Seattle City Council Briefing 5/5/2025

Good afternoon, everybody.

Today's council briefing meeting, May 5th, 2025, will begin.

It is 2.01.

I'm Sarah Nelson, president of the council.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council member Solomon?

Here.

Council member Strauss?

Present.

Council member Hollingsworth?

Here.

Council member Kettle?

Here.

Council member Moore?

Present.

Council member Rink?

Councilmember Rivera.

Present.

Councilmember Sacco.

Here.

Council President Nelson.

Present.

Eight present.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

If there is no objection, the minutes of April 28th, 2025 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

All right.

First, I want to say happy public service week to all the staff and the administrative departments.

in the entire city.

We as a council appreciate you and I wanted to use this opportunity to uplift everything you do for the people of Seattle.

So thank you very, very much.

We have one proclamation, one presentation, and no executive session today.

On tomorrow's City Council meeting agenda, there are 15 items on the introduction and referral calendar.

Council Bill 120976, the weekly bill payment ordinance.

Council Bill 120979, an ordinance amending Ordinance 126955, which adopted the 2024 budget.

Council Bill 120978, an ordinance relating to the code of ethics.

Resolution 32170, a resolution granting exceptional approval of the Downtown Seattle Association to install, maintain, and operate interactive media kiosks in public places, and then Council Bill 120977, an ordinance relating to oversight of the police.

Let's see.

We also have Council Bill 120981, an ordinance relating to regular property taxes and appointments, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

Nine appointments to the Transportation Levy Oversight Committee.

The consent calendar includes the weekly bill payment ordinance and 15 items.

There are no pieces of legislation from committees.

Okay.

Moving on to proclamations, everybody.

Um, excuse me.

Next up is we have our OIR team.

Excuse me very much.

I just scrolled too far down.

We have the state legislative session update.

This is our wrap-up of the session, and we are very fortunate to have our whole team here today to present to us.

So thank you very much for being here in person, and we look forward to hearing your reports.

Good afternoon, Council President Nelson and council members.

I'm Mina Hashemi, Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

I'm Samira Janaisio, State Relations Director.

Good afternoon, Ana Johnson, State Legislative Affairs Director.

And we're all in person today, so welcome back.

Thank you for having us today for our final presentation of the session and for dedicating time all session to engage with our state program here in these meetings, as well as our one-on-ones and for your partnership, setting the city's priorities.

I'll start by saying that the 2025 session has been one of the most tumultuous and emotionally charged sessions in recent memory, marked by significant political tension, major fiscal challenges, and the deaths of two beloved legislators.

From the opening days that atmosphere in Olympia was fraught with Kent division, deep ideological splits over how to address the state's financial crisis created a highly charged environment where legislators frequently clashed, not only along party lines, but also within their own caucuses and with the new governor.

The most pressing issue was the staggering $16 billion budget deficit.

The reality of the shortfall quickly consumed legislative discussions, setting the tone for the months ahead.

Adding to the strain inside the building were protests sparked by proposed cuts.

In response, a range of revenue ideas were volleyed around the capital, from new taxes on capital gains to expanded sales tax bases and proposals for bond measures.

The session was further shaken by the death of former Speaker Frank Chopp.

A towering figure in state politics for decades, Chopp's passing was mourned across party lines with tributes highlighting his enduring legacy.

Adding to the heavy mood, Senator Bill Ramos passed away while in office a mere two weeks from signing day.

Elected to the Senate last November, Bill had been in the House since 2019. Ultimately, legislators finished their work with daylight to spare on sine die.

The final $77.8 billion operating budget includes nearly $6 billion in cuts and close to $9 billion in new revenue over the four-year outlook, significantly less revenue than Democrats had initially sought.

of the revenue plan, citing concerns that the proposals were too risky.

The final budget steers clear of furloughs for state employees, an option both the governor and Senate Democrats had floated earlier in the session.

It's still an open question whether Governor Ferguson will support the budget in full or issue partial vetoes.

In his sine die press release, he said he intends to carefully review all revenue increases.

And his decision will be closely watched as it could either cement cooperation with the legislative majority or trigger a new round of political negotiations in a special session.

Long sessions like this are grueling, and despite the hard dynamics I just described, our state program delivered strong results in all of the city's priority areas with just two in-house state relations directors and a smaller contract lobbying presence than the city has had in recent years.

Next slide, please.

This session, there were 1,904 bills introduced with 423 passed, which is pretty typical of a session of this length.

OIR tracked 795 of those bills, which is up from previous years.

and as you know on the ground lobbying is the bread and butter of this program and our state team had over 100 meetings with legislators this session including multiple contacts with our seattle delegation and members of leadership in february oir was pleased to welcome mayor harold to olympia for a lobby day as well as council members cattle rink rivera saka and strauss for city action days Three council members testified this session, council members Moore, Rank, and Saka, in addition to 13 departments who testified at 34 different hearings.

All of this combined on-the-ground relationship building is a critical part of our success in Olympia and was a first for this OIR team.

And while it's helpful to quantify our impact wherever possible, it's impossible to track hallway conversations, quick phone calls, and floor poles, where much of the business is done in Olympia's fast-paced environment and where our team also thrives.

You'll see a lot of text on the upcoming slides, and we will focus on the most important and interesting details, but we wanted this to serve as a resource for you and the public to come back to.

So we've included bill details and funding breakdowns.

So I'll turn it over to Ana and Samir after I just first acknowledge their hard work and success this session.

As I said, it was a hard, long session, and they remain strategic, dedicated, and effective all session too.

solve problems and deliver meaningful results for our city.

Thank you.

All right, so for today's presentation, we're going to go over where our Seattle priorities landed.

We'll go over the final budgets and revenue packages, and then also an overview of other legislative highlights that weren't on our Seattle priorities list.

So starting with Seattle priorities for public safety, some of these obviously will sound very familiar.

House Bill 1112 relates to our pro tem judges and their ability to live with outside live outside the city.

That one has already been signed into law.

And then House Bill 2015 is the big public safety funding bill you may have heard about throughout session.

This bill includes $100 million for a law enforcement recruitment and retention grant, as well as a new local councilmanic sales and use tax for criminal justice purposes at 0.1%.

Also, the shared street bill made it to the finish line, Senate Bill 5595. And then also included in the final transportation budget is the next segment of our Aurora safety improvement funding at $5 million for SDOT.

Moving on to economic development and small business bills.

All session modernizing outdoor dining and special event alcohol regulation passed into law and now awaiting the governor's signature.

House Bill 1733, which helps small businesses and nonprofits relocate when they're caused by agency displacement, such as sound transit link extensions, that passed into law.

And also the final budget provided $300,000 to the city for technology business startup incubator leasing costs, such as the AI hub.

For housing and homelessness, 1403 and 1516 both relate to condominium development and affordable home ownership.

Both those bills which we have supported have passed into law.

House Bill 1774 allowing WSDOT to lease land for less than fair market value when it's used for community purposes.

also passed.

And then lastly, in the capital budget, there was $10 million for infrastructure costs for Fort Lawn redevelopment this biennium and a pledge for an additional $10 million in the next biennium.

For climate and environment, the Recycling Reform Act made it through the finish line, as well as House Bill 1253 relating to joint use agreements for City Light.

And then clarification to the Clean Fuels Program, House Bill 1409 also made it through the finish line.

And then in terms of funding for climate and environment, in the final budget, Seattle Parks and Rec is going to receive about $1.5 million for Hutchinson Park renovation, as well as a half a million for Lake City Natural Area.

And then for the Lower Duwamish Waterway Superfund Site Remedial Action Grant Program, SPU is going to receive 5.7 million, and City Light is going to receive 1.4 million.

In terms of adequate services, these bills should look familiar to you.

The first three here deal with child care, both in terms of siting, construction development, and then also workforce.

And then the final two bills on this list deal with K through 12 public education related to materials, operating costs, and supplies, as well as special education.

There are some Seattle priorities that did not make it to the finish line, so we recapped some of those bills here.

And we look forward to making strides over the interim and maybe bringing them back next session.

I'll move on to some budget highlights.

So starting with the operating budget, there was about $9 billion in new revenue, and so some of those new revenue sources I'll go over quickly.

There was an excise tax on the sale of zero-emission vehicle program credits.

There was also increases in the estate tax and also an increase in the capital gains tax.

And then the bulk of the revenue from the state budget comes from the two taxes on the screen right now.

One of them will establish sales tax on currently exempt services.

Those services include computer and IT services, temporary staffing, advertising, investigation security services, and also adds nicotine to the tobacco tax.

Because this establishes the entirety of the sales tax on these services, this would also mean an increase in local revenue because the local sales tax will also now apply on these services.

And then B&O tax increase was also a big revenue generator for this budget.

They kind of increased across the board.

Primary B&O rates on gross proceeds increased.

The services rate for businesses with income of more than $5 million increased.

And also there was a new 0.5% surcharge on businesses with more than $250 million in income.

And then two existing surcharges, financial institution surcharge and the advanced computing surcharge also saw increases.

Moving on to some of the funding in the operating budget, starting with behavioral health, there's a variety of programs that were funded.

I won't go over all of them, but school-based health centers saw increases in their budget.

Crisis relief facility grants, also distribution of naloxone, and also a telebroponorphine hotline was also funded.

There are also some cuts, so there are various cuts to assisted outpatient treatment, short-term housing subsidies, recovery residences, and also behavioral health reimbursement rates as well.

In the operating budget for public safety, a number of highlights here, $60.3 million in the municipal criminal justice account, which flows to local governments.

The operating budget also funded 23 BLIA classes for the next two years in the new regional academies.

Unfortunately, the final budget did reinstate the 25% local match for local governments when they send new recruits to BLIA.

It also included a $4 million grant through AWC for alternative response programs throughout the state, $3.6 million for public defense grants, $1.2 million for the state patrol's toxicology lab backlog, $9.5 million for law enforcement assisted diversion grants, and then about $40 million for the recovery navigator program throughout the state.

And then for the operating budget for housing and homelessness, there's a lot of highlights on this slide, so I won't go over all of them.

But just a few to mention that are notable is $117 million to backfill document reporting fee losses to local government, which goes to primarily serve for homelessness programs as well as affordable housing programs.

$90 million for the state's encampment resolution program for those who are living on state right of ways.

And then $25 million for operations, support, maintenance for permanent supportive housing providers.

Switching to the capital budget, a lot of good highlights here, especially with the housing trust fund.

We saw the housing trust fund funded above $500 million, and you can see the breakdown here of where those funds are.

direct appropriation.

We are excited to see that the CHIP program increased overall, so we were able to get a good share of that for our project.

You will see that there's also direct projects for Seattle that are transit-oriented development in the program there, and a variety of other good funding sources for housing across the income spectrum.

And for climate and environment, some of the funding here is the highlights that you can see that either the City of Seattle administers as it flows from the state to the city and then to either businesses, low-income housing, or community-based nonprofits to provide either rebates to switch their electric appliances, add solar to their businesses, as well as programs that are going to help the city with our public building's carbon footprint.

Moving on to the transportation budget.

This year, the transportation budget was in a very difficult place in that they didn't have enough money to pay for many of the projects that they had already promised in previous budgets.

And so because of that, there was lots of transportation revenue bills.

Essentially, this was all one big bill.

that passed all of these.

I won't mention every single one of these revenue sources, but the biggest one is the six cent gas tax increase, which will fund a lot of the transportation budget, which will also increase 2% each year to account for inflation, and cities will get 2.5% of that increase.

In terms of what the budget actually funds, that is relevant here in the city.

$9 million to address homeless encampments on WSDOT rights-of-way, which includes a specific $1 million carve-out for safety improvements and debris cleanup in Seattle.

Also $10 million for Revive I-5 construction mitigation.

This is a construction project that was supposed to happen this year on the Ship Canal Bridge, but has now been delayed to next year.

This is money that will flow to King County and the City of Seattle.

as well as a number of grant programs for port electrification and EV charging infrastructure.

So moving on to World Cup funding, there's a few buckets that are very specific to the World Cup next year, starting with public safety.

It's $2.75 million for law enforcement and fire department resources at official venues, including fields and fan activation areas.

There's also a number of transportation-related funding, including $9 million for grants to transit agencies for enhanced service.

And then capital improvements, the highlight here is about almost $20 million for the Washington State Public Stadium Authority, which is a lumen field.

This will fund a number of improvements to the stadium to make it in line with FIFA requirements.

And now moving on to just some other bills that were not necessarily on our priority, but we wanted to highlight, and many of them we've already talked about in the past, so we'll just go over them fairly quickly.

Starting with budget and revenue bills, House Bill 1791 increases a lot of some flexibility for local governments and how we use our REIT revenues.

And House Bill 1858 deals with the document recording fee shortfall by removing an exemption, so increasing some of the document recording fee income.

For the climate and environment bills, House Bill 1018 deals with energy facility siting for fusion energy.

House Bill 1329 makes clarifications to the Washington Clean Energy Transformation Act, or CETA, for power utilities.

And then House Bill 1483, known as the Right to Repair Bill.

And then House Bill 1543 is an agency request bill to help make flexible compliance pathways for building owners under the Clean Buildings Performance Standard.

And then finally, Senate Bill 5626 deals with making tweaks to the safe excavation practices and preventing damage to underground utilities.

For healthcare and behavioral health, House Bill 1813, which centralizes some of the crisis service payments in Medicaid and impacts just Medicaid enrollees and how those services are paid.

House Bill 1432, which relates to insurance practices for mental health and substance use disorder.

And then House Bill 1427, which increases access to certified peer support specialists.

There's a number of housing bills that passed this year.

It was a big theme for this session, and so there's a couple of slides on this, and I won't read all of the bills.

Many of them I've gone over in previous presentations, but I'll highlight the passage of House Bill 1217, which limits annual rent increases to 7% plus CPI or 10%, whichever is lower.

And also another bill that's been introduced many years is House Bill 1491, which is a transit-oriented development bill, which also has passed into law, which creates density requirements around light rail and bus rapid transit stations.

And then a couple other bills that will impact the city specifically Senate bill 5184, which concerns minimum parking requirements, both residential and commercial parking requirements at cities and then 5571, which prohibits cities from requiring or excluding certain exterior cladding materials in our code.

In labor and commerce, we saw House Bill 1747, which expands Washington's Fair Chance Act and is modeled in part after the city's own Fair Chance Ordinance.

Senate Bill 5041, which makes striking or lockout workers eligible for unemployment insurance benefits.

And Senate Bill 50101, expanding access to leave and safety accommodations for workers who are victims of hate crimes.

And then Senate Bill 5786 increases pretty much every various liquor licenses, permits, and endorsements, increases those fees across the board.

For the public safety and criminal justice bills, House Bill 1163, this is known as the permit to purchase a firearm, are also a bill that enhances the requirements related to both purchasing but also transferring and possessing firearms, passed into law.

And then House Bill 1498 is creating a domestic violence co-responder program, a grant program within the Department of Commerce.

And then House Bill 1811 enhances crisis response services through co-response integration and support, both through some workforce protections, as well as creating a training academy through the UW Social Work School.

And then Senate Bill 5202 is ensuring the efficacy of judicial orders and harm reduction tools to increase safety of survivors of abuse.

And this is a King County prosecutor priority that makes clarifications for survivors.

firearm rights or also has to relinquish their firearm.

And it also makes clarifications to when a abuser is in possession of a ghost gun.

And then Senate Bill 5745 makes clarifications to the procedure for appointed counsel for those who are civilly committed at the UW Behavioral Health Teaching Hospital in Northgate.

And then for social programs and education, just a few bills here.

House Bill 1296, this is known as the Student and Parents Rights Bill.

House Bill 2049 is a bill that would increase the maximum per pupil limit used for school enrichment levies.

And then Senate Bill 5232 makes clarifications to HEN or the Housing and Essential Needs Program.

For transportation, Senate Bill 5801 was the transportation revenue bill, and so there's a number of policy items in there as well that I wanted to highlight.

The first two bullets here relate to high-capacity transportation system improvements, which would be light rail and also some bus rapid transit.

The idea is to make it easier for them to site those stations and by making them essential public facilities.

And then also specifying that cities cannot preclude the siting of those stations by imposing conditions or costs that are not reasonably necessary to mitigate adverse impacts caused by the improvements.

And also has some language in here requiring cities to commit to reasonable timelines for permitting of those facilities as well.

Though it also has a requirement on the essential public facilities themselves to provide the cities or counties with information necessary to make timely permitting decisions.

And then lastly here, there's a provision authorizing the imposition of tolls on the entire 520 corridor instead of just the floating bridge.

And with that, we're happy to take any questions.

Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you, Council President, to our state team.

Thank you for all of your hard work this year in Olympia, calling in every Monday to talk to us here as well.

And specifically, thank you for your work on the shared streets bill and the alcohol modernization bill ahead of FIFA.

We worked together and my office helped coordinate some of the work in Spokane and Vancouver and in Tacoma.

And these two bills were a couple years in the making.

As I said before this meeting, this has been my office's most successful year in Olympia and that's because of your hard work.

And, you know, also thanks to Megan Bartol on my team and Kate Hoffman who managed my intergovernmental work last year because it really did take that pre-work of two years to get these bills across the finish line.

Just, again, want to give you my thanks.

And thank you for helping us to prepare for City Action Days, colleagues.

We had more Seattle City electeds in Olympia.

We had more this year than any time in the past decade.

Association of Washington City noticed it, legislators noticed it, and it makes a really big statement to a lot of folks.

It was meaningful to the legislators and to our association, and I hope that we can continue engaging in this way.

I mean, really, folks were shocked that so many of us were in Olympia engaging.

Well, one of my colleagues is asking why, and it's because in the past, Seattle Electeds haven't gone down to Olympia.

I think 2013 was the last time I remember more than five, and it was a big deal.

It is a big deal.

That's the good news.

Of course, there's always the hard news coming out of Olympia.

With all of those great successes, I was also disappointed to see that Senate Bill 5469 did not pass this year.

This bill would have prohibited landlords and companies from using AI and algorithms to fix rent prices.

While it did pass the Senate with every Democrat voting in favor of it, it did not pass the House this time.

It's, this is a major issue in Seattle where landlords have allegedly put confidential information into platforms like RealPage.

Then the service has used that data to suggest landlords increase rents often beyond what they otherwise would have.

Otherwise, what the free market would have otherwise pushed for.

This can undermine competition and result in de facto agreements between landlords.

Our system only works when folks are competing with each other on price, and this type of technology can undermine that.

The Department of Justice and our own Attorney General have active lawsuits about this, but none of those lawsuits will take time, take a couple of years, and it's incumbent upon us to take action now.

At this time, I've asked staff to draft legislation and have asked for legal analysis regarding it because, colleagues, I'd like to be able to work with you in the coming weeks to propose legislation, like many other cities across the country have, to make sure that we ban practices that can result in artificially increasing rent prices for renters here in the city of Seattle.

Thank you for all of your good work this year.

And I look forward to the interim, which is the busiest time of session.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council member Rink.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Council President, and thank you all for your incredibly hard work during this session.

I just can't express my appreciation enough.

I know when we were down in Olympia, we appreciated being able to tap into your expertise as a resource in our conversations with legislators.

So thank you again, not just for your work, but also coming to update us so often about what's happening on the ground.

So thank you.

And I just have a couple of quick questions.

I think myself, like many people, we're digesting the budget.

all of the successes in the budget in terms of the ways in which funding will be showing up across our city, but I'm also very interested to understand the impacts of potential cuts.

And of the cuts that have been made, do we know yet how City of Seattle programs or projects could be impacted?

generalize from what I know and feel free to add on.

There was cuts in kind of every section of the budget.

In terms of places where the city would be getting direct appropriation, I think one that comes to mind is reinstating that BLEA cost for sending law enforcement officers to the academy of the 25% that local governments have to cover.

But then I think a lot of the cuts came in terms of 10% here on this program, 20% here.

Some programs were cut altogether or we delayed like entitlement programs that were set to implement over the years, like, for example, the Fair Start for Kids Act, which is a child care subsidy program.

Those not necessarily are going to affect the city directly, but maybe will affect our constituents and organizations that we work with and programs that we administer here.

So it kind of varies depending on what subject area, and we're happy to dig in further if you have specifics that you're looking for.

Certainly appreciate that.

And I'll just add that many grant programs were cut, you know, had like 10% or 20% cuts, and some of those grant programs the city applies for and sometimes relies on, and so hard to quantify what that looked like because the city would have to actually apply for that, but certainly those cuts to those buckets of grant funding can certainly trickle down to the city.

Thank you for that.

And my final question is just related to B&O and looking at Senate Bill 2081. I'm wondering if within that bill there were any changes to some of the exemptions as it relates to B&O, if there were any changes on that front.

Yeah, I can get back to you.

I know there was a number of changes on what the tax rate applies to.

There's also a separate bill that had changed a close number of exemptions, not just B&O exemptions, but other various exemptions, and I can send that information to you as well.

Thank you so much, and thank you again.

Looking forward to digesting all of these alongside you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you, Council President.

I just wanted to say thank you for your work over the course of the session, and particularly, as Council Member Strauss noted, all of us coming down to visit.

I really appreciated my day there and spending the day with you both.

I think it's really important, A, to give an understanding of the dynamics that are happening at Olympia, because it has direct consequences on us.

Obviously, I care about public safety, but not just public safety.

but other areas too, and then separately, you know, making those, of course we run, particularly the Seattle area, representatives, we run into them in various ways, but going down there and meeting with them and talking about some of the issues really helps, because then later on, You know, like the recovery navigation program issue that we had, you know, allows us to engage in a way better than it would have been otherwise.

So thank you.

We'll see you next year, maybe more than once, I don't know.

And again, and by the way, I'm not gonna give it away now, but I've got an idea for a bill that I'll tell you later, okay, for next session.

If you want a preview, you'll see it during the compiling process.

That's just my only hint.

All right, thank you, Council President.

Council Member Saka.

Thank you, Madam Council President.

And thank you, Director Hashimi, Ana Samir for your SAGE guidance and counsel throughout this session and all the prep work required that goes into it before.

And so I just want to acknowledge the great work and say thank you.

Yeah, I had the pleasure of going down I went down to Olympia twice this session and testified twice, once in person, once virtually, and you all helped coordinate those efforts with my office, and so greatly appreciated.

Didn't go unnoticed, thank you.

So a lot happened, a lot of exciting things, you know, celebrate some wins for not only the city, but I think the entire state, many of which are reflected here, also kind of left more to be desired.

And that's somewhat understandable given the tight timeline even of a quote-unquote long session as this one was.

But rather than call individually some of those opportunities and successes, wanna just focus for a moment.

If you wouldn't mind talking a little bit more about one of the bills that did not advance, House Bill 1423, that would have authorized the use of automated noise enforcement cameras.

And that one is one of the bills as I personally testified on, as you know, and is important to a lot of my own constituents.

Can you talk a little bit more about what happened there and the path forward?

As I understand it, there may be an effort to get Seattle included as one of the pilot jurisdictions, which currently the city of Kirkland, if my understanding is correct, is the only one currently authorized.

What's the latest and greatest there?

Yeah, thanks for that question.

That bill made it through the House and then ended up stalling in the Senate Rules Committee, so it never came to the full chamber for consideration.

And what we can kind of glean from that is that there wasn't enough support in that chamber to bring it to the floor, wasn't a priority enough for the members.

And so as we were talking with the transportation chairs and then the sponsors, it just seems like there wasn't enough momentum to bring it all the way through the finish line.

And so folks were really aware that Seattle is very much interested in a pilot here.

And I think we have laid a lot of groundwork to come back next year, see if we can get that authorization for us and also work out some of the concerns that maybe members had in the background that made it stall out in the Senate.

Thank you.

I have a couple of specific questions about some of the pieces of legislation, but first, Absolutely.

Thank you very much.

And I really do appreciate you including a brief synopsis on some of your actions over the course of the whole thing.

I'm also interested in knowing, is it regular to sign in pro or con on bills or do some of those conversations happen?

You don't have to answer this right now.

Or do some of those conversations happen more in passing when you talk to legislators.

Um, I have a specific question about the, um, uh, a piece of legislation that I, at least two of us, um, uh, Council Member Kettle and I were really in favor of, and that is the, uh, the allowing private, uh, labs to process, um, toxicology.

So I remember when we were talking about this in our one-on-one meetings, it became clear that perhaps this wouldn't advance as is, there were some changes being made to it.

And so I sort of dropped, I stopped over the course of the session asking you about it.

And it seemed as though there might be a fix in the works or something different that could please everybody.

But could you just explain what that was?

Because it is very disappointing that we, unless I understand, unless you can explain differently.

We don't have a solution to the backlog that is really keeping unsafe drivers on our roads.

So what was the upshot of that?

Yeah, so that bill stalled out pretty early in the session.

It had a hearing in the House Community Safety Committee, but ultimately didn't move out of that first kind of stop in the process.

There were a number of challenges that came up in terms of working with the state, State Patrol specifically, who manages the toxicology labs, as well as a number of questions about just how to handle the evidence and court processes that just folks hadn't grappled with or didn't have an answer at the time.

Also, unfortunately, the sponsor of that bill ended up having medical leave in session, so there really wasn't a member on, you know, in Olympia pushing that bill forward.

So it was kind of a culmination of a variety of different things on that topic.

But one solution that did kind of address what we're getting at around the backlog is through the budget.

So the state patrol is going to receive a little over $1 million to help with some of their evidence backlog that they have at their labs in order to help things in the queue and move the process more swiftly.

So that's one strategy, not necessarily the solution we were looking for.

But in the short term, that's something we can count on.

Thank you.

And for the record, that was HB 1228 concerning toxicology testing by certified or accredited laboratories.

I finally found that page.

And then I have a question about HB 5814 establishing sales tax on currently exempt services.

What is the estimate of how much Seattle could receive from that?

Yeah, the estimate that I received from CBO was kind of a, it was a wide range of essentially of between two and $35 million.

So it's hard to- Don't take that to the bank.

Yeah, exactly.

So I think they'd let me know that they'd have a better estimate at the next forecast.

Okay.

Got it.

And I think that what you were talking about, the sort of the, that was 1.2 million to decrease case backlogs for Okay, so that was on page 16. So do you think that that 1228 would come back next year?

Yeah, we certainly can bring up the conversation again.

I think as soon as we can kind of work out some of those policy questions that arose in the committee process and have answers to them and have compromised approach with all the stakeholders, I think it definitely can come back.

Would it be correct to characterize some of the concern that if private labs, accredited labs are used, then who would pay for that?

And there was some concern that counties or municipalities would have to, was there a,

think back, it definitely was a question that came up around who pays.

But the bill did not specify that, for example, like anyone or the state had to be on the hook for that.

I think that was a concern that legislators had of like, OK, if we authorize these other labs to do it, does the state have to help pay?

But it was more of a question.

It wasn't necessarily, I think, one of the factors that held up the bill.

Okay, and then my last question is the transportation budget, 9.2 million to address homeless encampments on WSDOT owned rights of way.

Is that more or less than heard from our partners at KCRHA and some of those funders that there was a concern that there would be fewer resources?

Yeah, so there was two areas that dealt with that.

In the operating budget, there was the program itself that KCRH operates that does the operations.

And that was funded at $90 million for the two years.

And that is less than previous bienniums.

Previously, it was around 140 million for two years.

So this is a reduction.

And then the cleanup money is washed out specifically for them to actually do just the literal cleanup, the debris cleanup that doesn't involve any outreach.

And that that 9 million is relative to the same as what what they've been received in the past in the past budget.

So does this mean that if there are people who are living unsheltered that they there are fewer resources to outreach to people to and fewer opportunities for them to be housed afterwards?

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Does anybody have any questions?

What is the expectation?

There is now the question we can't, you're all nodding in knowingly.

One does not know if, you know, what is going to happen next.

And so is there, so I'm assuming that nobody, no jurisdictions are counting on these numbers at all, including Seattle.

We're all just sort of waiting to see what happens with the executive.

Yeah, I think the timeline is the governor has 20 days to sign a legislation or sign or veto legislation after it passes.

And so we generally will find out in the coming weeks.

Okay.

All right.

I'm seeing no other questions or hands up.

So thank you so much.

And if anyone has any further follow-up questions, go ahead and ask.

But I am also tempted to say just Take some rest also.

So thank you so much for your hard work.

Thank you.

Okay, up next, signing of letters and proclamations.

Colleagues, I was planning on distributing for signature a proclamation at today's meeting honoring Reverend Harriet Walden.

Unfortunately, it came to our attention late that there were some errors that needed to be addressed, so I'll be holding this proclamation until tomorrow when I will ask for signatures and present it at the full council meeting.

I apologize for that.

I will save the the main talking points for for that presentation.

But I do want to just so that we're on the same page.

This is a proclamation that states that the city of Seattle honors Reverend Harriet Walden, an advocate, leader and changemaker whose impact will continue to shape and inspire our city for generations to come.

So stay tuned for that in the making.

All right.

I don't see any other hands up.

There is nothing else to talk about for any other actions.

So we will go right now to the preview of council actions, council and regional committees.

And this week's roll call starts with council member Solomon.

Thank you, Madam Council President.

I'll try to keep my remarks brief and focused.

So with tomorrow's council agenda, there is ADU state compliance updates.

Vote is expected.

Lish Woodson can be contacted with any questions about that.

This will be a special meeting starting at 9.30.

And on tap for that meeting will be a briefing regarding Sound Transit 3 Code Amendment legislation.

In terms of activity this past week, was in attendance at the vigil at the Filipino community of Seattle for the 11 that died in Vancouver.

Council Member Rink was also in attendance there.

A somber event, to say the least.

Had a number of meetings with various...

Oh, thank you for that.

Getting blind over here.

Had a number of visits last week with the Office of Civil Rights, Open House, the Puget Sound Regional Council Growth Management, I met with the downtown Seattle Association leadership, met with the Office of Labor Standards, staff toured Fort Lawton.

Councilmember Rink and I were at a community brunch with the Ethiopian community yesterday.

And just this afternoon, there were several of us who were in attendance at the Alliance for Gun Responsibility luncheon.

Rather than previewing what's going on for the rest of this week, I want to highlight on the Alliance luncheon.

It's not lost on me that we're at a luncheon talking about the Alliance for Gun Responsibility.

And just a few days ago, I had another shooting at Bear Sheaver Park on a Thursday evening in which a 76-year-old woman and an 8-year-old girl were both hit by gunfire.

Still trying to get to some of the details about this, but evidently there were shots fired from a car into the park at an area where a family was gathering, a lot of kids running around, and then a lot of kids running into the woods to avoid the gunfire, and a lot of adults hit in the dirt.

And then after that happened, there was another volley of gunfire that occurred.

And I'm trying to get specifics as to if it was folks in the park who were shooting back or if whoever shot the first time came back to shoot again.

And I can't help but think about one of our own central staff members that happened to live not too far from that and saw it happen.

I also can't help but think about the children who are impacted by that, who are in the middle of that, and are going to be traumatized by that for life.

A lot of folks are asking about, well, we need to have a community meeting.

We need more police.

We need something.

But what I'm left with is, why?

Why do we have people shooting at a family in a park?

Why?

And I don't have an answer.

And I don't know if there's any community forum that's going to provide us that answer.

But I would ask of those who decide to pick up a firearm to resolve conflict, think about the impact of those young lives that could be your little cousins, your brothers, your sisters.

Think about how they are going to be scarred because you decided to use a firearm to resolve some kind of beef.

I may not be able to do anything about the fact that someone has made me angry, but I can do something about how I respond to it.

So that is my ask.

Think, please, and think about those young ones.

So with that, unless there's any questions, I'll yield the balance of my time.

Thank you, Councilmember Solomon.

Words well said.

Gun violence is preventable.

We can't necessarily stop disagreements from happening.

We can't stop fights from happening.

We can't take firearms out of the situation, which in an instant, somebody's impulse can be life-altering, life-changing in a really negative way.

That light looked really good on you as well.

It looked so good it was blinding.

I'm glad that we got the shades pulled down for the record, Amelia.

Yeah, it was the shine off the head.

Out of your eyes, out of your eyes, my friend.

So this week, the Finance Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee will meet this Wednesday, May 7th at 9.30 a.m.

We are scheduled to vote on the grants acceptance ordinance and appropriations that was presented during the last committee meeting.

We will also be receiving a finance update from central staff regarding our general fund budgeting balancing analysis.

This week, our analysts will be breaking down the effects of April's revenue forecast and what that impact will be on different funds and those fund levels.

These are dense and important insights for our budgeting process coming this fall and for the supplemental this summer.

If you are unable to attend committee, I ask you receive this briefing on the material because it is a critical base of information setting us up ahead of the budget meetings in June and July.

I am still planning on hosting the select budget committees in June and July.

The, when we started this at the beginning of the year, I mentioned that we would be, I was looking to host these meetings in June and July to look back on the work that we did last year and get our feet set and ready for this upcoming falls budget process, reforming both with the news last month that we received, it makes these meetings next month and the month after even more important and will contain the pre- To enact the budget reform and stabilization work that we do need to complete this fall.

For full council, the budget committee does not have any bills coming to full council tomorrow, but before I move on to external work regarding the street kiosks on the introduction referral calendar today, I won't speak to the merits of the proposal today, simply that in the past, this program has been discussed and that proposal has been squarely within the signed code rather than the proposal as a street use term permit.

That said, typical procedure reflects that if this is signed code, then it should be referred to the Land Use Committee, and if taken at face value as a street use term permit, typical procedure would have this bill referred to the Transportation Committee.

These comments are solely on the procedure today, and I'll speak to the merits of this proposal as it moves forward.

On to external committees.

The Sound Transit Expansion Committee meets this Thursday, May 8th.

The agenda will be a couple motions and reports to the committee regarding the Tacoma Dome Link Extension DEIS Public Comment Report and the Multiple Award Task Order Contracts MayTOC Briefing.

This has the potential to create cost savings for sound transit.

And it is something that we need to look at very carefully.

because if the entire sound transit budget does not support some of these actions, we need to be mindful of that.

Onto the good news.

This coming Saturday, Saturday, May 10th, the downtown Redmond Link extension will go live with two new rail stations, one near Marymoor Park and the other downtown.

In the celebration, there will be a speaking program and ribbon cutting at the downtown Redmond location station.

Programming begins at 1030 with light rail service beginning around noon.

I feel if anyone is interested in joining, I'd be happy to carpool or bus pool with you out there.

There will be live vendors, live music, food, family-friendly activities at both Redmond stations throughout the day.

So feel free to come by and join the festivities.

In District 6, I shared this last week, and yes, I know the animal shelter is not in District 6, but it's within my committee.

A reminder that June 8th, the animal shelter will host their 5K fun run and walk proceeds help further the animal shelter's mission to provide critical services for our community's most vulnerable animals.

In District 6, I held office hours last week, and I'm looking forward to hosting office hours next week.

And finally, I want to speak to another item on the introduction referral calendar today, the bill regarding ethics.

Colleagues, I want to be transparent with you that I'm skeptical of any legislation that would loosen restrictions in our ethics code.

While I have been aware of this proposal since last year, we are just 100 days into the second Trump administration and the trust in government is nearing all-time lows.

We've seen what happens when people in power have crossed the ethical lines.

It leads to mistrust in government and undermines the work we are doing.

For me, this is not the time to be having this conversation about loosening our ethical standards, the ones which we are held to.

But if we are to have this conversation, I think voters should be the ones to decide.

Our council should not be changing its own ethical constraints.

We shouldn't be changing our own rules.

After all, voters have elected us to operate under these rules.

Changing the midterm within six week period and without a vote of the people undermines that agreement we have made with our residents.

I've seen the arguments for these changes, but I think that we should ask ourselves one question.

Would this inspire trust with the people of Seattle?

The answer for me is in no uncertain terms, no.

We in this chamber need to inspire trust for our residents.

We need to inspire trust in government to fix big problems and small.

And I stand ready to partner with everyone and anyone to pass laws that inspire trust that fix big problems or small.

Unfortunately, this legislation simply doesn't do that for me.

I'm happy to continue the conversation.

And with that, that's my report colleagues.

I'll take any questions and if no questions over to the one, the only, Council Member Joy Hollingsworth.

I see no questions or comments, so go ahead.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

You only told me you were gonna do that intro last week.

That was two weeks ago.

It wasn't the full intro for the record.

Okay, fair enough.

Just, you know.

I'm just playing of parks, utilities, technology meeting will be Wednesday, May 14th, next week at 2 PM.

We're gonna continue colleagues.

We're gonna continue the conversation about SPUs, their legislation that they presented to us last meeting, some of those discussions.

We're also going to be talking about Memorial Stadium as well for a presentation.

We are on a little bit of a tight timeline in conjunction with our Seattle Public Schools.

the school district.

So we'll be providing more information looking forward to that.

But we have asked our Seattle center and some of our central staff to reach out to some of the committee members to provide a detail.

We received an email regarding some of that information last week.

So thank you to central staff for providing that.

I know I'm new to the situation.

We have council members who have been engaged with this process for a very long time.

Thank you all for that.

Also the comprehensive plan, the selection.

for comprehensive plan will be may 7th which is this wednesday that's going to be at 2 p.m we will engage and talk about some we're going to have central staff attend where they will be presenting some of the amendments that some of the council members have brought in forth also the work plan that our office is proposing so thank you all for participating in that so we can have a comprehensive work plan as well.

We will be accepting written public comment on Wednesday just so we can dive into the details about this legislation because we have a pretty hefty agenda that we need to get through and looking forward to the council members that have their amendments.

Just FYI, we're going to have central staff present those and then We'll turn it over to the council members for you all to explain and walk us through some of your amendments for the interim legislation of House Bill 1110. We also have sent out a public notice regarding the May 19th public hearing for the comprehensive plan that was sent out and we'll be providing more information within our newsletter to kind of make it so it's a little bit more palatable for the general public but looking forward to people engaging on May 19th.

We're having two public hearings.

The first one is online that will begin at 9.30, where we're only taking online public comment that is virtual.

And then we will be moving at 4 p.m.

into our in-person public hearing, just so we can make sure that we split it up and we can hear everyone that has signed up for public hearing.

Other than that, that's everything that we have for our committees.

And if there are no questions, seeing none, hearing none, I'm more than happy to pass this off to my left, Council Member Kettle.

Hearing and seeing none either, I will start.

Thank you, Council Member Hollingsworth.

The Public Safety Committee, next meeting of the Public Safety Committee will be a week tomorrow, the 13th of May.

We're gonna have two items on the agenda.

First, we're gonna have Chief Barnes, who at that point will be pretty much at his 100 day mark, and he will have a briefing on his neighborhood safety plan.

So that will be on the agenda.

Secondly, and I apologize, because we didn't get to item four in our last meeting, which is the Chief of Police investigation ordinance.

We had a rambunctious, long discussion earlier in parts of the agenda, so we will take that up next week.

Generally for me, for meetings, external and so forth, and of interest, this week, Note today, I had an interesting meeting with the AI Safety Project, talking about AI.

Lots to think about.

I don't think at the federal, state, local levels we really are doing that, which in turn is a safety issue.

Meeting with CPC, the Community Police Commission, tomorrow and tomorrow evening, my staff will participate with the South Lake Union Community Council.

Wednesday, we have the Regional Water Quality Committee that I participate in with Councilmember Hollingsworth.

And then on Thursday, Puget Sound Regional Council's transportation policy meeting, which I plan on attending in-person, Councilmember Saka, after my daughter's dentist appointment.

So I want to caveat that actually a little bit.

Next week, just a couple things to note.

I'm engaging with the FIFA World Cup team, particularly because of the impact of District 7. And I'm looking forward to the Pacific Science Center, which is a jewel of our city, and their Ignite luncheon, which is going to be headlined by our own mayor, Mayor Harrell.

And lastly, I just wanted to note too, last week I had a series of meetings.

that kind of point to some of the challenges that we face and the engagement that we need to do.

Wednesday I went to the Jewish Family, Jewish Family Services luncheon and, you know, Rabbi Berkowitz gave a fantastic speech speaking to the challenges of looking out in this time of immigration and refugee challenges that we face or at a time when USDA has cut down, you know, deliveries to food banks and the challenges that they're working through.

It's definitely recommended to everyone because to be frank, it's the best speech I've listened to regarding to this new environment that we're in.

Thursday, I met with the state's DSHS office, met with Assistant Secretary for Economic Services in Belltown regarding the challenges that we've seen in our neighborhood and to work together with the state particularly with their location there at Belltown Center, and to come together and see what we can do for our communities.

And speaking of community, also on Friday met with WHEEL, the women's shelter, and the challenges of losing the Mary's Place Day Center is still reverberating.

And I think it's important for us to look at that and see what are the possibilities.

And part of this is engaging in different ways.

And I really also want to thank the Union Gospel Mission for my tour of some of the work that they do, which gave me great insight in terms of some of the work that, for example, Co-Lead is doing in terms of getting individuals into housing, which kind of goes to the, You know, the state briefing, the OIR briefing that we got earlier, it really shows what a difference can be made by these different groups working together and having the various angles covered based on these varying different types of organizations doing their work in this area.

So I just wanted to highlight, you know, that one, two, three combination that I had Wednesday, Thursday, Friday last week.

It was really enlightening.

And I just wanna thank the organizations that had me or were meeting with me.

And now over to, barring any questions, comments, Council Member Moore.

Thank you very much, Council Member Kettle.

So on tomorrow's full city council agenda, there are no items from the Housing and Human Services Committee.

As I mentioned this week, with the permission of the committee chair, I will be bringing legislation to the governance committee that proposes a change to the ethics code.

This legislation is at the behest of the Director of Ethics in Elections to address concerns he has identified with the current code that effectively de facto disenfranchises voters, particularly district voters.

The intent of this legislation is for greater transparency and sunshine.

I do look forward to the committee presentation and additional discussion.

Councilmember Strauss, I'm pleased to hear your comments about the rent algorithm issue.

I too share those frustrations and had also reached out to central staff to bring forth legislation to prevent algorithmic rental price fixing.

So hopefully we can work together on that legislation.

Let's see, last week I had a briefing from the mayor's office on the Northern Lights Initiative to revitalize the Aurora Corridor.

Some very exciting ideas about how to really bring that stretch of state highway to life in a way that contributes to neighborhoods and positive activation.

My concern remains though that we really need to have a coordinated public safety strategy until we are able to address the public safety challenges Some of the other things are going to be difficult to put into place.

So I made those comments, shared those comments with the mayor's office, and I look forward to continuing to work on a really coordinated and holistic approach.

Along those lines, I also held a community meeting and district regarding the chronic open air drug use and often violent public disorder occurring along 33rd Avenue and Lake City.

This has been an issue that this community has dealt with for a very long time.

It was clear from this meeting that the city needs a coordinated strategy that includes neighbors, business owners, service providers, SPD, CARE, and UCT to ensure that the heavily burdened 33rd Avenue community of mostly immigrants, refugees, veterans, those living in spectrum provided housing and others can continue, others actually can feel safe in their residences and on the street.

So we'll be continuing to work with those city departments as well as that community to find hopefully a solution to this.

I want to note that the federal cuts to the AmeriCorps program have directly impacted D5 providers.

The hunger intervention provider program is now going to be, is not necessarily going to be able to maintain their food service provision and they run an incredibly important senior meal provider program.

The Literacy Source Program will also not be able to continue with their programming.

They work with immigrant and refugees to help them learn English, to study for their citizenship exams so they can become citizens, and also to learn how to navigate the digital world that we find ourselves in.

And so they are not going to be in a position to continue to provide that level of service, which is quite distressing.

And I have reached out to the HSD and Office of Immigrant Refugee Affairs to see if there's any potential underspend to help with at least temporary assistance in that regard.

A note later this week I'm scheduled to attend the West Seattle Art Walk and that will feature work from local survivors of commercial sexual exploitation.

Saturday I will have office hours at the Lake City Community Center.

Last week during my office hours I would note that there were individuals who were openly smoking fentanyl on the service center steps just feet away from kids who were playing and blocking the pathway for constituents trying to navigate up the steps to their appointment with me.

I would note that this is just a few feet away from the future Lake City Community Center that will be providing affordable housing to individuals and to families.

Just again, more evidence of the need to address the ongoing open air drug use and chronic disorder that we are seeing in our communities that are affecting real people.

And then lastly, I would like to thank the UCT and their contracted service providers.

We took back the service outreach contracts last year.

I've recontracted this year with DESC and REACH, COLEAN, other groups.

Those relationships appear to be working very well and I wanted to just shout out to them.

for the amazing work that they do every day connecting people to shelter, housing, and services, as well as keeping neighborhoods clear of trash and needles, as well as their efforts to find ways to bring community spaces into positive use.

We really appreciate everything that they are doing in District 5. If there are no questions, I'll turn it over to Council Member Rink.

Well, thank you, Council Member Moore.

Pardon me, the Sustainability City Light and Arts and Culture Committee met last Friday, where we received two presentations from the Office of Sustainability and Environment, the first on Fresh Bucks and the second on the Environmental Justice Fund.

I look forward to strengthening these programs as chair of the committee especially as we're seeing changes to SNAP at the federal level and opportunities for Fresh Bucks to be able to step in.

We also confirmed an appointment to the City Light review panel.

Luis Ernst, now we have officially closed and we have a fully seated City Light review panel, which is very exciting.

And following the end of the meeting, I also had the chance to connect with City Light General Manager Don Lindell to provide an update on how City Light is making internal culture changes following the investigative report.

Last week, the Trump administration released its discretionary budget for fiscal year 2026. I'm still working my way through it, but the cuts are jarring.

Any cut will need to make it through a Republican-controlled Congress to be officially enacted, but there is dire cause for concern at the initial proposal.

And as chair of Sustainability City Line Arts and Culture, I want to daylight a few items that caught my intention, including 12 mentions of cuts happening to programs that are considered I encourage my colleagues to take a look at some of the areas that will impact the committees they chair as an exercise to see what may come.

Some of these dramatic cuts include a total elimination of the low-income heating assistance program, also known as LIHEAP.

In the reports, the Trump administration states, quote, the budget proposes to end this program and to instead support low-income instead through energy dominance, lower prices, and an America first economic platform." But there are no specifics on how they plan to do this, which is concerning as we head into some warm summer months. There's also an elimination of $15.2 billion in remaining bipartisan infrastructure law funds that were intended to be invested in renewable energy and vehicle electrification and charging stations. There is a $2.6 billion cut from the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The Trump administration states that this is a necessary step to eliminating Green New Deal, climate change, and environmental justice programs. Also a thing to note in the official report, the administration has taken to calling the Green New Deal the Green New Scam. There's a total elimination of the Corporation for National and Community Services, aka AmeriCorps, as has been discussed. Two of my staff previously served with AmeriCorps, while also within this, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, the National Endowment of Arts, and the National Endowment of Humanities, the Marine Mammal Commission, and more. So colleagues, I encourage you to take a look at what is being proposed here. I know it was certainly illuminating for me and deeply concerning when we think about the ways in which this will have impacts on the residents in our city. Um, building onto that, the Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes is meeting Friday, May 16th. Um, we will hear from a panel of transportation organizations on federal changes and how they are impacting their work, especially as they pertain to upcoming projects, and I want to thank our transportation chair, Councilmember Saka, for his partnership in helping put together that panel so we can tee up a positive discussion for that topic. We will also be voting on a welcoming city resolution, and thank you to members who have provided their feedback and engaged with my office on the legislation over the past few weeks. And on a final note for my remarks today, I want to emphasize democracy. and it's an incredible responsibility to be holding. We must do everything in our power to protect it locally while also restoring trust in the public, trust of the public in government, which is currently at an all time low. And so I share in the concerns raised by council member Strauss about the proposed ethics legislation. I have a lot of questions and I look forward to engaging with our head of ethics as well as the ethics commission, but I will name one of those questions publicly today and it's why now? So I look forward to engaging on this matter. I'll be engaging on it closely. And with that, I will turn it over to council member Rivera.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Council President, colleagues.

All right.

I want to thank those of you who could be could could join last week.

The select committee.

I heard from the executive via Deputy Mayor Washington and Director Chappelle on the Mayor's proposal, Every Child Ready Feb Levy Renewal Proposal.

Today the clerk's office will be publishing my amended legislation which you can review.

As you know, you or your staff are welcome to come to me directly and also our central staff, Jasmine Marwaha, at any point to ask any questions.

Next week on Monday 12th at 5 PM, we're gonna be having a public hearing on the FEP renewal proposal here at City Hall and Chambers.

And on Wednesday 15th, we also have another FEP select committee where central staff will be presenting uh, the policy considerations for the proposal, um, and we will have a very tight quorum.

So I hope you'll be able to make every effort to attend so we can keep this renewal process, levy renewal process on track.

And I want to thank you in advance for all you're doing to accommodate, um, and prioritize the select committee.

toward that end, because as you know, colleagues, we have some certain number or amount of time for which we need to put this vote on this so it could appear in the ballot in the fall.

In the last couple of weeks, I met with Director Hamdi Muhammad from the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs to discuss their support of immigrant community, especially in light of the terrible attacks from the federal government.

Like Councilmember Moore, I asked and requested information related to any underspend from the City's budget that could go toward further helping with the representation of unaccompanied minors in Seattle in addition to the funding that OIRA provides under the City's Legal Defense Fund.

Last week, I had my regular monthly meeting with Chief Barnes where we discussed the recent activation or the upcoming activation of Magnuson Park.

by the Seattle Police Department and the park rangers at Seattle Parks to deter very large, very loud after hours activity at the park's boat launch.

Magnuson Park has become yet the next park that has experienced such activity.

some of which is very disturbing that has involved gunfire.

That activation will start Memorial Day weekend and SPD has also increased patrols in the area between now and the official activation as they're able to given the staffing numbers and I confirm that with Captain Davison today from the North Precinct whom I met with this morning.

So they are doing everything they can on that end to make sure that they're being responsive to all this activity that's happening at Magnuson Park and throughout the district.

And I will say that I know that Captain Davison has also prioritized as they're able patrolling the district, not just the district I represent, but just the north end and the districts that are represented by the north precinct.

So I want to really thank them for that.

Um, I am looking forward to attending the Wedgwood Community Council's monthly meeting tomorrow to hear from constituents from Wedgwood.

Um, and, uh, as well as will be, uh, my office will Council meeting, the North Precinct Advisory Council meeting, which we always make a priority to attend and participate in.

And then lastly, next Friday, May 16th, I'll be attending my first meeting as a newly appointed member of the Association of Washington City's Legislative Priorities Committee, a committee which helps determine the organization's legislative parties for Olympia's next legislative cycle.

Colleagues, unless there are any questions, I'll pass this along to our colleague, Councilmember Saka.

All right.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

So on the Transportation Committee front, our next Transportation Committee meeting, colleagues, will be tomorrow morning at 9.30 a.m.

Three items on the agenda.

First and foremost, our automated traffic enforcement camera authorization legislation.

Secondly, the automated traffic enforcement camera budget proviso lift, specifically for non-school zones.

And then third and finally, we have a block 52, an alley vacation in district seven near town hall.

So exciting, fun packed, impact.

full agenda for tomorrow morning.

So we'll see you all there colleagues.

And as always, everyone is welcome to attend.

With respect to the Levy Oversight Committee.

So first and foremost, friendly reminder colleagues, more specifically our non citywide district based colleagues to please get your picks in for the Levy Oversight Committee to SDOT or my office, we will tentatively begin the appointment process at the May 20th committee meeting.

Districts one, three, five, plus all the motor boards, the pedestrian, freight, bike, transit, et cetera.

And so we need to initiate this process and get, the goal is to, like I said, start the consideration of and review, go through our process at the council level at the beginning of the May 20th committee meeting.

Goal is to finalize and get these people seated by and have their, so they're able to have their first meeting in the summers sometime because we are, four and a half, five months now into a brand new voter approved levy.

I think by summertime is when they should be able to meet for the very first time.

So friendly reminder, and I don't wanna air anyone out or put anyone out on blast in particular, but as this thing on colleagues in particular from districts, I didn't name districts two, four, six, and seven, please do submit your picks and happy to talk offline as well.

Very important stuff.

Moving on to, so later next week, actually just finalize a date for an important community town hall conversation on community safety for the North Delridge, Snake Hill and High Point communities.

finalize the date and location next Wednesday, May 14th, in my district.

More information will follow in one of my newsletters later this week, but we have some great guests lined up and panelists, including SPD chief Barnes, the mayor's chief public safety officer, Natalie Walton Anderson, and Seattle City Light CEO, Lindell, and others.

So really looking forward to this important community conversation that follows.

rampant incidents of gun violence, escalating, rising gun violence, gunshots, shots fired incidents in and around that community in particular.

Colleagues, as you know, I was, me and my family were, happened to be personally impacted by all of them, but one in particular.

And so now is the time to talk about some solutions and gather community and make sure that whatever city solutions arise, whatever additional city solutions arise out of this.

I sent a very robust, comprehensive newsletter update last week that included some very robust set of initial steps, but whatever else arises out of this, we need to make sure that it's informed by community.

And which actually brings me to my next point as well as Council Member Solomon aptly noted to kick us off today, like community forum, yes, no, maybe so.

There's no amount of community forums and public safety town halls that we can do that can absolve individuals and communities of their own individual responsibility to not shoot guns at kids.

to not shoot guns at parks next to people's homes, to have bullets lodged in car seats, yes, the city needs to do more.

And in particular, these neighborhoods in particular that are gonna be the subject and focus of next week's D1 Community Safety Town Hall, there is some unfortunate, it's ultimately, They're ultimately attributed to two things SPD tells me, gang violence, one, and two, the surrounding neighborhood, why it leads to a target of opportunity, so to speak, for people to take target practice shots.

Regardless, in these specific neighborhoods, there are some historical levels of underinvestment in these communities, including around basic infrastructure and lighting and lack of sidewalks that don't make it more easy and convenient for people to do this kind of thing.

So we need to do more.

That said, and the city needs to do more.

That said, individuals and communities have a responsibility.

It's a shared responsibility to address these solutions.

Want to make that crystal clear.

So thank you, council member Solomon for highlighting that.

The onto streetlights.

So at last week's council briefing, I had an excused absence, but I know there was some conversation, important conversation around and credit taken for some of the great work that City Light has done to repair some downed streetlights in my district, in Highland Park in particular, which is terrific.

Colleagues, I do appreciate the collaboration and shared commitment to addressing safety in High Point, including through some of these basic infrastructure, streetlight-related investments.

And credit, in my view, is something that it is not a finite resource.

It is a uncapped resource that we can all share and celebrate.

But I also just want to clarify that our office has been working actively with Seattle City Light on this issue since at least late February, following another tragic shooting in that particular neighborhood with respect to the street light issue.

And so grateful for the support from my colleagues and their offices, but as this specific community's direct representative, our office has been leading the push to restore lighting and improved safety in this area.

I've taken a number of neighborhood walking tours with community leaders, responsible members within the executive departments and, uh, And then when three other council members' offices get involved, that really helps light the fire and motivate people.

So just wanna say we can all win in this and celebrate those unique things like achievements.

More work needs to be done and we'll continue, my office will continue to advocate for neighborhoods that have been disproportionately impacted by gun violence.

Special shout out in this issue.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera for last week in my absence, kind of clarifying my office's involvement in some of that.

Also thank you to, let me name names too, because I'm not here to silence anyone or conveniently omit impactful contributions of everyone.

So let me name names, Eric Schmidt from my office, Ian Griswold, Tim Lennon from Council Member Rink's office and plenty of others.

I appreciate your work and contributions toward our shared success.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And finally, quick clarification on the Federal Select Committee panel.

Councilmember Rank, thank you for your partnership in that.

I did not have a chance to be a thought partner in formulating the exact panel, but you and I had some great conversations earlier this year around what the like, idea generation and kind of whiteboarding around what the scope of the challenge is that we should ideally try to highlight at this committee, and so no doubt that that work selection that your office used to work with communities to figure out the best panel composition.

But in any event, I think your broader point was on our partnership on this in which I would wholeheartedly agree.

And so thank you for your collaboration and partnership as well.

Colleagues, that is all I have.

I welcome any comments or questions.

And if not, I think I'm the last one.

So pass it on to the council president.

I have a question about the advisory committee on the levy.

Are those appointments likely to be competitive?

I mean, are there likely to be more than one...

several people put forward for one position.

For the advisory committee, do you mean the modal advisory board selections?

Because there's, I think, 18 offhand individuals.

By district, I mean, because I don't have a district that I'm responsible for and I didn't know if I should put forward names if I had a name that

Go ahead.

Yeah, so we have three or four offices that have already made their selections and they were very competitive.

I'll speak for my office, very competitive.

We interviewed a bunch of people and figured out what would be the best needs for our district.

But I know, so yeah, I think they're fairly competitive, but just for clarity, these are for the seven district-based offices.

Right, that's what I mean.

So for eight and nine.

Got it.

Council President, I have a point of clarification from my earlier report.

Would you like me to do that now or after you go?

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Colleagues, I should have been clearer.

The changes I made to the FEP levy renewal legislation are for clarity and minor grammatical changes.

I did not make any changes to the actual investments and wanted to ensure this was clear.

As I informed you, the legislation is now available for review.

As you know, we discussed the legislation and the investments.

And I made sure that your interests were represented as the executive was putting that together.

And it was very collaborative.

So I did not actually make any changes to the investment pieces.

And I didn't want you to be concerned that that was the case.

But also want to make sure that you know, please do reach out with questions, comments, feedback to both myself and Jasmine Marwaha.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President, for letting me clarify.

Thank you.

So before getting into my regular comments that I have prepared, I wanted to thank Council Member Solomon for voicing your outrage and dismay on what happened over the, on Friday in Beersheba.

I think it was Friday, no, it was Thursday.

and then subsequent comments about gun violence, because it is indeed.

When that happened on Thursday, I did receive word shortly thereafter, and what popped through my mind is what is the response of the organizations or the work of our community safety initiative organizations, like how much what are the immediate steps that are taken when gun violence happens to prevent retribution or perpetuation of the event?

And so I often write to HSD afterwards and say what is happening right now, et cetera.

And Council Member Saka, thank you very much for, again, bringing up what is going on in your district.

I will be joining you at your...

at your town hall.

Thank you very much for that invitation.

And then later in June, I'll be attending the Southwest Precinct Advisory Council where I'll be joined by CAO Davison and Southwest Precinct commander staff for a panel discussion regarding gun violence and safety in general in the community.

It just seems that this is coming up over and over again.

And I do want to state for the record that we did just have an audit on gun violence and what more of the city could be doing or should be doing to reduce and prevent gun violence.

And these are steps that were outlined in several recommendations in that audit.

I CAN'T REMEMBER THE PRECISE DATE THAT IT WAS PRESENTED IN MY COMMITTEE, BUT THESE ARE RESOURCES THAT DON'T COST THE CITY ANYTHING BECAUSE THEY ARE PROVIDED BY OUR PARTNERS AT THE DOJ, DEA, ET CETERA.

AND SO AGAIN, I'LL JUST STATE THAT THOSE RECOMMENDATIONS ARE A PRIORITY FOR ME TO BE IMPLEMENTED.

It's not going to be town halls or audit recommendations.

Nothing is going to, there is no, I'm not even going to say it.

I was going to say that an expression.

There is no one thing or two things that are going to help, but it's incumbent, I would say, because life is worth it, let's just say.

Anyway, moving on.

The Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development Committee meets this Thursday at two o'clock and there are five items on the agenda.

Two mayoral appointments to the Seattle Film Commission and one council appointment to the Seattle Film Commission.

and a briefing and discussion on resolution 32170, which grants conceptual approval to the downtown Seattle to install, maintain, and operate interactive media kiosks in public places located in the Metropolitan Improvement District.

All right, I'll say this in English.

So this legislation is four years in the making.

I was briefed on these kiosks, officially briefed, although we had had previous conversations right now the very first month I took office.

But my first meeting was on April 12th, 2022, was briefed on this initiative.

And I've been working with the stakeholders for the better part of three years.

And this has been a priority for my office and I'm proud to finally have this in my committee.

Why am I so supportive?

I'm so supportive of this initiative, these kiosks, primarily for three reasons.

As economic development chair, this supports local small businesses.

These kiosks will be, and they have been, and there will be one installed in City Hall on the ground floor on the first level later this week, I believe it is Tuesday or Wednesday.

I think it's Wednesday.

But in the case, this supports small businesses.

Users will be able to, wherever they are in the mid-area at first, in phase one, and identify or ask about where they should shop, eat, play, et cetera.

Or...

just regular residents will be able to input a question or a resource that they want and be able to get information in, well, in the moment.

So it supports our local independent small businesses.

There's also a public benefit in the programming.

There will be, people can access transit schedules, library hours, and there will also be emergency information.

If there is a, any kind of, well, an earthquake, for example, and there will be emergency information available very, you know, to the public almost instantaneously.

And all of this information will be multilingual.

And so there's a strong public benefit for these kiosks.

And then finally, these kiosks will generate revenues for the business improvement areas who provide essential services such as trash pickup, graffiti removal, additional security that benefit the whole community and not just the businesses and property owners who pay for the assessment and insert here my usual boilerplate language in support of our business improvement areas and the vital role that they play in our city.

So this is the beginning of the discussion.

This is a resolution that will outline the actual concept and it the director's report, which is many, many, I think it's about 300 pages long as this is also comes along with that resolution.

And so that presents the concept and then the actual legislation that is, that contains the term sheet will be coming in a couple of weeks after that.

So it's exciting for me to see this finally coming to fruition.

And I invite anybody who is interested to check out the kiosk that will be in the lobby downstairs.

All right, and then we've got a briefing and discussion on Councilmember Moore's Council Bill 120978 regarding the Code of Ethics.

So that's the committee meeting coming up.

And just looking back over last week, on Thursday, May Day, I joined the Office of Labor Standards at the Chinese Information and Service Center for their annual outreach event to reach out to businesses in the community and make sure that they are educated about Seattle's labor standards, rules, and procedures.

And this is so important because today as we watch Trump gut our national labor protections and workers' rights while simultaneously throwing businesses into a tailspin through tariffs and unpredictability, it's more important than ever to support both our workers and our employers here in this city.

and proactive outreach like this event is especially important for businesses where English may not be the first language spoken.

And this helps set them up for success and ensure that they have the knowledge and tools they need to do right by their workers.

And let's not forget that these are, we're talking about jobs and anti-displacement efforts in our city.

And so that was a great event and it was great to see people coming forward and going out, spreading out throughout the neighborhood.

And I will echo the point that Council Member Rink stated about local government.

I consistently think to myself that as Trump is bashing West Coast blue cities and making fun of whatever struggles they've had over the past five or years or so, I believe that the best resistant, not the best, but a very good form of resistance to that kind of attack is a very well-functioning and vibrant city that we've got here in Seattle.

And we need to remind ourselves and our communities that there are some positive things happening here.

And this week, my staff will be speaking of attending Visit Seattle's annual meeting Unfortunately, I can't make it because it's during my committee, but it's held during the National Travel and Tourism Week and the event will highlight Visit Seattle's 2024 accomplishments and reveal the latest visitation data and outline key programs and initiatives planned for 2025. And given that it's National Travel and Tourism Week, I want to take a moment to thank the staff at Visit Seattle, the Convention Center, and DSA for everything they do to make Seattle a welcoming, clean, beautiful, and just plain fun city for tourism guests and for folks right here at home and all over the world in helping to create and sustain the jobs while pumping dollars into our local economy.

And again, this is about a well functioning city and having the revenue to provide the programs that we all deem important when it comes to Seattle values and what we're trying to do, not just with delivering basic services, but programs that support our most vulnerable in our city.

That's all I've got to say.

Let's see.

I will hold off on some of the other events that are going on and just ask if there are any comments or questions before proceeding.

Okay.

And let's see if there's any further business to come before the council before we adjourn.

All right.

Hearing no further business, this meeting is adjourned.

It is 340. Thank you very much, everybody.

Thank you.