Seattle City Council Briefing 3/4/2019

Bless us for this.

Good morning, everybody.

Morning.

Happy March.

Welcome to our regularly scheduled council briefing.

Today is Monday, March 4th, and the time is 9.31.

President Harrell is excused from today's council briefing and city council meeting.

In his absence, I will be serving as president pro tem.

Council President Harrell will return on Monday.

Did I say that already?

March 18th.

And so before we begin our roundtable, I'm going to invite the Office of Intergovernmental Relations to come up and give us our weekly state legislative report.

Good morning.

You can introduce yourselves for the viewing public.

I understand you have about 150 bills in front of us.

I think we cut it down to 22 pages.

It was very helpful.

Thanks for getting it out early.

50, and number one being public safety, number two being homelessness and housing, and number three being the environment.

We do have a lot of areas to cover with you today, and we have survived now both the policy committee cutoffs and the fiscal committee cutoffs, and we're moving quickly into the House of Origin cutoff on the 13th, which is next Wednesday, not this coming Wednesday, but the Wednesday after that.

So things are moving very fast, and we appreciate many of you being willing to engage in Olympia.

Given the timing, we wanted to be judicious about the dates that we requested your help in Olympia.

So given all the floor activity, We're still looking at dates in March around for the Council Lobby Day.

And I'm going to turn it over to Karen, who's going to go over some of those logistics before our portfolios.

Let's do introductions real quick.

Oh, excuse me.

I kind of teed you up for that.

Lily Wilson-Godega, Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

Cheryl Schwab, OIR.

Karen Cargill, State Director.

Christina Postlewaite, State Lobbyist.

So I'll just jump in.

Lily gave a nice introduction as to where we're at.

So this is day 50 of the 105-day session.

We are still...

Count down the days, day 50. Almost halfway, almost there.

Still looking at the 19th and the 21st, or the 21st for the council to come visit us in Olympia to lobby.

We're currently tied for the date, so Hannah in our office is going to be doing some outreach to the council members we haven't heard back from, and hopefully we can solidify a date.

Do we need to all go at once?

Can't we do half and half?

We can talk about that.

I know that we've typically tried to do a big push to really show the presence of the council as a unified body, but I'm happy to chat if there's an interest with that.

I'd rather have everybody show up in the same week as contrasted to half of us not being able to go.

I think in the past we've tried to organize speakers or things of that nature as well, which gets a little bit difficult to have to split that up.

But if there's interest in just having, coming down and doing some meetings, I think that we could probably make that happen, so.

But I want to support you.

Let's just be clear on that.

But I know there's one of the days that I can't go and I'm willing to go.

If everybody has to go on Thursday and I can go on Tuesday, I'd still rather go than not.

And yes, anyone's always welcome to, if there's a day that they're down in Olympia or a day that works for them, let us know and we can help organize meetings that we think would be helpful.

Okay, now that we've got Council Member Bagshaw's schedule all the way, maybe we can move forward.

Sorry.

That's okay.

So last week was fiscal cutoff, a lot happening at this point.

That was fiscal cutoff from House of Origin, so bills have to Bills that aren't deemed necessary to implement a budget needed to be moved out of their budget committees.

That's transportation, ways and means, appropriation, finance.

So there's a lot.

Some hearing days we'd hear 75 bills, lots of movement.

So we're still chugging along.

As Lily said, March 13th will be the House of Origin cutoff.

So bills that will need to have moved out of their House of Origin to still be moving.

So that's the process.

We know that there's a lot of reference to the rules and committee.

I know that that's kind of a confusing one.

If anyone does have an interest, we have a nice write-up that kind of explains what the rules process is.

It varies a little bit between the different chambers.

So if anyone wants that information, let me know and I can send that over to you.

So I'm going to dive right into education.

For Council Member Gonzalez, I know that you had a lot of interest in some of the child care legislation that was going on.

So those have all been populated in here.

So if you have any questions about those, we were supportive of the Child Care Access Work Group, which I know is a big conversation point.

And Council Member Mosqueda brought that up last week.

So we're monitoring all of that.

The school levies, that was, again, the post-McCleary fix.

Still up in the air what's going to happen.

The bill that we were anticipating that was going to move last week didn't end up moving.

So, we're still touching base with some folks to see what might be the next piece of legislation that we would see.

We can anticipate seeing something like that in the budget as well.

So, still looking at that.

Currently, the numbers being floated are a cap, a levy cap of $3,000 to $3,500 per student or at 20%.

So, those are the numbers that are being tossed around, but we're still looking at that.

Seattle School District was looking at 35%, is that right?

Historically, they were at 37% before the new cap.

I'm not sure what number they're going to be asking for at this point in time, but we can check with them about what they need in order to be whole.

Good.

Another one I just wanted to flag for you on page two, Senate Bill 5066, that's the school district elections.

That is in rules right now and that would change the bond, the threshold, the voting threshold from 60% to a simple majority.

Yeah, so 50%.

So that's still moving along.

And we were disappointed to see that our Washington State Opportunity Scholarship, the local match bill did not advance.

There were concerns about the cost associated with that.

So we're continuing to work with that during the interim.

A lot of the partners that we worked with are encouraged by that and really interested to see how local governments can play a role in this higher education conversation and how to fund those first two years.

So we're happy that we were able to start that conversation and we'll continue with that over the interim.

environment against- Madam Chair, may I ask a question?

Yes, I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Karen, maybe, I don't see it on this list, and I thought somebody was going to be working on it, but I may have lost track.

But there was a lot of interest on our behalf to really explore some modifications to how child care facilities and centers are able to be cited through a much stronger urban lens as opposed to what currently exists, which is a framework that is really much more oriented towards rural and suburban cities.

Do you have any understanding or information about any efforts related to sort of the nitty-gritty details around modifying some of those regulations?

I'm under the impression there's some rules happening on some of the agency side, but I'm happy to follow up with that.

In terms of legislation, I don't have a list of bills.

It would be good to know if there's any legislation that would have been required to facilitate some of those regulatory rule changes on the administrative agency side.

And then, regardless of that, I know you all have a lot on your plate, but I don't want us to lose sight of some of those administrative rule changes that are absolutely going to be critical for the city to be able to continue to advance a lot of our interests in meeting the affordable child care needs of our residents in the city, which includes being able to work with providers who are having a lot of difficulty figuring out where to site child care facilities in the city under the current rules and regulations that apply to them.

And Council Member Mosqueda had followed up specifically around some of the outdoor play space requirements.

We met with the Department of Children, Youth, and Families and talked about, you know, do we need to initiate legislation to address some of those concerns that are specific to providers in the city?

or in urban areas generally, they've actually agreed upon some rule changes with coalition partners, I believe in partnership with SEIU 925, around alternatives, such as if a childcare provider can identify a safe route to a nearby park.

There's some other provisions included, and I know Council Member Mosqueda has been reviewing those as well, so we can send those over to you as well.

But I think that they've come to consensus with the providers as well, from my understanding.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam President.

Great question, and I had the same question earlier about whether or not we needed legislation.

I'm happy to have our OIR team following the rulemaking closely.

It does sound like our community partners, and you mentioned one, SEIU 95, but a few others are pretty satisfied with the internal rules.

So to the extent that we can get that wrapped up this year, my understanding in terms of where we're at with the rulemaking is I believe they're at the 102 process and 103 should be coming soon.

So that means within July three months exactly So that's really great news for us to move forward quickly And I'm excited that our community partners across the board have been feeling pretty positive.

So I think it's also internal square footage Amendments as well that they're excited about.

Yeah, that's great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Muscata and councilman Gonzalez.

You can continue

So on environment, it starts on page three.

I know I referenced last week, there's a lot of environmental legislation that's moving through this year, which we're really excited about.

So there's a lot of bills.

I will not go through all of them, but some just highlights.

The 100%- I wonder why.

I could go through each one individually if you'd like to.

The 100% that moved out of the Senate on Friday, which we were really excited to see.

Our transportation electrification bill, which again was the authority for City Light to be able to offer some incentives regarding electrification infrastructure, was moved to the Rules Committee.

We're still looking at some of the plastic straw blends and some of the single-use plastic serving ware.

A lot of those are continuing to move forward.

A lot of stuff on recycling and solar.

And I put quite a few new bills in here regarding the orcas.

I know that there was quite a few task force that were, or bills that were put forward from the task force this summer.

So I've dropped the ones that are still moving into this legislation.

That's regarding like salmon protection and vessels and things of that sort.

We should go on the record that this council is, we're all climate hawks, just for the record.

Can I ask you about what is Chinook abundance?

That's for the food supply for the orcas.

Okay, so I'm reading it, but what is that going to do, the task force?

I can give you the specifics.

I can send those to you via email, but it's in order to protect the supply of that, of the Chinook salmon.

Yeah, I got that.

I just didn't know what a task force was going to do about that, but okay.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

They've made some recommendations.

I saw some.

I just don't think that the recommendations are listed because they are plentiful.

We'll send you those.

I'll follow up with the full list of stuff that was being recommended.

General government, there's one in particular I wanted to highlight for you on page six.

This is the Municipal B&O Tax Apportionment Formula, Substitute House Bill 1403. FAS worked quite a bit over the last year, two years, with Department of Revenue, Association of Washington Cities, and Association of Washington Businesses in order to put forward recommendations to simplify the apportionment formula.

They all came to agreement this past October.

There was a lot of effort in order to preserve the revenue that we have coming in from the B&O.

So everyone seems, I think for the first year in a long time that we had something just kind of sailing through on B&O.

But that was a really big deal and FAS did a lot of very good work on that.

So I just wanted to flag that and say and thank them for all of the strong work that they were doing.

Council Member Bagshaw, I wanted to highlight the PACER bill for the URMs, the resiliency.

1796 on page 7 is still moving.

That was referred to the rules last week.

And we're seeing a lot with the ballots.

That's still moving along to have all the ballots paid, the postage paid for the ballots on page 7, 5063. And the Washington Privacy Act, this is a big bill from Senator Carlisle.

He's doing a lot on this, and that's about what user data and how that's being distributed and the choices that consumers can have with their data.

We're tracking that.

There's some components about facial recognition that we're looking at right now.

So, but yeah, lots of bills still going through.

And if there's any of them in particular that you'd want more information on, please let me know.

A quick question about the substitute House Bill 1796. That's the one that you just mentioned about the PACER program.

Is there anything we need to do to keep that moving?

You remember that Representative Pettigrew and I have been working on something similar for years and it just sort of dies about this time of year.

Is there something we can do with Representative D'Olio to bring more attention to it or is there anything that you see that needs to be done?

Yeah, I think actually working with Pettigrew, I know that D'Olio has taken a pretty strong lead on this and I know, I think, I'm pretty sure Pettigrew is one of the sponsors on this bill, but I know that he's on the Rules Committee so ask him to pull the bill from rules in order to help move it to the floor.

Recognizing that he has played a larger role in this.

I know that he's a sponsor on this bill But I think that asking him to potentially pull the bill from the rules committee in order to allow it to advance to the floor I think you're suggesting that that that we do that that we make that request.

Yes.

Okay, would you work with me after this?

So that we do the right thing and use the right words to make that happen.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you councilmember

Okay.

Under health care, so starting on page 8, I wanted to highlight a couple items actually on page 9, the following page.

I wanted to highlight the forensic mental health care, so 1513 and 5444. This is the true blood that the governor requested legislation for the settlement agreement.

The agreement was agreed to by parties of the lawsuit.

The House bill had a hearing on February 26th, and then was then amended and passed out of committee on the 28th.

It's in rules.

We'll keep you apprised of that.

That'll be a big, big process moving forward.

Which bill was that?

We're looking at 1513. It's the middle of page 9. kind of top middle of page nine.

And then the next one below, 1523 and 5526, sorry, that's the public option bill.

It's another governor requested.

which includes establishing a public option, they call it cascade care, standardizing, standard plan design.

I apologize, I haven't had my coffee yet.

Standard plan design.

I know.

I think I, too, had too much earlier, and then I just kind of wafted away.

Designed for health insurance plans sold on the exchange.

So the House had a hearing, House version had a hearing on House appropriations last week and was passed through a committee.

on the 28th.

It's in house rules right now for further consideration.

And the Senate version had a hearing in Senate Ways and Means Committee on the 28th and was passed, 27th and was passed on the 28th.

Quick question on your substitute House Bill 1513. Is there money for us in the city of Seattle to be providing more beds and more mental health services coming out of this?

I can get you an updated version of that, too.

I would love to check in with Aaron Jajic, one of our state contract lobbyists, and get a more in-depth...

If you can just send the signals, whether it's to Jenkins or whoever,

This is something that we all know within the city of Seattle that we need is more beds.

We've got a few now that are opening up on Beacon Hill, but beds that are dedicated to people with mental health issues, behavioral health issues.

So if there's money coming out of this particular bill for that work, it would be terrific.

And it also ties in really nicely with the low acuity project that we're working on with our first responders.

What we hear from everybody is they need places to take these individuals other than Harborview Hospital or our jails, clearly we need to get them services that they need.

So this is great we've got some state legislation.

We just need some resources and some help.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Any other questions on health care?

I have a quick one.

Yeah.

On 15, House Bill 1638, the vaccine preventable disease, repealing the personal belief exemption for measles and mumps.

So that's on the House side.

When was that expected to, what would be the trajectory on this one?

They're all in rules, I believe, so we, huh?

I want some second reading.

Oh, second reading, yeah.

So I know the big push on the House this side this week is going to be, especially the next couple of days, is going to be housing-related bills.

So I'm not entirely sure when we'll hear this.

It'll be heard on the House floor, but we can keep you updated when that happens.

You generally don't get a lot of heads up before it does, but we can make sure to provide it once we have it.

But second reading is, I mean, it has moved out of the Rules Committee, so it's eligible now to go to the floor at any point.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, so under housing and homelessness, so on page 10, towards the bottom, 1406 and 5646, that's the local option bond bill that we continue to really work hard on.

That's one of, I think, the big coalition strengths that have been put forward this year.

There's a lot of people at the table, and they have been since well before session started.

We continue to see that moving forward quickly.

And then Council Member Herbold, I wanted to touch on the tenant protection.

This is 1656, which is at the bottom of page 10. So I wanted to, just for background for everyone, this is put forward by Representative Macri and it would end no-cause evictions.

Landlords would be required to provide legitimate business reasons for ending tenancies, extend the three-day pay or vacate notice.

This is really important to keep people in their homes.

I want to let you know that we heard from her this weekend and the language that you worked on with her will be included in the striker.

So thank you so much for your leadership on that.

And then I also wanted to let you know that the SEPA bill, which is 5946 on page 13, It is on, let's see, is it page 13?

Pop, page 13, yeah.

That's the bill that we're working with Senator Nguyen on that would allow cities to put in sanctions, encampments, and shelters with bypassing the SEPA process still.

It's within reason still bypassing the SEPA process.

It's going really well.

Hopefully not putting too much stake in this.

It just got some great news coverage in the Tacoma News Tribune talking about Camp Second Chance, which I know some of you have visited, too.

The residents came down and testified about how their camp functions and how it really helps getting people back on their feet.

And this bill would allow us to have a lot more spaces for people to go in between, you know, being on the street and into permanent supportive housing or wherever they need to go.

Which one are you talking about?

You went really fast.

Sorry, it's 5946. It's the top of page 13. It's the last bill.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'll monitor my caffeine intake next time better.

And I'm going to go ahead and start.

Oh, please go ahead.

Yes, Council Member.

Thank you so much.

Sorry.

Have you guys had a chance to look at the question that we had last week about property tax exemption and how the income eligibility threshold is handled in the different bills?

I just want to.

Yeah, I can talk to that.

That'd be fantastic.

So only one of them is advancing still.

It is 1181, I think.

On what page?

On page 10. And so the way that they adjusted it, they did, it's a percentage, there's going to be like different tiers and it's going to be a percentage of the county median income.

Great.

So I'm still trying to understand what that means, like, because since there's going to be three different tiers essentially, if there's a choice and how that choice is made, but that is the version that's looking like we will continue to move forward and we'll keep you posted on that one.

That's by Debra Ligonoff.

I'm going to go ahead and start in the public safety section unless there are any additional questions in the housing homelessness area.

We have a substantial package of firearm bills that are still moving through the process and I know many of you have been watching those closely.

including Senate House Bill, and this is, excuse me, on the top of page 13, Substitute House Bill 1010, Representative Sen's proposal that would provide WSP more flexibility to destroy legal firearms.

That passed out of House Civil Rights and Judiciary on the 18th and is currently on the second reading calendar.

A ban on high-capacity magazines, which I know is a high priority for the Council.

On the bottom of page 13, sponsored by Representative Valdez, Substitute House Bill 1068 also made both cutoff deadlines and is also in rules.

And then moving over to page 14, Representative Jenkins' bill that would require law enforcement officers secure firearms when responding to domestic violence calls passed out of committee on February 1st and is on the second reading calendar, along with substitute House Bill 1739 at the bottom of page 13, which is a proposal to ban undetectable 3D or ghost guns, also sponsored by our own Representative Valdez.

And then finally, in the gun responsibility section, I'll just highlight Senator Palumbo's proposal, substitute Senate Bill 5174 on the bottom of page 16 that would put training requirements in place for a concealed pistol license, which also survived policy and fiscal committee cutoffs and is currently in rules.

And then in the, oh, did you have a question?

Which one, I'm sorry, is Senator Palumbo's?

Substitute Senate Bill 5174.

And I just want to thank you for your hard work.

We've been doing this.

The city of Seattle had passed a proclamation or resolution, and then we were back in Washington, D.C.

meeting with Senator Murray and Senator Cantwell.

But I'm really proud of the...

You have the substitute House Bill 1713 for Native American women, Mississippi Indigenous women.

Thank you very much for working on that.

I really appreciate the work you guys have put in on that.

That is something that we've been working really close with, with the Seattle Indian Health Board.

And call our Abigail Elka Hawk and the other domestic violence folks.

So thank you very much.

I appreciate that.

I'll actually switch sections and move a little bit ahead since this is one that we have under our civil rights and safety net portfolio.

I'm still struggling to find Senator Palumbo's bill.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

It's on the bottom of page 16, substitute Senate Bill 5174.

Got it.

Thank you, and then in the area of protections for victims of sexual assault in the middle and sorry jumping back I'm doing kind of sections here But I will always list the page numbers so that you guys can look at the specific bill but in the area of protections for victims of sexual assault In the middle of page 13, House Bill 1016, sponsored by Representative Caldier, would connect survivors of sexual assault to appropriate providers and put penalties in place for any hospital that does not comply with the new requirement of connecting victims with a community sexual assault agency within two hours of being contacted.

This bill had an amazing vote in the House.

It was passed unanimously and has since been referred to Senate Health and Long-Term Care.

And then on the bottom of page 13, Representative Entenman, a proposal that she put forward would authorize a warrantless arrest when someone violates a no-contact order issued in a prostitution or trafficking case.

House Bill 1055 also passed the House unanimously and was heard in Senate Law and Justice on February 25th.

The second to the last bill you said was on page 13?

I'm missing that.

Yes, sorry, on page 13.

No contact orders, is that it?

The warrantless arrest bill.

Yes, where's that at?

That is, I believe, on 13.

13, the third one down.

Under public safety.

Oh, got it.

No contact orders, arrest.

OK. $10.55.

Thank you.

Sorry to jump around a little bit.

Back to the top of page 14, a bill that many of you have asked us to watch closely and advocate for that would address the state's backlog of untested sexual assault kits.

substitute House Bill 1166 sponsored by Representative Orwell, passed House Appropriations on February 28th and was referred to rules.

And then down to the middle of page 14, Representative Griffey, notably a Republican, has a bipartisan bill that would extend the statute of limitations for rape in the first, second, or third degree and also eliminate the statute of limitations for rape or child molestation.

That bill is also on the second reading calendar.

And lastly, I know Council Member Herbold had asked us to watch this closely.

There are two representative Pellicciotti proposals on the bottom of page 14, House Bill 1382, that would grant immunity from prostitution charges to those seeking emergency medical assistance, and would also change the second conviction of patronizing a prostitute from a misdemeanor to a gross misdemeanor, and both of those bills have been referred to rules.

Finally, and I'll go through this very quickly.

I know we're almost out of time.

Under civil rights and safety net, I wanted to highlight substitute House Bill 1713 on the bottom of page 15. This would require the Washington State Patrol to develop best practices for law enforcement response to missing and murdered indigenous women.

This is the bill I know Councilmember Juarez has worked very hard on.

And it would also establish liaison positions within the agency to build stronger relationships between government and Native communities.

That bill is also in the Rules Committee.

Senator Saldana's proposal on the bottom of page 16, substitute Senate Bill 5164, would make victims of human trafficking eligible for medical care, food care, and cash state assistance programs if they do not qualify for federal benefits.

and legislation that would eliminate the death penalty.

That continues to move right along.

It passed the Senate 28 to 19 on Council Member Bagshaw's birthday, and it's been referred to House Public Safety.

So I think that was a present from Senator Carlyle.

I think so too.

Finally, the Keep Washington Working Act on the bottom of page 18. I know Council Member Gonzalez has recently sent a letter to the committee about the importance of this to the council.

That would prohibit state agencies from using resources to assist federal immigration enforcement in data sharing, surveillance programs, or any other laws, rules, or policies targeting Washington residents based on the basis of race, religion, immigration, or citizenship status.

That is also, that is currently in rules as well.

That is the Keep Washington Working Act on the bottom of page 18. And lastly, legislation that I know is also important to Councilmember Juarez that would establish the Washington State LGBT and the rest of the council as well.

The Washington State LGBT Commission substitute Senate Bill 5356 is in the middle of page 19 and passed out of ways and means on March 1st, currently in Senate rules.

And with that, I will turn it over to Cheryl Schwab, who's going to touch on some of our transportation priorities.

Actually, before you do that, I have a question.

I didn't notice this listed on the, anywhere in here, but there is the statewide initiative around secure scheduling legislation that is statewide.

Can you tell me a little bit more about where we're at with that?

I have some concerns.

I don't believe, I know it was amended significantly in committee to exempt many rural counties.

I know there was There were some concerns from the advocates around that.

I don't believe it made the fiscal committee cut off.

So although a bill is never completely dead, I don't sense that it's moving forward any longer this session.

That's too bad.

Yeah, I'm with you on that.

Okay, I'll do transportation real quickly.

In that same vein, the sound transit bills that we talked about last week, Council Member Johnson brought up, at the moment they have not passed out of committee.

Doesn't mean that they won't be back, but at the moment they are.

As I understand it, Ms. Schwab, in particular, one of those bills, House Bill 2123, which would reclassify the schedule for motor vehicle excise taxes and would result in a $640 million hit to the Sound Transit 3 budget has been listed as necessary to implement the budget, AKA NTIB, which is an indication that though it is not moving out of committee, it is still on the radar of House leadership, which is, of course, disconcerting to yours truly.

Definitely.

We will continue to monitor that.

Motorized foot scooters, a popular subject.

I hear from Councilor Mosqueda on the scooters.

Well, it has moved out of committees.

Moved out of both committees.

It was a strong stakeholder group effort and with cities and as well as the industry, but a really good cooperation with the cities.

There are a few amendments being offered, but at the moment, it is very much what we were hoping it would be.

So, feeling good about that.

I just want to say thank you, Madam President.

Thank you so much for your work on this, and I did have a chance to connect with folks in the executive's office as well.

I appreciate their interest in making sure that we had a path forward on this scooter bill.

And will you just keep us updated?

We want to make sure that folks understand as legislation moves forward It's it's hard to undo a position if it's already been taken But I think that on this one you all have clearly communicated to our state legislators our interest in seeing this move forward as a city So if we need to do any clarification or touch base with any specific legislators, let us know but I think that this will be a good way for us to ensure that people have alternative modes of transit and and that they're going to be safe while doing it.

So thank you for your work on that.

Thank you.

Another one I was going to highlight was the automated traffic safety cameras.

Yes, well, you know, it's not done yet, but we're really happy with how this is moving and the way it's going so far.

And this would allow us to ticket those who are blocking the box?

Right, and also bus lane enforcement.

And just in transit lanes.

No, also.

Oh, great.

To be clear, we currently have legal authority to give tickets in certain blocking of the box situations.

No.

Not with a camera?

Not with a camera.

That's not what I asked.

Oh, you mean the police?

The police can give a ticket.

Law enforcement does currently have legal authority to issue tickets.

However, they have to actually see it, position themselves there, and then engage in that enforcement.

What this does is it allows us to automate that enforcement capacity, which is a much more efficient way for us to enforce This type of traffic offense, correct and the same with bus lanes, right?

I could do it now But it has to be a police officer.

Mm-hmm.

What do they do with buses that are blocking the box?

But what was the question I didn't hear it Do with buses that are blocking the box should get a ticket as well That would be city policy on what a regulation is.

We would have authority to use camera enforcement We can decide

What happened to you this morning on your commute in?

On my bike?

No, all was well.

You saw a bus that was blocking your intersection?

No, it's when they block the bike lanes that makes it so exciting.

Can I ask for one other question?

I didn't see.

Senator Carlisle and I have been talking about legislation that he had proposed early in the session around the retirement system, authorizing the city's retirement system to join with the state.

There were a lot of discussions.

I think it was Tacoma, Spokane, and Seattle that would be given the authority.

I haven't heard a thing about it for the last few weeks.

I believe it did not get out of committee.

Yeah, I'm also on that same page.

I think at one point it was shifted to maybe having it be a study of some sort, but I don't believe it did advance, but I will confirm that and that's my understanding.

Thank you as well.

Thank you for the many conversations with Senator Carlyle about that.

He's, I think, very invested in continuing to work with you on what opportunities there might be.

But I do think some of the research that you suggested is a good path forward.

Okay.

I think there's significant resistance from the city of Seattle's retirement system folks to say they don't want to join the state.

So what I had asked for is a rigorous study about what the pros and cons and the benefits would be both to the retirees and to current employees.

But that said, if it didn't pass out of the committee, there's not a lot of momentum to even do that study.

Because if we don't have the authority to do it, the question is, should we invest in the pro and con research?

And I would say, and maybe we could follow up about this offline, but there's a very I know Senator Carlisle has an interest in continuing work on that, and I think perhaps through the interim, if you are still interested in that research, you know, along with our partners in the retirement system, we could look at, you know, something, some different language for the next session as well.

Great.

I think let's talk about that afterward, because it's pretty clear on what people are looking for.

in terms of they want to have good return and be protected.

The state's program offers a broader range of investment options, and it's spread further so that it reduces the risk to individuals.

But that said, people that are on the board feel very strongly that they want to have a vote in it, that they want to be present.

So happy to work with you and appreciate it.

Absolutely.

I can see she's getting very antsy.

I'm just trying to move things along.

Thank you guys very much.

Sorry, Madam President.

I was trying to find the bill number.

You may have already mentioned it's specific to labor.

There was a few bills that were going to allow for others to unionize.

One was related to the legislative assistance.

I understand that that bill also died in committee last week.

which is unfortunate.

We're also interested in tracking the bill that would allow for the assistant attorney generals to unionize, and is that on our list already?

I don't think we have it included in this report, but I believe that bill is still moving through the process.

Let me double check and confirm that.

Okay, great.

You know, I would love to make sure that as many individuals as possible, no matter what sector they work in or degrees they have, that folks feel that they have the ability to collectively bargain.

So, unfortunate that the LA bill didn't move forward if the AAG bill gets additional support and we can lend our support.

That would be great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you guys.

We'll see you next week.

Okay.

Bye.

Okay, so now that we're done with our state legislative update, let's go to our briefing.

Before I talk about mine, I have a script here to read from the Council President.

The regularly scheduled Governance, Equity, and Technology Committee meeting for Tuesday, March 5th at 9.30 has been rescheduled to Thursday, March 7th at 2 o'clock.

There are two items on the agenda.

We have Saad Bashir.

He is going to be, I believe, for the Chief Technology Officer, the Director for the Seattle Information Technology Department appointment.

This is the second committee discussion and the committee is planning to vote on the appointment.

And second, we have one Ethics and Elections Commission Council appointments.

Looks like we have a couple appointments going on.

information technology, and the Ethics Commission.

From D5, the Civic Development, not just D5, my committee, the Civic Development, Public Assets, and Native Communities Committee will convene this Wednesday, March 6 at 2, on the agenda are four appointments up for the Seattle Center Advisory Commission, which is very key in light of all the growth that we're seeing in Seattle Center.

In addition to a reappointment of Mr. Robert Nellams for the Seattle Center Director.

We'll also have here from the Office of the Waterfront, which will present their 2019 work plan.

And the Seattle Parks and Recreation will present an overview of their community center strategic plan, including implementation updates.

In 2016, SPR completed a community center strategic plan to guide park district investments in community center operations.

The plan was informed by demand study, a demographic research, best practices review, and public outreach.

So we are excited to see what SPR has come up with and what the next steps are.

Lastly, we have two ordinances up for discussion and a vote.

One is the 2008 levy inflation contingency use for 2019 projects.

And we also will be discussing the Occidental Park timber pavilion donation.

And I think that's all we have from my committee.

Council Member Bagshaw.

Thank you.

We have two items today from our Finance and Neighborhoods Committee.

Item number 12 this afternoon is Landmarks Commission regarding the Broad Street substation landmarking ordinance that will come together.

And for those who are wondering where in the world this is, it's down by Seattle Center.

And there's a couple of buildings there that will have The other item that we will be voting on today is a resolution, and thank you, Councilmember Herbold, for bringing this forward.

It's a CIP, a capital program watch list of large, complex capital projects that we are going to have enhanced quarterly review of.

Thank you for doing that.

And I believe you're bringing an amendment today that would put it back into the Finance Committee quarterly.

So I look forward to working with you.

on that and happy to be doing it.

I think it's a great idea and it just puts a little bit more juice into the work that we're doing.

And also, I just want to mention that at our committee on Wednesday, we had an excellent presentation.

David Jones, our auditor, was accompanied by the I want to thank the public health researchers and the University of Washington researchers reporting on access to healthy food and the food bank network in Seattle, and I want to acknowledge for at least the umpteenth time that Councilmember Juarez was absolutely food banks and less access to healthy food in D5 than anywhere else in our city, and the work that she's done during our budget last year and going forward to make sure that food banks get the food that they need, but also acknowledging the really great service that food banks provide.

It's not just food, but it's things like being able to get information about utility discount programs or ORCA cards, And this is true across the city.

And so I do want to say thanks to the researchers, both at the UW and our Seattle King County Public Health researchers.

They did an excellent job.

This is the second of three reports.

The one that we did in the fall really focused on the costs of beverages.

And to, I think, many of our surprise, we're raising more than was anticipated.

But one thing that we're not taxing is diet beverages and diet beverages costs have gone up in most stores or many stores to equal the costs of sugary beverages.

So somebody is making some money there and it's not getting taxed.

And I think it's Council Member O'Brien, I just want to be able to talk to you more about that this year.

And we will have a third report from this committee about actual consumption.

I think what we're seeing is that we're raising more tax money than we had anticipated, but consumption at this point does not appear to be going down.

So it'll be another issue for us to discuss from a policy standpoint.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you and good morning everyone.

Good morning.

There are four items on today's City Council agenda coming from the Human Services, Equitable Development and Renters' Rights Committee.

There are three appointments of Calvin Jones, Gina Owens, Michael Ocampo to the City of Seattle Renters Commission, and there's a resolution that urges that the mayor conduct an inclusive transparent candidate search before going ahead with the nomination for the Human Services Director, and I'm passing around copies of a memo that were all emailed to you to last Friday listing key actions, communications, and community input into the director nomination so far.

The next meeting of the Human Services Equitable Development and Renters' Rights Committee is scheduled for a special time on Saturday, March 16th at 1 p.m.

at the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, which is on 124 21st Avenue in the Central District.

At this meeting, we will discuss equitable development in a Central District apartment building called the Chateau Apartments.

This building has 21 units, including 14 that are contracted with the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, to be Section 8 affordable units.

The name of this program, the HUD program, is Project Based Section 8 Housing Assistance Payments Contract.

This is a little different than the Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers, which we are often talking about where renters are assigned a voucher, but then they need to find a landlord who will accept it, which we know is notorious for taking months or even years to find.

In this program, the Section 8 subsidy is attached to the building.

At the end of 2017, a real estate company named Cadence purchased the building to demolish and redevelop it into what it calls efficiency dwelling units, which are, you know, one room or studio apartments.

Last December, Cadence announced that they would cancel their contract with HUD for these 14 Section 8 units at the end of this year.

My office has been working with the tenants in the building, but also discussing with City Council Central staff and also city departments, including the Office of Housing and the Department of Construction Inspections, and the Bremerton Housing Authority, which happens to be the housing authority in Washington State that oversees this particular HUD program.

And we want to make sure that if the tenants are displaced from their building, they must not be displaced from the neighborhood and that they're able to find affordable and accessible homes in the neighborhood.

And many of them are people in their 80s and 90s.

They live near their caregivers, medical support structure, and other support structure.

Some of them are being looked after by their younger generation, and so all of that will be disrupted if they are pushed out of the neighborhood.

And if council members are interested, I'm happy to share also the specific documentation from HUD which describes what the process can be that the city can follow in order to make sure that these project-based vouchers are transferred to another building or other housing units, home, apartments.

And is it possible at this point?

Yeah, when is it possible?

Is it possible to transfer to another building?

Do you have?

There is, yeah, I mean there's a process that we can use and so that's what we want to discuss.

Great, I'd love to see that.

So I held a press conference last week with many of the tenants who spoke eloquently about the issues they have faced.

I mean, there is one family, for example, with two children, and another one was on the way, and I think that must have happened already.

And this is a family who has experienced a devastating bout of homelessness.

They were in their car for three years.

They've just moved into this unit and now they're devastated to hear that they're about to lose it.

So I think a lot is at stake.

At the committee meeting on the 16th, we will hear from those tenants and discuss how they can make sure that they don't lose access to the housing that they need.

Lastly, sorry, yes.

I just want to highlight a point that was made in a Seattle Times article last week about this story.

This is a proposed proposal that would build new units, 73 units in total, but it would remove 21 units.

These 21 units are currently affordable.

Of the 73 units that would be built under MHA, the Mandatory Housing Affordability Program, only five would have to be affordable if replaced on site.

The Seattle Times article makes the point that my proposed Housing Displacement Mitigation Ordinance would not cover this particular area.

And I just want to highlight the fact that as proposed, the Housing Mitigation Displacement Ordinance focuses on areas that are within high displacement, low access to opportunity areas.

I think it's very worthy of a discussion of whether or not we should expand that to include high-displacement, high-opportunity areas, which this is one of those areas.

So that would help address the significant loss of affordable housing units with this development.

Thank you for talking about the OPCD heat map.

Yes, correct, the heat map.

You got it.

Council Member Sawant, you want to finish up?

Yes.

The last point I have is that the next meeting of the Select Committee on Homelessness is scheduled for Tuesday, March 12th at 2 p.m.

That is the time that is usually reserved for the Human Services Equitable Development and Renter's Rights Committee, but since we're moving that committee meeting to Saturday the 16th, as I mentioned, that time slot has now become available for the Select Committee.

At that meeting, we will discuss the sudden decision by Mayor Durkin to threaten the closure of the share wheel shelters after June and then we will also discuss the impacts of rents and evictions on homelessness and my staff will be sharing a more detailed agenda in a day or two.

Council Member Sawant, I have a quick question.

You talked about your meeting on the 16th on a Saturday.

What time was that?

I didn't get the time.

It's 1 p.m.

Okay.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold.

And I do want to, for the record, I heard you reference a proposed closing of share shelters in June.

I think we all received information from our central staff as well as directly from the executive and I've also had the opportunity to have a conversation with folks from HSD.

There is no planned closure of SHARE shelters in June.

It is true that they've been given only a half-year contract, and they've identified specific areas of desired improvement, and that is increasing the numbers of people.

SHARE will participate in HMIS.

They have a large number of people that exercise their legal rights to opt out and HSD wants to continue to work with them on that and that is what I believe has been a sincere statement on the behalf of HSD is not that they are intending to end provision of this service in June but rather that they are trying to work more closely and I'm going to be doing some of that work also.

trying to facilitate conversations between ShareWheel and HSD about how to improve the numbers of people who are participating in the HMIS system.

Great.

So just to make clear then, the share shelters are not closing in June.

There is no proposal for the share shelters to close in June.

I think it's a reasonable concern to have that the contracts may be not revisited.

But again, I believe that HSD is being sincere in using the contracting process as a way to incentivize change practices.

That was my understanding.

Council Member Sawant.

I just want to say that, yeah, we will be discussing these issues at the select committee.

I think we should have the people who use the shelters and also the people who run the shelters there as well.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Herbold.

All right.

So as far as items on the full council agenda today from the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, and Arts Committee, we have two reappointments to the Museum Development Authority.

One is a reappointment coming from the MDA Governing Council, and the other is a reappointment coming from the Seattle Art Museum.

We also have two bills from Seattle Public Utilities that we will be voting on today in full council.

One is something referred to as the Seattle datum point, and a datum point is a reference point used in surveying and construction to provide a known location for measuring the position or height of an object in relation to the datum point.

The datum points were last updated back in 2013, and the legislation would eliminate the need for future code updates each time the National Geodetic survey adjusts its datum.

So basically we used to do it locally, now it's being done nationally, and we will no longer need to continuously update the datum point because it will automatically update in the future.

The second piece of legislation is a contract with Waste Management for construction waste collection services.

Waste Management is the current provider, was selected after an RFP, and the new contract is for six to ten years and will begin in April 2019 if approved.

Councilmember Bagshaw referenced the watch list resolution that's coming forward.

This is something that we've been working on for a while now together with the city budget office and the executive.

We have established criteria for the types of projects that will go on the watch list and a process for the executive to report on projects on that watch list and this resolution itself contains the 20 or so projects that are on the watch list.

They are mostly projects from our large capital departments, Parks Department, Seattle City Light, SDOT, NSPU, feel free to take a look at the list.

It is included in the resolution itself.

And we had a great discussion in committee about how the council will, in the future, receive the quarterly reports.

And Council Member Bagshaw graciously agreed to hear that in her committee.

Moving forward, I think it's important to memorialize the Council's intent for hearing these so that this doesn't just become another, you know, report on a shelf.

And I think Council Member Bagshaw's plan is that when we have these quarterly meetings that we would also invite, in those cases that they are not already members of your committee, we might invite the chairs of the committees that have watch list projects to participate as well.

I think you brought that up and I thought it was excellent that if it's a transportation, I mean just under the current configuration, if it's transportation we'll reach out to Council Member O'Brien.

And if it's something specific dealing with land use, we'll at least give early enough notice so individuals can attend if they're interested in doing so.

And just for the public record, the way we've put together the watch list, although we earlier had created some criteria, using those criteria, the executive made some recommendations for watch list projects and then central staff worked with all of you.

to identify additional projects that you wanted on the list.

So this is, again, a collaborative effort with the executive, in particular, the Budget Office, whom I thank for their work on this.

There's no Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, and Arts Committee meeting this week.

As far as regional committees that are coming up, we have Regional Water Quality this week, as well as, I believe, Labor Management Leadership Committee this week.

And then I want to thank everybody for, in very short notice, signing on to the Seattle Symphony's Octave 9 proclamation.

It was a really fantastic open house this weekend.

Octave 9 is the new space where soundstage used to be.

multi-sensory, interactive, and I frankly, I don't have the words to describe it.

It's really fantastic, and there will be another open house in April, specifically family-oriented.

I think it's April 12th, and it'd be great for folks to check it out.

It's a really neat new space.

And then lastly, Thursday last week there was a meeting about the Lowman Beach community project.

There's a seawall removal project there that the Parks Department and Seattle Public Utilities has been engaging with neighbors about and it's a really high priority project for the county and specifically focused on salmon restoration.

We've talked about this a little bit prior when the council received some grant funding.

from the flood control district.

I just want to give voice to the fact that there are concerns that the residents who live abutting the seawall have about the removal and the need for mitigation.

I'm really appreciative of the Parks Department in continuing to meet with those residents and working through those issues.

Thank you.

Councilor O'Brien.

Thank you.

The Sustainability and Transportation Committee doesn't have anything on this afternoon's agenda.

We do have a Committee meeting tomorrow afternoon.

Four items I want to highlight on that.

We're going to get an update from the Pike Pine protected bike lane design workshop group.

That update will be given by Joel Sisolak from Capital Housing who's been part of that process.

We're also going to get an update from Seattle Department of Transportation on the Vision Zero progress report.

That's our commitment to eliminate all fatal and serious injury incidents in the transportation sector across all transportation modes in the city by the year 2035. Then we're going to have two ordinances.

The first is going to be, we'll consider to grant University of Washington permission to maintain and operate a pedestrian tunnel under and across Northeast Pacific Street near the hospital.

And then we're going to consider an ordinance relating to the Delridge, excuse me, relating to lifting the proviso on the Delridge Multimodal Corridor Project.

Council Member Rankin, I asked you a quick question about the pedestrian tunnel where you just said it was.

Can you, I'm not really good with visualizing exactly where that's at.

I believe it's, so you know where the triangle is between, at UW there?

I believe it's between the triangle and the hospital across Pacific Avenue.

So it's west of Montlake Avenue connecting what I believe is a parking garage in there.

But I don't have all the details.

We'll get those in.

Oh, OK.

And I'm happy to get you the materials if you have some.

No, I don't want them.

Just want to know.

I don't want them.

Don't bother me with details.

I'm good.

OK.

The other thing I'll just mention, yesterday there was the second community meeting in Crown Hill for a community planning process they're going through.

Really great turnout.

I'll tell you that some of the themes that continue to come up is a desire for that community to have What they describe as kind of a main street right now, 15th Avenue is a major freight vehicle corridor.

And reconciling that with the type of pedestrian environment that a lot of folks want is a challenge.

Obviously, it's a challenge we have in a lot of our communities around the city.

One of the concepts that they're exploring is creating a main street just off the arterial, similar to what folks are trying.

And up on Aurora, on Linden, just up there, that would be just west of Aurora.

And so they're working on that.

They're really interested in a lot of redevelopment coming to their neighborhood because they're excited about seeing that neighborhood transform.

But they're concerned about what that transformation looks like and really want to make sure it feels safe and it is a pedestrian-friendly environment, that there's easy access to the transit and making transfers.

A lot of the same concerns that I think we hear in all of our communities around there.

And so great meeting, really great turnout.

The process will continue on for probably about another year.

But they're working on a set of recommendations.

And along those lines, I want to just say thank you to Councilmember Johnson for, in my absence last week, helping with some of the amendments around the Crown Hill and the MHA.

And of course, congratulations on a big step.

Obviously, there's a full council vote coming up in a few weeks, and we'll talk more about that.

Thank you, Council Member Bryan.

Council Member Bastian has a question.

Thank you.

Council Member Bryan, when you're talking tomorrow in your committee about the Pike Pine corridor and the bike lanes, would it be possible for you to bring up the 4th, 5th, and 6th connections now as well, 4th, 5th, and 6th Avenue?

Because I noticed in some information that came from SDOT that 5th Avenue and 6th Avenue are going to be turned into these bus corridors.

We've known about that.

But what are we still doing?

We've been asking about having the network completed for safety reasons for people who ride bicycles, and motor scooters down there.

So we'd just like to know, are there plans?

What are they doing with that?

Because...

Sure.

And just so I'm clear, are you looking for information on protected bike facilities along

Either protected bike lanes or just some designated areas that are better than Sharrows.

What I saw was that the bikes were going to be in the bus lanes and especially when there's more buses that might get a little bit dicey.

Yeah.

I share your desire for better what I would say kind of north-south through the city access.

I believe tomorrow we're just going to be hearing from the individuals who participated in the work group on the Pike Pine Corridor.

And so, other than how Pike Pine interacts with some of the north-south, I don't know that those individuals will have some expertise.

But what I can do, if there's folks from SDOT at the table, I can certainly flag that as something that we have ongoing concerns about and can plan to have someone at the table in a future meeting.

We're going to want to talk about all the protected bike network, the downtown protected bike network that we passed a resolution on last summer.

And that work is slated to be largely complete by the end of this year and get an update on that.

And we know that that resolution did not include significant facilities on 4th, 5th, or 6th in part because of concerns around the ongoing Seattle squeeze and what that means and some of these changes.

But we know that we need those facilities too.

And so we can have a conversation about that timing if you'd like.

I think if we could just get them to commit to doing it, even if it's a year out.

it would be very helpful and it doesn't have to look like second avenue as far as i'm concerned if it's different designs that might work better that's great i'm with you right thank you councillor o'brien councillor mosqueda good morning madam president good morning thank you so much um for getting us through this morning's morning briefing there is no item uh from the housing health energy and workers rights committee on today's full council agenda however i am handing out a copy of a resolution that I will be walking on for transmittal to the full council.

I'm not suggesting that this be a full vote today.

This would be a walk-on with the hope to get your feedback within the next week, and then to have a vote on this in...

at least two weeks on the 18th of March.

So very briefly, Madam President, this resolution helps to ensure that our full council has a good understanding of the process used by the executive to put forward and to consider nominations for department directors.

I want to be very clear that this is not in competition or does not conflict with Councilmember Swantz.

resolution for today.

This is intended to be a standalone and separate from that process.

I think that the conversation that has been raised over the last few months raises good questions about the ways in which we can do a better job in terms of clarifying our expectations and the process.

not just for ourselves as council members and the legislative body, but for the full community participation as well.

We understand that in some cases there are legislative departments that are relatively small in size.

Maybe there will be a process that is very minimal.

Maybe there won't be a process at all.

But specifically to departments that have large size, scopes, and engagement, with our community, we want to make sure that there is a selection and confirmation process that's transparent and inclusive.

So the resolution in front of you builds off of Councilmember Licata's resolution from 2007 and helps the council understand the process that the executive is using and what forms of engagement have been held.

It is intended to outline what engagement sessions are to be scheduled, whether a racial equity toolkit was used, who had a seat at the table.

I want to be super clear with folks that this is a document that we have been working on over the last few months with some feedback from community partners.

I'm happy to have been able to build off of Councilmember Locata's previous legislation.

Thanks as well to Councilmember Herbold for some of her input.

and we're continuing to seek input from all of you.

So far, this includes a list of engagement and input sessions, including dates and groups represented, a memo describing the process to identify strong candidates.

The resolution also requests that the council consider evaluating the confirmation process by looking at the use of the racial equity toolkit and the process, and the effort to have constituencies and groups that have been directly affected by the services of the department be included in reviewing potential new candidates.

These groups would include staff, community groups that work closely with the department, and the labor community and business partners.

So as you can see, I believe that this resolution helps us in our quest to ensure that we have greater transparency, inclusion, and understanding, and that we have a better understanding as well on the diversity of the individuals who've been putting forward the nominations, and that we engage those who are directly affected by the department's potential new director.

We had some great opportunities to engage with really diverse bodies when it came to Seattle City Lights appointment, for example.

I think it was an excellent example of what we'd like to see when we pull together diverse stakeholders.

Though I wasn't involved in SDOT or the IT confirmation process, the individuals who sat around that table as well really talked about a robust engagement process in which There was a diverse group of people who not only helped us select the final candidates, but were there to do the interview process and to see a broad array of stakeholders come forward from business members to labor advocates to community partners.

I think it helps us get a better sense of how those conversations transpired.

So, in conversations with many of you, this is forward-looking.

It is for new department directors going forward and, again, is not intended to be in conflict with the resolution considered today.

Councilmember Muscat, I have two questions.

Yes.

First of all, did you work with law on this?

Yes, we've been working with law on this.

It's actually hot off the press, so there's a few things in here that are new to me as well.

One thing I would suggest is that if you see something that is missing or something that you'd like to clarify, if folks could let us know what those amendments are by Thursday of this week, We will aim to get that input and get feedback from law by the following Thursday, the 14th.

So that will give us ample time between law having a chance to review any new changes and us potentially voting on the 18th.

And second, Council Member Mosqueda, I really want to thank you for giving your colleagues an opportunity.

I think it's the height of good government when you give your colleagues an opportunity notice.

an opportunity to question, to discuss.

God forbid we talk to each other and try to, you know, make something good, something better, something that doesn't violate our charter or our responsibilities and is also a very clear about our role in the legislative branch.

As you know, Council President Harrell and I had long discussions about what would be coming over the transom, and so I want to thank you for doing that.

I think that just takes down the anxiety level.

It gives my office and me an opportunity to look at what you've done.

I like it that you've put in here, I'm looking mainly at lines 10 through 22, you know, at a minimum following particular things by the executive.

And some of the stuff they do anyway and we do anyway.

And so to codify that, give us an opportunity, talk to legal, look at our charter, know what our responsibilities are, have a collaborative process, I really appreciate that.

So I want to thank you for that.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you, Madam President.

And today, I think, is a great opportunity for us to initiate the discussion moving forward.

Again, reiterate for folks, if you do see amendment ideas or you have a question, let us know by Thursday the 7th of this week, and that way we can make sure to get it to law and get you back a final by Thursday the 14th so that we have an enambled time.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you.

I have a couple questions as well.

I understand that you're going to walk this on today for purposes of amending the introduction referral calendar.

Where will it be referred to?

Thank you for your question and I defer to you all in terms of process.

My understanding from talking to central staff was that I could introduce it today, not have us vote on it, hold it and hold it and have it referred to full council still, but not have it voted on until the 18th is my desire.

Okay.

So this will be a resolution that will be taken back up in a couple of weeks at the full council as opposed to being referred to a committee for additional committee work.

That's correct.

Okay.

The grace of the council.

Great.

That's my hope.

So the second question I have is that I noticed on this draft of the resolution that it does not have the concurrence of the mayor yet.

Have you had an opportunity to have conversations with the executive about a resolution of which contents would be a layer on top of what are her executive powers and authority under the charter?

Yes, thank you for that.

We've been engaged in conversations with the executive for the last week, week and a half, and At this point, we're still in those conversations, so that's part of our desire to continue to get feedback and amendments.

The hope would be that this is not just something that the council sends and then sits on a shelf, that this is truly practice going forward.

So the desire would be for there to be concurrence as well from the executive's office.

We'll continue working with them and all of you to see if that resolution can be found.

I appreciate that and I think I just wanted to signal that much of what is included in this resolution for those of us who have run or been part of confirmation processes or nomination or search processes for some of these major departments the contents of what this resolution lays out is not new.

It is what those of us who have engaged in the work in those spaces have ordinarily requested very early on for the executive to provide to us as part of the mayor's search and nomination and ultimately confirmation process.

So many of these things are things that I think are pretty run-of-the-mill ordinary pieces of information that are traditionally transmitted from the mayor to whoever the committee chair responsible for the confirmation process is so I don't I don't think that there's anything earth-shattering in this resolution so I hope that we are able to I think the only difference here for perhaps some of the other departments is the utilization of the racial equity toolkit.

I will, however, say that in the chief of police search, which I know is not going to be subject to this implications related to it, but even in that context, we did utilize a racial equity toolkit, and we also required all of the search committee members to undergo racial equity training in advance of even beginning to consider what some of the factors and criteria were.

as it would relate to our own obligations of looking at applications and making sure that we understand how bias can come into those subjective processes, evaluating the application processes.

But again, I think that this is pretty standard in my experience on being on the city council for the last three years in terms of these The only other thing that I would say, the last thing that I would say is that I'd like to take a closer look at this as it relates to the OPA Director and the Inspector General for Public Safety.

Those are two positions that are In the IG's case appointed The search process is run by the City Council City Council has the authority to appoint that position and And we also do the confirmation process because that's an independent office.

There's a lot of requirements in our police accountability ordinance that lay over that particular appointment process in terms of who is part of the search and nomination process.

And I want to make sure that this doesn't trip into that arena.

And then similarly, with regard to the OPA director, the Office of Police Accountability director who is searched for and nominated by the executive, there's also some language within the police accountability ordinance that already dictates dictates minimal expectations around the search process and the nomination process.

So just want to make sure that those are going to remain intact and in place in addition to the resolution.

Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez.

Council Member Skater, did you want to respond?

Thank you, yes.

Yes, Council Member Gonzalez, your points are well taken and I'm looking forward to, on that last point, hearing back from you on how this could apply there.

Also, I wanted to reiterate, We all have been through various confirmation processes and many pieces of this resolution outline our expectations that have already been fulfilled in many cases.

I think when those expectations aren't met, there are glaring omissions in who's at the table or we hear concerns from certain constituencies, this will be a nice document to be able to have to fall back on.

As with every piece of legislation that we consider, while we may have expectations for best practices, it is always nice to codify it in statute.

or in our resolution and make sure that this is a process in which we all have a solid understanding.

I'm especially cognizant of the fact that it's not just for this council, it's for future councils.

And again, we're building off of the 2007 resolution which was passed before.

So I think it's a good idea to continue to enhance and improve that.

So your points are very well taken.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I forgot I had more.

Go ahead.

On this topic, thank you so much.

I really want to say that I have appreciated the opportunity to work with you, Council Member Roscada, on this.

I think a lot has changed since 2007 as it relates specifically to Council Members' expectations for these processes.

And to the extent that there are uniform expectations, having a document that identifies them is really important.

I also appreciate that you've drafted this in such a way that there isn't a need for the council and or the executive to have to refer to two different resolutions, the old ones and the new ones, so combining all of those expectations in one is great.

And then finally, I want to thank you for including the language that I recommended in section 1A.

I think this is related specifically to the council's expectation that the mayor should tell us what their intended process is on the front end.

So that, again, it gives us the opportunity if we have something different in mind from what is being proposed, gives us the opportunity to highlight those things, work with our colleagues to encourage the executive to address those process issues on the front end.

So thank you so much for including that language.

I think that's a big part of why we're having this discussion is because there were expectations for what the process should look like for HSD.

And I think this provides a lot of needed clarity moving forward.

And if I could just say, I think for a lot of us, that is already happening.

The problem is, is we don't necessarily make it public.

And then when there appears to be a difference of opinion in terms of what that initial process might be, that's, I think, where we create, unfortunately, a lack of trust and transparency, even though it may have been inadvertently caused.

All right.

Councilor Muschietti, you want to wrap up?

Oh, I'm sorry.

Oh, I'm sorry, Councilor Szilagyi.

As Council Member Squiera clarified, this resolution does not, this resolution that has been brought forward does not comment on the ongoing issue of the appointment of the Director for the Human Services Department.

The resolution that is coming from my committee specifically refers to that and also just wanted to clarify that that resolution is a direct product of hundreds of people having sent their communication in some shape or form, either speaking at two different committee meetings or having phoned our different offices or having sent emails.

And the genesis of it was from Protech 17, the union that represents many of the members of the, many of the employees at HSD, having invited my staff in early January to hear their serious concerns with the way the nomination, the current nomination went.

And also I wanted to clarify that my office had been making inquiries with the mayor's office since early last year and there was nothing that, there was no information forthcoming whatsoever until the December 19th announcement that the mayor had nominated an individual for the HSD directorship.

And so just want to make it clear that nothing, there was nothing unusual that was expected, and it was not like the mayor was caught by surprise.

These are regular occurrences, as you all have already said, that these should be followed.

But I also wanted to urge the council to look at the fact that it is not just about rules that we are setting up for the future.

It's about rules that, it's about procedures and policies that the City of Seattle has agreed to and then didn't follow in certain cases.

I mean, there was a promise made to HSD employees also that they would be included, but they weren't, and they were taken very off guard by the appointment that was, nomination that was made.

They have disagreements, and I'm not claiming that every HSD employee is on the same page, but I am, what I am saying is that we have heard from so many that it felt, it was incumbent on the committee, and I think it's incumbent on the council to pay heed to them.

Okay, thank you.

Councilman Swamp.

Ms. Hanna, you want to finish up?

Sure.

Thank you, Madam President.

So I wanted to flag for folks that we do have a meeting coming up for the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee on March 7th at 930. Continuing on the theme that we'll talk about later today in terms of access to quality health care for all, part of what the city and the county have been engaged in is is the Medicaid demonstration transformation efforts that are being undertaken by Jeff Sakuma and Susan McLaughlin from Healthier Here and Public Health Seattle-King County.

So we'll have an update from them.

We'll also have an update from our Seattle Housing Authority, who has an effort underway to try to rehab and preserve and expand affordable housing for more than 2,000 units for low-income residents.

Looking forward to that discussion.

So today also I wanted to flag for folks that I'll be attending the Fort Lawton redevelopment plan public meeting I know many of us have been waiting for that for a very long time and there will be a public meeting today at Catherine Blaine Elementary School starting at 530 the address is 2550 34th Avenue West in Seattle 98199 Please consider attending as we try to create more affordable housing and to house our seniors and those who are homeless as well as mixed income housing.

On Thursday, I'll be speaking at the League of Women Voters on a panel talking about the impact of women in King County or impactful women in King County at the Atlas Work Base in Lower Queen Anne.

And I will be not here next week, as I will be participating in the National League of Cities conference, but also their National Housing Task Force convening, which we're getting together in person again.

So I look forward to bringing back more information from that discussion.

Thank you, Councilor Mosqueda.

Council Member Johnson.

Thanks almost Councilmember Rob, you almost got that one.

I started to say go Rob.

It would have been just fine.

Good morning.

Get it Rob.

There are two items on today's introduction referral calendar.

One I talked about last week and it was inadvertently moved to today.

The other, that one relates to the proposal to allow portables at the North Seattle Police Precinct.

It's a type 5 land use decision, won't be coming before us anytime soon, but will be on today's introduction referral calendar.

The second is Council Bill 119471, which is a changing definition of a vessel in the city's shoreline master program.

We do have a, there's no PLUS related items on today's full council.

We had planned on canceling this week's meeting, however, we've decided to hold it to discuss One bill and one bill only, and that's Council Member Herbold's one-for-one replacement bill.

So we will have that on the agenda for Wednesday morning at 9 30. We have a couple of other things going on this week.

There's a deadline of tomorrow if you're interested in bringing forward any amendments to the companion resolution to the citywide MHA bill that we passed out of the select committee last Monday.

We have had a lot of robust discussions about companion resolutions at previous MAJ upzone discussions.

Companion resolutions have generally been the place where we've been able to address non-land use related items, whether they be economic development, transportation, or other issues that have come up in the course of discussions.

We've got a pretty robust resolution right now, but happy to take more amendments I would encourage you to talk to Allie Panucci of our Council Central staff if you're interested in adding more.

It doesn't mean that there won't be more opportunities, but the resolution's planning to go live later on this week.

So if you want it in there in the next round of drafts, please see Allie by tomorrow.

By tomorrow.

By tomorrow.

Okay.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Oh, just a couple last minute things.

I want to say a big thanks to my colleagues for sitting through almost four and a half hours last Monday.

I came in this morning and realized that that was only a week ago, but like a long time ago.

So we don't anticipate further amendments coming forward, but in the same vein, if there's something that we didn't get a chance to get to that's a good idea that's come up, we would strongly ask you to connect with central staff this week so that we can have those.

published as part of the SEPA endless loop notice before we take up those three bills, the Northgate TOD bill and the two MAJ related bills on Monday, the 18th of March.

Two last small issues.

Thanks to the folks who turned out last week in Ballard and West Seattle related to the Sound Transit scoping conversations around the Ballard West Seattle light rail extension.

There's one more scoping meeting that's happening this Thursday evening at Union Station.

So if you missed that, feel free to come on down.

Lots of other ways to get involved.

You don't have to come to a meeting.

You can find all that information online.

And for my fellow transit rider colleagues, don't forget that at the end of the month, the 23rd specifically, buses are coming out of the tunnel.

You may not be riding a bus that's in the tunnel anymore, but it's going to have a kind of ripple effect on where bus routes are going in and around downtown.

If you're a regular transit rider, just keep an eye on on that There's gonna be a lot of folks out street teaming over the next couple weeks, but your route may change Including that aforementioned fifth sixth pathway, which some of us North End riders will now move to after being on 4th Avenue.

So Looking forward to seeing how those changes continue.

That concludes my report.

Thank you.

Councilman Johnson.

Councilman Gonzalez

All righty, hello, good morning party people.

Are you ready?

Good morning.

Let's do this.

Exactly.

Okay, so really quickly, this week I will be attending the King County Sexual Assault and Resource Center's 30th annual Be Loud Breakfast.

That's Tuesday, bright and early at 7 a.m.

on March 5th.

I will then on that same day at 5 p.m.

join my colleague over here to the left, Councilmember Johnson, at the ASUW Student Senate Forum to discuss issues relevant to University of Washington students.

And then on Wednesday, March 6th, I will be attending the Seattle University Law School's Public Interest Law Foundation Gala and Dinner, really a dinner that's designed to fundraise ongoing pro bono legal services throughout our community.

On full council this afternoon, I have two items on the agenda.

The first is resolution 31867, which is a resolution that would have the city of Seattle express its support of the Medicare for All Act of 2019. Again, this resolution appears on the introduction referral calendar and on today's agenda for consideration.

by this full city council this afternoon.

As many of you are probably already aware, last week on Wednesday, February 27th, the Medicare for All Act of 2019 was introduced by our very own House of Representatives Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.

And she introduced that bill with over 100 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives.

So I'm really excited to share the news with all of you that Congresswoman Jayapal has made time on her busy schedule to call into this afternoon's full council meeting at 2 o'clock.

We've been working with Council President Pro Tem Juarez's office to make sure that we can accommodate this and with folks in our IT department to make sure we can accommodate her smooth call-in for this afternoon.

So we'll kick off public testimony with providing Congresswoman Jayapal an opportunity to provide us directly some testimony on on this resolution and why it's relevant to not just Seattle residents, but also across the country.

So really excited to be able to welcome her, even though it's only telephonically, to our full council meeting.

Very excited about that.

Another thing that I will note on this resolution is that the current version in Legistar does not include a concurrence from Mayor Durkin.

We just heard this morning that she would like to concur on the resolution, so I will be proposing an amendment during full council that would insert a line for the mayor to concur on the resolution.

And then just really quickly for those of you who might be getting questions from your constituents about what is the Medicare for All Act and why is the City Council acting on it, I wanted to share some information with you all about not just the nitty-gritty policy pieces of the Medicare for All Act, so I'm going to hand out, but I also wanted to give you all a recently released report by King County that is a King County Community Health Needs Assessment that looks at 2018 and 2019. So the first handout that I'm giving you all is is a National Nurses United fact sheet that breaks down Representative Jayapal's bill.

On the front side, it really talks about how our current healthcare system is ineffective and efficient and incredibly expensive for all Americans, including those who live in the city of Seattle.

And on the back side, there's data about the nitty-gritty components of what her bill would do and how this is different from the Medicare for All effort in 2008. I believe, so I wanted to make sure that you all had that information available for you.

It comes full with 13 footnotes with lots of different citations to literature, so I invite you to read that if you have additional interest.

The next thing that I'm going to pass out is, again, this King County Health Assessment Report.

I just took out an excerpt that really talks about a couple of issues.

One, it focuses in on King County, including the city of Seattle, and really lays out with data what some of the access to health care issues are in our county and in our city.

It focuses particularly on uninsured adults.

Who are these uninsured adults?

So for example, in King County from 2008 to 2016, there's a graph on the second page of this handout that I passed out that talks about how adults age between 18 to 67. It lays out how many of those folks between ages 18 and 67 have no health insurance.

And while we know that after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, we saw a huge adoption of people signing up for healthcare, we still have a disparate number of, particularly those members of our communities of color who have not been able to access affordable healthcare insurance.

And again, Medicare for All will provide an opportunity for those communities and insurance and health needs to be met.

The King County Community Health Needs Assessment Report that I just passed out on page 67 also talks about what the unmet medical needs are within our community as well.

And again, providing you all this information to allow you an opportunity to share this data with any constituents who might be calling your office or emailing your office.

asking for additional questions about this.

But I'm really excited about working with Congresswoman Jayapal on advancing this resolution.

The city of Seattle, upon passage of this resolution, will be the first city to pass a resolution in support.

And I think that is only fitting given that the sponsor of the bill is Congresswoman Jayapal, who represents this district that we sit in, and really excited about being able to lend our collective support, hopefully.

to her effort to continue to build the case and the momentum nationally for serious consideration of this legislation in the House of Representatives.

Many more cities to follow.

What's that?

Many more cities to follow.

Yes.

And so I should just add that, yeah, Council Member Jayapal is actually my congresswoman, but we are going to hear from her to accommodate her schedule at two before public comment.

Oh, great.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate that clarification.

I'm happy to answer any other questions about the resolution, otherwise I'm going to move on to the second item.

All right.

So I also have Council Bill 119468 on this afternoon's agenda.

This is a bill that would create an incentive program for the hiring of new police officers at the Seattle Police Department.

My committee has had two hearings on this particular bill.

My committee and this council as a whole has been closely watching the hiring and separations data coming out of the Seattle Police Department since the middle of 2018, when it became apparent to us that the department was lagging far behind their hiring forecasts.

The department has continued to confront hiring struggles in recent months, a reflection of a very challenging landscape nationally, where police departments across the country are struggling to recruit officers.

So this legislation, as proposed by the mayor, would have provided lateral hires from other departments a signing bonus of $15,000.

I have proposed several amendments.

I proposed several amendments to this bill that were voted unanimously out of committee last week that would expand the hiring bonus to not just lateral hires, but also to new hires at 50% of the rate.

So it's about, I think it's 7,500.

for new hires and it also includes additional aspects around accountability so that we are able to continue to get data related to how this hiring incentive bonus is working and whether it's working to allow us to course correct if needed much sooner.

The other thing that that this bill will do including not just the expansion to new recruits and the new data collection, but it also includes a effectively a sunset date, which would require the council to renew the program so that it won't continue in perpetuity.

Again, that is tied very closely with our expectation that we want to see data and evidence that this hiring bonus is actually accomplishing the stated goal of addressing the hiring gaps for the police department.

I think it's appropriate for us to make sure that we're monitoring that data and to make policy decisions relative to the data that we're seeing and receiving to identify whether or not this is working.

And then the last piece is that there will be a clause in this version of the ordinance that would require a new hire or a lateral hire who receives the bonus to pay back the bonus if if they leave before a set period of time.

So this has all been reviewed by the law department, all of these amendments, and feel very confident in our ability to move forward with this version of the bill.

Thank you, Council Member Gonzales.

So is there any questions?

Oh, sorry, the last thing I will have.

Oh, I'm sorry.

And the last thing is I forgot to, I'm sorry.

The last thing that I will have is an appointment.

It is a reappointment to the Seattle Immigrant Refugee Commission, and it'll be a reappointment of Maya Babla-Apaya.

Okay, Council Member Mosqueda has a question.

Just very briefly, just for clarification, the ordinance that we have in our packet for today's full council agenda version two, that is what we will be voting on?

There's no amendments besides the fact that the mayor would like to concur?

On the resolution.

On the resolution.

Correct.

Okay, thank you very much.

In the ordinance or the council bill related to SPD hires, you'd mentioned that there will now be an obligation to pay it back if they don't stay for a set period of time.

What is that set period of time?

Is it different for a new recruit versus a lateral hire or is it the same?

I think it is the same provisions apply to both and I don't have the actual bill language in front of me because I didn't bring my iPad but I'm happy to follow up with you on the there's a there's both a staggering requirement of you get paid the You get paid 50% of the bonus upon hire.

The rest, the remainder of the bonus, at the end of your probation period, and then I believe it's within three years, if you separate from the department, you have to pay 100% of the bonus back.

So it would apply equally to both the lateral hires and the new hires.

There's no distinction in the policy based on whether you're a new or a lateral.

though the investment that the city is making in lateral hires is significantly more than new hires, is that right?

Not necessarily, because new hires require a whole host of investments by the police department in terms of getting them to be admitted into the training academy.

That all requires some level of financial investment and certainly time investment to get a new recruit up to speed.

That process takes about 12 months for that to occur, as opposed to a lateral hire who is already trained, just has to convert their license to one where they can be a law enforcement official in Washington State.

And that's pretty quick turnaround.

But in terms of the amount of the bonus that we're providing a lateral versus a new hire, Yes, the lateral higher dollar figure is larger.

And lastly, I should note that in your review of the fiscal note, you will notice that this is a revenue neutral proposal, even with my Proposed expansion to apply it to new hires and the reason that it is revenue neutral is because the department is still not hitting its hiring Forecasted numbers and so there are significant salary savings that will be repurposed For funding of this incentive hiring program.

Okay.

Thank you Okay, I think we're done for the morning and we'll see you in the afternoon.

We're adjourned.

Thank you