Seattle City Council: Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers’ Rights Committee 9/24/19

Good afternoon.

Today is Thursday, September 24th, 2019. The Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee will come to order.

This is a special committee meeting.

It is 2.04 p.m.

And I'm the chair of the committee, Teresa Mosqueda, joined by Councilmember Juarez.

And today is our last committee meeting of the year.

We've done some good work today.

We've done some good work this year.

And I promise we will not add any special meetings.

Yes, I promise.

I promise.

So we have some really important work to do today to close out the year with our friends from Seattle City Light.

This is an all Seattle City Light agenda today.

We have Seattle City Light Review Panel Commission reappointment.

We have the Northwest Seattle property sale rate pilots update on the Emergency Low Income Assistance Program.

and the Northern Grid Regional Planning Organization.

Also, a pilot program to study demand response and low-income assistance.

And also, we'll get a verbal report on some of the conversations we've been having around the shut-off notices and how some of those communications will change in the future.

Looking forward to that.

At this time, we'll take public comment.

And there's one person signed up.

Can we please have Sean Collins come speak to the microphone, and welcome Sean.

We appreciate you being here.

Hold on one sec, let me double check, is that on?

Yeah, okay.

I'll just get close to it.

Let me just turn you up a little.

Good afternoon, Councilmembers and staff.

Thank you for allowing me to be here.

My name is Sean Collins.

I'm Director of the Energy Project, a statewide program addressing energy policy issues concerning low-income populations.

And I'm here to speak directly about the work we've been doing with Seattle City Light and members of Bird Bar Place, Hopelink, and Multi-Service Center.

Those organizations are providing low-income services through the LIHEAP program, weatherization, and the like.

We're here working in support of Council Bill 119659 and Council Bill 119632, which will support important efforts aimed at reducing energy burden, as well as encouraging enrollment in an arrearage management program and enrollment in the low-income weatherization program.

We feel like these are important efforts to address affordability within Seattle City Light and we're happy to be working with Seattle City Light to deliver these programs.

And that concludes my comments.

Excellent.

Thank you so much for being here and appreciate your comments on items 4 and 6 for the viewing audience.

Appreciate it.

Is there anyone else here to speak?

Any comments related to Seattle City Light?

Okay.

Seeing none, we are going to go ahead and close out public comment.

And for the record, Council Member Bagshaw has joined us, and I want to say thank you to Council Member Bagshaw as well.

Council Member Juarez and I had the chance to high-five for all the amazing work that we did at her committee this year.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

So it's been really a pleasure to have both of you on this committee, and I'll say more at the end But just in case anybody has to leave early.

I know we've added a few meetings to our agenda this year We've had a few extra long meetings and to the folks that we have the pleasure of working with We also have rearranged some of our timelines So we are here with our last meeting of the year and really excited to check in with Seattle City Light on all these items Everyone gets a participation trophy You get a participation trophy.

You get a participation trophy.

Everyone's a winner.

We don't keep score.

We don't look at first, second, or third.

No, we're all winning.

All right, come on.

We got business to do.

And Council Member Baxter has a meeting right after this, so we've got to be on time.

Federica Cuevas, do you mind reading into the record item number one?

Agenda item number one, appointment 01429, a reappointment of Leon Garnett as member of Seattle City Light Review panel for a briefing discussion and possible vote.

Great.

And if we could be joined at the table by our friends who are here to talk about the reappointment, that would be great.

Is it just you?

OK, excellent.

Leon, welcome back.

Good to see you.

So we have the opportunity now to really make, I think, an additional contribution to the good work that Seattle City Light is doing by potentially reappointing Leon Garnett.

This will be the item, or this will be the second term for you in position number seven, advocating on behalf of low-income consumers.

And you have served on the Seattle City Light review panel since 2016. So we'll go ahead and let you do a little bit of an introduction and wondered Eric Did you have anything to say before?

Mr. Garnett goes on with his introduction.

I have nothing that Okay, those are the sorts of things that I would have said I'll just get out of the way.

Okay.

So if you haven't had the chance to go and visit with our friends from the Commission, it's really a dedicated group.

The Seattle City Light Review Panel Commission has taken the responsibility of looking at rate reform and thinking about how we do this in an equitable way for both residents and consumers in the industry as well.

So we know you have been very busy.

You have added a lot of meetings to your agenda, speaking of stacking the agenda earlier this year and late last year.

So I want to say thank you in advance and please go ahead and introduce yourself and then we'll have a few questions for you.

Again, my name is Leon Garnett.

I am the chief operating officer with Bird Bar Place, which is a community action agency that provides LIHEAP for the city of Seattle.

Through our energy assistance program, we serve about 7,200 households each year through advocacy and financial assistance.

In my work with the panel, I am the low income customer representative.

So I get to talk about the issues that affect low income people, whether they be renters, homeowners, We have people who are living in their cars who use propane.

So we see it all and we try to help where we can.

And so I want to bring this, continue to bring this vision to the rate review panel when we're talking about rate reform, when we're talking about interacting with customers, customer education, and looking for ways to further make energy equitable in Seattle.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you very much.

Really happy to see you again.

In this role, we've had the chance to work on affordable housing issues recently, so I think there's a nice dovetail there as we think about creating sustainability for our families across the city.

Council members, do you have any questions that you would like to ask Mr. Garnett?

Thank you for spending your time.

I appreciate very much your talents coming in this.

The one area that I would really like to flag and something that this committee has worked on a lot this year is what we call all ages and abilities.

So identifying people, they may be low income, but particularly those that are on fixed incomes.

that as we age, that we find ourselves in a situation where things were good 10 years ago, but suddenly the money doesn't stretch so far.

So I just would like to ask your particular focus going forward to remember the seniors and those with disabilities that need a little additional help and to give us a call if there's something that you find going awry.

Yes, most of the people we serve are over 55. I know that's not always conceded to be a senior, but...

But that's how the feds classify it, so most of the recipients are people who are a little bit older, and we try to make accommodation where we can for them, so that's something we're always thinking about.

There's a few items on our agenda for next year as we think about creating more accessibility to Seattle City Light and more affordable options for customers.

One of the things I would just love to put on your radar is for you to be able to give us feedback in the future about how maybe the review panel could be more outward facing.

I know you get a lot of information that you're asked to digest and consider internally and then there's a lot of report outs and We've appreciated the handful of times we've been able to come and listen in on the conversation or participate in some way.

You know, you have the experience of working at Burt Bar, know the importance of going into community.

So if there's anything that we can do to help facilitate more of an outward-facing presence for the review panel, to help de-wonk it a little and deconstruct it, I think that would be really helpful, especially as more of our customers are, you know, We want more of our customers to be informed about their various options.

So let us know what we can do and look forward to working with you as you bring your 15 years of experience at Bird Bar directly into how we continue to make Seattle City Light more accessible and affordable.

Thank you.

So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to move the committee recommends passage of the reappointment of Leon Garnett as a member of the Seattle City Light Review Panel Commission.

Second.

Are there any other comments?

Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

No one's opposed.

It is unanimous.

We will bring this recommendation to full council on September 30th, and you do not have to be present to win, but we will definitely sing your praises there.

I know you got a full-time plus job, but if you would like to be there, of course, we'd love to have you.

Otherwise, we look forward to seeing you at the next review panel commission and really appreciate your service.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, let's go ahead and read into the agenda item number two.

And as you're doing that, if we could be joined by the presenters, General Manager Debra Smith, Lynn Best from Seattle City Light, Erica Malone, Jennifer Libreck from the Office of Housing.

Agenda item number two, Council Bill 119635, an ordinance relating to the Seattle City Light Department and and the Office of Housing transferring jurisdiction of the former Loyal Heights and Finney substation properties from the Seattle City Light Department to the Office of Housing for the purpose of developing permanently affordable home ownership.

For briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Wonderful, and you guys are welcome to take any seat at the table.

I know it's often awkward to have your back to folks, but you are welcome to sit anywhere you'd like.

Why don't we start down here and do introductions, and then we'll get started.

Tracy Ratzliff, Council of Central Staff.

Eric McConaghy, Council of Central Staff.

Just the little green button.

Thank you.

Jennifer Labreck, Office of Housing.

Lynn Bass, Seattle City Light.

Tim Kroll, Seattle City Light.

Erica Malone, Office of Housing.

Debra Smith Seattle City Light excellent great well I said it was all Seattle City Light today, but there is a nexus with this housing policy We have a presentation that we will walk through and I'm gonna for the sake of time ask folks to say some opening comments, and I may have some closing comments and Did you have anything you wanted to say to TS up to here?

You know my opening comment is just a general thank you to the committee for making time for us today I know that it is an all Seattle City Light all day meeting and we appreciate your time and well I think we're well prepared and we'll be able to move quickly through the items and again I really appreciate I know you have a lot on your plates right now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

All right great let's go ahead.

Good afternoon.

So we wanted to put the disposition, the discussion around the disposition of these two sites for homeownership into a broader context to start with.

The disposition of these two sites is just part of the mayor's overall surge in investments for housing for low and middle income households over the last several months.

That includes using about $15 million from the Mercer proceeds to support permanently affordable homeownership.

$50 million to build and operate 175 new units of permanently supportive housing, $25 million, as announced in the budget yesterday, and new funds for affordable housing using existing revenues, and $52 million over five years as part of the fair share tax, a modest tax on Uber and Lyft to support housing near transit, and of course, passage of the multifamily tax exemption program, which happened last night.

I'm gonna just back up for a quick second just to put the conversation In in the spotlight so that folks know which properties we're talking about and why the term disposition is so exciting So just as by way of reminder This is a follow-up to the policies that we passed last year that asked the city and starting with city light and then citywide to look at using all of our surplus or underutilized properties where we knew we could build affordable housing and create affordable housing instead of just selling them on the market.

This is a really great opportunity for us to now see these disposition policies in action and really appreciate both Office of Housing and Seattle City Light for helping us move forward.

So approval today of this Council Bill 119635 would mean that Seattle City Lights former Loyal Heights substation property and the former Finney substation property would be surplus to the city's electric utility needs and therefore our desire would be to see it transferred to the Office of Housing where it would be no cost for the Office of Housing to be able to then work to build permanently affordable home options, home ownership, low-income options for folks at or below 80% of the area median income.

So I just offer that as a little bit of context as to the why we're looking at these two properties and the significance of the conversation today.

So as you know, under Council Resolution 31424, City Light has been asked to look at its former 4,000 volt substation properties in geographic areas.

And so we did that for the Northwest properties in the autumn of 2017. following that resolution that lays out our disposition process.

And from that process, we are recommending the disposition of Finney and Loyal Heights properties.

So just to give you a quick reminder of the process, we first contact departments and agencies that are for their review of the properties available.

And we heard from the Office of Housing that they expressed an interest in two of the sites, which we just named.

Parks and Recreation was not interested in any of these sites.

They didn't see them as being in any service gaps.

There was no other department or agency that expressed an interest.

And therefore, we started the process for the community.

We provided information at any interested community group that wanted to hear it.

City Light hosted its own community information meeting at which Parks, OH, and several other departments attended to provide additional information.

We had a public hearing on November 16th, as required, and then we sent out notices for the public hearing.

They were posted on the properties.

They were posted on our website.

We mailed them to all the neighbors and residents, the owners and the residents, and we published legal notice.

And anytime we got a comment that basically asked us to provide the property to another department, we went to that department and asked them again, are they interested that we've had comments on this property?

All the public comments that we got were transmitted, and our recommendations were transmitted to the city council, and all the commenters were notified as well.

We did get many comments.

Most of them recommended parks and open space or affordable housing use.

And we went back to parks and they, again, said that they did not want to pursue these properties.

Okay.

And then as we are doing this outreach work, The law under the state legislature was adopted that would allow the transfer of utility property for less than fair market value for the purpose of affordable housing.

And the city passed the resolution that was just mentioned, 31829, that implemented this and set affordable housing as the priority use of surplus property for the city.

And any other use for City Light property would still require fair and full market value for justification for compensation for City Light.

Because the bill number is up there, House Bill 2382, just a quick note of appreciation for Representative Ryu, who is the prime and also for the former Speaker of the House, Frank Chopp, for his leadership on this.

This is really, I think, a wonderful tool that we now have in our toolkit to help address affordable housing when we have surplus property.

So excited that we are moving forward here.

And so City Light recommends that we declare Loyal Heights and Finney's surplus for utility use and transfer them to the Office of Housing at no cost for the development of affordable housing.

So thanks, Lynn, and thanks to the council members and the committee for having us here today.

We're, first of all, just really excited to be able to have this opportunity to create permanently affordable home ownership in neighborhoods near transit, near other amenities, parks, where very few affordable homes exist now.

These first two slides just sort of giving you a little bit more information, detailed information about the sites themselves.

The first property located in Loyal Heights near the corner of Northwest 80th Street and 28th Avenue Northwest, walking distance to several bus lines, other various amenities.

That's what we're talking about, yay!

The second site is on Finney Ridge, right on Finney Avenue North, between 61st Street and 62nd Street.

Both the 5 and the 5 Express stop less than a half a block away, and it's walking distance to other bus lines and other amenities as well.

So to back up just a little bit about the Office of Housing's process on this, when City Light circulated the notice amongst the departments of the notice of excess property, Office of Housing was particularly keen about these two sites because of their location, as I mentioned, in neighborhoods where affordable housing is very scarce.

their proximity to transportation options and services, and the size of the properties being a good fit for home ownership, both of them large enough to accommodate several homes, but not so large as to be suitable for, say, a tax credit rental project.

We still weren't sure, however, that permanently affordable home ownership development would be feasible and whether or not there'd be developers interested.

So at first we published a request for interest.

There was interest.

Turns out affordable home ownership is. is feasible and so we released this April a request for proposals.

We did receive five proposals, two for the Finney site and three for Loyal Heights.

We were explicit about seeking developers who will build homes affordable to households at or below 80% of area median income and then also ensure the ongoing affordability of those homes at all subsequent resales.

So our preferred proposal for the Loyal Heights site was submitted by Habitat for Humanity, who has a 30-year track record of successfully developing affordable home ownership throughout King County.

They are proposing to build eight three-bedroom townhomes, all of which will be permanently affordable.

Our preferred proposal for the Finney site was submitted by Homestead Community Land Trust and Edge Developers, a team that is working on several projects together.

Homestead Community Land Trust, like Habitat, has a long and successful track record of creating and preserving affordable homeownership opportunities.

They've proposed 19 condominium homes on the property, again, all of which will be permanently affordable.

to households with incomes at or below area median income, most of the homes will be family-sized as well.

You see nine three-bedrooms and five two-bedrooms there on that site.

Thank you.

I just want to say thank you to Office of Housing and recognizing affordable three-bedroom homes.

This is a big deal, obviously, because even two bedrooms are expensive.

increasing the inventory of this is really a great idea.

When you talked about resale restricted, the same thing is true of the habitat.

Correct.

Yeah.

Could you repeat the area median income threshold as well for these?

Oh yeah, I should probably know that off the top of my head.

Well, it's 80% AMI for both sites.

And 80% these days takes us up to, for a family of four, somewhere between 80,000.

I was going to say 80.

I think it's 80,000.

Yeah, I think it corresponds pretty nicely with the actual number.

We'll get back to you on those actual dollar figures.

I think you're right, because we talked about this earlier, and that the median income around this place now is like $104,000.

I mean, it's just a stunningly high number, and for people We ran into this around child care question earlier this morning.

You pay your mortgage or your rent, and if you have car payments, your car payments and your child care, and you are looking at very little left in your bank account from those three things.

Yeah, absolutely.

And this has been a huge priority of Office of Housing and I think this committee to see more three and four bedrooms, let alone two bedrooms.

So this is a great example.

Just real quick question on the last bullet there, resale restricted and permanently affordable.

Can you talk a little bit about what that looks like and what our current policy is?

Sure.

Yeah, so permanent affordability.

Our partners through Homestead and Habitat both operate their resale restricted homeownership programs.

using a ground lease or a covenant that restricts the resale price of the home when or if a family decides to sell.

So they're selling it at an affordable price to begin with, and then formula resale caps that price at resale.

So we say permanently affordable.

Our covenant requires 50 years of affordability, but our partners are able to essentially create affordability in perpetuity through the arrangement that they have with their homeowners.

And then there is a multiplier effect there because even though if a family decides to sell in the future and they're selling obviously for a restricted amount, they're generating equity.

They're building a portfolio and that helps individuals get into that potential second home, which we need more of these units so that more people can move out of these.

great first-time home ownership opportunities into future homes so that more people can have this experience too.

But this is really exciting that you have partnerships that allow for that affordability to continue into perpetuity, in perpetuity.

Thanks.

Did you want to continue that actually is the last slide so I think this is a really great image to stay on real quick I know that Seattle City light.

I'm sorry come Oh, I was just gonna say I looked it up and and for 2017 it said it was a hundred thousand six thirty in 2017 and and Let's see.

And the 2008 data is coming out this month.

So the brand new data is due out in September.

So it is a really high number for the average median income.

Great.

This is a great example.

If you think about Finney Ridge, it's access to high opportunity neighborhood, parks, transit, great schools, access to Green Lake, for example.

I lived around the corner there on 70. fourth for a long time and One thing I know is that office of housing had your eyes on a piece of property originally last year on this site But given the high cost of property in Seattle and how fast property moves We weren't able to pursue that property if I remember correctly So this is a great example of where now public land becomes available and instead of having to compete on and get outbid or, you know, basically outrun by the private market, we now have an opportunity to make an offer internally first.

And I'm glad that you mentioned all the work that you did with parks.

I'm sure people will ask about that.

And the fact that Office of Housing stepped up and is now creating these type of units, first-time opportunities for people to get into beautiful homes and desire opportunity neighborhood is a great example of where this policy I think is playing out nicely.

Any other comments?

Central staff, any comments from you?

Okay, well I think that this is a great example of how we are implementing the legislative intent under House Bill 2382. It's also a really great way for us to show the community partners who we engaged with last year on implementing the council bill who were urbanists, environmentalists, labor folks, service providers, because we know that you need to have stable and affordable housing and you can't just sometimes put a door there or a roof over someone.

They need access to services.

So I think this is a great show of partnership with those community members who stepped forward and asked us to do this in the past.

and the partnership with Homestead Community Land Trust and Habitat for Humanity.

What a great way for us to really express our interest in serving the community well with these public properties.

So if there's no other questions, I want to thank you for your work.

It was not easy or quick to get here.

It's a really great partnership between the Office of Housing and Seattle City Light.

And I'm going to make a motion.

I move the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 119635. Are there any other comments?

Seeing none, all those in favor of passage of Council Bill 119635 vote aye and raise your hand.

No one opposed.

Thank you very much, Office of Housing and Seattle City Light.

Can I say one thing before everybody leaves the table?

Yes.

I just want to especially say thanks to all my Seattle City Light friends, Erica, Lynn, Tim.

Deborah, it's just been a delight that you're here.

I don't mean to sound maudlin, but this will be my last committee in front and with you.

So it's been a real pleasure.

And I know how hard your colleagues work.

on behalf of the people here in the city of Seattle, I just want to say thanks.

Thank you very much.

Thank you all.

And as we close out this piece, I want the viewing public to remember, every time we build on publicly owned property, we save around 15% in terms of overall construction costs because we are maintaining that land.

So what you just did was to save the city some money on the way out and show how efficient and effective you are as a council member.

But you know that you were the one that started this seriously last year.

We could do this for two hours.

So just before we move on to the next item I want folks to know that that bill office of housing and Seattle City Light will come to full council on September 30th So we'll highlight your good work there again.

Thank you.

Thank you

Great and that moves out with a motion of three to zero in support of full passage at the full council on the 30th So why don't we go ahead and read into the agenda item number three?

Thank you for today agenda item number three council bill one one nine six three three an ordinance relating to the rates terms and conditions for the use of sale of electricity supplied by the Seattle City Light Department for 2020 for a briefing discussion and possible vote I

Great, and we do have a presentation on this as well, is that correct?

Okay, great, we'll get that teed up.

Just by way of introduction, approval of this would make it possible for the city to amend Seattle City Lights rates and fees in three ways.

Or am I on the wrong item?

Okay.

The PowerPoint is, though, it's one PowerPoint for this item and number six.

Okay, I think the viewing audience heard that.

Okay, and if you could double check in with Farideh, because she has access to all the magic on the computer there.

So for the viewing public's We can do six and three that's fine.

Okay.

Thank you Well, we've approved the agenda we'll just take them in the order that we want to can we do that is that okay?

Okay So it was that a motion just to man the agenda just to put these items together You know, I don't want to close out the year not doing something properly So I'm gonna motion that we consider item number three and item number six together on the agenda motion It's been moved and seconded any other comments none all those in favor.

I great the agenda has been amended But today if you could read into the record item number six two, that would be fantastic.

I

Agenda Item 6, Council Bill 119632, an ordinance relating to the Seattle City Light Department granting authority for the department to offer term-limited pilot programs to study demand response and low-income assistance programs.

For briefing, discussion, and possible votes.

Excellent, thank you, and as we move through the agenda I was really seeing item 4 as also tied into this, but we'll get to that one next okay great So why don't we go down the line and have folks reintroduce themselves for the record and Eric if you'd like to start That'd be great.

I'm Eric McConaughey on the council central staff And I'm Deborah Smith.

I'm the CEO of Seattle City Light Kirstie Granger interim CFO Seattle City Light

Carsten Krof, Rates Manager, Seattle City Light.

Good afternoon, Council Members.

Brian Hoxford, Seattle City Light.

Excellent.

Okay, well, thank you for the impromptu shuffling.

This is very helpful for us.

Just by way of background for folks who are watching at home, item number three is Council Bill 119633, which relates to Seattle City Light rates.

Approval of this would amend Seattle City Light's rates and fees in three ways.

The first is the rate for City of Burien customers.

The second would be automatic cost adjustments related to bond bill power association costs.

And the third way would be in charging station rental fees.

And then when we consider item number six, it will be Council Bill 119632, which is a pilot program to study low-income assistance programs.

And approval of this would authorize Seattle City Light to offer pilot programs for rate design research purposes During the meeting City Light will describe several pilot programs in development in anticipation of receiving authority for this proposed legislation.

So we're going to couple these two conversations together and we do have a PowerPoint presentation to walk through.

Again, thanks for your flexibility and letting us put these two items together and we'll turn it over to you.

Great, well I'm only, I'll just say a couple things.

One is, so some of the items, the items that are in agenda item number six are what we consider to be housekeeping items, but they're important.

And the first items that we'll be covering, I think, are really exciting.

And so, you know, we worked, I wanna, I guess, acknowledge up front that we worked hard with the city attorney's office, with Eric, with your staff, council member, to make sure that we developed a program with respect to rate pilots that would allow us to be nimble and to learn from things and yet still keep you fully in your appropriate rate setting role.

So it was a great piece of teamwork, and so we're really excited to be here today.

And I'll turn it over to Kirstie and Karsten.

All right, so the first thing, I'm not sure if it's three or six at this point, but we're going to start talking about the pilot programs, because we are really excited about this.

So to set the stage.

Number six, folks.

Is it six?

OK.

All right, so to set the stage for our viewing public at home, this is part of something we've been working on for some time now.

City Light is hard at work, working on a new rate design that we're planning on bringing out in 2021. And Council Member Mosqueda, you've been very supportive of us as we've been working through this.

We started back in 2018, and this was an initiative that came out of City Light's strategic plan.

And we identified that this is an opportunity.

City Light's rate structure is about 30 years old.

And as we all know, the world has changed a lot in 30 years.

There's new technology for customers, new efficiency alternatives, customers generating their own power.

And in the near future, new smart devices for controlling how power is used, stored batteries, there's a lot coming.

And so it felt like the time was right to take a look at our legacy rate design and sort of prepare ourselves for what rates are going to look like for the future.

And so we've been working on this in 2018, 2019 City Light, along with our customer review panel.

We delivered a report in April to council, and this report outlined a new set of policy objectives, policy objectives for rate design, as well as a vision for what City Light's rate design could look like in the future.

as well as a series of recommended actions for achieving this vision of a new rate design.

And City Light worked very closely with our review panel, including Leon and the rest of them.

This was a big lift for us and the review panel, but we delivered that in April.

So this is the next step.

It's coming up between now and 2021, two very important things.

We've got, first, a lot of technology that we're still working on.

We've got to complete the advanced metering installation, some upgrades to our billing system to integrate that all together and make it possible to do some of these new things we're talking about.

But then also doing some pilot programs, which will be very small-scale programs that we're looking at doing test new and innovative approaches to pricing and really help us learn and prepare for 2021 when we're going to be rolling out the new rate design.

So that's where we are now.

And a little bit about where we're going.

So we envision in the future that we will have new rates, new rate structures.

And I should point out that when I say rate design, it's not how high rates are, but But how they're structured, right?

So I know you know this, but just, so it's the fees.

You can charge per how somebody consumes electricity.

You could charge a flat fee.

We can charge for the capacity that the utility holds open so a customer can access electricity.

There are different ways that you can charge for using electricity services.

And so rate design looks at that structure, not the amount that the rate is necessarily.

It's a zero-sum game.

And by way of reminder for colleagues, you have been involved in these conversations since the consideration of the strategic plan in 2018. Part of the strategic plan, as I remember, originally envisioned considering looking at rate redesign.

But one of the things that we did at this committee was ask for that timeline to be expedited and for a few additional considerations to be considered as part of the final proposal or recommendations back to the committee, really thinking through that consumer advocacy lens to add more options to what design could look like.

So thanks to the review panel and Seattle City Light for being accommodating to those additions in the strategic plan and for the quick work that they did last year in the delivery of that report.

A lot of folks were asking the last time I was there was, what are we gonna do with this information?

And part of what we're doing with the information is following Seattle City Light's recommendation on this pilot effort here as we roll something out for 2020. So thank you for your willingness to both look at the additional considerations and options we put in the strategic plan and for expediting your timeline.

I also understand this is something that Seattle City Light attempted to do maybe four or five years ago, 2014 might be right, and wasn't able to move forward with sort of the redesign approval or concept at that point, and so we're really excited that you're going to be presenting something to us for 2020 as well.

Yeah, we're excited too.

So looking ahead to the future, we envision that City Light will be able to use some new approaches to rates to do what we call demand response.

And this is incentivizing customers to maybe reduce their energy consumption at certain times of day when the grid might be at risk of being overloaded or when energy prices are very high.

This could also be an incentive to shift consumption.

So instead of, for instance, an electric vehicle owner charging in the evening when the grid is congested and prices are high, but instead charge overnight when the power is cheaper and that benefits everyone.

So there are a lot of different incentives in this demand response area that we would like to look at.

Secondly, looking at rates that would target city goals like decarbonization, affordability, electrification is a big topic right now and thinking about how can we use rates to encourage electrification of fossil fuel burning technology.

And then finally, we would envision these being opt-in programs, and so recognizing that we have a very diverse customer base, and right now our rates are not designed to allow customers choices, but I think we can do that.

We can offer our customers a menu of pricing plans, and so maybe for an EV owner they might choose something.

But maybe for a large family for whom affordability is an issue, they might choose a different program.

And so we can do more to meet customers and their unique needs.

And so that's where we're going and we're very excited about it.

Yeah, I think I would just note that so currently City Light uses tiered rates, which back in the 70s was very progressive, and it was a great tool to encourage energy efficiency.

It's still a good tool.

But it is, you know, if you think about it, it's kind of a blunt instrument.

And there are tools today that allow customers to do more things, to have more control than a tiered rate does.

So if customers are willing to put the thought and the energy into how and when they use their power in ways that allow us to maximize the value of our hydro resource, then the customer has the opportunity to better control their bill.

And so that seems to be the way that the market is moving and where we want to move with it.

And that's why we use the term, though, demand response rates, because there are many different ways that those rates can roll out, but in general, They are designed to encourage customers to think about when and how they use the power.

So the ordinance that we have today would grant authority to City Light to offer these pilot programs to test new approaches in two specific areas.

Low-income assistance.

As you know, Seattle, we have some of the lowest rates in urban America, and we're very proud of that.

And we also have a utility discount program, which offers a 60% discount on all rates.

But we think we can do more.

We know that affordability is a big issue in the city right now, and there are alternatives to our current UDP that we can explore.

And so this would be about looking at alternative discounts and services for assisting low-income customers.

And then the second one is about incentives to study demand response, which we just talked about.

And recognizing that the purpose of pilot programs is research, the ordinance outlines a number of specific criteria that any pilot program would need to meet.

And you can see those there.

So that would include defined research objectives and evaluation criteria, terms and conditions that are transparent, publicly documented.

The pilots would have to end, this is less than three years long, opt-in only, including recruitment strategies to reach underrepresented populations, because we feel like we'd want to make sure that people have the opportunity to participate if they want to.

And finally, recognizing that these Pilot programs will not replace our regular electric rates.

Any participant in a pilot program would be held harmless.

And so if, for some reason, the incentive structure that we designed resulted in them that would be higher than under their regular rate, then they would be held harmless.

And that's just recognizing that these aren't rates.

It's a research pilot.

And so we want it to be a positive experience and a way for everyone.

So a little bit about specifics.

So we're working on four pilot programs which would be enabled by this legislation that we're proposing.

The first one is a program aimed at very low-income customers for whom our UDP maybe might not be actually sufficient to help them reduce their energy burden.

I guess that low-income advocates recommend an energy burden of 6% or less.

And even with the 60% discount our UDP provides for some customers, there's still, that isn't enough.

And so this program would look at addressing that need.

So we would have a rate discount that would deeply subsidize our second block rate and our base service charge and result in a very low, very simple per kilowatt hour rate, and that this would also be supplemented by other services, so it would be a rate discount, but then also we'd be looking at a whole suite of services, subsidized home weatherization, balance management programs, so if customers are behind on their bills, coming up with a plan to get them a payment plan and work that into the whole thing so that we're not just addressing, it's not just a discount, but we're trying to address managing consumption, helping efficiency, and also giving them a low steady bill.

So we're really, and this was a project, just a shout out to, Sean and you Brian and also Leon, they worked with us on designing this program and so it really was a partnership with the Energy Project, with Bird Bar Place, who will be helping us with some of the administration of this program.

And so it really was a team effort.

So we're really excited about this.

Do you have any sense of how many people will be eligible for this very low rate, and then what the impact would be to other city-wide customers?

Sure.

So it's, I think Karsten's got some cost numbers, or Brian does.

I do.

Our pilot, we're designing the pilot right now, and so we're assuming that we're going to have an upper limit of 300 customers on that pilot.

Recruitment and enrollment will sort of get us to that, we hope.

And if not, anything over 150 would be good for scientific research purposes.

So we'll sort of see where we end up with that.

In addition to the cost for the rates, I think we're going to work out to about a dollar, less than a dollar per City Light rate payer for the cost of this pilot, just for the rate piece.

Yeah.

And then the wraparound services will be funded through our energy efficiency, our CES group, and others.

And this is the pilot that is the most advanced.

And Brian, I know you're working on the pipeline, and one of the provisions of the ordinance is that we will bring you a charter for each of these individuals.

They're ready not for approval purposes, but to review and to provide input, et cetera.

And then we will provide regular updates.

And so we are very close to having this one complete and ready to roll.

Our hope was to get it as close to the start of the heating season as possible so that customers, we can begin to sign customers up as they begin to access other forms of of energy help that's available.

It also includes an arrearage forgiveness component where we will actually use donated funds to allow us if customers are meeting that energy burden and they're making the payments that they've agreed on.

after a period of time, the remaining past due balance will be written off, and we'll be able to use donated funds to do that.

So the nice thing about this program is it's pretty simple.

We should be able to learn quite a bit from it, and if it's something that works for us and works for the city, it's something that we could talk about, and we have been talking with Seattle Public Utilities about it as well, and it's something that could work across the city services if we chose.

Nice, thank you.

Can I just say, Thanks to that, I appreciate when our electrical utility and our water, Seattle Public Utilities, work together.

Because so often, people are confused about, what?

Who's doing this?

So it's great.

And I also really like the idea that you just mentioned of the donated funds being used for this.

How many of us donate to that?

I don't know the numbers.

We can get you some information on it.

That program is called Project Share.

Yes, I'd like to know.

We'll just get you a quick note.

Good, thanks.

Great, all right.

The next three we're looking to target for 2020, a residential time of day pilot, which would incentivize shifting consumption for residential customers to off-peak times.

We anticipate that this might suit high income household, I'm sorry, not high income, high use households, and potentially EV owners, because they'll be looking at charging.

And so this would be a way we could incentivize them to charge at night.

The next one is a commercial charging pilot.

So this is about incentivizing electrification and charging off-peak again.

And this would be targeted for fleets and commercial charging providers.

And then finally, an industrial demand response pilot.

And this would be a fairly small pilot, maybe three to five customers.

But looking at if you are a large customer who has something that you could voluntarily curtail, if we had a need for that, then we could incentivize the customer to do so and kind of have that be a win-win.

And this is one that when we were doing the talks, right when I started working here in industrial customers and we were doing the outreach, we heard from industrial customers about a real desire to have a program like that.

Also, I would go back and just comment on the residential time of day.

Yeah, high-use households, especially larger families, larger families who maybe have very fixed or lower income, they struggle with their energy burden.

Arizona Public Service is a utility that has a pretty diverse customer base, and they have found that a lot of those customers have really embraced this notion of time abuse because, again, it gives them a tool to help control their bills.

So it's not just electric vehicles.

It's also people where, hey, or I want to really make a difference from a climate or carbon perspective.

And so I'm willing to put some extra thought into how I use energy in order to make a difference.

Great.

Does that conclude your comments on all four of the pilots?

Yes, it does.

Okay.

Can you remind me, I think when we talked about the 300-person universe that was specific to the top item for energy equity, is that correct?

Can you remind me of the universe of each of the pilots that we're talking about here?

the total number or residents, consumers?

Yeah, I think that's still being in the design phase.

The residential time of use pilot was targeted at about 1,000 customers initially.

And again, that's not a firm number, but that's the initial proposal.

How we roll that out is going to depend on our technical ability.

Again, because that we're doing this in advance of our IT infrastructure, a lot of this process is going to have to be done manually.

So we want to be able to make sure that we're able to administer the enrollment process.

Okay, and any estimates on how many individual commercial customers we have participating in the commercial charging or the industrial demand response pilot?

Well, so for the demand response, I think we're anticipating three to five large customers.

For the commercial charging, this one's going to be- And the industrial one would likely happen in conjunction with Bonneville or a power supplier as well.

So that's a program where we would be supported in that through our energy provider.

Right.

With the commercial charging, this would be similarly a small number.

But I think that these ones, we're looking at specifically reaching out to, I mean, there's not a lot of commercial charging out there.

And so this is really one where we'll be working in partnership with different agencies.

So we're talking with King County Metro.

They're looking at building an electric bus charging base in Tukwila.

And so we're working with them on trying to figure out how we can support them in building this base and electrifying our bus system.

So that's one potential customer for this.

But it wouldn't be a broad thing, but we'd be looking at partnering with commercial customers who might have fleets that they want to electrify or provide charging and buses or other transit.

Okay, and two questions.

One, is one of the customers us, our own electric charging vehicles within the city?

Yes, that that rate would Include our own own chargers, which we have one right now and have planned for I think 18 more Okay, and then is the port a partner?

I'm their partner already, but I know that they have a number of electric charging vehicles that they use on the port as they expand, or is that another customer that works?

Yeah, it's kind of probably both.

I mean, we would certainly talk to the port about what they're currently doing, but we're working with them in a direct relationship, and so there's a multiple city departments, and you're probably aware of that.

It's one of, we're working as a kind of one Seattle approach to electrification of the port.

So we're working, for instance, right now on, you know, how do we best serve the growing electric needs of the docks and the expansion in a way that isn't disruptive of the waterfront construction.

So there's a lot of different phases to how we're working with that.

I would also say, which is kind of a small win, but just an aside, is that we have been having conversations with Metro, and they've actually, King County's actually asked us if we would project manage their, so we have a non-binding MOU right now about City Light being the project manager for their electrification effort in Tukwila.

So we're actually out there potentially developing some some experience and some reputation for being able to be a service provider outside of just our standard services, which is, I think, a cool thing and a good way to save for public agencies to partner.

Great, great.

And then lastly, remind us, again, you may have said this at the beginning and I know it's in our materials, when are we planning to get report back on these pilots?

So I think we would envision bringing them back to you as we develop them.

So as Debra mentioned, Brian goes first with the low-income pilot.

And I want to say that it's coming later.

Yeah.

I think mid-October to the end of October would be our target right now at this point.

Oh, this year?

Great.

We're almost ready to go on that one.

We wanted to get to you first before we put the bow on it, but we're very close.

And then we're happy to report out, you know, provide written reports on a quarterly or semi-annual basis.

These will all be fairly short-term pilots because, again, we're trying to work towards rate redesign, at least beginning to roll some rate redesign out January 1 of 2021. The idea here is we get to learn some things along the way.

OK, great.

And so we will take you up on those report backs.

And I think I see these in line with our efforts to pass components of a Green New Deal, something that I'm going to be talking about later today at town hall with Naomi Klein on her book, On Fire.

It's how do we take things to scale?

How do we try to do things more at the macro level?

Because I think we get sort of obsessed with what are the little things that we can do?

And, you know, yes, it's important to ban straws, but what is the other macro thing that we can do in partnership with community?

One of the things that I think we do really well, specific to housing, and our friends from housing are no longer here, but sometimes we pilot things and we know that they work right off the get-go.

How do we take some of those efforts to scale faster?

So we'll be looking to you to help us both fulfill, I think, the values of this city in moving forward with some macro policies that you're testing now and doing that as soon as possible and getting your feedback on these strategies.

I think we have a real interest in making sure that we advance the strategies that you've outlined because they're based in your research.

We know that folks have been asking for these for a long time.

So let us know what we can do to help you expedite some of these items.

And I'm excited to talk about those more.

Any other comments on these four pilots?

Okay, so before we get to that last slide, I think what I'd like to do is move approval of item number six, so we can keep these items compartmentalized a little bit, and then we'll go to the Burien conversation, which is the next item in your PowerPoint.

And again, these four items, energy equity, residential time of day, commercial charging, industrial demand, these are the four pilots in development.

looking forward to hearing the October feedback on the first one, but this is basically authorization to move forward so that we can offer the pilot programs for rate redesign purposes before implementation.

I'd like to move committee recommends passage of Council Bill 119632. All those in favor say aye.

No opposition.

I didn't ask for any other comments because I think we'd extended our discussion on that.

So it's a vote of three to zero and we will bring this Council Bill 119632 without any amendments to full Council on September 30th.

for a full council vote.

Now we are going to go to the last slide here of this presentation.

And again, for the viewing audience, this is item number three, which is more of a technical ordinance, if that's correct, if we can describe it that way, related to Seattle City Light's franchise agreement with the city of Burien to the south.

Right, so this is a technical ordinance that's taking care of three housekeeping aspects of rates.

The first one pertains to rates for the customers in the City of Burien.

This is a change that was initiated by the City of Burien as part of their franchise agreement There's, let's see if I can explain this simply.

So City Light has the authority to charge franchise customers in these franchise, we have five suburban cities that we serve, a rate differential, so a slightly higher rate.

And also, there's a franchise, what we call a franchise contract payment.

So this is a payment from City Light to the city of Burien or Shoreline or Lake Forest Park, so to that city.

And there are two options the franchise cities can choose, a low option where the rate differential is 6% and the contract payment is 4% of the revenues of those customers, or a high version which is 8% rate differential and a 6% contract payment.

I think all of our other franchise customers have the high option, the franchise cities.

And Burien is the only one left on low, and they are opting to move to high.

So we'll be adjusting the rates for customers in the city of Burien, effective January 1, 2020, to reflect this change.

And this will only impact customers in the city of Burien relating to this.

Not that I need all the details, but why?

Why would they go from one to the other?

It increases our City Lights payment to the City of Burien.

They're collecting, they're opting to collect additional monies from their customers.

And so, and sometimes you'll hear that.

I mean, we sometimes talk to commercial customers that are located in franchise cities and they can be frustrated over rates and it's usually because the differential that their city has elected to pass on.

Thank you very much, and thanks to Councilmember Herbold for joining us as well.

We were just talking about the joint efforts between Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light and Councilmember Herbold oversees Seattle Public Utilities, so thank you for being here.

Well, I have not actually heard from anyone in the City of Burien with any concerns.

I assume that this is all technical and appreciate your ongoing work with our counter Parts over in Burien so do let us know if you receive any feedback Or we'll let you know if we get a call as well but I do see this as a technical ordinance related to the franchise agreement and Again, we're dealing with the rate for City of Burien customers automatic adjustment related to Bonneville Power Association and charging rental So there are two more components to this.

Oh, so sorry.

No, it's quite all right.

So there's clarifying our process for setting the fees for using City Light's public charging stations.

As Karsten mentioned, we have one in operation right now on Beacon Hill, and we're looking forward to rolling out more soon.

And we do, City Light has authority to operate them under some pre-existing ordinances, but we, after talking with the city attorney's office, we decided it would be prudent to clarify the process for setting these rates just to show that they are cost-based and that the charging stations are subject to the same retail rate that any other use of electricity would.

And so this is just a little bit of housekeeping that clarifies that.

And then finally, the BPA pass-through, which is a mechanism that's been in place for some time where City Light passes through in rates any changes to the rates that we receive from the Bonneville Power Administration for wholesale power.

And the way that the mechanism is written right now doesn't leave a lot of latitude.

And so this just eases it a little bit.

And one way that that will be helpful is coming up this fall, we are expecting an RSA surcharge to come on.

which would increase customer rates by 1.5%.

However, there's also a BPA pass-through coming that will decrease rates by 1.9%.

So our intent with this is to be able to implement those at the same time.

And so for our customers, they'll see stability and a tiny decrease as a result of these two things.

And I'm going to have Eric from Central Staff, if you could walk us through the connection between these three issues and as they relate to your Central Staff memo and the technical nature of all three of these items, given the different geographic location.

I want folks to understand the nexus between the three.

the city of seattle and the city of bury and the city of seattle.

The common feature of all of these is it changes rates and fees for city light those are codified the city council is the authority to say yes or no to those in terms of how they're implemented in the world and how they function, they're fairly independent, but in the Seattle Municipal Code and what is being asked of council in terms of authorizing them, they're about the rates and fees that are charged.

Great, and did you have any other back-end you'd like to share on the ordinance?

No, I think that sort of covers all the items that I had sort of made notes on to make sure that those things were covered.

It's on the slide, and I'm not sure if anyone said it out loud, but the change for the Burien customers would be about 2%, so I thought that might be good just to vocalize that.

Great.

Questions, colleagues?

OK, there are no questions.

Any additional comments from Seattle City Light friends?

OK.

So thank you for walking us through that.

And I think that this is one of the items that has been on the get to list for a while.

So thank you for your patience as we've lumped all of our Seattle City Light items together for today.

Let's go ahead and move this.

I move the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 119633 without amendments.

Second.

Any other comments?

Seeing none, all of those in favor of the committee recommending passage of Council Bill 119633, please vote aye and raise your hand.

No abstentions, no votes.

So we have now moved that Council Bill 119633 without any amendments out of this committee with a recommendation to full council for passage and that will also come to committee on September 30th.

That's Monday, September 30th at 2 p.m.

Thank you and thanks for walking us through that presentation.

Thanks for hanging with us.

I know rates can get pretty technical, so.

They are exciting.

And then we do have two more items on today's agenda.

That's item number four.

And then number five, is it OK if we do item number five before four?

I think that's pretty technical in nature, too.

OK, I'd like to move the agenda to include item five before number four.

Okay, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay, no opposed.

Fundita, could you please read into the record item number five for us?

Agenda item number five, Council Bill 119631, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department authorizing the General Manager and Chief Executive Officer of City Light to execute a Northern Grid funding agreement for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Wonderful and Jim Baggs good to see you back up here and do you want to introduce yourself for the record and we'll have everybody do that one more time as well.

Thank you.

I'm Jim Baggs with Seattle City Light.

Good to see you.

Eric McConaghy, Council of Central Staff.

Deborah Smith, Seattle City Light.

I was actually asking Jim on the way over here, I said, so are you having deja vu or you know?

And I said, hold on, I said that I was because it was a year ago that you guys were grilling me in my confirmation process.

I know.

It was a lot of fun.

Well, we're happy to have you back.

Good to see you, Jim.

Thank you for being here.

And this legislation, we do have a short PowerPoint presentation on it.

We are discussing legislation that would enable City Light to enter into a two-year funding agreement with the Northern Grid.

This would support City Light's planning for future transmission and long-term operation needs.

The Northern Grid is a new regional transmission planning organization that will go live.

pun intended, in 2020, and intended to benefit the entire region by having a single process to enhance regional planning.

And for Council Member Herbold, I just want you to know this is fairly technical, so we're gonna do this and then we're gonna get into the conversation on item number four.

Okay, I have to be out of here by 3.30.

I appreciate you introducing the bill so we could do the Seattle Public Utilities items.

Yes, okay.

But I hope I can stay before.

Okay, let's see here.

Council colleagues.

I did amend the agenda.

Uh-huh, uh-huh.

I hope that the audience is picking me up.

I'm getting scolded by my colleague.

You know what?

Let's go ahead and, oh, did you have something to say?

OK.

It's going to be quick.

Oh, it's going to be quick?

Well, it depends.

It should be quick.

OK.

Let's go.

Let's go ahead.

Let's go ahead then.

Let's go very fast.

I probably spent more time than needed dwelling on it.

It may be that if we just let Mr. Baxter go, it might be.

Okay, go ahead and then we'll go ahead and get right to it.

Welcome, Jim.

Thank you very much.

As you laid out what this bill is all about, You know, I would point out that I really view it as a technicality.

This is really business as usual for Seattle City Light.

It's changing the form of an organization that we participate in.

So no real cost implications for City Light.

you know, again, just a different organization that we'll be participating in.

So, we as members of the Western Interconnection, the whole Western 14 states in the West as well as Alberta, British Columbia and Northern Baja are all interconnected and we engage in transmission planning often on a regional basis because what happens in one region impacts what happens nearby and sometimes even far away.

So we engage in that sort of an effort on a regional basis.

We have participated in an entity called Columbia Grid.

You can see here on the map up here, Columbia Grid was in the far northwest.

There had been sort of a sister agency called the Northern Tier Transmission Group, referred to as NTTG all the time, that had been also doing transmission planning for some of the other utilities in the northwest.

What is happening here and what we're looking for the authority to do is those two organizations are both collapsing into one, a new organization that will be called Northern Grid.

And what we're asking for here is the authority for Deborah to sign the agreement to enroll us as a participant in Northern Grid, who will do transmission planning on a broader scale in the Northwest.

The benefits of moving to Northern Grid is that we're going to reduce a bunch of administrative overhead.

We've had two sort of duplicate organizations doing very similar things for different utilities in the Northwest, so that will be helpful.

There's large data benefits and modeling benefits from transmission planning that should ensue from this combination.

We'll have, by having a larger region, we'll have more opportunities for regional transmission projects which, you know, sort of by definition span large geographic areas usually.

It'll cut down on the stakeholder participation needs and, as I said at the beginning, cut back on duplicate administrative needs for the group.

The timing for this transition would be as shown on this slide, the Northern Tier Transmission Group planning cycle really ends at the end of this year.

So these things are kind of overlapping as you can see from the slide.

But they would phase out by the end of 2020. The new organization phases in starting in October of this year and would be running in the beginning of 2020. And then we would phase out of Columbia Grid and be fully in the new organization in January of 2021. There's no additional cost to City Light or its rate payers from participating in this.

And in fact, we think that over time, this should help reduce our costs a little bit.

But the cost of participating in Columbia Grid will more than cover the cost of participating in Northern Grid.

And I think with that, that's all I have.

Great.

And if you could go back to slide number three, I think that that covers it nicely, the elements, the benefits of going into this agreement.

And Eric, I'm looking at your central staff memo.

It says, I have not identified issues regarding this bill for consideration of the committee.

Any other things that you'd like to flag for us?

I know that's true.

I haven't identified any issues that I would bring up to talk about or to amend or that sort of thing.

I appreciate that presentation and in many ways we're moving from one kind of regional planning organization to another but charged with doing the same things under the rules that the utilities have got to follow.

Excellent.

Okay, any questions?

Well, you were right, Mr. Baggs.

That was very efficient, just like the program that you are promising here.

So I would like to go ahead and consider the committee approve, again, Council Bill 119659. Second.

Any additional comments?

Okay.

Looking forward to, I'll show you one additional comment.

Looking forward to hearing a report back as you guys head down this road.

I know while the comment was short, the work behind the scenes has been lengthy, so thank you for your engagement on this one comment.

I think you just read into the record item number four.

You said one, one, nine, six, five, nine.

Did I say that wrong?

Thank you.

Here we go.

Can we do this again?

Good thing we didn't vote because we would have voted twice on that.

I should have caught that as your vice chair.

I'm sorry, Madam Chair.

That's okay.

So let me just, for the record, item number five, council bill.

119631 would authorize City Light to enter into a two-year funding planning agreement with regional electrician, electrical transmission planning organization known as the Northern Red to your extension of the agreement without further council review or approval.

Are we good, Lisa?

And so I move the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 119631. I second that.

Okay, any additional comments?

None.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None.

No abstentions.

Okay, four to zero.

We have now moved the appropriate council bill out of committee and we will bring that to full council on the 30th.

Thank you very much Council Member Herbold for catching that.

The only reason I caught it is because number four was the one that I had in my head, right?

And we've saved the best for last.

So let's go ahead and get to item number four.

Farideh, if you could read into the record item number four.

Anybody else who's interested in participating in this conversation from the audience, please join us at the table.

Agenda item number four, Council Bill 119659, an ordinance relating to emergency assistance for low-income City Light Department and Seattle Public Utilities Department customers for a briefing discussion and possible vote.

Wonderful.

So we have already had you guys introduce yourselves.

I'm happy to have you here.

Council Member Herbold, I know your time is limited.

Did you want to say anything about this before we get into the presentation?

just restating my thanks and appreciation for you, Chair Mosqueda, for agreeing to reintroduce a new bill.

You had a bill that made these changes for Seattle City Light.

I've been waiting for a bill from the executive to do the same for Seattle Public Utilities.

I'm always one to take advantage of the opportunity when it provides itself, and you graciously have provided the opportunity to allow this council to be more effective and efficient in getting the job done.

So, thanks.

You're welcome and thank you for being here.

As we talk about the Emergency Low Income Assistance Program, this is something that we're excited to do jointly with Seattle Public Utilities as we think about the Emergency Assistance Program as it relates to both public utility and Seattle City Light.

I think we know that the general public doesn't really distinguish between the two departments.

They just think of government or they think Seattle when they get a letter in the mail.

So this legislation in front of us would make the rate assistance more accessible and aligns the City Light and Seattle Public Utilities Assistance Program.

Again, thanks to central staff for your quick work with both departments and I'm looking for...

There you are.

Hello.

If you'd like to join us, you're welcome to, Brian.

OK.

Great.

Well, thanks to the team at Central Staff for working on this jointly.

And if you'd like to offer some opening comments, you're welcome to before we walk through the legislation.

Just very briefly, Brian, good night.

My colleague on Central Staff did really a lot of the heavy lifting on this.

So I appreciate him and also your staff and Council Member Herbold, your staff as well, in collaborating and getting to this conclusion.

this bill I should say.

If you like I can just walk through what the bill would do.

This bill would increase I should say just momentarily in case people track this closely the name for Seattle Public Utilities Program is the Emergency Assistance Program sometimes called the EAP and And City Light's program is called the Emergency Low Income Assistance, the ELIA or the ELIA, maybe.

Those are some details in case people are sort of paying attention to one program or another through time.

Those are the two programs we're talking about.

The changes in this bill would change the code to increase the income eligibility for both programs to 80% of the state median income, that'd be up from 70%.

It would allow the application of emergency assistance for both programs toward 100 percent of a customer' s delinquent bills.

It would add the twice per year provision to city lights program that currently is found in spu' s program.

This is a provision to apply for the assistance twice per year for households with minor children.

It would adjust the maximum credit in a city lights program on an annual basis to reflect the average growth of electric bills.

The idea is that there's a maximum amount, but the code would say that that amount will flex with growth in the bills.

And it would adjust the rules for a city lights program to allow a customer to be eligible for credit on notification of a 10-day notice instead of 24 hours.

And if you'll allow me just a little pause here, I understand that the bill that we had before Mr. Hawksford would have been presenting because he did much of the work on that.

I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that.

Thank you.

Any additional comments?

You're always welcome to.

I don't want to muddy the waters here, but I want to crosswalk something for you, just in the interest of being super transparent, given the next conversation we may have.

So as I'm looking at the PowerPoint, we didn't use this, and I know this has changed a lot.

So Eric, if I'm walking off the sidewalk, I'm about to fall into it.

I'll do my best.

Pull me out.

But we noted initially that our formally, this form of assistance was available to customers who had received a 24-hour notice of impending shutoff.

And so one of the changes, Brian, I think that we were proposing was that customers would be eligible upon receiving a 10-day shutoff notice.

And given where we're currently at with shutoffs, what I've gone is I've gone back, this was what I was running over there talking to Jim Baggs about.

We have a protocol for shutoffs and process and dates.

And I think the way that crosswalks, and we can get you back some information.

I don't think it's a problem, so I want to just acknowledge.

We're changing the titles of the notices that our customers receive.

And instead of them being referred to as the urgent notice or the pending shutoff notice, they're both called important notices.

One goes out 31 days after the bill, and the other goes out 41 days.

And so it's that difference, that 10 days.

So what this would mean is the customer would need to be at the 31 days and with a balance of $300 or more in order to be eligible to receive the payment.

And so that's not an issue because those are the 10 days that, Brian, I believe you were focusing on.

But again, since we're technically changing what those Those notices are called.

I just wanted to call that out.

Don't there's not an issue, and I think that still works very well Councilmember herbal did you have something on that?

I think it's something that maybe we can talk about between now and full counsel.

I think Seattle Public Utilities flagged a similar issue as far as what is required from the customer to demonstrate their eligibility.

So, and I think given the fact that you're changing the names of notices, their practices, they're open to changing their practices a little bit so that they don't have to have necessarily received notice from SPU that payments have, a shut off notice of a sort.

It might be an opportunity for some additional alignment between committee and full council.

I think that makes a lot of sense, especially because I know that SPU is looking at, you know, in certain instances, no shut-offs, etc.

And so I think if we can make it be around the threshold for, you're now in a place where you really need help, both in terms of the age of the bill and the amount of the bill that would work.

That's really positive.

So council colleagues, we're gonna do a brief update on the item that CEO Debra Smith just teed up, which is some really good work that they're gonna do with community partners to talk about how the language could change in their notices that people receive.

So that if you are behind on your bill, for example, the language doesn't appear maybe so concerning that you just decide, I'm not even going to open that.

I have no ability to pay that.

I can't open it.

I just have to put it aside.

That fear that somebody has when they just shut down.

We've all probably experienced it at some point in our life So we're really looking forward to hearing more feedback from Seattle City light as they talk about changing their shutoff policy which is something I'm really Optimistic about and I really appreciate their work on and what we'll get that update in just a minute and what councilmember her world I think is suggesting is As we move forward between this committee and Monday, and it sounds like CEO Debra Smith is interested in this as well, that we harmonize some of that language so we're not accidentally creating confusion or giving folks the misinformation that this will continue.

So it's a great thing and we appreciate, I really appreciate you flagging that because I didn't think about that technical.

The CEO Smith beat me to the point.

That's great, you did, you raised that.

So thank you, you did not muddy the waters at all, you cleared that up.

And then in this legislation, just some highlights I'm really excited about.

Extending the eligibility to more people by raising the qualifying income level from 70% of the area median income to 80%.

As Eric mentioned, increasing the number of times per year that emergency assistance is available to families with children from once a year to twice a year, increasing the maximum credit from 50% of the bill to 100% of the bill, up to $200.

And we know people are struggling with affordability in this city.

It's not just the lowest income, it's also middle income folks.

So as we think about every tool in our toolkit and the rising cost of living in the city, I think these are really helpful additions to help make sure that I appreciate Councilmember Herbold reaching out on this as well.

They see us all as responsible and we want to be responsive to that call for accountability.

So this is about supporting low income customers, especially during emergency situations and providing them with a suite of opportunities, a suite of actions that they can take.

Any questions about the legislation or clarification?

I don't think we've talked about utility discount program, how all of that's going to be integrated

We haven't, and they integrate today, so they're not mutually exclusive.

It's so, I think, as Councilmember said, it's a suite of services that are available.

And it's interesting because it was actually the slide that I think you, Councilmember Herbold, assigned to SPU, and then we participated in it, and that was right as Brian was joining us.

and Ben Noble and others, and we were trying, so we used this alignment opportunity as a way of providing additional assistance for those folks who were potentially higher income, but it's available to anyone who meets that qualifications within the criteria.

One of the things that I really appreciated from both your departments, and also I think Metro was involved, the cross-agency identification of who might participate or qualify so we don't have people scrambling around and trying to find Bob's office in one floor of the SMT and your office in another and then get over to Metro, that if people can get the assistance they need from a one-stop shop, it's really helpful.

And I think this is really important, and I think that most of you probably know, but the federal program for electric customers, LIHEAP, resets October 1 of each year.

And so a lot of our customers who are most vulnerable, they know that.

And so this is a time of year when, as the federal government releases monies for LIHEAP, so having these changes in place as that reset occurs gives customers the greatest opportunity once a year to come forward and if you will, start the new year, start the new year fresh.

And so the timing here is really important.

Great.

Thanks.

And as was mentioned, this was an interdepartmental effort, so we do appreciate the cross-departmental collaboration on this to expand and streamline access to emergency assistance.

I think more to come from us in the future on access to the utility discount program and ways to streamline it.

One thing that, you know, for example, I'm interested in working with you all colleagues on in the budget is how do we have a warm handoff if somebody calls into statewide poverty action, for example, how do they get handed off?

Okay, before we go, do you want to vote on it?

Okay, let's do it.

She says they're waiting for me in case you didn't hear that.

All right, so seeing no other comments, I'd like to move the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 119659. been moved and seconded.

Any comments?

One comment is we look forward to working with you on amendments prior to Monday so that we can harmonize this language.

Any other comments?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None.

No abstentions.

Thank you for staying Councilmember Herbold.

This bill has passed out of our committee with a vote of four to zero.

Pending conversation and potential amendments to clarify language so that we are Maybe talking about thresholds and the new names for the notices and things like that.

You guys, we are so efficient today.

And so before we go, since you teed up it so nicely, would you like to comment a little bit about the conversation that you've been having with your team internal to Seattle City Light?

Some of the discussions we've had since your arrival as the CEO has been, how do we better communicate with our customers out there, recognizing we're a public utility, we want to serve the public, we are here to try to make ourselves more accessible and we've done a lot today to try to create more affordable options to folks.

How do we sort of break down any of the barriers that might be created by individuals not paying their bills and really trying to encourage them?

to see opportunities versus a threatening note.

And we've received a few emails saying, you know, my electricity is being shut off, and we don't actually have that policy in place right now.

And so instead of going down the shut-off route, it is really with a lot of enthusiasm that I'm looking forward to working with your office as we change the policy related to shutoff notices and not move forward with shutoffs.

At this point, I think that that's an important element that we can offer as a public utility as we regroup and think about how we're communicating with our customers.

So I'll leave it to you to share some of the innovative thinking that your team has come up with that was already in the works, but I think you guys have really underscored a commitment to clarifying with customers what their options are.

Thank you and I appreciate the opportunity to provide a brief update.

I think you might recall when I, you aren't going to recall this, but I recall it because I hear myself say it all the time, but back when I was going through the confirmation process, one of the things that I believed for most of my career is that customers or constituents that work with their public utility that we all want the same things, whether it's a customer, an employee, or a community member, and we want to be treated with kindness, we want to be treated with respect, and we want to know that we're being heard and that we matter.

And so I think that a lot of this is about that.

And I know that we have talked a lot, and we do have an obligation to collect for the services we provide.

And that is actually part of how we maintain long-term affordability.

But we also need to do that in a way that honors those first three really important values that I know you and I share.

And we've talked about that a lot.

So I really appreciate the fact that we've been able to work together on how we can move forward in a collaborative way.

with the city, with my other department heads, et cetera, so that we can provide the services that our customers depend on.

So our goal, I'll just say it up front, our goal is and always has been to work with customers to ensure uninterrupted service.

And that is not only a goal of Seattle City Light, I would say that's a hallmark of public power, community-owned utilities, And I would say that, you know, customers that receive their service from PSC, the customer service rep that's serving a PSC customer feels exactly the same way because you're delivering critical products and services to people that depend on you.

So I think it's one of the things we all do well together.

Having said that, so we have kind of a three-step plan that I want to share with you.

One is we really want to better understand our customers in order to create those customer-centric approaches to delivering and ultimately collecting for the services we provide.

And I guess I would sum that up to say, you know, one size fits all, solutions don't fit.

So we are digging into the data.

We are understanding better how many customers we have that fall into this.

We are currently defining past due as balance over $300 that's over 30 days past due.

So that's kind of how we define it.

So we're looking into that both in terms of you know, type of customer, commercial, residential, et cetera.

How late is the customer?

How past due is the bill?

How large is the bill?

We are, we have pulled specifically all UDP customers out, although we recognize that we have many UDP qualifying, customers who qualify for UDP who are currently not UDP customers, so we're sensitive to that.

So again, trying to understand the data, and at the same time, We're being very clear that understanding the data is not the same as understanding the customer.

So part of the approach is to look at the forest, but then also really focus on the trees and talk with people and understand what their specific needs are and how can we help.

So the individual circumstances and the very individual needs for payment plans, et cetera.

We want to do right by all of our customers, so we want to provide the resources and the tools they need.

And I think you saw today, for instance, in the pilot program, if that is a success, that might be something that is a tool for us down the road.

So we want to experiment and we want to understand how we can meet customers at their point of need.

We want to, you know, we want to, so that's number one.

Number two is we want to investigate options around our flexibility to collect for services that we've provided.

So again, legal obligation, but what does that look like and what kind of flexibility do we have?

And how do we honor all customers while we are honoring individual customers with circumstances that are, you know, really, really hard to deal with in the moment?

So we're looking at late fees, and we, and I'll talk about this in a second, but we are revamping our collection notices.

So, I want to differentiate the collection process from the disconnection process.

So, we absolutely have an obligation to attempt to collect for monies that are owed us.

What you've asked us to do, Councilmember, and what we've agreed is to, and we've not disconnected customers for a very long time, and we've agreed to continue with that practice right now while we work through that.

At the same time, we are looking actively, and I think this is where we are in agreement, about how can we better improve our collection processes without moving to disconnect.

So that's the focus.

And I think that for folks to understand who may be watching this on TVW or in the audience, There is a difference between a collection process versus sending someone to collections.

And I think for me, when I hear collection process, I think, oh my goodness, are we sending people to collections?

And that's not the case, correct?

Do you want to clarify that?

So there are two situations, generally, where a customer could be sent to a collection agency.

currently.

And that is if a customer leaves our service territory and they leave an unpaid bill, and we make a TUMPS, and we do, we make multiple TUMPS to reach out to ask those customers to participate in a payment plan to make some kind of an arrangement.

But if they leave a bill owing without making any arrangement with us, that account will go to collections.

The second is when we do new customer hookups and those are more often commercial and again where the customer has entered into an agreement with us for a new service connection of some sort and then the bill is not paid.

Those are the only instances where we are currently sending a customer to a collection agency.

So when I talk about collection, I am talking about how do we work with customers to encourage them to enter into a payment arrangement with us, to make a payment agreement with us, and those are actually different things.

and then move forward to, you know, most customers, of course, the majority of all customers, that's what they want.

They want to pay their bills and feel good about doing that.

So again, we're pretty committed and generous to working with them to make that happen.

So back to late fees, you know, what we're looking at is, customers who enter into payment arrangements with us in an even longer term, you know, up to three years for past due amounts, that if the customer agrees to a payment plan and they are able to make their current payment, they're able to pay for the current service and make this agreed-upon payment, that we will waive all future late fees.

And then at the same time, and this hasn't been tied down or defined, but the second piece of that is if the customer is successful in making that payment arrangement and working with us on that for a period of time, then going back and writing off the late fees that had been accrued previous.

So in some cases where we have some customers with large past due balances, that can be a significant form of relief, both in terms of the balance owed, but going forward.

The other thing I would note is that we had published a draft DPP, so Departmental Policy and Procedure, to solicit public comment on our credit and collection policies.

SPU just is going through the same process.

We didn't receive any public comments.

The comment period ended, but given where we're at in these discussions with you, Council Member, we've decided not to finalize the rules while we work through this, and that way, if we have an opportunity to make additional changes, we can.

We really appreciate that.

We understand that at the city level you are required to attempt to collect and we know that sometimes getting a notice of shut off is the impetus that people may use to pay their bill.

And as you said earlier, this one-size-fits-all policy, though, doesn't work for everyone.

And so the multi-pronged strategy that you've outlined here, which moves us away from threatening shutoffs and initiating shutoffs after a few years, I know we haven't been doing it, but to stay where we are and think about how we better communicate with folks, I think really reflects the values of the city.

So thank you for doing that.

Well, and ironically, where we started with this was that We hadn't shut customers off and we recognized that by sending notices that said that they were at risk of shut off and then not shutting them off, we were in fact sending a very mixed message.

And so that's actually the point at which we started engaging with you and Aaron and others to say, If, in fact, we're going to move back to this practice, we need to do a reset of sorts.

And that's what started, I think, the more detailed conversation between all of us that I think has us in a pretty good place.

So the third of my three points is around outreach and communication.

What we know the the current notice there's two and they are computer generated And that's relevant because we are working in fact.

I just had a conversation today with Saad Bashir from Seattle IT we are working to Get these changed on the bills, but I want to I want to be transparent and say that that that hasn't happened yet But but Saad said I could commit here to all of you that he and I are working on as closely together as we can to make this happen as quickly as we can.

So that's where it's at.

So right now, a customer gets a notice of impending shutoff, which I think is one of the things, and that's the first notice that they get at 31 days past due.

And then they get a final notice of impending shutoff.

And both of them do refer to further credit action up to and including an interruption in service.

You know, and they, you know, they have all caps in some cases and things that are scary.

So, you know, what, and thank you for saying it, it is a bit of a, It's a balancing act because on the one hand, yes, in fact, there are customers who don't pay their bill until they get that final notice.

Yeah.

But at the same time, it doesn't feel, it feels like it's disingenuous to say that that's where you're at in a process if in fact you're not.

And then if you're not that customer, you're the customer who really doesn't know what to do.

Now you are scared and feeling really at risk.

So the language is changing completely.

We're sending them out for review.

We've talked with your staff.

We had already worked on some letter and some communication with some of our particularly limited income partners here in the community, and you've provided some additional names, and we'll send these notices out to the same group as well as the people that you asked.

But we're now rebranding them, and so we have Please Call Us and Please Call Us Immediately.

And, you know, the language is about our goal is to provide you with reliable, affordable, and uninterrupted electric service, but we need your help to do so.

And then we really encourage and invite them to call us.

enter into a payment plan and give them information about how to do so.

And so we're trying to change the tone.

And I think it will feel very different to our customers.

The good news, too, if there is any, is that we've been sending this out for the last year.

So we restarted, again, the collection process, not the disconnection process, about the time I started.

So we have some history that will allow us to look and see, OK, what's the impact of the change of language, if any?

And so that's some more work we can do.

And the last thing, and then I'll be quiet.

is we are forming up, and I think this is the most exciting part, is we are forming an escalation team.

So I talked about data and analytics, but more importantly understanding the specific circumstances that cause customers to have problems.

And so the escalation team is a place where customers who receive these notices will be able to go, and we will be reaching out to customers directly.

So we will start with the customers who have the oldest, largest balances, and we will reach out to them and say, you know, how can we help?

Where are we at?

Here are the services and the ways that we can help you move forward, and what are your specific situations?

And over time, the activity of that escalation group will allow us to develop the data to better understand if there are things we can or should do on a more holistic basis to impact larger numbers of customers.

So we're working on pulling that together right away.

Excellent.

Thank you for that overview, and thank you for all of the work that you've put into this approach.

Council Member Morris has a comment or a question.

Without going into the individual, my biggest complaint with Seattle City Light and SPU is that when we have motel owners on Aurora that are $17,000 to $18,000 to $20,000 in arrears, and no one shuts their water off, That is just unconscionable, where we have motel owners who are basically slumlords and don't pay their bill, and we have people where we're giving them vouchers to live there and they don't have electricity or they don't pay their water bill, they're shutting it off.

We had two incidents of that.

And I couldn't get a straight answer from Seattle City Light and SPU is how does someone get a $22,000 bill and you don't shut off their, in arrears, and you don't shut it off?

We've had two incidents of that with motels.

So I'm more concerned about the commercial side when people don't pay their bill.

Well, and that's one of the things we'll learn from this.

And so what we talked about when we all got together most recently was to say, right now we're staying.

So we're staying the credit shutoffs.

But as we gather this data and as we look into it, then we'll come back and we'll say, you know, if there are groups of customers where we should be moving forward on behalf of all customers, so to your example, then we'll come back and we'll talk about those.

And I think you were super open to that because, again, our goal is uninterrupted service, but we also have an obligation to have people pay for the services they've used.

So I think it's both, quite honestly.

Right.

But this is the individual hotel owner, not the individual tenants that are renting the rooms.

Understand.

Yeah.

That was my biggest concern.

So as we gather more data, we could choose to re-institute collections for commercial customers, for instance.

That would be something that we could choose to do.

What we've agreed to do right now is to gather data and to better understand who the people are that currently make up that group.

And we've been most focused on our residential customers.

And I really, I know that you all have a full plate as well.

You have all the things we talked about today plus the daily operations of Seattle City Light.

I think it's really smart to be looking at those, I think you said, past due, how far back and how large they are to get a better sense of what is the biggest barrier with some of those because I think As we try to prioritize what has led people into that area, they may identify policy changes at the front end that can help a number of folks.

So I know that's more on the residential side than it is on the commercial side, but that could potentially help us as well.

The interesting note is when we finally physically went out there and I called the state and we held back his lodging license, it got paid that day.

Boom.

I was on the phone with him like, nope, we're shutting you down.

I shouldn't have to be out there doing that.

That was my point.

How does it get there?

Obviously he can pay, it's just no one ever made him.

And we also are concerned about the folks living in those hotels.

We don't want them to be in a situation where their water or their electricity is shut off.

So yeah, I appreciate the nexus there between caring for the customer or the resident.

Any other comments?

Thank you.

Thank you.

So thank you.

I just want to express our appreciation for your quick work on this because we have been working over the last few weeks to really try to think through policy options and your team came up with these options and the menu of ways in which customers, especially residential customers, will have access to more information about their options.

Really appreciate you considering the waiver of late fees when people start paying their bills.

I think that's innovative.

One of the things that I know Eric's looking at is what do some of the other public utilities do when it comes to these long overdue bills?

Do they have a process in which There's forgiveness at some point or do we even have the legal ability to do that?

So more to come in the future on this and I just want to underscore appreciation for your innovative policy kind of pivot on this as we thought about the changes on the horizon.

Thanks and quick call out to of course Maura and Kelly and Sandra and Robert who's behind me and my Chief of Staff Jen Chan.

They've all been just working really hard on this.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

So as we think about shout outs, thank you all.

You are welcome to stay or leave, but just want to say thank you.

As we think about shout outs, want to say thanks to first Freddy de Cuevas, who's been clerking us all year in the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee.

Thank you for your flexibility as we added so much to our agendas over the last two years.

And I say two years because I've had the chance to work with you both.

Yeah, two years in November on this committee on housing, health, energy, and workers' rights.

I want to say thanks to our team at Central Staff as well.

Eric McConaughey for your work with us on Seattle City Light, Dan Eder and Karina Bull, who worked with us on issues related to Office of Labor Standards, Tracy Ratcliffe, who worked with us on everything related to housing.

Those are really the three that we had the chance to see the most at the table.

But honestly, thanks to everybody on central staff for their incredible work with us as we tackled all of the issues related to the social determinants of health.

Thank you.

Thank you.

our department heads, our department teams, and most importantly, the community members who've come and spoken with us, and to our incredible staff in my office, Sejal, Erin, Farideh, and Aretha, who have helped to get us ready for all of these committee meetings.

This will be the last Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee, and I know I will see Council Member Juarez back here for our next meetings in the future.

And just before we go, though, thank you, Council Member Bagshaw, for all of the work that you've done.

in this committee.

If we don't get a chance to say it again, because we're not going to have a December meeting, it's been a real honor to work with you and serve with you.

So thanks for all that you bring to these committee meetings, especially your commitment to health.

And I'm really going to I look forward to working with you over the next few months, but also I'm going to miss you.

Yes, going to miss you on this committee a year from now and next year.

So thank you for all that you've done.

And Council Member Juarez, thank you for your leadership and keeping me on time and on task.

And you guys have been great in welcoming me.

I'm no longer a freshman.

I'm no longer the only one, the newest one here.

And so I got to step up next year.

And with your leadership and mentoring, I feel like it's been a really productive two years.

So thank you both.

With that, I think we're adjourned.

Thank you all for being here.