Seattle City Council Sustainability & Transportation Committee 52119

Good afternoon, everybody.

Welcome to the Sustainability and Transportation Committee.

My name is Mike O'Brien.

I'm chair of the committee.

It is 2.02 p.m.

on Tuesday, May 21st.

Really quickly, today's agenda.

Joined by my colleague, Council Member Swann, thank you for being here, and staffed by Kelly Reefer, thank you for being here, too.

On today's agenda, we're going to take up a couple appointments, one to the Sweet and Beverage Tax Advisory Board, one to the Seattle Transit Advisory Board.

Then we'll consider an ordinance with a possible vote on authorizing acceptance of funding for grants for the Department of Transportation.

We will hear a petition for a vacation, a street vacation, adjacent to the Burke-Gilman Trail near University Village.

We will also take up an ordinance accepting a final street vacation for Block 19, which is the block, one of Amazon's projects in the Denny Triangle.

We will also look in order to extend the permit for a sky bridge in South Lake Union.

And then we have a series of ordinances accepting deeds for, I believe it's over 100 parcels in five separate ordinances.

So that will be exciting.

Before we jump in, I would move to amend the agenda to add a chair's report to the agenda I would do that right after public comment, if that's okay.

We're going to do that now, apparently.

So, all in favor of amending the agenda?

Yeah.

All in favor, say an aye.

Aye.

Good.

So, we will approve the agenda as amended.

All in favor?

Aye.

I'm not sure if we can just say.

Unless I hear anything, I'll approve it, but we'll figure that out as we work through.

We have some new rules here at city council that we're still figuring out.

So with that, we'll go ahead and move to public comment.

Folks will have up to two minutes to comment.

We just have one person signed up, Mr. Shard.

Yes, good day.

Yep, it's on now.

Good day, everyone.

I am a person that takes transportation through the bus.

But by the time I get here, I'm a nervous wreck because oftentimes the buses are not compatible for us.

So I come down here and this kind of like the bully pulpit.

They're the bullies.

And I think even children in school are not supposed to be bullied.

Bullying is supposed to be against the law.

So I come down here.

I've lived here all my life.

I've never seen this type of treachery.

treason and all this the racism and all the filth that have come out of discrimination is all displayed down here in these chambers and I have spoken consistently against it I've done exactly what I'm supposed to do by law to address it okay because I'm a human being God gave me this voice to speak, and I will use it.

So back in the 60s, we used to get beat like a pope, and even in slavery for just even having anything to say to address anything that was going wrong with us.

I'm talking about black people in their communities, in their homes, and in society.

That's why you see another person coming down here.

Now they're trying to criminally insult our integrity and call it a criminal sanction because they against the wall like that man with his hands folded doesn't have enough power to shoot us down, huh?

And so I'm still gonna keep addressing it.

until the Lord says different because he's the one that directs me and guides me and instructs me in the way that I should go and I don't understand this mess up in here and I keep speaking about me not understanding this mess up in here, and don't you know out of all these people in the city, they don't know how to come to me and say, well, Ms. Rashard, this is how it's done.

They're taking your free speech, and don't you let them do that to you, because that's what they've been doing since the beginning of time.

Thank you.

That's all that signed up today.

Is there anyone else in the audience who'd like to provide public comment?

All right, seeing none, we'll go ahead and close public comment.

And I'll invite presenters forward for agenda item number one.

Oh, yeah.

Chair's report.

Thank you.

Hang on a minute, presenters.

Council Member San Buenaventura, I wanted to take a minute to highlight a concern I have about bike safety in light of some incidents that happened last week.

And so I asked Kelly to tee up a video that someone sent in from 35th Avenue Northeast and ask her to play that.

Do you have a second, Kelly?

This is a recently redone road project.

This is supposedly meeting our complete streets policy.

And this is a helmet cam on a bicyclist coming in.

And I've been a bike commuter for 20 years, and so I put up with a lot of stuff.

But trying to encourage new people to get on their bike and come to work with folks passing at high speeds in a center turn lane that's not designed for passing.

And like that.

and not room for a bike on the lane.

To me this looks terrifying and certainly would not be what I would be implementing if my goal was to triple the number of cyclists in our community in line with both our transportation plans and specifically our climate action plan.

And so on top of this, I understand that there was a collision last week where a cyclist was taken to the hospital by an ambulance.

Don't have much in the way of details on that, not sure what we'll get.

But I'm interested in sending a letter to the Department of Transportation to ask them to comment on this video experience and the overall implementation of Vision Zero and Complete Streets on 35th Avenue Northeast.

I specifically want to understand if, I believe when they announced that they were not going to put a protected bike lane on there, instead we're putting a center turn lane.

They made some claims that they thought that would be safer for cyclists in the current situation.

And when I look at this, that's not what I see.

And so I want to ask, one, when they look at this, are they saying this is what safety looks like for cyclists?

If it's not, and we made a mistake, I'm curious.

So two things.

One is, how did we make a mistake so late in the game on something like this?

And two, what can we do to correct that mistake?

I'm, we have a strong commitment to Vision Zero, which would be eliminate all serious injuries and fatalities for any road user.

And when just a short time after this work, we already have a serious injury and that video experience, which I don't think is unique, is really unfortunate.

So, Council Member Samant.

Yes, thank you for including this in your chair's remarks, Council Member O'Brien.

That is, I did watch it earlier.

It's pretty scary.

And I don't think that that video is in any way supporting the claim that the center, the center lane would have made things safer.

And I do, I want to go back and look at the press release that came out from the mayor's office, In my recollection, they did make that claim.

And I echo your concerns about it.

And also, I support the questioning of the Department of Transportation as to what they think about this.

And if they agree that this is not something that has promoted safety, then what would they do instead?

Great.

I should mention I'm joined by Council Member Chayko.

Thank you for being here.

If you're interested, I'd be happy to share a draft of the letter.

That would be great, yeah.

That sounds great.

In light of this, I'm also trying to think through policies that we should be implementing so that first we need to understand if they think this actually is a safe project and how that's safe and we can talk through that.

we really need to up our game if we wanna achieve our goal of Vision Zero and our climate goals.

And this does not feel like that was consistent with that.

No, and I think what happened with the whole, with the abandoning of the 35th Avenue bike lane was sort of, it just brought to light that we cannot have a city hall that talks about Vision Zero without actually following through on concrete aspects of how we're gonna achieve Vision Zero.

Every single project that is expanding bike lanes, expanding the ease for pedestrians to be going around the city, every single concrete project matters, because without that, Vision Zero is just an abstract notion.

Appreciate that.

All right.

Thank you for reminding me about my chair's report.

Thank you for participating in that.

And now we'll move on to agenda item number one, and I'll invite presenters forward.

We have appointment 01352, appointment of Paul Sherman as a member of the Sweetened Beverage Tax Advisory Board for a term to August 31st, 2021.

Welcome.

Once you get seated, I'll have you start by just doing a quick introduction, your name.

Paul, you want to go first?

Sure.

I'm Paul Sherman.

as the nominee for the board.

Great.

And I'm Hannah Hill.

I'm a food policy advisor at the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Great.

Thank you both so much for being here.

Hannah, do you want to tell us a little bit about what the advisory board does?

Yes, sure.

And you can talk about Paul if you want, but we will certainly ask Paul some questions.

Great.

Well, hopefully I can do both.

So first of all, thank you to the committee and to the chair for having us here today.

I'm also filling in for Bridget Igoe.

She's also with the Office of Sustainability and Environment, and she staffs the Sweetened Beverage Tax Community Advisory Board.

As you all know, the Sweetened Beverage Tax Community Advisory Board was established by the same ordinance that created the beverage tax.

And the role of the board is to develop recommendations for the mayor and for city council on programs and services that should be supported by the beverage tax revenues.

These programs and services must align with the ordinance and are there to benefit Seattle populations that experience the greatest health and education inequities.

According to the ordinance, the board shall consist of 11 representatives who are residents of the city of Seattle or that work within the boundaries of the city of Seattle.

So today we're here for the confirmation hearing of Dr. Paul Sherman for one of the board seats that's been reserved for an expert in public health.

So if you don't mind, I'll go ahead and introduce Dr. Sherman.

I would have to follow up with Bridget on that.

I don't know the ins and outs on that.

No problem.

Sorry to be on the spot.

No, that's fine.

But Dr. Sherman is the Chief Medical Officer at Community Health Plan of Washington.

It's Washington's only local not-for-profit Medicaid and Medicare managed care plan.

Prior to joining the Community Health Plan of Washington, Dr. Sherman worked at Kaiser Permanente of Washington, where he's responsible for the statewide care delivery system and oversaw 1,200 employed clinicians.

He is a seasoned physician and began his career in pediatrics and has served on a variety of boards throughout his career, including Group Health Community Foundation Board and the Board of Washington Health Alliance.

So I will turn it over to the committee for discussion and questions.

Great.

Well, Dr. Sherman, maybe we'll start with you and let you tell us a little more about your background and specifically your interest in spending, you know, a significant amount of volunteer time on this board, so why it's important to you, what you hope to accomplish there, too.

Great.

Thank you for having me here.

I went into pediatrics 30 years ago with the goal of working on the health of a pediatric population.

And through my time at Group Health had various roles, but it was always looking for opportunities to address health inequity and improve the health of our population.

And that has continued now that I've moved to Community Health Plan of Washington.

where we as long as, as well as so many people in the community are paying more and more attention to the social determinants of health and how we can work on those to improve the health of the community to serve the most marginalized.

And also as pediatrician, I have always had a big interest in education so that the two specific foci of this committee to decrease health and education inequities is really appealing.

That's great.

One of the things that It's critical for me in the board and frankly the policy around creating a tax on sweetened beverages.

It's a complex policy issue that I think a lot of us struggled with.

I certainly struggled with it.

But came down firmly in support of it in large part because of what I heard directly from the communities that are most impacted.

Most impacted by excess consumption of sweetened beverages.

Those communities are often targeted with certain marketing materials or in a way that they don't have access to healthy alternatives, either financial access or geographic access because of the limitations of where they live.

And then the negative health outcomes that come from drinking, you know, too many sugary beverages.

The concern I had is that a tax that would be regressive or disproportionately fall on lower income and communities of color, because those are the very communities that are consuming the beverage disproportionately.

It was critically important that in the design of this, that because what I heard from public health officials was we both need to have tools to discourage the use of these products that are causing bad health outcomes and we need tools to invest in healthier options.

And so I got to a place where I was comfortable with a tax that was going to be disproportional with the understanding that we would invest those tax dollars directly back into those communities and with the kind of leadership and guidance from those community members on what the best investments were.

Obviously, there's a lot of great needs in our community, a lot of needs that I support more broadly, certainly around housing and homelessness.

We're going to talk about transportation needs later today.

Those are all very good things that we have finite resources for and we need to find a way to invest.

But I personally believe it's inappropriate to take these tax dollars that disproportionately are falling on lower income communities and communities of color to use those to meet our broader needs.

We want to keep those nearly tailored.

And so that's something that I will continue to look at and really have looked to the committee we're considering appointing you to for the guidance on where those dollars should go.

We're also working on, you know, we'll be working on the budget this fall.

I'm working on some budget language in anticipation of the budget coming.

to make it even more clear that when the mayor sends over her budget that my expectation at least is that whatever revenues we're collecting from this need to go directly back into those communities.

I don't know if in your experience how much tax policy you get in, but I imagine some.

But I believe any of your thoughts on that would be great.

wholeheartedly support everything you just said.

I would say that the one thing I wish actually is that the tax was bringing in less revenue because it was having more of an impact on behavior.

I'm really glad that and will push as much as I can to keep the funds flowing to where they need to go to affect those inequities.

And it was another thing that attracted me to the committee, or the board, was that the charter was so explicit about evaluating what was going on and if we were being effective with the legislation and with the dollars.

That really appeals to the scientist in me.

That's great.

And I also appreciate that and we've had some good kind of preliminary reports from the committee and look forward to getting more information from the committee and I believe research folks at the University of Washington have been doing some work there.

Colleagues, do you have any questions for the doctor?

No, I think that was very informative.

I just wanted to say that I, like Council Member O'Brien, I also struggled a lot with a tax.

I detest regressive taxes in general.

We are in a city with the most regressive tax system in the entire nation.

Unfortunately, we are also sitting in the wake of the Amazon tax repeal.

And so, like he said, I also struggled with it and I ended up actually ultimately voting no on it because some of the community members who had fought for this, they didn't like some of the aspects that ended up appearing in it.

Here we are, and so I really like to hear that the members of the advisory board are, and I know you are truly committed to making sure that now that the tax is in place to make sure that we actually use it in service of the communities that it is meant to serve, not as a revenue collection sort of tool, because it's not.

And at that time there were a lot of people who are you also using the term syntax, which is really an anti-poor terminology, and I'm glad that we're not doing that anymore and really seeing this from an equity lens.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll just echo what Councilmember O'Brien said.

I mean part of this is I I've been here for a month.

And so just...

Time is flying.

Yeah.

I've gotten a little grayer since.

But really just what I'm really keen on seeing is someone who's really invested in trying to make sure that the intended outcomes are going back into communities who are disproportionately impacted.

So thank you.

That's great.

Well, we're excited for you to join.

I really...

There's a lot of pressure on this group to do this right in terms of making smart investments.

I have a ton of faith in you and your colleagues on the committee.

There's a lot of really impressive folks there.

There's also, you know, hopefully we can manage this so the money starts to diminish significantly because that would be the ultimate goal.

But there will also be a lot of budgetary pressure on that.

really invite you and other committee members to speak truthfully to all the elected officials on what you would like us to do, and we will do our best to live up to that.

If there's nothing else, I'll go ahead and move appointment 01352. All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Great.

Representative Sherman, thank you so much for your service.

This will come before the full council at our meeting next week, which is on Tuesday, because it's Memorial Day.

So we will make it official then, but I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to come down here and be part of this, and thanks for your commitment to the community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Kelly, would you read agenda item number two in?

All right, we have appointment 01353, appointment of Bryce Colton as a member of the Seattle Transit Advisory Board for a term to August 2nd, 2020.

Welcome.

Hi, thank you.

Good to see you.

Just to let you know, I'm getting over an illness, so I'm very sorry for my bad Batman impersonation.

That's a good sound.

Get the Lego figures out and we'll start playing.

Just wait until I start laughing.

It's like the Wheezy Toy from Toy Story.

Why don't we start with just introductions, just name.

Yeah, so my name is Bryce Colton.

I'm a Capitol Hill resident.

I've been in the Seattle area my entire life, born and raised.

I currently work at Mercedes-Benz Research and Development in North America, sort of along the waterfront.

sort of a startup area backed by Mercedes-Benz and working on sort of technical aspects of deploying applications to cars.

I am a bicyclist.

I don't own a car.

I use transit and bikes to get pretty much everywhere.

And those are pretty much where my values lie when it comes to the urban form.

I got into sort of the urban planning aspect and transportation things after taking a small class in college and since then have volunteered with like Seattle Transit, or sorry, Seattle Subway, The Urbanist, and the Seattle Transit blog a little bit.

So it's an honor to be here before you today.

Thank you very much.

Great.

Bryce.

Ben, do you want to introduce yourself?

Sure.

So I'm Benjamin Smith with SDOT, and I'm the board liaison to the Transit Advisory Board.

Do you want to tell us anything, a high level of what the advisory board does, just for the record?

Sure.

So the Transit Advisory Board is relatively new, formed by the council in 2015. It's charged with advising SDOT, the city, Metro, Sound Transit on issues relating to transit in the city.

It also has a role that's called out to do oversight of the Seattle Transportation Benefit District funding that was approved by voters in November 2014 to help the city fund extra Metro service.

The Transit Advisory Board has 12 members, six appointed by the mayor, five appointed by council, which Bryce is one, and also an engaged member.

We recently had a resignation of one of the original board members, so we had this vacancy, and Bryce had applied last year when we had an open call for appointments at that time.

He was still interested and able to serve, so he's here with you today.

Great.

Bryce had a chance to see you in the community a few times and appreciate your passion for this.

It sounds like you got a fascinating job about new technology and transportation.

We see those things pop up publicly every once in a while.

We struggle with those and how they integrate them, but it's great that people are thinking about that.

One of the big things, as Benjamin mentioned, was the Transit Advisory Board is the public kind of steward of the Transportation Benefit District.

Those funds are that initial ballot measure will expire at the end of next year.

It generates probably close to $50 million a year right now.

About $40 million of that's going to buy additional transit.

We need to figure out what we're going to do pretty quick because the idea of living without that.

But I don't know if you have any thoughts on the transportation benefit district or any of those other things you want to share with us.

Yeah, I've seen a bit of talk about trying to go back to the county because this is the same vote that was done after the county rejected the previous vote, right, many years ago.

Yeah, I wasn't directly in politics then, so I don't remember much about that, but I've seen rumors that King County as a whole may be more amenable Since the passage of Sound Transit 3 was a success in King County, we may be able to hopefully go to the county level and get more of a cohesive structure if possible.

I believe the way the timelines work out is we could go to the county and if they don't actually approve it, we could throw something on the ballot for spring within the Seattle area only.

But it would be really nice to have the county kick in together so that we can more integrally tie the region together with transportation solutions.

Yeah, I agree.

And one of the challenges, I think, is Seattle being the densest part of the city tends to be the most supportive of transit investments.

And as you get further and further from the core, the kind of political support falls off a bit.

And we do need a regional solution.

Obviously, we have Sound Transit 3 as the three-county regional solution.

We have King County Metro as a bus regional solution countywide.

And so how do we get as much service for everyone But also recognize that people in the city are willing to pay more for even a higher level of service.

And that's a balancing act that hopefully we can walk in the coming months.

But it's something that I imagine the commission will be weighing in on.

Colleagues, do you have any questions for Bryce?

First of all, thank you for being willing to serve on the board.

And I used to live on Capitol Hill myself a few years ago and entirely depended on public transit for several years.

And there are a lot of people who do that still.

But I also hear from a lot of people and also my personal experience is that there are many community members who would like to entirely depend on transit but aren't able to because it just simply is not, just given the current density of the network and frequency, simply aren't able to get about their day in a realistic manner.

and will often use transit but aren't able to do that on a regular basis, especially for get to work.

And I think there was a recent article that reported statistics about how despite the traffic snarls, if you are in your car, the average time you take to...

get to and from work, these are from survey respondents, I think, is lower when you drive your car than with the bus, not because the buses themselves are not efficient, but because the combination of the traffic on the roads and also just not having enough of, you know, just widely spread network of routes and everything, it doesn't help.

So it doesn't help people make that sort of decision to do it.

What do you see yourself and also how can the board, you know, play a role in really advocating for a major expansion of public transit?

I think there's no doubt in our minds and there shouldn't be based on everything we know statistically that Seattle, as Council Member Brown was saying, Seattle's people, the majority of them love their public transit.

There's no question about that.

Look at the commitment people showed during the squeeze I mean, it's incredible.

And over the decades, even those overall funding actually hasn't kept up and there were actually cuts and there's still an over-reliance on regressive taxes, still ridership has gone up steadily over time.

So, sorry, I'm sort of, it's a long-winded question, but given all of this context, how do you see the advisory board and your own role in advocating for progressive revenues to really just like do a major expansion public transit and also what are your views on making it free sort of point to point?

Yeah.

So even as someone who believes that transit is going to be the necessary backbone of a successful transportation system, it's still foolish to say that cars or autonomous vehicles or whatever they're going to look like in the future are not going to be part of the solution.

They may play a larger or smaller role, but they're definitely not going away.

They're just a tool in the toolbox, more or less.

When it comes to advocating on the Transit Advisory Board, I believe that there is going to be a lot of networking responsibilities on the board, really trying to build consensus behind sort of a countywide transportation benefit district vote, or work with community members to try to make sure that when we vote on something like Move Seattle, independent neighborhoods don't start striking down the overall will of the voters.

And I'm sorry, I forgot the last question.

Oh, just in general, how do we raise progressive revenues and also there's, my office is certainly advocating for it, but I'm not, I'm sorry, I'm certain I'm not the only one about actually making transit free and also ending the penalties for, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I can say that I support ending penalties for fare evasion.

It doesn't really make much sense, and it just punishes community members that are already at a disadvantage.

When it comes to progressive revenue sources, I definitely support that.

How we get there, I don't know.

I'm not a lobbyist, and I'd certainly, you know.

I think lobbyists have a bad track record of that.

It's good you're not a lobbyist.

So, yeah, unfortunately, I can't give a specific idea of how I would do that, but if the opportunity presents itself, I would be sure to support a more progressive revenue source than what we're using currently.

Thank you.

Bryce, first, thank you for being engaged in the process and willing to serve car-free myself.

So, I appreciate you being car-free yourself.

Councilmember O'Brien has said before just how we get more young people involved and really just kind of a call to action.

So I see your resume and your involvement, both ASUW, you know, being involved and staying involved.

So please, I just want to be as encouraging as I can be.

I want to just ask about your continued advocacy and where your position stands on scooters.

and how you see that perhaps just playing into your car-free lifestyle.

or for others?

Yeah, I have a relatively uninformed opinion so far on scooters.

I haven't looked at studies yet, and I haven't looked at the successful rollouts in other cities.

So any opinion that I'm going to voice right now will be unfortunately somewhat uninformed.

But if I were forced to take a stab at it, I would say scooters can largely be used in much the same way as a bicycle.

They have much of the same speed limits.

They can use much of the same infrastructure.

You're gonna go similar speeds.

And so I believe that scooters can be part of the successful last mile problem of getting people to and from transit stations.

If they sort of live right on the edge of what could be a successful location.

Many of my co-workers, they live sort of like near one of the express commuter routes up in Mill Creek area, right?

And if they had an electric scooter, they would cut down a 15 or 20 minute walk to like a three minute ride.

So encouraging that type of safe rollout where people of all ages can use streets successfully and safely and hitting that Vision Zero target, while also decreasing the reliance on fossil fuel vehicles, one way being those scooters, is definitely in line with my values and what I think we should be working towards as a city.

I believe we've seen fairly successful rollouts in sister cities like Portland and across the rest of the nation.

And I think we can look to what worked and what didn't work in those locations in order to inform our decision here.

And then just lastly, I saw that you speak a little bit of Spanish and Mandarin as well.

I hope that you can use your skill sets to encourage or recruit as those vacancies come up to recruit from communities that might be reflective that speak those languages as well or multilingual.

Yeah, I hope so too.

My Mandarin is super broken, but my Spanish is all right.

Yeah.

Gracias.

Gracias.

Muchas gracias.

Well, thank you so much, Bryce.

Clearly, despite your Batman voice today, I can tell your passion and commitment to thoughtful analysis of a whole host of transportation issues, and look forward to having you on the Transit Advisory Board.

So thanks for serving.

If there's nothing else, colleagues, I'll go ahead and move agenda item number two.

All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Great.

Thank you very much.

We'll work with the council next week.

Thanks, Bryce.

Thanks, Benjamin.

All right.

Kelly, you want to read agenda item number three?

And if you want to just read the short title and up to the first semicolon, I believe, is how we do that.

All right.

We have Council Bill 119512, an ordinance relating to the city's 2018 budget authorizing acceptance of funding from non-city sources.

Great.

Thank you so much.

I think I already have that one.

We'll start with introductions.

Calvin.

Calvin Chow, Council Central staff.

Chris Castleman, Finance and Administration at SDOT.

Kristen Simpson, also with SDOT.

Thank you all for being here.

Who would like to kick this off?

Well, I think I'll turn over to SDOT pretty quickly, but I'll just note at the beginning that a lot of this is very technical in nature in terms of budget revisions, not necessarily policy related.

They are largely grant acceptance and sort of budget changes that are necessary to enact certain agreements that we have with Sound Transit, Washington State Convention Center, and others.

So.

Great.

And I'll just flag, colleagues, I have a small amendment I'll be proposing at the end to broaden the acceptance in a, to allow for the possibility that additional funding might come in the near future and just trying to streamline that.

So I'll talk about that at the end of the presentation.

All right, well, I want to thank you, Calvin, because you pretty much took care of our first slide there.

So as Calvin indicated, this is a relatively routine action that we're bringing forward to you today.

This committee is familiar with the grant acceptance process for SDOT on an annual basis, allowing us to formally receive grants or accept grants that we have been awarded.

and the applications to those grants were previously authorized by the council.

So we're doing that today.

And in a few minutes, Kristen will be going through that in a little bit more detail.

We're also appropriating funds related to previously executed funding agreements with both external funding partners and also city partners.

And in that case, those are reimbursements.

And then we're creating two new capital projects in our CIP for 2019. These last two actions are actions that normally the council would take up as part of the first quarter supplemental process, but because the city elected not to do the Q1 supplemental this year, we're bringing those actions combined with the grants acceptance to this committee today.

Okay, so as I stated, Kristin's going to go over the state and federal grants acceptance in just a moment or so.

The total for that is $33.7 million.

In some cases, we ask at the same time as acceptance, we ask for additional appropriation authority to spend the monies associated with those grants.

when additional appropriation authority is needed.

So part of the funding agreements that we're looking at additionally in this ordinance are related to those $33.7 million of acceptance, but not entirely, obviously, because the numbers don't match.

So if you look at the funding agreements, we have a total of $16.2 million from a variety of different partners for projects that you're already familiar with.

And then we're adding two new CIP projects, one for the Sound Transit Benefit District, which you already spoke of, or excuse me, Seattle Transportation Benefit District, which you already spoke of previously, and then also for the North of Downtown Mobility Action Plan.

And so the details for those are in the ordinance and also in the fiscal and summary note.

If you have questions, I'd be happy to take them now or offline, but Kristen was going to walk through the grants.

Yeah, so we're accepting a total of 12 grants from a number of state and federal sources.

They're listed on the slide and also in your packets.

Everything from some Safe Routes to School projects with crossing improvements all the way up to funding for some of our BRT corridors.

There are a number of two different grants for the East Marginal Way project and then a couple of funding infusions from FTA for our two fixed guideway for the monorail and for the South Lake Union streetcar.

Those are a type of grant that comes to us based on the amount of service or on the amount of mileage that we have on those.

And so it's sort of a grant and sort of not, but it's a way that we can have some maintenance funding for those services.

Okay, well, that is In a nutshell, what this ordinance is all about, I believe Council Member O'Brien, you had an amendment that you wanted to put forward.

I do, thank you.

The Seattle Department of Transportation does a great work on kind of regional and federal transportation projects, so appreciate the whole team that's constantly keeping the eye out for opportunities to get kind of matching funding from other organizations.

And appreciate your work to design projects, frankly, that both are consistent with our values and goals here at the city that score well on this level.

And obviously, we want to see investments throughout the entire region, but always pleased that ASTOT is very competitive.

So that's great.

Colleagues, one of the opportunities we have is you see a couple pieces of it up there.

The Transportation Improvement Board and the FHA.

design and construction of the East Marginal Way bike facility, I believe.

There's an opportunity to, there's a major project on East Marginal Way.

This is essentially between the Spokane Street Bridge, West Seattle Bridge, and kind of the south end of Pioneer Square.

The road itself is in pretty poor shape.

It's part of the heavy haul corridor, which is My understanding is a series of roads that are designed to a much higher standard so that the heavier trucks from the port, largely the dredge trucks that are moving around, can use those facilities, I think, with different chassis without doing damage to the road.

But that facility needs a complete rebuild, which is a significant investment.

It's also a major bike corridor because of its location from West Seattle, not because of the friendliness towards bikes.

It is a very, you know, what we showed earlier, the graphic of biking on 35th, it probably would be rated X to show biking on East Marshall Way some days.

It's just a fairly chaotic street, and there's a lot of professional drivers, but they're in big rigs, and then bicyclists, and then also regular people in vehicles trying to navigate down there, and it's fairly chaotic.

It can be terrifying at times.

My understanding is there's an opportunity to do that project in two phases.

And some of the money we've received from grants to do the bike money needs to be invested relatively soon, whereas some of the money we have for the roadway project, we're still missing a bunch of money, so we'll have to do some more fundraising to get that.

And we have a longer timeline to do that.

But there's a way to stage this work.

And there's another set of investment money that would come from, potentially from the Puget Sound Regional Council.

We're on the contingent list.

So this project didn't quite get funded, but if some of the other projects don't need all the money or can't happen in this time period, I believe Seattle would be the next, this project would be the next one to get funding.

So in anticipation that something might happen, and in most years something does happen to free that up, I would like to amend this to also approve kind of a contingent receipt of this so that if that money comes through, you don't need to come back here and you can actually get working on this right away, because we'd love to see that project happen as soon as possible.

So what you have in front of you is what's titled Amendment No. 1. And it simply has a couple whereas clauses that talks about it and then adds a Section 7, which says, the Director of Seattle Department of Transportation is authorized to accept up to $4 million of non-city funding from the Puget Sound Regional Council for the East Marginal Way Heavy Haul Project contingent upon receipt of final award from the Puget Sound Regional Council.

The funds when received shall be deposited deposited in the transportation fund, and then the number is 13000, which I assume is one of our general ledger codes of sorts, but that's definitely above my pay grade to figure that out, so I trust you on that one, Calvin.

Calvin, is there anything else that I missed on the description of that?

So colleagues, if you're okay with this, I would like to move amendment number one to council bill 119512. Second.

All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Great.

Okay, any other questions or comments on the now amended bill?

Okay, hearing none, why don't we go ahead and I'll go ahead and move Council Bill 119512 as amended.

All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Great.

Thanks for your work on this.

Keep bringing these back to us all the time.

This is the kind of stuff we love to approve.

And look forward to hearing any word out of Puget Sound Regional Council if that thing comes through.

I guess Council Member Chaycon and I may hear that first out of the Transportation Policy Board, but we'll know about it.

We'll monitor it closely.

All right.

Kelly, you want to read the short version of Agenda Item Number 4?

CF-314380, Petition of the Trinity Trailside LLC for the Vacation of a Portion of Northeast 48th Street Laying Between 24th Avenue Northeast and the Burke-Gilman Trail.

It's kind of an auspicious group sitting down in front of me.

I see all these faces come around.

Lish, do you mind starting the introductions?

Lish Whitson, Council of Central Staff.

Beverly Barnett, Seattle Department of Transportation.

Mark Brand, Site Workshop, Landscape Architects.

Chip Nevins, Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Michael Jenkins, Seattle Design Commission.

That's great.

We've got the whole brain trust of the city here today.

We have more in the audience, too, if we need them.

Liz, do you want to kick us off on what we have in front of us today?

Sure.

This item and the next item are both related to street vacations.

Just as a reminder, under state law, property owners have the right to petition the city to acquire a street right-of-way abutting their property.

This petition was filed before we updated the street vacation policies last year, so it has gone through a significant review by city departments and the Design Commission to look and make sure that it addresses the city's goals for circulation and access, protection of utilities, light, air, open space and views, and land use policies.

Under the previous vacation policies, on-site public benefits are preferred, and you'll see that that's what's provided under this petition.

We're still in a bit of a transition period.

Was it over a year ago, or about a year ago?

About a year ago, yeah.

Then we passed new policies about street vacations, specifically how those projects come to the city council at least a little bit earlier in the process, and also the design commission.

But some of these projects are multiple years, so we'll continue to probably hear a few more of these.

that we're in under the deadline, so we're in this little straddle period, but look forward to hearing this.

Beverly, did you want to lead us off?

Yeah, I did want to say a couple things.

I think Lish covered the authority that the City Council has and also referenced.

While the state has delegated authority to city council, so they make every decision, however large or small, but they didn't establish criteria.

So what we use to review vacations is the adopted street vacation policies.

And as Lish noted, they were revised last May.

So we're just moving into the new policies.

SDOT has been asked to administer the program for the City Council, so it's our job to go through the policies, analyze the project, and we'll talk about some of the procedural review as well, particularly with the Design Commission, and then we bring forward a recommendation.

State law requires that a public hearing be held before the City Council can make a decision.

So after we do the presentation today, this was noted as a public hearing as well.

And we're very happy to be here today because this project was long in coming.

I think this may be the very last project you'll see under the old policies.

And this project was interested in addressing density.

They wanted to provide more housing on site and began work with the contract rezone.

And so that means the project is quasi-judicial.

We don't finish that.

We don't bring forward the recommendation on the vacation until the quasi-judicial action has been completed.

And in this case, the council finished its work on the mandatory housing before the contract rezone.

So this project now dropped the contract rezone and it is compliance with the new housing regulations in order to achieve the density and will be paying into the MHA fund.

So now that that work is completed, we're able to bring the vacation recommendation forward.

So we have been working on this for a while.

So we are ready to be here, and I think they're ready to start with the student housing.

So I think with that as background, we were going to have Mark go through the project And then we want to hear from Parks Department and Michael on the design commission review.

And then at the very end, I did want to make a couple comments about the conditions related to work with SPU and parks on other permitting.

So I think we were just going to then jump into where it's at so you can see what we're looking at.

Great.

So we've got a brief slide show up on screen.

We'll give you a little background and talk about our vacation, no vacation alternatives as we do.

and then jump into the public benefits and end with the matrix at the end.

So this property is about 2 1⁄2 acres.

We are proposing to vacate a section of Northeast 48th Street.

It's a dead-end street that terminates at the Burke-Gilman.

Is really today, or used to serve just a small collection of apartment buildings, three-story apartment buildings.

So it was almost like a little private street.

It's located in the University District area, excuse me, on the U-Village area, neighborhood, just off of 25th, and it's a looping road that it sits on.

So again, it almost feels like a bit of a private domain.

It is not connected into the street grid.

Neighbor to the south is University of Washington, to the due east is University Village, and then we get into some commercial properties to the north, and of course, the Burke up on the west side.

So this is the view of the property.

You see the existing buildings, again, a collection of three to four-story walk-up apartment buildings.

And again, you can get a sense of the looping road there off of 25th, the arterial.

And then just off the page to the left is the motor pool site for the University of Washington.

And then another set of images taken from the Burke.

Views in the bottom are north and south.

One thing I want to point out here is there is a connection up to the neighborhood upslope.

And so there was, we did have communication with the community about having connections across the Burke and into the commercial district along 25th Avenue.

So we did reach out.

I had great fortune of sitting on the street vacation committee.

So Council Member O'Brien, I did bring that to our clients early and it was very effective.

This neighborhood doesn't have a super strong identity.

I mean, with residential, we actually reached out to Ravenna Bryant Community Association and there was a subset called Ravenna Springs that we did actually meet with several on several occasions.

So we took the opportunity to meet with Cascade Bicycle Club, Kelsey Mischer when she was with the club as advocate, and then Feet First as well.

And Feet First at the time didn't have to have an executive director, so we used one of their committee members.

So there was early involvement to discover where we might go with public benefits, and you'll see that in a moment.

We also met with parks, with Chip here to my left, and SPU, and then Green Seattle Park.

partnership on Forterra relative to some restoration improvements.

And then, of course, our neighbors, University of Washington, Christine Kenney, the landscape architect with the university.

And then neighboring developments, the U-Star, or Gray Star and U-Village.

So the vacation, no vacation, I'll turn this up on screen.

The main thing I want to point out here is the connection for the neighborhood.

The existing connection that uses Northeast 48th exists.

It is not accessible connection.

It is somewhat circuitous.

And our proposal was firmly based on being able to shift the mass of the project to the north with the vacation of the street, which gives you, you can see on the screen, that direct connection to 25th.

It also works in tandem with University Village's new parking garage that's going in.

They are improving the intersection.

You'll see that in a moment.

So there's a direct, safe, signalized connection to the University Village and 25th Avenue.

In particular, it has transit.

This is the proposal.

This is where we are today.

And I'm going to go through the benefits.

But before I do that, one of the things I wanted to point out, and Michael might want to chime in here, is that in our work with design commission, we went through two urban design merit meetings and there was concern with our no vacation proposal and were we putting our best foot forward.

What it did enable us to do is not only prove out that the vacation alternative is better, we actually had a really good discussion about that open space you see on screen, what we call the commons.

And this is a product of being able to shift the mass around, gain the best aspect for what is essentially a public space.

It is not a public benefit.

We did not put that on the table, but it was an outcome of the public realm discussion with Design Commission.

Do you want to go back to the slide before?

I think this slide really hits on some of the concerns that were raised by the commission.

And I think without question, I think that the applicant was able to provide an in-depth analysis about the vacation and no vacation alternatives, really relative to some of the fundamental issues that the commission looks at, which are how are building siting, massing, the site plan, opportunities for open space affected both by the vacation and then the no vacation alternative.

And the work that the team did really helped develop a positive narrative that said, if you're vacating that right of way, you're able to shift the building up in a meaningful way that provides an open space connection.

that connects to the trail in a much more meaningful way than the existing right-of-way would have offered.

Yet you can see here that the right-of-way under the vacation alternative is kind of in the same place.

It shifts a little bit north, but you have that width that the right-of-way offered before, and you still have that view corridor.

The challenge there would have been grades.

The grade changes are much more significant where 48th was.

So you wouldn't be able to access the trail in a meaningful way.

It caused significant challenges with ADA, let alone accessibility for people using bikes or pets.

So we actually, there was a fairly rigorous, a series of alternatives that we asked them to provide.

And it really helped the commission get to that fundamental question, which is, if you take that right-of-way out of service, how is the plan and how are the public amenities that can potentially be developed protected and enhanced in a more meaningful way than if the right-of-way was retained?

Thanks for walking us through that.

So again, the vacation proposal, there are three eight-story buildings, it's student housing.

You'll see in this pop-up view, you get an idea of the mass.

And we are, again, very conscious of pulling the mass furthest to the north to give the daylight access, air light views to the south and to the public connection.

And as Michael mentioned, it will seem like an extension of the right-of-way to get to the Burke-Gilman.

So I'll jump into the public benefits.

There are five of them, and here's the five.

I'll start with the direct connection that we just spoke of.

So we had the great fortune of being able to work with another project that was active and just ahead of us, and that's the University Village parking garage.

They were improving the intersection at 25th.

25th is not the most friendly street to pedestrians.

You know, just thinking about the video you showed earlier, well, 25th is not great either.

And the neighborhood knows it.

So this was a very important thing to them.

In fact, they wanted us to think about the other intersection too.

We focused our energy where we knew we could accomplish the lot of getting across 25th and all the way over to the Burke Ferry safely.

So this first benefit is just that.

It's a 16-foot wide connection.

You don't find this on the Burke either.

I mean, you find some small connections.

We happen to work on the one at Children's Hospital, which is a winding.

It winds its way down into Sandpoint Way.

It doesn't happen often.

So this is a generous connection.

It is a ramp.

It is an 8%.

It does meet ADA requirements, so you do have landings.

There are four of them, or three of them, to get you down to street grade.

And then we continue to work with SDOT on how you safely get across, which is a very quiet street here at the corner of 24th and 47th.

The bigger issue is probably the motor pool.

There's an ebb and a flow with the motor pool in the morning and the afternoon when all those vehicles are coming in and out.

So there was a coordination we determined that coming across diagonally, and what you'll see in a moment is another benefit is a curbless street was the safest approach to this.

In addition to that, and I'll get over in a moment, there is also a connection off-site that gets you all the way to the intersection.

So this is the curbless street that we're proposing.

And the benefit part of this is not the frontage improvements.

It's the other half of the street.

So from the center line due east, we're improving the entirety of the street.

When we proposed this, it was still called a shared use street.

We did not have that typology.

They were not yet adopted by SDOT.

Now there's a curbless.

street that is a standard, so that it was made easier to adopt.

So this is primarily a pedestrian-oriented street.

We still have parallel parking, but we have more landscape, more generous sidewalks, and really pedestrian-controlled street environment.

And what is a particularly quiet street?

And then the extension of that on 47th really was an important link to get us to that intersection, which will be a new signalized.

It is a signalized crossing, but it gets realigned and the crosswalk gets realigned with it.

And it does get you directly across the street into an ADA connection down into U Village.

And that, again, was very important to the neighborhood.

The third benefit is amenities along the trail.

And these are important in the sense that we don't get them often.

We don't get a water station.

We don't get any wayfinding or very little of it.

A bench is almost a rarity along the Burke, a trash can.

So these are things, amenities, which we propose.

And again, the neighborhood very much liked that.

And here's a rendering of it.

So again, it's a bike fix-it station.

water, a water bottle refilling station, which doesn't happen on the Burke, bench, trash, recycle.

and wayfinding, which I'll talk about in a moment.

Fourth public benefit is restoration along the Burke.

You see this going on in various areas.

So we worked with the Friends of the Burke-Gilman Trail, Fort Terra, Green Seattle Partnership, and Parks to determine an area.

It's essentially the frontage, which is off-site and within SPU and Parks property directly fronting the site.

And then I'll end on wayfinding.

So we've been tracking the wayfinding program with SDOT.

It's in its conceptual phase right now.

I happen to sit on a stakeholder committee for that as well.

So we are waiting for guidelines to come out, and we will use those guidelines then to deploy our, and determine location too.

So we've got a range of signs we've proposed, plus one kiosk at this intersection.

And that's what's up on screen.

And then I'll just end on the public benefit matrix.

I won't go through this, but as you've requested in the past, we've provided costs over on the right-hand column associated with the direct cost to the developer for that public benefit item.

And that's the end of the presentation.

Thank you.

Parks?

Yeah, I'm here really to speak in support of these public benefits.

You probably all know the Birkeland Trail, a major regional facility that's managed by the Parks Department.

And its success really is well thought out access points.

We don't want access points everywhere.

We want them where they're needed.

I think this connection to U Village is And this part of the trail is lacking any kind of connection.

So this is a huge benefit to the trail.

In addition, as Mark said, we don't get those kind of amenities on the trail.

It's kind of a, in a way, it's kind of like an on-ramp to a highway because it's wider there.

So there's a pull-out place for benches and a water station.

And there is a Friends of Berkman Trail that is extremely active about restoration of this, of all the vegetation along the trail.

So they're very excited about this as well.

So, you know, we've been working with Mark and his team since the beginning.

We've provided all level of comments.

They've been through our standard review cycles and they have modified the project accordingly.

So we really appreciate the collaborative relationship and we look forward to these improvements.

Michael, anything else from the design commission that you already touched on?

Yeah, I think, you know, the commission always looks for that big move.

Where's that equivalent value as a result of the vacation?

And I think that in this case, it's pretty clear where that big move is.

You're creating not just a connection.

It's not just a utilitarian connection.

It really benefits a variety of users.

Peds, bikes.

just much more than what you would normally see with just a simple connection.

And I think this sets a good standard for the city to follow in its own work.

Yeah, as someone who uses my bike on the Burke-Gilman occasionally, and occasionally is going to U Village, it's always a head-scratcher, frankly.

Do I cut down that road?

Do I go across one of the overpasses into the parking lot and pick my way up?

Do I go around the backside and sneak down from there?

And this, at least the way it's portrayed here, It's going to be like, oh, there is University Village.

That's the way I go.

And it looks, it'll be a very logical and a kind of shortest distance between two points and a safe crossing of an arterial, which is well in need of that.

So that looks outstanding.

The wide spot on the path, an opportunity with a bike fix-it station is always great.

Hope it can be maintained.

And a water bottle filling station is awesome.

And so, again, those will be owned and maintained by Parks Department or by the property owner?

And they'll- In perpetuity by the property owner.

Excellent.

That's great to hear.

So all that, that's outstanding.

I really appreciate the thoughtfulness.

I imagine the Design Commission had some work on making that in Parks too.

So thank you for doing that.

The kind of not public but the open space that's adjacent to it looks great too.

I don't really know how they're going to manage that.

But it certainly looks, you know, somewhat inviting if you're taking a rest and want to go sit down there.

And is it going to be, I mean, is there specific rules around how that is?

I realize it's not part of the public benefit.

Yeah, it's not part of the public benefits specifically because there was some uncertainty on the part of Trailside as to how easy it would be to manage.

The vacation requires that it be designed in a way that's welcoming to the public, so it won't be fenced, but it won't necessarily be programmed either.

And they're looking at some retail opportunities, so if there's a little coffee shop, or I don't know what you want when you get off the trail, ice cream or something, it would be available to everyone.

But it's not defined as a public benefit, so we're not obligating them to manage it in a specific fashion.

Yeah, so it's another design commission discussion we had.

We actually started out with a fence.

So this is student housing and so security is a concern.

I think the analogy is the student housing over in the district side that you've seen as of, you know, in the last five years, which they have open atrium courtyard spaces that flow through.

So similar to that, there's a very modest amount of retail and it's actually up on the screen here, just the end of the building.

So it's carefully placed at the trail connection to be successful.

So that would be an attraction to come down into the space.

And I can imagine the client programming this from time to time.

There'll be events.

So we're trying to be welcoming, but also, you know, it's semi-private space.

It's like maybe a front yard, but a very approachable one.

Sorry, one second.

Do you say it's student housing?

Is this private student housing or contracted?

Private student housing.

We're clear about that, yeah.

So rented by the bed.

So they're multi-bed units that are being rented.

Got it.

Yeah, there's about 265 units, and the bedrooms will vary from two to as many as five.

And there is below-grade parking and bike parking.

And that's one of the reasons for the vacation is to provide that continuity below grade.

So there's fewer curb cuts and vehicle and bike entry points.

Those are really channeled at Northeast 49th.

And the, sorry, 265?

Units or beds?

Units.

Oh, so there's going to be a lot of students there.

Yes.

Excellent.

Council Member Chico.

Just really quickly, appreciate the engagement with the Roberta Bryant Association.

I was at your meeting when you came.

On slide 20, really quickly.

I want to point towards what I've heard before, and I'm just curious if this came up at any point, about public benefit.

As you get further right along the Bergillman at night, it gets to be pretty dark.

Was there any conversation about just lighting or trying to provide some lighting around?

There was, and actually to the right there are lights.

Yeah, it's in the corner, right?

When you swing around to Blakely Place, the canopy of the trees obscures them somewhat.

It's an excellent maybe question for Chip.

I don't mean to pass the buck here, but the Burke is mostly unlit.

And what you hear from the neighborhood is they'd rather walk on 25th as treacherous as that could be, or even cycle on it because it's lit.

And so that's a broader conversation with the BERC.

We decided to only light the connection, so right at the connection and then down to the intersection to be consistent with the majority of the BERC.

And that was a conscious decision collectively with parks.

So this is probably a discussion beyond this table, but Chip, is there a specific policy in parks to not light these regional trails?

Gosh, I don't know if there's a policy, but I think much like our parks, we tend not to light them, and a lot of it's cost reason, because you've got to lay the conduit and maintain the lights.

And so I don't know if there's a conscious policy against it, but it has to be a special situation where we do light it.

And we do light certain specific areas, but not on the Burke ailment, I don't think.

So it's worthy of a larger discussion, I think.

Great.

Thank you.

Okay, so colleagues, any other questions?

Well, it's just not a question, more of a point probably.

I think there might be potentially, for the future conversations about public benefit, if there's an opportunity to partner, because I can definitely see how you know, why we don't do that being as a kind of a budget conscious decision, but I think potentially if there's an opportunity to do some private development that's like, that's surrounding the Gilman, that might be an opportunity to provide it as a public benefit in the future.

So I just want to make that a little bit more of a aware of what we can do in the future potentially.

Yeah.

Okay, colleagues, we, I need to ask your indulgence for a moment here.

The agenda did not note a public hearing, so I'd like to amend the agenda to add a public hearing to agenda item number four.

And just note that this was noticed in the Daily Journal of Commerce.

We just failed to put it on our agenda.

So, I'll move to amend the agenda.

All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Great.

And so, we'll go ahead and open the public hearing.

Is there anyone signed up for the public hearing?

Okay.

Anyone in the audience like to comment for the public hearing?

Okay.

Seeing none, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing.

Thank you for doing that.

We believe we have all of our rules in order here, so I'm going to propose that we go ahead and move this legislation out of committee.

If we hear in the convening time that we need to do something different, we'll figure that out.

And before that, you should waive the council rules that generally restrict you from having a vote on the date of a public hearing.

Right.

So I was moved to suspend the rules to allow for a vote on this item on the same day that we held the public hearing.

All in favor, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Okay.

So the rules are suspended, so we can go ahead and proceed with a vote on this item.

If colleagues are okay with that.

I don't see this as terribly controversial.

reserve the right as it goes to full council if there's some things that come up or people have some concerns about the process that we can revisit that.

But it seems like a great project.

I don't want to hold you all up any longer.

You see it says possible or future development site across the street.

Is that plan in works or kind of who knows to be determined?

It is actively in the works, so.

And we've had some of the same team working on that, so it was really, we were able to really coordinate the curbless street design and the timing.

There's been a lot of interaction out there on the sites.

Yeah, so I can imagine just by the shape of the land, there could be, you know, a thousand students living in this area in a couple years.

It is changing.

Pretty exciting, and also a nice connection to kind of a little bit of a, You know, no man's land at the moment, so the connections would be great.

So colleagues, I'll go ahead and move.

Clerk file 314380. All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Great.

Thanks for your good work on this.

Really appreciate it.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

We'll move on to agenda item number five.

Beverly, you can stay here, I guess.

Kelly, do you mind reading in that agenda item?

Council Bill 119527, an ordinance vacating the alley in Block 19, heirs of the Sarah A. Bell's second edition, in the block bounded by 6th Avenue, Blanchard Street, 7th Avenue, and Lenora Street on the petition of Acorn Development LLC.

And we'll do, let's see, why don't we do a round of introductions again, just for the record?

The Schwitzen Council Central staff.

Beverly Barnett, Seattle Department of Transportation.

John Savo, principal of the NVBJ.

And I just stepped off the Seattle Design Commission a couple months ago and reviewed the Trailside Project as chair.

So.

Nice work.

And they did nice work.

Yeah, I'm excited about that one.

Okay, so we're pulling up a presentation and, Lish, do you have anything you want to say in this?

Yeah, just briefly.

So the last item would grant sort of ability for the trailside project to build the improvements that they're asking for once they are Completed with the project they'll come back for a final ordinance Basically checking off all the box saying that they did what they've said committed to doing And that's where we are with this project.

They've completed all the work for the street vacation they are asking for your final approval and the final approval is basically a based on whether or not they completed the conditions and provide the public benefits that they committed to.

So there's two council actions in any street or alley vacation.

What we just did was the first one, which is where we make the policy decisions and decide it's okay.

And then there's a second decision that comes back to us.

At that point, all we're really doing is saying, did you check the box?

It's a ministerial decision.

Ministerial.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

All right, Beverly.

Yeah, before John's going to go through the PowerPoint on this, I thought it might be a good reminder of the background.

At the time that the council reviewed this project, it was one of three.

There were three alley vacations.

They all came in under separate petitions, and it was the anticipation that they would, the final vacation ordinance and the projects would be closed out individually.

But with the three projects being together, block 14, 19, and 20, since we always are so clear in where we're talking about, that the city council was able to look at a larger package of public benefits and different things were assigned at different times.

One of the public benefits for these three projects, for example, was a new streetcar, and the city council required that the money for the new streetcar be provided when the first project was done so that 3.7 million was provided for the new streetcar before the first project happened.

So there are different parts and pieces and phases, and so what we're looking at, this is block 2, block 14 has been finished.

And when John gets in and we see the map, the locations will make a bit more sense.

But also, because the three blocks went through at the same time, they did look at land use zoning criteria that allowed them to move some things around on the site, and there were public benefits associated with the planned community development.

So we see different kinds of vacation criteria and public benefit criteria from the PCD as well.

So when the council looked at this, we had charts of what obligation went with each project and what obligations were associated with the vacation and what was associated with other land use actions.

So we've implemented that.

The developer has been very careful in following that.

So this is the second one.

And what you see in terms of the public benefit is just what is associated with the vacation of this particular block.

There's one more that we'll be doing end of this year, early next year.

And there's a fourth project that came online following these three that will probably be next year as well.

So this has been a seven, almost eight year journey.

And I know some of you have seen me before.

That would be me.

Yeah, that would be you at this point.

Yeah, thanks Mike.

So as Beverly mentioned and Lish, this is part, this is really a kind of high level look at what is a much more detailed report to show that we actually did what we said we would do or exceeded that.

So there's really no controversy here that we're aware of.

We're not going to highlight any changes, but really that we've delivered on our promise.

So just as a reminder, there are three blocks that were part of this project originally.

As Beverly mentioned, Block 14 has already been built and approved.

Block 19 is the one we're talking about, now referred to as Day 1. And that includes both the high-rise 37-story tower and the spheres.

And then Block 20 is in construction and actually only a couple of months away from being opened and active as well.

The only other thing I'll mention is the reason we went for holiday vacation is just a reminder.

These blocks were a little bit narrower than the typical blocks in Seattle as a result of some actions in the 1920s when they widened the roads.

In addition, the way the blocks are oriented, long and narrow on sort of the north-south axis, When we put buildings of any size as allowed under the zoning, we end up with really buildings that are a wall towards the water.

So we wanted to open up views by rotating the buildings and allowing those views to be opened up towards Elliott Bay.

In addition, these particular alleys ran into Westlake, which runs as a diagonal through the city and ended up in five or six-way intersections.

So they weren't very useful because of that unusual traffic condition.

And on top of that, when we rotated them, we were able to create some significant public open spaces.

And this block is, I think, that's particularly one of the accomplishments, as can be viewed in this particular slide, where you see the block as it was before, surface parking, and essentially one and an add-on to that building that was there that was only one story in height.

And now we have a high-density urban use together with significant public open space.

That public space is multi-use, and it is entirely public.

You can see that they use it for farmers' markets in the summertime.

It's also a place they can kick around a ball on that lawn.

There's a sort of amphitheater seating facing towards the east and the south, the southeast.

And then there's the canopy, which we'll talk about, up above, where you can sit in under the rain or walk under it out of the weather.

As Beverly mentioned, this is only one of multiple public benefit packages.

The first of those was the package we created to go from the base FAR to the max FAR that was allowable.

We didn't exceed that, of course, but we did go to the max.

And we used those open spaces principally as one of the means to get there, along with TDRs from preservation.

And then there was a planned community development.

This was only the second one in the city that had ever been done.

The first one was for Union Station.

And we actually had worked on that project long ago.

And so there were benefits with that, including like the operational and maintenance, operations and maintenance of one of the streetcars for up to 10 years.

And also the idea that we aspired to being lead gold.

And then we were gonna shoot for anything more we could achieve.

And you might remember that we went and achieved this idea of district energy on that block, which is one of the places I think we really exceeded what we were trying to do.

And then the alley vacation benefits are what we're here to talk about, and I'll quickly go through them.

They're outlined here, and as Beverly mentioned, some are already done, the two in the lower right.

We purchased a streetcar, or I should say the client did, and then we contributed to a feature park right across Westlake, what's sometimes been called the Enterprise Park.

And then there are a couple still coming.

When block 20 is complete, we'll have created a shared use or curbless street on Lenora between Westlake and 7th Avenue.

And on Westlake, we're gonna do some additional improvements.

We did actually most of them.

We did the first block 14, but there's a few more to come when we complete this block that's adjacent to it.

So I'll go through each of these others that are associated with this particular alley vacation.

The continuation of the 7th Avenue cycle track.

This is a track that's on either side of the street, one way in each direction, separated from the sidewalk by trees and landscaping, and separated from the street as well as the sidewalk by landscaping.

So we have a true cycle track on either side.

On Blanchard, we extended the Green Street.

which really hadn't happened on either side of that up to now, but we did then set the building back an additional 10 feet so we could have additional landscaping including trees and create a cycle track on that street as well and wider sidewalk than required.

There were other additional voluntary setbacks and the most significant of those by far were those associated with the spheres.

One of the things, the purpose of this sphere is in fact to have a garden in which you can work during the year, all year round.

And we wanted to sit in a garden, and that garden then could be shared with the public because it's along the right of ways on three sides, as well as that public plaza in the middle, which then includes not only planting that is similar and sometimes even the same as what's inside the building, but also then the outdoor seating and a little bit nicer sidewalk than we otherwise would have achieved.

There were other right of ways improvements, the double tree allay along the 7th Avenue cycle track.

The signature canopies, an original idea for that was just a straight, flat.

canopy when we were doing the original design, but when we got into the spheres and saw the opportunity for doing something special, we created these really art pieces of canopies that people can walk under or sit under comfortably and take advantage of it.

And they're also invite vines to grow up them, planting at the base of most of them.

There is no signature art piece, and there was none promised on this block.

There was on 14 and Block 20, and both of those are, one's already complete, the other one's been installed but not visible yet.

Here, though, with the addition of the spheres, we had, in addition to the crafted pieces for things like the utility covers and the benches, the lighting that we did along Blanchard Green Street, the spheres itself serve as a significant public asset and amenity.

Thank you for the lighting.

You're welcome.

And then really, the last one here is this idea of additional overhead weather protection, again, being provided by the tree canopies that we had designed.

So with that, I just want to open it up for questions, kind of the highlights of each, but happy to answer whatever I can.

Chico, any questions for John?

No.

I appreciate the presentation, but I mean, I've I think this is just a good example of what a public-private partnership could look like with regards to providing public benefits.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

John, it's been a pleasure working with you and NBPJ on a couple of projects, but this has been a pretty exciting one.

I know that NBBJ has a long history around the world, but I certainly see those spheres in a lot of photographs whenever Amazon is talked about globally.

And so I'd be curious to see when, at some point, NBBJ goes back and see which of their projects appears more in the press than anything else.

And I would guess that this might be towards the top of the list.

We already know that it is.

Is it?

Yeah.

That happened several months ago.

We already had many more.

mentions in press than others.

And most recently, as a Wall Street Journal video, I'll give you a little tour of the sphere, so you can find it online.

But it's been very exciting to be part of this, and this client has been extraordinary.

Great.

Well, it's been great to work with you on this.

So we're here at the end of this project, just approving the ordinance to grant the easement.

I assume we pass the ordinance, and then There's work that's done where the title changes and we collected the fee or does the fee for the right away?

Yeah, the Amazon paid the fee on all three of the alley vacations early.

So they paid two years ago.

So the fee's been paid on this.

It was five million something.

Okay, great.

Any other questions on this bill?

Okay, I'll go ahead and move Council Bill 119527. Second.

All those in favor, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

No?

Okay.

There's a full council on Tuesday.

Thanks so much for all your work.

I look forward to coming back for block 20. I hope you're still here.

Well, you know the deadline on that one.

All right.

We got one more before we get into all the fun things.

Kelly, do you mind reading agenda item number six into the record?

Council Bill 119520, an ordinance granting KR Westlake LLC permission to maintain and operate a pedestrian skybridge over the alley in the block bordered by Westlake Avenue North, Terry Avenue North, Thomas Street, and Harrison Street for a 10-year term, renewable for two successive 10-year terms.

Welcome.

Why don't we start with introductions?

Beverly Barnett, Seattle Department of Transportation.

Amy Gray, Seattle Department of Transportation.

Amy, I haven't seen you in committee for a couple months.

Have you been on vacation, or what's going on?

There's been a lot of other stuff.

I've been in other committees on Civic Arena.

OK, well, it's good to have you back.

Thank you.

I'm not sure who wants to lead off the presentation.

I will.

It's just taking a second.

Oh, yeah.

I'll just introduce this.

So this council bill would renew the term permit for the KR West Lake Terry Sky Ridge for another 10-year term.

Term permits are generally, they're usually granted for a 10-year term with two renewable 10-year terms.

This is the, would be the first renewal.

So there would be one more 10-year term 10 years from now until it gets to its expiration.

Got it.

I was wondering about that.

So the renewals come back to us in addition to the...

If there's substantive changes to the ordinance, like if, well, when some of the old permits had affirmative action language, which with the initiative was no longer deemed legal, we would have to do amendments to that.

So we bring things like that up.

If it's just everything remains the same, nothing's new, there's no insurance language, or we don't need to change anything, like SDOT doesn't have a new revocation director type position, then it would just be an administrative renewal.

But we're doing some changes to language here to make it compliant with current laws.

Excellent.

So this skybridge is in the alley.

I think there's an image of it.

It's between two office buildings, one on Wessek Avenue North and one on Terry Avenue North.

Kaiser Permanente, this was originally granted to Group Health, which now is Kaiser Permanente, and they have some other office spaces in there.

Here's a map showing the location.

It's just off West Lake.

Let's see.

So the permit is expired, but this ordinance has a ratify and confirm clause, which would make it effective to the last day of expiration.

KR West Lake Terry has been paying all their fees, maintaining their bond, providing the insurance information, and doing the inspection reports while we get to the renewal.

So they're compliant.

And SDOT is recommending approval.

You mentioned that it's coming back to us because there's some substantive changes there.

Anything from a policy perspective we should know about?

Not really, it's just how the risk manager, the city's risk manager wants the insurance language to be a certain way.

And when that is opened up, we look at the new code drafting manual that's put out by the city budget office as far as what language we're supposed to be using and taking out, just cleaning up the language to the current standards.

But it's mostly, things have changed when it comes to insurance language from 10 years ago.

I defer to the city experts to manage that unless my colleagues want to dig deeper into insurance language.

I see shaking of heads.

I do the same.

I do what they tell me to do.

I'd send it to the applicant and I tell them just to do it.

Excellent.

Colleagues, any other questions on this?

If not, I'll move Council Bill 119520. Second.

All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Great.

Thanks so much for your work on this.

Thank you.

Kelly, I'm going to ask that you read in...

I'm going to ask that you read in all...

No!

I want...

Take away your water and we're going to read in all five bills all the way through.

No, but let me read the short version of all five of these at once just to get them on the record and then we'll move them.

That's okay.

Yeah.

There was a time, to be clear, when we read in all these, not just at committee, but at the full council.

And the clerk at the time was amazing at reading really fast that met the legal requirement of Audible.

But man, she could rattle this stuff off.

I'm thankful I can read the short version.

Council Bill 119521, an ordinance accepting various deeds for street or alley purposes, laying off, opening, widening, extending, and establishing portions of right-of-way.

Council Bill 119522, an ordinance accepting 20 limited purpose easements for public sidewalk, street, or street alley and alley turnaround and traffic signal purposes.

Council Bill 119523, an ordinance accepting various deeds for street or alley purposes, laying off, opening, widening, extending, and establishing portions of rights of way.

Council Bill 119524, an ordinance accepting 20 limited purpose easements for public sidewalk alley or street and alley turnaround purposes.

Do you need help?

Yes, please.

All right.

OK, we had them all over here.

Let's see.

This one?

Yes.

Great.

And then we'll go here.

Thank you.

Yeah, no problem.

There you go.

I think you just, yeah.

Okay.

Are there two more?

Are there two more presentations?

No, two more bills to read in.

Oh, did I read them all?

Oh, pardon me.

Sorry, I jumped to the text too soon.

Council Bill 119525, an ordinance accepting various deeds for street or alley purposes, laying off, opening, widening, extending, and establishing portions of right-of-way.

And one more for good measure, Council Bill 119526, an ordinance accepting various seats for street or alley purposes, laying off, opening, widening, extending, and establishing portions of right-of-way.

Sorry about that.

This is the stuff we live for in the Transportation Committee.

Isn't it?

Council Member Pacheco, I'm really excited to have you here for this.

As I mentioned in the council briefing, all joking aside, these are the projects, my understanding, I'll let you explain in more detail, but these, you know, between the five bills, there's a hundred different easements or deeds we're accepting, and I assume these are all development projects that are happening around the city that often involve pretty minuscule parcels of land, but these are land that either an easement or the actual properties coming over to the city as part of the development so we can maintain whatever the city does, transportation or other uses.

But I will hand it over to you all to talk us through all of these.

And then we start with introductions.

Maya Honeywell, SDOT.

Gretchen Heidel, SDOT.

Thank you, Maya and Gretchen.

The purpose of this legislation is to accept dedication deeds and easements, place the property under SDOT's jurisdiction, and designate the property as right-of-way.

The Department of Construction and Inspections may determine that a developer is required to dedicate property to the city under the city's land use code.

Developers then submit a letter of intent to dedicate the property.

SDOT then performs environmental entitled due diligence review before any property can be dedicated as right-of-way.

Once the property is cleared for acceptance, the deeds or easements are signed.

and recorded.

Property dedicated to the city is used to widen streets, alleys, and sidewalks to meet current land use codes requirements.

The city's charter requires that the deeds and easements be accepted by ordinance.

SDOT prepares and presents council bills to accept 20 deeds or easements at a time.

Once accepted, The dedicated property is then used to enhance sidewalks, streets, and alleys throughout the city.

We are here to ask that you accept the dedication deeds and easements.

And that concludes the presentation.

And do you want to walk through all 100 parcels and explain them to me, or should we just...

Councillor Pacheco, I think this is fairly, as Lish said earlier, ministerial.

I'm sure there's good reason why our predecessors decided these types of actions to come to the council, but we've certainly tried to streamline as much as possible, and I don't have any specific concerns about this, but if you have any questions or concerns, we can dig deeper.

Great, well then I'll go ahead and start moving these bills one at a time.

Let's see here, make sure I don't miss one here.

So we're going to start with agenda item number seven and I'll go ahead and move council bill 119521. Second.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

That passes and we'll go to full council.

The next one I'll go ahead and move council bill 119522. Second.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

That goes to full council.

Agenda item number nine, council bill 119523. I'll move that.

Second.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Agenda item 10, council bill 119524. I'll move that.

Second.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

That passes.

And council bill 119525. I'll move that.

Second.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Is there one more in here?

Is there six, not five?

Council Bill, I'll move Council Bill 119526. Second.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Great, so all of those bills will go to the full council on Tuesday, but thanks for all your work on this.

we get to do the relatively quick and easy part.

And we even saved Kelly a little work by not having to read the whole thing in.

But I imagine each one of these parcels required, you know, legal review and property review and title review.

And so I know there's a lot of folks on your team and probably the law team that put a lot of time into this.

So I don't want to diminish that.

This is important work that we do.

So thank you so much for your leadership on that.

Great.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

If there's nothing else for the committee, we'll go ahead and be adjourned.

Thank you.

Smooth.

Thanks, everyone.