Committee on Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities 7/18/22

Thank you, good morning and welcome.

The July 18, 2023 meeting of the Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee will come to order.

The time is 9.30 a.m.

I'm Alex Peterson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll.

Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Morales.

Present.

Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Chair Peterson?

Present.

Three present.

Thank you, and I know we'll be joined by the other council members soon.

Colleagues, if there's no objection, today's proposed agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Good morning again and welcome to the Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee.

Today we have six items on the agenda, five of which are for a possible vote.

First on our agenda, we have Council Bill 120614, which authorizes SDOT to accept various grants for projects and programs that have already been considered by the City Council in the past.

Second on the agenda, we have Council Bill 120613, which is a SkyBridge permit.

Recommended by s dot to renew and extend approval to maintain the sky bridge across 3rd Avenue between pine and Stuart 3rd on the agenda is council bill one two zero six hundred which is Sponsored by councilmember Herbold and me to improve safety this legislation designates certain areas within the city as dangerous speed zones to authorize automated camera enforcement that will increase pedestrian safety without the need for officers in the field and We've got two amendments.

The first is a technical amendment from central staff.

And the second amendment adds additional zones that district council members identified as streets susceptible to reckless driving.

Those district council members may, of course, speak to those additions when we get to those with amendment two.

And I support those, absolutely.

Fourth on our agenda is a briefing and discussion from the Seattle Department of Transportation on their annual equity report.

Fifth on the agenda is Council Bill 120611, recommended by the City's Financial and Administrative Services Department, FAS, which approves property transfer from Seattle Public Utilities to Seattle Public Schools for Rainier Beach High School.

We will have a public hearing for this item, and if all goes well, we can suspend the rules to advance this item out of our committee today.

We do have a full committee on August 1st.

And finally, the last item on our agenda is Council Bill 120612, which would approve a contract for processing and composting food and yard waste and other organics as recommended by Seattle Public Utilities.

So next on our agenda, we'll go ahead and move to public comment.

I'll go ahead and read the procedures for public comment.

It looks like we just have two or three people signed up and nobody online.

They're all in person.

So at this time, we'll open the general public comment period for the Transportation Seattle Public Utilities Committee.

For our hybrid meeting, we do have people signed up to give public comment in person, nobody online yet.

but they can still sign up online.

I will moderate the public comment period in the following manner, starting with the speakers who've registered here in person.

I'll call on them two at a time.

The public comment period for this meeting is up to 20 minutes, but I don't think we'll need that.

Each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I'll call on the speakers two at a time and in the order in which they're signed up.

If you've not yet signed up or registered, you can go ahead and do that now.

Online, you can go to Seattle.gov forward slash council.

So for remote speakers, if any show up, once I call your name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt of you have been unmuted will be the speaker's cue that it's their turn to speak.

And the speaker must press star six to begin speaking.

For everybody, please begin speaking by stating your name and the item you are addressing.

As a reminder, the public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda or to our committee's oversight responsibilities.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left.

So the chime means you still have 10 seconds.

but begin to wrap up your public comment when you hear that chime.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.

If you're providing public comment remotely, once you have completed your comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel.

And I did want to announce Council Member Herbold is present as well.

All right, well, let's go ahead and let me just check one thing here.

We'll go ahead and begin with the speakers who are in person.

So let's go ahead and hear from, drum roll, Sheila Mead, and then followed by Jodi Albright.

Good morning, Sheila.

and pull that microphone really close to yourself.

Okay.

My name is Sheila Mead and I'm here to comment on CB 120600. Okay, I spoke on June 20th to you about speeding on Harbor Avenue Southwest and Alki asking for approval of cameras on these streets.

Council members Herbold and Peterson initiated the bill.

I'm a member of a neighborhood group who live on these streets.

From June 24th to July 1st, I called the police daily.

The calls at times were up to 10 times a day.

I called after I kept a tally of up to 40 cars speeding at times.

This would happen mostly on Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

I was told to call with each incident.

I felt uncomfortable doing this as I realized the police are limited as to what they could do.

This council is who could put a stop to this very unsafe practice of speeding.

On July the 1st to the 7th, I wrote daily emails to each of the 10 council members of my experiences living on Harbor Avenue.

and driving alky.

This was an effort to encourage the passage of this proposed bill.

Before and after the speed bumps, the street allows for racing.

The noise pollution of the fast cars is not pleasant.

The noise and speeding go together.

Of course, the nightly speeding and noise continue.

Our group is deeply affected by the happenings of June the 16th with the speeder running a driver into the water.

I hope cameras and speed bumps can be installed by August the 1st.

This has gone on long enough.

There has been no...

Thank you.

And you can also, thank you for writing to us.

We are familiar with that.

And thank you for being here today.

Hi, I'm Jody Albright, and I'm also speaking at 120600. I belong to the same grassroots community group who came together over the unsafe practices that we're seeing on an hourly daily basis on Alki, especially in the summer months.

The recently installed speed humps are helpful, but they're not enough.

They only slow racers on a portion of this roadway, and Sunday's accident that has left an innocent driver fighting for her life at Harborview after being hit and thrown into the water by a car reportedly going in excess of 90 miles an hour is evidence of this.

Unfortunately, the speeding behavior is not unusual, and more action is needed to increase safety immediately.

Every day and night along Alki and Harbor Avenue.

Between the speed humps on Harbor and the business district of Alki, we see and hear high-speed cars and motorcycles driving at excessive speeds.

In the last two months along this stretch of road, a speeding car has knocked down a light pole.

Two cars parked along Alki were totaled by speeding cars crashing into them.

A family had a near miss from a speeding car passing another car at a crosswalk while they were trying to cross, and motorcycles racing and doing wheelies on the road, the bike trail, and even the narrow pedestrian walkway.

Can you imagine if the light pole or the cars had been people, or if the pedestrians had been unable to get out of the way of the motorcycles on the walkways?

It's getting very dangerous to enjoy the Alki area.

We need your help to protect the lives of the residents, the visiting families, and the thousands of tourists who come to visit Alki.

We need immediate action to implement additional safety measures on Alki.

This includes enforcement of our current laws, speeding and sound ordinances, immediate actions of speed humps to slow down the speeding cars, and finally the cameras to enable prosecutions of violations.

I cannot think of a more compelling reason than Sunday's tragic accident at the 1300 block of Alki.

Oh, of Alki for the Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities hearing to approve agenda item number three.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Andrew Kidde.

Good morning.

It's Kidde.

My name is Andrew Kidde, and I live in the Seward Park neighborhood.

Thanks for hearing my testimony in favor of automated enforcement of speeding.

The data on cars hitting pedestrians and bicyclists in Seattle shows deaths and injuries are on the rise.

But statistics feel abstract.

For me, this data is personal.

I have several friends and relatives who have been hit by car drivers while walking or biking.

Some have sustained life-changing injuries.

One died in a collision.

Speed is a causal factor in a very high percentage of automobile crashes.

And the lethality of car crashes increases exponentially when the vehicle is going more than 30 miles per hour.

The data on using automated enforcement of speed cameras is clear.

When speed cameras are installed, they reduce general traffic speed and prevent collisions.

To choose to not implement speed cameras is to choose to allow preventable injuries and deaths to continue.

Speed cameras are generally not popular, and concerns about government surveillance and equitable implementation are legitimate.

These issues, however, can be addressed in how the program is designed.

In addition, this program should not be designed as a revenue generator hitting up people going 5 to 10 miles per hour over the speed limit.

It should target reckless driving.

Finally, the concern that drivers might get caught driving recklessly is not legitimate.

As elected leaders, I urge you to make the right vote instead of the popular one.

Please implement a well-designed speed camera program in the city of Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And just checking online here, colleagues, it appears that there are no speakers signed up online.

And so we'll go ahead and conclude the public comment period.

Thanks to everybody who showed up today.

Okay.

Let's go ahead and get to the first item out of the six items today.

Will the clerk please read the short title of the first agenda item into the record?

Agenda item one, Council Bill 120614, an ordinance relating to grant funds from non-city sources authorizing the heads of various departments to accept specified grants and execute related agreements for and on behalf of the city for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

Today we have the Seattle Department of Transportation here to walk us through this ordinance accepting a handful of various grants.

All right.

Good morning.

Chris Godwin.

Good morning, Councilmember.

For the record, I'm Chris Godwin, Finance Manager for the Seattle Department of Transportation.

Today we're going to go through what should be a fairly quick presentation about accepting some grant awards.

Go to the next slide, please.

We always like to start our presentations at SDOT with a brief statement of our vision, mission, values, and goals.

Seattle is a thriving, equitable community powered by dependable transportation.

We're on a mission to deliver a transportation system that provides safe and affordable access to places and opportunities.

And our core values are always equity, safety, mobility, sustainability, livability, and excellence.

And under the direction of our director, Spotts, we also strive to be responsive, innovative, transparent, and accountable.

Next slide please.

So, um, today we're going to be accepting some additional federal grant awards.

Um, the origins vary.

Uh, so the 1st, uh, set of awards are related to, uh, the American rescue plan act of 2021 funding, some preventative maintenance on.

the Seattle Center monorail and on the streetcars for SDOT.

And then in March 23, we were awarded a $2 million federal raise grant to help us with curb space management.

And then in April 2023, the Puget Sound Regional Council reached out to SDOT and offered to award us federal grant from their contingency list.

This is an instance where the PSRC is recognize that they're not going to be able to expend the federal awards that they are passing on quickly enough and looks for opportunities to award additional grant funds to departments or jurisdictions that can spend them speedily.

It's a common practice.

And based upon that conversation, we confirmed readiness and that we were able to accept and award 1.1 million in additional funding from the PSRC.

Next slide, please.

All right, some statements about the projects that will receive funding.

The first one is the Seattle Center Monorail.

They'll be receiving some of the ARPA funding to fund preventative maintenance and revenue recovery funds for monorail operations that stemmed from COVID-19.

We will also be receiving some funding for the Seattle Streetcar First Hill Line and the South Union Line.

And again, it's just operations activities for the streetcar.

You know, the expected outcomes include mitigating operating funding deficits caused by COVID-19 pandemic.

And this allows the Seattle Streetcar, both of them, to continue to provide frequent, reliable and equitable service to transit riders in the City of Seattle.

Skipping to the second item on this one, because bundled it with the First Hill Street log car line.

We received, as I mentioned before, a $2 million raise grant to improve how we manage our curb space for commercial vehicles in specific, piloting a digital permit and some additional innovative technology.

And we'll be using this over the next 18 months to pilot a program to see if we can advance this under grant two, under phase two, sorry.

Next slide.

And then on this last slide, this covers those contingency awards where the PSRC was looking to move some of its awards around to make sure they expended it quickly.

We will be receiving an additional $1.1 million to support intelligent transportation system investments in the 80th Street and 85th Street corridor.

This will allow us to upgrade and install signals and leading pedestrian intervals to support movement and improve safety for all travel modes to and through North Seattle.

Um, and address the mobility gap and improve access to housing employment opportunities and other daily destinations.

Uh, we will also be using a portion of that to support, um, pioneer square historic area restoration phase 1. this is in order to help us shore up some area ways in pioneer square historic district that are, uh, that needs some attention because they're crumbling and could become a safety hazard.

Uh, and that next slide.

And that is the extent of our presentation.

Thank you very much.

Any questions?

Thank you.

And I do want to thank our central staff analyst, Calvin Chow, who also reviewed these grant acceptances.

Welcome, Calvin.

Did you want to say anything about this?

Have any comments about this?

Councilmember, no concerns from central staff.

I'd say that most of these are relatively small grants that are more routine in nature.

The one that is probably the most interesting is the curb space grant because that is sort of new policy space for the department and something to just watch and see how that progresses in the future.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any comments or questions about this grant acceptance ordinance?

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold.

And I think of with it within the context of transportation policy, I think of last mile as me being a particular thing that is unrelated to to freight.

So you just talk a little bit more about the concept of last mile with freight.

I believe it's very similar.

The transportation system is about moving goods and people, and so it's the same idea of how to get that last delivery of goods from the curb to people's residences.

I believe that's the concept, and this is about how to use more technology to identify where spaces are available, to prioritize that, and to price it.

I don't have more details than that, but that is something I'm happy to follow up with the department on.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think of, you know, for last mile for, for, for transit and pedestrian, I think of it as being like.

there's not service to complete that last mile.

I guess I'm just having a hard time conceiving of that for freight, but what I think I hear you say is it's not so much that the last mile, it's that there is not curb service at the location of delivery, regardless of how far that is.

I think that's right.

We haven't used this terminology much in the freight space locally that I'm aware of, but I think it is still in that sort of mentality of curb space is limited, especially in some parts of the city, and how do we, people are relying more on doorstep deliveries.

So how do we deal with that type of issue?

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Colleagues, any other comments or questions about this grant ordinance?

Reminds me of the Gerald Ford quote where he said, we have miles and miles to go before we adopt the metric system.

So let's go ahead and move this item.

Colleagues, I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120614, item one on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of this Council Bill.

Any final comments or questions before we vote?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to pass the council bill?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

The committee recommendation to pass the council bill will be sent to the July 25 City Council meeting.

Thank you, Chris Godwin, for the presentation.

Will the clerk please read the full title of the second agenda item into the record.

Agenda item two, Council Bill 120613, an ordinance granting 300 Pine Street Condominium Association permission to continue maintaining and operating a pedestrian skybridge over and across 3rd Avenue between Pine Street and Stewart Street, repealing section nine of ordinance 124985, and providing for acceptance of the permit and conditions.

For briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

Our Seattle Department of Transportation and central staff are here to talk about this proposed renewal and extension of the SkyBridge.

Before we turn it over to the presenter, I just wanted to thank Lish Whitson for his council central staff review of the item.

Lish, did you have any opening comments?

Just very briefly, this is renewal of the Skybridge permit.

I don't think the committee has seen many Skybridge permits over the last couple of years.

They are a special category of term permit that have their own sort of expanded review based on the impacts of Skybridges on the public realm.

Thank you.

Well, welcome, Amy Graves-Dott.

Good morning.

Good morning, councilmembers.

Thank you for the opportunity.

I am presenting Council Bill 120613, seeking permission for 300 Pine Street Condominium Association to continue maintaining and operating a pedestrian skybridge over 3rd Avenue between Pine Street and Stewart Street.

The skybridge provides a pedestrian connection between the parking garage located at 1601 3rd Avenue and the retail office building located at 300 Pine Street.

The Skybridge was originally permitted in 1960 to Allied Stores, otherwise known as the Bon Marché, and Bon Marché was acquired by Macy's.

In 2016, Council passed Ordinance 124985, re-permitting the Skybridge for a potential of up to 30 years.

The next slide, please.

300 pine street condominium association acquired the property after Macy's moved out of the building and SDOT recommends approval.

Next slide, please.

300 pine street condo association applied to renew the permit for the second term as granted under the ordinance.

At the time of these renewals, SDOT reviews the class to ensure that the use is consistent with the The renewal will be for 20 years, and the council bill details all the conditions of the permit, including fees, insurance obligations, indemnification, updates the bond, and maintenance obligations.

It also requires the applicant to submit a conditions report every two years that's submitted to SDOT that details the condition of the SkyBridge, any causes of concern, timeline for repairs, And staff review these and if there's things that are of concern to them, they follow up directly with the applicant and work with them to make sure that the SkyBridge remains safe and the pedestrian and street below remains safe.

Next slide, please.

Here, so some east and west orientation views within the SkyBridge.

Next slide, please.

This shows the general location of the SkyBridge in the heart of downtown.

Next slide, please.

300 Pine Street Condominium Association is seeking to renew this permit for the 20 years, and if approved, will continue maintaining and operating Pedestrian Skybridge.

If the ordinance is approved, the permit will be renewed for up to 2043. And that is it.

And I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you very much.

We really appreciate SDOT's thorough review of these.

I seem to recall, Amy, you went out there and took those photos.

So appreciate that in-person due diligence there and also mentioning the the periodic review of the physical condition of these sky bridges.

So colleagues, any comments or questions before we move to a vote on basically extending this existing sky bridge authorization?

All right, and Lish, did you want to add anything after the presentation?

No, thank you.

Okay.

All right.

Colleagues, any comments or questions?

All right.

Colleagues, I now move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120613, item two on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the Council Bill.

Are there any final comments or questions before we vote?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to pass the council bill?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation to pass the council bill will be sent to the July 25th City Council meeting.

Thank you, Amy Gray and Estad and Lisch.

Thank you.

All right, will the clerk please read the short title of the third agenda item into the record.

Agenda item three, council bill 120600, an ordinance establishing additional uses for automated traffic safety cameras and designating restricted racing zones for briefing, discussion and possible vote.

Colleagues, as you know, Council Bill 120600 designates certain zones within the city as dangerous speed zones and authorizes the use of automated enforcement to curb the reckless driving that occurs there so we improve safety.

I want to thank everybody who emailed us in support of the resolution, everybody who's provided public comment, come down to City Hall.

We've heard from people across the city, including West Seattle, and, of course, active residents in my own District 4, Northeast Seattle, who've tirelessly advocated for safety measures to be implemented along Sandpoint Way as well.

And I'm grateful to everybody who shared their story to help make our communities safer.

Automated camera enforcement is an elegant enforcement elixir that discourages reckless driving, increases pedestrian safety, and reduces the need for face-to-face interactions between drivers and the police.

So I'm hoping we can act swiftly to implement this additional enforcement tool to curb careless car collisions and prevent injury and death.

We do have two amendments today.

And I know our co-sponsor, Councilor Herbold, may have additional comments here.

Let me just describe these amendments quickly.

The first is a technical amendment from central staff to adopt more consistent language for our Seattle Municipal Code.

And amendment two designates additional dangerous speed zones to our initial list, thanks to the input from concerned district council members.

They can speak to those additions when we get to amendment two.

So let's just check in with central staff.

Calvin Chow, did you wanna make any introductory comments before we go into your presentation?

I think I'll hold off until I give my presentation, thank you.

Okay, all right.

And again, Council Member Herbold, did you wanna have any introductory remarks?

What is your preference, Mr. Chair?

I could hold them if that's preferred.

It's whatever, whatever you like and you can speak twice as well.

I'll say a few things.

Okay.

Really appreciate your partnership in this and agreeing to hear this bill in your committee, and your co-sponsorship.

As many in the viewing public know, as district one council member I've been hearing for years from West Seattle residents about dangerous car drag racing along Alki and Harbor Avenue and West marginal way.

The drag racing on Marginal Way in particular is so intense that you can hear the drag racing all the way up the hill, a couple miles away up in Delridge.

This is a safety issue.

Sound of the speeding is not the main issue.

This is really a safety issue.

This bill designates racing areas.

The point of the bill designating racing areas gives SDOT the authority for to be able to do that.

We have a lot of work to do to make sure that we have automated speed enforcement makes these specific areas eligible.

The implementation of this authority is wholly in to be done separately.

My objective in moving this bill forward is to remove the hurdle of the Council authorization, which is a necessary step, but it's a necessary step that does not need to happen sequentially after SDOT makes decisions and creates implementation plans.

by making this decision first while SDOT works on those other elements.

We're hoping that will help speed the final decision making and implementation along.

We know that under the law that was passed in 2022, there are additional areas that are eligible for traffic enforcement, automated traffic enforcement, and areas include both these racing zones that we're talking about today, as well as speeding along what they call, I think, park zones.

And we've just recently gotten more information, almost a year and a half after the legislation has been passed, about what the definition of a park zone is.

So that's gonna be helpful as well.

Cameras can detect speeding, but in this case, they aren't authorized for their purposes.

Like we've heard about dangerous driving or hazardous driving, but I firmly believe if people are slowing down their driving, the likelihood that they'll be driving in a hazardous fashion is greatly reduced.

In Alki and Harbor Ave neighborhoods, we know that there's support for a variety of safety issues that are not focused on law enforcement.

Engineering changes to the streets, such as speed humps, which have been installed some places, but the community has been asking I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done on that.

And of meaning that I went to in December I think their their requests even predate that for additional the top and I really appreciate as well I have a few more words, but as offered by Chair Peterson, I'll hold them until later on in our discussion.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

And I know we'll hear from other committee members.

And first, we should probably get central staff's presentation.

So go ahead.

And of course, we heard this item in a previous committee.

So this is our second time.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

Calvin Chow with Central Staff.

Councilmember Herbold did a great job of summarizing legislation, but I just wanted to put it on the screen for you again, remind you that last year, the state did provide new authority for using cameras for speed enforcement.

And so the proposed legislation would add that to our code.

It would establish six streets as designated racing zones.

And then it also has some additional language around holding off, preventing installation of cameras until the executive has responded to the council's statement of legislative intent, which we do expect to receive next month.

And actual implementation of a camera deployment does require future budget action and also requires the state-required equity analysis.

The base legislation includes these six streets or zones, and there are some additional ones proposed in Amendment 2. And I think, unless there are questions, I'll leave that there.

Thank you very much.

So what we'll do is we'll see if there are any questions about the base legislation.

We know we have amendment two that adds streets and we will have colleagues speak to those added streets.

But let's go ahead and see if there are any questions just on the baseline bill and then we'll move to the amendments.

Okay.

So then what I'll do is I'll go ahead and start the parliamentary procedure, get the bill in front of us formally.

Amendment one is the technical amendment, which we'll deal with first, and Calvin will describe that when we get to that.

And then amendment two, the one that's important to many of us here, we'll give plenty of time to speak to that.

So, council members, I now move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120600, item three on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of this council bill.

Council members, I now move to amend Council Bill 120600 as presented on the committee's agenda as amendment one.

Is there a second?

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to adopt Amendment 1 to the Council Bill 120600. So Amendment 1 is now before us for discussion.

It's a technical amendment from central staff to adopt some consistent language here.

So go ahead and turn it over back to Calvin to walk us through this Amendment 1.

Thank you council members.

Amendment one is really just a technical amendment to essentially as drafted.

I did not use the language that was most recently adopted by Council and so this is just a cleanup to make it consistent with what has what is current law.

The change does not change any of your policy goals or direction.

It's really purely technical to kind of match the existing code.

And it also, we have also received additional legislation related to cameras from SDOT that will be taken up in committee later.

And this cleanup ensures that there's no conflicts between the two pieces of legislation that we're all working off the same code.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any comments or questions about Amendment 1?

Okay, let's go ahead and vote on Amendment 1, get that incorporated into the bill, and then we'll move on to Amendment 2. Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to adopt Amendment 1?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and Amendment 1 is adopted.

Council Members, I now move to amend Council Bill 120600 as presented on the committee's agenda as Amendment 2. Is there a second?

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to adopt Amendment 2. So Amendment 2 is now before us for discussion.

And colleagues, we can have Calvin walk us through Amendment 2, and then I know a couple of you may wanna speak to this.

Go ahead, Calvin, thank you.

Thank you, council members amendment to add four additional streets to the list of designated restricting racing zones.

These are CVU Avenue, Northwest, Third Avenue Northwest, Emma King Jr.

Way South and Rainier Avenue South.

And I have a map just to illustrate what the streets we're looking at here.

Thank you.

I really appreciate colleagues engaging in this.

Obviously, this is something that can be amended again in the future as others see the benefits of this legislation or want to weigh in.

Colleagues, any comments or questions about these additions?

Council Member Morales?

Thank you, Chair.

Yes, I will address the amendment in a moment, the addition that I included here.

I do want to first thank folks who testified today.

I heard Andrew Kitaf, who is a constituent of mine in District 2. So thank you all for participating here and for sharing the nuance and challenge that we have in the South.

with this whole conversation.

I do want to thank Chair Peterson as well for incorporating my amendment into the omnibus amendment package.

I want to say that I really wish I didn't have to bring this amendment, but the truth is that the only mechanism being afforded to us, especially for folks in the South End, is in order to keep us safe while using public infrastructure, is something like traffic enforcement.

I think SDOT's own engineers would tell you that relying on enforcement for traffic safety is antiquated.

We really need to be looking, as I've said before, at our street design.

And with the chair's indulgence, I want to share just a few examples of some of the things we've been waiting for, District 2, to improve our public safety infrastructure.

On Lake Washington Boulevard, SDOT spent $400,000 of general fund money, and we'll be spending $400 of parks levy money to survey people on speed bumps.

This is for a diminished version of our summer bike lane program that's existed in the city for 50 years.

So instead of building protected path for non-drivers along Lake Washington Boulevard, we'll be studying it again.

Even as we've experienced hit and runs and multiple cars actually driving into the lake on Beacon Avenue, SDOT has studied parking impacts three times.

And finally installed speed cushions, but video evidence shows us that it has doing nothing to slow the speeds on that street.

Instead, we could just be improving the multimodal safety on that avenue.

The departments made the choice to delay again protected bike lanes on MLK near Junkins Park.

We've made the choice to use only paint to address safety on the rest of MLK.

For seven months, I have been unable to get an update from SDOT about safety upgrades to protect south end bike lanes that we fully funded in the last budget.

SDOT has made the choice to have piecemeal bus-only lanes or continuous turn-only lanes on Rainier, which we know drivers use as their own personal express lanes, instead of using the ample space on the road to make it safe and accessible to make a convenient north-south connection for everyone.

I have to say again, I feel like I've been saying this for years.

I don't understand why over and over again the department chooses to delay safety projects in places where people are dying.

where collision frequency can be used to set a watch, and where yet another driver, as I mentioned, drove into Lake Washington, and another driver committed a felony hit and run this weekend on the same street.

In March, on March 16th, Mamie Mabia Lutumba's four children lost their mother forever in another felony hit and run where the street where she was murdered looks exactly the same as it did before and detectives have provided no updates to her children about what happened.

to be prioritizing road safety in every decision we make, especially during a national and a local road safety crisis.

And that's why I'm here today talking about a traffic enforcement amendment, because we've been boxed into this as the kind of decision that we're allowed to make because of our lack of ambition in making our streets safer for children and their parents and their grandparents and for disabled people.

So I'm not exaggerating.

We've had on these two streets that I've included in this amendment, MLK and Rainier, we've seen a combined 270 collisions.

That's according to WSDOT's 2022 data.

That is 150 more collisions on these two streets than the rest of the streets included in this package combined.

There have been 11 crashes on Rainier since we first talked about this bill on June 20th.

There have been another six on MLK, according to WSDOT crash data.

And we still have no major meaningful safety upgrades that have been prioritized in the South End.

I don't see any urgency to redesign these streets to slow people down or to favor active transportation.

MLK and Rainier are monuments to the decades of harm that's been done to the south end, when they were built they cut through our communities were used to separate and segregate pollute our valley with noise and CO2.

For time residents in the south end have been fed this idea that these are the streets, we deserve that we need a streets like this, even while the city pumps millions of dollars into other neighborhoods to improve safety and improve accessibility and improve transit and improve walkability.

So here I am offering a traffic enforcement amendment because that's the only tool we've really been meaningfully offered.

And still my community wants to know, where's the equity analysis?

Will tickets be issued on a sliding scale?

Why do we need more surveillance as my constituents commented today?

So until we start to prioritize the lives of residents over speed and ease of motor vehicles, until we truly make a concerted effort to redesign our streets enforcement is what we have.

And at the very least, I will say I'd rather have unbiased cameras capturing license plates than officers using their discretion to pull people over because we know what consequences that can often have.

So I want to thank you again, Chair, for working with me to include these, and I will be supporting the bill.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales.

Colleagues, any other comments or questions about the amendment?

I do want to thank Chair Strauss for also providing input on this.

And Councilmember Herbold for recognizing the need to act urgently on this issue, rather than just waiting for everything to come at once from SDOT.

So thanks for taking that initiative for us.

Well, colleagues, let's go ahead and vote on Amendment 2, unless there are any other comments.

All right, and we can comment at the end as well here.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to adopt Amendment 2.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries.

Amendment two is adopted.

Well, those were our two amendments to this bill.

Colleagues, any final comments or questions before we move to a vote on the bill as amended?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

So much.

I have a few additional comments about the bill itself, but I also do want to take this opportunity to talk about a speeding incident that happened in district last weekend on Sunday evening.

There was a horrific collision on Alki Avenue.

Constituents estimated that the car was speeding upwards of 75 miles an hour.

The other car was thrown off the road, over the trail and into the water and submerged.

We're fortunate that no pedestrians or cyclists were hit in this area.

There's high pedestrian and cyclist traffic there.

One person reported that the vehicle took out nearly 15 cyclists shortly before the crash.

the collision demonstrates the clear need for safety approaches, such as not only speed cameras, but also, as mentioned before, actual physical changes to the street, including the speed humps that this community has been requesting for, I believe the request for additional speed humps started last August.

we've heard a lot of questions about how the revenue is going to be used.

And so that will present an opportunity for a broader conversation about where to designate the additional remaining 50% of funds.

And.

It's important to keep in mind, as we've experienced with automated traffic enforcement, when we dedicate those funds to road safety improvement, we also have to be aware that revenue does tend to go down as drivers adjust.

And so that creates some sustainability issues when we want to keep the funds that are being used for things like safe streets, around school areas when we want to be able to keep funding those programs and we're using funds associated with camera enforcement, those dollars have a tendency to go down.

We know that bill addresses other concerns raised about traffic enforcement generally and camera enforcement specifically.

Want to uplift greenways and whose streets are streets, issues that they have consistently and doggedly raised in this legislation itself.

And it says the council anticipates address issues such as mitigating the disproportionate impact of fines and focus on the highest risk behavior, creating an equitable citywide distribution of cameras, developing a policy to prioritize physical street safety improvements before implementing automated ticketing, and addressing privacy concerns by documenting publicization and strengthening protections around use of images and data collected by automated enforcement cameras.

And though it's not flagged in this particular passage that I just read, I do understand that the policy that SDOT uses once implementing traffic enforcement is a system of warnings for a period of time before tickets.

So just wanted to lift that up as well.

And again, thank you, Chair Peterson, for hearing this legislation, and thank you to the District 1 residents who have been so helpful in pushing this policy forward.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Kalman, please.

Thank you, Council Members.

I just wanted to reiterate again that there will be some necessary future budget actions to deal with implementation and hearing an implementation plan for this that covers not just the location and installation of cameras, but also proper staffing for issuing citations.

So this body of work will have to come back to Council probably a couple more times.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

And I just also want to thank you, I wanted to just speak once rather than speak to the amendment and speak to the underlying bill I want to thank you for including Third Avenue and Seaview Avenue.

I've heard in this committee quite a lot of talk about Alki and Harbor Avenue and I can tell you that this occurs out near Golden Gardens as well.

Places where people enjoy the summer and drive fast is a consistent theme that we've been hearing.

I really appreciate you adding Seaview Avenue to this list.

The residents there have been asking for speed enforcement cameras for quite some time, and I'm glad that we're able to put this forward.

It's not everywhere in our city I have heard for a desire to have more ticketing.

Here is a place and I really appreciate you helping both myself, my D6 residents, and our city move forward to address speeding in places where people live, play, stroll, and roll.

So appreciate you, Chair, and thank you for adding my additions to your amendment.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

So really appreciate all the engagement here.

I think this is an example of the City Council working collaboratively, finding a point of unity on an issue.

There are lots of different tools that we need here to make this work.

The enforcement tool is just one of those tools.

and I really appreciate everybody rallying together to get this done.

I look forward to teaming up with Council Member Morales in the upcoming budget discussion so that we can also get those funds for infrastructure safety improvements implemented.

I do want to appreciate recent changes that have been made at SDOT under the leadership of Director Spatz, elevating the traffic to achieve safety officer position, giving that person the responsibility, accountability, and authority so that we can get better results here.

All right, colleagues, well, let's go ahead and there are no further comments.

We'll go ahead and vote on the bill as amended.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to pass the council bill as amended?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation to pass the council bill will be sent to the July 25th City Council meeting.

Thank you everybody.

All right, so let's go to the next agenda item, agenda item four, and then we have two more after that.

So will the clerk please read the full title of the fourth agenda item into the record?

Agenda item four, Seattle Department of Transportation annual equity report for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

This is an update from our Seattle Department of Transportation on their annual report on equity.

So let's go ahead and turn it over to Estat.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning, council members.

I'm Greg Spatz, SDOT director.

Very happy to be here this morning, and it's exciting to see the committee focusing on sort of the nexus between street safety and equity, and that's something I'm very, very passionate about.

You know, when I was pursuing this job opportunity, I was really very impressed with the way that SDOT had pulled together a transportation equity workgroup, which had then created a transportation equity framework.

And I thought that framework was really a best practice across large city DOTs in this country.

And it made me very excited about the job, you know, in my previous job in Los Angeles at streets la one of the reasons why I chose to work for la as opposed to some of the smaller more affluent cities in LA County was that I'm really passionate about investing in underserved communities and.

When I came before this committee for confirmation last summer, I said that I'm going to focus my tenure on safety and on investing in underserved communities by co-creating projects with those communities.

And I also felt that it's really going to be incumbent on me to take all the excellent principles and tactics contained in our transportation equity framework And bring them to life.

Make it so that the way we actually design and construct project centers equity, make it so that the way we contract for work puts money in the pockets of minority owned businesses women owned businesses local businesses.

Make it so that, you know, the way that we hire promote and train people centers equity.

And to do that, we've built up a really tremendous and growing set of staff under the fine leadership of Michelle Domingo who's about to go into the specifics with you.

And it's my goal to really provide this team and other teams with my full support in like fully actualizing the spirit and potential of the transportation equity framework across all of our internal and external facing activities.

And I think you'll be very impressed with what you see as the multifaceted effort that we're making in this regard.

And just regarding the previous item, I do want to reiterate my total commitment to promptly and completely advancing all of the projects in our capital program with a particular emphasis on projects that have been long awaited in the south end.

And I am laser focused every day in advancing those projects through design and into construction.

And I believe there will be a whole lot of good news in that regard over the next 18 months.

And with that, I'd like to introduce Michelle Domingo, who is running our equity team, and will make the presentation.

Thank you so much, Director Spatz.

What a wonderful introduction.

Thank you.

Hey.

So, here we are.

Hello, and thank you, Council, for inviting us to speak with you today about the great work SDOT is doing around equity, race, and social justice.

My name is Michelle Domingo.

I use she, her pronouns, and I am the director of the Office of Equity and Economic Inclusion, and I also serve as the Equal Employment Opportunity Officer or EEO officer.

This past year has seen additional growth in our race and social justice work at SDOT, where we continue to expand our practice work of equity internally and externally, or what we like to say, everyone's work is equity work.

We are very excited to share with you today the work of our department that we have achieved in the past year and shifting our SDOT organizational culture to practice equity in all the work that we do.

So, we will have time for questions, thoughts, and responses at the end, so we kindly ask when you have a thought or a question that you please take pen and paper and jot it down, and we will have time at the end to discuss.

Thank you for giving us the time, entire time today, to get through all of the presentation materials as we have prepared for you thoroughly today.

Next slide, please.

So, you can see here the slide that my colleague, Chris Godwin presented earlier, and you can see that equity is one of our core values and goals.

So the SDOT Office of Equity and Economic Inclusion team is presenting to council today on the equity and racial social justice work this past year.

This annual equity report to council is a required deliverable to the Office of Civil Rights.

The report out also serves as a pulse check on where we are with equity as a value and goal of SDOT.

Finally, it gives us an opportunity to celebrate the equity work at SDOT.

Next slide, please.

Okay, so we wanted to do a little bit of grounding in the presentation.

So we are visual communicators here in our team, and this diagram shows the difference between equality versus equity.

So the diagram on the left, everyone gets the same, same amount of resources, regardless if it's needed or right for them.

Where on the right, equity differentiates that everyone gets what they actually need, understanding the barriers, circumstances, and conditions of that person's situation.

For the next slide is another visual representation.

These there we go since we're multimodal, we chose a diagram of people of cyclists of equality versus equity.

So, on the top, you see equality is the measure of sameness.

Each of those people get the same type of bike.

Equity at the bottom, however, is a measure of fair treatment, opportunities, and outcomes across race, gender, class, and other dynamics.

This distinction is important.

We are told that to be fair, we must treat everyone the same or equal.

However, when we recognize the legacy of institutionalized and structural racism, we understand that differing people and communities need different resources, which is equity.

In order to be equitable, we provide specific, unique resources that will support people and their communities getting their basic needs met and reaching their full potential.

And the most important part, sameness is not always the same as fairness.

If the oppressed group remains disadvantaged.

So I hope that's helping for a little grounding of how we do our work.

Next slide, please.

Okay, so here you see OEI, the Office of Equity and Economic Inclusion, uses this diagram of the umbrella to show how equity is an overarching value and goal at SDOT.

To further solidify our commitment to equity, SDOT has our office, OEI, to support the entire department in the areas of race and social justice, transportation equity, WEMBE, equal employment opportunity, or EEO, and Title VI.

The Office of Equity and Economic Inclusion is responsible for leading the strategic vision and leadership in the planning, promotion, and advancement of equity and diversity, and leads SDOT to measurable improvements.

OEEI promotes and upholds equity SDOT through internal advocacy, through our partnerships with the SDOT RSGI Change Team, employee resource groups, and the Transportation Equity Workgroup.

We are located in the newly formed division of Equity and Communications Office, or ECO.

This last year, 2022 through 2023, Our office has continued to grow, hiring three new equity positions and partnering with SDOT Finance and Administration and SDOT Sound Transit for matrix equity positions.

Those are very new positions, and we're excited about those.

Next slide, please.

Okay, so we have a slide here of our equity professional development, SDOT, of how we promote and practice and support the organizational change to practice equity.

So there are a number of equity professional development opportunities at SDOT.

We do require a minimum of 2.0 RSGI credit hours, which is tied to our annual A3 performance goals as a deliverable.

We also offer six learning modules called the Brave Spaces, Safe Spaces, open to all SDOT staff, which teaches them the foundational knowledge of equity and are available to experience again on Cornerstone.

Our employee resource groups, or ERGs, also grew this past two years to a total of six ERGs to support and create space, offer a chance to network and socialize, work on professional development, and to raise awareness of relevant issues.

We also increased our training offerings of EEO, Title VI, and WEMBI to all of SDOT staff.

And so now we will hear from Selma Siddick, our OEEI staffer, and her title is SDOT Compliance Manager.

Selma?

Thank you, Michelle.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to our presentation.

As Michelle mentioned, my name is Selma Siddick.

I use she, her pronouns, and I'm SDOT's Compliance Manager.

I'm very excited to tell you more about Equal Employment Opportunity, or EEO, Title VI, and Contracting Equity slash WEMBE, how they function within SDARC and the city overall.

Next slide, please.

This diagram illustrates the differences and similarities between EEO and Title VI.

It also serves as a reminder that our workplace is our inside community, while the external work we do is for the outside community, and that both are equally important and interrelated.

Next slide, please.

Working on our inside community and being intentional and strategic with training and internal audits has been our priority for the last two years.

We have a new EEO policy statement, a new EEO coordinator, we are working on a new EEO plan, and we have shared resources on how the EEO complaint processes within SDOT work with our staff.

We continue to collaborate internally with SDOT staff executive leadership, our change team, and other employee resource groups.

We want to give a special shout out to our internal HR team for their support and collaboration in the EEO work.

This work is important because our workforce equity and workplace safety ensure we are better able to retain the amazing talent that we have within SDOT.

Next slide, please.

You will hear from Anya Pentak Next in the presentation about our 200 plus TEF tactics that demonstrate our commitment to serving the community equitably and how our Title VI program supports the TEF implementation through federal compliance.

Title VI states that no person in the United States shall, on the grounds of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in be denied the benefits of or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity.

Our Title VI work ensures regular coordination and collaboration between SDOT and the Office for Civil Rights.

Next slide, please.

In collaboration with the Office for Civil Rights and the Office of Immigration and Refugee Affairs, we updated and simplified our Title VI language poster and translated them into Seattle's top-tier languages and added QR codes for each language.

Earlier this year, the City of Seattle updated its Title VI non-discrimination notice.

We are in the process of writing our Title VI to WSDOT.

We've updated our complaint process, and we've simplified our Language Access Plan, or LAP.

The City of Seattle continues to notify the public of their rights under the Title VI act of the civil rights act and the city's obligation to fulfill these duties through its title six notice of non-discrimination and federal compliance.

As a side note, SDOT also has a language liaison staff member who created the term base, which is the official list of SDOT's translations of frequently used terms and names, such as right of way and Seattle streets.

And these are commonly translated pieces of material that we share out with community when we are working on projects and programs.

Our term base is set up to ensure consistency in the translations that we produce and serves as a tool for other city departments and community-based organizations and partner agencies to use when referring to our projects and programs.

Next slide, please.

This Venn diagram illustrates that race and social justice are not only our moral obligation, but also our federal obligation.

Ensuring and maintaining equity is everyone's work, so we can see where they overlap and intersect with each other.

Next slide, please.

So now I'm going to switch over to talking about contracting equity slash WEMBE.

Next slide, please.

Thank you, Bill.

Our WMBIE program uplifts women and minority-owned business enterprises' participation in the city department by eliminating internal barriers through training, policy, sharing best practices, and advocating for improved systems.

Also, sharing resources and building relationships with firms is a top priority while encouraging our project managers to own these relationships.

some of our Wimby commitments this year include reaching our Levy to Move Seattle Wimby goal, meeting our 2023 SDOT Wimby goals, I'm sorry, increasing our outreach to community members through training and support staff and piloting new initiatives with our project managers.

Next slide, please.

Overall, our consulting and purchasing spend went down in 2022 but we anticipate higher spending in 2023, which will translate to a higher WinB spend overall.

We also have a stretch goal for SDOT for purchasing in 2023. Our five-year average for purchasing is 19%, but we are working closely with our SDOT contracting and purchasing partners to drive WinB utilization in purchasing.

Next slide, please.

To ensure the balance to ensure we balance the workload of when we program and contracting equity for community members and CEOs, we are pushing to ensure our systems can keep up, we are working closely with our internal contracts.

finance, accounting, and project control trains to connect our various data systems in SDOT to better track when we use by funding source and across our diverse projects.

We are also working with departments across the city to share best practices and challenges around contracting equity, including how we ensure our systems keep pace with our projects and funding systems.

Next slide, please.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Can we go back there one more?

I apologize.

Next, you will hear from Anya Pentak, our Transportation Equity Manager.

Thank you.

Thank you, Salma.

Good morning, council members.

Thank you again for having us.

My name is Anya Pintak.

I use she, her pronouns.

I am SDOT's Transition Equity Manager.

I will be sharing a little bit more with you about our Transition Equity portfolio, as well as our partnership with the Transition Equity Workgroup, which I've had the privilege to partner with them and the honor to collaborate with them for almost five years now.

Next slide, please.

So what we do in the Transportation Equity Program is that we oversee, advise, and we support the department-wide implementation of our Transportation Equity Framework, or what we call the TEF for short.

The TEF really grounds and directs SDOT to provide a transportation system that supports our BIPOC communities and the communities that we have historically and currently invested in.

We're continuing to partner with our key community advisory stakeholder group, the Transition Equity Work Group, the TW, and we're starting to integrate and implement the TEF through SDOT policies, processes, and practices.

Next slide, please.

The TEF is one tool to transform policies, procedures, and practices to undo structural and institutional racism.

And I want to really highlight that this centers our city's race and social justice initiative.

We are currently in the second year of implementation and our timeline spans to 2028. We have 10 TEF values, which you see in the visual here on our slide, as depicted in our circle diagram.

And we also have 220 plus tactics that we co-developed with members of the TW.

Each of these TEF values have definitions that were developed by the TEW members, and part of our roles in OEI is to guide SDOT staff to center the definition of these values and to ground the TEF when doing equity work in their respective portfolios.

If you haven't done so yet, I encourage council members to please look at the definition of each of these 10 values, because these are principles that our department uses when we center equity.

In terms of the 220-plus tactics, they range in different categories from advocacy, policy, program, project, to tactics that are more cultural changes for our department, such as our internal processes and best practices.

Implementation in our department is about integrating these tactics into each respective SDOT division goals, practice, and work plan so that we as a department can better serve our communities that we have historically and currently under-invested in.

Next slide, please.

A little bit more about the implementation of the TEF.

I'd like to really emphasize that this is a department-wide lift.

This is not just our work in OEI or Transportation Equity, and our practice is to promote collaboration and partnerships across our areas of services, as we like to call them, within SDOT to implement the TEF.

I mentioned earlier we started implementing the TEP in 2022 and key SDOT initiatives and portfolios have started implementing the TEP into their work.

One example is the Seattle Transportation Plan, the STP, and I want to give a shout out to our policy and planning team who are leading the development process of the STP and are frequent collaborators of our office.

Specifically for the TEF, the STP team has identified equity as one of our key priority goals and building on the excellent work of the TEW and TEF.

The plan is advancing several dozens of the TEF tactics.

One of the ways that the STP have done this is through their STP public engagement strategy, which implements and integrates several of the TEF tactics under the value of community engagement.

There are so many other examples from other SDOT teams in TAP implementation.

I wish I had more time.

And I'd like to give a big kudos as well to all the SDOT staff who are continuously pushing themselves to integrate the teams.

Next slide, please.

With the TW, this is a continued collaboration and partnership.

We are continuing to collaborate with the TW in implementation of the TEF tactics.

The group is continuing as a community advisory group in SDOT and specifically within our office, which is something that the community members have advocated for.

The TW is currently serving as community stewards of the TEF.

We continue to connect with the group on a monthly basis to foster relationship building between T.E.W. members and SDOT staff on key T.E.F. tactic implementation.

If folks can recall in a previous slide, one of the values of the T.E.F. is decision making, transparency, and accountability.

And one of the ways we do this is through trust building and our relational work with the T.E.W. We turn to the TW to identify annually key priority items they'd like to focus on in connection with TEF tactic implementation.

In 2023, the group has been engaging with SDOT on the Seattle transportation plan, transportation justice topics, and emergent topics, including climate action.

Thank you, council members.

And with that, I would like to pass it to my colleague, RSGI advisor, Barbie Danielle DeCarlo.

Thank you, Anya.

Aloha and good morning.

I'm Barbie Danielle DiCarlo, and I serve as the Race and Social Justice Initiative Strategic Advisor for SDOT.

I'd like to say first that we are so excited about the RSGI work we do at SDOT.

We're taking a holistic approach, and it has been very exciting.

We've been building incredible relationships in our work and really taking the work at the pace of trust.

And so I would just like to thank everyone who's been involved in our work and who has supported our work up till now.

Our change team is passionate and committed about the race and social justice initiative.

And RSGI focuses on how to energize and do the equity work, and how we are in relationship with each other.

So a little bit about how our team is organized.

Go ahead to the next slide, please.

Thank you.

So the RSGI Change Team offers members the opportunity to specialize in committee service in five focused areas to deepen connection and commitment to SDOT's values, The Learning and Practice Committee, formerly known as Training Committee, works with the RSGI advisor to offer opportunities for continuing education and learning around race and social justice-related topics as it relates to our work at SDOT.

With a brand new transportation equity framework underway, and you heard Anya speak about that, the team added a committee to specifically work with implementation of TEF tactics.

With over 220 TEF tactics, working on teams has proven effective, and a great way to uplift accountability in our race and social justice practice as well.

The change team infuses RSGI into the TEF tactics.

And so the TEF tactics are the what, and the RSGI is the how.

The integration of RSGI practices into work plans has been an ongoing practice supported by change team members, along with racial equity toolkit support, all with the goal of sharing current RSGI information and practices across the department and improving work with an equity lens.

Our communications committee shares out important RSGI information and supports our annual outreach to bring new team members on.

And then our change team uses a multi-chair model and works with change team alumni to ensure smooth transitions when welcoming employees to the team.

So that's just a little bit about our change team.

They're working all year long to really make positive change happen at SDOT in a holistic and collaborative way.

Next slide, please.

So the racial equity toolkits are meant to help us do our work better with an improved lens on equity and how we provide our services.

So each year SDOT highlights four racial equity toolkits to the Seattle Office of Civil Rights.

And then those are posted on SOCR's website.

So the following RETs we submitted this year, we submitted an auto enforcement RET offered by Vision Zero, the Vision Zero team, a road pricing for equitable mobility, a safe start program from the street use and public space management group, and then Lake Washington Boulevard racial equity analysis.

Next slide, please.

We love our change team, and they do a lot of work.

It's a lot of energy.

And there are a handful of folks, maybe 1718 or so.

And so, we can't do everything.

So we've highlighted just a few, a few things that we're really proud of this year.

We want to first thank the Office of Civil Rights, the city wide change teams and the Council for the energy and effort.

into unanimously voting for the race and social justice initiative into city ordinance.

We're very proud of that.

Thank you so much for your support.

That means a lot.

The RSJI started in 2004. It's a lot of work and it's a long time.

Well done.

SDOT change team puts their energy in many areas across the department.

So here are a few highlights.

The team made it a priority to support the implementation of tactics, as I said before, outlined in the transportation equity framework.

We know there can be a lot to learn and understand and manage.

So we take time and make time to work with colleagues and teams in working with the tactics to definitely 100% center equity and fairness in our service at SDOT and our relationships with community.

The change team also did excellent work collaborating with crew staff to have relationship-based RSGI learning and practice opportunities, something new, using a cohort model to offer space and time to walk the talk of the RSGI.

This is a new way of offering RSGI at SDOT, and it has received excellent feedback, especially from the people who are engaging it, the crew folks.

And finally, the SDOT's change team worked with the Employee Experience Council to look at ways to continue to improve employee workplace relationships, connections, accountability to the employee survey at SDOT.

And relationships, we take a couple of steps back.

We move a couple of steps forward.

So we know that the equity work moves.

It moves with us.

And we try to really meet it where it is.

And so we had a lot of interesting experiences over the last couple of years working with the survey and the Employee Experience Council.

And we just want to give them a lot of love and appreciation for doing the very difficult work that it takes to analyze surveys.

And we just want to say on behalf of the change team, and I'd like to say on behalf of RSGI, I want to thank you so much for welcoming us today and allowing us to be here and to grow into the work and to practice the work that we're doing right here, right now, even as we're giving this presentation.

I want to thank you so much, and I pass my word back to Michelle.

Thank you so much, Barbie Danielle.

So here are resource links if you'd like more detailed information on all the work presented today.

As you can see, we are very busy practicing and operationalizing the equity work at SDOT.

And we continue to practice that equity work is everyone's work at SDOT.

And as Anya mentioned earlier, we move at the speed of trust.

Very important.

Moving at the speed of trust when we work with our internal stakeholders and with our community as well.

For our next steps, we continue the implementation of the Transportation Equity Framework.

We support and strengthen EEO, Title VI, and WMBIE as programs.

We expand our learning and practice opportunities for RSGI and equity.

And we strengthen and expand our cross-collaboration with the RSGI Change Team, Employee Resource Groups, the TEI IDT to implement the TEP tactics, and our Transportation Equity Work Group.

Next slide, please.

And that is the end of our presentation.

Thank you so much, council members, for allowing us time and the space to talk about the equity work.

And as BD mentioned before, being here today is part of practicing the equity work and that we're learning more about the practice.

And we just want to thank you.

And with that, I don't know if we have time, but if anyone has any comments or questions, I think this would be the time.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for that thorough and thoughtful report and for sharing so many of your team with us today so we can see all those talents and hear from the individuals and what you're working on for the department.

Colleagues, any comments or questions?

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you chair I'll be brief I just want to thank you all for a robust in depth and amazing presentation moving this work forward I know that this work is in addition to your duties as regularly assigned.

And so this is not.

not within your work portfolio.

So you're taking extra time, energy, emotional and physical labor to get this work done to turn it turn thoughts into actions.

And I just want to say that I see your work.

I appreciate your work.

And thank you for coming and presenting a committee today.

Thank you.

Well, Thank you, and I hope that the viewing public and others are able to get your report.

I know I'll be circulating it in my newsletter, and I know others will circulate it widely, so thank you very much for being here today.

You're welcome to stay as we move on to these other items.

All right, colleagues, let's go on to the next item.

Will the clerk please read the full title of the fifth agenda item into the record?

Agenda item five, council bill 120611, an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities declaring property at 8817 Seward Park Avenue South, commonly known as the former Henderson Street pumping plant, as surplus to the city's needs, authorizing the sale of this real property as a direct sale to the Seattle Public Schools.

authorizing the general manager and CEO of Seattle Public Utilities to execute all documents for the sale of the property, designating the proceeds from the sale, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts for public hearing, briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

And as our committee clerk mentioned, we have a public hearing today for this Council Bill 120611. This Council Bill will approve a property transfer from Seattle Public Utilities to Seattle Public Schools for Rainier Beach High School.

Depending on the feedback we get, and I don't think we actually have any public speakers here, but if so, if committee members feel comfortable after the presentation, if their questions are answered, we can consider suspending the rules and voting the legislation out the same day as the public hearing.

And let's just double check here.

I'm not seeing any speakers.

We'll go ahead and have the presentation first and then I'll go back and see if they're and then I'll open and close the public hearing.

So let's go ahead and welcome our city team here who's presenting.

I think we've got Karen from Financial and Administrative Services Department.

Good morning.

Good morning, Council Member Peterson and good morning all council members.

My name is Karen Gruen.

I'm the Real Estate Services Director for the Finance and Administrative Services Department here at the City.

And with me this morning is Mike Skutak.

Mike is with Seattle Public Schools.

He's the Project Manager for the Rainier Beach Replacement Program at Seattle Public Schools.

And agenda-wise, we will be covering with the committee Council Bill, let's see, 120611, That council bill would authorize Seattle Public Utilities to sell a parcel of its property directly to Seattle Public Schools and the sale is proposed to promote the and to support the replacement project for the Rainier Beach High School project at Seattle Public Schools.

We will go over the property itself and describe that for the committee.

We will talk about the city's disposition procedures and the alternatives analyzed for this particular parcel.

And then we'll turn the presentation over to Seattle Public Schools so that they can brief the committee on the Rainier Beach High School project.

So with that I want to get into the history of the property we're talking about.

This is property that was first acquired by the city back in 1919 for the Henderson Street pumping station.

That project was completed in 1937. In the 1970s, the Henderson Street pumping station was decommissioned.

And so since that time, although back in the 30s, 40s, 50s, this was critical infrastructure for the city.

Since that time, the property has been declared excess by Seattle Public Utilities because it no longer hosts critical infrastructure for the city of Seattle.

It's located at 8817 Seward Park Avenue South.

It is zoned for low-rise residential.

And the appraised value of the property is $1.25 million.

If you see the property on a map, which we have for you on the next slide, this is a zoomed-in view of the property.

What you're looking at in blue is the Rainier Beach High School campus, which is 21 and 1 half acres.

And then the Seattle Public Utilities parcel is a 10,000 square foot parcel in the lower southeast quadrant of the campus and directly on the campus.

So it's surrounded by the campus of the high school at Rainier Beach.

The proposal to move the project or the sale forward would be a disposition of city property.

And so resolution 31837 is what the different city departments follow for any disposition of city property.

A very important part of that is engaging with the public and notifying the public.

The declaration of the property being excess and also the proposed use of the property.

In this case, the proposed use is to sell it directly to Seattle Public Schools for the Rainier Beach redevelopment program.

FAS worked with the Department of Neighborhoods Southeast Engagement Coordinator to notify 12 key community organizations, some of which are shown on the slide here at the bottom for their logos, in order to get the public to be informed about this project and the proposal.

We also translated materials into seven different languages that were commonly spoke by the community members.

And we worked directly with Seattle Public Schools on our notification as well.

And on the next slide you can see we've got a very prominent sign that we posted on the school campus and with the replacement project signage so that everyone could see the declaration of property as well as what the city is proposing to do with the property.

Also part of our disposition procedures is to have the city assess whether any parcel that's being recommended for disposition could be developed into affordable housing, as that is a key city priority.

Office of Housing for this parcel did assess the parcel and concluded it is not a good candidate for affordable housing development.

The factors that led to that conclusion are proximity to the high school, being surrounded by the Rainier Beach campus, and parking for the high school.

The size of the property and zoning would limit the number of units that could be developed on the property for affordable housing and the capacity of the property to serve other public policy priorities, namely the redevelopment of the Rainier Beach High School campus.

And so we also wanted to brief the committee on the very high level sale terms, and that would be Captured in the purchase and sale agreement that requires that the transaction would close on or before October 2nd, 2023. The terms would be at the appraised price of $1.25 million.

Seattle Public Schools would pay that to Seattle Public Utilities and the funds would be deposited in the city's drainage and wastewater fund.

Of course the sale is contingent upon the approval of Seattle Public Schools and of the City of Seattle.

On June 7th the Seattle Public Schools School Board approved the purchase of the property.

And so with this council bill we are submitting to council the recommendation that the City of Seattle approve the sale of the property to Seattle Public Schools.

And again the reason we're here is to support the redevelopment project of the Rainier Beach High School.

And so with that I'm going to turn the presentation over to Mike who can brief the committee on that important project.

Thank you, Karen.

Again, my name is Mike Skutak with Seattle Public Schools.

I'm a Senior Project Manager for the Capital Projects and Planning Group.

And I want to thank you all for inviting me today to have the opportunity here to present.

My role is to provide the council members with some background information about Capital Projects.

that will be greatly benefiting from the sale of this property.

And that project is the construction of a new 292,000-square-foot, 1,600-student-capacity Rainier Beach High School, which will replace the existing high school that was constructed in 1960. The total anticipated cost is $276 million, and this is a project that the community has been advocating for for a great number of years.

And that dream became a reality when levies were passed in 2019 and 2022. Construction of the project will be phased with students occupying the classroom facility in the winter of 2024. And final completion will be in the fall of 2026 when the Performing Arts Center and the landscape and exterior parking features will be completed and activated.

Inserted on the slide is linked to a wonderful article by Seattle Times about the project where the community describes it as the crown jewel of the Rainier Beach community.

Seattle Public Schools has been collaborating with the school and community since 2017 about this project and we've garnered enormous support.

Seattle Public Schools has also collaborated with Seattle Public Utilities to purchase the property over the last year or so, and the current design, permitting, and construction effort anticipates the sale of the property to Seattle Public Schools.

This slide, the drawing on the left is an aerial view of the completed project located at 8815 Seward Park Avenue.

It's 21.5 acres, contains the school, the play fields, and support facilities.

The school building is centered, highlighted in white, with the baseball, softball, and auxiliary fields located above the school to the north.

And the football stadium is below the school and remains in its current location.

The SPU property is highlighted in green at the lower right portion of this drawing.

And it's located at the corner of Henderson and Seward Park Avenue South.

It occupies, as I want to really point out, a very prominent location on the site and is currently identified as this area is the main pedestrian entryway to the school.

The drawing on the right is a more detailed view of the SPU property overlaid onto our current design.

And again, I want to point out that this is a very prominent location on the project site and is the main pedestrian entryway to the school.

It's important that we own the property, which will allow us to install the landscaping, the sidewalks, fire retention, and the parking facilities as depicted here.

In addition to the ownership of the property, well, in addition, ownership of the property will allow us to maintain that area and keep in mind that the majority of the public only sees the exterior of the school.

So something as simple as just keeping the landscape and lawn well-maintained demonstrates that we are good stewards of the taxpayer dollars.

And lastly, we'll be using this area to connect some utilities into the existing abandoned STU vault that's located in that area of the site.

Negative impacts, if the sale doesn't go through, we'll not be allowed to construct the landscape fire retention and the parking facilities as depicted here.

The main pedestrian entry will have to be relocated, resulting in a less desirable and almost certainly a less efficient and harder to maintain site.

So with that, I will conclude and I think take any questions you have.

Thank you very much to FAS.

And I know Seattle Public Utilities has been working on this as well.

And thank you to the school district for this thorough collaborative presentation on this parcel.

Colleagues, I did want to ask if you have any comments or questions.

I'll also do the public hearing parliamentary procedure.

There is nobody signed up to speak in person or online though.

And then Brian, goodnight from Central.

Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I don't have questions.

I just want to thank everybody for helping make this happen.

As you said, this school is so outdated.

It's very exciting in the Rainier Beach neighborhood to know that this project is underway and that the students in the neighborhood will have a really beautiful new school very soon.

I know folks are very excited about that.

So thank you for working collaboratively to make sure that happens.

Thank you, Councilman Morales.

Really important to get your approval for this in your district.

I wanted to thank Brian Goodnight of City Council Central Staff for his memo analyzing this.

And wanted to ask Brian Goodnight if he had any comments.

At this time, I think there was something about the timing we want to be cognizant of.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, so if the committee does choose to take action today, the recommendation from staff is to send the item to the full council agenda on August 8th, rather than either of the next two meetings.

And this relates to some of the process steps that are contained within the city's disposition policies.

So in short, the procedures require a public hearing on the disposition and the notice of that 14 days prior, which FAS did complete on July 3rd.

and then another section of the procedures state that council won't take action for a 30-day period following notice of the legislation.

So in order to meet those procedural time frames, the council shouldn't take action on the disposition until 30 days after the July 3rd notice, so that makes the August 8th full council meeting the first possible date.

understood thank you and yes colleagues we do have a relatively full agenda on august 1st so with no there being no public comment on this item i'll probably ask if there's comfort to suspend the rules and vote on it today and as we do sometimes we will direct the clerks to have it on a different day, not the immediate city council meeting, but in this case, August 8, to abide by those procedural requirements mentioned by Brian.

So let me go ahead and open and close this public hearing.

The public comment rules are the same, but there are no public commenters here.

So I'll go ahead and officially open the public hearing.

The public hearing is now open for discussion of Council Bill 120611. And seeing that there are no public speakers in city council chambers, there are none online.

I'll go ahead and close the public hearing.

I think that helps support the concept of just moving it out of our committee today and then we'll put it on the August 8th council meeting.

I'll go ahead and are there any comments or questions about that?

Otherwise, I'll just do the parliamentary procedure for that.

Let's go ahead and suspend the rules and then we'll go ahead and vote on it.

So I move to suspend the council rules so that our committee may vote on this legislation today the same day as its public hearing.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to proceed to a vote on this legislation the same day as its public hearing.

There were no speakers today.

Colleagues, any comments or questions before we vote on that procedural item?

Okay, let's go ahead and call the roll to suspend the rules on this.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion passes and we'll go ahead and vote on this bill today, same day as this public hearing.

Again, there were no speakers and appreciate the presentation from FAS and from the school district.

So council members, I now move that the committee recommend passage of council 120611 item five on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, it's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the council bill.

Any final comments or questions before we vote?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to pass the council bill?

Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Morales.

Councilmember Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Three in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation to pass the council bill will be sent to the August 8th city council meeting.

Thank you, colleagues.

And thank you, Brian.

Good night.

Thank you, FAS.

Thank you, school district.

Thank you, everybody.

Will the clerk please read the full title of the sixth agenda item into the record?

Agenda item six, Council Bill 120612, an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities authorizing the general manager and CEO of Seattle Public Utilities to execute contracts with Cedar Grove Composting, Inc. and Lenz Enterprises, Inc. for organic waste processing services and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

Colleagues, Council Bill 120612 would approve a contract for processing and composting food and yard waste and other organics.

So we have with us today Seattle Public Utilities to present the recommendation.

Before I turn it over to SPU, I wanted to thank our Council Central staffer, Brian Goodnight, again, for his review of this legislation.

Brian, do you have any opening remarks or concerns about this proposed contract?

Thank you, Chair.

I don't have any opening remarks and no concerns from central staff.

Happy to turn it over to SPU.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome, Sally and Jeff.

Thank you, Council Member.

Good morning, Council Members.

My name is Jeff Fowler and I'm the Deputy Director of Solid Waste for Seattle Public Utilities.

With me today is Sally Holzman, the newly appointed Solid Waste Contracts Manager.

The organics processing contracts are two of the seven major service contracts SBU has with contractors to manage solid waste in Seattle.

Organic material, mainly consisting of yard waste and food waste, are brought to one of our two transfer stations by the commercial haulers or by self-haul customers.

The materials transferred to trucks and delivered to islands to be processed into compost.

Next slide.

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I'm going to stop sharing for a second.

My.

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Okay, I got it.

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Continue, please.

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Okay, let's try this differently.

We do have a secret backup ready for you if that's necessary.

Okay, that might be, but tell me what you see now.

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I just, when I did that, it wasn't going to forward.

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Yeah.

Okay.

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Great.

Great.

Um, the purpose today is to authorize Seattle public utilities to execute contracts.

With lens lens enterprise and Cedar grove composting to continue to provide organic waste process and services.

In the city of Seattle next slides.

For this briefing, we will go over the contract process, the timeline of that process, some of the key elements of the request for proposal that we sent out to contractors, and the highlights of the new contracts and their fiscal impacts.

The current contracts expired next March, and to provide ample time, requests for proposals were issued last year for consideration by the contracting community.

We received four bids and in the end, the current contractors, Lenz and Cedar Grove, scored the highest and were selected for new six-year contracts.

Two contractors allows for redundancy.

Next slide.

Here's the high-level timeline of the process.

Negotiations occurred over this past winter and spring, and now we are here for ordinance consideration.

Next slide.

Some of the key aspects of the RFP included the ability to process all types of compostable waste, including compostable packaging.

Vendor service level flexibility, the ability to take more or less material as needed.

Cost, experience and performance of the service.

and a farm that could assist us with hauling of the compost as needed, as well as exploring future possibilities and pilot projects.

Next slide.

These will be six-year contracts with two three-year extensions at the City's option.

New for this contract is a third-party certification requirement for food serviceware so we can provide clearer purchasing guidance to food service business customers of what is compostable locally.

Also processors will be required to provide us with the test report submitted to health departments and ecology to help us stay better informed of their operations.

Next slide.

The new contracts are estimated to cost 5.6 million, which is in line with the 5.5 million assumed in the 23-25 budget.

The six-year contract terms are in line with the $36 million projection included in the recent solid waste rate study.

Annual inflation adjustments in this contract are 80% of the CPI, Consumer Price Index, which is the same as the terms in the prior organic contracts.

Are there any questions?

Thank you.

So, appreciate the transparency in getting seeking the best value for ratepayers through the competitive requests for proposals process.

I know that that's required and expected and and we benefit from that and even if in this case it looks like the existing service providers won that that competition and So we'll end up with a similar contract as well, as I understand it, from our central staff analysis.

So thank you for going through that process.

And I understand, could you confirm that based on the internal presentation you provided to me that the overall rate path that the City Council approved from Seattle Public Utilities, that rate path, will not be impacted by this contract.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

Okay, because I know we're very rate sensitive.

We want to keep those either those rates as low as possible because they are regressive.

So good to know that this contract will not negatively impact rates.

Yes, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

It's unclear to me whether or not in this contract we're talking about the trucks hauling the compost as well from Great Paris Homes?

No, this is hauling from our transfer stations potentially.

So, based on the distance to where lens is located, we've that's what's true in our last contract to where they do some of the hauling and then our staff.

Paul to Cedar Grove.

Got it.

So, I'm sorry, do that.

Does it's our trucks that hold the Cedar Grove, not the right, correct.

And, and the, and the from the home is just our collectors of depending on where you live in the city of ecology or waste.

Right.

Right.

That's precisely.

You're queuing into the basis of my question, our contracts for hauling from home for trucks include requirements for electric vehicles and if so if there were any contractor trucks.

involved here, and it sounds like you're saying it's the city who hauls from Cedar Grove, not the contractor.

Just was wondering whether or not there was an opportunity to negotiate green trucks, electric trucks in this contract as well.

But it doesn't sound like there are any of their trucks involved.

Uh, lens does do some of the trucking and they're also a backup to our.

If we had issues with trucking, we have that as a backup and that's that was the intent of the contract is to kind of have redundancy.

But, yeah, our trucks call from our transfer stations to Cedar Grove.

Okay, thank you.

Colleagues, any other comments or questions about this recommendation from SPU to award to these winners?

Okay, so because there was, oh yeah, go ahead Council Member Strauss.

Thanks, nothing to report here regarding this contract I just see Sally Holtzman on the line and she has just been so helpful in so many different ways in District six and across Seattle when it comes to waste management I couldn't miss this opportunity to say thank you on the record.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So because there was the competitive request for proposal process because we are familiar with these two contractors or sp us.

And the contracts are.

substantially similar to what's already in place because there's no impact on rates.

I think this simplifies our decision making to grant the authorization to move forward here.

So I'll be fine voting this authorization out of committee today unless there are any desire by committee members to hear this again on August 1st.

We did have no public speakers about this item either.

Okay.

Thank you, it's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of this council bill.

Any final comments or questions before we move to a vote?

All right, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to pass the council bill?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation to pass the council bill will be sent to the July 25 City Council meeting.

Thank you to our presenters from SPU and to City Council Central staff, Brian Goodnight, Calvin Chow.

So colleagues, this concludes our committee today.

The time is 11.26 a.m.

The next meeting of the Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee will be Tuesday, August 1st.

Thank you, everybody.

We are adjourned.