Committee on Economic Development, Technology, and City Light 7/12/23

Good morning, everyone.

The July 12th, 2023 meeting of the Economic Development, Technology and City Light Committee will come to order.

It is 9.30.

I'm Sarah Nelson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Juarez?

Aye, being here.

Council Member Sawant?

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Council Member Herbold?

Chair Nelson?

Present.

three present, two absent.

All right, well, let's get started.

We've got two items on today's agenda.

The first is the final appointment to the new Seattle Film Commission.

And the second is a roundtable discussion with directors of the city's business improvement areas.

And we'll talk about operational barriers to small businesses these days.

And let's see, we will now move into public comment on the items listed on the agenda.

And we'll start with the in-person commenters, and people will have two minutes to speak.

And for people that are calling remotely, when you hear your name called, please press star six, and you will be unmuted.

So let's see.

May I please have the sign-up sheets?

Are there any?

There are no in-person commenters signed up.

Okay, no in-person commenters, but if anybody would like to be added as you come in, feel free.

And we've got one commenter on the remote list.

And so I'll go ahead and open it up to remote commenters.

And that is, let's see, BJ, no last name.

Go ahead, BJ, you've got two minutes.

Oh, good morning.

My name is BJ.

Oh, BJ last.

Yeah, it looks weird on the form.

Yeah, good morning.

My name is BJ last.

I'm a Ballard resident and a small business or a former small business owner.

At this point, I was calling and actually to give what I found to be the largest barriers to being a new small business owner based on my experience, largely with other businesses, big things, those businesses not paying their employees and the city taking a relatively lazy fare approach to enforcing that through the Office of Labor Standards.

where businesses know pretty much if they don't pay, they, you know, at worst, if they get dinged, end up having to pay a portion of what they hadn't paid people.

So, I was in a position of having to compete with people who weren't actually paying their workers, giving them a sizeable advantage over me.

So, that was a large barrier.

Additionally, other issues with regulations.

There are a lot of businesses that have dropped in a bunch of eco blocks.

This has taken out parking, limiting people's ability to get to my business without actually putting in anything useful like bike infrastructure or outdoor seating or anything to actually improve access to the area.

It's really just removing access.

So really, those items have been the biggest barriers to me.

So thank you.

I yield the rest of my time.

Thank you very much.

Seeing no other speakers listed on the remote sign-up sheet, the public comment period is now closed.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Agenda item number one, appointment 02596, appointment of Budi Mulyo as member of the Seattle Film Commission for a term to July 23, 2025, briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you very much.

Why don't you come on up to the table while I provide a little bit of context here.

So this is the final member of the Film Commission, in position 11, representing immersive technology, such as augmented, extended, mixed, and virtual reality, and emerging technology businesses.

Positions 1 through 10 were nominated by the Mayor and City Council and confirmed in April.

And per Council Bill 120412, the Film Commission's remaining, that is the Film Commission's authorizing legislation, Position 11 is to be selected by the seated Film Commissioners.

And they've met a few times and have now put a nominee before us.

And we will hear from Alicia Teal.

By the way, welcome.

The Office of Economic Development's new External Affairs Director.

And usually we have Chris Swinson, the face of Seattle Film.

He is out, so we're lucky to have you in chambers today.

And I will have everybody else introduce themselves.

But thank you so much, Mr. Muglio, for coming today and being available for us to get to know you a little bit.

Go ahead.

Oh, by the way, before you start, Council Member Herbold has joined us a few minutes ago.

Go ahead.

Great.

Good morning, Council Members.

Thank you for having us here today.

Council Member Nelson, thanks for the warm welcome.

At the City of Seattle's Office of Economic Development, we are committed to building an inclusive economy where individuals, businesses, and community can build wealth, share in Seattle's prosperity, and unleash their potential for growth and innovation.

One important part of our local economy is the creative economy, representing all jobs that use creative skills and produce creative results across all industries.

Today we celebrate new opportunities within our local film industry, a foundational part of our creative economy.

The Seattle Film Commission is a group of 11 film sector volunteer representatives assembled to advise and make recommendations to the city of Seattle on the development of policies and programs that enhance the economic development of Seattle's film industry, provide growth opportunities for local film industry businesses and workers, and promote the sustainable growth of family wage jobs for workers who have been historically underrepresented in the industry.

The Seattle Film Commission serves as both a conduit to the local film industry and a key thought partner to the city as we collaborate to design policies and programs that grow the local film industry, connect talent to opportunities and jobs, and keep Seattle a premier location for film production.

I'm excited for the commission's appointment for position 11 and would like to hand it over to the position 6 commissioner, Champ and Sminger, to talk about and introduce the commission selection for this seat, Budi Mulya.

We'd be happy to take questions after Champ and Budi introduce themselves.

Thank you, Alicia.

Council Member Neslin.

I am Champ Ensminger.

I represent position six on the commission, which represents the post-production community in Seattle.

And yeah, as far as the connections that we have between Booty and I as far as the kind of the slice of production that we experience.

We are both technologists and that we represent people in the community that are using a lot of emerging technologies and advancing technologies for the process of production.

As an editor myself, it's a lot of trying to sort through all the fun that is had at production and the defining characteristic of The community that booty booty represents as far as immersive immersive technology is that it is production and post production at the same time, and all of the kind of the interesting things that are happening in that space are able to happen on their own in kind of a vacuum.

Seattle is a great place to to film things but in the days that Seattle gives us a curveball as far as weather immersive technology and virtual technology mixed reality, all of these things can be created.

kind of stand alone and doesn't need to rely on fair weather, which is really great for productions.

Yeah, and so as one of the 10 sitting members of the commission, we are very excited to include this voice in the commission.

through a public nomination and application process back in March, the city received 170 applications for the 11 Seattle Film Commission positions.

And positions one through five were selected by the mayor, and positions six through 10 were selected by the city council.

And position 11 is selected by the sitting members of the commission.

We deliberated thoughtfully and Booty's name came up many times as someone who is working in the space and whose past work really aligns with the mission of the commission as it stands now.

We're very excited for him to join us.

The position seats, as I said, a film industry leader in immersive technology, which includes, but not limited to, augmented, extended, mixed, and virtual reality, as well as emerging technology businesses that surround these fields.

So this position is selected by the 10 seated members of our commission and has a two-year term, which will end July 23rd, 2025. I am very excited and honored to introduce Budi Mulyo for the 11th position.

Thank you.

Happy to hear from you.

Go ahead.

So thank you so much.

This is an honor for me to be nominated as the Seattle Film Commission.

And I'm so excited about this position because of my past experience of being Asian.

And it's like really the only way to get ahead is to learn cutting edge technology.

so that I can actually contribute to the film production.

If you probably heard, there's something called Oscar So White.

So this is part of the thing, where I get into the film production as well.

A long time ago when I was doing this, I did not get into becoming an actor, so I started with the PA.

Eventually, I leveraged my 15 years experience in IT consulting.

I actually learned more about this virtual reality technology.

And we do 48 hours events where people come together and then co-create and then share.

our resources, and then the way we tell story is different from the way we tell story now, which is probably going to be the future, because how much the corporations in Seattle, like Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple, they're just throwing billions of dollars into this technology already.

So they have a lot of right on this technology alone.

But in my perspective that we can't forget of the underrepresented and underprivileged that actually didn't have access to the technology in the first place.

That they were not allowed to be part of this emerging technology.

So I co-founded a non-profit eventually to make sure that this has equal opportunity for everyone.

So SIXAR is the name of the non-profit that I co-founded.

And right now, we are actually have two training modules.

One is the AI and how it can be incorporated into business.

And then the other one is the architectural visualizations.

That can be used for, for example, like what you say, building the set, but not actual set, but it's the digital set.

So that's just like a start of that.

I also visited Fossler Studio, which is in Kirkland, and that was an excellent example on how we can leverage technology into the production.

It was a really good way to think about it, just that you can bring in the environment to us, instead of us going to the environment.

So one thing that I felt would be good also, I've experienced another VR that being used as a mental health care product, where you can actually being exposed to, for example, bullying, but with the psychiatrist, someone next to you, so to guide you.

And some of them being used to like exposure therapy for like, veterans who came back with the trauma, PTSD and stuff like that.

So another one was being used as a healing process for burn victims or like someone with paraplegic.

So it has a lot of potential, especially when you start thinking about like this can be used for other than film, basically.

But I also recognize that people who are refugees, like people who doesn't have a mean to get this, so I was also trying to advance that agenda a little bit, like diversity within the film industry as well.

So that's kind of like the thing that I'm passionate about.

And at the same time, also, it has the benefit of engaging and leveraging the corporation to be part of the community by showing the example of how we can actually work together.

Yeah, so that's a little bit of what I'm passionate about, and I'm, yeah, I'm here to advise the city.

Thank you very much for telling us what, basically what this sector is, and also its applicability to film.

And this is the perfect example of what I've been saying all along, which is that film is such, encompasses such a broad range of disciplines and so you mentioned that you I think that you wanted to be an actor but that didn't quite work out and so but here you are in film this you are An example of how film is a crossover industry, that the disciplines that are in operation in film are also, of course, the basis for many other sectors and vice versa.

So I really appreciate that bio.

So can you tell me a little bit more about, have you ever studied film?

Or when you said that your love of film, that was a long time ago.

I just wanted to note that you also have a passion for cars, it seems.

for cars in your, yeah.

Look me up, yes.

I did work on the autonomous vehicles and compete on the Seattle Robotics Society competition and won that competition.

Yeah, that was also another passion of mine.

And I started a company in West Africa at the point, like, it's challenging for obvious reasons.

Logistically, it's hard to send parts from China to Africa.

But that's cars, yes.

But it's not quite passion for cars, but more passion about fabrication and electronics and electrical.

So, because I...

In the long run, this is like another thing that I'm juggling too, is building a floating island school.

And this is like, people will be laughing at me whenever I'm in the room.

Only take five, 10 minutes before that comes up.

It's called Aquademy, so it's like we'll be learning sustainability, but I don't know anything about, this is where a lot of time where I start, like I don't know anything about it.

I don't have resources and network to do it, but let's do it anyway so that I can actually start the momentum going.

And I don't know how and when and, you know, to build this floating island school, so I just start with the electronics and fabrication.

That's, so that's where the car coming from.

You know, so.

I understand.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Let me, I'm looking at my screen here to see if any of my colleagues have any questions or comments.

Okay, seeing none, I just want to say that I am delighted and excited about your participation because I think that we'll learn a lot from you and that you will be a great contribution to the mission of advancing film and the creative sector in Seattle.

So with that, let's go ahead.

I will move this legislation.

Hearing no other questions from committee members, Excuse me, I move that the committee recommends confirmation of appointment 02596. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointment.

And I'm not seeing any other hands up.

So will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that appointment 02596 be confirmed?

Council President Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Chair Nelson?

Aye.

Four in favor, zero opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that appointment 02596 be confirmed will be forwarded to the City Council for final consideration at Council's next meeting on Tuesday, July 18th.

And you are welcome to be present either in person or online, but you don't need to be there.

So, thank you very, very much.

I appreciate it.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right, will the clerk please call the next item, item two, into the record.

Agenda item number two, addressing small business barriers in Seattle.

Okay, while we're waiting for a change of guard at the table, you can all come up and sit down.

I just have to say that I'm excited to welcome back a panel of business representatives from across the city and for the viewing public.

This is the second roundtable discussion that the Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee has hosted.

The first one was in, I think it was February 8, 2022, shortly after I took office, and it focused on the impacts of crime on small businesses.

And the question at the time was, why are we looking at crime in this committee?

And it was because public safety was a core precondition for economic recovery and growth.

And I just wanted to invite small business representatives to the table to really talk about the reality behind the statistics and put forward some recommendations for things that the city could do in the short term to really help.

And it was productive.

There were several recommendations that were put forward and one, for example, that was implemented was the storefront repair fund in which small businesses can apply through the Office of Economic Development for up to $2,000 to reimburse themselves for payments that they had to make to repair storefronts, broken doors, windows, et cetera.

That is one example.

There's also case conferencing.

I won't go into detail about that.

But the point is that it does work to bring people with the firsthand knowledge to the tables to educate counsel and also advocate for themselves.

So, crime is still an ongoing issue to small business success, but we've invited you all here at your request, I must note, to talk about other challenges that small businesses are facing and also showcase some of the great work that you all are doing to promote your members and your business districts.

So, before passing it off to our first speaker, who is Alliance for Pioneer Square Executive Director Lisa Howard, why don't you just all go around the table and introduce yourselves.

I'll start.

I'm Lisa Howard.

I'm the Executive Director with the Alliance for Pioneer Score.

Good morning.

Erin Goodman, Executive Director for the Soto Business Improvement Area.

Good morning.

Mike Stewart.

I'm Executive Director for the Ballard Alliance.

Hello.

I'm Manisha Singh, Executive Director of the Chinatown International District Business Improvement Area.

Good morning.

My name is Quinn Pham.

I'm the Executive Director with the Friends of Little Saigon.

Good morning.

Chris McKay, Executive Director of the West Seattle Junction Association.

Good morning.

Don Blake, the Executive Director of the U District Partnership.

Hello, everybody.

Go ahead.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you for giving of your time to be here today.

Go ahead.

All right.

Thank you.

I'm going to kick it off.

So good morning, and thank you to Councilmember Nelson and the committee for inviting us here today to discuss the small business barriers in Seattle.

A lot has changed over the last year since we presented to your committee, and we're excited to continue to tackle the remaining obstacles with the council as well as the mayor's office.

We would like to especially highlight the Office of Economic Development and their continued work with us around supporting our districts and Seattle small businesses.

Our panel, as you can see, consists of representatives from seven districts across Seattle, and we will each take a few minutes to share what's going well, what continues to challenge our small business owners, and then we'll conclude with some recommendations for moving forward.

We hope that this discussion will give you a high-level overview of what's happening on the ground and help to inform your decision-making as you continue through 2024. Overall, we see a continued investment in our district through both public and private projects.

As we come off of the All-Star Game Week, we also can highlight events that are coming back in full force, from the recent U District Street Fair to the upcoming Ballard Seafood Fest and the West Seattle Summer Fest, as well as others.

We continue to drive traffic to our neighborhoods with fun and engaging activities for regional visitors.

We are welcoming new businesses.

Pioneer Square saw an influx of leasing on ground floor retail in Q1 and Q2 with 18 new leases signed or businesses opened.

And last, we continue to steward our public spaces and commitment to ensure green spaces available to our neighborhoods and surrounding residents with the reopening of City Hall Park, the Ballard Commons, and the recent groundbreaking of the Little Saigon Park.

Through all of this work, we remain committed to growing our respective books of work around diversity, equity, and inclusion through program improvements, including hiring, operations, and programming.

And as things are moving forward, we need the continued support of the city to ensure our city's business districts and small businesses continue to flourish.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next slide, please.

That's an overview of the panelists.

Next one.

Okay.

We're actually going to start with the University District.

Great.

Happy to kick us off here.

Thanks for having us here today.

I'm Don Blakney with the University District Partnership.

The UDP is a 501c3 nonprofit that is funded mostly by a business improvement area, and that was renewed in 2020. And right now we're seeing in the U District kind of a tale of a few different stories here.

We have kind of unprecedented investment.

We had the up zone that happened in 2017, which brought a whole new host of investment and a light rail station that opened in 2021. Those two things alone have changed a lot of the shape of the U District.

We've seen a huge investment in housing, especially student housing that's coming through, also some commercial properties that are coming.

That is, you know, we're expected to add about 7,000 residents over the next five years, which is going to have a huge impact on the small vitality of the small businesses in our district.

We've had some really great partners with the city government and with state government this year.

In the last couple of years, the Office of Economic Development has been very helpful in working closely with us, first on a grant to help us do some beautification across the neighborhood.

We did a whole tree lighting initiative that basically brought tree lights all the way from Northeast 41st Street up to Northeast 50th Street, which changed the whole way of the neighborhood field at night.

Also, we had a broken windows grant that we piloted that turned into that whole storefront renovation program that the city was leading.

It was a huge benefit to small business owners who during the pandemic didn't have the resources to keep after the broken windows that were coming on a regular basis.

The big story recently was a $5 million grant we got from the Department of Commerce at the State of Washington.

to give basically recovery grants to small businesses to help invest in their small businesses.

A lot of our small businesses have short leases, so it makes it hard for them to make long-term investments in their spaces.

And so this grant unlocked a lot of potential for improvements.

We have 140 grants.

across the neighborhood that have made a big impact on our district.

As Lisa mentioned earlier, we did have our event season this spring, which was really exciting.

We had the Cherry Blossom Festival, Boba Fest, and the U District Street Fair, which all came in quick succession and were able to kind of bring new people into the district and to really bring that vitality.

We have public works projects going on and we have new businesses opening.

I wanted to say all that before I said we also have some major issues that we're still trying to deal with.

We have a couple of unaddressed drug markets that just hold on on certain parts of our neighborhood that result in shootings and a lot of public safety issues that we've got to get after as a city.

Also, we have an extreme situation with people who are suffering from unaddressed behavioral health issues.

And we've been able to work with our city partners on a case conferencing program, just like Ballard's doing.

And that's been really meaningful because having personalized approaches to these folks who have really high needs is a really important intervention in order to make a difference and lower the impact they have on our neighborhood.

I'll stop there and kick it over to, I believe it's Ballard.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, terrific.

Good morning again, Mike Seward, Ballard Alliance.

We are an organization that represents hundreds of businesses in Ballard and also residents as well, but we're here today to talk more about businesses.

I'll follow suit here and talk a little bit about what's going really well and then highlight a couple of things that we'd love to be able to work with you all to address.

I think the first thing, especially coming out of the pandemic, Ballard has done well.

I think we've had low turnover of our businesses and the vacancies that we do have seem to fill pretty quickly.

It's not, there are certainly a couple of problem spots with some longer term vacancies, but they are more the exception than the norm.

And I'll definitely credit that in large part to the Street Cafe program.

that we worked on a lot with Council Member Strauss, Council Member Nelson, the mayor's office over the last couple of years, Ballard's a thriving restaurant and retail district, and to really prop up that restaurant economy during the pandemic to keep those businesses there and thriving through Street Cafes, I think in large part helped us overall.

And that program continues to grow and evolve.

So that is definitely a huge positive.

I'll echo the storefront.

repair fund that's been successful, and continuing that forward into the future I think would be a great benefit to all neighborhood business districts across the city.

Public art projects are flourishing.

In Ballard, since 2019, we've been able to do, not just us, but through other partnerships, with business owners, arts groups, the city, et cetera, over 75,000 square feet of public art in Ballard.

So it's been really impressive and a great display.

And then the other piece, going back to our meeting a little over a year ago, And we talked about the notion of public safety coordinators, safety hub coordinators.

We have city funding that for that position this year and have brought that position on board.

It's been about four months and I think it is, it's beginning to make a difference.

It takes a little while to onboard, but I think the most important thing is having that dedicated individual within the district who can liaise with businesses and liaise back with the city or other levels of government on crime-related or general safety-related issues.

Not everything can have a perfect solution at the end.

However, having that contact and that person that's dedicated to working with that business owner.

And remember, these are small businesses that are, they're working in their businesses, they're managing staff and payroll and all of those things, and to have to deal with insurance agents and SPD reports and follow it all up, it's very challenging.

So having that individual.

to assist with that is indeed comforting and is a great support.

So we're big supporters of that.

And that could be something that could be carried forward into other districts as well.

In terms of barriers, for us, I think the key barriers really do center around the public safety realm.

And I'll just hit just a couple of points, but clearly repeated victimization of small businesses with property damage and theft.

And in this particular instance, I'm not talking about the $100,000 theft.

I'll get to that in a moment.

But just the repeated break-ins, smash-and-grabs, thefts, it just really becomes time-consuming and creates creates kind of this sensibility of things being unsafe.

And as a business owner, you're really looking out for the safety of your employees and your customers first, and then yourself as well.

So those things repeatedly happening continues to be a challenge.

At a higher level, organized theft at small and independent businesses.

We talk a lot about retail theft and organized retail theft, and when we think about it, we think about major retailers, right, that may be downtown, they may be in the Northgate Corridor or elsewhere.

But I do want to mention that that's happening in neighborhood business districts with small businesses.

And it is, I'll give you an example of how organized it is.

There's a small ice cream shop, and they have a Brinks security truck that comes every day, or every week on a certain day, and there was an individual who clearly staked it out, knew the day that the truck was coming, the day before, broke in, drilled through the safe, and took nearly.

a bike shop break in with, I don't know if it was a U-Haul, but it was just a big box truck, pulled up in the middle of the night, smashed, and took $60,000 worth of bicycles.

So those things are out there and happening too, and that's a little less prevalent, but it's still of concern.

And when that impact happens, it's real and it's meaningful.

And then I think the last thing I'll hit on, and then I'll turn it over to my colleagues, is just thinking about encampments in the public rights of way.

And I think that we've had some really good improvement over the last six months to nine months on that.

However, problems still do persist.

And just one quick example is an alleyway that's between Market Street and 56th.

It's behind Majestic Bay Theater.

It's a small, narrow alleyway, and it is the access point for all of the compost, recycle, and trash bins for all of those small businesses in a small residential building.

And we've had some persistent encampments there in the right-of-way, which creates a couple of problems.

One, the safety and security of the individuals who have to, you know, the employees who are minimum wage or a touch above, who have to go out there and use those dumpsters to do their job and get things done.

We've had fires out there, very unclean and unsanitary situations.

And then really at kind of the peak, we've had waste management who has stopped service for fear of safety of their employees that are out there picking up the waste.

We work it day by day, we work it in our case conferencing meetings, but the persistence of that is clearly still an issue that we need to keep doing a better job on.

All right, I'm next.

Okay, so you know this year is really themed a tale of two cities and in our case the tale of two neighborhoods.

We're finding in Pioneer Square the highs are really high and the lows are very low and that continues on and looking to make some more progress in that in 2023 and 2024. I think one of the best stories about Pioneer Square is people are coming back.

As I mentioned in my opening, we have a number of new businesses, 18 since the beginning of the year, and many of those are Asian, black, and women-owned.

And it's really exciting to see a new group of people investing in the district and planting roots there.

We were the recipient of an RCO grant through the state of Washington for the for a redesigned project for Pioneer Park so looking forward to kicking that work off to be able to improve one of our major gateways to the neighborhood and it's such an important space.

This year we also had the reopening of City Hall Park.

We continue to work to ensure a safe, inviting urban realm.

There's a lot of work to do up there, especially to ensure that the 600 plus residents on the adjacent blocks have everything they need to be able to live a quality, safe life in our city.

And private and public investments continue.

People continue to bet on Pioneer Square.

We have six developments either slated or underway, as well as a number of public investments coming in to do improvements on street improvement projects and other projects.

And the last highlight, I will say we finally have the Pioneer Square Habitat Beach is open.

If you haven't been down there, please take a second and walk down.

It's such a unique opportunity to be able to actually touch the waterfront Pioneer Square and really shows the progress that we've made as a city and kind of the future of our connection to the waterfront and the importance of that project for Seattle as a whole.

Moving on to barriers, I think the main one, and this is something that we're really focusing on, is neighborhood occupancy continues to be a challenge.

Recent reports show a vacancy rate is one of the highest in the city at 25%.

which is back to about 2008, 2009 levels.

There's many factors for this.

It's some of it's pandemic related, some of it's redevelopment.

So it's a combination of things that are leading to that level of vacancy rates, as well as the leases being in flux post pandemic.

You know, a lot of people has lease terms of five to eight years.

So we're not done seeing kind of that 2020 impact.

Can you repeat your vacancy rate?

25%.

Okay, thank you.

So we will continue to see that over the next couple of years as people decide what they're going to do with those leases signed pre and during the early days of the pandemic.

Next, really exciting with East West Connections coming online, but we will have construction impacts this fall across the district, which will make accessibility and operations even more challenging.

One of the other large things that we're hearing from businesses permitting challenges for small business, including a lack of clarity and confusion within the system, as well as delays, especially once that starts delaying opening dates, you're talking about a lot of money for a very small business investing their life savings into into trying to open and invest in the city.

Next one is infrastructure challenges.

We have area ways issues, which are becoming more impactful to the day-to-day operations.

We've had a couple area way failures, which both impacts the public realm and accessibility from a pedestrian standpoint, but also have long-term high cost implications for the neighborhood as a whole, as well related to the infrastructure, transportation planning.

We're really looking for connectivity and accessibility to our transit system for Pioneer Square.

I don't feel like we're quite there yet with the current planning and where we've ended up after the multiple years of construction impacts on the district.

Last but not least, looping back to a theme Mike just brought up is criminal activity, including property crime.

We did a recent survey asking businesses about their experience in the district over the last year.

And we found a group of 40 businesses reported about $221,000 in damage collective due to property damage and that's a direct impact on their bottom line and looking for ways to be able to help those businesses survive as well as lessen that impact.

And I'm going to pass it over to Manisha with the Chinatown International BIA, District BIA.

Thank you Lisa money she's saying with the Chinatown ID BIA, we're all smaller, smaller BIA covering what we consider West of I five including Chinatown in Japan town.

Some of the things to highlight that are going well is.

Summer in Seattle is so dynamic, and we're seeing a lot of great activities in the CID.

So we've been invested in doing consistent marketing activities over the summer, and a lot of our smaller neighborhood events are coming back.

This is really highlighted with our activations, including our CID Food Walk, where we're finding that consistent effort over a longer period of time has been more impactful to our businesses, as opposed to doing our larger events.

We've also seen, especially since the pandemic, a very strong volunteer base that is supporting us in our neighborhood.

We learned, especially at the height of the pandemic, people's really emotional connection to the CID is very strong.

And a lot of folks consider this their cultural home.

So we're seeing a lot of volunteer engagement.

We do neighborhood cleaning events monthly.

We've done our large spring clean this year and the One Seattle Day of Service and had a lot of engagement with volunteers.

And we're continuing to see that the rest of this year and into the years ahead.

And it has been really beneficial to our small BIA to have that volunteer support to help the beautification of the neighborhood because we are not able to necessarily cover all those spaces with our cleaning contracts.

Some other exciting things, we're seeing several new businesses.

Similar to Ballard, our turnover rate was pretty high at the height of the pandemic, but we're seeing a lot of backfill really quickly.

So it's really exciting to see some new businesses in the neighborhood just over the last several months.

And through our support, through partnership with the Office of Economic Development, we've had two really exciting projects over the last almost two years now.

One is what we call the Window Repair Project.

We have now supported over 100 businesses in providing security film to be placed on top of their windows to prevent future break-ins.

In addition to that, we've been able to provide window repairs for broken windows over the last year or so for free to our businesses.

Our office in particular is doing a what we are calling a pressure washing project as part of this.

We have been able to pressure wash almost the entirety of the district last year, last summer, and then we paused for the winter season and we're picking that back up this summer.

So this is our effort to get the neighborhood to a baseline level of cleanliness as it was prior to the pandemic and it's been really great to see this clear and visible improvement.

So highlighting some of our barriers that we're experiencing, as other folks have mentioned, we're still continuing to see some public safety issues, particularly around property damage and graffiti, broken windows and doors and fires.

Being a historic district, a lot of these costs to our businesses and to our BIA is very cost prohibitive.

to repair a window in a historic district is very challenging, not just from the cost, but a lot of our businesses are not insured or underinsured, plus going through the historic review process to get that back up is quite a process.

In addition to that, we're still seeing some solid waste management issues.

The CAD is home to one of several business districts that has the clear alley program.

The clear alley program was implemented in the early 2000s to support more public safety measures in our service alleys.

And with that, that removed dumpsters from our alleys and replaced them with bag services that were intended to be cleared more frequently.

Over the last several years, we've seen a different shift in service levels but I think we've gotten back to what it was prior to the pandemic.

However, the program as a whole is very prohibitive for our businesses to participate in.

It is very expensive for businesses to to have a monthly payment, plus the cost of bags, plus understand the rules and regulations of having this program.

One of the other major barriers to this program being successful is the residential population that is in the CID and that is adjacent to our alleys.

A lot of our residential buildings are low-income buildings and the the pressure that is on residents themselves to participate in this bag program is very cost prohibitive and they are not able to participate.

And so as a large and dense restaurant district, we are seeing a lot of trash generated, but not a good avenue for folks in the neighborhood to get rid of their trash.

So we're consistently seeing large trash issues in our alleys, in our public hands, and that puts a lot of pressure on our business, on our BIA to service our public areas and for our businesses to actually participate and make this program successful.

Another area that we're seeing some challenges in is our events.

So RBI is reassessing what events look like for our district.

We've historically done three large festivals and we're finding from our businesses that they're not necessarily complimentary to their business or helping their business.

And unfortunately, they're not able to participate in a lot of our events because of the permitting issues with either ESSA permitting or coming out into the street to fend food.

So it hasn't been something that they've really able to been a part of, and they haven't been able to reap the benefits of either.

And then our other large issue is around Sound Transit and the future station in or around the CID and future construction impacts related to that station location.

And with that, I'll pass it off to Quinn, Friends of Little Saigon.

Yes.

Quinn, I'm with the Friends of Little Saigon.

And as you can tell, there's two of us here from the CID.

So Little Saigon is included in the Chinatown International District, but we're not included in the BIA assessment.

And so the Friends of Little Saigon, we fill in some of the gaps that are present because we don't have a BIA, but hope to in the future.

with your support.

So as Monisha has mentioned, with our events, because of our small capacity, smaller curated cultural events have been really successful in the neighborhood, and we want to continue to do that with our partners.

Things like Celebrate Little Saigon, which is a small block party in the neighborhood.

And then we work with local artists and authors to do book readings and smaller events that are really tailored to the needs of our community members.

And those have been fantastic and we hope to do more of those in the future.

But I want to speak on more of the infrastructure that is in Little Saigon.

Because the neighborhood has multiple challenges, being fairly younger than the rest of the Chinatown core, our infrastructure is not built to sustain or really support long-term businesses and economic activity.

And so I think Lisa mentioned that they have seven developments happening in the Pioneer Square area.

we have seven just on the east side of the Chinatown courts in Little Saigon, maybe more.

And so this neighborhood is drastically changing and you'll see that visibly in the next couple of years.

And so on our part, we are working really closely with the Office of Economic Development on small business TA and other support programs that have been mentioned today.

They've been part of our, collaboration to really build out support services that are wraparound for businesses.

So when we say business TA and support, it's not just about the technical like business planning, but it's addressing public safety, thinking about succession planning and filling vacancies that have been around for a very long time.

But some other good news that is happening in the neighborhood, you heard that we just broke ground on a little Saigon Park that was underway for over 10 years, which is a little ridiculous, but we're really excited for that to happen.

That brings on opportunities for more events in the neighborhood, just public open space for employees and residents to come and gather and hang out outside.

We also are working with SDOT on several public improvements and art in the neighborhood.

So we have seven electrical boxes that are being designed and wrapped that are coming live this fall.

We also have small improvements like tree pits, getting the, what is it?

Flexi something so that it's easy to clean up and maintain.

And so that those are like simple things that will we hope to see dramatic impacts from.

Other things are.

I'm working with the office of planning community development.

I'm a huge advocate for the EDI program, because it looks at community ownership and small business ownership, especially in a neighborhood that has little to no control of their business spaces.

And the changeover and the redevelopment that's happening, businesses feel like they just don't know what to do and where to invest their time and money.

And so programs like this can help us secure their position and create more opportunities for building legacy businesses that we have currently but are slowly vanishing in Seattle.

So some of the challenges, I won't talk too much about this because Monisha talked a lot about some of those, but for Little Saigon, it's definitely around public safety.

I think Don mentioned this in the U District around black markets and drug markets.

That is still alive in Little Saigon.

It continues to move around the district.

We hear a lot about 12th and Jackson, but it really is not just 12th and Jackson.

It constantly moves because there have been only short-term solutions to some of those challenges that we're dealing with.

And I also want to applaud Ballard for the hub coordinator program.

So we're also looking at a potential program like that, or something similar to the master programs in other neighborhoods.

And lastly, with some of the redevelopments that are happening, there's, There could be more to be done with some of our permitting and engagement processes with new developers.

I think there is an intent in the beginning to work with community, but when it actually pans out, we're definitely pushed to the side.

And the ground floor uses is really a critical part of some of these new developments that we've provided a lot of input and strategies forth to the developers, but oftentimes it falls flat and we're seeing increased vacancies in even our new developments.

So that's something that we constantly are thinking about.

So I'll pass it to Eric Soto.

Thank you, Quinn.

I do want to note that Council Member Sawant has joined the meeting.

Oh, thank you.

So I'm Aaron Goodman I represent Soto BIA which is Soto is a large district we encompass nearly 1200 businesses over 950 acres, stretching from the stadiums, all the way down into the Georgetown area right north of Georgetown and.

Soto had a very different experience during the pandemic than many other neighborhoods is that so many of our businesses were essential and so many of our workers did not have the privilege of working from home.

They had to be there every day so the rest of the city could have food and PPE and you know everything moving around.

And so what we see, you know, and what is going well in Soto right now is we're very excited.

In the last week, we have launched our clean team, which is our cleaning ambassador program.

This is something that we are so excited about.

We received funds through the city, through federal funds to launch this.

And so now we have pressure washing added to our other cleaning services, such as illegal dumping removal and sidewalk cleaning and street sweeping.

And so this is going to allow us to be more nimble and to respond to smaller things that are really impactful.

So we have teams that do sidewalk cleaning, but that's for big stuff or illegal dumping on demand.

But for calls of human waste, we've never been able to respond because small to the contractor, but huge to the business that's impacted.

And so we're really excited for that launch.

And I will tell you that the response has been overwhelming.

The clean team came in the second day with a huge box of donuts.

They said that they're literally like people are trying to feed them as they work because they're so excited to have them in the neighborhood.

Other part that's really exciting is that thanks to a grant from OED, we have launched a green space planning process.

We had our first meeting back in May and are looking for our next meeting in August to go into a community plan.

And really this is, we know that Soto is undertreed.

We have about 3% tree canopy, which is very low.

And we also know that there are opportunities to and green space and less traditional manners through green walls through green roofs through small spaces, as well as large spaces we have some large areas.

that are grass in Soto that could have a walking trail or could have, you know, additional trees added.

But we also want to make sure that the plan takes into consideration Soto needs and preferences.

And so trying to figure out what types of trees grow well in an area where you have a lot of traffic.

So columnar trees that grow up rather than out.

And so this is hopefully going to will be a plan that when we look towards the future for implementation for grants, we'll have this in place for people to refer to and also will help guide our personal focus on green space in the coming years.

Another thing that we've done this year that I've been really excited about is that we brought together a group in SOTO that we call our Economic Development Stakeholder Group.

And, you know, Soto BIA, we do a lot of advocacy, but it's not what the Soto BIA thinks.

We're channeling what we hear from our businesses.

And so when we started this group, we kind of had a preconceived notion of what we would hear.

What were the biggest barriers to starting a business, to owning a business in Soto?

And while we did hear some of the things we expected to hear, like public safety, We also heard a lot about infrastructure, about electric infrastructure, sewer infrastructure, road infrastructure, and we also heard about permitting.

And so we partnered again with the Office of Economic Development to do a series of roundtables where we had the first one included Deborah Smith from City Light, Rico from OPCD, and Mark McIntyre, the director of OED, getting together to hear firsthand from our businesses and property owners what were the challenges around electric infrastructure, which some of you may not realize, but we're at a point where we're electrifying and I'm not sure our grid can keep up.

because we've had some significant failures this year, both planned outages, unplanned outages.

We've had businesses waiting up to two years for new electricity or permits that were pulled for electricity, but, and then wasn't electrified in time, which allowed someone to come in and steal all the wiring because it wasn't electrified.

We've had, you know, so that was really, while we didn't solve all of the problems in that meeting, We developed really good lines of communication that have been significant improvement in this year.

We had a power outage where earlier before this meeting where UPS without without power for almost 24 hours and you know, that's different than a regular business.

That means packages aren't going out.

And after this meeting, Seattle City Light went to UPS, got to understand their operations, where the issues are.

And we had another planned outage where that communication, you know, connection was made.

And so it was much less impactful to UPS as well as to the neighborhood as whole.

We did a similar meeting with the directors of SPU, SDCI, and again OED to talk about the permitting challenges.

And permitting is not just about new buildings and bringing in new development, it's also about addressing issues from the past.

And there are areas of SOTO that have long chemical and biological issues in terms of hazardous materials and You know, one property owner shared the frustration of going through the insurance process to get to get their permit to remove a 1950s era chromium dip tank, which I'm not really sure what that is, but it sounds really bad.

And so they're prepared.

They're funded to do it.

But they've been waiting over two years for the demolition permit for the corrugated metal shaft that sits above it.

And so these were kind of the issues.

I just said noted, go on.

Yeah.

And so, you know, once again, we did not solve all of the permitting issues during this meeting, but we developed lines of communication and an opportunity.

So now we have access to a permit navigator.

So when new businesses or folks come in, you know, permitting is still going to take a long time, but we have the ability to route people to someone that can help them make sense of the process.

And we have new development coming in.

We have the Tuttabella Food Innovation Center, which it will, when it opens very soon, will employ over 190 people in a food manufacturing facility.

We have A new clean energy manufacturing site that's underway and so there is exciting new stuff coming to soda.

So, in talking about what's going well I also I pretty much address some of our big barriers around infrastructure and.

and permitting but I do want to address insurance.

We brought this up when we came to speak to you last year and we understand that insurance isn't something the City of Council controls or manages but I think it's very important that the City begin to understand the impact that some of the events and public safety issues and some of the decisions that this body makes have on the ability for businesses to get insurance and also for the cost of that insurance.

And we all have anecdotal stories, the business that tells me that pre-pandemic they could have their choice between 10 to 15 companies and now they're choosing between three.

the fact that now their deductible is $30,000.

That means this business is eating any damage under $30,000.

And when you have trucks that get vandalized on a regular basis, and maybe they're getting $300 worth of fuel, but it's $8,000 to repair the truck, and a truck that's out of commission for a number days to weeks because the line at the truck repair shop is very long that means impact to the business that also means impact to employees when there isn't a truck to drive you're not pulling in those employees and so when you look at that this cost is both to the property and to the business but also to the economy as a whole and the ability businesses can't operate without insurance and so the ability to get and maintain affordable commercial insurance that really supports a business is really important.

And I'll stop there.

Thank you.

Well, and over in West Seattle, we're still thrilled about the bridge.

We are.

Every time I drive across it, I smile.

So I want to start on the good note as well.

In West Seattle, we do love our festivals.

We throw about 24 a year at different events and fun things.

And we just had our first ever Pride Fest last month, which was incredible, well attended, and brought a lot of people into the junction.

Summer Fest is this weekend, competing with Seafood Fest over in Ballard.

Thank you very much, Mike.

We have better music.

Just kidding.

But we're bringing back a few things just to bring more people in as well.

So we're also starting some new things like our glass float hunt.

We're hiding 100 beautiful glass floats all over West Seattle so people from all over the city can come and find them.

We are also doing something new.

I've created an artificial intelligence community generated light show that we're going to do on a seven story building at Christmas.

I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

It's new.

I'm excited about it.

Also on the good front, we only have three vacant buildings right now and I really feel in a lot of ways.

do with anybody not wanting to come in.

It's other than that.

So I think I'm happy about that.

I also want to thank the city for the broken window fund because like everybody else, my businesses are taking advantage of that.

And it certainly takes the sting out of a broken window.

We had three this week.

We do rely a lot on grants from OED, from the Neighborhood Matching Fund, from the Office of Arts and Culture, and they help make my job easier, just bringing around events and beautification.

So I'm really grateful for all that.

We experience the same negative issues everybody else is in terms of public safety.

And I think one of the big ones is just the persistence of individuals who are challenged mentally or with substance abuse and who refuse service.

And then they just hang out in our pocket park and make things very difficult But in addition to that, I just wanted to touch on permitting because I hear about that the most from business owners I just met with todd carden who owns elliott bay brewery just two days ago.

He said uh, chris I applied on february 1st for my street cafe permit.

I just got it three days ago So that's a lot of wait time there, and that's incredibly frustrating for them.

I've heard countless frustrations with the Liquor Control Board and permitting there, and very, very challenging.

But I did have a person lined up today, Bea and Mark from Next2Nature.

It's a small business in West Seattle, and they're trying to open a place called The Hydrant.

She wanted to speak today, but for some reason had a little bit of difficulty getting on.

So she just shot me over something that I'd like to read to you.

She says, for background, the space at 4541 California, the Hydrant, was converted to restaurant use in 88, originally Snubby's Deli.

There was a series of successor restaurants and cafes.

Let's see the butchery took over the space and altered use to mix retail restaurant We took over in 2015 expecting to be able to continue the restaurant assembly usage unbeknownst to us sdci then dclu retired the mixed retail restaurant classification and moved the space into full retail so that when we applied to permit for the hydrant They told us we were changing use and needed to do significant alterations to the facility, including adding a sprinkler system, fire resistant walls.

Olive Pryor mentioned businesses had a full-size grill hood and other kitchen things.

She said, we have only refrigeration and we will do no food prep on site.

We've been trying to resolve this ever since.

She says, our talking points are, we're frustrated with seemingly arbitrary and faceless decisions with no recourse.

We are frustrated with the bureaucracy and lack of a single point of contact for communications and escalations.

We're being priced out by improvements requested by the city.

And I'm sure I'm not the only BIA director hearing those kinds of complaints, but permitting is really challenging.

And what I always hear from city officials is we are business friendly.

It doesn't feel like that to the businesses.

Thank you very much.

Well, thank you all for sharing your perspectives and stories from the individual districts.

I would like to do a quick summary just and then open it up for a discussion with the council member.

Again, thank you, Council Member Nelson, for having us here today.

I feel weird kind of reading this way, but I'm sure the digital, it all works in Hollywood.

As a theme, I just want to bring out three themes I heard as I heard our colleagues talk today.

One that, you know, Seed funding in neighborhoods has a huge impact to unlock momentum and prosperity.

So just thinking about how the city can play a role with seed funding, that broken windows grant was a great example of that.

Some of the other OED grants have been really important, and the Washington State one I mentioned earlier has had a huge impact.

Public safety is key to prosperity in small business districts.

Without that, everything else gets way harder.

And then I would say a well-organized set of government Partners is key to our success and heard some success stories around the table And I think we've found some success in talking with you councilmember Nelson, so we wanted to kind of build on that today I'm going to read through a couple of needs that we kind of identified together as a group And then I'll talk about some solutions that we've we have for those needs one is There needs to be a greater safety presence in neighborhoods.

And that, you know, used to be police foot patrols, but that's been gone for over a decade now.

And so we're trying to figure out what that could look like.

Some neighborhoods like the U District and downtown Seattle have ambassadors.

And maybe those are programs we could extend into other neighborhoods so that they have that presence.

What we find is that there's businesses who need not a 911 call, but someone there to help with a very small issue.

But if you're sitting in a small business by yourself and you're there and there's somebody who's intimidating you, it's not a 911 call.

It could be someone else is coming in and asking them, hey, can you step away?

Or answer some questions about something that might be happening outside that you might not understand but the safety ambassador does.

So those kind of solutions, we'd like to see those in other neighborhoods.

We brought this forward as an idea in 2021 when we came to this committee as an unarmed civilian foot patrol.

That hasn't been realized, so we like to put it back on the table and kind of figure out how we can do that in neighborhoods because it is meaningful and it's not necessarily, you know, a 911 call.

So, and one last thing on that, they can work very closely and do in the U District with social service providers to identify need and then help triage places where the unaddressed behavioral health is having a huge impact.

So, there's a great partnership there that can be realized if we do it right.

Second need is the insurance issue.

Erin brought up that issue.

It's very important to small businesses to be able to get insurance.

It unlocks other things they need to be doing as a small business.

And so those barriers need to be better understood.

We're not experts in insurance, and so we can't translate these anecdotal stories into what should be done.

I think what we asked for back when we came in 2021 was an idea of a study, either at the state level or at the city level, to really unlock kind of what's going on there.

what could be done to have insurance be less expensive and more available.

The perceptions of Seattle, we're being told it's high risk, and so insurance is not easy to get and it's expensive.

Another need that we have is better solid waste management.

We heard in the CID about the issues they're having with waste management.

Not the company necessarily, but just the idea of managing so much solid waste.

To put it in context, we have a handful of neighborhoods in Seattle that have both historic buildings, and high concentrations of restaurants.

What that means is, you know, with a new building, you have garbage is required to be stored inside.

So all of the dumpsters come inside, and you have alleys that are open, and you can use them for other things.

In neighborhoods like CID or in the U District, we have, for example, in the U District, we have 130 restaurants within 10 blocks, and all of that garbage gets stored outside on a regular basis.

And there's the oversight of that garbage depends on, it gets really, It's a little wonky really quick, but like residential is a different process than commercial, and the oversight is different.

And so that just leaves a whole bunch of room for slippage.

We had 40 dumpster fires up against buildings in one year in the U District because someone was coming through and lighting dumpsters on fire that were not locked.

And it caused, we almost lost a couple of buildings, residential buildings.

And so having a process to study and kind of understand these issues, maybe having a team that comes by and helps deal with all of the overflowing dumpsters that happen.

We have a lot of illegal dumping that comes when you have that concentration of dumpsters.

People from all over the region know they can come to a certain neighborhood and dump their stuff, and no one will know and no one will care.

We find receipts and kind of like box labels from Kirkland.

People come and just use it because they know it's a target, and there's no real way to deal with it.

So perhaps there's a way that we could have something built into the city contract with waste providers to come and have an extra team that just comes and helps deal with these few neighborhoods that have this issue.

This probably will resolve in the next 100 years when buildings change and things develop, but right now we're stuck with this for the next 50 years.

I would also say that the permitting times was brought up here as a really big as a really big issue, I think looking at that as a city and doing a study to figure out how we can create a portal for small businesses at the city to address these and handhold people through.

It's such a learning curve.

When you have a new business that's opening up and the permits, it's like the, if you don't understand it all at the front end, you can really delay yourself by accident.

And so having someone who can really walk you through that process.

And all the information you need to have up at the front end of the process is really important.

So that's where the city partners come in.

We have a great partner with OED.

And so I don't want to say that that's not there.

I think we just need to continue to think about it.

And it's interdepartmental.

It's not just OED.

It's DCI.

It's Liquor Control Board.

It's these other things that all have to fall in place in a really quick succession for you to get your business open and working on time.

I think lastly, I just wanted to give a kind of a, I wanted to raise this again as an issue that we're all seeing in our neighborhoods.

Public safety issues are not a one department issue.

They're complex.

They require, they require issue resolution across departments.

And I'll use not a U District example, but a Capitol Hill example.

Cal Anderson Park has a lot of public safety issues.

And we've been working, I live on Capitol Hill.

We've been working with the city there to address public safety issues around the park.

And what we found is it requires five city departments to deal with a public safety issue.

SPU owns a lot of the stuff up there.

SDOT has a lot of real estate up there.

Seattle Parks Department has real estate up there.

SPD is involved.

the community, the Seattle Central College is involved, and of course the Parks Department.

And all of that comes together, and then you have an HSD layer with the social service providing up there.

And to have a strong partner within the mayor's office and in the city to be able to navigate and quarterback that conversation.

super important and we really appreciate all the work that's going on with the Harrell administration to try to set up those conversations when we have to do that kind of complex issue resolution.

But it's really important that the city steps in and plays that role for business districts like ours where not everything is just a quick phone call to a particular agency.

You really do need to have that triage.

I'm going to leave it there.

Did I capture everything?

Is there anything I missed from you all?

Thank you.

That's quite a to-do list.

Thank you very much.

I'm just getting caught up here.

Thank you so much.

I want to start by saying, to remind our listeners and our viewers on, not Hollywood, the award-winning Seattle channel, what is a BIA?

Business Improvement Areas are funding mechanisms for business district revitalization and management.

And so, local stakeholders, usually property owners, oversee and fund the maintenance, improvement, and promotion of their commercial district.

And we just renewed the MID.

That is an example of a business improvement area.

And they are intended to provide supplemental services to ensure the success of the businesses that are located in neighborhood business districts, also residents, et cetera.

And what we're hearing and what I've said before is that these aren't supplemental services.

These are essential services that if they were not provided by the BIAs, our city would be quite different.

So thank you again for that.

And I just wanted to make sure that people understood what we're talking about when we say BIA.

And there are 11 in the city.

Next time, I will, at next meeting, I want to say that I'm hearing a lot about, I'm just responding to some major themes.

I am hearing about coordination, and that businesses, not just individual businesses, but BIAs themselves, would like to have a cross-departmental response of some sort, because problems are not simple, usually, and I, in back of the day, OED did have an informal team called the BAT team, Basically, we're go-to people in departments that a business owner could, a business owner makes one call to OED, and if there's a combination city light SDOT problem, then that person would help navigate the communication across departments.

And the good news is that the OED is working on revamping and formalizing that, and we will hear about that at our next meeting.

So, I do have some good news on that front, that there will be a lot of what you – the needs that you're talking about for streamline problem solving, in essence, is being addressed, and I look forward to hearing more details about that.

So, I will stop talking now.

I heard the needs, and before we end this meeting, I want to make sure that my list is correct, but first of all, I would like to open it up to my colleagues.

for any questions they might have or comments.

I wanted to thank the panel.

I know this was the second time we've done this to have small businesses.

And I know the people from the ID and Soto and Vineyard Square, we get a lot of your constituent letters and concerns, and we've been paying attention to this.

So I want to thank the chair, but also the opportunity to hear from the businesses that are downtown what we're trying to do.

And hopefully we can do more.

Obviously, small businesses are the lifeblood of what makes a community and a city healthy.

And just what they do in any community is so important.

So I just want to thank you for the opportunity and thank you for being here this morning.

And thank you, Chair, for your leadership on this.

Thank you very much for recognizing the importance.

And in previous meetings, you have noted that North Seattle could Use a BIA.

Sorry, Phillips.

Anyway, go ahead, Councilmember Herbold.

Thanks so much.

I just wanted to say a few words on the public safety front for folks' awareness.

Councilmember Lewis and I, The beginning of 2023 worked with the Seattle auditor to request an organized retail theft audit.

Excuse me.

The transmission and completion of that audit was delayed.

We, the auditor had received feedback from several external bodies, including the State Attorney General, the King County Prosecutor, Homeland Security, and several business groups.

Feedback as of when we had originally scheduled it for a committee briefing had not yet been received from executive branch departments.

I believe the city auditor has received that feedback and are still waiting for a final comment from the executive.

We are aiming to have a briefing at the next committee meeting, the Public Safety and Human Services Committee meeting in we're going to have a public hearing.

July on the 25th at 9.30.

we are including several extent external stakeholders governmental.

Stakeholders that I mentioned earlier the attorney general King County prosecutor Homeland Security.

But the Washington retail still seeking an update from the executive on the Seattle Police Department's recruitment and retention plan and the use of funds that the council provided not only in 2022, but also in the 2023 budget for a recruitment and retention plan for the Seattle Police Department.

and as soon as we learn more about that plan and the use of the funds that Council provided, I will be pushing that information out.

And then lastly, just want to extend an offer to the district one small business owner who is having problems with the permits at SDCI.

And if there's anything I can do, feel free to send them my way.

I'm happy to try my best, no promises, but try my best to do some troubleshooting.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold, and also thank you very much for mentioning our eagerness to hear more about police officer recruitment, because what I'm hearing from everybody here is public safety is an issue, yes, but I believe that what I heard What I heard that is a benefit of neighborhood ambassadors or the case conferencing is that there are relationships that are being built through the familiarity of some of these programs that you touched on.

And that is what an adequately staffed police department does provide, is the beat cop or the regular presence that just gets to know each other, you know, people in the district and can, you know, build trust, and also prevent things from escalating into major district-wide problems.

So noted, and we'll.

Looking forward to that update.

Council Member Strauss.

Chair, thank you.

I just have to first say thank you.

It's great to see you all.

And thank you for your partnership.

I was taking notes through all your presentations, so I'll kind of tick through them.

They're not in an organized fashion because I think everyone kind of touched on some of the similar points.

But I really see everyone here as a partner.

And this work, it's an ecosystem of partnership.

And a lot of the work that you do is actually government relations.

I recall a walk, a public safety walk with Mike Stewart where we were with SDCI most importantly, but also with the fire department and the police department because we were just trying to figure out what can a parking garage do to secure their building.

And it was really wonderful to see Mike in a public or in a government relations role translating and advocating for a property owner who doesn't understand department speak and Mike and I, our relationship being able to coordinate on the ground right in real time and working with departments.

That type of government relations is not something that comes naturally to small business owners who are focusing on just getting, meeting their bottom line and creating their product and moving forward.

And some of that partnership also looks like with the street cafe that we have at Ballard Avenue, SDOT did the work and Ballard Alliance is maintaining those planters.

It's important.

The public safety coordinator position that we've funded and now hired in Ballard is, I think very important, and that's when I'm talking about ecosystem, we took that idea from the U District BIA, right?

And it's something, I think that position is something that is needed across all neighborhoods, frankly, because it really is both triage, dispatch, problem-solving, and quick wins.

Nods around the table to that.

Say again?

Oh, I just said nods around the table just for people that...

Oh, yeah.

Absolutely.

And, you know, even downtown, 3rd Avenue, Thurton Pike could use somebody just specifically with this role of taking the day-to-day issues, triaging, and finding solutions.

Some of what we've done this last year was taking advice from you last year.

I mean, it was last year's presentation where you're talking about hub safety coordinators.

We did it in Bowery.

We're finding success.

I'm gonna eventually get back to your asks, but I think that they're spot on.

Just what Mike said about organized criminal activity, I can confirm that, that it is a different level than the smash and grabs.

I won't go into the stories that I've heard, but they are similar to what Mike shared.

And some of this partnership is also about dealing with the persistence.

right?

Things get better and then they get worse and then they get better and then they get worse.

And the alleyway that Mike brought up, I mean, that thing has been good, it's been bad, it's been good, it's been bad.

I mean, and I think that it might be time that we look back at some of those earlier solutions that we thought, well, maybe We don't need to do this because, you know, it's been handled, but now it comes back, right?

And just the ability to work with Mike, to work with SPU to get that trash service returned, to work with HSD, that partnership is important, especially around persistent issues.

There are things that we have done on the legislative side that maybe don't always, they're not an immediate felt impact.

Just this week we passed a Pioneer Square rooftops legislation to hopefully get some more, to reduce the vacancy rate down in Pioneer Square.

I mean, I was down in Occidental Square having lunch the other day and it was fabulous.

It reminded me of pre-pandemic, after Weyerhaeuser came in.

And some of this partnership too is going around the table where pre-pandemic, I worked with Don about City Hall Park and that, what you said about Cal Anderson is totally true where at City Hall Park, we had SPU, we had the county, Sound Transit, Parks, and SDOT.

and to be able to create the solution that was before the pandemic that worked, pandemic closed all of that great work down, but then that translated to us being able to do the same thing in Ballard with the Ballard Commons Park, using that reopening as the pilot for the Parks Department to reopen City Hall Park, which I think they were more successful at City Hall Park with their reopening than ours, right?

I mean, but that's the benefit of getting to do it multiple times.

Just going through permitting, Boy, oh boy, are you spot on.

And so I asked the city auditor to audit every permit review desk.

That permit is currently, it was supposed to be delivered in June.

It's going to be delivered in August or September.

I'm excited for this.

It does not, unfortunately, talk about street cafe permitting.

You know, it doesn't talk about the other jurisdictions like liquor control board that are outside of the city.

It really focuses on the building permits.

But this is just going to be the first round.

And while the Land Use Committee won't have the time to take up the recommendations from this permitting audit this year, That's something we're going to do next year, right?

And because it shouldn't, you shouldn't have a longer wait time from permit application to issuance to certificate of occupancy.

You should, that time shouldn't be longer than it took to build the Space Needle, right?

Like that's what we're talking about here.

Because it is more than, It's more than just building buildings.

It is addressing the issues from the past, as you mentioned.

It's about just getting that certificate of occupancy.

It is about significant alterations.

Like if there was a mistake made in West Seattle and, you know, Council Member Herbold, I'm happy to help if you've, if you run into challenges getting, getting to the bottom of how you, What designation that building is and what does 51% change mean?

Because then if you're not, if you're in an area that is subject to SEPA, then you have to go through SEPA just to do the significant alteration.

And that's even longer.

I mean, that's part of why I passed the SEPA threshold change for downtown.

because we shouldn't be having significant alterations going through SEPA.

Sorry, I'm going on a really long tangent, but I've got all the notes from what you were talking about, and I think it's just so spot on.

Another piece of legislation that I'll be bringing soon is about vacant buildings, because I know for Aaron Goodman in Soto, if you've got a vacant industrial building, that's a problem.

And we've had that in Ballard in our industrial area too.

And so we're going to be changing how vacant building monitoring program works and is enforced to hopefully bring better results.

One of the ideas stemming from U District last year about broken windows that turned into a real program I think was very successful.

I think it's something that we need to expand funding for and expand eligibility or have something that is tied for some of our smallest businesses.

Just one example, my office was working with a small business that is located in Ballard and Greenwood.

They have two businesses, so they could not apply.

Right.

But we've got other local companies who I love that I dine at that there's no shade here.

It's just they have a parent company that is able to have multiple restaurants of the same parent company, but because they are filed differently, they're their own companies, and so each of those businesses get to have their windows replaced.

But the slightly smaller business that has only two locations, like we need to figure out a solution for them as well.

The pressure washing, I think, is exactly spot on.

I know working through the unified care team, that's something that as these neighborhood-based homelessness response teams are standing up and expanded throughout the city, that the desire is to have a truck that also has a pressure washer so that you don't have to rely on contractors.

But as that is still expanding, absolutely.

We're also relying on this partnership again.

I mean, when Ballard brought Uplift Northwest into Ballard, it was a game changer.

Suddenly, all of the streets were actually litter-free and the leaves were raked up.

And I'll tell you, when the leaves are raked up in the fall, It makes a big difference for your walkability through the business district because it's whether or not the storm drains are filled, right?

I mean, there's all these little things that you as BIAs are doing within your specific assessment area and working as an ecosystem between each other.

Quinn, about the flexible porous paving, it's shocking how much of a difference it makes.

You stop tripping on the roots.

There's not trash.

Most of the time people stop letting their dogs poop there and leaving it there.

Right, I mean, and this is something that I think it's almost as if there needs to be a standardized plan for downtown, like neighborhood downtowns, where when you have this business district, there are certain things that the city does.

flexible forest paving.

It's shocking how much of a difference such a little thing can make.

And like this beautiful cooperation, if you will, where we've got Seafood Fest and the West Seattle Party happening this week.

Mike, I will admit, I did a lutefisk eating contest last night.

I will not be a participant on Sunday, but happy to be in charge.

I'm glad you're actually here today.

Yeah, I would say that was gross.

As any good Norwegian would say about Ludofisk.

Getting to some of the public, to the asks, right, about public safety, how do we have those daily beats right away and now?

And I know it's really, I was very supportive of the mid-expansion in downtown.

And maybe that's something that happens in the BIAs as well.

I mean, even when we had Uplift Northwest, they by no means were.

Can they respond to anything?

Oh, sure.

Just raise your hand or interrupt.

OK.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Just interrupt me.

I love having mid-safety ambassador, you know, oh, we had uplift Northwest and by no means are they public safety people, but just having more people on the street regularly walking around.

I think it is important that we have some sort of neighborhood ambassador.

I know in Ballard, We now have community service officers doing walking patrols and that has had a positive impact.

It's still something that we need to do more of and formalize how that works.

Don, I see you want to say something.

Just really quick about the CSOs.

I think it's a different type of program than what we were envisioning.

Just the key to the success of these programs is geographically specific people who are there every day and from most of the hours.

Like our program, we get there at 730 in the morning and we leave at 11 at night.

And I mean, and our program to do that costs $400,000 a year to RBI, which is a lot.

And so thinking about, but it's cheaper than COPS, right?

And so how do we, I mean, not every neighborhood has those resources to do that, but I think it's the specific people there over time that can collectively share that knowledge.

Go ahead.

Yeah, I agree.

I just was thinking, I think it was about a month and a half ago when I first even found out about the CSOs.

And I met them.

I thought they were great.

They said that they would have regular patrols in West Seattle, and I saw them again for the first time yesterday.

And they're great people, but there's no consistency to Don's point.

And I think getting to know the kind of characters that are hanging out in our own unique neighborhoods and being able to relate to them and help them.

move things along is really going to be key to this program and the success of it.

But I can't believe what he spends.

I don't have that kind of money.

Lisa, you raised your hand.

Just to layer on that, I think when we're talking about the presence, part of the key to that is the communication channels, especially with the business districts and organizations within, because we have a huge amount of information coming in.

And if we can help pass along that information to help troubleshoot and shoot it back out to the neighborhood, that's when it all comes together.

because I think the presence is important, but if there's no relationships there across the neighborhood districts, then we're not going to be successful in that function.

Is that what you're, you mentioned this last time.

And is that what you mean by a quarterback in the mayor's office?

There's two things.

You really need someone who is a quarterback at the city to pull together departments.

So it's an office job of someone who's an expert with like black belt and city departments.

And then there's the on the streets people who go out there and walk and check in with businesses.

very different role, but it's a part of that same equation where that information is collected.

And then we can use that to deploy social services, to deploy strategies from the departments or the neighborhood investments.

But that on-the-ground person or set of people, right now I think we have about eight ambassadors that do that work over the course of the week.

That's what makes that information gathering, like Lisa was saying, and the lines of communication open.

I think I agreed with everything that was said there.

And, you know, when I came into office, I'm going to use CSOs comparing to how we used to do homelessness outreach, which is when I came into office, we didn't have any geographically-based homelessness outreach in our city.

We do now, right?

And there's still room for improvement, but at least what you were saying about the regularity, the consistency, and what you were also saying about just needing to know, like, every day, yeah, I'll see you every day.

Maybe that's...

We're open to suggestions.

I hear that as the request of that neighborhood consistency every day in certain hours.

And I just see with the CSOs, the community service officers in Ballard, I see them because I share my district office with where the North Precinct has their substation and the CSOs are in there as well.

And so I think I probably see them a little bit more because they're doing their paperwork and getting ready to go out and do their next thing.

And the Department of Neighborhoods has really changed also over time.

Back in the day there used to be a regular presence and community councils, etc.

So that's exactly where I was just going with that, which is like I, as a district council member, use my district office to try to support what Department of Neighborhoods used to do.

Because that used to be a Department of Neighborhood space and is now finance and administrative services.

And so it's by using that physical space to create the hub between the police, between CSOs, between our outreach workers, between, I mean, and then me just having that front presence and being able to look across the street to see Mike.

But Erin, you've got something.

I think what everything you're saying makes total sense.

And I think we need to kind of lift up what Quinn said earlier about wanting to be a BIA and the fact that this public-private partnership enables districts to increase their capacity to support and so as you know we look forward at one thing that the city can look at other neighborhoods that might be primed to become a BIA to you know both work with the city and help that process but that seems like something that would be a good role for the city to take.

Again, this is agreement here, because even, it's interesting, like I represent Northwest Seattle, but I've worked with Aaron about vehicle residency outreach.

We use University Heights, which is not a BIA, but is associated, and this is how we, again, with this ecosystem that we're working in.

Frankly, we've also got the Finney Neighborhood Association in my district.

I'd like to move on a little bit to, can I ask a question when you're done?

Sure.

Let me just finish this thought and I'll pass it back to you, which we've also got, I mean, much like Little Saigon, we've got the Finney Neighborhood Association that is doing a lot of this work and even not in Finney, in Greenwood.

I mean, Finney-wood.

Where it's important to be able to support you to become a BIA because kind of going back to what I first said about that partnership with Mike and Government Relations, for you to have that consistent funding to be able to do the work every day is what sets you up to be able to do this.

Sure.

We're exploring options to expand the CIDBIA into Little Saigon.

Gotcha.

I wanted to pick up on the insurance issue because I do remember this being, obviously as a small business owner myself, I know that number one, people don't report crime because they don't plan on submitting a claim because they don't want their premiums to go up.

So that's one problem.

So the crime statistics are not a reflection of reality.

Number two, there are insurance companies that have pulled out of this market.

And the remaining policies are extremely expensive.

So I understand the difficulty.

And when you asked for a study last year, I looked into it a little bit.

I did some provisional pricing, and then I was thinking, gosh, what good would a study be to just simply surface what everybody knows if council doesn't have the power to do anything about it?

But I am hearing that this is top of your list still, and there's got to be something, maybe, that we can do.

Or I don't know.

I'm just saying that I'm hearing you.

I need to find out in partnership with you guys what the next step should be because it is a problem and we can't have that being the reason why businesses are leaving town because they can't get insurance.

So that is an incredibly important issue.

And Council Member Nelson.

Hold on, please.

Go ahead.

Do you have a moment?

Do you have a note on the insurance?

Exactly.

Exactly.

Just that.

And something that I've noticed as I've been looking into this issue as well is that with our current insurance commissioner being a bit asleep at the wheel that...

So OIR does play a role here to find out.

Yep.

And we have the ability because the current insurance commissioner is not running for re-election that I think it's gonna be important that we have an insurance commissioner that really fights back on insurance companies because when the insurance companies just have free reign to deny claims, to raise co-pays, and it's not even just about business insurance.

It's like there are homes in Eastern Washington that aren't able to get home insurance because they're in a fire zone, right?

And this is because our insurance commissioner has, not been up to par.

There's that and also what you said, Aaron, which was that the city has contributed to the problems why it's difficult to get insurance.

It's a whole big thing that we have to address, but definitely making sure that we understand better the landscape, I think, would be historically how many companies operated here, how many are now, et cetera, et cetera.

I think that is a valuable avenue of inquiry.

And also, leadership at the state, and we can engage our, like I said, our Office of International Relations.

So basically, I've got a whole list of items that I don't feel like I need to respond to.

You've raised them, permitting, permitting, permitting, public safety, public safety, public safety.

New issue for me is solid waste.

I was not aware.

And that seems perhaps like a fixable thing.

Just kidding.

Everything is complex, but I really appreciate now understanding what is going on.

And this is the beginning of a conversation on these issues, not the end, of course.

So go ahead, Don.

I was just going to say, some of these themes, another way to look at them is that commercial districts just have a really interesting lens to be applied so that you can, that these problems get more complicated when you look at a commercial district.

The garbage is one of those examples.

I think land use and its intersection with permitting and all that, that also is another lens of like when you apply it to a commercial district, there's impacts to small businesses that might not apply if you're looking at a different neighborhood.

And you have to set these laws up to kind of work for the whole city.

But then there's these other lens you sometimes need to zoom in and kind of apply.

So I appreciate having the entree to come to this conversation and be able to do, to kind of zoom in on some of these issues.

So thank you.

OK, and a couple of positive things I heard, which was low turnover.

I love those two words put together.

So that was good to hear about.

I also heard high vacancy rate also.

So I understand that there are Well, you've got higher vacancy rate than downtown.

Downtown's is 22%, or at least it was in May.

That was up 2% from the same time last year.

So these are not good trends.

We've got to get office workers back in the office, et cetera.

But noting that vacancy is an issue, but it's good to hear that there is some stable tendency amongst your businesses as well.

I think, Chris, you wanted to say something?

And then let's, maybe we can, did you raise your hand?

No?

Okay, I will open it up to any of my colleagues for further questions or discussions, and then I am not, I would like you to, if we have missed anything, or if you have any last words, please go ahead and speak up now, because this is an important conversation.

chair we just want to thank you for having us and having this ongoing conversation that it's not just that we came once and presented but that we're building that ongoing conversation goes a long way towards the communication challenges and coordination challenges we've discussed so thank you thank you thank you

Councilmember Strauss.

Sorry.

I'm excited to continue the partnership I mean through all of this different work and one thing that I really am here I'm hearing and I think is a fast solution is just having those hub coordinators in every neighborhood because yes having one person to then know who everyone in the city is to talk to and then to work with the district councilmember, etc.

It's a smart decision.

And I'm excited to work with you on all of these issues.

And we are coming up to the mid-year supplemental and the fall budget deliberations.

And we all know what our budget situation is.

But part of this conversation, for me at least, was to focus our attention on your needs.

And as I said, next time we will have a presentation from the Office of Economic Development, which will talk about some of their intentional investments that touch on a lot of what you've already addressed.

You all know how to reach me, and I just have to say thank you very, very much.

This is how I learn what I need to know to help you.

So, thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, now is the time in the meeting where I say, is there any other business before us?

And I am not seeing any other hands.

So, uh, this concludes the agenda of the July 12th meeting of the Economic Development, Technology, and City Light Committee.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, July 24th, 2023, at 9.30 a.m.

And right now, we've tentatively got scheduled, as I've noted already, um, the Office of Economic Development's Future of Seattle Economy presentation, a, um, a resolution about, uh, a, um, about that is associated with that and future investments that are going to be coming up this fall.

And then a generational wealth presentation, four music commission reappointments, and a Seattle City Light annual audit presentation.

So that's coming up.

And oh, nope, I'm seeing that the, yeah.

That is correct, and my staff is sending...

Yes, I do mean 26th.

So it is July 26th.

Thank you very much.

All right, July 26th, Wednesday.

Okay, everybody, that's a wrap.

Thank you very much.

Bye.