions or comments?

Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, chair mosquito really appreciate Councilmember Lewis, bringing this forward I know we had looked at commercial parking tax a little bit last year and I think it's even better timing to do something like this now considering the three light rail stations that are coming online and so that.

there's a disincentive for single occupancy vehicles, further disincentive.

And now that we have those light rail stations online and more coming, that will help.

And I certainly appreciate the additions to Vision Zero, as well as Council Member Lopez's mention of bridges.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

I'd like to add my name to this proposal.

I appreciate the proposal by Council Member Lewis.

And we'll be discussing next bonding proposal for bridges.

And I recognize that we'll dedicate funds from a vehicle license fee revenues that this year are funding other projects.

So this small increase in the commercial parking tax allows for funding other safety projects and make sure that we'll be supporting that important work.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Council Member Herbold, adding her name to S.503.

Council Member Peterson, did you want to add your name?

Yeah, I'd like to add my name as a co-sponsor as well.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Peterson adding his name to S.503.

Thank you very much, Council Members.

Seeing no additional questions, let's move on, Calvin.

SDOT 504A1 would amend and pass as amended the council bill to issue additional LTGO bonds, about $100 million in 2022, and add $100 million of LTGO bond proceeds to SDOT's bridge-related CIP projects.

It would also add 3.1 million of transportation fund to SDOT for the debt service on the additional bonds.

This is offered by Councilmember Peterson and co-sponsored by Councilmember Juarez and Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Muscat.

I know everybody's been looking forward to this one today, so let's dive right in.

I want to thank Councilmembers Suarez and Lewis for co-sponsoring and also the steadfast support of Councilmember Herbold.

We've all previously supported this concept of building back better with a boost of bridge bonds.

Bonds will enable us to finally address the backlog of vital bridge safety projects in the wake of the closure of the West Seattle Bridge and the subsequent audit of Seattle's bridges that made it clear that many bridges that connect us and keep our economy moving have been historically neglected and remain in poor condition.

For some valid reasons, some council members wanted to deal with this issue during the fall budget process, and so here we are.

Now we have an SDOT budget in front of us of over $700 million.

Our bridges continue to deteriorate and we don't want to miss this rare window of opportunity when interest rates are at historic lows.

You all have heard the broad benefits of investing in our infrastructure for safe connections, so take this opportunity to note the positive impacts this bond issuance could have.

So the bonds we can fulfill more promises of the move Seattle levy by restoring seismic upgrade projects that were canceled or paused by s dot, such as for the valor bridge and or the Fremont bridge.

With bonds, we can increase safety on multiple bridges on the list that SDOT provided at our request on September 30th.

This includes safety projects for Fauntleroy Expressway, the Spokane Street Swing Bridge, the Magnolia Bridge, and the University Bridge.

With bonds, we can also boost the capital-heavy line items identified by the City Auditor as being historically underfunded.

This project list is flexible, so the sponsors would welcome feedback from others who want to seize this moment for infrastructure safety.

For the year 2022, the $100 million in bonds would require interest-only payments totaling approximately $3.1 million.

That's with the hyper-cautious estimated interest rate of 4%.

Recent bond sales for these types of bonds have actually been around 2%.

The amount of debt service payment would approximately double for each of the remaining years.

With the time value of money, the $100 million received today to address our immediate needs is worth more than $100 million trickling out over 20 years.

And if interest rates spike in the future and another bridge fails, I think everyone will look back at this moment and ask, why did City Hall not take bigger action?

It's unfortunate that the Durkin administration budget falls short on bridges, but here we are with the ability to improve it.

As the Seattle Times noted earlier this week, City Hall has had a history of kicking the can down the road, but the Seattle City Council ought to end this practice and get to work on appropriately funding vital infrastructure once and for all.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Peterson.

I appreciate you bringing this forward again, and I do think that there are folks have been anticipating this and look forward to the discussion today.

So I'll hold a few questions that I have and some comments, and I will go to Councilmember Strauss first.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson, for the intent of this CBO, CBA, excuse me.

I think that the intent is spot on that we need to be able to use bonding capacity to make improvements today.

As we spoke about previously, my concerns are what is the next best use of those dollars?

Just want to make sure that the funding source is correct.

and making sure that the prioritization list is correct and it works with the work that our city has already done with the state legislature regarding the Ballard Interbay Regional Transportation Corridor.

So I have limited myself to 10 co-sponsorships in this because I was a prolific co-sponsor in the original round and so you are getting my last co-sponsorship opening.

Happy to co-sponsor with you today and we'd like to work out those finer details.

Thank you for exercising leadership on that.

Council Member Strauss, in terms of number of co-sponsors, appreciate it.

Council Member Strauss, adding his name to S.504.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

I'm sorry, I don't have the item up on my screen.

Am I listed as co-sponsor for this one?

Council Member, you are not listed yet.

We have Council Members Juarez and Lewis as the original co-sponsors.

Great.

I would like to be added and really appreciate Council Member Peterson bringing this forward.

Just want to highlight a couple points.

I appreciate including projects that were originally included in the Move Seattle levy, but have since been removed.

I think that's very important to keep faith with the voters who approved the levy.

The levy is a critical part of SDOT's budget, not just for seismic rehab of bridges, but also for things like Vision Zero, sidewalk, pedestrian, bike, and freight projects.

that will be going back to the voters in 2024. And I consistently argued that we need to show voters that we're willing to take decisive action to fund these projects that have already been approved by the voters.

As Councilmember Peterson noted, having funds in hand will make projects more competitive for federal funding.

And SDOT's memo from November of last year showed significant increases in cost to seismically retrofit bridges.

Specifically, some of the bridges that had been planned for inclusion in the levy work includes bridges very important to district 1 access on 1st Avenue South.

4th Avenue South over the railroad tracks in photo there.

key arterials when the tunnel to the West Seattle Bridge is closed, and a combination of local and outside funding will be needed to support these projects.

I also appreciate the inclusion of project work for the Fauntleroy Expressway, which connects the West Seattle Bridge to the peninsula.

But as I noted during a previous discussion, moving forward, I want to make sure that we're sensitive to the impacts of closure of the West Seattle Bridge and how difficult it has been for residents of District 1. Again, I think we really need to avoid closing any lanes on the bridge or adjacent structures for a few years.

the intent is to use bond financing to do this work in the next couple of years, I think we need to look at phasing that out further.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Herbold adding her name to SDOT 504. Council Member Herbold, thank you.

Councilmember Patterson, I'm not seeing any additional hands up, so I would offer you a few comments in closing.

Councilmember Juarez, did you have your hand up?

No, I just hope people join the cool kids on this one, so just, you know, trying to help Alex out, trying to do a solid for D4.

We're just having a little pun here today, guys.

So anybody, you know, feel free to jump in.

Yeah, please.

Come on.

Okay.

Council Member Peterson, thank you for bringing this issue forward again.

Thank you for your earlier work on this.

I really appreciate the ongoing conversations that we've been able to have with members of the community and SDOT.

So first, let me thank Department of Transportation, who had engaged with the request that we had made to pull together community members to have stakeholder conversations earlier this year.

Thank them for the work and the community who participated in those discussions.

My hope was that we would be able to pull together everybody in one large Zoom room.

Perhaps the remote nature of the last year and a half made that impossible.

I do think that there is a lot of overlap in terms of priorities for both infrastructure in terms of bridges and also infrastructure for pedestrian and bike safety.

And I think if we were all sitting in one room, as we used to be able to do, we'd be able to find some of that common ground.

I've continued to talk about how we must repair bridges.

We must do not only do maintenance, but structural fixes to our bridges.

And as we do that, provide upgrades and enhancements so that we can have multimodal infrastructure, infrastructure that supports buses and bike lanes and pedestrian safe spaces.

As folks know, I went with a group of folks earlier this year across the at ballard bridge and because of the narrow lane for pedestrians and bicyclists on the ballard bridge for example there was no way to take trailers over that had kiddos in it.

there was no way to take some of the larger bikes that are e-bikes across on the protected side to the area.

the area to the side, i won't even call it a bike or a pedestrian lane really because it's very scary to walk and bike or run over that.

No firsthand how bridges must also be seen as a way to connect communities and connect people to our neighborhoods that are not using cars and are using buses or bike or walking or running.

So I think that there's a lot of overlap and I hope that we continue to find that overlap as we continue our discussion about infrastructure.

I'm also really excited about the conversation at the national level and want to thank our Seattle delegation for their work to support infrastructure investments.

And then when I say infrastructure, I do mean bridges and roads, and I also mean human infrastructure in housing and child care.

Both of these bills must go together and very strongly supporting the Build Back Better Act so we can actually build stronger, safer communities.

So both are needed.

And I do want to also thank the Department of Transportation very briefly here.

The West Seattle Bridge was mentioned.

We know that they are working day in and day out to try to create the opportunity to open that bridge as soon as possible.

As council members noted in an earlier meeting earlier this month, we are on track.

We do anticipate that the West Seattle Bridge will open by mid-year of next year.

And in the meantime, SDOT has invested in more than 200 local projects out here.

to do traffic mitigation, traffic calming, pedestrian safety efforts to try to address the routes that more vehicles are using around our region and appreciate the work that SDOT has done to both do traffic mitigation as well as open that bridge ASAP.

And I agree that our bridges are a connection to community, to commerce, to childcare, to workplaces, and we really must be investing in this infrastructure that's been willfully underinvested for decades from the national level to the local level.

So I look forward to continuing to work to identify solutions here.

And Calvin, I do have a quick question for you, and then I'll turn it over to you because I see your hand up as well.

The question would be on the items that are listed on this slide, excuse me, this CBA.

Is it possible to get an understanding of how many of these projected projects are at least at 30% design and more?

So if we're pulling from the Move Seattle levy, if we're looking at some of the items that came from the ESSOT report, wanting to know how fast some of these items could be worked on and how quickly dollars could be deployed for construction.

Yes, some of the projects came from the project list that council requested in relation to the VLF funding plan and they were, they showed dollars spread over the next three to four years for these projects as they still need some additional development, design development before SDOT believes they could construct them.

The seismic projects for Ballard and Fremont as well, I know that SDOT has identified that those are They're conceptual cost estimates and they feel they need to do significantly more design to get them to a place where they could rebaseline the project.

So I think there is significant design work that would need to be done for some of this project list.

I'd also just wanted to highlight that like many of these items that we've discussed today, they need to find the ongoing source of funding to actually implement if we were going to go down this path.

We would have to identify the, the revenue source that we would use to pay back the bonds over the next 20 years.

No, just that we did use a, to come up, first of all, the list is flexible, using a filtering process of what was already approved by Move Seattle levy.

I mean, SDOT's known about those projects for years.

They were promised to voters.

There was a recent, one of the reasons that a couple of seismic upgrades fell off the list was because they had done additional study and then the costs went up.

I do want to be mindful of the cost of interest.

And so one of the reasons we want to issue the bonds now is that we can lock in the interest rate at today's historic lows.

If we wait and interest rates go up, then actually we would be having additional costs later to deal with.

And as Calvin mentioned, we did get the list of other projects from SDOT.

So I feel like these have been vetted relatively well compared to other projects.

In terms of the source of funds, I mean, we haven't identified a source of funds for any of our budget ads at this point, but we did just talk about the commercial parking tax.

We did talk about, you know, getting a revenue forecast.

I know there were some structural ideas that central staff had with the entire budget in terms of freeing up dollars.

And so I think there's a way to get there.

And since we have talked about this for over a year, I think this is the time.

I think we're ready.

Great.

Well, thank you.

Appreciate the nexus there with projects that were already on the list.

I think the follow-up questions that I'll have is more along the lines of if we can do another filter to see which of these projects are I'm ready to build like in the next year.

If there are 30 plus percent design, that would be helpful to know.

And I look forward to working with you Council Member Peterson.

And I want to thank the members of the community who have continued to see that nexus between the need for infrastructure and pedestrian and bike safety going hand in glove with our investments in bridges.

So look forward to finding that information out and Calvin thanks in advance.

All right, let's move on unless there's anything else on this topic.

The last item is SDOT Walk-On 1. This would cut $2.4 million of general fund from SDOT that was dedicated for the Center City Streetcar Connector Project.

This funding is TNC network tax funding, so it will be available for other general fund purposes.

It is co-sponsored by Council Members Peterson and Council Member Herbold.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Please go ahead.

I'm pleased to join with Councilmember Herbold on this item.

I know that she's worked on this before I got here.

And I appreciate her bringing this issue up frequently for the most cost-effective transportation investments.

We discussed this item previously in this budget session.

And so this is just simply the budget action to give an option to us, to the council, if we did want to save $2.4 million with this, or other priorities, such as Vision Zero.

And we'd be saving not just the $2.4 million, but also tens of millions of dollars in the proposed capital improvement program.

And then we have the many budget amendments before us today, where we're seeking tens of millions of dollars of good additions to SDOT's $700 million budget.

So this is just an opportunity to prioritize.

We want to keep this item, you know, lift it up so that it is an option for us.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, anything to add to that?

Sure, thank you so much.

Thank you to Council Member Peterson for bringing this forward.

As he mentioned, this proposal would make $2.4 million in funds available for other council priorities.

The most recent cost estimate, and this is from 2019, so it's pretty out of date, for the Center City Streetcar is $285 million.

The CIP, the Capital Improvement Project List, $92 million construction cost funding gap.

But with the federal funding having expired on September 30th, it's now $140 million funding gap for this project.

So recognizing this potential funding gap back in 2017, when total construction costs were estimated at $158 million, again, 2017, the estimated costs were $158 million.

2019, estimated costs are $285 million.

Several of us on the council adopted amendments asking SDOT specifically to identify contingency strategies and potential funding sources to address the real risks future federal transit agency funds may not be included in the federal budget to reimburse the capital construction costs of the project.

Estat's report at the time said the full $75 million is not appropriated by Congress.

Estat will identify alternative funding sources to complete the project on schedule.

The council still has not received an answer about how to pay for the extra costs of the project, nor have we received a proposal to fully fund it.

One point that I did not mention during the previous discussion was that in addition to construction costs, of course, annual operation costs, and those are really important consideration because of how we fund operations.

Most recent and how that impacts our ability to fund other transit priorities like added metro bus service.

That has been so important to be able to look at buying extra service over the last several years that has made Seattle's use of transit really an example for the rest of the country.

The most recent estimate noted that there was a $18 and $19 million funding gap for operations would need to be funded by the city for the combined streetcar line, whereas it's about $5 million for the two lines, the two existing lines.

So it's true that transportation systems have publicly subsidized operations, and that's great.

It's appropriate.

The difference between STOT and, for example, King County Metro and Sound Transit is that it's a regular feature of their budget, and their primary purpose is to provide transit.

on the other hand, has been mostly relying on commercial parking tax to cover this operations gap for the two current streetcars, and that is a funding source that can be used for other priorities.

So while we've committed to these two streetcars, we must recognize that operations funding will continue to detract from other future needs, including transit needs.

And one of the things that I hear people saying about the federal grant is some have suggested that we might be turning our back on potential grant funds and what that would do to Seattle's credibility and our ability to win future federal grants.

This is not the first time that this question of to do with federal funding, the Seattle streetcar history already includes giving back a grant.

Through a previous administration, it stopped one grant for the extension of the First Hill streetcar north on Broadway, but that project never took place.

So again, I think a local jurisdiction taking a look, and in particular, the city council I think it's important for us to look at what our transportation department's priorities are and not having an impact on the permanency of a previous federal grant appropriation.

I don't think it's the end of the world for the city council to be for federal funding and for our local funding, support transit and other projects to improve the safety of our streets.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Strauss, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, colleagues.

I'm not going to debate the points that you've raised.

Your points are well taken and deserve investigation for your questions to be answered.

I just want to speak about the streetcar a little bit more broadly about how the macro connection that it creates.

And there's a couple missed opportunities with the streetcar.

I need to start with that.

One is that we never provided them dedicated lanes, and we know that Dedicated lanes allow them to have the reliability and frequency that they need for people to be able to use them and know when they're coming and how long it'll take them to get there.

Having two streetcar lines that are unconnected is a very large lost opportunity because with the original intention to be able to take a streetcar from South Lake Union to First Hill, neither of those neighborhoods have light rail, while other sections of the streetcar line would mimic or cover light rail areas of service.

It is important to understand that the original framework was to also serve and connect areas that aren't connected by light rail.

Another missed opportunity is that it is adjacent to but does not touch the waterfront.

The waterfront has a very high level, a high lack of service that is desperately needed.

And so I My points here are, before we make funding decisions about this, we really have to take a moment to reflect on, do we want two disconnected lines in our city?

Or do we want to complete the connection to make this?

Because I think two disconnected lines doesn't serve our city well enough, and a singularly connected line would.

That is not to say, and that is separate and aside from all of the questions raised by my colleagues that I think do deserve the time and attention that they've requested.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you very much, Council Member Peterson.

I'm so sorry, Council Member Strauss.

D4, D5.

Looking at Council Member Peterson on the sheet here for the prime sponsor.

any additional questions or comments.

Nope.

All right.

That does bring us to the end of S.

I hear you.

And at the request of some council members, I think that the request was that we go ahead and take our break now so that folks can have a little bit extra long lunch.

Okay, I'm seeing some hands up.

Thumbs up.

I mean, we will then go through HSD.

All is one block this afternoon.

I do hope that you enjoy the rest of your recess.

So we will reconvene at 2 p.m.

We have to convene at 2 p.m.

And then we will get through the remaining HSD priorities here at 2 p.m.

Okay, that means we'll have to be judicious in getting through those last comments.

All right, thank you all very much.