Good morning, everybody.
Thank you for being here for our regularly scheduled briefing on May 13, 2019. As I described, as the clerk and I discussed, there will be a new process by which, at the beginning of the council briefing, we will approve the minutes of the last briefing.
And we're doing this because the state auditor and our city clerk have looked at the rules and looked at the consistency of how we approve minutes, for example, at our full council.
And you'll see some slight changes on how we approve minutes for standing committees and this council briefing.
It's a formality, but again, we will publish the minutes and make them available to the public.
There was a complaint that this kind of document wasn't produced, but we're going to make sure we're squeaky clean.
So you have a copy of the first minutes that shows the attendance and the start time and the ending time and whether or not we had an executive session and that kind of detail.
So having said that, if there's no objection, the minutes of the May 6, 2019 meeting will be approved.
Hearing no objection, the minutes are approved.
And again, we'll make sure that's online and available to the public.
I'll start off as we go around the room and do a preview of today's full council actions.
Nothing for vote this afternoon from the Governor's Equity and Technology Committee.
I do want to make mention that on, after this meeting, we have a select budget committee that starts at 1030. And for the next couple of Mondays, actually Tuesday, it'll be 528. But the next Monday on 520, we'll have a select committee on civic arenas.
And then on Tuesday May 28th at 1030. We'll have a select committee on MHA I Know it's a little confusing here.
It says on next Monday 520 at 1030 right after council briefing, okay So anyway, so the really the point being is that after our briefings for the next couple of weeks we have select committee committee meetings right after Okay, why don't we go around the room and talk about anything you'd like, particularly the actions for the full council today.
Council Member Sawant.
Thank you, President Harrell.
Good morning, everyone.
There are no items on today's City Council agenda from the Human Services, Equitable Development, and Renters' Rights Committee.
The next meeting of the committee is scheduled for its regular time tomorrow, Tuesday, May 14th at 2 p.m.
At that meeting, we will be discussing with the Department of Construction Inspections about their newly launched Renting in Seattle web portal.
As I'm sure you all have heard, the Central District and Capitol Hill, and also more south in Seattle, have been hit by several shootings over the last two weeks, including last Saturday when a very young African-American man, Royall Lexing, was tragically shot and killed.
Our deepest condolences go to his mother, Laura Walker, his family, and the entire black community that is reeling from this tragic loss.
There were also shootings later that night, and then also one on the previous week, I believe on May 2nd and 3rd, where there was no loss of life, but this is extremely troubling to All of us, my husband and I actually live in that neighborhood and we hear shots from our house.
So we completely understand the anxiety and fears that community members are feeling and that they concretely want to end the gun violence.
So my staff and I will be discussing this hopefully in my committee tomorrow, but also going forward.
And all of last weekend, I just wanted to share with council members that my staff were in touch with several community members who live in the vicinity where the shootings happened.
And also, we've had some really important input from community members who live on a particular block, a block of 21st between Union and Marion.
And it's a block where approximately 30 to 35 children live in that block.
So it's a very crucial issue for the council and for the mayor's office to consider because there has been a particular spate of gun violence on that specific block.
There, in the last school year, there have been, or in this ongoing school year, there have been three major shootings on that block.
So we will be discussing some specific proposals from community members to what they feel would reduce the gun, especially the drive-by shootings.
I'm not an expert on these issues, but they have some concrete ideas that we will be looking at.
And we will be coordinating with the police department to hear about what's happening and also with the Department of Transportation.
I do have one more item, but if council members want to respond to this, it's fine.
I think Council President Harrell wanted to go first.
Do you want to finish the next item and we'll come back to it?
I'll come back to it.
Okay, so thank you for addressing the the fatality and the tragic events that took place.
And thanks for having a discussion involving the community.
No buts.
I just want to make sure that both the Public Safety Committee and other people that we keep our structure such that everyone We're coordinating it the best way so with public safety.
It's such a huge Over half of our budget.
I think it's very tempting to try to pull off some but as a process at least what I would my role has tried to do is try to Centralize as much as possible such that everyone could chime in this while this affects your district clearly in the central district and so many community members it affects our Every district the the kinds of preventative work we should look at and so I want to make sure that it's it's it becomes centralized as well, but that's not to say move forward and do it and and Absolutely.
I just want to clarify this wasn't in no way meant to take pull anything out of a councilmember gonzalez's committee in any way whatsoever There are specific questions related to the department of transportation not the department the police department that we would like to discuss And I am happy whether, regardless of whether it happens in my committee or in another committee, that's fine, and we're happy to coordinate.
The question is, the most important issue is that those questions get addressed.
And one last comment, I think Council Member Gonzalez may want to say something, but last week I had a briefing from Human Services Department on, it was very good, and I encourage all of you, I think a couple of you have gotten a briefing on, what kinds of things at least the executive and the department are thinking about in terms of violence prevention.
And I enjoyed the briefing thoroughly and so I'd encourage all of you to try to take advantage of the briefing.
They're just trying to gather some feedback from us as they move forward.
Council Member Gonzalez.
Hi, thank you so much.
I really also appreciate Council Member Sawant bringing up an issue that in a lot of ways disproportionately and certainly directly impacts District 3 in particular as it relates to gun violence.
And just would welcome an opportunity to coordinate with your office, Council Member Salant, how to make sure that those issues stay centralized within the Public Safety Committee.
We focus a lot of our work on gun violence prevention and routinely hear from the police department on statistics and other type of work that they are doing that isn't simply an emphasis patrol response, but also looks at some of the strategies and outreach they do to connect with what are referred to as violence interrupters.
So a lot of the geographic areas that you've already highlighted are ongoing geographic place-based issues related to gun violence.
And we have had the pleasure of having the police department come in and talk to us in previous months about sort of what the the holistic approach is that they're taking in order to reduce those gun violence issues, but would be happy to hear directly from community about what other things they think should occur within your district as it relates to gun violence prevention and would, again, welcome the opportunity to coordinate with your office and opportunity to have time in my committee to have that conversation because I think it's really important and timely given that we're heading into warmer months and time.
And again, as Council President Harrell mentioned, it certainly is, I think, in certain instances acute in District 3, but I think it certainly is a citywide issue and would welcome the opportunity to partner with you to frame the conversation.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
And yeah, absolutely.
I was actually hoping that we could have something scheduled in your committee to at least have an initial report back on what the police department thinks is happening, and perhaps also work together on how to act on some of the concrete proposals that have come up from community members.
Obviously, we are not experts in evaluating those ideas, but we need city staff to come and advise us on that.
Yeah.
And there's a lot of...
history both in the Chinatown International District and South Park and Georgetown around.
putting together public safety task forces that look specifically at not just crime and disorder issues, but livability in neighborhood issues that could be particularly helpful to inform those conversations by members in the community who might already have initial ideas.
We have our next committee meeting on May 22nd.
I can talk to staff and our offices can coordinate about whether or not there's time for May 22nd.
That sounds great.
Great.
Thanks.
Look forward to that.
And exactly to your point, Council Member Gonzalez, some of the proposals that the community members have have nothing to do with policing.
It's mainly environmental design and lighting, parking.
road coordination, you know, stuff like that.
So, which potentially could reduce and if it's going to have other benefits as well, then why not look into it?
Because environmentally also, I think that will help.
These are blocks where a lot of children live.
So, traffic calming patterns, I think would be useful regardless.
Absolutely.
And I think if when we look at both the Chinatown International District Public Safety Task Force Report and the South Park, and Georgetown Public Safety Task Force reports, it's perhaps not so surprising to see how many of those recommendations actually involve improvements to the built environment that really make the environment feel safer, so there are more people walking around, engaging in positive behavior and activity, lighting, cleaning up, garbage service, those types of things absolutely are important things for us to look at in terms of improving public safety within particular neighborhoods.
So happy to coordinate with your office on those things.
Super important.
Yes, I agree with that and I will instruct my staff to work with your staff.
Just one last item.
I am passing around a proclamation.
in the honor of the Eritrean Independence Day and this year's celebration on May 25th.
It will take place in Seward Park and it is open to the public.
And so as I said, I'm circulating it for council member signatures.
And I believe my office had emailed the text of this proclamation to your offices last week.
Thank you, Council Member Schwan.
Council Member Juarez.
Thank you.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Just like to note, some of us were here on time.
Oh, it's coming.
I'm just kidding.
I'm just giving you a hard time, Lisa.
I'm really giving you a hard time, even though you came after me.
Wait, we're throwing the bus.
OK.
So there is one item on today's agenda recommended by the Civic Development Public Assets and Native Communities Committee.
Council Bill 119496 is an ordinance regarding partnership between Seattle Academy and the South Park Community Center.
The Parks Department has requested more time on this bill to follow up with council members and the community which had more questions about the agreement itself.
I want to thank Councilmember Gonzalez and Councilmember Herboldt who've worked with Parks and Tracy to strengthen and clarify the term sheet and and I'll let them speak to their amendments this afternoon.
My understanding is that they will propose these amendments to council today, so we move forward to a final vote.
There will not be a SIPNA meeting on Wednesday, and the next one will be June 5th.
Last Monday, I hosted a District 5 town hall on public safety.
I was joined by Mayor Durkin, two members of the Seattle Police Leadership, including Chief Greening and Captain Sano from the North Precinct.
Over 100 residents attended, and I appreciated the excellent questions from the audience.
say one thing not being in d5 i heard all the way from d5 how really great that was and what the responses were and i want to say thank you to chief greening and i saw him later on in the week but thank you for doing that i think that that kind of bringing together the neighborhoods is really helpful and back to the septet conversations that were held just moments ago between council member gonzalez and council member sawant You've really been a champion for that.
So I just want to say I heard all the way from D5.
Well, I should add, and I appreciate my colleagues that checked in with me to make sure everything went fine.
And I think these are the type of community events you have to have when people are reeling from particular issues that are in the news.
And so we talked about those difficult issues about the unsanctioned encampments and the homelessness issue and the health issue and the public safety issue.
Well, we talked about what's going on in the North Precinct and their concerns about property crime and police response time.
And like I said, we had well over 100 people.
We used a device called, I'm going to say it wrong, Pigeonhole.
Pigeon something.
It's a computer thing that people put in their questions.
And then we, you know, we set the tone.
We set the tone that this is a community meeting and we want people to talk and feel safe and have an opportunity to share their concerns and that, you know, we recognize that we are indigenous land and that we're all going to behave and be kind to each other and allow people to speak.
And that's exactly what happened.
So we had a two and a half hour meeting and it was great.
Good for you.
So thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Juarez.
Thank you.
Good morning, everybody.
We have no items from the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee this afternoon, but immediately after our meeting this morning, we're going to get an update from Ben Noble on our general fund status.
And as all of you will recall, last year we passed a biennial budget.
Ben will come in today and talk to us about the 2020 projected revenue and tell us what a good job that he did on pinpointing how much money we were going to be able to expect this year.
And I can give you a forward hint is that he's going to tell us that we collectively have about $5 million more that we can anticipate spending.
And if you divide that by nine council members, that's not a whole lot of money.
So I'm just acknowledging now and early on that with a biennial budget, we have a small amount of money that we're going to be able to tweak for this when we come up in October.
divide that by seven the two at large they don't oh yeah divided by seven districts okay you guys sorry but oh my word I am offended by the remarks we also will help from David Jones have a financial condition report He is coming in as our internal auditor to discuss how well we're doing.
And I want to once again, as a spoiler, let you know that this is 2017 is the last full data that we have, but the news is darn good.
And I do want to acknowledge last Friday and say thank you to the Seattle King County Advisory Council on Aging and Disabilities.
I think it's a semi-annual meeting, but thank you for all signing the proclamation that we signed last Monday.
Recognizing them and thanks to the council members and also to Kathy Knight, Jason Johnson, Irene Stewart for putting that together.
And also another plug for age-friendly Seattle.
That's what something that we have signed on to.
So I'm hopeful that this year we can continue to make the connections, something that Council Member Gonzalez was just talking about with the SEPTED.
For those who are wanting to walk around, they want to feel safe, they want benches to sit on, they want the bushes cut back in neighborhood areas to make sure that they can see.
So thank you for that good work.
And again, to the Advisory Council on Aging and Disabilities, all the people that provide their time there.
And also, thank you, huge thanks, Chief Scoggins to Lieutenant Kenny Stewart from our firefighters.
We kicked off last week our low acuity, also now known as Health One, the pilot downtown.
So we'll be focusing on the low acuity problems that our firefighters have been challenged with over the last number of years, and that's going to be going We hope in the third quarter of this year, and I've asked Chief Scoggins, I want to be one of the first people that get to ride around the van.
Not that he's picking me up, but that I get to be in the van working with him on that.
And also, lastly, thanks to Randy Angstrom, he brought the SIF passes by last week.
Oh, look who is really late.
Can we just acknowledge?
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember Bagshaw.
Councilmember Herbold.
Everybody has had a special shout out as they walked in the door.
Just everyone who was late.
Oh, sorry.
I thought that was implied.
So before I start with my report, I just wanted to take a minute to go over some of the items that Councilmember Mosqueda asked me to share with you today in her absence.
not come any surprise to you.
These two items are items that we lifted up last week in anticipation for this week.
The first being that today has been designated as Bee's Day.
Last week, Council Member Mosqueda introduced a proclamation honoring and recognizing the life of Beatrice Catherine Alder and designated today, May 13th, as Bee's Day.
After a complicated pregnancy, Bea Alder was born in November 2017 and sadly died 36 hours afterwards due to medical issues.
Bea's parents, Rachel and Aaron, were devastated.
Rachel, who works at the city's Human Services Department and gave birth to Bea, was in the middle of physical and emotional recovery after losing her child, and she learned that due to inadequate bereavement policies at the city, she would actually not get the time that she needed to grieve.
Due to a gap in the paid family leave policies, she could not take time for her physical recovery either.
While recovering, Rachel and Aaron had to deal with procedural gaps and were only able to find the time they needed due to the sick leave donations of many of Rachel's HSD coworkers.
We really need to take times like this to recognize, identify, and talk about how to fix the issues that impact women disproportionality.
We need to talk about how women of color are substantially more likely to die during childbirth, and we need to talk about how people need time to grieve the loss of a child.
Due to Erin and Rachel's tireless advocacy, and specifically advocacy with Councilmember Mosqueda's office, the week before last, the mayor announced that she will transmit legislation for consideration by the council that would allow for time off after the loss of a child.
This is an important step, and it would not have happened without Rachel and Erin and the legacy of B's short but very impactful life.
So we've dedicated today, Monday, May 13th, the day after Mother's Day, as B's day.
This is a real life example of grassroots advocacy.
Individuals with lived experiences sparking policy change.
so no other family goes through the same experience as they did.
So today we honor Erin, Rachel, and the life of Bea, who's had an impact beyond her 36 hours.
The other action that we took last week that Council Member Mosqueda has asked me to hold up today is the proclamation that we passed, sponsored by Council Member Mosqueda in recognition of Affordable Housing Week.
This proclamation designates this week, May 13th through May 17th, as Affordable Housing Week in Seattle, and it is organized by the Housing Development Consortium of Seattle King County.
This is a 165-member organization of affordable housing organizations working together to make sure that everyone can live with dignity in safe, healthy, affordable homes within communities of opportunity.
This week will be a week full of events, celebrations, and advocacy across dozens of cities in King County to ensure that everyone has access to a safe, health, affordable home.
We know that countywide we need 156...
I still have a hard time with this number.
156,000 affordable homes to meet the current need.
Affordable Housing Week is intended as a testament to the collaborative nature needed to meet the scale of this need for affordable housing in the region, and through events and advocacy opportunities catered to each city in the county, Affordable Housing Week shows that every city has work to be done to get to this goal, and we're going to do this work together.
This is the city's and the county's fourth year and the biggest year of Affordable Housing Week with over 30 events across the region.
You can learn about these events and how to participate at www.housingconsortium.org.
There'll be building tours and open houses showing what affordable housing actually is, discussions on the intersections of housing with issues like mental health, immigration, hunger, and more.
And now on to my items.
I don't have anything on the full council agenda coming out of the Creative Committee, but one of the items that I believe is on full council today coming out of Councilmember Juarez's committee relates to the agreement between the Seattle Arts and Sciences Academy and South Park Community Center Partnership Agreement.
And I have an amendment to the ordinance requesting that DPR submit their final partnership agreement to council for review before signing.
There's also language that has been developed in partnership with Councilmember Gonzalez, including specific revisions to the terms of agreement to provide more clarity on field use for the community and accessing the demand of the field.
In my committee tomorrow, the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development and Arts Committee, we will have a briefing by the City Auditor on Phase 2 of their review of hate crimes in Seattle.
The Auditor has found an increase in reported hate crimes in Seattle from 2012 to 2018 of nearly 400 percent.
Assaults with a hate element were up 524 percent, and incidents with a bias, a racial bias, increased by 427 percent.
Again, that's from 2012 to 2018. The report notes that increased reporting doesn't necessarily mean that the number of incidents has increased, but it can reflect increased law enforcement attention.
SPD has definitely played their part in increasing their attention to hate crimes in recent years, so that's an important part of the picture.
But at the same time, FBI data and a study noted in the audit by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State University, San Bernardino, showed both nationwide increases of hate crimes during the last four years.
So that would indicate that even given SPD's increased emphasis and attention to this area of crime, that there is actually something going on here in Seattle that goes beyond that increase in reporting and increased law enforcement attention.
We will be discussing a council bill that I've been working with the city attorney on for the last several months that will allow easier prosecutions of misdemeanor hate crimes.
Prosecutions are currently limited to the city-specific protected classes of only marital status, political ideology, age, parental status, and homelessness.
Those are the only city-specific protected classes that we currently can use the protections and enforcement of malicious harassment to address.
Only 23 cases were prosecuted from 2012 to 2017. This legislation would newly allow for prosecutions also based on the state protected classes of race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, mental disability, physical disability, and sensory disability.
It includes a requirement for the city attorney to issue an annual report to the council about the demographics of not only the victims, of which 100% are members of protected classes, but also the demographics of the defendants as well.
The purpose is to track how the legislation is being used to address hate crimes, while keeping in mind concerns that we've heard about existing disparities in prosecution, where members of protected classes are disproportionately likely to be prosecuted for violations such as assault.
And so that's sort of across the board, not specifically for hate crimes.
But given that there is this underlying disproportionality, we want to really keep an eye on how that disproportionality either does rear its head or does not as it relates to the hate crimes legislation.
Finally, the audit notes that 85% of offenders prosecuted by the county are men and 77% are white and 19% are black.
In addition, in the Creative Committee will be hearing a presentation to release the spending proviso on the Ship Canal Water Quality Project.
This is a part of the city's CSO control program, which seeks to meet state and federal permit requirements to reduce the size and number of sewer overflows into receiving water bodies.
The consent decree is required to bring us into compliance with the Federal Clean Water Act.
SPU has developed a plan which proposes several projects to reduce combined sewer overflow events, CSO events.
The largest of these projects is, in fact, the Ship Canal Water Quality Project, and it addresses wastewater storage capacity needs in the Ballard, Fremont, and Wallingford areas.
Nearly 70% of the city's CSOs associated with the plan occur from these basins, and this project will store waste water in a deep underground tunnel that is generally in the street right-of-way.
The presentation will focus on, again, we will be lifting council budget proviso that we placed on this project, specifically on the tunnel portion of the project, getting us through the design phase and with the idea that we would lift it before we entered into the construction phase if we were happy with where the project was as it relates to its timeline.
and its budget, and as we get closer and closer to construction, there's greater and greater certainty about the budget for the project, and I think folks attending committee tomorrow will be pleased.
It's good news.
We also will be having our first presentation discussion of the appointment of Robert Lee as Director of the Office of Economic Development, and we will be having an update also from Office of Economic Development on the implementation of the Legacy Business Program that I've been working on for the last three years.
It is a lot of time.
It is a lot of time.
Baby steps, baby steps.
A couple other points.
I'm sorry I'm taking so much time.
I'm reporting for two people today, so bear with me.
I want to just make note that we will be circulating a proclamation this week in time, hopefully for a couple of memorials coming up later this week for Sharon Jones.
I think we all know Sharon, she's a real change vendor who has graced our presence with her time before the council on advocacy related to housing and homelessness many, many times.
Her passion and vision for these issues, I think, has moved us and she has been a really fantastic advocate for her co-vendors at Real Change, as well as homeless people and folks who are vulnerably housed all over the state.
She passed away on April 28th.
after succumbing to Lou Gehrig's disease.
She is not the first vendor to have passed away and she's not the first homeless person to have passed away.
We know that this year has seen a very large number of deaths of homeless people and an increase in homeless people who have died due to violence.
And I think honoring Sharon in this way is an important recognition as well as the larger impact of living unsheltered has on our community.
Lastly as far as events coming up this week that I'll be participating in out in community on Tuesday I'll be attending I believe councilmember Gonzales will also be attending the business improvement area public safety forum that will be focused on Some of the findings in the prolific offenders report On Wednesday, there will be the Seattle Firefighters Department Awards luncheon Thursday's opening night.
Thank you for mentioning councilmember Bagshaw And then Friday, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project will be having its 35th anniversary gala.
On Friday, Sam Stein, who's the author of Capital City, Gentrification in the Real Estate State, will be speaking at Town Hall on neoliberal Seattle, the city as investment.
I encourage folks to attend.
And then finally, I will be presenting out at KXP on one of their ongoing forums called Mastering the Hustle.
It's an engagement with folks in the music community on how to better promote their craft and be able to Earn a living in this very high-cost city and the specific topic for this event is can the Seattle music industry survive?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Councilmember Herbold.
Councilmember Pacheco.
Good morning.
Good morning So we have 22 plus related items on a introduction and referral 19 appointments to design review board and three appointments to the Seattle Planning Commission There are no plus related items on the full council agenda today.
I The next PLUS committee meeting is next Wednesday, May 15th, and our agenda will include the 19 appointments to the Design Review Board, the three appointments to the Seattle Planning Commission, and a briefing on Council Bill 119489, which amends the land use code to implement a comprehensive plan amendment.
The council passed last year to allow for a slightly expanded major institution, the master plan application from Seattle Pacific University.
I want to take a quick minute to send a gratitude and appreciation to Councilmember Mosqueda and Councilmember O'Brien for the lunch and learn with the scooters last week.
I was personally just, I enjoyed it very much.
As Councilmember Mosqueda has said, scooting is the future.
I also want to send appreciation to Councilmember Mosqueda for her work session in D4 on confronting harassment and discrimination last week as well.
Had this weekend the opportunity to do a you district cleanup where I was the judge for the trash collection And that was a lot of fun.
So that's two trash cleanups that I've been able to do in District 4 So I want to send my appreciation to the community groups that have organized it this week.
I will be participating in listening sessions at the Lowell Hearst Community Council the Ravenna Bryant Community Council and the Wallingford Community Council and So I will be going back to to some of the neighborhood councils this week to listen about what I can best do over the remainder of this term.
Very good.
Thank you.
Council Member Bryan.
Thank you, Council President.
The Sustainability and Transportation Committee has eight items on this afternoon's agenda.
Six of them are appointments and reappointments to the Freight Advisory Board and two of them are an appointment and a reappointment to the Levee to Move Seattle Oversight Committee.
The Sustainability and Transportation Committee does not meet again this week, but we'll have a meeting next Tuesday.
That's it for me.
Thank you, Council Member Bryan.
Council Member Gonzalez.
Good morning.
Good morning.
The Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans, and Education Committee has one item on this afternoon's agenda.
It is Agenda Item 1, and that is Council Bill 119509. Council Member Bagshaw already spoke to it briefly.
But Council Bill 119509 is a budget action item which authorizes the Seattle Fire Department to establish the mobile integrated health unit pilot program referred to by the executive now as Health One.
This council bill was amended in committee and recommended for passage by my committee last Wednesday, May 8th.
This council bill would lift a proviso placed on $475,000 in the finance general and appropriates to the Seattle Fire Department for the purpose of operationalizing the mobile integrated health unit by the third quarter of this year.
The original budget proviso and green sheet were both sponsored by Council Member Bagshaw during last year's budget deliberations, so I really want to appreciate her We had a lot of discretion this year to be able to make sure that it was baked into the budget, but also this is something that I think Councilmember Bagshaw has been yelling to the skies for several years and really glad that we're finally at a place where we have a high level of confidence in the model proposed.
As a pilot by the Seattle Fire Department, really grateful that we've been able to work with both the local union and with fire department leadership to ensure that we have the right sized model right now for the pilot program with strong commitment from fire department leadership, including Chief Scoggins, that they will be doing a pretty in-depth study and evaluation to ensure that the pilot program is meeting the full scale of needs of low acuity calls for those folks who will be relying on the mobile unit to meet those needs.
So really excited about having that in front of committee this afternoon.
And then really quickly wanted to take a moment to acknowledge sort of a point of personal privilege but also just pride for the legislative department as a whole.
I wanted to take a moment to congratulate our very own Joseph Peha from Council Central Staff Communications.
Last week, you may have heard that he was honored with the Mary Skelton Memorial Award that was given to him by the Municipal League.
He was recognized as the Volunteer of the Year for his work on making voting more accessible to the general public.
And I think that we should all be really proud of Joseph and the work that he's been able to do both in City Hall but outside of City Hall in his truest commitment to ensuring that programs like Ready, Set, Vote are designed to make voting research easy, nonpartisan, and to also highlight all three branches and how important they are in our democratic process.
So congratulations to Joseph, and if you see him, I hope you will personally extend your congratulations to him and give him a high-five for his volunteer work outside of City Hall.
Really proud that one of our own could be acknowledged in this way, so congratulations.
to Joseph.
And then just really quickly, a quick reminder that this Wednesday, May 15th, I will be down at the U.S.
United States District Courthouse.
We have a status conference with Judge Robar on May 15th.
15th that's a Wednesday at 11 a.m.
Where a judge Robar will walk us through his Opinions and thoughts on whether or not the city is still in full and effective compliance as a result of our settlement with the Seattle Police Officers Guild in that collective bargaining agreement.
It's a pretty important pivotal hearing for the City of Seattle as it relates to our ongoing work on the consent decree and I will be there as a representative of the City Council and look forward to reporting back the next week what we heard from Judge Robar.
I'm sure you will hear about it in the news before I get to you, but if you have any questions, about how that hearing went.
I will be back in the office, assuming that the hearing goes efficiently.
I should be back in the office by 1230 p.m.
or one o'clock.
Happy to connect with any of you that might have interest hearing hot off the press what occurred during that particular hearing.
Also, I just wanted to make note that I will, as Council Member Herbold mentioned, will be up in Ballard at the Nordic Heritage Museum at the second annual Seattle Neighborhood Business District Safety Forum hosted by the Business Improvement Area.
Associations.
I will also be joining on Wednesday and Thursday friends and old colleagues from the Northwest Area Foundation, which represents the northwest quadrant of the country and focuses on philanthropic work in reducing poverty throughout the northwest region of the country with a specific focus on granting up to 40% of, actually a minimum of 40% of grants to tribal communities and First Nations for purposes of economic development and poverty reduction.
Really excited about joining.
They are actually having their annual board meeting, one of their board meetings here in Seattle.
Really happy that they have chosen Seattle as a place to come and learn and be present and looking forward to joining with them on Wednesday for dinner, Thursday morning at a conversation around Centering Race in Philanthropic Work on Thursday, really excited about that.
And then I will be at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project Gala and reception on Friday afternoon.
And on Saturday, wanted to let folks know who might be interested.
I was asked by Vote Run Lead, a national organization that focuses on recruiting women to run for office at all levels of government, to speak at their candidate training on Saturday May 18th at we work really excited about joining that nonpartisan group around making sure that folks Understand what it means to run for office and encourage more women to be part of our democracy So actually that's it for me.
Thank you.
Councilman Gonzalez customer words Did you want to talk about sound trance a little bit or did you have something you wanted to say?
No.
Oh Oh, I thought you're you're signaling to me.
Okay, so Congratulations on your appointment to Sound Transit.
Before we move into Executive Session, will you pass these out to Councilmembers Herbold, Pacheco, and O'Brien.
Well, I'm not I'm just saying that I'm gonna go over the issue again for those three That um at the beginning of every council I didn't say anything.
There's no values associated with this That uh at the beginning of every briefing We this is based on some work that the state auditor and our city clerk and monica I want to thank you for all your work on this There's a process by which we will approve minutes of our briefings and I would need a quorum here to do that officially And that's a sample of last week's minutes that we did approve this morning.
And we'll do that every time.
And so you can see that, again, we'll try to start on time and have that at the beginning of the agenda.
And this was based on a public, I'll say complaint, but a public Complaint for I don't know how else to say it on that.
We weren't making this available We do keep minutes and we've always kept minutes, but we they weren't as They weren't published as we will do now.
So I just want you know, that'll be the process moving forward.
Okay?
Okay, having said that we're gonna move into executive session And as presiding officer, I'm announcing that the Seattle City Council will convene an executive session.
The purpose of this executive session is to discuss pending potential or actual litigation.
And this gives us an opportunity to discuss confidential legal matters with our attorneys as authorized by law.
However, a legal monitor is always present to make sure that we reserve questions of policy for our open public sessions.
I expect this session to last approximately 15 minutes.
So that'll be, let's see, that's 10.35, 10.36.
And if it goes beyond that, I'll go back in the public session and announce its expected duration.
With that, let's move into executive session.