Seattle City Council Briefing 7/15/19

Okay.

Good morning.

Thank you for being here for a regularly scheduled briefing on July 15th.

A few things just to mention before we go around the table.

We're joined by Councilmembers Bagshaw, Pacheco, Juarez, and Gonzales.

And if there's an objection, the minutes of the July 8th, 2019 meeting will be approved.

Any objection?

Those minutes are being approved.

I just want to mention, I'm sorry.

Well, silence is consent in my rule.

After this meeting, I do need all of you to know that we have a select committee on civic arenas that will start at 1030. I'll be co-chairing the meeting.

Of course, Council Member Wuerz is a co-chair as well.

We have three items to talk about, and I do need a quorum there, so we want to start right at 10.30.

As I said last week, the first hearing, our first matter will be the Seattle Center Arena Sign Overlay District legislation, followed by the Seattle Storm Key Arena Facility Use Agreement amendment.

In other words, amending the agreement with the storm.

And then the other one is a property transfer relative the Skate Plaza site and so let's try to get five members there so we can start that one on time.

I have a proclamation I want to pass around for signature for Carolyn Riley Payne and many of you know Ms. Payne she's been active in the community for over 40 years most notably active as the vice president of the Youth Council at the NWCP and and extremely instrumental in this, I think it's called the SO program, the ACT-SO, which stands for Afro Academic Cultural Technological and Scientific Olympics Program.

Many notable people have passed through that program over the 40 years, and she was appointed to this program 40 years ago for a one-year stint in our areas, has run this program just magnificently.

And so she'll be here this afternoon, and so there's a huge Celebration of her accomplishments at first he had me Saturday which was very well attendance.

We wanted to honor with a proclamation.

So I passed it around for a signature and Although councilmember Gonzalez may talk about a proclamation.

She is interested Why don't we just take that now while we're in the habit of talking about proclamation?

No councilmember Gonzalez has a proclamation.

She's circulated around go ahead councilman Gonzalez.

I

Thank you, Council President.

Good morning, everyone.

I am pleased to pass around a proclamation to recognize Latinx Pride, which will occur this Saturday, July 20th from 5 to 10 p.m.

at El Centro de la Raza in the Beacon Hill neighborhood.

So really excited about being able to not only have a joint proclamation from this city to declare July LGBTQ Latinx Pride Month as a follow-up to June's Pride Month, but this is really an opportunity for us to recognize the contributions in an intersectional manner, the contributions that the Latinx LGBTQ community has made to the broader LGBTQ movement.

I also really want to extend my gratitude and thanks to council president's office for working with us on identifying a manner within the council rules that would allow the city council to be a sponsor of this really important event.

It's a small event and they need a lot of resources to be able to pull it off and I think this is really an important part of the values of the city of Seattle so we'll be a sponsor of this event in the amount of $2,000.

Really welcome everybody to join this Saturday if you are available to.

It'll be a great celebration of the Latinx community who identify as transgender, lesbian, bisexual, gay, two-spirit, queer, or otherwise gender or sexuality non-conforming.

I'm passing around the proclamation now and would appreciate your signature and your support.

And again, if you're able to attend and join us this Saturday, that's July 20th from 5 to 10 p.m.

I am pleased to be able to attend myself personally and will be presenting the proclamation to the organizers and members of the community on Saturday.

Thank you.

Thank you Councilman Gonzalez for sort of spearheading our support for this great event and look forward to it and we'll try to get as many bodies there as possible from the council.

We'll follow your leadership on that.

Council Member Begshaw.

Thank you very much and good morning.

Good morning.

This afternoon from Finance and Neighborhood Committee we've got two items.

One is the appointment of Bobby Humes as Director of our Department of Human Resources.

Many of you know that he has first, I mean first came to Parks and then has come over here at the Mayor's request.

I've had many chances to talk and interview with him.

So that'll be on this afternoon's calendar.

And thanks to President Harrell and Council Member Gonzalez for joining me and supporting him at our committee.

We're also going to be approving the 2019 annual action plan for housing and community development.

During our budget last year, we had roughly 19 million in the pot.

It turned out that we would have $2 million more totaling now $21,167,444.

So that goes into our block grant and home investment partnerships.

So we'll be approving that this afternoon.

Those are the two items I have.

And scheduling, we're going to cancel the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee for the 24th, which is a week from Wednesday.

I'm going to be rescheduling a special meeting on the 31st.

And thanks for your assistance in making that happen and putting that on your calendars.

Just a couple of other things that happened last week that I am very proud of.

Thank you to Brian Chu in my office for organizing some work that we did in the public life study in Pioneer Square, working with SDOT.

The first time we had about 45 volunteers.

I think we've had at least that for the last couple of days.

What we do is actually count the number of people who are there, coming and going, either sitting, what kind of behavior is going on.

then that becomes part of SDOT's basic information for either investments or deciding what we need to do to make it a safer place.

So I'm excited about the fact that it's the first time that had been done in our City Hall Park area, and I just want to acknowledge all the people that joined on that.

It's pretty interesting, I was, and Council Member Pacheco joined me, we were standing over by the fountain, and as many of you know, there is oftentimes less than what you would consider to be positive behaviors.

And this one woman came up to me, and she said, how come there's no garbage cans down here?

We'd clean that up if there were garbage cans.

And I just acknowledge the fact that, you know, that is really true.

If people don't have garbage cans handy and they are dwelling in a particular place, they're going to throw the garbage on the ground, which is what happens.

And we continue to have to clean it up.

So we'll be working with parks and with SPU just to see if we can do something temporarily this summer to help clean that up and to empower the people who are there.

to actually clean up with them and for themselves.

Also, I want to acknowledge the great work that was done.

Dan Strauss, Brian, and Lena in my office helped organize a design charrette for Uptown, South Lake Union, Belltown last Friday.

We spent the entire day with some of the best architects and designers, SDOT, other, we had 45 people there that really know their stuff.

And looking at what we can do to make Thomas Street east of the arena and west of the arena a place that people feel safe and excited about with art and better lighting.

As part of what we're doing this morning later with our civic development and around the arena, I will bring this up again about what we can do.

But the real key thing for SDOT and others is that these changes need to be done by October 2021. So when the puck is dropped, that we've got these designs in play and that they're safer, more encouraging for pedestrians and bikes and everybody to get there.

So just want to bring that up for a notice.

And again, thank you, Estat, for all your work.

And again, October 21, these things have to be in place and not like delayed and delayed.

So if we need budget items, we're going to do it this year.

Very good.

Thank you, Council Member Bixchel.

Thank you.

Council Member Pacheco.

Good morning.

Good morning.

So there are no PLEZ related items on the full council agenda today.

The next PLEZ committee meeting is this Wednesday, July 17th.

There will be three items on the agenda, a briefing and public hearing on our annual comp plan, docketing resolution.

This is a resolution that sets the dockets of amendments that the council will consider next year.

Two, an amendment from SDCI Director Nathan Torgelson on the permit backlog and a briefing from OPCD on their industrial lands work plan.

And for the events for this week, I'm really happy to partner with Councilmember Gonzalez on our domestic violence lunch and learn on services and gaps.

We'll be looking to identify the systemic barriers, gaps, and challenges that we currently have in our existing systems.

I really want to send an appreciation and gratitude to the organizations that will be joining us, the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence, New Beginnings Ending Domestic Violence, the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Seattle Police Department's Victim Support Team, and the Seattle City Attorney's Office for Domestic Violence.

And I want to send appreciation as well to the two staff members that have been leading the charge for us, Roxana Gomez and Alyssa Patrick.

So, thank you.

Very good.

Thank you, Councilmember Pacheco.

Councilmember Juarez.

Good morning, everybody.

Good morning.

So I don't even know where to begin.

So I'm going to do the regular stuff first, and then I want to have a few other words.

First of all, I want to thank Councilmember Herbold for our Lunch and Learn that we did for the AIDS Memorial Pathway last week.

And it was a success, and we learned all about how the AIDS Memorial Pathway is going to be built and how the program and what the artwork is going to look like.

It was a very emotional and beautiful presentation where people had the opportunity to enshrine the historic and current efforts of advocates fighting to end HIV-AIDS discrimination.

So many young lives were lost in the 80s and 90s to this disease, and for us, this city, for the first time to have a memorial and art to commemorate and honor their lives was amazing.

So thank you again, Councilor Herbold.

A big thank you to Councilmember Rasmussen for his continued advocacy, Christopher Paul Jordan, the artist, Randy Engstrom from our arts director, Jason Plourd, and Michelle Hasson with AMP, that's the AIDS Memorial Pathway, AMP, and Kristen Ramirez from Arts for their creativity, hard work, and leadership.

Again, I was contacted by Council Member Rasmussen, oh God, almost two years ago when this first started, and we got money in the budget and this council approved it and moved it forward.

So it's nice to see these type of memorial things finally come into fruition.

So, just briefly, Council President, I know that you're chairing today's Civic Arenas at 10.30 where we're going to, as you said, talk about the overlay district for Seattle Center, the key arena facility use agreement with Seattle Storm, and the public skate plaza near Thomas Street.

And as you know, Council President, this is in line with the three prior agreements or ordinances that this council passed, the development agreement, the lease agreement, and the integration agreement.

And I want to give us all, because we never really do this for ourselves, all of us who are here and certainly are supportive, a big pat on the back, because we passed this $1.6 billion project for a new Seattle center, and we're on our way at no taxpayer dollars.

And that's no easy feat.

I think we're the only city in the country that has done that, that actually owns the property.

no taxes, and we're moving forward.

Now, there are other tax mechanisms, but the local taxpayer would not be paying for, like we did with Soto, and then blew it up after we paid off the bonds.

So anyway, this Wednesday, July 17th, I have my committee, Civic Development, Public Assets, and Native Communities, and the Seattle Public Libraries will present their 2018 RSJI, the Racial Social Justice Initiative Report.

and a reappointment for Jay Rich for the library's board of trustees.

And Jay's been great.

He led us through the library levy.

And as you know, that's, oh, I can just, it's just on the ballot.

Following this, Seattle Parks and Rec have two ordinances up for briefing and possible vote.

The first vote and presentation will be the Discovery Park-King County Outfall Legislation.

This ordinance is your basic technical essential governmental service function where we maintain an overflow pipeline and channel.

And the second one, which is near and dear to my heart up in D5, the Thornton Creek Acquisition on 125th.

This ordinance allows for parks to acquire the deed for open space, park and recreation purposes.

This is a wonderful opportunity for natural lands and green space.

I've been driving by this piece of property for over 30 years.

It's on the North Fork of Thornton Creek.

It's absolutely beautiful.

It's for sale and we're hoping that we can buy it and preserve it and we can create an opportunity for more green space, not only up in D5 but obviously for the City of Seattle.

So I look forward to the committee and the briefing and what we're going to learn about how we can purchase this property.

A big thank you to the county council member Dombowski and Jesus Agare, who all worked hard on this to bring this forward.

And of course, the D5 community, which has been very instrumental in working with us and bringing this piece of property.

And it's literally six blocks from my house.

So I feel a little like I'm going to benefit a little bit more than everybody else.

The last SIPNA meeting before our August council recess is scheduled for a special meeting for Wednesday, July 31st at 12 to 130. Just to let you all know, I think I may take a page out of Councilmember Gonzalez's notebook and since I'll be turning the big 6-0 next Monday, I might have to take that day off.

Not sure.

Okay, do it, okay?

The boss said do it.

I'm going to do it.

Just on a personal note, I want to send a special thank you to Councilmember Gonzalez, Mosqueda, and Pacheco.

We were all texting this weekend and we all felt a certain amount of familia, family about the new politics, not new politics, of go back to where you come from.

What that kind of paranoid and predatory form of politics does to our people.

violence and I Guess I just to a point in my life where every time I think things can't get any worse or something has gone away It hasn't it comes back like a worse than a bad rash Except for this point.

It's people who are literally living in fear in ten cities I have to continue to remind people that human values, progressive values, are democratic values.

And I don't know what I'm going to tell my children's grandchildren, my grandchildren, when they say, Mom, what did you do when all this was going on?

I just feel like we have to do something.

And I know Councilmember Gonzalez and Mosqueda, and I know all of you do, and Pacheco.

I reached out to those three because of our history and our background.

And I would like to remind people that when you say go back to where you come from, we are where we come from.

And the North America is our land.

And I just want to end on that note that I hope we're going to move forward and people are not going to give up and allow this type of hate and racism divide us.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilwoman Juarez.

Can I just say thank you?

I mean, as always, one of the things that I love about this council is the fact that we really are coming from lots of different places.

But thank you for bringing this up.

And one of the most outrageous things when I heard that those tweets was not only the stupidity, the anger, the hatred that that continues to foment, but also the absolutely irresponsible nature of those comments because at least three out of the four women were born here in this country, please.

I think it's Bronx, Cincinnati, Detroit.

It's about as outrageous a statement as I could have ever heard.

But then, as it's absolutely not true, We are all Americans here.

We need to be supporting each other.

Thank you for reaching out.

And let's just continue this sense of usness.

We're all together in this.

Figure out a way that we can continue to lead in our city to be as strong as we possibly can.

I just want to acknowledge the fact that I recognize how much additional pain that you've gone through and thanks for bringing it up.

Thank you.

Thank you Councilmember Juarez.

Councilmember Herbold.

In the interest of showing leadership as Councilmember Harrell says, I have a very short report today.

I have a regional committee update attended Puget Sound

Economic Development Board last week.

I'm attending the Flood Control District Board this week.

And then on Sunday, I just want to say a few words about the fact that the South Park Library is having a reopening celebration.

For those of you who don't know, there have recently been some refurbishments done to the library.

It was closed for two months.

The improvements that have been made are to support the changing ways that patrons are using the libraries and to make the branch a more enjoyable, useful place to read, study, and collaborate.

And the event will be happening Sunday between 2 and 5 p.m.

and there will be a variety of festivities.

I hope people can join us.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Good morning, Mr. President.

Good morning.

I will announce that there's going to be two items on today's full council agenda from the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee.

The first is a bill that I'm very excited about, and I believe all of you are as well.

That's amended council bill 119542. This ordinance relates to provider inflationary adjustments for our human services or social service contracts.

I just want to say thank you to a handful of you for engaging with us on writing amendments and to all of you for being at various hearings over the last six months and for providing your input as we try to identify ways to lift up our social service providers who especially are providing services to our most vulnerable.

As you'll remember last year in the budget we allocated a 2% increase to both non-general fund and general fund contracts in last year's budget cycle.

We also committed at that time to trying to find a way to stabilize that type of adjustment so that every year where there's an inflationary adjustment, the contractors don't have to worry about how they're going to make up the difference.

And the reason that this is so important is we're talking about services for youth development, senior centers, community clinics, folks who are serving those who've experienced domestic violence and sexual assault, also helping to prevent that type of situation, those who are working in food banks and meal programs and homeless shelters, as well as prevention from falling into homelessness by providing housing assistance.

We talk about this being the backbone of the social service network in our city, and the consequence of us not having the ability to give inflationary adjustments automatically year after year has sometimes resulted in organizations having 40 to 50 percent turnover and vacancy rates in these very organizations that are trying to provide services.

So one of the things that I'm really excited about is the work that Council President Harreld has done over the last few days which is to help us identify an amendment that I will be fully supporting that recognizes Our intent is to make sure that we're stabilizing these workers.

And yes, we have inflationary adjustment needs that are affecting the cost of rent and utilities and other operational costs.

And the consequences, those are fixed costs.

And where we have a flexible or variable cost, we see a reduction sometimes in staff.

When the position vacates, the position turns over, it's not filled, and sometimes we recognize that people are taking other jobs because it's much more affordable for them to be able to stabilize their family.

So really appreciate the work you did Council President Harreld over the last few days to help us include that intent language and thank you for bringing that amendment forward today.

I also want to thank Council Member Bagshaw for her work with us as we worked on how do we evaluate are these dollars going to actually help us stabilize these organizations?

Are they providing a direct impact to the workers?

Are they providing a direct impact to the Clients, thank you for the work that you've done especially on the look back period as we do the evaluation and also make sure that that evaluation doesn't just sit on a shelf, that there will be action on it.

So really appreciate all of you.

And Council Member O'Brien is not here, but I want to say thanks to him.

He's been bringing this issue up.

And Council Member Herbold, I know you got a chance to talk to some of the folks last week at the rally, so that was really fun.

Thank you all for your engagement on this issue.

I know it's been a long time in the making, and excited to see us get this over the hurdle today.

I appreciate all of the work that you have done as well.

I don't really want this to become a thank you.

at the meeting or not at the meeting last week, I had proposed an amendment that would make sure that the 2020 budget and the 2021 budget were covered.

But it was quite clear that, first of all, the amendment was not going to pass, but also I want to acknowledge that supporting these service providers is one of the most important things we can do.

And you threaded the needle.

very well.

I'm delighted with the resolution that you're bringing forward, Council President, that you two drafted over the weekend that will acknowledge our intention that we would like this money to go into workers' salaries.

We also know that we can't dictate that, but it's a good first start, something that we are doing, and I'll be working with our budget office over the next few months to make sure that that's incorporated in whatever budget action that the mayor brings down so that we can not get distracted during our actual October and November budget deliberations.

Hopefully we can just move forward with this and not continue to have to debate whether it's a good idea or not.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

Thank you again, Council Member Bagshaw.

I do have just a few more items.

I'll be very quick, Mr. President.

We also have for today's full council agenda the appointment of Victor Lozada for serving on the Domestic Workers Standard Board.

And with his appointment, the board will now be complete.

And his appointment seat was chosen by the board as we outlined in the legislation.

Really excited to have the full Domestic Workers Standards Board up and running the very month that we went live with these new requirements for domestic workers.

The next Housing, Health, Energy and Workers' Rights Committee will be on July 18th at 9.30.

We'll have a presentation by the Office of Labor Standards on the RSJI report.

This was a carryover from our last meeting.

We'll also have a briefing and discussion on the hotel workers' legislation focusing on retention and workload.

These are two of the items that we were going to discuss last week and we're moving to this week's agenda.

We will also have a possible vote on the notice of intent to sell legislation and discussion.

I just wanted to quickly flag thanks to Councilmember Gonzalez's office and your leadership as well.

We're going to be adding to your amazing packet of hotel worker legislation materials a revised copy of our schedule.

We'll be adding basically another month to the discussion so that we can have more in-depth discussion about the four components of the legislation and appreciate your staff bringing us the ideas for rolling out additional times, those work really well for us and I think my colleagues on the committee will agree we will try to do a better job of outlining what can be expected at those committee meetings so that we're not packing in a million things like you saw last week.

So much to do though, got a timeline here and we will get it done by September then.

Weekly, let's see, on Wednesday I'll be doing a site visit of the Tacoma Stability site.

People might know this is where we have the large tent in Tacoma and we also have the weld or pallet shelters that are outside.

Very interested in learning more about those pallet shelters and how they can be stood up quickly to house folks.

They are insulated and you can paint the outside.

That was two of the questions that people asked.

So we're going to go down there and take a visit of that on Tuesday morning.

And I will be speaking at the Summer Health Professionals Education Program put together by the University of Washington School of Medicine.

And I really appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Very good.

Thank you.

Council Member Bakeshaw.

Another thing that you and I are working on and continue to work on this week is the child care effort here in City Hall.

And I want to say thank you to the Northwest Center, who's joining us this week.

And I believe it's Thursday we're meeting with them.

Our DEEL Office, Department of Education and Early Learning, has been taking the lead.

And regards and thanks to the executive for making sure that we have that contract moving forward.

I understand that we've had the architects coming around and looking at multiple sites.

So we can do what they've actually done at King County in the Chinook building.

So, just appreciating the fact that we're working on this as a team and I believe that we'll see something resembling a work plan by the time budget gets here in October.

Very good.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you.

Nothing on this afternoon's agenda from my committee.

You've already signed the proclamation and Council Member Pacheco spoke about my special committee this Tuesday.

That is all.

That's strong leadership right there.

See that?

Okay, so that will conclude our preview of today's actions.

We want a full quorum here at 10.30 for our Select Committee on Civic Arenas.

Huge project for this city, so look forward to seeing everyone at 10.30.

With that, we'll stand adjourned.