Seattle City Council Briefing 11/9/2020

Good morning, colleagues.

It's good to see all of you.

The November 9th, 2020 council briefing meeting will now come to order.

The time is 9.31 AM.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Juarez?

Here.

Lewis?

Present.

Morales?

Here.

Mosqueda?

Present.

Peterson?

Here.

Sawant.

Here.

Strauss.

Present.

Herbold.

Here.

Council President Gonzalez.

Here.

Nye present.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

If there's no objection, the minutes of November 2nd, 2020 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

Really quickly on the President's Report, again, good morning, colleagues.

This is an overview.

At this afternoon's full council meeting, we will consider the payment of bills, the introduction and referral calendar, and eight other items of business.

We will also accept public comment this afternoon for no more than 20 minutes.

Second, as a reminder, the Legislative Department will be observing Veterans Day this Wednesday, November 11th.

Many council member offices, including my own, will be closed on Wednesday, as will general operations for the Legislative Department.

Just a general reminder for members of the public and for all of our staff.

I also want to quickly say thank you to the Seattle voters for overwhelmingly approving Proposition 1, which is Seattle's a transportation benefit district.

Dollars collected from the renewal of the STBD represent direct investments into our transit system and transportation infrastructure, including the West Seattle Bridge, which we are going to hear about here shortly.

The renewal of STBD will be absolutely critical to the people of Seattle as we look towards economic recovery for all of us, but especially for our essential workers that continue to rely on transit.

And our transportation network for mobility so many thanks to all the voters and of course the campaign workers who worked on this campaign during these very challenging times and last but certainly not least.

Thank you to all of the people across the country who turned out in historic numbers to vote in our presidential election.

Here in Seattle, hundreds of people poured into streets and neighborhoods to celebrate the news that the American people have chosen Joe Biden to be our next president and Kamala Harris to be our next vice president.

And like so many Seattle residents, I too am absolutely thrilled by these election results and really firmly believe that together, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to provide every American the much needed leadership and stability that we need during these incredibly difficult times.

And really hope that this is an opportunity for us to heal those fissures of hate and division left in the wake of the Trump administration.

And of course, while the election result, no election, eases our most pressing issues and needs of our community members, it does provide us an opportunity to confront some of these significant challenges together in a new day here.

So as a mother and as a woman of color and the daughter of immigrants, I stand at the ready to continue the hard work needed to partner with the new administration, other elected leaders, and community organizers to effectuate this really important and desperately needed systemic change that we need for our communities.

I know many of you probably share the same sentiments and really excited about being able to be here on the other end of a very long election week and looking forward to continuing to work with all of you on so many of the important things that we all care about.

So thank you for giving me an opportunity to Make some comments about that at the top.

I'm sure many of you during your reports are probably going to do the same.

Let's go ahead and dig into the first presentation on today's agenda, which is the presentation on the West Seattle High Rise Bridge Safety Project.

We have a couple of, we have three presenters with us today.

Director for SDOT, Sam Zimbabwe, Heather Marks, also with the Seattle Department of Transportation, and our very own Calvin Chow from Council Central staff is also with us to present on this agenda item number three.

And before we go ahead and begin the presentation from Asadat and Calvin Chow, we are going to go ahead and hear from our Transportation and Utilities Chair, Council Member Peterson.

And then we will hear from District 1 Representative Council Member Lisa Herbold as well.

So I'm going to hand it over to Chair Peterson to make some introductory remarks.

And then after that, we'll hear from Council Member Herbold.

Thank you, Council President.

Good morning, colleagues.

I'd like to welcome back our Seattle Department of Transportation and thank them for their ongoing work to stabilize the West Seattle Bridge while they plan for repairing or replacing that vital infrastructure.

SDOT's managing that crisis on top of running their vast department with over 1,000 employees and multiple ongoing construction contracts as they make improvements throughout Seattle, even during the pandemic, for all modes of travel.

In addition to the weekly updates on the West Seattle Bridge that we all receive via email from SDOT, we had more formal briefings from SDOT in April and then at my committee in August.

We decided this week was timely for another larger update as the mayor gets closer to a decision on whether to repair or replace.

There's no immediate legislative action that council is required to take.

Earlier this year, the city council already authorized most of the financing necessary for the initial traffic mitigation and to stabilize the high bridge because we need to stabilize the bridge whether we repair or replace it.

The mayor has, however, just this morning, encouraged us to provide individual input to her and her office later this week on this issue of the West Seattle Bridge.

As we know, the West Seattle Bridge is a critical piece of infrastructure, not only for the 100,000 residents of West Seattle, but also for our entire region, and really for our nation, considering the importance of the Port of Seattle, our historic maritime economy, and international trade.

Over the last few months, Councilmember Herbold and I have also been attending the meetings of the Community Task Force, a diverse 30-member task force dedicated to providing input on this project.

These task force members have participated in over a dozen meetings and spent numerous hours reviewing material and I just want to acknowledge and thank those volunteers for their dedication to this project and to their communities and to our region.

I also want to thank Calvin Chow Central staff who's had to track this issue and keep us informed all the while doing other projects and then the city budget as well.

So in addition, Councilmember Herbold and I have been meeting every other week with SDOT to monitor and ask questions about the progress of not only the engineering work and plan for the high bridge, but also traffic mitigation solutions that impact residents on the ground.

As we await a decision from the mayor on repair or replace, the presentation today will be an opportunity to bring everybody up to speed on what actions SDOT has taken to date to stabilize the bridge, repair for the repair or replace decision, and implement critical mobility changes for the West Seattle community.

We're very excited, Council President Gonzalez acknowledges too, about voters renewing the Seattle Transportation Benefit District.

Even though bus ridership's down sharply during the pandemic, the needs have increased around West Seattle with the high bridge closed.

And the new STBD funding officially recognizes the needs of West Seattle during this crisis, as well as support for infrastructure maintenance and capital improvements across our city.

So thank you for allowing me to have these opening remarks.

I'm going to hear from Councilmember Herbold now.

Thank you so much Councilmember Peterson for those introductory remarks and I want to provide District 1 representative Councilmember Herbold an opportunity to also share some words with us, please.

Thank you.

I'll keep it real short.

Chair Peterson did a great job of providing background and context.

I want to also echo the thanks that Chair Peterson gave to SDOT for their managing of this crisis, both as it relates to working with community, to to managing the technical advisory panel, to developing the West Seattle, the ReConnect West Seattle plan, working really diligently to address the severe needs for communities living in the detour routes and addressing the traffic and And congestion and safety, pedestrian safety and driver safety needs in those areas, their dedication and focus has been really appreciated.

As well as also, again, managing the process with the community in determining what our next steps are.

So since the closure of the West Seattle Bridge, On March 23rd, the impact has been felt very strongly in District 1. As the council member representing District 1, I hear every day from residents and businesses that are hurting.

Once social distancing ends or decreases, traffic and access issues will only increase and and likely very dramatically.

The sooner we restore the bridge, the better.

That is the premium value for me.

The bridge is a critical regional asset intricately linked to our maritime economy and the Port of Seattle, with links that go inland, throughout the state, and beyond.

Like Councilmember Peterson, I hope that the federal election may assist with federal funding, and I'm really encouraged by the attention from Congresswoman Jayapal and our senators, who have been very, very supportive of the city's efforts.

I've met with Estat regularly, participated as a member of the West Seattle Bridge Community Task Force, which has met 12 times, including during the last four weeks as well.

In late November, the members of the task force provided their recommendations to the mayor on whether to repair or replace the West Seattle Bridge, and the decision is in her hands.

Our recommendations, so council members understand, is not a consensus opinion, from the task force.

There is, I think, a wide spectrum of perspectives.

And so, individually, we have been providing our feedback to the task force, which will then be sort of compiled and presented to the mayor.

And the opportunity for us here today, this morning, is for I think that's all I have to say.

I'm looking forward to hearing from council to get up to speed, ask questions, and again, as we've heard from the deputy mayor this morning, the mayor is also interested in council feedback as well.

Thank you so much council member for those comments as well.

Really do appreciate the opportunity to get a in depth briefing.

Once again, I think this is the 3rd, maybe the 4th time has been with us in council briefing really excited about the opportunity to dig into.

the work that you all have done thus far.

And do sincerely appreciate the offer from the mayor to get a broader set of input and guidance from the council on this really important infrastructure issue.

So really looking forward to getting up to speed here.

Sam, do you want to kick us off?

And we can just do a quick round of introductions, and then Shauna can share the presentation.

Sure.

So I'm Sam Zimbabwe, director of SDOT.

And with me today is Heather Marks, who's been leading up the whole program of efforts that you'll hear about this morning.

And she's going to do the bulk of the talking.

And then Shauna Larson is here, too.

leading the charge on sharing the PowerPoint today, but also liaising with Council on this and any other issues you all have with SDOT.

So, Sean, why don't you bring up the presentation?

We've got a lot to cover, and I know that there's going to be a lot of questions.

I would encourage questions as we go.

If there are clarifications or if there are larger, more philosophical things, maybe we could hold those till the end.

But I defer to the Council on how you'd like to Heather and I, I just want to thank you all for the opportunity to be here.

It has been quite a while since we've been in front of the full council to talk about where we are.

And as we get started, I'll give a little bit of introduction.

Heather's going to take us through the bulk of it.

And really, when we talk about the West Seattle High Bridge program as a whole, it's both our efforts on the bridge and in the community to mitigate the impact of this.

And I want to thank Council Members Peterson and Herbold for their tireless support and engagement in this throughout the process, as well as we go through all of the work that's here.

You know, I think Councilmember Peterson has also continually highlighted the need for focus, not just on the West Seattle Bridge, but on all of our bridges and our maintenance needs as a city.

And then Councilmember Herbold has been engaged with the West Seattle community and South Park community, the whole Duwamish Valley that is feeling the impact.

And I think that their engagement has made our work better as a whole.

I also want to reiterate the thanks for the West Seattle Bridge Community Task Force.

That is a number of people who have been giving lots of time in the midst of a very stressful time to really help us channel the viewpoints of the community, hear feedback, understand where we have questions both about the mitigation efforts that are underway and about the infrastructure decisions that are before us.

And I'll say that we recognize that this has been a tremendously stressful time, that the West Seattle Bridge has only added to the potential impact, and we are working with speed and urgency to restore travel across the Duwamish and also mitigate the most harmful impacts of the closure.

The disruption to commuters, residents, tribal communities, health care and essential workers, local businesses, city services, the maritime community, manufacturing, we've all felt these impacts.

I know those are being felt throughout the community.

Many folks who I didn't mention there.

And really, this should only happen once.

This should only be something that happens this one time.

And we have not passed up a single moment in advancing our options, even when folks hear about about a decision before us, we're not losing any time or speed in the effort to move forward on both repair or replace and be able to restore this transportation connection as quickly as possible.

Public safety and equity have been at the forefront of what we have prioritized as a department.

When we took this difficult decision to close the bridge back in March, that was because of the rapidly accelerating crack growth.

We are now, and we'll talk about this morning, coming to the end of the first stabilization efforts that we've put into place.

Those were not the result of a lack of maintenance.

We've done everything that we've had to from a maintenance perspective, and that has meant that we have all of these options still in front of us.

It's also the work that you'll see and you'll hear about was not possible when the bridge was open.

So as we had to respond to this need, Regardless of whether it was planned or unplanned, the bridge would have had to close to put into place the stabilization efforts that are before us now.

So we've got a lot of material.

I'm going to stop there.

I'll interject maybe if there's anything to add, but Heather's been giving this presentation and things like it all across the Duwamish Valley communities for months on end and has all the information to provide an update for the council.

With that, I will turn it over to Heather.

I'll just say, actually, before I do, what's changed since late April, these bullets list that out, but we've declared the bridge an emergency.

The first time that we know of that an infrastructure, piece of infrastructure has been the subject of an emergency declaration, we've done A whole range of community engagement.

We'll talk a little bit more about that.

We've also done almost 200 specific traffic and detour route improvements.

Work to advance funding and get a handle on what funding will be necessary.

We've completed a cost benefit analysis, which tries to look very equally at.

all of the options on the table while we continue to move forward on both repair and replace as well.

And we continue to manage low bridge access and the critical connection that that still provides to and from West Seattle.

Moving forward with photo enforcement later this year, as well as making sure that we have the right balance of access needs to make sure that remains a critical freight transit and emergency response corridor.

So with that, I will turn it over to Heather and let her take it away.

Really quickly before Heather begins her portion of the presentation, colleagues did want to acknowledge that, again, as I mentioned this morning, Kelvin Chow is on the call with us.

And Kelvin, did you want to make some comments now or did you want to wait till later?

No, I think I'm here mostly to support the council members and follow up on any questions you might have.

And I'll interject if it makes sense to you.

Great.

Perfect.

So Calvin is available to us as our council central staff policy analyst lead on this particular issue.

So colleagues, if you do have questions.

That you'd like to direct a Calvin as opposed to the department.

He is available for those questions.

And then I know that we all now know how to use the raise your hand feature in zoom because we've been using it diligently and expertly in our budget committee meetings.

So if you do have questions throughout the presentation.

Please raise your hand using the raise your hand feature on Zoom, and I will be monitoring that screen, participant screen, and will call on folks in the order that I see hands raised.

That'll just make my job a little easier, colleagues, since in the presentation view, it's difficult to see everybody's tiles at the same time.

So please make sure to use your, the raise your hand feature on Zoom if you have a question.

And I am happy to facilitate that Q&A process.

All right, Heather, take it away.

Thank you so much, Council President Gonzalez and all the council members for inviting us here to brief.

As Sam mentioned, I have given this presentation a number of times.

And so if I skate over something too quickly, please don't hesitate to ask.

I'm happy to elaborate on any of these items.

So just to take us back to March 23rd, that was the day that we closed the bridge to traffic due to rapid growth in cracking along the center section of the bridge.

And even after we took that live load off the bridge, we noticed that the cracks continued to grow.

And so that confirmed for us that removing traffic was the right thing to do.

As you all know, the mayor declared the closure of the West Seattle Bridge a city emergency in July.

And as ever, public safety is our top priority as we work to stabilize the bridge and determine a path going forward.

Next slide, thank you.

This is a fun 3D kind of image that demonstrates what we are doing to stabilize the bridge.

And when I say stabilize the bridge, I mean literally do things to make sure that it doesn't fall down, just to bring it out of the engineering world and into real people speak.

Um, we have added new post tensioning, uh, to the center section of the bridge, which is what you see here, as well as, uh, release the restraint on the lateral bearing at pier 18. Um, the stabilization won't restore traffic, but it does, uh, improve the safety of the standing bridge and preserves the structure from further impacts from the environment.

Uh, next slide, please.

This is a really good picture that can show the scale of what we're doing inside the bridge.

And I believe that Shauna sent out a broad invitation for council members to come and see inside the bridge so you can experience this for yourself.

This image shows the inside of one of the box girders underneath the bridge.

You can see from the size of the people and the size of the equipment, including the brackets that fasten the post-tensioning tendons, as well as the deviator blocks, that this is really big.

These are big things that are happening inside.

And this stabilization puts us on the right path if we repair the bridge, and it's also necessary for safe demolition if we decide to move to replace.

Next slide, please.

Just to give a little finer point on this, each one of those brackets is connected through the structure of the bridge, down below the bridge.

Each one of those weighs over a ton.

Each of those post-tensioning strands is about 300 feet long and is being ratcheted up to 280,000 pounds of tension.

dozen strands that are that are shown there this is being done in this this and then there's a parallel there's two of these box girders underneath the deck of the bridge so this is being done two times one on each in each of those and and that's what's being necessary to stabilize the bridge when we get to talking about the repair pathway that would be that would be sort of the same type of thing, but more of the same type of thing in a repair scenario.

So that's just a sense of scale of what we're talking about when we talk about stabilization, and then as we move into talking about repair.

Right, and just, sorry, Shauna, just to also give you a sense of scale, each of those strands holds 40,000 pounds.

And so that's 280,000 pounds per tendon.

That's the big thick piece.

So we're talking about a huge amount of work that this steel rope, if you will, is performing for us.

Next slide, please.

Thank you, Shauna.

So just in terms of keeping folks informed, we are sending out updates to more than 8,000 people every week.

week.

Those are folks that have signed up.

So that's something that you can do on our web page.

We've posted 51 blog postings with the community.

We have twice as many blog users this year as we did last year, which is pretty significant.

We've done a huge amount of interviews in response to media requests.

We've met with more than 100 stakeholder groups, which is why I'm so good at delivering this presentation.

And we've created four advisory groups to inform and guide the city's response.

You've heard both Council Member Peterson and Council Member Herbold mention the community task force.

We've also employed a technical advisory panel made up of structural engineers and geotechnical engineers to help us.

And we have brought together an employer resource group, which consists of some of the largest employers in the city as well.

as a maritime and industrial town hall.

Next slide, please.

So we created an email box to collect all the responses that we've had.

This pie chart here shows you what kind of topics we're seeing.

I always find it really interesting to see that low bridge access gets more play than the repair or replace decision.

We've launched ReConnect West Seattle to build traffic management and transportation projects based on community input.

And we've stood up and are working with a low bridge subcommittee to manage access across the lower Spokane Street Bridge, especially with the advent of automated enforcement.

Next slide, please.

So we maintain emergency vehicle access as the top priority for the low bridge.

This is the little bridge that could, right?

It can carry about 20,000 people a day, 20,000 vehicles a day, and as such is not a good substitute for the high bridge, but it is a good substitute for emergency vehicles as well as freight and transit.

We have opened up access for other users including everyone between 9 p.m.

and 5 a.m.

and it's funny when you look at the volume on the bridge, it just spikes right after 9 p.m.

so I'm sure people are making good use of that.

School buses and employer shuttles will be able to use the low bridge when they operate.

We have about 15 van pools worth of essential workers mostly working at hospitals in the region.

We have opened up access for certain Maritime and industrial users, including ILWU, they need access, not for commute purposes, but in order to get to and from aspects of their job during the day.

We've also handed over about 13 placards for the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce and the Junction BIA so that small businesses can get to Costco or wherever they need to go to resupply their businesses.

You all are probably well aware that automated enforcement cameras will be installed in November.

We'll be testing those in December and monetary penalties will begin in early January.

You can see from this photograph that we have already installed the signage that is required there.

The access policy will be dynamic with ongoing monitoring and adjustment as we learn how we can provide more access while maintaining that priority for emergency vehicles.

Next slide, please.

So ReConnect West Seattle is a program to allow similar levels of traffic travel across the Duwamish River to those that were seen before the closure of the West Seattle High Bridge and At the same time, we want to reduce the impact of environmental injustice in the Duwamish Valley.

So we've done a great deal of work, lots of public input since July.

We had a survey where we received 15,000 responses, more than 1,700 responses to neighborhood-specific ballots.

We have 22 projects underway, and that's including the other traffic management projects that we've done just as a way to maintain flow.

We have about 33 projects that are being designed right now and planned for delivery in 2021. As you all know, the wintertime when it's cold and rainy is not a great time for paving and installing lane lines.

We are also working with our partners on a mobility action plan to increase the availability of transit both rubber tire transit, as well as waterborne transit.

And we're going to be delivering most of that in 2021. Next slide, please.

We are engaging heavily with the neighborhoods of Georgetown South Park and Highland Park.

These are the neighborhoods through which almost all of the detour traffic needs to go.

And they have all these neighborhoods have seen a significant increase in traffic.

And this does a couple of things.

Not only does it create a situation where unfamiliar and frustrated drivers are making choices that they maybe wouldn't make in terms of speed and diversion in their own neighborhoods, but it's also increasing the levels of air pollution.

So we have a partnership with the Department of Neighborhoods and we're so grateful for them.

to engage and elevate input from Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities, particularly in these neighborhoods.

Regular updates and engagement via the community liaisons in seven different languages.

And we've hosted socially distanced, as you can see in these pictures, walking tours, briefings over Zoom, and meetings to understand neighborhood safety priorities.

Next slide, please.

So, as Sam mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, we're moving head urgently to restore traffic.

I'm speaking to you from a very chilly following neighborhood of West Seattle and Sam also lives in West Seattle.

So this is this is not just a job.

It's it's personal for us.

So, since the bridge closed, we've simultaneously been advancing both repair and replacement pathways and I'll tell you.

that all of our engineer friends that we work with would really prefer that we do this in sequence, but we're doing it all simultaneously.

There is not yet a divergence on the different pathways.

We can still go either way and haven't lost any time.

All the work to date informs decisions and provides an improved understanding of the risks involved with both options.

Risk tolerance is ultimately the biggest consideration for anybody who is evaluating these choices.

And there are so many factors and perspectives to consider not just the perspectives and and of our neighbors here in West Seattle and throughout the Duwamish Valley but also just the solid engineering that has to go into either of these choices.

So there's a lot to consider.

Next slide please.

And as such, um, for you and, and certainly for the mayor whose decision ultimately it is, there are so many things that are going into this.

Um, the cost benefit analysis is one piece.

Uh, the technical advisory panel input is another, uh, the community task force feedback is critical.

And of course, all of us have to consider the external factors in the city state and the nation.

SDOT, as the owner of the asset, has some asset management input to give.

We have to be thinking very carefully about timing and funding opportunities.

And then, of course, just the uncertainties and risks that follow along with any decision of this magnitude.

Next slide, please.

So just a real quick primer on the cost-benefit analysis, which I think we have sent to all the council members if you're feeling like 85 pages is your jam.

So the cost benefit analysis provides analysis for five different alternatives.

We started out with six, but alternative three was removed due to cost and feasibility issues.

If you have questions about that, we can maybe talk about that a little bit later.

We looked at shoring, full repair, superstructure replacement, that's where you take the top part off, full replacement, which is both the top part as well as the piers, and then an immersed tube tunnel option, which instead of being on alignment, it needed to be off alignment.

The cost-benefit analysis is a conservative evaluation reflecting 0% design.

The costs that we're just about to talk about are not estimates, just order of magnitude conceptual cost data that's really important.

The cost-benefit analysis doesn't yield a decision.

It just helps us understand and compare performance costs and risks.

Next slide, please.

So the synopsis is probably what you would guess even if you hadn't read it.

Repair has a better cost-to-performance ratio, has a lot lower upfront capital costs.

Ultimately, though, a much higher lifecycle maintenance cost There's a quicker return to traffic, but there's also significant risks associated with that, including another unplanned closure in the future.

The replacement options, 4, 5, and 6, perform better overall, but they have significantly higher upfront capital costs, lower lifecycle maintenance, and a little bit longer time to return to traffic.

The success doesn't depend on the bridge reactions to stabilization, and there's a lower risk that it wouldn't achieve its 75-year service life.

Next slide, please.

One of the ideas that came to us through our request for proposals process as we were looking for somebody to design the new bridge is this what we're calling the rapid replacement option.

It was a concept developed by HNTB.

This is SDOT's replacement design consultant.

I do want to note that this isn't a novel concept or something that's never been done, but it is new for us.

The steel bridge lightens the load on the existing shortened piers, and so it improves some performance.

There's a bridge on Lake Champlain that HNTB delivered really quickly and really inexpensively.

I encourage you to examine that if you like.

It of course needs further evaluation, but offers an accelerated schedule and also streamlines permitting and construction.

Next slide, please.

So here is a nice comparison of all the alternatives.

This is all data that is coming out of the cost benefit analysis with the exception of rapid replacement.

That idea came to us at a time when we were already underway with the cost-benefit analysis.

So these are, you'll see that these have ranges instead of specific rough order of magnitude costs.

The structure of the CBA required us to have just one number.

So these look very, very specific, like very specific numbers, but they should not be regarded that way forever.

This table shows you the alternatives with their estimated upfront construction costs, total ownership costs, the year-ish that they would restore traffic, and the lifespan that we could expect out of the repair or the replacement.

Next slide, please.

So,

The West Seattle Bridge CIP, the immediate response, and thank you all very much for understanding the criticality of getting a little bit of money flowing so that we could keep the work going.

Our project is still in preliminary design, and so the costs presented are rough order of magnitude range estimates.

There's about $190 million added in the new CIP this year.

$100 million in existing bond authority and up to $150 million anticipated with additional sources TBD.

We've secured $8.4 million in federal grants.

Next slide, please.

So obviously a project such as this, whether it is repair or replacement, it's going to require a funding strategy, not just the city council writing a check.

So we're going to leverage that initial investment.

And again, thank you for that.

It really does demonstrate the value that the council and the city put on this bridge.

We've spent about $20 million to date on stabilization and emergency repairs, but also on the traffic mitigation efforts and planning.

Our intention is to partner with Washington State, the Port of Seattle, the Puget Sound Regional Council, and other stakeholders Everyone recognizes the local, regional, and statewide economic and mobility significance of the bridge.

That hasn't been difficult to explain.

We also anticipate seeking federal funding, both discretionary grants and formula funds.

We've worked very closely, particularly with Senator Murray, to support new investment for bridges in the next surface transportation authorization.

And we also intend to use USDOT programs including InfraBuild and TIFIA as well as other competitive programs to help fund this.

We're also pursuing additional funding for bridges in the fiscal year 2022 appropriations and any potential future infrastructure package.

I for one am crossing my fingers.

Next slide please.

Everybody loves infrastructure right?

All right, that is the end of my presentation.

I'm very happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Heather, for that presentation.

Really, really appreciated it.

Calvin, anything you want to add for council members to consider before we open it up for questions?

I think the only thing I wanted to just highlight is there isn't any legislative action in front of you today.

There is obviously a budget impact.

That's you are considering in the 2021 budget earlier this summer.

You did take action to approve 70Million for this project.

There's an additional 30Million proposed in the 2021 budget and then.

The executive signaled their intent to request an additional 50 million in 2022 so No actions in front of you today except for the budget related actions Okay, and it's been mentioned a few times that the repair and replacement decision ultimately belongs to to Mayor Durkin And one, you know, I'd like to get confirmation of that from you, Calvin.

And then two, if you could, you know, if you could describe sort of what council's actions legislatively would be limited to, you know, once that decision is made, that I think would be helpful context.

Sure.

So certainly the mayor gets to direct the department on how she wants to proceed with the project and pursue replacement or repair.

It is at zero percent design right now so we don't know what we don't know and we could learn more about the costs or risks that are associated with the project so I tend to think of it more about sort of identifying a preferred alternative for the environmental work that is to come.

It could be that we have to change course and so it may be prudent to think about whatever option we don't pick how do we make sure that that's not completely lost internally if we did have to change track.

I think the next obvious opportunity would be the budget process going forward to kind of understand what the status of the funding requests are.

Certainly, if there's any grant funding or grant applications related to it, that may be another opportunity for council to be involved.

Council always does control the purse strings.

So there is that sort of back check on it, but it is certainly the executive's prerogative to sort of decide the first steps on which way we go.

Yeah.

Thanks, Calvin, for that.

I just thought that would be important information for the general public in terms of who's making decisions where and how.

And in asking that question, I don't want to imply that we are not working collaboratively with the executive on this particular issue.

We have been, in fact.

really have appreciated the transparency and the sharing of, um, of, of so much information that is going to be relevant to, um, working on this issue collectively and together.

So, um, so, so do, do appreciate, uh, making sure that we all understand what our respective official roles are in terms of this project, while also making sure that the general public has an understanding and confidence that there has been really strong collaboration and cooperation between the executive and the city council on this particular capital project.

So I appreciate that.

We have a couple questions in the queue.

Thank you, colleagues, for using the raise your hand feature.

First up is Councilmember Herbold and then Councilmember Morales also has questions or comments.

Councilmember Herbold, please.

Thank you so much.

This is a question for Calvin.

Thank you so much for sharing with council members over the weekend the memo from our independent council consultant, RHC.

And I'm just wondering, is this the appropriate time to ask that you present those sort of preliminary observations from RHC, or is there another way that we should discuss that?

No, that's fine.

I could do that now.

So earlier this year, Council did hire a structural engineering consultant to help bring some structural engineering expertise to support your consideration of this project.

And I did send out a memo at the end of last week, just documenting their review of the cost-benefit analysis.

They really had three kind of main points.

As structural engineers, they feel that You have the original design drawings and you have the structure that can be evaluated.

And so it is possible to learn more about the repair option and compare it at a different level than this sort of more conceptual replace option.

And that may help better understand the costs, better understand the risks.

I think it's sort of a, I think the executive has been clear that they've been trying to kind of put the options at a level playing field in the CBA and I think our consultants perspective is, but you could learn more if you wanted to to to try to identify those costs further.

Another issue that they raised kind of related is related to the life cycle costs and just sort of questioning how that is a like for like comparison.

And then the last issue that they raised was sort of support to bring the rapid replacement option up to the same sort of level of analysis.

And they listed some sort of technical structural engineering types of risks that should be evaluated.

I think it would be helpful, Calvin, if you could explain a little bit more about, in particular, sort of the observations around the way the comparisons were made and whether or not they were sort of, for instance, the life cycle costs, for instance.

If you could sort of tease that out a little bit more so folks in the viewing audience understand the implications of of the consultant's recommendations in that area?

Sure.

And I may get this wrong because I'm drawing it from memory, but some of the issues are when the CBA shows something like a 15 to 40 year consideration of use of the structure, How, how are we considering the future phase that the sort of the back end of repair phase and comparing that in an apples to apples way.

How I think some of their concerns were also around, you know, if you did find out if you did more engineering on the structure of the existing structure.

and you were able to know more for certain about the costs and what's involved, maybe you do significantly reduce the risks that are factored into the CBA.

And in their consideration, they would expect the repair options to show a little better than they do.

I do think it's driven a lot by the fact that with the existing design and with the structure that is available to be analyzed and modeled, There's more tools available to explore that option than we have for some of these conceptual ideas that are still rapidly evolving in our 0% design.

Oh, I want to make sure that I'm tracking this conversation because I think it's an important one.

So colleagues, for those of you who may have missed Calvin's email, that went out on Friday.

and it's time stamped 12.40 p.m.

if you're digging through your inbox currently.

It's a two-page memorandum from RHC Engineering, Jane Lee and Jimmy Chen.

The memo is dated November 6th and does go through an analysis of the cost benefit analysis that we're discussing here.

And I think what I'm understanding from this conversation is that the consultants that are at RHC Engineering are flagging that the cost-benefit analysis presented to us by SDOT related to alternative two, which is repair versus a superstructure replacement alternative four, may not be completely reflective of what the true costs would be in terms of performance as well.

Is that, in my understanding, sort of generally- My interpretation-

My interpretation of the memo is that they are really highlighting, if you remember in the presentation today, the SDOT kind of highlighted that the CBA is trying to compare options at a 0% design and trying to compare them as like-for-like options.

And my real takeaway from the memo is that our structural engineering professionals I think that you could do you could learn a lot more about the about the repair option and sort of ratchet down your, your knowledge about that, that might better inform the decision, I think, in general, they, repair options because it's what they know, it's their professional job.

But I think it's part of how the decision has been structured in the CBA at least, is to try to stay at a high level.

And I think what our consultant is saying is, but you have other information available to you, how does that factor into the decision?

Got it, okay.

That's helpful, I appreciate it.

Council Member Morales?

Thank you to my questions.

Thanks for flagging the memo.

I didn't miss it.

So I will make sure that I get a chance to look through that.

I have a few questions.

So if it's okay, maybe I'll just ask them all and then we can.

from there.

The first question is about slide five and the post-tension work that you were talking about.

I am not a structural engineer, not any kind of engineer, so I'm wondering if you could offer sort of a layman's explanation of what's in that box and how that is helping hold up the bridge.

I'm interested in learning a little bit more about a rapid replacement and maybe Maybe that conversation will change after we dive into a little bit more about this memo that we've received recently.

But in that vein, I'm also interested, not that I'm advocating for anything in particular yet, but just out of curiosity, are there any alternatives that are being considered to repair or replace?

I know this is also part of the conversation, some of the questions that I'm hearing.

from constituents, and particularly because of the next question, which is what are the, how will the climate impacts or the carbon emissions about either of these options, any of these options be assessed?

And then the last question is really when you were on slide 18 and talking about the costs of whether it's repair or replace and the different kind of funding sources that we might have available to this, I'd be interested to know to date how, get information on any WIMBY contractors that we are using for this work.

and what plans are in the future for making sure that we are also using women and minority-owned businesses, contracting with them for this very substantial work that needs to happen in the city.

Thank you.

jump in and see if I can respond to the previous discussion, as well as some of these questions, Councilor Morales.

And I'm also not a structural engineer, so I'll preface my comments that way as well.

The The way that the bridge is constructed what you're looking at in slide five which john is resharing again.

This is the structure of the bridge and it's called a box girder and the what the floor of this is is the bottom of the bridge that you see from underneath it.

And then the top of what you see is the ceiling or what's underneath the roadway structure, what's underneath the deck of the structure.

And so this is the hollow area within the bridge that has always been there, that's there.

So what this is doing is sort of cinching everything together because what was happening as the pattern of the cracks started to show made it seem like the weight of the bridge was transferred incorrectly for how it was designed and was leading towards the center of the bridge collapsing.

And so putting these post-tensioning strands holds it all together, cinches it back together in tension, that will be the first part of transferring the loads back to where the bridge was originally designed to carry.

This shows, again, inside of the bridge, it's cutting away one of the walls of the girder to show what's going on inside that area.

The rest of this, the repair work that would be needed would be to do the same type of thing, but going from one pier to the next pier to tie the walls back together to the pier structure.

I think in response, we got the same memo from the council consultants.

And I think as we've tried throughout this process to be very transparent and share information with the whole public.

We've gotten lots of great feedback from an engineering perspective.

We have continued to do that.

And just to be very clear, the CBA is not a decision-making I mean, it's not a decision-making thing.

It doesn't make the decision for us.

It is a tool and a part of the inputs into this large decision.

And the CBA tries to take the same level of information for all of the alternatives and the alternative pathways and give us an apples-to-apples comparison.

As we do each step of the way repair work, the stabilization, the installation of real-time monitoring equipment that we did early on in the process, what's called non-destructive evaluation, looking within the concrete to understand the strength of the steel that's left in the bridge, which has been, you know, we found a lot of strength left in the steel.

That has informed our understanding of a repair pathway.

And as we do this right now, we continue to learn more about the current structure of the bridge.

based on how it responds and whether it responds as we anticipate it will from a structuring perspective and the monitoring equipment that we have there.

So that continues to evolve.

The CBA was a point in time and the CBA doesn't necessarily need to continue to evolve to inform the decision.

It sort of gave a good point in time understanding And then we continue to learn more.

And so it is part of the information overall that we get.

So we won't know exactly how the stabilization work.

Works until it's done and and we'll.

You know, in the interest of not losing time and sort of making sure we're advancing all options at the same.

Pace we continue to do work both on.

Design of a replacement and on repair that helps.

give us the best possible information going forward.

The rapid, I guess to answer Councilor Morales some of your additional questions, the rapid replacement, I think Heather talked about this a little bit.

It was a new idea that came to us through the design firm that we've brought on to lead a replacement.

They have experience with a very similar project in connecting New York and Vermont across Lake Champlain.

And so it's a new idea.

We don't have any bridges that are built like this right now in the city, but it is not unheard of and it's been actually tested and done exactly this way of doing a rapid replacement with this style of bridge by the team that we've got on board to help lead us through an eventual replacement.

In terms of climate impact.

We are keenly aware of the climate emergency that we are in and the West Seattle bridge was critical to moving thousands and thousands of West Seattle lights and others back and forth across the Duwamish in bus lanes that were on the bridge.

that that the loss of that transportation capacity has meant those uh there's been a air quality uh shift and the air quality impacts have have moved to other communities within the duwamish valley that are already stressed from a from an air quality perspective and have disparate health impacts in terms of asthma rates and others that um the the loss of capacity at the West Seattle High Bridge has shifted those burdens to places that are already feeling those burdens.

And then in terms of WMBE contracting, a lot of what we've done to date has been done under sort of emergency basis.

As we've gotten more regular, done RFPs, done regular sort of contracting procedures, we can also report and provide detail on what exactly is going to Wimby contractors and both prime and subcontractors.

And then as we move towards the capital work that will be necessary on either a repair or replace standpoint, depending on the funding streams that we end up using, I think we can figure out how the benefits, both from a contracting and from a hiring perspective can be broadly felt within our community.

Thank you so much.

Can I level set really quick just on one thing?

We have just the stabilization contract was done on an emergency basis.

The design contract, the traffic and revenue study contract, and the communications contract were all done with a competitive process and all set up in order to receive federal funds.

And so that means that there's a set threshold for WIMBY contractors.

And I'm sorry that I don't remember what that is off the top of my head.

I will say that our communications consultant and I recognize the irony in what I'm about to say is a woman owned business.

Okay, thank you so much for those questions and those answers.

Are there any other questions or comments?

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you very much for the presentation today.

Just a few follow-up questions.

Can you remind us again what the date is that a decision is going to be made here?

I don't think we have a set date.

But we're at the point, like we said, we haven't lost any time on either pathway.

We'll start to get to that point fairly soon, but we're not at that point yet.

Thank you very much, Director.

And any general timeframe then?

Can we anticipate this in the next two weeks, two months, two days?

I don't, I don't think we're two days.

And I don't, I don't want to, we don't want to put, I think, part of what I'm saying about we haven't lost any time is we don't want to put artificial timelines on the date that a repair and replace decision needs to be made because we're not yet at the divergent point.

As I think Calvin very accurately said, there's still work that can be done on moving forward all, and we don't have enough information on both pathways to perhaps take a definitive hard turn, but we will start to lose some time, and we need to move forward definitively while making sure that we manage for the unexpected and the risks that are still out there.

Thank you very much.

So two quick comments then.

One is I look forward to continuing to get feedback from those who would be engaged in the strategies for making this a safe and viable transportation option.

I know that the members of Martin Luther King County Labor Council are supportive of the rebuild options if number four can be done quickly and safely.

and we think that it's a sustainable strategy.

I think they're supportive of that.

Otherwise, a complete rebuild is something I know that people are continuing to emphasize the importance of.

So I look forward to continuing to get the feedback from those folks on the front line there.

Number two, you know, I was visited at home by some folks who are really interested in making sure that this lower bridge option, our neighborhood here in West Seattle is able to access the amenities downtown and in the greater city and are open to biking across the lower bridge, walking across the lower bridge to get to downtown.

Thank you, by the way, for the work you've done along Um, the port downtown, because having bike there pretty recently, I know that you have put in additional posts that we're going to keep advocating for a true protective bike lane, but it is a more viable option for folks who are trying to walk and bike.

1 of the things that the neighbors have suggested is. safe lighting parking lot like accessibility area so that people could drive to the lower bridge and then go across with their you know stroller or their bike and those who are runners as well have mentioned the importance of being able to be able to access the city by walking and running.

So any comments about the ways in which you're trying to make that area maybe more accessible for folks who would want to use it as a safe Park and walk or stroll or bike area versus a park and ride area.

Yeah, so the work that we've done under ReConnect West Seattle so far, you've noticed some yellow lines and some.

some better definition of the bike lane, are things that we've been able to do quickly.

There's a whole additional set of mitigation efforts that will take us into 2021 that are some of those, potentially some of those larger items.

And I don't know, Heather, if you want to talk about any specifics of those, but we generated all of those ideas through large community-based process, heard from lots and lots of people, and have tried to match those expectations with what we can also make sure we can commit and deliver on.

Oh, Heather, you're on mute.

It's got to happen once a day, right?

Monday morning.

Yeah.

Good morning, everyone.

So I don't know if I have anything specific to share with you, Council Member Mosqueda, but I am interested in hearing a little more, maybe not now, maybe at a separate time, about some of the ideas that you've heard about.

We are really prioritizing walking and biking, especially over that low bridge.

That's a really low impact on the rest of the system way to get across.

There is a, it's not a great one, I'll confess, but there is a park and ride that's underneath the Fauntleroy Expressway.

And so it sounded like you were interested in additional lighting under there so it doesn't feel so grim.

You got it.

Yeah.

I'm happy to talk offline and connect with folks too.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Wonderful.

And, you know, this is something I'm sure we can talk about offline as well, but Calvin, if you do have any additional input, one of the questions I raised earlier was just the the sheer shock that many of us have felt and continue to feel when we see a bridge that has only met its half-life and what kind of remedies we have for the original contractor.

And I think it is, 35 years is a very short timeframe for a bridge.

And if I'm not mistaken, that's half the expected life of this bridge.

So it seems like they fell woefully short of their responsibilities in constructing this bridge for us and looking forward to hearing more about the remedies on that.

And I think if that is of interest to council members, that's something we should have the city attorney weigh in on an executive session.

I did want to just maybe put out there for council members consideration that perhaps that stock could talk about what they, the timeline for learning about how the stabilization work is going, because that's sort of the next opportunity to get more information about how the bridge is reacting and sort of that next level of knowledge that we might get from the project.

I know that Council Member Herbold has a question.

Do you wanna have that question posed by Calvin answered first and then you can go?

Great, perfect.

Okay, so let's dig into the subject area introduced by Calvin and then we'll hear from Council Member Herbold.

The problem with not sitting next to each other at the table is we can't elbow each other and decide who's going to answer any specific question.

So let me take a shot.

Heather might have the same or different thoughts, which is all good.

So as we've been going through the process to date, we've been evaluating whether our model of bridge performance matches up with what we're seeing in terms of the instrumentation on the bridge.

And that started as soon as we were lifting those work platforms that you can see under the bridge into place.

And so far, everything that we've seen to date matches with what our expectations are of the model.

So the two specific things that are most important right now were the release of Pier 18, the stock bearing on Pier 18, which is on the east side of the bridge structure on the east side of the river, which most of that work was completed last week to release that bearing.

The second major piece is taking those post-tensioning strands up to the full tension that they will carry.

And that's also largely complete at this point.

And again, what we've seen from the bridge has been very consistent with the model that we had developed.

that led to us understanding what the critical situation with the cracking was to begin with.

So all of that is very positive information.

What we don't yet have and won't for some time, it's very chilly this morning, but we haven't gone through the full thermal cycle of the bridge, and especially when we get down below freezing is when we can start to see the concrete perform in some different ways.

So understanding exactly what what would happen and then if we are at the point in a repaired bridge when we do restore live load.

post, not for the stabilization, but from the additional repair work, we would still be learning more about the bridge.

We would still have to keep up that monitoring and understanding of how the bridge performs off into the future.

And we can't say exactly how the bridge will perform off into the future until we go through all of the, you know, it'll have to be an ongoing continuous monitoring effort on a repaired bridge, both in terms of, you know, how it's performing and also the condition of all of this new stuff and the existing bridge in terms of making sure that we're still providing a safe connection from a transportation perspective.

Can I just add that we are also in an effort to keep everything going on as quickly as possible?

We're starting with our first type size and location workshop today, so that'll start the design process for a replacement bridge.

And we're also continuing the process to design the repair.

When Sam talks about we're not losing any time, he's talking about the for the bridge, either repair or replacement, we won't start losing time probably until May or June.

Where we do start losing time though is actually pretty quickly when it comes to the funding opportunities that we have.

And so the question of whether we repair or replace isn't urgent until June.

but for assembling funding for either repair or replacement, we need to move forward a little bit more quickly than that.

Okay.

Thanks for that.

Council Member Herbold?

Thank you.

It's possible that Heather just answered part of my question, but I just have a couple comments first before I get to, I have two questions.

Just want to, step back about the big differences between option two and the replacement option.

Option two is a $47 million cost and 2022 restoration of traffic.

The repair option, there is a new repair option, but the repair option that was evaluated in the CBA is a repair option of six years.

and about $400 million at 0% design.

So, you know, big picture, big difference in cost and timeliness of restoration of traffic.

The executive rightfully is focused on the issue of certainty and their responsibility to be an asset manager of all of the city's transportation infrastructure, but the technical advisory panel has high confidence that a repair will last for 40 years, and the council's independent consultant is in concurrence with that confidence.

And just highlighting a section from the CBA It states, based on the work done to date in the correlation of analytical modeling to measured behavior, the technical risk of the bridge not behaving as intended, thus limiting the service life of the rehabilitation, likely has a very low probability, less than 5% of occurring.

They go on to say that the repair alternative too has the highest the value index is the ratio of performance cost, performance to cost, which measures the return on investment, and it also has the highest potential for an increase in the value index as compared to the other alternatives.

As we know, equity is also a highly rated attribute in the cost-benefit analysis.

And, you know, what equity means to me is that we are making an intentional effort to minimize disparate impacts to particular communities.

And there's a great map included in the cost-benefit analysis that illustrates the location of disparate impacts along the southern portion of the peninsula in the Duwamish communities.

as well as the percentage of people of color by census tract.

So for me, making a decision with equity really as a big focus of the decision means that we are intentionally minimizing the negative impacts in those particular areas.

And a lot's been said about the impacts to business and workforce.

That's really important for West Seattle, specifically small businesses, but also for the regional economy.

And so that gets to, I really appreciate Director Zimbabwe's recurring statement that we are, the decision before us is more like a preferred alternative.

Calvin has reinforced that.

That it doesn't mean, if there's a preference for one option, it doesn't mean that we can't If we find more information, switch to another option.

And slide 11 states that we're not at the divergence of different pathways.

And so that's something that would be helpful for me to understand.

So what that says to me is that if there is a decision to pursue for instance, replacement, we can continue to still work at evaluating repair and taking steps towards repair.

So the question I would have is, when do those pathways diverge?

And maybe that is what Heather was referring to when she referenced May and June.

And then my second question is, I've heard a lot of concern that the consideration of a rapid replacement could result in delay of a repair pathway.

So I'm just interested to hear a little bit about that as well.

Thanks.

Sure, let me take a, let me take a shot at those.

Um, you know, because I, I think, uh, like Heather said, we don't really hit a divergence until, um.

Next spring, but on a technical on a construction timeline.

Perspective, I do think that the, uh, that a rapid replacement.

Idea depends on on clearing some of the.

Non technical, but more procedural hurdles that we would have to go through on a on a on a expedited basis on a on a.

on a timeline that would require very close coordination at all levels of government, including up to the U.S.

Coast Guard, which is a major permitting agency for a bridge.

So I think that those timelines start to get more important than the technical timelines on a from a construction perspective.

And that's when we would see like in the spring really starting to lose time.

But we have a lot more information going into that time period than we have right now on either repair or replacement path.

I would also just say that the $47 million in the cost benefit analysis is also at 0% design of what a repair looks like.

And we still don't know exactly what will be required to To implement a full repair that restores traffic and there is still uncertainty, even though it's maybe a little bit more clear and then I think the other thing that the cost benefit analysis helped us understand from a from a.

asset owner perspective is also how the ongoing operations and maintenance costs will factor into that and what that means for the full life cycle of the bridge.

And as I said, there's a lot more that we are adding into the bridge right now and would have to add still more as part of a repair that has to be sort of factored into the understanding what the ongoing responsibilities are that make it a continuously useful transportation asset and exactly what we'll have to do to take care of the bridge.

And to get into that box, just so that we're all on the same page about this, right now to get into the box girder and do the work that we've done, we've had to actually take out part of the deck.

You know, we've had to remove part of the deck to get the equipment and people down into the bridge.

Usually there's just a...

a manhole to get into that that's in a traffic lane actually on the bridge.

So to do the work to get down into the bridge and make sure everything is operating, we'll still have an ongoing impact on traffic.

We won't have to open the deck up every time we go down into the bridge to do something, but it's gonna take some ongoing work that will be necessary to maintain the bridge going forward as well.

So there's a lot of factors.

And I think really where Heather talked about in the presentation, but where we come down is where our tolerance for that risk is and what we can do to mitigate the risk on either one of these pathways before we have to make determinations that really take us on the divergent directions.

OK, colleagues, we are about 10 minutes over, close to 15 minutes over on our time allotted for this presentation.

I don't want to cut off conversation.

So if there are any other questions, happy to provide an opportunity for folks to pose those questions.

Of course, this won't be the last opportunity that we have to connect with folks over at SDOT.

Again, colleagues, any other questions or closing comments on this presentation.

Okay.

And once again, the executive Mayor Durgan has offered an opportunity to hear directly from each council member about these alternatives presented to us here.

For those of you who would like to have an opportunity to weigh in with the mayor with your preferred alternative.

I highly recommend that you connect with Calvin and with the folks over at us dot and have any.

unanswered questions answered for you so that you are able to provide your feedback to the mayor if you wish to do so.

We will continue to, my office will continue to work with Calvin and council members Peterson and Herbold on providing an opportunity for us to have SDOT present to us as a full council during council briefing.

I do appreciate I want to thank all of you councilmembers for creating some space here to be able to have this conversation.

It is a timely issue that is really important.

I wanted to have an opportunity to make sure that everybody was up to speed knowing that there would be an opportunity for each of us to engage with the mayor about a preferred I think that is all we've got from this group.

I don't see anybody else raising their hand or offering any additional comments.

So we'll go ahead and say thanks to the folks over at SDOT for being with us this morning and for all of your work.

I'm sure that you will be hearing from folks.

Sam, anything else you'd like to say?

I would just say really quickly that thank you for having us, taking the time and these are great questions.

We're also happy to answer questions going forward.

Like you said, Council President, and we also have extended an invitation for any council members that would like to actually take a tour.

on the bridge.

We'll do it all safely.

It's very safe to be up there right now, but we're happy to also do that because this is big infrastructure that's, you know, we can only show you some pictures and it's hard to sort of get a sense of the scale without being there.

And we're happy to do meetings before or after any tour that we're able to take you on.

Thank you.

Thank you for that reminder.

And I think that email came from Shauna, if I recall correctly.

So for, again, those of you who are looking at your inbox for that invitation.

That invitation came from Shonda Larson over at SDOT as an offer to council members.

And it is limited to council members only, is that right?

At this point it is.

And yeah, we can do that.

And we'll do social distance, safety precautions, all the public health and other things in place.

But we'll have to do those if we do that.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate that.

Okay, colleagues, we're going to go ahead and move to the next agenda item.

Thank you again to the folks from SDOT for being with us.

You're welcome to disconnect from the meeting at this point.

And let's go ahead and dive into preview of today's City Council Actions Council and Regional Committees.

The roll call for this week will be as follows.

We'll hear from Council Member Juarez, then Luis, Morales, Mosqueda, Peterson, Sawant, Straus, Herbold, and then I will conclude this agenda discussion.

So let's go ahead and get started.

First up is Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you loud and clear.

Great.

So let me start with Public Assets and Native Communities Committee.

There is one item of the Public Assets and Native Communities Committee on this afternoon's council agenda.

That's resolution 31979. This resolution reschedules the December 1st and January 5th hearing dates to March and April, respectively, per advice from law and our work with Council Central staff.

The hearing examiner plans to publish an updated final report to include pending information on 17 remanded properties along the waterfront.

As, you know, this has to do with the lid, the hearing examiner is still collecting this information.

So law and central staff and advised to keep the scheduling streamlined.

Therefore, with this resolution, we are simply shifting the scheduling of the December and January hearing dates previously scheduled to spring of 2021 to hear all appeals together.

And I'll speak more to this during our city council meeting this afternoon.

Office of the Waterfront, Pier 58 update.

During the past week, the Office of the Waterfront continued to remove the concrete walkway on the eastern edge of Pier 58 with saw cutting from the seawall side.

And next week, the remaining concrete elements just north of the southern terrace will be removed.

Next steps following that will include removing timber deck and piles in the southwest corner adjacent to Pier 57. Week ahead, Thursday, November 12th, I have a Puget Sound Regional Council Transportation Policy Board meeting.

And moving forward, along the lines of what Council President Gonzalez shared with us on some election comments, this election season will mark 2021 with the most Native Americans ever to serve in the U.S.

House of Representatives.

Six Native candidates will represent their communities in the House of Representatives next year.

Native women broke records too.

According to the Center for American Women in Politics, 18 indigenous women were running for their congressional seats this year.

And as you know, Justice Raquel Montoya Lewis retained her seat on the Washington State Supreme Court.

That being said, that's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Juarez, for that report.

Any comments or questions on that report?

All right.

Thanks again, Councilmember Juarez, for that report.

Much to celebrate in that space.

Really appreciate you highlighting it.

Councilmember Lewis is up next, and then after Councilmember Lewis will be Councilmember Morales.

Good morning.

Thank you, Madam President.

Good morning.

I similarly don't have a whole lot of items this morning.

There's no agenda items from the select committee.

on homelessness strategies and investments on this afternoon's agenda.

I held a town hall on Friday.

to discuss sort of our midpoint on the budget and highlight a couple of the form Bs that have been proffered by my office, as well as a broader presentation on the potential implications of homelessness ads, service ads in this budget.

It was a real privilege to be joined by Colleen Echo Hawk, Jesse Binet from the Public Defender Association, Sharon Lee from Lehigh, and then of course Colleen, who was from Chief Seattle Club, to talk about permanent supportive housing, transitional shelter increases, outreach investments, and harm reduction.

in a number of the budget proposals from myself and a number of other colleagues here, and the implications that could have on our ongoing state of emergency on homelessness.

We also addressed a number of different questions.

from constituents on a number of issues related to parks, public safety, and other priorities we are focusing on in our budget deliberations.

I similarly want to offer my congratulations to President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris.

great vindication of the American people to have had a resounding and clear result to this election, charting a new path forward, and one that will be good for partnership, not just with Seattle, but other American cities.

I look forward to renewed federal partnership on climate change, on affordable housing, on infrastructure, which as our briefing this morning clearly indicates, is an essential partnership, not only for us, but for other major American cities as well.

And a sense of urgency in the federal policy to deal with our public health emergency, COVID-19.

And for so many other reasons, it's just a great day to to celebrate on Saturday when it was officially called and looking forward to our collaboration with the incoming federal administration.

Otherwise, I look forward this week to Council Member Mosqueda releasing her chair's budget and our future budget discussions.

And with that, I don't have any additional updates.

Thank you so much, Council Member Lewis, for those comments.

Any questions or comments on that report?

Hearing none, we'll go ahead and move down the line.

We'll hear now from Council Member Morales and then we will hear from Council Member Mosqueda.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you.

I, too, want to echo the celebration.

Congratulations to our new president and vice president-elect.

And just want to take a quick moment to acknowledge the Black women in our community.

We all know that there is a lot of work to do still.

um to address the racial equity uh the challenges that we have in our community and in our country but um as our a d2 constituent and artist uh tasha marin saw stated on social media over the weekend black women deserve to celebrate the joy in this moment uh and we will get to work for everybody soon, but I want to acknowledge that and give Black women in our community a moment to breathe and celebrate and enjoy this moment.

So thank you to everyone for that.

Last week I attended a Rainier Avenue walk hosted by Seattle Greenways.

I want to thank my constituents K.L.

Shannon, Phyllis Porter, and Gregory Davis for organizing the event and do want to thank Director Zimbabwe and his staff for coming out and attending.

We discussed some improvements that need to be made at the intersection, particularly of Rainier and Henderson.

There have been some improvements made there, but we do have 300 new units of housing planned in the surrounding area within several blocks.

And there are four schools, so along Henderson.

So we definitely need to make sure that we are planning for future pedestrian safety improvements there.

I also joined REACH and Lehigh workers at an encampment at Johnson Little Park in the New Holly neighborhood.

I want to thank them for their work.

We were able to find nine tiny homes for our unhoused neighbors who had been living in the park.

There are still a few folks there and workers are trying to find more stable living situations for them.

I will say one of the gentlemen I spoke to was an elderly man who had just been released from the hospital after suffering from pneumonia.

He had been on a waiting list for housing and well, he thought he had had housing and turned out he was just placed on a waiting list.

So he was returning to the park.

because he didn't have anywhere else to go.

And so, especially now, as we're moving into the wet and cold season, it's really clear how dire the need is for safe, warm, non-congregate shelter in our city.

And my hope is that our outreach workers will be able to find a place for him very soon.

We held our first Front Yard Forum this weekend.

which, as I've said, are physically distant block meetings.

We met with neighbors who wanted to discuss public safety and alternatives to policing.

And really, these are ways we're also interested in understanding better how our constituents can interface with City Hall around things like permitting or sidewalk repair.

And I was very pleased to hear that the neighbors in this particular block all know one another very well and work together when there is a community issue.

That's part of the benefit of having hyperlocal advocates and communities.

So we will continue having front yard forums.

We have one this Thursday in the Rainier Beach neighborhood.

If you're interested in holding one, you can reach out to my district over now.

We're also having continuing our community office hours, virtual hours on Sunday afternoons.

You can request an appointment that through our council website.

Finally, I do want to say one of the issues that comes up, no matter who I'm talking to.

is community safety.

Everybody wants their neighborhood to be safe.

And folks are also acknowledging, as they did at the Front Yard Forum, that the best way to keep our neighborhoods safe and to keep our neighbors safe is to invest in our neighborhoods.

We don't increase that safety necessarily by investing in police, particularly not at twice the rate of community investments.

I want to say that this is especially true when we see a repeated disregard for the safety of our neighbors who are exercising their constitutional rights.

We have been talking now for six months across the country, and our neighbors here in Seattle have been in the streets demonstrating their deep frustration about racial inequality in our society, and more specifically, about how that manifests in police brutality against black and brown folks.

This council has been talking for six months about addressing these issues by divesting from the police and investing in communities of color.

And I will say that when we see repeated escalation of police force against people who are demonstrating their rights of free speech, rights to assemble, despite recommendations from every accountability partner, they stand down, that they reduce contact with public, particularly during these demonstrations.

For me, it really begs several questions.

Why are the interim chief and the mayor disregarding his recommendations?

Why are protesters still being met with the phalanx of police and riot care?

Why has a new unit been created whose sole purpose seems to be to clash with those who are exercising their right to protest police accountability?

We haven't seen any sign of attempts to de-escalate in any of these situations.

So I want to know who's ordering this behavior that includes smashing the car windows of our neighbors, interfering with the press, and has even led to people being hospitalized?

And why should we continue to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in an agency that has so little regard for the safety and the protected free speech rights of our neighbors?

As a council member and as a community member, I can't condone this behavior and I'm tired, frankly, of asking these questions and getting no response.

Every time I ask these questions, I get hedging and hand-wringing.

So as we enter the final stages of the budget process, we'll be discussing how to reallocate resources in a way that aligns with our stated goals of restructuring SPD.

That means reducing the size of the force, reducing overtime, reducing our reliance on a police-centered approach to community safety.

My office supports these budget actions and is exploring additional ones.

And I have to be honest and transparent with my constituents.

We will not reach our shared goal of 50% reduction in one budget cycle, especially when we're budgeting for just a single year right now.

So I will also say that I am committed to bringing our partners along on the pathway of reaching that shared goal.

And part of that is recognizing that there are roadblocks that are in our way.

I'm committed to working on these structural impediments so that we can reach our goal, whether that is the contract or state legislation that needs to change to help achieve the goals that we have.

We know that this system is broken.

to fix it will take more than just city council's actions.

So tomorrow will be the next step in the council action that we can take.

It certainly won't be the last.

I look forward to continuing to strive for community safety, protects all of our neighbors to work with the council to do that.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales for those comments.

Are there any comments or questions on that report?

Okay, hearing none, we're going to go ahead and hear now from Councilmember Mosqueda and then after Councilmember

Thank you very much, Madam President.

I held my comments because I knew I was next.

I want to say thank you to Councilmember Morales for the comments that you just made.

You have stated all of the things that I was also going to say, so I will just say I echo your frustration.

I echo your concern and condemnation of ongoing We have mounting numbers of lawsuits against the city of Seattle, and we also have an individual who's been hospitalized.

So I really appreciate you raising those issues so we can continue to do the important work that we need to do to scale up community investments and create alternatives both to general policing, but also I'm reining in what we have seen in terms of response to mostly First Amendment activities.

That is, I think, very well stated by you.

So I appreciate you saying that.

In addition to the celebrations that we saw over the new federal administration, in addition to the ongoing racial reckoning that we see in our country across every city, we also are seeing increased numbers of COVID cases.

So I just wanted to spend a quick second in reminding folks to please Please keep your masks on.

Please practice good public health practices to prevent the spread of COVID.

We are reminded about the importance of the ongoing pandemic and our responsibility to act to prevent the spread when we see the spiking COVID cases across the country.

The daily average, according to a New York Times reporter over the weekend, is that we are reaching 106,972 daily cases, over 106,000 daily cases on average.

And according to the New York Times reporter who is locally based here, that means that one out of every 438 people in the U.S. have tested positive.

I know that I saw posts from my friends who are local here in the Seattle region who have been exposed to COVID and are quarantining now.

We all know more than 438 people.

That means we all know at least one person who has been affected by COVID.

So please continue to remain vigilant and keep those masks on and practice all the good public health hygiene.

The charts that we are seeing are quite literally off the page.

They are off the page when we see the direction that we're headed and we all together must work to bring that number back down.

As far as the finance and housing committee, we want to note that there are no items from the finance and housing committee on today's full council agenda.

But with your support, I would love to add an item from our select budget committee to the introduction and referral calendar this afternoon.

I want to give you a quick preview of that, and with the council president's approval for the motions needed, this afternoon's council agenda I will be seeking to move an amendment to the introduction and referral calendar.

As you know, the 2021 proposed budget would authorize a $25 million Interfund loan to support SDOT's ongoing transportation funding needs.

The original bill would have used two sources for the loan.

That includes about 20 million from the IIT fund and the other 5 million were coming from the Transportation Benefit District.

Council Member Peterson, thank you very much, as Chair of the Transportation Committee, and I, we have all discussed our concerns about using the original legislation because it might impede on the STVD funds and the cash flow and the ability to support critical infrastructure.

Even though there is a question mark there, just to take away that question mark completely, we are interested in introducing this legislation for this afternoon.

That would be on the introduction and referral calendar that would go along with the budget activities to replace that Interfund Loan strategy.

The replacement bill would change the source of the Interfund Loan, such as the entire $25 million Interfund Loan would be from the IT fund.

And there would no longer be any reliance on an Interfund Loan from STVD funds.

The city budget's office has confirmed that the IT fund has sufficient resources in its coffers for the next few years to serve as the single source of funding for the entire $25 million loan for critical SDOT improvements.

So that is what you will see from me.

I just want to make sure that folks know what the background is there, and it does require an amendment to the introduction and referral calendar.

As far as the budget, folks have already mentioned, we are going to release our council's draft budget tomorrow at 930 a.m., begins our public comment period.

We will have the opportunity to walk through the proposed council's budget balancing package.

I want to thank all of our council colleagues.

Every one of you provided amendments that we were able to accommodate to a certain degree.

But truly, all of the amendments that we are discussing for tomorrow's proposed budget have come from the robust public discussion that we had in the Select Budget Committee.

All of you have provided amendments and suggestions to invest in key priorities in the city, including affordable housing and homelessness, making sure that we're creating a strong and equitable economy for all, investing in housing and the Green New Deal investments.

And we are doing all of this while getting back to basics by supporting core government services and protecting I want to thank all of you.

I continue to call this the draft council budget because I do hope that it reflects various priorities from every single council member.

And there's obviously a work to be done.

As a reminder, if you see any additional changes that you would like to see, those form Cs, which are our amendment forms, those are due on Thursday.

We are asking for form Cs to be submitted by 10 a.m.

on Thursday, November 12th.

This would propose any changes that you would like to see for appropriations and policy investments.

As a reminder, these forms are the ones that need to be self-balancing.

These could be self-balancing either for reductions in appropriations by shifting appropriations or additional revenue.

And please note that if proposed revenue increases, to be introduced and referred to the budget committee by Monday, November 16. Council budget action or statement of legislative intent that is not on the published November 18th or 19th agenda, the agendas must be amended by an affirmative vote of the majority of the council members present in order for them to submit the late budget form.

So this is very similar to the process that you all used for form Bs.

And thank you for engaging in that process so that it's really transparent to all council offices and the broader public which items we're bringing forward.

With that, I want to thank you in advance for all of your work that we will be doing over the next two weeks and all of the work you've already done over the last eight weeks on this budget.

And a special shout out to my office and Central Prairie Chiefs of Staff for leading on these efforts.

Also to Central staff who've been just incredible and working around the clock and we want to honor their work.

I greatly appreciate how they have helped to bring various budget priorities together to provide you with a well-rounded draft budget for your consideration.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda, for that report.

Are there any comments or questions on that report?

Council Member Morales, please.

Thank you.

I just want to clarify, you said that form C's are due at 10 o'clock Thursday morning.

Okay, I have five o'clock Thursday on my calendar.

So thank you for that clarification.

Ditto on my calendar.

I think there was a calendar invitation that went out to all council members that sets the deadline at 5 p.m.

So we may want to ask Patty if they can update that reminder to accurately reflect the timeline.

I will do that and it also says 5 p.m.

on my calendar in front of me.

So we may have tried to slip that in.

Thank you for catching that Council Member Morales.

We will follow up with you and if indeed the time is 10 a.m.

we'll make sure that that's reflected in your calendars.

Appreciate your flexibility there and also recognize that's coming the day after a holiday.

We'll follow up with you in writing to make sure everybody has that and that will be included in our Monday council memo that will be sent out shortly.

So we'll get you clarification for sure.

Thank you, council members for flagging that.

Thank you.

And then Council Member Esqueda, the amendment that you're making to the introduction referral calendar today, I just want to make sure that it's that I'm clear that it's it's There'll be an amendment to the introduction referral calendar for this council bill that you just discussed this morning.

And the intent will be to refer it to the Select Budget Committee.

Yes, please, Madam President.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

And then just really quickly wanted to, before we go on, Council Member Muscat, I appreciated the comments that you made around COVID and the ongoing spread of that infection.

Our numbers are worse now than they were in August, certainly.

And I think I saw a number somewhere that said that we're about 50% above where we were at the peak of the infection.

And as folks continue to go out into community, I think it's really important to remind folks that a mask doesn't make you invincible to infection.

And that while wearing a mask is really, really important, equally important, if not more important to that is social distancing.

And that is hard to do when you're out in the streets celebrating with thousands of other people in our streets.

I just want to remind folks that wearing a mask is really important, but certainly don't want folks to walk away with the impression that that is going to protect you 100% of the time.

Obviously, the social distancing with with the mask are what is really going to make a difference here and bring our numbers down.

So just wanted to remind folks of those two strategies that are critical for continuing to contain and get the COVID-19 infection back under control.

Thank you, Council President.

Yes, I think I only emphasize the mask wearing.

Absolutely.

Thank you for bringing up the social distancing and especially I want to underscore that point as public health leaders have been saying so many families and friend gatherings have now moved from outside to indoors because of the bad weather.

It is part of the reason we are seeing an increase in cases.

So do not do that.

It's not a good idea and it is not It is not going to prevent you to sit across the room from each other when COVID remains alive in the air.

So an airborne disease must require both the mask and true social distancing.

Thank you, Council President.

And let's not forget, higher numbers of black and brown folks are not only contracting this disease, but are dying from it.

From a racial equity perspective, let's all do our part.

Absolutely, and we have been seeing that the modeling is telling us that the the occasions and instances in which we are seeing much of the infection is during family gatherings where people are.

not wearing masks and not physically distancing.

And so we are coming up on holidays.

This is a hard time for all of us.

It's hard to be away from our friends and our family, but really important for us to get back to business as it relates to compliance with these public health recommendations so that we can literally save the lives of our relatives and neighbors and other community members.

So appreciate you bringing up that really important subject during this period of time.

A thousand people a day are dying right now across the country.

So this is very, very serious.

Okay, thank you so much for having that conversation with us.

I'm sure all of us are going to be pushing out more information about the public health response, ongoing response to COVID-19, and how to continue to protect ourselves.

Right now, we're going to go ahead and hand it over to Councilmember Peterson, and then we will hear from Councilmember Solan.

Good morning.

Thank you, Council President, and thank you, Chair Mosqueda, for your leadership on the budget process.

I really appreciate it.

The Transportation Utilities Committee has no items on today's full City Council agenda.

Our Transportation Utilities Committee will resume its meetings on Wednesday, December 2nd, directly after the fall budget season.

In district four, I wanna thank constituents who signed up for my virtual office hours and who talked with me this past Friday afternoon.

Key topics this week were public safety and trash accumulation, which has become a major problem.

Please sign up through my website for office hours and we'll talk by phone or Zoom.

I know many of us are breathing a sigh of relief that Donald Trump lost the presidential election and we have high hopes for the new administration of Biden and Harris.

While this positive change may reduce the political temperature, I know it must not reduce our resolve to revamp public safety and increase police accountability at all levels of government.

At the national level, we must once again have a Justice Department that supports federal oversight of local police departments, as we had under the Obama administration with the federal consent decree that's still in place here in Seattle.

At the state government level, we must continue to encourage our leaders in Olympia to enact a much higher standard for police reform so that we no longer need to negotiate justice with each new police union contract.

At the local level, I'm confident we are recommitting ourselves to revamping the police union contract here to root out institutional racism, to support the good work of our first responders, and to reinvest resources in a way that truly increases the health and safety of all communities.

While we will certainly disagree and debate how to get there, I remain confident that together we will get there.

I know we're also excited about the election results for the Seattle Transportation Benefit District.

The measure was well-crafted.

It was a group effort.

It won over 80% of the vote here in Seattle.

And while bus ridership is at historic lows today, our bus system remains vital for our essential workers during the pandemic, and we have increased transit needs around West Seattle while the high bridge is closed.

The measure approved by over 80% of voters authorize up to $9 million for capital improvements in 2021 to support infrastructure maintenance and capital improvements that maximize efficiency and reliability.

So looking forward to implementing that with SDOT and with my colleagues here.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Peterson.

Are there any questions or comments on that report?

Hearing none, we'll go ahead and hear from Council Member Sawant and then Council Member Strauss.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you, President Gonzalez.

Good morning, everybody.

There are no items on today's City Council agenda from the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee, which has no regularly scheduled meetings until the budget deliberations conclude.

I wanted to thank the progressive organizations, the People's Budget Movement, and those supporting the Solidarity Budget for really pushing on concrete gains for renters' rights, tiny house villages, the Green New Deal, and the Africatown-led affordable housing, all of which have been strongly supported by our socialist council office in the form Bs we brought forward from my office.

We will continue to advocate for an increase in the Amazon tax to stop the draconian over $200 million of cuts to housing and services that exist in the mayor's proposal.

Millions of working people around the country celebrated the defeat of Donald Trump in this unprecedented election.

In fact, working people and young people from around the world who are watching anxiously these last few days, hoping for Donald Trump's defeat, are heaving a collective sigh of relief.

As a socialist and union member and a working class elected representative, I join in the celebration of the downfall of this deeply reactionary, anti-worker, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant president.

Not only have Trump's policies been a disaster for working people, women, communities of color, and immigrant communities, but his election and presidency have actively emboldened right-wing populism, racist ideas, and even far-right violence.

Congratulations also to all the left progressives and socialists around the country who were elected or re-elected last week, including the election of Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman and the re-election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

However, the fact that the American presidential election was close at all is an enormous indictment of Biden and the Democratic Party establishment.

Trump has been a historically abysmal, deeply unpopular president who should have been easy to defeat, especially in the context of his criminal mishandling of the response to the pandemic.

To quote the Guardian newspaper, quote, Trump should have lost in a landslide.

But no blue wave materialized.

Millions more people voted for Trump than in 2016. And it became disturbingly clear that even if Trump himself is booted from office, Trumpism is alive and well." Unquote. And Trump almost certainly could have been handily defeated had the Democrats not gone all out to crush Bernie Sanders and viciously reject the most popular parts of his platform, like Medicare for All, Green New Deal jobs program, taxing the rich instead of working people, and exposing Trump for his selling out of working people for historic corporate tax cuts. That would have been the platform that could have united tens of millions of working people and young people across race and other divisions and wiped Trump off the map. But the Democratic Party rejected it offhand in favor of defending the status quo. Exit polls show that between 58% and 75% of voters who voted for Biden report that their vote was primarily a vote against Trump, not for Biden. In reality, Trump and the Republicans, of course, represent an agenda extremely hostile to ordinary people, and they have fomented racism, bigotry, and xenophobia. But the tragic reality is that there is no strategy inside the Democratic Party to fight these racist and reactionary ideas, and we need a party that represents the interests of tens of millions of people. and help a party that will help build mass movements, none of which the democratic establishment have been willing to do. Two very sobering statistics. About 40 percent of households with a union member went for Trump. This is the best margin for a Republican since 1984, which was the election that gave Ronald Reagan his second term And another fact, Trump got the highest support from voters of color of any Republican candidate in 60 years. So it is clear that it's an extremely risky strategy for the Democratic Party to refuse to take up progressive issues that will successfully push back against the right wing, drawing in working people who are angry at corporate politics. and end up voting Republican because they feel they have no other choice. No one should be surprised that several establishment Democrats whose campaigns refused to stand for any progressive issue either lost their seats or very narrowly won. All through the primary, the Democratic Party claimed that rejecting Bernie Sanders and his campaign platform would help them in these so-called down-ballot races. And shockingly, now those same establishment Democrats are blaming their losses or their near losses on progressives, on socialists, and on the Black Lives Matter movement for their own failures. In contrast, for example, every single Democratic candidate who co-sponsored Medicare for All in a swing district kept their seat. Which again is no surprise given that polls have consistently shown a majority of the US electorate is considerably to the left of both party leaderships on issue after issue, environment, electoral reform, Medicare for all. In fact, an exit poll done just on November 3rd, ironically by Fox News, showed 72% of voters want Medicare for all. Even in states that went to Trump, progressive ballot initiatives won by wide margins. In Florida, a $15 minimum wage ballot measure was approved by voters by more than 61%. And in every state that had a marijuana legalization measure, every state won that kind of measure. And many of those are deep red states that went for Trump. The New York Times quotes Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez expressing her frustration with the Democratic establishment's attacks on the left inside the party. This is, I think, today's article. And their view of looking at progressive issues as the enemy. She said, quote, I don't even know if I want to be in politics. It's the lack of support from your own party. It's your own party thinking you're the enemy. You mean, she's referencing progressives. So Trumpism will not end with Trump unless working people build independent, fighting mass movements and begin to build our own party for the working class? And unless we do that, right-wing populism and far-right forces are likely to grow under the corporate administration of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. So specifically, we need to build movements to fight against austerity and the budget cuts that will loom from all across states and cities for the Green New Deal, for Medicare for All, and to hold police accountable across the country. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Other than any comments or questions on that report.

Okay, hearing none, we'll go ahead and hear from Council Member Strauss and then Council Member Herbold.

Good morning.

Good morning, Council President and colleagues.

There are no items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's introduction and referral calendar, and there are six items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's agenda.

Four appointments to the Historic Seattle Preservation and Development Authority Governing Council, one appointment to the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority Governing Council, and one appointment to the Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority Governing Council.

This last week, I was able to join the Maritime Industrial Work Group, which had several really great presentations.

And again, I'll highlight that we have here in the city of Seattle, a unique competitive advantage with our maritime industry, as we have the closest freshwater port to the Gulf of Alaska.

This coming week, I'll be joining the Ballard District Council for their regular monthly meeting.

And here in District 6, I continue to host District 6 resident meetings every week.

During my resident meetings last week, we continued to discuss public safety, homelessness, transportation, stay together blocks, and I spoke to residents in Ballard, Finney, West Woodland, Woodland Park, Crown Hill, Loyal Heights, Tangle Town, And then the Greenwood Finney.

Finney is just such a unique ridge that connects so many neighborhoods in District Six.

So met with a lot of folks last week.

And I continue to meet with residents every week.

If you'd like to join me, please sign up on the form on my website.

We're scheduling about two weeks out at this time.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, colleagues.

And thank you to all the black women in the United States that made this last election getting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris elected.

Thank you, Council President and colleagues.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Any comments or questions on that report?

Okay, hearing none, we'll go ahead and hear now from Council Member Herbold, and then I will conclude with my report.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much.

What we have on the agenda today, on the full council agenda, is one bill from the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

That is Council Bill 1199.45.

This is an ordinance related to civil service commissions.

The intent of the effect of the ordinance is to address how Public Safety Civil Service Commission members are elected.

One of the three members of the Public Safety Civil Service Commission is elected by relevant employees, specifically police and fire.

Things are slightly delayed by COVID-19, so this allows the city clerk to hold the election in December rather than November and allows for electronic ballots rather than physical ballots.

This is only for 2020 and it is included in the ordinance, not captured in the municipal code.

to express the temporary nature of the change.

It also eliminates outdated language in the Seattle Municipal Code regarding the election process and allows the city clerk to modernize the election process by rule.

That's all that is on the full council agenda from my committee.

Just as I do every week, I give my props out to Seattle Fire Department for their COVID-19 test administration at four sites throughout the city.

And the cumulative number of tests being delivered by the fire department up through November 7th, starting in June 1st is 331,000 tests.

administered by the Seattle Fire Department.

Echoing some of the comments by my colleagues today as it relates to COVID-19 transmission, there was a Washington State Department of Health statewide situation report last week which shows, as we've noted, that coronavirus transmission is increasing throughout Washington, that case counts in western Washington have been increasing in all age groups.

since mid-September, and this suggests that no single transmission route is driving trends.

And COVID-19 is well dispersed across the population.

Growth in cases is particularly pronounced in the 25 to 39 and 40 to 59 age groups.

folks who are making plans for the holidays, like I know we all are, please keep in mind the best way to protect your friends, families, and communities.

Wear masks around people that you don't live with, even if those folks are close family and friends.

Limit the number and size and frequency of gatherings.

Wash your hands frequently.

Get your flu shots.

Stay home if you're sick.

And if you think you've been exposed, call your doctor or visit kingcounty.gov forward slash COVID forward slash testing for free testing appointments.

Another reminder that open enrollment for health insurance is November 1st through January 15th.

The King County health insurance navigators are offering personal help with the enrollment process at kingcounty.gov forward slash coverage.

and you can also call the King County hotline for health access and insurance questions, 1-800-756-5437.

This general topic brings me to some of my election reflections.

Really appreciated Council President Gonzalez's comments about social distancing as it relates to celebrations.

Despite how overjoyed I was this weekend with the election results, Another one of my strong reactions was concerned about COVID transmission during celebrations.

And more in the vein on election reflections, I'm so encouraged that this week has started off Monday morning with a press conference from President-elect Biden, turning his primary focus on the creation of a federal COVID-19 response.

and his insistence that mask wearing not be a political statement moving forward.

With this outcome of the presidential election, I'm so hopeful that cities and states are no longer on their own to address our greatest public health challenge in a century.

As far as activities coming up this week, for me, I have the Watershed Resource Inventory Area 9, otherwise known as Water 9, meeting this week.

And then just reflecting over last week, letting folks know here that I presented at the Community Police Commission in response to their request for council to inform them on the council's budget actions regarding policing in Seattle.

We had a really good discussion with the members of the CPC about that.

Last week, I also received a briefing from Chief Diaz on policy changes related to crowd control that the police department announced last week.

And this got some attention in the media.

policy changes that they announced fall into five different categories.

One being recognizing the visible presence and appearance of officers at a demonstration can impact interactions with the crowd and reducing the department's presence when safe and feasible.

Two, they are intending to take additional measures to provide media, legal observers, and protest medics safe avenues to carry out their important roles.

Three, they're working to de-escalate whenever it is safe and feasible.

Four, they're improving means of conveying public safety messages to large crowds.

And five, they are working on new strategies to address individuals taking unlawful actions in otherwise lawful crowds.

I had this briefing with Chief Diaz and Captain Leslie Cordner last week.

I believe it was Friday.

I mean, it was after the protests that I think many of us saw last week where an individual was hurt during the protests.

implementation, commission of an arrest.

And, you know, one of the things I really struggled to try to understand from my briefing on these changes is how changes in written policy are actually resulting in changes in decision-making in real time.

We can clearly see that they're using a new public safety communications device that is clear and apparent.

But for things like reducing the visible presence and appearance of officers at demonstrations in their own understanding that large numbers of police can have impacts on interactions with crowds.

That's an example of a policy change that was announced, but I have a hard time seeing the outcome of that policy change on the ground.

We, I think, saw many dozens of police officers responding to what appeared at the time to be a protest of approximately, it looked like 20 people.

So I'm going to continue to try to understand again, how policy changes are implemented and how they actually result in different responses by the police department when it comes to managing crowds of folks who are engaged in their rights of free speech.

And, you know, some of the policy changes I understand also are going to have to go through the consent decree process.

But some of these policy changes, the police department is saying that they are implementing now.

And so I look forward to working with my fellow council members on understanding more about what it means to implement these new policies and what it means when new policies have supposedly been implemented, but that we're not actually seeing the changes that we expect from those new policies.

And then lastly, I just want to mention that this week on Thursday, I'm going to be participating virtually in a district one town hall organized by the Democratic Socialists of America.

And that town hall is focused on public safety and the police department budget.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Any comments or questions for Councilmember Herbold?

Councilmember Peterson, please.

Thank you, Council President.

Councilmember Herbold had a question about the Council Bill 119945, just so I understand it better.

I know several of you worked really hard on the landmark police accountability ordinance in 2017, and I thought that it called for elimination of employee representation on this particular body, the Public Safety Civil Service Commission.

And is there, it's my understanding though that this bill does provide an opening to flexibility to encase that.

part of the accountability ordinance can be implemented later because I believe one of the sections of the accountability ordinance removed the employee from this commission, but this is sort of perpetuating that ability to have the employee on the commission.

Yeah, this particular bill is really focused on allowing the Public Safety Civil Service Commission to constitute itself under the current requirements.

does not create any long-term conflicts around our efforts to reform the appeals process.

I think that's what you're getting at as contemplated under the 2017 accountability ordinance.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments for Council Member Herbold?

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Herbold.

As Chair of Public Safety, I really appreciate all that you have been doing to bring to light some of the, not only policy considerations, but the, I think, disparity between what we're hearing and what we're seeing.

I too have had a chance to have a conversation with Chief Diaz as we have a few times during the budget process so that I can give a heads up on some of the things that we are hearing as problematic to let folks know we're going to be moving forward on various pieces that council members have proposed.

In my discussion, I believe it was last Friday as well, I had heard that there was a difference in the approach that police were taking.

but I specifically asked if this was policy in writing and was told that no, it was more of a philosophical change.

Can you clarify for me, because I haven't had the chance to read the report that you just mentioned, is there changes that were directed in writing or is this something that they are thinking of as a philosophical change?

You know, Council Member Mosqueda, that's a really good question and that's the Part of which I was trying to understand better from SPD in my briefing, there wasn't a report, right?

There was a blotter post that the media has reported on.

And in that blotter post, that SPD blotter post, it identified these five changes.

And I've asked whether or not there are policy changes in writing.

And there are going to be policy changes in writing, but those policy changes are going to go through the consent decree process, which means they're reviewed by the monitor and the DOJ, and then brought to the judge, and there's an opportunity for our accountability partners to weigh in on those written changes in policies.

But in my briefing, there was discussion that some things will have to go through the consent decree process and some things won't.

And some of those things that don't have to go through the consent decree process, they're implementing now.

And even if they're, it just seems to me that We all are familiar with the police department's 500-page-odd policy manual.

Many of these items that that go into the policy manual are things that have to be flushed out beyond five bullets.

So I'm trying to figure out where there is a change that is going to be reflected in the policy manual that we can see now.

If they are saying that they're implementing some of these changes now, I would like to review them in a way that is more expansive than a five-bullet blotter post.

And that's what I'm trying to figure out, is which things are going to be going over here through the consent decree process, and which things are they doing now.

Follow-up, Madam President, very briefly?

Thank you very much, Council Member Herbold.

Appreciate you following that line of questioning to make sure that there is information in writing that is not only transparent to us, but members of the public and press as well.

I really appreciate your leadership on that.

And I do wanna recognize that some of their recommendations have to do with the safety of the police interactions with members of the media, legal observers, and medics.

However, in the last few weeks, as I mentioned to the chief, I've heard a few reports of members of the press specifically being moved out of the way to very far distances.

And it is not the goal to prevent the press from being able to document what's actually happening.

So I think that there is a lot of work that still needs to be done to ensure that yes, members of the press, legal observers and medics are not harmed by activities of our police force but also that they are still able to both document the situation and be close to the action so that reporting can occur or the legal absorbing and medical services can also occur.

So I just wanted to flag that for you as well.

Thank you, Councilor Mosqueda, and you have just reminded me of another issue related to the right of not just the media, but the right of the public to observe.

We have an Observer's Bill of Rights that the council passed several years ago, and it is all about the ability to observe and document police interaction with the public.

And in my viewing of some of the activities, Last week, it appeared that the distancing of the public from the activities of the police department in relation to the injured.

injured individual might not be consistent with the intent of the Observer's Bill of Rights, which does establish that a police department can require a safe distance from sort of where the action is.

But the separation of folks in this particular instance seemed to be much beyond what would be considered a safe distance.

And then there was a lot of concern about the interference of police flashlights and lights with the efforts to create photographic evidence, the shining of the lights on protesters who were trying to capture what was happening made it impossible in some cases to do so.

So I'm really interested to see more about, again, how we can ensure that we're preserving these precious rights that we have, the rights of folks to engage in First Amendment activity while observing the law and not doing damage to our city or doing damage to people, but observing the First Amendment rights of protest as well as the press's ability to document and the ability of people who are medics to assist folks in harm's way.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments for Councilmember Herbold?

Okay, hearing none, I also want to echo my thanks to you, Councilmember Herbold, for continuing to make sure that we have all the information we need as our Public Safety Chair and appreciate the ongoing work here and also just want to acknowledge the comments that were also made by Council Member Morales to also echo those remarks and those frustrations I think are shared amongst all of us in terms of our ongoing desire to want to make sure that we are first and foremost protecting people who are exercising their first amendment rights on the street whether it's media or protesters and so really I really appreciate the opportunity to have a conversation here and look forward to getting more information as it becomes available for new council member.

We'll really appreciate that.

Colleagues, in terms of my report, I already reported what I needed to during my president's report.

There's no governance and education committee scheduled for the month of November, and I have nothing on this afternoon's agenda related to governance and education.

committee.

So I am happy to sort of close out this part.

Is there anything else for the good of the order?

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

Just a quick reminder that we are going to have an all-day Select Budget Committee meeting tomorrow starting at 9.30 a.m.

We will have at least the first hour for public testimony.

And for folks who would like to provide public testimony, please note that the live link will be available at 7 30 a.m.

So you have two hours plus the duration of our public testimony to sign up.

But again, thanks in advance to all of you for your walk through of the draft budget.

Um, and we will be posting that today along with any questions and comments that you have for tomorrow.

I know that it's gonna be a robust discussion.

So thanks so much for all the work you've done so far and look forward to seeing all of you tomorrow.

Thanks for that reminder, Council Member Mosqueda.

All right, folks, well, that concludes our agenda for this morning.

So we'll go ahead and adjourn and I'll see you all at two o'clock.