missing title

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you for being patient with us.

It is April 29th, 2026. The Land Use and Sustainability Committee meeting will come to order.

It's 9.38 a.m.

I'm Eddie Lynn, chair of the Land Use and Sustainability Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Foster?

Here.

Council President Hollingsworth?

Present.

Councilmember Rink?

Present.

Chair Lynn?

Here.

Chair, there are four members present.

Wonderful.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Oh, council member Strauss is excused from today's committee meeting.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you all for coming to this Wednesday morning meeting to discuss land use.

As always, thank you to our city clerks, council central staff, mayor's office, and Office of Sustainability and the Environment for helping us prepare for this meeting.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on the agenda or items within the purview of the committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Currently, we have 13 speakers, 10 in person, three remote.

Okay.

Given that, each speaker will have two minutes.

We'll start with in-person speakers first.

Clerk, can you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 60 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they're registered.

In-person speakers will be called first.

After which, we'll move to remote speakers until the public comment period is ended.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers will be muted if they do not end their comments within allotted time.

They'll also call the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open.

We will begin with the first speaker on the list.

who is Sean Watts.

And Sean, just one moment.

Good morning.

Maybe just a little bit closer.

There we go.

Good morning.

Thank you, Land Use Environmental Sustainability Committee, for inviting the public to address the council.

My name is Sean Watts.

I'm owner of SM Watts Consulting.

I'm here to proclaim my enthusiastic support for Liliana Ayala as director of Seattle's Office of Sustainability and Environment.

I met Liliana in September of 2013 at the Environmental Professionals of Color meeting just a few weeks after I moved to Seattle.

I remember this clearly because within moments I recognized that Liliana was a singular force and that she was already well on her way to making her mark in the world.

Liliana has all of the traditional experience and qualifications, numerous fellowships, including most recently as an Obama fellow and USA leader, environmental policy lead for Congresswoman Jayapal, numerous well-deserved accolades.

She knocks it out of the park on paper.

I'll let my colleagues and her LinkedIn page cover that.

And not to diminish the depth of her experience, but as an agency head, I think it's even more important that she embodies so many of the most crucial personal leadership qualities necessary for this job.

She's a passionate defender of equity and justice, shows grace under fire.

I've never seen her shook.

I've seen her cock her head a certain way and chuckle when things need fixing, but she never gets ruffled.

She can keep more plates spinning than a circus act, and she always has a plan.

She does what she says and says when she can't.

She's kind, thoughtful, accountable, compassionate, trustworthy, effortless in her ability to lift others up, and she makes people believe in themselves, and perhaps most important for the Office of Sustainability and the Environment, she makes people believe in the future.

I've worked with and for managers who shine on paper but don't have half the experience, disposition, and emotional intelligence that makes Liliana Ayala an ideal leader for this agency.

And I thank you again for this opportunity to support my friend and colleague, Liliana Ayala.

Thank you.

Next up we have Paulina Lopez.

Good morning, dear council members and sustainability committee.

My name is Paulina Lopez, and I am the executive director of the Duwamish River Community Coalition.

I thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

I'm here also to offer my strong support for the confirmation as director of the Office of Sustainability and Environment to Liliana Ayala.

This role is critical for the future of our city.

As the director of the Office of Sustainability and Environment, she will not only be responsible for shaping policy, but also for guiding how we respond to some of the most pressing challenges we face in climate change, environmental health, and sustainable growth.

All of this has been a great experience with Liliana and will require a leader that can translate urgency into action, as has proven for her past experiences.

Also balancing competing priorities and building trust across communities, which is a great attribute that Liliana has.

Lili brings experience that judgment needed to meet that moment.

Her background reflects a deep understanding of environmental justice, policy, and practical approaches to implementation as we saw through the Green New Deal, environmental agenda, and many other examples.

Just as important, Liliana has demonstrated an ability to work collaboratively with community, which is an attribute that we need in leaders nowadays, the businesses, and government partners.

Liliana has shown a commitment to environmental stewardship, not only in the city, but at the national level as being an Obama fellow, as working with Pramila Jayapal, a member of this community.

And then she understands environmental progress and efforts that should reach out to residents.

At the time of the city's act decisively, we need a leadership that both is visionary and pragmatic, as Liliana attributes.

Liliana demonstrated both qualities.

I'm confident she will bring the focus and the collaboration necessary to make this a priority.

I respectfully urge the council to confirm Liliana.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Cara Williams.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Kara Williams.

I live in D3 and work at the Low Income Housing Institute.

I am here today to speak in support of CB 121195. We are in dire need of shelter that provides people a roof over their heads, a door that locks a space of their own, wraparound case management, behavioral health care when necessary, and other supportive services.

We receive calls every single day from people looking for shelter.

Expanding current shelter sites with necessary supportive services is a fast and effective way to save lives.

I support this increase of the citywide limit for transitional encampments from 100 to 150 people and allowing select sites to serve up to 250 people.

Service providers are ready to ensure public safety at new shelter sites, to provide supportive services, to make sure staffing plans match the need created by having more people on site, and to be good neighbors.

Working on community engagement at Lehigh, I can confidently say our community advisory committee meetings provide a great opportunity to connect with neighbors around each village and to follow up with operations staff to address anything community members bring to us.

Raising shelter capacity limits is a strong and dignified step towards giving our most vulnerable neighbors what they need to thrive.

I ask that you please move forward with this legislation needed to quickly expand shelter.

Thank you for your commitment to ending homelessness in our city.

Thank you.

Next up we have Marta Catane.

Thank you, committee and council members, for taking the time to hear from community members this morning.

My name is Marta Kidane, and I am the community engagement manager at the Low Income Housing Institute, or LEHI.

We greatly appreciate the Land Use Committee's work to allow for shelter expansion across the city of Seattle.

As we all know, there is a homelessness crisis in the city, and Council Bill 121195 is a direct response to meeting that need.

Thank you, committee members, for making this a priority.

At this time, I'd like to ask that the committee reconsider amendment number five, which speaks to the grouping of shelters into neighborhoods.

This is an idea that originated from the presentation we and other providers gave to the Land Use Committee on April the 1st.

Lehigh made a recommendation that program participants can be grouped into neighborhoods by putting shared essential items between said groupings.

For example, hygiene trailers, kitchens, and laundry rooms that can be placed strategically to make them easily accessible to villagers and making the village feel smaller while keeping that community feeling.

The way the amendment is currently written can be prescriptive to providers, so I ask that you give a second look there.

and also we want to ensure that with those changes we would always be increasing the level of staffing according to the number of occupants and the census need.

So we greatly appreciate again your prioritization of shelter needs and homelessness support and we hope that the council bill can be amended in order to meet provider needs as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up we have Steve Rubisolo.

I think Seattle is open to many housing opportunities, but each village will have to be judged on if it becomes a crime center or not.

And I would believe that if we have problems in one or two, we shouldn't go after all, but we should look very carefully at what happens in each one individually, because I think Seattle will continue to support as long as it's done in a reasonable manner.

The main thing I'm going to talk about today is trees and 4401 Fremont.

We have trees going back to the 70s, and I recently found a yellow tag on a number of trees there talking about replacement removal and replacement.

Now, I tried to contact SDOT, and the first day I tried, they were having meetings, and so I tried again, and my call was referred to their arborist I have yet to hear.

So, I'd like to get a full understanding of the yellow tag.

I'd like to know the reason why, because on Fremont, you can tell how old an apartment building is by looking at the trees in front of it.

They have been destroyed each time the new generation of apartments come in, because it's far easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to do a good job in this city.

and I was heartened a little bit last night at a Fremont meeting where even people who believe the nonsense about raising zoning will lower the cost of housing were concerned about design review.

It appears even some of the true believers don't believe that the city and the neighborhood should adjust to the building, that maybe there are some limits in the building.

Next up we have Ruth Tait.

So I'm talking about planning.

Friends of Queen Anne are advocates of social and affordable housing because we don't believe the market can deliver for low and moderate income people.

We support upzoning, but not without evidence we need so much.

We love middle housing, just not the way Seattle is doing it.

We prefer Portland's approach, which has been very successful building smaller entry-level income homes.

where housing supply realists who don't think mass up-zoning will achieve the affordability we need and weakens efforts to direct growth to transit centers.

Research shows mass up-zoning price impacts are modest and take years to show up.

Supposed success stories like Auckland and Austin have all seen declining growth.

Their price drops are partly due to decreased demand.

Builders stop building when prices drop too low, which is happening in these cities.

They'll start again when scarcity returns and prices begin to rise.

Is the city expecting too much from mass up-zoning?

Where's the definitive proof it works?

Why aren't we doing other things that could be more effective, like dampening land speculation?

Vancouver recently added a suite of speculation taxes and investors fled.

Prices have dropped by nine percent, in some cases by a million dollars.

The bad news is those investors see Seattle as their new favorite place.

Why aren't we addressing the unearned wealth Upsoni gives landowners and finding ways to get some of that back to fund low-income and social housing?

or banning short-term rentals, which could put more housing on the market overnight.

We ask you to be housing supply realists, recognize the limits of mass upzoning, and look for other solutions to achieve more immediate and long-term impact.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Cindy Wilson.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Cindy Wilson, and I'm with Headwater People, an indigenous-led and run consulting group here in Seattle.

And I have some words to share for myself and one of our co-founders, Matt Ekohak Hayashi.

Our team at Headwater People is proud to speak in support of Director Ayala's confirmation.

As community members, we have witnessed firsthand how the Office of Sustainability and Environment has flourished under Liliana's leadership.

She embodies a model of public service that builds genuine trust and drives meaningful action in what is arguably the city's most consequential work.

She leads with clarity, empathy, and urgency and she is cultivating an exceptional team that generations of Seattleites can count on.

We are excited to continue supporting Director Ayala and OSC in their critically important work.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Next up we have Margaret Shield.

Good morning.

I'm Margaret Child from Lake City, and I've spoken before about my strong support for rapidly expanding low barrier accessible shelter with wraparound services, like the tiny house village near my home.

We need more and larger shelters, and I'm grateful to the council for rapidly enacting two of the three bills in this package, but they came out with more weight, more requirements.

So as you consider adding amendments to Councilmember Foster's good land use bill today, please always remember that right now Seattle is in a crisis.

Too many people are living on our streets, in our parks, on the edges of roads, in green spaces.

There are no safety plans there at all.

There are no services there.

And it's impacting most neighborhoods across the city on a daily basis.

It's unhealthy and unsafe for everyone.

Now, I know you know that, but please remember it as you consider adding more data connection, more reporting, and more bureaucratic tasks for service providers to this bill.

Every weight you add makes this hard work even harder, more logistically difficult, and much more costly.

Are you aiming for the perfect when the good would be so much better than where we are now?

Is the juice really worth the squeeze on every one of these requirements?

Please propel this shelter expansion initiative forward towards success.

Please don't weight it down into the quicksand that we've been stuck in this issue of homelessness for far too long.

Let's build more shelters now.

Thank you.

Next up is Peter Hasegawa.

Good morning, Chair Lin and members of the committee.

My name is Peter Hasegawa, and I'm a labor rep on the Green New Deal Oversight Board, and I'm here on behalf of my union, IBW Local 46, and our 6,000 electricians.

I'm speaking in support of Liliana Ayala's appointment as the director of the Office of Sustainability and Environment, Seattle is facing many threats from extreme weather.

We had over 400 Washington residents die in the heat dome in 2021. We have floods, wildfire smoke, bursting pipes.

Liliana is very clear-eyed about these threats, and she's gonna help the city do everything it can to support residents from these hazards.

At the same time, she's also going to be an advocate for the workers who are performing the work to protect the city and make sure that they have an opportunity to have great careers and good green jobs.

Our local strongly supports Liliana for this position.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Hannah Lindell-Smith.

Hello, good morning Council Members Foster, Rank, and Lynn.

My name is Hannah Lindell-Smith.

I'm a youth representative on the Green Edo Oversight Board, and I'm honored to speak here today in strong support of confirming Director of Office of Sustainability and Environment, Liliana Ayala.

I heard about Liliana's nomination and, well, attempted confirmation, I hope so, as the director when I was in my second year on the board, and I really think that I actually did scream a little bit with excitement because I've seen firsthand how Liliana has been an effective advocate and a really fearless leader of the department in those two years.

So first with the Climate Justice Department, before that with Equity and Environment Initiative.

She's an expert policy practitioner, a capable coalition builder, a leader of environmental justice in every sense of the word.

And I've seen that process play out more clearly than ever under the new Wilson administration.

When I asked Liliana once about where did those recommendations from the transition sessions go, she clearly laid out her five-step plan for how those recommendations were going to be implemented, reviewed, and truly respected.

That is the kind of leadership that we need at the Office of Sustainability and Environment and throughout the city.

And she really is the best of what we have to offer here in the movement, in government, and in the world.

Please, I strongly urge you to confirm Liliana Ayala as OSC director.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's our last in-person speaker.

We will now move on to our remote speakers, starting with Fatima Fido.

Fatima, please press star six.

Fatima, if you're there, please press star six.

Okay.

Fatima, we'll come back to you.

Our next speaker is David Haynes.

Good morning.

Is the environment sustainable for healthy living where you site encampments on the side of the train tracks or the bus stop or the road ridge?

It's unsustainable to make the environment movement a race war and a class war, especially when you're ignoring the opportunity to build back better and reimagine a 21st century, first-world quality, sustainable, walkable, pedestrian-centric, resident-friendly neighborhood without the road rage or the buses or the trains bothering you every 5, 10, 15 minutes.

You're acting like you're doing poor people a favor by creating what they call low-quality, low-level, affordable housing, and yet you're putting them in the worst locations, in the most unhealthy environments.

And it's like a two-phase policy that is really being used to line the pockets of a bunch of politically connected nonprofits that wanna play the race war and make a bunch of money handing out flyers or taking another survey.

But there's no real effort within the land use to take away the restrictions that the small-time landlords put on the redevelopment of the comp plan and allow for the community in Seattle and the rest of the nation to see how you can redevelop without the road being the priority.

Do you realize that there is such a great opportunity to almost double the space for building homes and completely improve the environment?

If you could just realize that all the asphalt and the concrete, that has been what has caused so much problem.

And when somebody wants to drive through your neighborhood and say, you're not allowed to build back better because we want that tree to absorb our toxic soot as we didn't do, we have to tear up those roads and allow for a greenscape redevelopment where you put the detached homes and the higher builds on the side roads.

Thank you, David.

We will now move on to Ryan Tallon.

Good morning, Land Use and Sustainability Committee.

Thank you for allowing me to give a public comment today.

My name is Ryan Talon, and I am a registered nurse at Harborview Medical Center.

I'm here to encourage you to support Council Bill 121195, and I want to explain why this legislation matters to me as a frontline health care worker.

At Harborview, I regularly care for patients who are medically ready for discharge but have no safe place to go.

We treat serious conditions like post-surgical recovery, severe infection, and traumatic injuries.

And then we just release people back to the street because we just don't have places for them to go.

And I've seen so many patients acknowledge in sadness and frustration that their discharge destination is just back to the street.

And then I end up treating them weeks later for entirely preventable complications.

The recovery is undone by exposure, lack of sanitation and instability.

This cycle is demoralizing for patients.

It sucks for healthcare workers and it's just unsustainable for our healthcare system.

And so it's exciting.

to see proposals like this coming to the council.

This bill offers us a step forward.

We have tiny house villages in Seattle that are already operating successfully and providing stability and supportive services.

My understanding of CB121195 is that it raises this tiny house size limit to 150 and it's going to possibly allow certain sites up to 250. And I would urge you also, just as an aside, to avoid amendments that make the implementation of Housing these people, my patients, more difficult because they need housing now.

They don't need to wait for us to add red tape to the process of housing them.

I urge you to support this tiny house model and I urge you to let it serve more of our neighbors who desperately need a place to heal.

Please support this bill.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Fatima, we're going to try you again.

Please press star six.

Good morning.

I'm speaking in support of Liliana Ayala as the OEC director.

My name is Fatima Fido and I want to share from a community member perspective the importance of representation in climate justice work when it pertains to frontline communities.

Our public institutions are better off when they close the gap between service, access, and need.

I met her when OSCE took the bold steps in piloting community assemblies to elevate the leadership and influence of homeland communities in environmental justice, making Seattle part of the global case making for participatory democracy.

Our leadership shines through in support of our staff and community spaces this past summer where youth deliberated for two days about how climate justice affects them.

She understands that for those of us on the front lines, climate justice isn't an abstract feature.

She listens and acts.

That's the kind of leadership worth naming, especially as OEC is leading the Climate Action Plan update, and I thank you for granting me the time to speak.

Thank you.

Chair, that's our last speaker.

Okay.

Thank you all.

Is there no additional registered speakers?

We'll now proceed to our items of business.

We'll now move on to our first item of business.

Will the clerk please read agenda item one?

Agenda item one, appointment 03491, appointment of Liliana Ayala as director of the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

And thank you to our representatives and presenters.

Please join us.

And once you're situated, please go ahead and introduce yourselves and to my colleagues.

Look forward to any questions or comments you might have.

Great.

Good morning.

For the record, Mark Ellerbrook.

I'm the Deputy Director for City Operations for Mayor Wilson.

It's my pleasure to be here this morning.

Council President Hollingsworth, Chair Lynn, and Council Members Rink and Foster, good to see you.

And it seems appropriate on this beautiful spring day that we are talking about the director for the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

In all of this city's glory, natural beauty to be seen.

So it's a pleasure to introduce to all of you our nomination to be the next director of the Office of Sustainability and Environment, Liliana Ayala.

You've heard a lot about her already.

It's always a little funny to be the person to then sort of reiterate all the things that people who know our director nominees so well to come up and do it officially.

But I will do it briefly, since they all did a better job than I could possibly do.

As folks heard, Director Ayala has a record of advancing environmental action, working in partnership with community to achieve that, and really focused on the equity space.

I've known Liliana for a little while.

I know her to be a collaborative leader, a warm person, who's able to lead others well and with empathy, something I think that is always important in a director of any department or office.

She has actually spent the last seven years at the Office of Sustainability and Environment, the first portion of that as Seattle's first climate justice director, and the last year as the deputy director of the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

She's focused her time on Seattle's Green New Deal, and I think also in part of that, sort of focused on reducing emissions, supporting communities, and supporting the department.

Outside of that work, she's also served the community in other ways, frequently on committees and commissions.

She sat on the Seattle Women's Commission.

from the vice chair and the chair of the Parks District Oversight Committee, as well as the co-chair of King County's Open Space Equity Cabinet.

And then prior to much of that, she also served at the federal level in Congresswoman Jayapal's office, focused again on the same issues of environmental sustainability and environmental justice.

Given the record at the local, federal, and regional level, it is really my pleasure to ask for your support for Liliana Ayala's nomination to be the next Director of the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

And I will turn it over to Director Ayala.

Thank you, Mark.

Hello, Committee Chair Lin, esteemed Councilmembers.

For the record, my name is Liliana Ayala, and I'm currently serving as Acting Director for the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Wonderful.

Colleagues, any questions or comments?

Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you for your service, Director Ayala.

I will just say it's a pleasure to get to hear your confirmation today and fantastic to get to hear your history of service detailed that way.

We have had the pleasure of working together numerous times in the past, I think over the last decade, on various projects.

And your commitment to community, to actually making sure that we're making progress towards our environmental goals are absolutely unmatched.

So I'm very excited to have you here for this discussion.

I do want to just ask one question, maybe a few, we'll see.

But I want to ask you how you're thinking about some of the actions that the city needs to take.

One of the, in my experience, most challenging things is that so much of the things that we need to do to make progress on climate come in our housing sector, in our transportation sector, in our building codes.

And so I wonder if you can just speak to the role that OSC needs to play as a convener and as a driver of the message, given that you don't have the direct authority over those areas.

Just curious how you're thinking about that.

Yeah, thank you so much, Councilmember Foster.

I think you touched on some of the qualities that are important for the Office of Sustainability to play, and from my perspective as director, one, collaboration is incredibly important.

Partnership is incredibly important.

It's important for me and my team to understand the priorities, challenges, and opportunities that our colleagues in departments like Department of Transportation or Seattle City Light or Seattle Public Utilities how they think about the issue, how they contextualize it.

And I'm maybe not shy to say we oftentimes at the Office of Sustainability and Environment have to be opportunistic in that deep listening, we wield soft power.

And so through listening and collaboration, we're able to come to solutions that provide multi-benefit.

I'll also say that at the Office of Sustainability and Environment, because climate and sustainability are our primary lens, We do see ourselves situated in a system, and we approach the issue and those solutions from a system-oriented perspective.

We're very adept at putting our expertise forth when it comes to supporting advocacy on local, state, federal level in terms of legislation and policy that helps us meet our climate goals and yield multi-benefits.

We're able to very sharply go after funds at the state level and federal level to help to amplify solutions that are happening at the local level that can stand to serve as a force multiplier.

So I'll say we're deep listeners.

We understand the system and the context, and we're looking to bring forth multi-benefit solutions.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Council Member Rink.

thank you chair pardon me and i am just so excited to see your appointment before us acting director ayala and i'm excited because i've seen the way you've moved through the work you have been somebody who has done the work for so long and i i know i've seen you for years now in community working alongside our environmental justice organizations and just having such a clear equity lens to environmental justice.

It has been really encouraging to see, and so I'm so excited that your appointment is coming before us.

And the questions that I have for you today, I hope you see as an opportunity to speak more to your vision as leading over OSC.

And with that, I want to focus in on one big piece of OSC's work, are building emissions performance standards.

So bearing in mind that buildings are responsible for about 40% of climate pollution in Seattle, what steps will you take as OSC director to ensure that the city is meeting our building emissions performance standards goals benchmarks to reduce emissions?

Thank you so much, Councilmember Rink.

First, I'll give some brief context and say the Building Emission Performance Standard for us is a critical strategy in meeting our city's climate goals.

Through that policy implementation, we're projected to reduce building sector emissions 27% by 2050. It translates to nearly 10% of all city-wide emissions by 2050. So in that process, we spent two years having conversations with hundreds of community-based organizations and nonprofits, building owners and managers, tenants, labor representatives, environmental justice groups, affordable housing providers, and in that process, what has yielded for me as important ingredients for success of implementing that policy and staying on track is the commitment from the city, our commitment from broad stakeholders and partners to see this be successful and to allow for iterative feedback, conversation, staying in relationship with each other to understand how implementation is going.

We have built in flexibility and support, so there's a transparent time horizon with regards to implementation.

Our team has put forth multiple pathways for compliance.

We have provided and built in supports in terms of technical assistance for building owners.

We've developed education.

We're working on case studies.

We have a building decarbonization grant program that's focused on supporting building owners who are serving low-income housing, who may house nonprofit organizations.

who interface with our priority overburdened communities.

This funding is meant to support their compliance and provide some sort of financial assistance.

So I think all of these things are built into supporting the success of implementation.

On top of that, we are committed to reporting back on progress every five years.

We're developing...

different sorts of technological tools to be able to communicate where our progress is at and how we're getting closer to our goals.

So we're incredibly committed in the success of this policy.

Incredible.

Thank you.

And of course, curious to know how we are meeting those goals and how, again, all of the policies that we are enacting here at the City of Seattle are having an impact on reducing emissions.

And I want to pivot a little bit and also commend the Office of Sustainability and Environment because you all administer the Fresh Bucks program.

And I know we've had briefings on Fresh Bucks before council previously.

and just wanna always take a moment to highlight how well administered that program is.

It's an incredibly lean program but has a huge impact when we talk about getting fresh fruits and veggies to our neighbors while also serving as a really important economic driver tool.

All the funding from Fresh Bucks being invested right back into our local grocers and farmers markets is just so important.

Which brings me to my next question just related to the food action plan.

Can you speak to how you will work to put the city's food action plan into action to build a more equitable and sustainable food system?

And how might climate change impact the future success of these goals?

And how are you intending to plan around this?

Thank you.

First, I wanna express gratitude to council members for all of your support for the food and your leadership for food services, food programs, benefits.

There's so much leadership in this particular issue area, which is a priority for Seattle constituents.

So I just wanna express my gratitude for all of the work that you're doing.

in terms of how we'll be working to put the Seattle's food action plan into action.

We recently released a update and an impact report.

So one of the key ingredients to that is making sure that we're reporting back on what we say and what we're committed to doing and making sure that information is reaching all of our partners You all, your constituents, the organizations that we're working with, to ensure that they have that data and they are able to utilize that data in service to their commitment to increasing affordability and accessibility of food for their neighbors.

No single department can accomplish the goals and strategies that are outlined in the Food Action Plan.

I think that's true for any of the issues that we work on.

It takes everybody.

The issues are so large that we need to really galvanize the strengths and expertise of everyone from every corner of the issue to come at solutions that yield multi-benefits.

So I think for us, part of our role in ensuring the success and implementation is making sure that we have a clear sense of what departments are doing, what metrics that they're responsible for tracking, ourselves included, and telling a citywide story about the real benefits and impacts that are reaching our community members.

Those are just some components of how we approach efficacy in terms of moving our strategies forward.

Thank you.

And Chair, if I may have one more question.

Thank you.

Thank you for that response.

And my last question for today is just related to climate justice, which of course is front of mind for so many of us.

And I think about here at the City of Seattle, we're working on improving our government to government relationships with our tribal partners.

And so I'm wondering if you can speak to what opportunities you see when it comes to working with our tribal partners when it relates to climate justice.

Thank you for this question.

I'm very excited to continue to grow my personal understanding and learning and support my staff and team to continue to grow their learning around how we're engaging with tribal governments as well as urban, native, and indigenous-led organizations and serving organizations.

So again, I want to commend the city leadership in the executive's office and in council for the partnership with the Office of Intergovernmental Relations on the First Nations Summit, those types of conversations that are very focused and supported allow for deep listening and for opportunity for departments to take some of the feedback that we're hearing and intentionally implement solutions.

So a couple of the opportunities that I see that we can build on.

This year, earlier this year, we announced the recipients and partners of the First Peoples Climate Fund.

This was funding that council, former council members worked with the Green New Deal Oversight Board and implemented recommendations to invest deeply in the leadership of tribal organizations, native and indigenous-led organizations, to move climate solutions forward in a way that is culturally rooted and reflective in traditional knowledge and traditional solutions.

I think there's an opportunity for us to continue to build relationship, learn from the projects that are being implemented, and understand how we might continue to build on those solutions.

Tactically, one of the things that I'm excited about is understanding how we might foster warm connections between our organizational partners and other departments within the city of Seattle, as well as regional partners, to be able to maximize the investments that we've been making.

So that's one example.

I'll also say that our office is very focused on fostering spaces specifically to support the leadership and voices of indigenous and urban native folks.

in the development of the Food Action Plan.

We convened a specific working group to listen to native and indigenous leaders and bake in the feedback and recommendations into the Food Action Plan itself.

Similarly, we've partnered with the People's Economy Lab and Rising Tide to host a community assembly that's focused on understanding solutions, again, from urban, native, and indigenous communities to bake directly into the strategies in our climate action plan.

So I'm excited to build on those projects.

Thank you for those answers, Acting Director Ayala.

I'm really excited again that your appointment is coming before us and to get to know more about your vision for the department.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Director Ayala.

Thank you, Mr. Ellerbrook, for being here as well.

Real quick, and you don't have to answer now, but one of the things, and not to go back on the food action plan, Councilmember Rank, you answered some of the questions that I had regarding this, but looking across the city and the different departments, Department of Neighborhoods does food equity fund, pea patches, Seattle Public Utility does waste prevention.

Seattle Parks and Rec does urban food systems.

They also have different programs where they do food access for kids late night.

Deal has programs that also do food after school and for kids.

HSD has a lot of food and meal program and providers.

It's spread across the city in different departments.

And I think the Office of Sustainability has an opportunity to pull everyone together to execute that food action plan so we can get the outcomes for folks.

Because oftentimes, I know there's a lot of overlap, and I find myself jumping from different department to different department figuring out who's doing what, which is great, but I think a part of that food action plan, like you had mentioned, director, was what are other departments doing?

How can we figure out metrics to push forward to make sure that we're having the best bang for our buck so people can have food accessibility?

So anyways, I just wanted to highlight that.

Just a quick comment, and it was also great to sit with you on the food access panel that we did about a month ago.

Was that a month?

It was, time flies.

Okay, time flies fast.

Okay, so I learned a lot, so thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Hollingsworth.

Thank you.

Thank you, colleagues.

Any other, looks like I think we're good.

Just say real quick, super excited for your appointment, in particular, excited by your focus on prioritizing, and I'm just gonna read this from your slide, which we'll talk about next, prioritizing those currently historically harmed by racial, economic, and environmental injustice communities like South Park, South Seattle, working with our tribal partners.

So super excited about your leadership.

And with that, I'd like to move that the committee recommends confirmation of appointment 3491. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, it is moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointment.

Do you, let's see, okay.

I probably should have done that earlier.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to confirm the appointment?

Council Member Foster?

Yes.

Council President Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Rank?

Yes.

Chair Lin?

Yes.

Chair, there are four votes in favor and zero opposed.

Wonderful.

Congratulations.

Thank you kindly.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation to confirm the appointment will be sent to the May 5th City Council meeting.

And now we get to move on to our second item of business and you get to stay with us.

Will the clerk please read agenda item two?

Agenda item two, Office of Sustainability and Environment, OSCE Overview and Climate Action Plan.

Thank you.

So is it just you at the table or will one of your colleagues be joining?

Representatives, please join us to talk about the work that you do in more depth.

And just for awareness, we're gonna, so we have one other item on the agenda.

I think we're hoping to, we might extend the committee meeting till about noon.

And so I'm hoping to wrap up this part by 11ish, maybe a few minutes after 11. And if we're not able to get to everything, then we can always bring you back as we will many times and or take some of these questions offline.

But again, super excited to hear more.

and whenever you're ready, do we have your presentation up yet?

Let's see, do you need help?

Yes.

Okay, wonderful.

Thank you, Thaddeus.

I'll give you a moment.

Okay.

Okay.

Appreciate your patience as we get ourselves oriented.

Thank you, council members.

It is my honor to give you an overview of the Office of Sustainability and Environment and ground you in our priorities for 2026. As...

I will go through the slides with expediency, and I'm very, very happy to come back or answer specific questions.

All right, we can skip through that one.

First, I want to give us a grounding in who makes up the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

We're a staff of about 60 folks.

We are conveners, facilitators, policy wonks, data nerds, incredibly passionate about caring for the well-being of our communities, our neighbors, and this environment.

As Committee Chair Lynn mentioned earlier, our mission here is to work to ensure a clean and healthy environment for all of Seattle residents.

We're prioritizing those who are currently and historically harmed by racial, economic, and environmental injustice.

We serve in a cross-departmental manner.

We're community collaborators, policy innovators, and very proud of being drivers of cutting-edge policy in the climate and environmental space.

We're passionate about contributing to a Seattle where communities and environments are healthy and free of fossil fuel pollution.

Just as important as the outcomes is the way that we do our work.

We're oriented towards outcomes and impacts, but we're intentional about who we're collaborating with, who we're prioritizing, and the process in which we're developing or co-developing, rather, policy and programs with the understanding that we also exist in an ecosystem where we're co-implementing these solutions as well.

I want to give us a brief grounding here in a pivotal body of work that our office played a leadership role in in partnership with many other departments at the City of Seattle.

I want to give a specific shout out to Seattle Public Utilities for their leadership in this origin story here on the equity and environment initiative and agenda.

This is a blueprint for advancing race and social justice work in Seattle.

It was the first time that the city of Seattle brought together environmental justice leaders to understand what the challenges are, what the impacts are, and what could environmental justice look like for the city of Seattle.

Many of those community leaders are in the room sitting behind me right now.

Throughout the years, we've been intentional about embedding the values and moving the strategies forward.

You'll see that we've had priorities in ensuring and safeguarding a healthy environment for all, making sure that we're growing inclusive and equitable pathways into the green economy and local jobs, supporting youth in their leadership journey.

and working across departments to integrate a foundation of equity and justice into our policy and programs and operations.

We utilize data and storytelling to drive the development of policies and to evaluate our policies.

We know that the numbers only tell us so much.

The stories and qualitative data from our community leaders gives us more texture and more information.

Traditional ecological knowledge gives us additional data and ensures that we are moving forward in a holistic way.

I can't underscore enough the importance of our collaboration and partnership with our departmental partners.

This little orca pot is a really good visualization of that.

We work to address the climate crisis and environmental justice in a way that's intersectional with other departments, thinking about how does housing connect with climate impacts and climate policy.

How does transportation or energy connect with climate policy?

Oftentimes, we are serving as a conduit to uplift climate and environmental leadership coming out of the departments.

And as I said earlier, we're working to seek funding in specific ways that accentuate the goals of other departments as well.

One of the ways that we do that is through the partnerships that we're involved in.

So the Office of Sustainability represents the city in C40 cities.

We also represent the city of Seattle in the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance in climate mayors.

We've been a part of coalition work in the Climate Commitment Act.

Most recently, we signed on to the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact.

So we're occupying collaborative spaces on local, regional, national, international space, and seeking every opportunity to uplift the leadership that's coming from Seattle on climate and environmental justice policies.

Our partnerships with community, as you heard, are central to the success of our work.

These are the commissions that we work very closely with, the Green New Deal Oversight Board, the Sweetened Beverage Tax Community Advisory Board, and the Urban Forestry Commission.

These are folks who are dedicated to service.

They're folks that are dedicated to uplifting community solutions.

and integrating their expertise into city policy and programs.

I just wanna briefly mention that this year we have some appointments for all of those committees and commissions that will come before you all this year.

So I'll touch briefly on our core policies and programs.

Our primary bodies of work fit into these buckets, but what I wanna say about that is that as humans, we tend to bucket issues, bucket solutions, but you will hear me say this over and over again, we exist in a system.

And so all these issues are interrelated and there's intersectional through lines for us.

in advancing environmental and climate justice and reducing climate pollution, increasing food access and sustainability, and growing Seattle's urban forestry.

The citywide climate action plan update actually creates a bit of an umbrella for those priorities to interplay with each other.

I won't go too deep into this because Sarah will give us a deeper dive here.

What I do want to say about advancing environmental justice is not only is it baked into the way that we do our work as a department, but it's integrated into the solutions that we have co-developed with our community partners and that we co-implement.

So the department manages an environmental justice grant fund and we partner with community leaders who serve on the Environmental Justice Committee.

They are community reviewers for proposals and help make sure that we're ground-truthing the solutions and what communities really need.

I talked a little bit about the First Peoples Climate Fund.

We also partner with across departments to build inclusive pathways, to grow a workforce that can implement the work that our climate policies are catalyzing.

And then of course, our partners in the Green New Deal Oversight Board are critical to holding us accountable.

What I'll briefly say here is I want to give voice to the work that we're doing in the Duwamish Valley.

As you all know, the neighborhoods along the river are critical neighborhoods that exist next to a Superfund site that disproportionately experience cumulative impacts in terms of air pollution and water pollution.

and are very strong communities that are made up of immigrant and refugee leaders and neighbors.

OSC for many years has been working in partnership with multiple departments to ensure that we're holistically listening and implementing multi-benefit solutions across the issue areas that we have leadership.

And I want to thank the community leaders from South Park and Georgetown that are here with us today.

We talked a little bit about building emissions in my responses to the questions, but what I'll say here is this is an area we're deeply committed in.

The majority of the city's greenhouse gas emissions are coming from the building sector and from transportation.

So these are always gonna be areas that are a priority for us in terms of policy development and implementation.

And I'll just make note that OSC implements the Clean Heat Program.

This is a commitment to converting homes off of oil heat onto energy efficient heat pumps.

So you see here the really incredible statistic that we've converted more than 2,000 homes since the program started in 2017. Transportation, as I mentioned, it's an area and a source of our greenhouse gas emissions.

We coordinate across department on implementation of a transportation electrification blueprint.

Right now, we are working with Zim Solutions in an investment to support the electrification, the purchase of electric heavy duty trucks to decrease air pollution in port adjacent communities.

And then, our food access and sustainability work.

I won't dig too much deeper into this since we touched on this earlier.

What I do wanna say here is maybe make a connection to a recent announcement that was made yesterday, and Committee Chair Lynn, you were there, committee.

Councilmember Rivera, you were there as well.

And again, appreciation for the leadership from council and the leadership from the executive and Department of Education and Early Learning for all of the investments that are being made in the FEP levy.

One of them in particular is an announcement that correlates back to the Office of Sustainability and Environment, which is the implementation of free school meals in Seattle Public Schools.

So the department, again, I'll just underscore our commitment to ensuring that Seattle residents have affordable and accessible fresh fruits and vegetables and that yields so many more multi-benefits in terms of social, economic wellness, and environmental wellness and well-being too.

Um...

This is a nod to some of our work in mobilizing around the distribution of food boxes when SNAP benefits were paused during the government shutdown.

I'll just say that the department is incredibly nimble and able to coordinate and respond quickly in partnership with other departments to ensure that we're supporting and fulfilling needs in the moment to make sure that we don't skip a beat in supporting Seattleites when they need us most.

OSE also is responsible for the coordination of stewarding Seattle's trees and urban forest.

We have some big work planned with regards to advancing a tree equity plan and strategy to close gaps in neighborhoods that have historically been redlined and under-invested in, and that are experiencing disproportionate impacts of urban heat.

and air pollution.

We can move on.

So I'll just kind of underscore some of the key priorities for the year.

Expanding access to healthy and affordable food and building on a sustainable food system.

And council members, this deck is for you to keep and refer back to.

I won't touch on some of the sub-program areas, but again, more than happy to follow up with you all.

Closing tree canopy gaps in our priority neighborhoods.

advancing equitable clean energy transition off of fossil fuels, investing in our city's climate and environmental leaders, and advancing leading edge climate action while measuring impact through our climate action plan update.

So this is just a little shout out to the information that we put out there.

We want people to know what we're doing for them.

And we want you all to know what we're doing for your constituents.

So if you haven't already, follow us on all the socials, sign up for our blog and our listserv.

And of course, we will be proactive in packaging information for you all to distribute to your constituents also.

And do you know where to find me?

I'm here, available to give you any information that you might need to make sure you're successful.

Wonderful.

And we have another presentation here on the Climate Action Plan, correct?

Do you want me to just keep it rolling?

All right.

Yeah, I think so.

And then we'll go back with questions, if that's great.

Okay, great.

Thank you for having me.

I'm Sarah Cubillos.

I'm the Climate Justice Director at OSCE.

Narita Gumon is our project manager for the Climate Action Plan and is unable to be here today, so I will be presenting.

I just want to cover quickly just an introduction of what our Climate Action Plan update is, some of our goals for the project, our approach, and really focus in on our engagement process thus far and what you can expect in the coming year and let you know who's involved in our planning work.

Okay, so the Seattle's Climate Action Plan is really the city's roadmap to reduce emissions, build resilience, and ensure a just transition to a low-carbon future.

Our last Climate Action Plan was last updated in 2013. This is a key deliverable in our participation in the C40 Cities Network.

We began last fall by releasing a progress report on the 2013 plan, and that was really an audit to help us understand what we've achieved, the progress that remains that we need to continue to advance the city's climate action goals, as well as we took an inventory of all the climate-related work departments are already doing.

One of the key differences and learnings we found for our update is that the update is really focused, this update for 2026, we're really focused on creating bold transformational actions to meet the climate crisis, and I'll talk about our approach to that in a second.

And definitely last but not least is one of the key deliverables of this update will be creating a tracking framework that can be used across all of our departmental partners to track our progress and impact.

Another thing to note is that while Seattle is a global leader and has been a climate leader for decades, and we've reduced emissions by 12% since 2008, we're still not on track to meet our goals.

We need to be moving 10 times faster than our current average reduction rate if we want to hit this goal by 2050. We do an inventory that focuses on our emissions reduction.

But what we need to do is also think about how we'll move the needle and transition to a new approach that includes resiliency and adaptation.

We know this moment calls on us to develop a coordinated strategy that is not just about mitigating emissions, but one that firmly integrates adaptation and resilience and focuses on how to adapt to our changing climate and supporting community health, well-being, and resilience.

and especially environmental justice.

These are our five goals that are really guiding our plan and, again, focus on how we're preparing and responding to climate risks like extreme heat, flooding, sea level rise, wildfire, smoke, air pollution, and other climate threats, while also increasing resilience through nature-based solutions, restoring our ecosystem, and thinking about how we're integrating land, water and biodiversity into our actions.

We know that we need to focus on how we can make our homes, transportation, energy cleaner and more affordable and do this all by also creating more pathways for green jobs and ensuring accountability from not only government, but accountability between each other too.

A little bit about our timeline for this work.

So we actually began with community assemblies, which we'll talk about shortly, that begun in 2024. We're currently working on, we've identified actions and we're in our prioritization phase right now, as well as starting to do more engagement work.

I'll talk about a survey at the end of this too that just came out.

One of the major things I'll share with you all is we'll be doing the planning process over the rest of this year, looking to have a first draft out for public comment later this fall in October.

And then we'll be hoping to bring you all the final plan early next year.

As I mentioned, one of our key engagement strategies is climate community assemblies.

You've heard them mentioned already, but I'll just quickly talk about our key partners and key takeaways we've had while doing community assemblies.

We worked with the Urban League of Seattle, MLK Labor, Washington Bus, and Rising Tides.

Each of those anchor organizations really delving deep into their constituency groups, whether it was about workers, youth, our indigenous communities, our frontline EJ organizers as well.

And while each assembly yielded dozens of recommendations, what was evident is our organizations want to be part of the solutions and own their own solutions.

They're seeking shared decision-making power with our policies, investments, and really focused on how we can co-design at the neighborhood level.

Climate and everyday reality is really where people find their entry points to connect into this work, specifically around housing stability, public health, food access, and economic displacement.

And of course, labor as a core partner.

So that's just a few key takeaways.

Another element of this work and has been already highlighted over this morning is how key our departmental partners are.

We started a city work group that represents 18 key departments.

We convene monthly.

As I mentioned, we did a big inventory of all the climate work happening.

I'll say climate work is happening in every single department, even if they may not be calling it climate work.

Over the course of this, we've gathered more than 250 different actions related to climate work.

And our goal right now is really making sure we don't come out with 250 actions.

But maybe one example of those actions that I'll just share is, as we were developing actions and collecting that, they focus on not only resilience, mitigating emissions through, like, how can we increase mode shift around transportation and trips?

And maybe I'll just share a really specific one, which was an idea around low-carbon community food infrastructure.

And that's really trying to see if we can build a citywide network of electrified, low-carbon food hubs.

And I highlight that one because two departments met separately, generated their own solution, and that's really the goal of this working group.

is to be able to provide a space for that kind of collaboration.

In addition to working with subject matter experts across departments, our acting director, Ayala, will be convening her colleagues in a director's forum, as we know that subject matter experts can move different actions, but it's really important for us to get buy-in at the leadership level And so we'll be hosting a director's forum starting soon.

And this will be really an opportunity to foster collaboration, build alignment and buy-in, and advance and endorse cross-departmental solutions for this plan.

And while we did some deep engagement with our overburdened communities and priority communities, we'll also continue that engagement by hosting a regional partners forum.

They'll bring cross-sector partners from business, health, nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, academic institutions.

I'll share this list is not exhaustive.

And as you have your own constituency groups, we'd love to include folks that you think would be interested in providing information to our plan.

And with that in mind, we just released a climate action plan survey a few days ago, and we already have 100 responses, and you all will be receiving emails from us with a toolkit that you can share with your constituency groups as well.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

And great job going through that thoroughly, but expediently.

I appreciate that.

And colleagues, I think we have probably between 10 to 20 minutes for some questions and comments.

So let's see.

Who would like to kick us off?

Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you for the fantastic presentation and the level of detail aligned with the level of speed.

I want to start off with a question just on the second presentation, looking at where we are.

One of the early slides that has the chart on our climate goals for 2030 and 2050, and it shows that we, as you said, need to move 10% faster, or 10 times, excuse me, not 10%.

10 times faster than we're currently moving right now.

I wonder how in that graph are the recent policy actions and the implementation on building energy performance are incorporated or are not incorporated.

And I'm gonna give you my second question now as well, just for the sake of time, which is, can you also speak to, we've had in a separate committee, we've had SDOT in front of us recently on the low pollution neighborhoods concept.

And I'm curious if you can speak more to how that is incorporated into the climate action plan.

Yeah, thank you for those questions.

For that graph, yes, that's from our previous greenhouse gas inventory.

We're actually in an inventory year right now.

We anticipate and our buildings and energy team have done a lot of work that we can share with you guys after this about kind of projections of where BEPS or building emissions performance standards will make moves or progress us on our goals, hopefully quicker.

And this year, we'll also release our new inventory that will give us a little bit of an update.

One thing to note is that inventories are always looking at data two years behind us, and it's just the nature of the data that we have.

And definitely another plug for why we want to create a tracking framework.

So we're really looking at more What is the impact that we're making that we might not be seeing just in the inventory?

In terms of low pollution neighborhoods, yes, we're working closely with Department of Transportation.

We're really excited about low pollution neighborhoods and see it as an opportunity where we're already moving forward on things like actions like low pollution neighborhoods that are really focused on.

providing multiple benefits and see that as a key model, especially for the rest of our work group, to think through what types of solutions and actions we want to see in this climate action plan.

So our goal is not to necessarily shift or change anything that they're doing, but really learn from what they're doing and make sure we're highlighting that work and bringing departments together to really make that implementation successful.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rink.

Thank you, Chair.

Councilmember Foster, I know we didn't coordinate ahead of time, but I had almost the exact same question.

It really did catch my eye, this point about, you know, we need to be moving 10 times faster than we currently are to meet our 2030 goal.

So my question was actually a bit more holistic, just in recognizing that 58% of our emissions are coming from transportation.

I appreciate Councilmember Foster's point about the low pollution neighborhoods, but wondering more broadly about our work with SDOT and understanding that as we have these large scale transit infrastructure projects, how we are tracking and evaluating for things like mode shift and the pollution reductions that come with that.

I can maybe start us off and say part of the development of strategies in the climate action plan, building off of previous work like transportation electrification strategy, gives us a set of strategies and metrics that we're tracking holistically.

So there's a bit of a framework there in terms of, you know, and seeing where the progress is going.

But I think this is a big opportunity and area for collaboration and partnership.

Council member Foster mentioned low pollution neighborhoods as a strategy and a policy mechanism for holistic solutions that help us reduce air pollution.

I think that can correlate over to multimodal transportation and looking at different ways that we might lower greenhouse gas emissions while increasing community health and benefits there.

But yeah, I think what you're highlighting is that we're really at the tough stuff and have a series of interdepartmental efforts collaborations and discussions to engage in as we're working together and getting ourselves settled as a cabinet this year.

Thank you for that.

And anything we can do to support in just that further interdepartmental work we're here for, I think it's really important that we tell the story that these investments are making also a difference when it comes to lowering our emissions.

And so I just want to continue the conversation there.

And I'll just close with a note of appreciation that This version of the Climate Action Plan includes some of those key metrics and just really dashboarding our progress.

I know this was a huge request from our environmental justice advocates.

It's something I heard about over the past couple of years, just a real hunger and desire to understand how are we making progress on meeting those goals so we can make sure that we meet that 2030 goal.

So thank you so much for your work.

Excited to continue this process.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Any other questions from colleagues before I move on.

Could we just go back to the slide on the 10 times faster?

And one thing I think in that slide talks about the baseline from 2008, 3.2 million, millions of metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

Then the 2022, 2.9 million.

And I do just want to note that during that same time frame, our population increased pretty significantly.

So while that number, obviously, we need to do much better, I do want to highlight that given our population growth that we've done hard work.

I do want to note, or question, as we continue to electrify our buildings, as we continue to electrify our transportation system, and there's multiple things we need to do, mode shift, to reduce trips, single occupancy vehicle trips, but we're also seeing this transition to electric vehicles.

And now we're seeing new energy demands through things like data centers and whether those are sited within the city or elsewhere in the state or region, there's this huge growing demand for new electricity.

Just wondering if you could talk about a little bit, and it's a little bit outside of our control sometimes, you know, how we build new electric generation, right?

And so, unfortunately, we've seen from our federal partners retreat from renewables towards, you know, a doubling down on fossil fuels, which is just It's unfathomable, especially as we see the war in the Middle East.

But any thoughts that you have on, as we continue this work on transitioning away from fossil fuels towards electrifying buildings and transportation, how do we also make sure that these new generation facilities are renewables?

Yeah, thank you for that question, Committee Chair Lin.

Back to your earlier comment, I maybe want to underscore, since the baseline measurements in 2008, city-wide emissions have decreased 12% with consideration to population increasing 26% during that period.

So I just thought that might be of interest.

I appreciate your inquiry on...

on a just transition here in the context of data centers.

What I'll say is, given the context that we're in, and you briefly touched on the war that's happening, I think it underscores the need for us even more to think about renewable energy sources.

It's critical for us in the long-term success not just from addressing our climate goals, but again, the multi-benefits and ensuring that we and our families have the energy that we need to continue to support the everyday things that we need to do from feeding our families to making sure that our children have light to get ready for school and do their homework.

So with regards to data centers, what I'll say is they're specifically with large load implications, there's a lot of considerations and environmental impact that is important for us to consider.

That includes the increased energy demand, as you mentioned.

Data centers, large data centers, have a need to operate 24 hours a day.

They consume large amounts of electricity.

and a modern data center can use as much power as 100,000 homes.

That's a really big consideration for us with regards to affordability.

Water consumption for cooling is an important consideration as well.

Even with new cooling technology like water recycling, that has impacts.

that are important for us as a city to continue to learn about and consider, especially with regards to the cost to our residents.

There's impacts with regards to noise and heat that we need to consider.

land use implications in siting and ensuring that when we're thinking about the geography that we're not perpetuating inequitable land use decisions and perpetuating environmental injustice.

There's air quality considerations as well.

I'm kind of touching on some of the myriad things that we need to think about as a city.

And that requires us, again, to work in an interdisciplinary, interdepartmental manner, leverage our expertise and skill set as we're considering what is happening in terms of increased usage of things like AI and whatnot.

So I hope that's helpful.

Thank you.

And as I think we all know and my colleagues know, we got thousands of emails rightfully raising concerns and alarms.

And I know that some of my colleagues have been working on this issue for months, but well before that recent news reporting.

But I assume or I expect that we will be calling upon you for your help as we figure out how to move forward, potentially developing a work plan around that issue.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments from colleagues?

Okay.

Well, thank you again.

Super excited for the presentation.

Super excited for the next steps with the appointment.

And thank you all to everyone who joined us for today, for everyone that came and spoke in support.

It was really moving.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, counsel.

Appreciate your time.

Okay, with that, we'll now move on to our third item of business.

Will the clerk please read agenda item three?

Agenda item three, Council Bill 121195, adornance relating to land use and zoning, adopting interim provisions to expand the capacity of transitional encampments and amending sections 2342054 and 2342056 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you.

And our presenters are joining us.

Once you have a moment, can you just introduce yourselves for the record?

Sorry.

Ketel Freeman, Council Central Staff.

And Jennifer LeBrec, City Council Central Staff.

Wonderful.

And I'm going to kick it over to my colleague, Councilmember Foster, hoping you can help us lead in this discussion.

Yeah, fantastic.

Thank you so much, Terry.

I appreciate it.

And we'll start with appreciation to Central staff for your hard work over the last few weeks.

I am really excited to have a conversation today about the amendments that colleagues have brought forward to this really important shelter census bill.

I will not be saying shelter census again during this conversation.

But we wanted to make sure that we had an opportunity today for colleagues to bring forth potential amendments to the bill and to engage in some discussion prior to holding a vote on the amendments and hopefully voting the bill out of committee next week.

So the way that we will proceed is central staff will discuss and highlight the amendments.

I believe we'll give an opportunity for the amendment sponsors to speak to the amendments, and then we will have questions from colleagues about the amendments.

So central staff, sponsor, and then questions, and we will proceed that way.

And hopefully we will be able to get through all of the amendments that we have in front of us today.

For folks who are here in person, there were, I believe, two walk-on amendments that are available that are printed at the front.

I'm not sure whether or not we've gotten those uploaded online or not at this point in time, but we will work to do that as soon as possible for anybody who is watching online.

So with that, I will hand it over to our fantastic central staff, Ketil and Jen, who will start with amendment number one.

And I'll be speaking on behalf of two amendments today for colleagues who were not able to be present.

Well, again, Ketel Freeman, Council Central staff, you have a cover memo from us that describes five amendments and briefly describes what the bill does.

In addition to the five that are listed in that packet, there are two more from, they're authored by Councilmember Rivera that Councilmember Hollingsworth will sponsor.

I'll just, maybe before going into the amendments, step back a little bit here and say that in the course of discussing not just this bill, but the other two bills, the council has been talking a lot about policies for shelter operation and also about the second order consequences when it comes to budget.

And I have requested some reports from the council that may inform decision making not just about budgetary stuff for the 2027 proposed budget, but also for how encampments may be operated in the future.

That is true for the amendments that we're going to talk about here today.

A lot of them are operational in sort of nature, not necessarily perfect fits for the land use code bill, but it's the vehicle that's in front of the committee today.

Just a preview of potential changes here, in addition to what sort of may flow from committee discussion today, we've talked a little bit with Lauren, the council's counsel, about how to reflect these within the bill in different ways and still achieve the same legal effect and policy intent.

And so in addition to how these appear today, there may be changes in form as well, but the content will be informed by the discussion today as well.

So the first one, Councilmember Foster, the amendment number one is an amendment sponsored by Councilmember Foster on behalf of Councilmember Juarez, This will look familiar to many of you.

The amendment would incorporate the standards for public safety plans that were discussed as part of the budget bill as an operational requirement for encampments that are newly established under the authority of the interim land use code bill.

Thank you so much, and I will speak to this.

I'm happy to take questions from colleagues.

I know Council Member Juarez wanted to be with us today.

She was not able to.

So I want to first start off for thanking her for her partnership on this and ensuring that we are holding two things at the same time, which is a commitment to ensuring that we are expanding our shelter system as well as a commitment to managing public safety.

And that means for the folks who are going to live at these locations as well as for neighborhoods.

So the intent behind this amendment is to ensure that The intent is to ensure that council members have up-to-date and accurate information so that we are able to engage proactively with our constituents as well as engage proactively on any potential changes that we want to keep an eye towards given that this is interim legislation.

So we know that this is going to be legislation we have for the next year and then next year the council will need to take further action if we want to to continue with the expansions that are provided under this bill.

So these reports would pull from already existing data, including but not limited to critical incident reports, good neighbor agreements, and 911 calls.

So that is a summary of the intent and what is included.

And I'll actually just start with a question to you, Ketil.

Can you just speak to, I think you said this already, how the contents of this amendment align with the already passed budget amendments that came out of the Finance Committee?

Sure.

So the language here reflects in some ways identically the policy language that was incorporated into the budget bill, the requirements for the public safety plan, and sort of how that would be incorporated both in operations of the encampment and also in responsibilities on the executive side for responding to calls related to public safety around encampments.

So it is, in some ways, identical language.

There is some sort of prefatory language that situates this with the land use bill.

So it would apply prospectively just to those new encampments that would be authorized under the bill.

Thank you so much.

And colleagues, I am happy to take questions.

Council Member Rink.

Apologies, Chair, that's an old hand.

Okay, wonderful.

Any other questions from colleagues?

I have a question.

So if we...

This language says the operator of a transitional encampment.

So in general, that would be probably one of our nonprofit partners, typically.

And just in terms of developing this public safety plan, some of these items, it says an initial public safety assessment of the area in which the shelter is to be located, including assessment of 911 call data.

going down to Section C, policies and procedures for keeping the area within 500 feet of unsectioned encampments or recreational vehicles that are in violation of the Seattle Municipal Code parking regulations.

One sort of question concern I have is just whether some of this stuff really should be falling on the operator or whether this really should be falling upon us as the city.

The operator doesn't necessarily have authority for keeping the area within 500 feet free of unsanctioned encampments or recreational vehicles.

What I see this really the intent behind this is to have a strong partnership between the operator and the mayor's office or our different departments who might be helping with this work.

But I guess I just wanna ask either staff or colleagues, any thoughts in response to who would be responsible for this work?

Thank you for that question.

I think that's a good question.

I'm reviewing the language from the amendment that passed as part of the budget, the shelter budget, which put more of this responsibility on the executive to develop these things rather than the provider.

So I do think it's maybe I'll turn it over to Keto for further thinking on that.

But that is true.

Right.

So obviously, I can't speak to the to the author's intent here.

But there are some functions here that would be city functions.

And there's one sort of there is just to step back a little bit about describe how interim use encampments are established.

They have to have a community advisory committee.

So I think the thinking here perhaps on the part of the author was to have the community advisory committee play some role in reviewing the sort of the security operational requirements, including those aspects that might have some city function.

so that they are apprised of that and can understand sort of how best to implement security protocols that are within the scope of the operator and also within the scope of the city.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for that question, Councilman Berlin.

I think it's an important one.

And while I'm very pleased to be sponsoring the legislation, I want to respect that we should have some follow-up around the author with intent.

And we'll make sure that that, I know that your team will make sure that that connection happens so we get clarity around the best way to move forward with this to create both alignment between this bill and the budget bill and to ensure the original intent of the amendment.

Thank you for that question.

Thank you.

I think we can move on to Amendment No.

2.

All right.

So Amendment No. 2, sponsored by Councilmember Hollingsworth, would require that newly established transitional encampments that are either larger or newly established under the—that are larger because of the bill that the Council is considering have a good neighborhood agreement and prescribes minimum communication and public safety protocols associated with that good neighbor agreement.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Kudel.

Thank you, Jen, for your help on this, colleagues.

I know that we currently have good neighbor agreements that are in the city.

This would add additional layers of information and strengthen those.

This is from personal experience of sometimes when we do have issues or things that might come up, that this would have, number one, a point of contact for initial concerns, which is posted either at the encampment and on the operator's website.

So a point of contact, a process for community stakeholdering to escalate concerns with the operator's organization.

Also a timeframe from initial contact with each contact, excuse me, a timeframe, so within 72 hours, unless it's an emergency, a commitment to attend regular community meetings, such as those held by some of the neighborhood groups.

So many different meetings throughout the city that are within the neighborhood.

And so this is just to make sure that we all have great environments for some of these encampments and it's just, or shelters, excuse me, shelters.

And so it's just making sure that we have a strength in for our good neighbor agreement.

So we put some, we listed some things all the way from a list of things from A to K, I believe.

And yeah, colleagues.

I'm more than happy to answer some questions or open to comments, whatever.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any...

Council Member Rank?

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for this.

Just so I'm understanding clearly, we have a number of good neighbor agreements operating with our service providers across the city.

I just would like to understand what is in a standard good neighbor agreement and what is included in this amendment that goes beyond the standard.

What are some of the new elements?

I'm just trying to parse those things out.

And I don't know if that's a question for both sponsor and central staff, but would love to just delineate and understand that better.

I would love central staff to jump in, and then I'll jump in with some additional comments.

Thank you, Jen.

Thank you.

That's a good question.

I think the city does require good neighbor agreements currently for any city-funded shelter.

So that is the standard agreement.

And KCRHA has policies around sort of, I would say they're high-level policies around what their expectation is for good neighbor policies for shelters.

There isn't really defined anywhere what the minimum requirements of a good neighbor agreement would be.

So we are, I would say in some ways, creating something new here by stating them in this ordinance.

However, I think we did run these, for example, past the mayor's office and they said, yeah, these are generally things that we would expect to see in a good neighbor agreement.

So the intent was not to create something new, but rather to capture on paper what would be reasonable expectations for a good neighbor agreement.

Thank you.

I don't know if the sponsor has anything to add to that.

Oh, yeah, no, thank you.

It wasn't, this is, intentions aren't to put any more bureaucracy onto the shelters.

It's literally, if I'm the one getting calls about certain buildings in our district, because it's too hard for the community or neighbors to have a direct contact with that provider, that's a problem for me. to try to alleviate some of these things, making requirements as simple.

The bare minimum is to have someone who can call someone back and have intentional conversations about what issues that they're experiencing so we can circumvent all of the bureaucracy.

We're trying to figure out who does what and just having that direct point of contact, really.

Certainly, I appreciate hearing the spirit of that from the sponsor.

I know we've all heard from folks and we want to ensure we're doing the good work to manage community relations and folks know who to call and so on.

I'm hearing in this that we don't have a existing standard good neighbor agreement practice.

I'm just trying to understand right now if there are like newer elements here, even for our existing good neighbor agreements.

And maybe that's just barring.

I don't have a landscape analysis of all of our city's good neighbor agreements.

And if there's any just novel components here at all, I would just like to understand that.

And maybe that's for a follow-up discussion.

And I will say, I do think it's challenging because we have, you know, KCRHA has these policies around what a good neighbor agreement or good neighbor policy should be.

But again, they're at a high level.

And so I think that this was, not intended to create anything novel, but to just capture what a reasonable person might say a good neighbor agreement should include.

I do think there's a line in here around having an emergency contact during non-business hours.

And that is one before that I've gotten feedback from providers, so that might be worth talking about.

I think there's some concern about you know, receiving many calls during non-business hours, even for things that are not urgent.

So that might be one from a provider perspective that is non-standard, but I think based on the, you know, the conversation, the brief conversation we had with the mayor's office, my understanding is that these would otherwise be thought of as fairly routine things.

That's great to hear.

Thank you, Jen.

And this, my final question on this is perhaps for Ketel, just functionally thinking about the legislation, the underlying legislation that's before us, I'm wondering if with the inclusion of this amendment, what impact, if any, does this have to our existing tiny home villages and sites across the city?

Does this just apply to new ones that are standing up under this legislation, or is this something that then is retroactively applied to existing sites?

Thank you for that question.

That's a good question.

You'll notice that with many of these amendments, there is a prefatory statement that situates the amendment in the context of the bill.

Just by way of reminder, the bill is coming to the council as a land use emergency, so to speak.

There will be interim regulations that will lapse after a period of one year, unless they're renewed.

The thinking is that about this time next year, assuming that the bill passes, the council will be considering permanent, ongoing legislation.

So there are findings that are associated with that emergency, and the statement of the emergency is reflected in the title as well, and they have to do with capacity.

And so the framing for almost all of these operational amendments is that they apply prospectively.

So they apply to just those encampments that are larger than 100 occupants that are established after the effective date of the bill.

So they would not, they should not be retroactive to existing encampment operators.

Thank you for clarifying that.

Thank you, Chair.

And yeah, sorry, Eddie and I are sort of co-facilitating.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Council President, thank you for bringing this forward.

And especially given that this is this approach is going to be a direct contract between the city and the provider.

Since we are not utilizing KCRHA, I do think it's important to make sure that we are bringing in elements that would have otherwise been within what KCRHA already requires of providers and then adding a little bit of clarity.

So I appreciate that.

I just want to ask you a question in terms of the point of contact.

And this may be Central Staff or Council President.

This was something that our office was also interested in, this idea of making sure people know who to reach out to so that there's just not a, what's the word I want to say here, lack of clarity around that.

And I just want to make sure that what I'm reading here is about a point of contact that's posted at the physical location so that folks understand who the right person to reach is.

But that point of contact, it may be a case manager.

We have a little bit of sort of flexibility in who the right person is. so that providers have the opportunity, depending on how they're structured, to identify that appropriate person.

So that's how I'm reading this, and I just want to ensure that that is aligned with the sponsor's intent.

Absolutely.

It's just someone that the neighborhood can talk to if there's an issue that they can address.

Oftentimes, just from my experience, I have to go through four or five hoops just to find someone who can talk to residents regarding a certain situation at a location.

So to avoid all that, so neighbors can go directly to the person It could be a case manager.

It could be somebody on site.

It could be whoever within that organization that has direct contact with the shelter site that can address those issues when they come up.

So it's kind of open-ended.

It doesn't say that person has to be on the property 24 hours.

It doesn't say they have to be a case manager.

It just says, hey, they have to have some number and contact for people to be able to directly reach out to folks.

It's also my intention, and I know this just for this legislation, But it's also my intention to bring and strengthen our good neighbor agreements holistically across the city, not just with this, because this legislation is new.

We had to address this.

But it is my intention to strengthen our good neighbor agreements across the city as well for current shelters as well.

But for now, we're addressing this one.

So I just wanted to put that out there just so everyone knows.

Thank you for the questions, too, as well.

Thank you.

Council Member Rivera?

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for letting me sit in the committee meeting today since I don't sit on this committee.

Thank you for joining us.

Just to Council Member or Council President Hollingsworth, I appreciate you bringing this.

In the time we've been here, we've heard a lot from neighbors, and we just, to me, this is want to help set up shelters for success, additional shelters that we have and the current ones that we have situated.

We want there to be, they are part of the neighborhood and we want to make sure that the neighbors surrounding the shelters see them as such.

And then in that way, it's good to have a point of contact that people can feel like, you know, if they see, if they have any concerns, they can reach out and there's that dialogue happening versus what we see sometimes now, which is neighbors surrounding of the shelters, don't know who to reach out to, as Council President said earlier.

So I think this is a very helpful way of encouraging good relationships between all the neighbors that live there.

So thank you.

Wanted to add that because I've seen it too in the time I've been here.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

I think, are we ready to move on to the next amendment?

So Amendment Number 3, sponsored by Councilmember Rink, would require that operators of newer expanded encampments with more than 100 occupants have at least two staff on site 24 hours a day.

Councilmember Rink.

Thank you, Chair, and thanks for that overview, Ketel.

This is a very straightforward amendment.

The essence behind actually both of the amendments that I'm bringing forward today really speak to the health, safety, and well-being of the people we're trying to serve, as well as the individual direct service providers who will be providing the staffing at the proposed tiny home village sites.

We've heard loud and clear from supporters of this whole effort that we need supportive staff to support our neighbors who are on their path to stabilization.

And candidly, this plan cannot succeed without those staff.

And so this amendment would require that operators have at least two people on site 24-7.

This is reflective also of conversations we've had with service providers just about the staffing support that's needed to manage all of the things that may be going on.

Folks have someone to turn to and we could manage all of the things that may be happening at these sites.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any questions, comments?

Okay, next amendment.

All right, moving on to Amendment 4, also sponsored by Councilmember Rink.

This amendment would set a goal, not a mandate, that operators of new or expanded encampments with more than 100 occupants strive to provide intensive case management services at a ratio of 1 to 15, one case manager to 15 occupants, for encampments that have occupants with high acuity needs.

The committee will recall that as part of the budget bill, the council set up a high acuity work group to help define a high acuity that would presumably be informed, that would inform implementation of this goal.

Council Member Rink.

Thank you, Chair.

So building on this theme of supportive services at each of these sites, this amendment would set a goal that operators of new and expanded encampments with more than 100 residents strive to provide intensive case management for encampment occupants at a ratio of one case manager for every 15 residents with high acuity needs.

And this is, again, informed by a number of our providers who work with high acuity clients and reflective of, I know, a number of conversations we've had related to supports for high acuity individuals just over the past few years.

The spirit of this is, again, to make sure that we are providing the support that folks really need.

We know that the work that case managers are expected to provide is both broad and individualized.

quite candidly, very emotionally demanding, sometimes physically demanding.

And so just making it very clear that this is something we want to strive towards.

I know we're going to be standing up that high acuity work group as entailed by that previous piece of legislation.

We're continuing the work here.

There has been significant work done to identify what is an appropriate case management ratio for high acuity clients, and this amendment reflects that.

So it really does set a goal in this, not a mandate, and I hope that we can have a continued discussion about the needs to support high acuity clients.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you, Councilmember Ring, for bringing this amendment forward.

I just wanted to highlight and express my appreciation for the focus here on high acuity clients and the differentiation that this amendment makes.

One of the things that I spoke about briefly previously in regards to this bill is it's important that we as council remember that this bill is expanding the site capacity, but that these may be locations that are serving different needs.

And so I appreciate that you're bringing this forward that has this case management ratio focused on high acuity.

because we may also have sites that are serving low acuity populations that would need a different approach.

So just appreciate that and the intent of the language here.

Thank you.

If there's no other questions or comments, I think we can move on to the next amendment.

Amendment number five, sponsored by Councilmember Strauss.

would require that operators of new or expanded encampments with more than 100 occupants be divided into neighborhoods of no greater than 50 occupants per neighborhood with controlled access points to each neighborhood.

Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair.

This is an amendment that is authored and sponsored by Councilmember Strauss.

He's just unable to be present in committee today, so I will be sharing some thoughts on the amendment.

However, questions, we're happy to daylight them today, but questions may be better directed towards his staff.

Councilmember Strauss is bringing this amendment to ensure that we can build new shelter quickly while continuing to do so in a way that centers the safety and operational needs of residents in these shelters.

So the underlying legislation that we're looking at allows the City of Seattle to build larger shelter locations than we currently have.

And currently as written, these shelters could, in theory, be created as one large 100-plus person site with only the fenced areas outside of the location.

If this amendment passes, it will allow the shelters to serve the same number of people.

However, it would add privacy measures for residents by partitioning the shelter location into manageable neighborhoods of up to 50 people.

This is a tactic that we did hear about during some earlier conversations when this legislation was first introduced.

This concept is important to Councilmember Strauss because if you live in one of those 50-person neighborhoods, no one from outside of your neighborhood would be permitted to come in unless they were sheltered in the same neighborhood.

This would also allow staff to respond more quickly to problems if they develop, and if issues do happen, it would ensure that they do not impact the entire population of the shelter.

There are some finer details of this amendment that are continuing to be worked out.

and Councilmember Strauss is open to feedback of any and all kinds in order to make sure this amendment is improving safety while not impacting the speed of creating new shelter.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any questions or comments?

I'll just make a quick comment that, and we heard this in public testimony, I appreciate the intent behind this, just a little bit concerned about being overly prescriptive to some of our providers, and I will share that with Councilmember Strauss directly, but just wanted to state that for the record.

Yes, Councilmember Foster.

Thank you.

And I'm going to now speak for myself.

I appreciate that question.

And I think one of the things that it may be important for us to explore is and that I've been considering as I looked at this legislation is ways to allow for that flexibility, you know, not knowing what the topography of a location is going to be.

We want to ensure that we are both thinking about this concept of neighborhoods, but also not being too prohibitive.

So I appreciate that question, Council Member Lynn.

Thank you.

I think we can move on to the next amendment.

Okay, so the next two amendments don't appear in the packet.

You have copies, I think, in front of you.

The next amendment is sponsored by Councilmember Rivera, authored by Councilmember Rivera and sponsored by Councilmember Hollingsworth, would require that operators of newer expanded encampments that are designed to accommodate up to 100 occupants or more than 100 occupants provide 24-hour security staffing.

Just before we get started, is there any way to share on a screen or no?

We don't have it on the screen.

It's on screen.

It's on our screen, but I don't, it's not on.

Oh, it is up there.

Okay.

Wonderful.

Okay.

Ignore the amendment number of that.

I'm not getting that.

Okay.

Councilmember Rivera, did you want to speak to?

Sure.

Well, first of all, thank you, Chair Lynn.

for the opportunity, and thank you to my colleague, Council President Hollingsworth, for sponsoring this on my behalf, since I don't sit on the Land Use Committee.

The intent behind this amendment is just to ensure that the shelters can provide 24-hour security at the shelters.

This is another, since we've been here, we've heard a lot of issues that have occurred not just shelters, but our permanent supportive housing sites.

And I've spoken with providers in the past about the inability of using city funding to make sure that they're able to provide 24-7 security.

It would be really advantageous.

So that means when they pay, you know, they have to, if they're gonna, let me backtrack, if they're going to provide it, then they have to use different funds.

And again, back to the same concept of the good neighbor agreements, trying to anticipate needs at the back end while we're crafting this here at the front end is really important.

And so having the ability to make sure that there's 24-7 security for any issues that might arise at these shelters.

We know that folks at these shelters have addiction issues, for instance, and we know that some people like drug dealers who are taking advantage of folks at these shelters might show up at these sites.

And we want to make sure that we're providing safety for both the folks that live in the shelter and around the shelters.

And we don't want unintended consequences at the back end.

We should anticipate, given what we've seen prior, that this will be an issue.

And we want to make sure that we're accounting for it, like I said, on the front end.

So very simply, I will say that having just case managers on site 24 hours won't, I don't believe, necessarily take care of the issues.

What we've seen from, again, permanent housing providers that have front desk folks 24 hours or long periods of time, if not 24 hours, they're not the ones taking care of issues that might arise in front of the buildings because I don't think the case workers are not security and they need protection as well.

So the whole intent behind having the 24 hour seven security is to ensure that everyone, including the case managers, are safe.

And so I think this is an important aspect, too, as we stand up these shelters quickly.

Again, it's not to impede the moving forward of these shelters, but to really anticipate unintended consequences and make sure it's safe for everyone.

I'm happy to take any questions, Chair.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any questions?

Councilmember Rank.

Thank you, Chair.

My questions are primarily for central staff, just on some of the mechanics of this.

Seeing that the language here states identifiable security personnel, do we have a code definition for security personnel?

I'm hearing the sponsor's intent to differentiate that this is different than on-site staff or case managers, but I'm just wondering, we mean a different staff position, and is there a code definition for security personnel?

There's not a land use code definition for security personnel.

Okay.

Understood.

And I'm curious, maybe this is a question for Jen, do we have any providers right now that have this kind of level of security that they are providing to sites?

I don't know the answer to that for shelter.

I do know that other types of affordable housing, for example, have hired private security to be present probably 24-7 or during evening hours, but I don't know the answer for shelter.

Okay, understood.

And do we have an estimate on the cost associated with having this level of staffing for security?

I don't have that information.

I could try to get it.

And my final question on this is, do we know, just knowing that we don't know the cost associated with this amendment right now, do we know if the executive has factored in some elements to their own cost projections for the overall shelter expansion program into this?

My understanding when talking to the executive about their costing was that they did assume that there would be two people on staff, or sort of two people present 24-7, including during the overnight hours, which they tend to think of as having, in part, a security function.

They're at the front gate.

They're controlling access in and out of the property.

They're doing security patrols in the evening, for example, just to make sure everything looks good.

But they have other responsibilities, too, like maybe conducting an enrollment if somebody's coming in the middle of the night.

So the presence of two of those staff 24-7 has been factored into the budgets that the executive is putting together.

I think this might refer to the idea of, for example, hiring a private security from a firm that has not been something that they have budgeted for to this point.

Understood.

Thank you.

No further questions.

Yes.

Thank you for the questions, Councilmember Renk.

I'd like to weigh in here, too, since I'm the sponsor of this legislation.

I will say that having caseworkers, they are not trained to be security, private security officers, so we don't want to place a responsibility on those folks where they don't have that area of expertise, and private security does.

So the intent behind this is to make sure that we have the proper folks who are skilled with the proper skill set to provide that that security aspect and not folks that might be there acting in a case management capacity who might be enrolling people and sort of taking care of not public safety issues, per se, but other issues there.

I think there's a huge difference between the skill sets for those two, and I don't think that it's necessarily accurate to think that the 24-7 folks that were considered to be intake managers and things of that kind could be providing the same security that I'm talking about in this particular amendment.

Can I, may I add one thing to that?

And I appreciate that point.

I think we should think about several different types of staff at these shelters.

So there's case managers, there's people who are providing behavioral health supports, and then there's, I don't, there's a term for them, but I forget it, but then there's, essentially I think of the folks who are like, whose primary job is sitting at the front booth and sort of monitoring access in and out of the project, and then doing things like the security walkthroughs or their after-shift enrollments.

I wouldn't call those folks case managers.

I think their role is different.

But I appreciate your point about what is their training.

Is it the same as somebody who's, for example, been trained in security?

But I just wanted to make that distinguishment between the different kinds of roles that you would find in the shelter.

Thank you.

And, Chair, if I may, thank you, Jen.

I will say that I know that, again, in speaking with providers from permanent supportive housing, they have front desk staff letting their residents in and out, but these are not folks that are providing private security, and they're actually hiring actual private security to patrol the buildings and to be there in case of a public safety issue.

There definitely have folks there overnight.

I don't know whether some of our providers have 24-7.

I think it speaks to the finance, whether they have the funds to do so.

But I do know that when we did the operating stabilization funds, for instance, we allowed the providers to use some of those funds to provide private security.

So to my point earlier about anticipating issues on the front end and making sure that that's taken into account, on the front end, what might go wrong on the back end, this helps take care of those issues.

Thank you.

Council Member Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair.

I appreciate that.

I had some questions.

Some of them are similar to the ones that Council Member Rank raised.

I just want to verify.

My understanding is, was in the budget bill that already passed, was there consideration or finance, or excuse me, resources outlined specifically for security needs in the budget bill?

I'm pausing to answer that because the budget bill really didn't have specifics about anything.

So it was security versus otherwise, I would say.

But we obviously, during the budget bill, had a lot of conversations about the per unit cost.

We heard a range of per unit costs.

I think those per unit costs we heard about assumed that there would be two people on staff 24-7.

in order, including overnight, but not specifically, but those costs did not include the assumption of two people who were like security guards from a private firm.

Okay, thank you.

I appreciate that.

The other question that I wanted to ask is, as I'm reading this, I understand this to mean that these security staff would be required on these locations, regardless of whether or not these locations are serving low or high acuity populations.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

Yeah, it does not distinguish between types of encampment, types of shelter or population served.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, colleagues.

Just have more of a comment, and this is more general with all these amendments.

I think we're trying to balance our oversight, our policy role with being overly prescriptive.

I think we're doing all of this on an emergency basis here of of, you know, acting quickly.

And, you know, we heard this in the public comments about, you know, let's not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

And I think we are balancing all of that.

And I think, you know, security is critically important at these sites, not only for the neighborhoods, but most importantly for the residents, right?

for these shelters to succeed.

We need these to be safe and with the services.

Just sort of one last comment, which is to the extent there is a cost, I mean, there's costs associated with all of this, but I think it's incumbent upon us to then work with the mayor's office to identify funding to support these requirements.

I'll just leave it at that unless anybody wants to respond.

I would just say if I may that if cost is an issue and two people are being contemplated perhaps then the mayor should consider making one of those people a private security and one of those people being that first person who's at the front desk letting people in and out and doing enrollment.

I mean, there's a way to provide both.

And I don't think, again, we want to set things up in a way that is welcomed by communities and in a way that makes people feel like there's assurances that someone will be there to take care of public safety issues, both for folks inside living in the community as well as surrounding.

I just think it behooves us to be thinking about that and providing for that on the front end so we don't experience the unintended consequences that we've seen from other types of housing that we've situated.

To me, it's just doing our due diligence.

It's the smart and right thing to do because we want constituents across the city to welcome communities that we're trying to place there.

And so to me, this is important.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

I think we can move on to the next amendment.

Okay, so the final amendment here, also sponsored by Councilmember Hogsworth on behalf of Councilmember Rivera, would require that newer expanded transitional encampments be located at least 750 feet from the property line of primary or secondary education institutions, childcare centers, and that is a defined term in the code, or playgrounds within a public park.

So it's the first criterion.

And then the second is at least 500 feet from public parks greater than two acres in size.

So this would not apply to, say, pocket parks, for example.

Certain types of encampments, specifically transitional encampments that exclusively shelter families with children or occupants in recovery from a substance abuse disorder would not be subject to these separation requirements.

So those encampments that the council contemplated with passage of the budget bill would not be subject to the separation requirements.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Ketel, for that.

This, again, goes to potential unintended consequences in ensuring that shelters are not placed near schools, near kids, and playgrounds.

While it sounds like a lot, 750 feet or 500 feet is not a lot, and I think we've seen some issues.

I can say Ingram has had issues with the public safety variety with sheltering or encampments near them.

So we want to make sure that, again, we're setting all of this up for success.

We don't want unintended consequences.

We know that for shelters that are not sober, we might have the issue that I identified earlier, which there might be drug dealing and other public safety issues, and we don't want that near children.

So this is not meant to be...

This is not meant to not situate shelters, but again, more to, as I said earlier, it goes to the potential unintended consequences and ensuring that we're setting shelters up for success while taking care of our kids and making sure there are no issues on the back end.

Thank you, Chair.

Happy to answer any questions.

Colleagues?

Council Member Brink?

Thank you, Chair.

I have a few questions on this.

I know this amendment came out a little bit later, so I'm still getting my head around it.

I'm trying to conceptualize what 750 feet looks like.

And so do we know approximately how many blocks is 750 feet?

So it depends on where you're in the city.

It's about two and a half blocks.

Two and a half blocks.

Okay.

And 500 feet somewhere in less than, what, two blocks?

Or one and a half.

Okay.

And where do street, I'm also mindful of, like, what is the definition of a park in this?

Do street ends fall into the parameters of this amendment?

So do street ends fall into this?

Or are they included as parks or boulevards?

Or does this amendment as written not speak to street ends?

So street ends are not technically parks.

They are managed by the Seattle Department of Transportation.

They're part of the transportation infrastructure.

They are park-like, but they're not managed by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.

The language here does include a carve-out, does not include boulevards.

The council is familiar with where those boulevards are.

There's a boulevard, for instance, that is a park facility that rings the top of Queen Anne.

So those are long, they're more than two acres in size, and they're skinny, so they can have the effect of precluding a lot of uses with the buffer.

So those types of parks facilities would not be included, but otherwise it would be facilities that are operated by the Parks Department.

Thank you for that.

I know street ends fall into kind of a weird gray space in a lot of this.

And I'm wondering, I know the amendment as written notes that at least 500 feet from public parks greater than two acres in size.

Again, I don't know what an acre looks like.

How many of our parks in the city are greater than two acres?

I don't know the answer to that question off the top of my head.

We can get that information for you.

You know, an acre is about 45,000 square feet, so a little bit more than that.

So two acres is roughly 90,000 square feet.

A medium format grocery store, let's use the Beacon Hill Red Apple, for example, is about a 35,000 square foot grocery store.

Okay, understood.

And I'm asking all these questions with also in the back of my mind understanding that we have a citywide goal of having every person able to be within one mile of a park of some kind.

And so I'm trying to map out in my head approximately how many spaces in the city does this just take off the table for opportunities to realize this program.

So would like to better understand that level of analysis.

And I do want to know a question for Ketel.

Are there any other parts of our land use code that creates and mandates this kind of required distance between certain programs and distance between programs or types of facilities and other kinds of public amenities such as parks and schools?

There are dispersion requirements that apply to encampments now, so they can't be located too close to each other in certain circumstances.

Another type of land use that has a separation requirement is cannabis producer processors and cannabis retail establishments.

And a lot of that flows from requirements in state law, and that is a little bit more expansive.

It's a little bit different than what's shown here.

It includes things like arcades, for example.

But that's the cannabis retailers, producer processors is probably the other one that comes to mind.

And adult entertainment establishments have some separation requirements as well.

Sorry, it was hard to hear you.

So I heard encampments, cannabis, retail establishments, and what else?

Adult entertainment establishments.

Okay.

Thank you.

I read this amendment, and I understand where this is coming from, but I...

I just have to say at face value, I'm concerned about the message this amendment is sending.

I know having walked alongside our unhoused neighbors, that much of the experience of homelessness is one of social isolation.

And as stated, I understand what's going on here, but I would like to hear more from the sponsor on this.

What is the outcome we're trying to achieve here?

This is not intended to isolate anyone, but I don't think that these encampments, if they're not going to be sober in nature, should be placed next to our schools.

And I know we've had issues with encampments at our major parks, which this is what the amendment talks about, is the major parks.

This doesn't talk about pocket parks.

And I will say that Ketel and I, and I appreciate Ketel's work on this, had a lot of conversations around, we don't want to make this restrictive.

If we were to call every single pocket park and all the things, then we wouldn't have places to situate these capitals.

these shelters.

So mindful of wanting to make sure that the shelters are set up for success and again that we don't have issues on the back end.

We've had issues with unsanctioned encampments near schools that were really hugely problematic because there was drug dealing and drugs and in those unsanctioned encampments like the one at John Stanford.

I know these are not unsanctioned encampments, but we do know that they are not sober in nature.

And that sometimes means that we have activity right outside at the front door of shelters of the drug dealing variety.

And I don't think that should be next to our schools and our playgrounds where our kids are.

And, you know, I will say yesterday, unfortunately, we were at Yesler Community Center for the FAP announcement.

Everybody knows by now that there was a shooting and shots were fired.

Hopefully nobody got hurt right into the Yesler Community Center.

So I'm not saying shots are going to be fired outside of these sanctioned shelters.

But again, we cannot say that there won't be drug dealing outside of these shelters or attempting to be done outside of these shelters.

And so we need to make sure that we're keeping our kids safe.

I do not think this is onerous.

It's not to me meant to be onerous.

A couple of blocks from a school I think is completely is completely fair and appropriate, reasonable is the word I'm looking for.

And so I think that we need to make sure that we're setting everybody up for success here.

And I don't think that this is onerous.

It's not meant to be, and I don't think that it is.

Council Member Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair.

I appreciate that.

I want to ask a couple of questions.

But before I do that, I want to just make sure that I reiterate the language that's in the underlying legislation in terms of transitional encampments, which before I introduced this bill for sponsorship, we updated to clarify that with the definition.

Ketil, can I ask you to speak to that in terms of what we're talking about here, which are essentially tiny home villages and RVs?

Right.

So the bill, as introduced, differed from what was transmitted by the mayor.

And there are three key differences.

One is there had initially been a proposal to allow multiple 250 occupant encampments.

Only one is authorized under the bill as introduced.

And for all encampments, the census was raised for other encampments from up to 150 occupants.

But that only applies to encampments that have micromodular shelter.

as a form of shelter and RVs as a form of shelter.

So a tent encampment, for example, could not exceed the 100 occupant limit that's currently in the code.

Ketel, can you say that last part one more time?

You were a little bit away from the mic.

Yeah, sorry.

A tent encampment, for example, could not exceed the 100 occupant limit that's currently in the code.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

I just wanted to make sure that we continue to be clear in this conversation for anybody that's watching about what the underlying legislation does and does not permit.

I know there's some discussion in committee today about other kinds of unsanctioned encampments, and also sometimes even about other forms of temporary shelter.

But this is really focused on micromodular, I keep saying tiny home, but micromodular and RVs.

And I wanna make sure that for the public we're clear and we're tracking that.

So thank you for that.

I also wanna ask, so it's my understanding if I'm reading this, that this amendment would preclude the expansion of an existing sited location if that location is within these defined geographic parameters.

Is that correct?

So, for example, we could have a micromodular community, a tiny home village, that exists and is serving a high-acuity population.

And if that existing location is within these parameters, then that location would be prohibited from expanding.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

Okay, fantastic.

And then it's also my understanding that the final sentence here, and I believe as I've heard the author provide remarks in committee today, that this does not apply to those locations that are exclusively serving families with children.

But I'm just focusing here on the word exclusively.

So if there's a location that has families with children as well as other kinds of populations at that site, that location would also be prohibited from expanding.

Is that correct?

As it's written, that is correct.

And just to clarify, by expansion, you mean expansion beyond 100 occupants.

Thank you.

Yes, I'm speaking to the underlying legislation that allows us to go from a 100-person census to a 150-person census when I say expansion, not meaning expand the parameters of the location.

Thank you.

It's not my understanding that we have locations where we're combining families with children with other high acuity populations.

I think the intent behind this is there is an amendment to have some of these shelters be families with children only.

The intent behind this is to make sure that we're not situating other encampments.

Can I just respond to that?

I do believe that there are a few shelters that prioritize having families with children, but might also be serving other people like single adults.

And the way that they try to do that is just by having different areas of the shelter serve different populations.

But I believe currently that that is the case.

So they have a focus, but they're not exclusive.

They're not exclusive.

Thank you.

And I think, Ketil, when you and I talked about this, we were thinking about those shelters that were put as amendments.

In the budget bill, correct?

In the budget bill, that's right.

They were supposed to be just families with children, so not that.

We didn't mean those.

Right.

My understanding of the of the intent of the budget bill was that there be prioritization for shelter for two populations, one families with children and the other a sober shelter.

Right.

So the exclusively meant the ones that were families with children.

So those would be excluded from this bill, from this amendment, rather.

Correct.

Yeah.

Thank you, and colleagues, I will say it's getting to 12. I'm not sure, I know some folks have to leave.

Just wanted to check on quorum issues, if we could stay a couple minutes longer.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Thank you, thank you, Chair.

Thank you, colleagues.

I do want to say, I don't think it's within the author, I'm the sponsor, I'm on the committee, but the author's intent to, I don't know, not be able to expand women and children shelters that are currently within our system that, like the word exclusively.

And so, and thank you for catching that, Councilmember Foster, because there is an encampment in Rainier Beach that serves women and children right behind Rainier Valley, not community center, but Rainier Valley Food Bank.

right across the street from the school.

That to me seems like the perfect example for it to be expanded, but wanting to make sure that this legislation wouldn't prevent that.

That's what I hear.

And I know that that's not the author's intent to do that.

This is for, and whatever way we need to word that, I'm more than happy to work on colleagues about language.

I understand that, hey, like Council Member Rink, you talked about like the message this might be.

I think this is particularly, when you look at, and Ketil, you talked about it, cannabis stores, it's 1,000 feet for elementary, high school, middle school.

It's 500 feet for parks and for city centers and transit centers as well, like the distribution.

If you're downtown, it's 200 feet.

So there are certain things in our city that do have buffer, we call them buffer zones within stuff.

So I took on this sponsoring understanding that we wanted to set up the high acuity shelters that we are citing to be successful.

because, quite frankly, what we're dealing with at King County Regional Homeless Authority and that piece is a mess.

And so, as we are taking this on as a city, we have to set new expectations and standards for stuff to be successful where the public can trust us, number one, where we can feel really good about the outcomes that are occurring, and then also, too, that the neighborhoods feel like welcomed, or neighborhoods want to welcome more of these shelter expansions to say, hey, we love them, we love the neighbors.

We're just trying to set some type of parameters so we can all be successful.

That's what I hear.

I don't think there's any intent for malicious anything of that nature.

If we need to change the language, more than happy to do that so people feel comfortable, especially as the sponsor of this legislation, and we'll work with the author on that as well.

So I just wanted to state that.

Thank you, Council President.

And if I may, Chair, I just I did I think I've been very clear.

I was clear when I introduced this and I was clear in our conversation today that the intent is to both set this up.

Well, the intent is to set our sheltering response up for success and ensure that we are accounting for unintended consequences at the front end.

because where we are is constantly having to react to things that happen at the back end.

And it's not advantageous to us as a city and as a community to constantly be in that reactive mode.

We should be anticipating things on the front end.

And when it regards kids, and I think we could all agree because I think we all very much care about kids in the city, let's make sure that we are anticipating the unintended consequences now.

And we do have other things that we put restrictions on, so this isn't new.

And as we're situating new shelters, we should take this into account and making sure that we are setting this up for success.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I think we're running out of time here.

Just real quickly, I'll just say I have a little bit concerned about the strict 750 feet.

I think there can be sort of natural sort of buffers and stuff that come into play.

I would be curious how this plays out in terms of locations.

Also, just concerned about definition of childcare center.

I'm not sure if that's defined just because you might have family in-home daycare.

Is that different than childcare center?

I believe it's different, yeah.

The childcare center definition here is the one for institutions as opposed to a home-based business childcare center.

Thank you so much.

We are running late, so I think we're going to have to wrap this up.

Really appreciate all the different dialogue and conversations.

Colleagues, are we okay to wrap this up?

I know people have to run to meetings.

Thank you so much.

We've reached the end of today's meeting agenda.

Seeing there's no further business, we are adjourned at 12.07.

Thank you.

Thank you.