Okay, good morning.
Thank you for being here for a regularly scheduled briefing on November 19, 2018. I just want to say to my colleagues, because we do know we are going to immediately go into the budget action shortly, I'm not 100% sure if all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed, and so we may want to be a little brief to make sure we have all that handled before our meeting up on the dais after this.
I'm going to call the meeting to order.
I have a quick President's report I'm going to dispense with.
I don't have anything for today's full Council other than the budget items we will address and we will address it this afternoon at 2 o'clock.
As a reminder, at 230 we have a Seattle parks district board right after our full Council meeting.
Councilmember Sawant, you have the floor.
The only other item I wanted to mention is tomorrow there will be the Transgender Day of Remembrance and Resistance at Langston Hughes.
My office is co-hosting that with Mac McGregor and several other organizations that want to highlight not only as an annual event to mark the absolutely tragic and horrific attacks against the trans community around the world, but also specifically to talk about strategies for fight back against the Trump administration's announced attacks on not recognizing gender non-conforming and trans community members, which we know if it actually takes effect, then it will have serious impacts on even including whether or not they qualify for federal benefits as federal workers.
So these are deep issues and they will be discussed by a lot of activists at the event.
Thank you, Council Member Schwartz.
Will you stay at Langston Hughes, is that what you said?
Yes, I can share the information.
Council Member Herbold.
No items on the full council agenda today We'll be having a civil rights utilities economic development Arts Committee meeting next Tuesday first one since budget cycle and I'm showing leadership today.
I don't have anything further to add.
Okay, we could go for that.
Thank you.
Councilmember Johnson is passing around documents
Yeah, thanks.
I wanted to leave those on the table for our colleagues who might be showing up late, and I'm not showing my most amount of dexterity this morning.
I wanted to hand out this memo that came out late on Thursday to make sure that my colleagues are aware of the work that we have been asking.
The planning department to conduct this is a memo from the office of planning and community development that we had asked for in October or so just to have an understanding about that kind of funding that we have lost as a result of the delay of the mandatory housing affordability citywide legislation and The memo which has a couple of pages of caveats and then a good table at the end outlines that we have over the last year lost in the neighborhood of a little less than 90 million dollars worth of funding for affordable housing that we would have otherwise been able to capture if the mandatory housing affordability citywide zoning changes have gone through as was possible that that amounts to about 650 to 720 or so affordable income and rent restricted units.
So I wanted to make sure that my colleagues had a chance to see that.
I know that we'd passed it around to offices late last week, but there's also a lot of caveats in here that leads me to believe that that number is actually lower than it would have been.
based on a whole lot of other things.
So that is not something we're gonna be taking up this afternoon at two o'clock, but I wanted to share with my colleagues, because I thought it was an important piece of information.
We do have an expectation that the MHA implementation that we've done in six different neighborhoods will contribute at least $13 million into the city's notice of funding availability in December, when the Office of Housing goes out to say how many resources they have versus how many projects they can fund.
That $13 million is $13 million we wouldn't have had if we hadn't implemented MAJ. And this just highlights how many more resources we could have had if we'd been able to pass the city-wides earlier.
That's it for me.
Thank you.
We have some comments on that.
Council Member Herbold.
I do.
I just wanted to let you guys know that I just sent to your inbox the press release from when the legislation was introduced.
It's the press release from then Mayor Burgess, and it was sent on November 9th.
And in that press release, it identifies the fact that the council intends to hold a slate of open houses in hearings across the city through August 2018. So I appreciate that the memo documents what would be lost in a theoretical year delay, but I don't think we, at the time that the legislation was introduced, which was also before the appeal, I don't think we anticipated voting on the legislation before August of 2018.
This is not a place where we usually do the kind of policy back and forth, but if you'll allow me to respond, Councilman.
Please, please do.
You know, when we originally asked for the legislation, it was delayed by about a year before the final MHA legislation was actually transmitted to us.
And when it was transmitted, we, as you know, Council Member Herbold, that legislation has been appealed and that appeal has been on hold for a year.
So from my perspective, we're a two-year delayed process.
I think that this memo is conservative about the resources that would have come into the city for affordable housing if we had not had those delays, but still factors into the account what would have happened had we had a one-year delay.
My goal here is to remind folks, I think, of the critical nature of affordable housing funding and the resources that are currently both coming into the city and could continue to come in.
if we were to adopt the CY mandatory housing affordability program.
And moreover, I just want to remind my colleagues that my folks think that we're coming to near the end of the development cycle.
And one of the common complaints that we're getting from folks is that we might miss that opportunity to collect an important progressive revenue stream from folks in the development community who would have to pay or perform within the program.
So I wanted to highlight that for colleagues.
It is work that I asked to be completed.
I know that many folks had asked for what my sort of back-of-the-envelope calculations would look like and it was, I think, about in this neighborhood.
So important information that I thought needed to be shared.
Thank you for that.
And we thank Mr. Assefa for preparing this in his department.
Council Member Juarez, you want me to let you get settled and just go past you?
You're settled?
Okay, Council Member Juarez.
Good morning, everybody.
Morning.
OK, so let's see, quickly here.
I know you're all going to be at the park meeting this afternoon.
I know you just can't wait to hear everything, all the exciting news from parks.
Interim Superintendent Christopher Williams announced the winners of Seattle Parks and Recreation 2018 Denny Awards for Outstanding Volunteer Stewardship.
The winners are a cross-section of Seattle's most creative, dedicated, and oh, thank you, and hardworking volunteers who donate precious time and energy to improving Seattle Parks and Recreation programs.
I'm going to read off the list of winners because I think it's nice to say their names because they work so hard from particular neighborhoods.
Let's see.
Lorna Murray from Magnuson Park for the Equity Champion.
Leslie Whitman and Amy Yee from the Tennis Center for Healthy People.
Sharon Baker, Lincoln Park for Healthy Environment.
Timothy Crosley, Licton Springs Blog for Strong Communities.
Maisha Barnett, Park and Green Space Advocate in Ballard, the Superintendent's Award, so that's exciting.
Last week we had a Park Districts Board meeting where we received the Department of Park and Recreation's midterm report.
We have a second meeting this afternoon immediately following full council.
And I will note two important things for today's agenda.
We have eight items on the agenda regarding the spending and operations plan for 2019, six of which we are voting on.
We need a quorum of five, so I look forward to all being there hopefully this afternoon.
This is kind of a big deal because we have about $58 million to look at and how we're going to spend it and how we're going to look at the study for the next six years.
The next meeting of the Civic Development, Public Assets, and Native Communities Committee will be Tuesday, November 27th at 2 in Council Chambers.
You will hear from the Department of Parks and Recreation for capital projects updates on Portage Bay, Portage Bay Park, the Bryant site, and the Arboretum Loop Trail.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember Juarez.
Councilmember Mosqueda.
Good morning, Mr. President.
Good morning.
There are no items for the full council agenda from the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee.
Again, our next committee is on December 6th at 930, and we will be confirming appointments, discussing the Office of the Ombuds and the Seattle City Light Bothell Joint Utility Trench Agreement Ordinance.
I'm looking forward to this afternoon and again want to thank the chair for her Leadership throughout this process to make sure that we had various components included from all the council members building upon the proposal that came down to us Just want to provide some updates as you saw in the amendments that came forward on Friday Last week on Wednesday.
I committed to working with all of you to make sure that we could find all alternative revenue options to fund the much-needed 2% inflationary adjustment for the homeless shelter workers.
And the amendment that you see in the proposal does that.
It makes sure that we can both provide the modest 2% inflationary adjustment and it fully funds the mayor's suggested navigation team as well.
So what I think is important to know is that both of these are important components of a successful homeless service provider response.
And we need to continue to invest along that continuum.
I also want to thank council staff who helped provide us with clarification and make sure that you all got this.
While this is no longer an issue that I think is in front of us, I want to make sure that we are clear for the record that the original proposal from central staff clarifies that there was never a cut to the positions for 2019. It's important, I think, that we just have that updated information out there.
I want to say thanks to all of you, including members in the mayor's team, our council, and central staff for working so hard to make sure that we found a nice way to recognize the importance of all of these workers along the continuum.
And I'm excited for this afternoon.
Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.
Can I just say a quick thanks?
I will circle back, but Council Member Mosqueda, thanks for really working that effort and also making very clear that The navigation team will be filled as the mayor had recommended.
And plus we are adding, thanks to all my colleagues who voted for it, a mental health worker to that team.
So thanks for your good work.
Thank you.
Let's see, Council Member Johnson, are we just going to go keep it?
Council Member Gonzalez.
Thank you.
The only item on this afternoon's agenda appears on the introduction referral calendar from the Gender Equity Safe Communities New Americans.
an education committee.
It is a resolution to have the city council take a position against the Trump administration's proposed rule change to the public charge rules, which effectively would create an entire new category of individuals whose immigration status would be put at risk if they are accessing public services, public benefits, or are likely to access public benefits.
So it's a bit of a wonky area of immigration policy and law, but we did our best to try to explain as much of the substance in the whereas clauses of the resolution and looking forward to having that considered next Monday for full council vote.
And we expect to have many of the public charge coalition Network members with us in chambers next Monday as we debate and consider that resolution.
Very good.
Other than that nothing else from my committee.
Excellent.
Council Member Bryan.
Thank you.
The Sustainability and Transportation Committee of course has nothing on this afternoon's agenda.
The only thing I just mentioned which is a budget item, but I want to just like for folks is part of this afternoon's agenda will be a resolution about transferring properties that are currently owned by the city, but operated by human service providers that are mutually offsetting benefits.
So I believe we will discuss that in our budget meeting coming up, but it'll be a separate resolution as opposed to a green sheet is how we're approaching that.
Thank you Council Member Brown.
Okay, Council Member Bakeshaw, all eyes are on you, you have the power right now.
I do actually, thank you, but actually we do and I do want to say great thanks to all who are at this table that have been working so hard and also to acknowledge Council Central staff.
Once again, I blew up their weekend, but hopefully that that will be the last time for a while.
A special thanks to Jeff Sims who went through and helped me really get a handle on all the monies that we are identifying, spending, allocating, RFPing around food banks, food services, Fresh Bucks, all of that.
And I want to say thanks to council members, whereas Council Member O'Brien, thank you for talking to me about how we can work this.
I will talk more about it when we're at the dais, but thanks very much for being willing and to being clear, and I think that we're there.
So, again, Kirsten and Council Central staff, everyone has just been so accommodating.
I really appreciate, I know that you've heard me say thank you before, but I want to say thank you again.
Also, those of you in the human services community that have helped us understand how important it is both to add the 2% across the board, but recognizing too that the coordinated services, the needs that we have across the city and the county and ultimately across three or four counties is where we need to go with some really additional hefty investments.
We'll be talking more about that starting as soon as this budget is over.
And I just really want to acknowledge that we've got a giant agenda still to finish.
At 10.30 this morning, we'll get started on budget with our special budget committee.
If you want to abstain, you can still abstain, but I hope we don't.
And then we will pass out what will be final, and then this afternoon we will vote on it.
So, for those who have come for public comment, I want to say that it's 20 minutes today, that we will allow 20 minutes, and that we're going to have to say thank you and get on with our business.
So, I appreciate that.
I suspect you're all signed up.
Madam Chair, can I have?
Yeah, please.
Mr. President, sorry.
May I ask a quick question?
Is public comment at the end of the hearing?
No, it's at the beginning.
It's at the beginning because we're voting and that's the way our council rules are.
If we're voting, then we put it up front.
If not, then we can put it at the end.
Thank you for the clarification.
Great.
Well, that's it.
Okay.
So at two o'clock, we're passing it over to you.
Okay, so 1030. Will anyone have any closing parts?
I do want to say one thing.
We had a weekend at the Royal Esquire Club.
We honored Chief Best, Chief Scoggins, and Director Robert Nelums.
And the mayor was there and stayed for the entire event.
And it was a scholarship dinner.
I sort of emceed and help direct the flow of events.
But it was hundreds of folks in District 2. And they gave three scholarships to three deserving, two African-American females, seniors going to school, and a young African-American male.
Great evening, and well-attended.
And that organization is doing some great things for the community.
Okay, see everyone at 10.30?
Up on the diets.
Okay, very good.
We are adjourned.