Seattle City Council Briefing 9/14/2020

Good morning, everyone.

The September 14th, 2020 council briefing meeting will come to order.

The time is 9.33 AM.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Juarez?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Here.

Council Member Peterson?

Here.

Council Member Sawant?

Here.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

Council President Gonzalez.

Here.

Nine present.

Thank you so much, Madam Clerk.

If there is no objection, the minutes of September 8th, 2020 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

President's report, I don't have anything to report from the president's report at this moment.

I will save my comments regarding for this afternoon's full council during my regular report.

So we'll go ahead and move into the preview of today's City Council Actions Council and Regional Committees.

I'll call on Council Members as established by the rotated roll call for City Council meetings this week.

That roll call order is Council Member Juarez, followed by Lewis, Morales, Mosqueda, Peterson, Sawant, Strauss, Herbold, and then I will conclude this agenda discussion.

We do have two executive sessions today, colleagues, so we can expect that we will go until at least noon today.

And so in order to make sure that we expedite issues, I know there's a lot for us to each individually report for this week, but I'd ask you to be aware of the fact that we do have two executive sessions on today's agenda and would appreciate your cooperation in making sure that we can have enough time to get through those two executive sessions.

Okay, first up is Council Member Juarez.

Good morning.

Good morning, thank you, Council President.

The Public Assets and Native Communities Committee, I have one item on today's introduction referral calendar.

That would be Council Bill 119881, and that's an ordinance relating to renovating Key Arena at the Seattle Center, authorizing the mayor or the mayor's designee to execute an agreement with Seattle Arena Company to establish roles and responsibilities for coordinating the design and constructing the transit-only lanes on Queen Anne Avenue North and First Avenue North, a transit queue jump at First Avenue North and Republican Street, design upgrades for the protected bicycle lanes, and additional improvements to Thomas Street.

If you recall, a lot of these issues came up in the last couple of years in our discussions with Key Arena, NHL, OVG, and SDOT.

In terms of timing, the executive has requested consideration before budget because they expect construction of the improvements to take approximately one year.

And the goal is to have the improvements completed before the arena reopens, which is anticipated in September 2021. Again, thank you Council President Gonzalez for scheduling this item for next week's agenda.

Today at two, I'll be brief because I have more to share at two o'clock.

Item number four on today's City Council agenda is Resolution 31967. I spoke briefly to it last Monday.

A resolution providing an honorary designation of a part of 28th Avenue Northeast as Hayashi Avenue.

This is a community-driven and it's located in District 5. This honorary street is to recognize the Hayashi's family's contribution to the Lake City neighborhood and to educate those on the egregious violations of human rights and racism that affected our Japanese brothers and sisters during World War II.

I'm just going to add a few things and there'll be more at two o'clock.

As I shared, this has been in the making.

I want a big shout out to Chris Leverson of Building Lake City Together.

Mark Mendez of Lake City Arts and Culture Initiative, and Molly Humphrey of the Lake City branch of the Seattle Public Library.

They formed a committee, they put a GoFundMe group together.

Over 14 Lake City organizations supported the street renaming.

When they put together the GoFundMe, they raised the money in 24 hours.

So with that, I'll share more about the unveiling and the date that we're gonna pick for the unveiling ceremony up on 28th.

In parks, as you know, this morning, our office will continue sending out weekly parks COVID-19 programmatic updates.

In regards to Pier 58, as you all know, at approximately 4 o'clock yesterday, there was a partial collapse of Pier 58 at the downtown waterfront, which injured two construction workers present on the site.

There were five additional workers on the site who helped pull their colleague out of the water safely.

The pier has been closed to the public, as you all know, since August 6th because of deterioration and significant shifting.

Orion Marine Contractors was selected through the city's emergency contracting process to complete the work of removing Pier 58 by 2021. Orion is an experienced contractor with in-water work of this type, has the equipment and personnel available to move quickly and is actively involved in several other local projects for SDOT in the Port of Seattle.

Thankfully, Orion had layers of monitoring for their safety protocols, which allowed them to act quickly when two of their colleagues fell in the water.

While we were lucky no one got hurt, the timing of the collapse was still shocking, as there was 15,000 square feet of concrete that collapsed within seconds, more than was planned for.

I spoke with Park Superintendent Jesus Agare and Office of the Waterfront Director Marshall Foster late last night.

Both assured me that the fire department initially treated the two injured workers.

They were taken to Harborview for complete checkups and I'm happy to report that they're doing fine.

I'm deeply grateful to the first responders who arrived swiftly to ensure their safety.

As a side note, I understand that the concrete or the cement that collapsed still needs to be extracted.

So in the coming days, the city will evaluate Pier 58 to determine appropriate next steps and potential broader impact, which means we will be hearing more from the Office of the Waterfront, Seattle Parks and Rec, and other city departments.

Quickly, parks will still be closed due to wildfire, or I'm sorry, yeah, wildfire smoke.

As of last Friday, Seattle Parks and Rec has closed all parks boat ramps, beaches, golf courses, and play fields through Sunday due to smoke from the wildfires in Washington and Oregon.

Last night parks has extended this closure to the end of today until further notice.

Briefly on the status of the keep moving streets, in coordination with the Seattle Department of Transportation, Lake Washington Boulevard, Golden Gardens Drive Northwest will remain open to people walking, rolling, and biking until the week of October 5th.

Alki Point will remain open until King County reaches phase three of Washington State's Safe Start Plan.

That's the COVID plan.

While we do outreach and assess how the street could be configured in the future, West Green Lake Way North will remain open to people walking, rolling, biking until the small craft center parking lots reopen.

That is a date still yet to be determined.

For King County, the King County mask giveaway event still continues.

Our mask distribution partnership with King County continues to the beginning of October.

Beginning in late August, thousands of cloth masks have been distributed to county residents at Seattle Park and Rec Community Centers.

The distribution this week was canceled due to smoky air conditions.

The remaining schedule is as follows.

September 14th, Lake City Community Center.

September 21st, Magnuson Community Center.

September 28th, Garfield Community Center.

October 5th, Yesler Community Center.

And October 12th, the Rainier Beach Community Center.

With that, this week ahead, it looks like I have a King County Regional Transit Committee meeting.

And with that, I am done.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Councilmember Juarez, for that report.

Really appreciate you highlighting and providing us with additional information about the incident at Pier 58. Thank you so much for that.

Really grateful to hear that there wasn't more significant injuries there and that there is a clear plan in terms of addressing the ongoing tenuous nature of that infrastructure.

Really, really appreciate you giving us additional information about that.

Colleagues, any questions or comments on that report?

Hearing none, we'll go ahead and move down the roll call list.

Next up is Council Member Lewis, and then we'll hear from Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Madam President.

There's a lot on my list today, but I will try to move forward with it expeditiously.

First, I do have a bill and a resolution on this afternoon's agenda, Council Bill 119869, which provides for certain enforcement measures and revisions to certain Seattle Municipal Code provisions as relates to accountability for violating executive orders.

I discussed this legislation a little bit on Friday at the government committee chaired by Madam President, and I appreciate the invitation to go and talk about that legislation there.

Karina is present from central staff to answer any technical questions if folks want to answer or want to ask technical questions during briefing this morning.

I would just say briefly, as I said at the committee on Friday, that this really came about because I did not see in the Municipal Code a lot of satisfactory ways to enforce these emergency provisions as it related to corporate actors in particular, considering that we've had lots of regulations through the restaurant caps and the premium pay and other things that address big multinational corporations and that the only provision for enforcement of such orders in the municipal code currently is a sort of outdated and archaic criminal misdemeanor from the 70s, which You know, presumably is not going to be a big deterrent to grubhub or some other actors to potentially not violate some of these orders.

This legislation would simplify that from from sort of a something that's halfway between a misdemeanor and a gross misdemeanor to a simple misdemeanor.

It would also add a private right of action for private parties who have been wronged by actors who aren't following the order to go and sue that corporate actor in court.

So I just want to clarify, because there's been some confusion.

The private right of action is not against the city of Seattle.

The private right of action would be against a corporation that is not following the emergency orders.

The legislation would also add a civil penalty, which could be assessed in lieu by the city against an actor for violating the order instead of a criminal sanction.

And that would be a Class 1 civil infraction.

As to the resolution, Resolution 31966, This resolution, I am going to pull from this afternoon's calendar.

The mayor's office has said they're happy to promulgate a new order that is cognizant of the of the ordinance.

And I think that that might just be a cleaner way to to do in any way, and that'll happen sometime this week, and my office will be coordinating with them to make sure that that gets out there so the resolution's no longer necessary.

Moving on to talking about various issues relating to the air quality in the city of Seattle right now, I was happy to see over the weekend that the city and King County stood up a emergency shelter in Soto for our neighbors experiencing homelessness to be able to get inside out of the hazardous level of air quality.

This shelter space can only support 80 individuals and I want to emphasize the inadequacy of our response so far, though I am appreciative that there is at least one shelter that is open.

The Human Services Department has assured me that they are going to continue to monitor if folks are getting into that resource, taking advantage of it.

I continue to urge the county and the city to seek and open and scale up more emergency shelter spaces.

It is evident the smoke is going to be with us for a much longer period of time than just the weekend.

It appears it's going to settle in for the week.

One particular area of discussion has been some potential sites on the Seattle Center campus in District 7, and I'm extremely supportive of that.

The city recently stood down some temporary de-intensification shelter spaces at Exposition Hall on the Seattle Center campus.

I know that the armory on Seattle Center campus has also been mentioned as a potential spot.

I would continue to urge the executive and urge King County to take advantage of those resources as well as additional ones.

This is extremely urgent and we need to be moving on it.

The Washington Air Quality Advisory, a tool that I was not aware of until this weekend, indicates that good air quality as a score on that tool is a score of 1 to 50. Very unhealthy is a score of 201 to 300. As of my talking in this briefing, the Washington Air Quality Advisory is above 300. It's at 309, which indicates a hazardous level of air in the city of Seattle.

This is something that is going to be settling in that we're going to have to deal with every summer from now on as a city.

For the last couple of summers, we've had big fires.

This is a particularly bad fire season, but there's no reason to believe that this will not unfortunately continue given the pace of global climate change.

And we need to have a Strategy, the same way we have strategy for snow days, the same way we have strategy for other disasters.

And I look forward to working with the executive to develop responses like that, given that this will be an ongoing hazard and something that we are going to need to continue to address.

I want to thank Council Member Juarez for her update on Pier 58, a public asset in District 7 that unfortunately resulted in a workplace accident where the pier fell into Elliott Bay.

And I'm very grateful to know that there was no serious injury despite the trauma of the collapse.

But I do want to address, related to the hazardous air, that we had city contractors doing city work in air that was deemed hazardous by the state of Washington.

And I think that in addition to talking about emergency procedures to treat these air quality influxes like a snow day or like a disaster that would be caused by snow, where we have those kinds of quick responses, I think it is also critical that we start talking about the potential workplace hazards of certain jobs.

where people place themselves at considerable and significant risk by being out in the environment doing work that they have to do outside.

And as someone whose father worked for 30 years for Seattle City Light as an equipment operator, who was exposed to hazards, who patrolled power lines, who dug vaults, And just knowing that working families who have parents that do that work out in the world are exposed to hazards all the time, that one more is now being added.

And that is potentially hazardous air quality during the summer when there are major wildfires in the region.

So this is something that we certainly need to address as a city, not just for our own employees, but for employees that work in the private sector and don't have a choice.

And something where folks should not be working in these hazardous conditions, or if they are, should be getting pay that is commensurate with the additional risk they are taking.

And I think that's another thing that we need to work on as a city, because this is just going to be an ongoing part of our life going forward, unfortunately.

So with that, I don't have any additional updates, Madam President.

And I know Karina is here if people have questions on Council Bill 119-869.

And with that, I will turn it back over to you, Madam President.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis for that report.

Karina, thank you for being with us this morning.

I do want to give you an opportunity from Council Central staff perspective to give a quick little preview of the council bill being sponsored by Council Member Lewis regarding civil emergency orders, just for the benefit of those council members who are not members of the Governments and Education Committee, which I chair, if you could give us a quick little summary on the bill, what it will accomplish, and then we will allow council members to ask any questions if there are any.

All right, thank you.

I am Karina Bull on Council Central staff, and Council Member Lewis provided a nice overview of the bill, thinking of things to add.

I will focus again on that right now.

The only way for the city to enforce a violation of a civil emergency order is this criminal penalty, which is an outdated misdemeanor at this point in time in the law.

It hasn't been updated since the 70s, as Council Member Lewis noted.

So this bill is both a cleanup of making sure that those penalties reflect the current penalties, which are Up to $1,000 fine or 90 days imprisonment or both.

And that is up to which means it doesn't always have to be that extreme.

And it also provides members of the public with ways to address violations with civil remedies and the city with an option for civil remedy as well so That means that the members of the public can take violators to court if they are injured, and then the city can use the civil infraction method as a more accessible and efficient way to enforce an order.

A quick note on this private right of action.

Again, building on what Council Member Lewis said about the private right of action would be filed against a person who violated the order.

It would not be filed against the city.

A parallel example could be minimum wage.

If a worker is not paid minimum wage by a business, then that worker would sue the business, the worker wouldn't sue the city so this Legislation has the same language where the civil action would only be against the person violating the order and then this passing this bill will not change the types of enforcement actions for any existing emergency orders on its own.

Instead, those emergency orders would needed to be updated in order to reflect these new options.

And so that would be future legislation or future emergency order that would need to be either transmitted by the mayor or considered by the council in form of a resolution.

Thank you, Karina, for that additional information building on Council Member Lewis's description of that council bill.

Are there any questions about the bill related to the civil emergency for Karina?

Okay, seeing none, I think it's crystal clear to folks.

It did pass out of committee unanimously with a recommendation for the full council to adopt it.

We will work with the city clerk's office on language to indefinitely hold resolution 31966, effectively removing it from the full council agenda this afternoon.

Appreciate the update on both of those aspects.

Thank you, Karina, for being with us.

You're welcome to disconnect from the meeting this morning.

Thanks again for all your hard work.

Any other questions or comments on the report from Councilmember Lewis?

Hearing none, we'll go ahead and go down the roll call and Councilmember Morales is next, followed by Councilmember Mosqueda.

Councilmember Morales, please.

Thank you, Council President.

Good morning, everyone.

There are several items on today's introduction and referral calendar, most of which will be heard in the Community Economic Development Committee tomorrow.

We've got several commission appointments, as well as we'll be hearing from the Equitable Development Initiative Director and from community members about establishing a permanent Equitable Development Initiative Advisory Board.

And I hope to bring that to full council next week.

Additionally, we have an ordinance to the SOTO BIA that will be referred directly to full council.

This ordinance just postpones the assessment update for 2021. And we can discuss that later.

Not from my committee, but from my district.

I do want to state my enthusiastic support for council bill 119827, which is on the full council agenda this afternoon.

It allows for a legislative rezone in an area of the Rainier Beach neighborhood.

I want to thank council member Strauss for inviting me to attend the land use committee last week, and I'm sure he'll be talking more about that later.

Last week I met with constituents who are eager for the city to find solutions to our homelessness crisis.

As the paper reported this morning, we've had several fires in homeless encampments recently.

And we know as meal programs have shut due to COVID and shelters continue to be at capacity, we know we have more people living in tents and cooking fires are increasing.

So improving access to services and to safe housing continues to be a critical priority.

I also wanna echo Council Member Lewis's remarks about the need to solve the homelessness crisis, especially in light of the fact that climate catastrophes add yet another impact to these neighbors.

And we are clearly going to be dealing with some of this for a long time on an ongoing basis.

Also met with constituents who want to ensure that we are reaching all of our black and brown youth.

There's an express need for additional resources for programs that serve young black and brown women with opportunities for mentorship and leadership and skill building.

So I'm looking forward to learning a little bit more about that and.

probably having conversations with Council President Gonzalez about how we can support that in the near future.

I do want to let folks know that the Office of Economic Development is gearing up for the next round of Small Business Stabilization Grants.

They're currently doing outreach to ensure language access before the application process begins, and that is slated to begin in October.

This is obviously really important work for the Office of Economic Development and for our small business community as they deal with the impacts of COVID, continue to deal with that.

In order to get money out the door, the Office of Economic Development will be shifting some staff.

to assist with grant process and data collection and accounting, everything that's going to go with moving that money.

So I would like to discuss with the Community Economic Development Committee how and whether we might want to build out this initiative.

It could be an important addition, ongoing addition to the work that OED does.

but we have to talk about how to make it more sustainable.

So I'm still sort of in gathering mode and we'll plan to have conversations about that starting soon.

This week I have a Board of Health meeting on Thursday where we'll be getting briefed on the COVID-19 impacts on our community, on mental health, suicide, domestic violence, and community well-being.

So we'll be reporting back on that next week.

We will also be talking about COVID-19 and flu updates.

So I want to encourage everyone to get your flu shots this year.

This is no time to mess around with infectious disease spread.

I have mine scheduled for tomorrow.

That's all I have this morning.

Thank you Councilmember Morales for that report.

Are there any questions or comments on that report?

Hearing none, thank you so much once again Councilmember Morales for that report.

We're going to shift on over to Councilmember Mosqueda followed by Councilmember Peterson.

Good morning Council colleagues.

Good morning.

There are two items on today's introduction referral calendar that are being referred to the Finance and Housing Committee.

I want to give you a quick update on those.

The first is Council Bill 119886, which is an ordinance relating to the transfer of city property located at 722 18th Avenue.

Seattle, authorizing the conveyance of property to Bird Bar Place, a Washington nonprofit corporation, so long as the operator demonstrates the capacity to own and operate the property.

And Council Bill 119876 is an ordinance relating to transportation network companies' driver labor standards.

This has been the long-awaited piece of legislation that we had been discussing last year.

This is the final element in our efforts in this iteration to make sure that workers who are providing critical services, providing essential trips for folks to be able to get to work and also go to the grocery store, especially as buses have limited capacity and limited hours right now.

We really want to make sure that this service also has the appropriate pay for drivers.

So really excited about the piece of legislation that's coming down to establish minimum labor and compensation standards for transportation network company drivers.

And thanks to both the mayor's office and transportation network companies and really thanks to the Teamsters 117 for their ongoing work with the entities to try to work on some legislation for us.

We will have a few ideas that are coming from drivers themselves and look forward to working with all of you on that.

We will have both the ordinances at our Finance and Housing Committee, which is slated for September 15th at 9.30 a.m.

That's tomorrow.

And we will have a briefing and discussion on the bird bar transfer property, the first piece of legislation that I read to you.

We will hear from Deputy Mayor Ranganathan and Director Assefa from the Office of Planning and Development and Director from the Department of Neighborhoods, and from Bird Bar Place themselves, Andrea Coupland, who will tell us about the land transfer process and the engagement.

So if you have any questions about this property, please do let me know.

And if you're interested in joining and not part of the committee, let me know that as well.

We'll have the chance to hear from Lish from central staff as well.

Folks probably know that this is a really exciting opportunity for us.

This is an exciting opportunity for us to move forward as community advocates have been asking for this land transfer for a very long time.

They have been working for years to secure access to the Bird Bar site as it has nurtured and invested in our community and now they are just awaiting ownership to implement improvements and plan for the future.

Just for brief background, Bird Bar has served Seattle residents for over 50 years, providing basic human needs and services like housing and energy assistance.

They provide a food bank and personal finance assistance, and they provide special attention and give assistance when there's emergency situations such as power shutoffs and eviction assistance for residents who are struggling to make ends meet, including refugees and immigrants specifically.

And they also work to make sure that those who are elderly and living with disabilities in our community have access to the services that they need.

This is one of several mutual and offsetting benefit sites or MOB sites.

That the city currently owns, but for all intents and purposes, the community organization that is leasing the site from the city has been the longtime manager or steward of the site and has taken ownership and responsibility for the site and always except for having the deed and the title.

So really excited about this.

this effort and just want to give a quick shout out to former council members in late 2018. The council passed a resolution committing to collaborate with the executive to ensure the transfer of the properties that have mutual and offsetting benefits lease to the organizations currently residing in those facilities no later than March 2019. While it's over a year past this deadline and the process has taken a while for us to get here, the community is really excited about this.

And we look forward to working on this and the upcoming central district as senior center as well, which will be forthcoming.

On the transportation network, minimum labor and compensation standards, just want to give folks a heads up that we will have a briefing from the Office of Labor Standards and our very own Karina Bull and Amy Gore from central staff who will be walking through questions from council members, walking through the details of the bill.

And council colleagues, if you have an idea or an amendment that you are working on based on your read of the legislation that's been transmitted to us, we'd love to hear about it.

Please do plan to share that with us before the 15th or during the 15th meeting.

That's again tomorrow at 9 30. We will plan to vote and discuss any amendments on the legislation at the September 24th meeting.

So again, no vote tomorrow, but please do plan to share any amendments that you may be considering at our meeting on the 15th.

And please let me know as soon as possible, let Chief of Staff, Sejal Parikh, know if you are working on any amendments so that we can work with Karina on the timing of those and make sure that they're shared well in advance.

Lessons learned from earlier this year.

We want to see amendments as soon as possible.

And then finally, we are working on the 2021 budget that is going to be transmitted here soon.

We appreciate the work that's going into the drafting right now with the CBO, thanks to Director Van Noble and the team in the executive's office for their work.

We know that the executive will be submitting the 2021 budget to council on September 29th.

We are working closely with central staff and the council president's office and I look forward to working with each of you to discuss the developments of the budget and the process this year.

So we'll be reaching out and having conversations with folks so you know exactly what to expect, the timeline and the expectations for amendments so that we can have a robust conversation so that it can be transparent and collaborative among our colleagues.

My office along with the council president's office will be sending out the budget memo with an outline of the budget process and the calendar I think later this week.

So thank you council president for that and thank you in advance council colleagues.

I know everybody has already put in We are doing it again at the end of this month.

We look forward to working with you to get feedback and delve into the 2021 budget process.

Thank you, Madam President.

Hearing none, we'll go ahead and move down the roll call line.

Next up is Council Member Peterson followed by Council Member Sawant.

Hello, colleagues.

Thank you, Council President.

There are no items on today's City Council agenda from the Transportation and Utilities Committee.

The next Transportation and Utilities Committee meeting will be held this Wednesday, September 16 at 9.30.

I'd like to highlight two important items for this Wednesday.

We're going to receive two reports.

The first about bridges, specifically the report I requested from our city auditor of bridge conditions throughout Seattle.

That bridge report was put online this morning.

You can find the report on my city council blog or on the city auditor's website.

In a city defined by its many waterways, our bridges connect us, and this audit report proves city government must do a better job investing in this basic infrastructure.

vital for transit, freight, and our regional economy, bridges require relatively large investments to build and maintain to ensure they remain safe for generations.

I requested this audit of our bridges because the rapid deterioration of the West Seattle Bridge underscored the need for city officials and the general public to have a clear, thorough, and independent understanding of the condition of major bridges throughout Seattle.

including the adequacy of the city's preventative maintenance investments and practices.

So again, that report is online right now, my city council blog or city auditor's website.

I want to thank the city auditor for their hard work on this, and also the Seattle Department of Transportation for their cooperation with the auditor's office.

We'll talk about this more Wednesday.

The second big report at our committee this Wednesday morning will be about Internet for All, specifically an initial gap analysis and action plan from Seattle's Information Technology Department about expanding Internet access and adoption.

Council President Gonzalez and Council Member Juarez were co-sponsors of the resolution that requested this report on Internet for All.

Due to the large volume of business that goes through this committee, Transportation Utilities, we are scheduling a special Transportation Utilities Committee for Friday, September 25, in addition to the one this Wednesday.

September 25, it'll also be at 930 in the morning.

We need to do this to get through all the business of our committee prior to the fall budget season.

And as our city is still engulfed by the wildfire smoke, I'd really like to thank the members of the Governance Committee, chaired by Council President Gonzalez, for unanimously recommending Resolution 31933, which will have our city government view future legislation through the lens of climate change.

That resolution will come to the full council next Monday, September 21st.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Peterson, for that report.

Are there any questions or comments on that report?

Actually, Council President, I just have one comment for Councilmember Peterson.

It's Councilmember Juarez here.

Please, Councilmember Juarez.

I'll be brief.

Councilmember Peterson, I just want to make sure that I know you're looking at September 25th.

I'm hoping that you and I can coordinate our schedules because we're also looking at September 25th.

with SDOT for the Hayashi ceremony up here on Lake City.

So if our offices can coordinate on that date, that'd be great.

I'd hate for you to miss that ceremony or any of our colleagues, but I also know I need to be in your committee for the Internet for All.

Thank you.

The good news is the Internet for All will be September 16th.

I'll just ask if you, Councilmember Peterson and Councilmember Juarez, can connect offline to sort of coordinate the logistical concerns that she is expressing.

That would be appreciated if you all could connect offline and have a conversation about sort of how to coordinate that.

Appreciate the flag, Councilmember Juarez.

Okay, hearing no other comments, we're going to go ahead and continue on the roll call.

Next up is Councilmember Sawant, followed by Councilmember Strauss.

Councilmember Sawant, please, good morning.

Good morning, everybody.

Thank you, President Gonzalez.

There are no items on today's City Council agenda from the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee.

The next scheduled meeting of the committee is for next week, Tuesday, September 22nd, 2020. I wanted to congratulate the community members who for years have advocated for the Bird Bar Place and the Central Area Senior Center.

to be retained fully in public hands for public use, and they have provided incredible services for the community there, especially for seniors in the central district.

Over 100 of the community members, along with Africatown, attended an important committee meeting that my office had held last year in response to the mayor's office stalling progress on the community's demands.

And I'm glad that they are making progress.

And I wanted to thank also Andrea Coppain and Diane Ferguson for their leadership.

Photos of buyers in California and Oregon speak a thousand words about the devastation faced by human beings, especially by those who are homeless, our homeless neighbors in all the states, and the people who have lost their homes, but also the devastation faced by animals.

This has been one of the most dramatic manifestations of climate catastrophe through repeated years of drought, high temperatures, and strong winds.

Thank you to all the firefighters and all the other public sector workers and the thousands who volunteered and are still volunteering and are still working to keep the fires in check.

Also wanted to thank all the workers who in the three states of Washington, Oregon, and California who have continually worked through the bad air conditions including delivery workers, construction workers, and postal workers.

One of my close friends and fellow activists in Seattle said to me last weekend that I can't breathe has become a tragic metaphor for 2020 for at least this part of the world when you consider police violence against people of color, poor and working class people and those facing mental health issues in combination with COVID and the smoke and fire that we are facing in these three states.

It might be tempting for many of us to think that if things get bad enough, that finally corporations and the billionaires and their spokespeople will do something about it, will actually begin to make a shift, a real shift globally away from fossil fuel use towards safe and renewable energy.

But we have seen through this current crisis and through the past crises that the global society has faced that such a thing will not happen because the system of capitalism itself creates a distorted system of incentives that prevents these entities who own the vast majority of resources from actually making transition towards a safe and sustainable planet and that we cannot simply wait for them.

It will need mass movements on the streets and in the workplaces.

And in fact, these movements against climate catastrophe will have to be led in part by workers in the fossil fuel sector themselves and the unions that represent them.

And ultimately, the fight will have to be for a democratic public ownership of this industry by workers so that all of us together as human beings, as working people, as the working class can make a rational and sane decision to transition towards a planet that is actually sustainable and livable for the human society and for all species.

And I just wanted to express solidarity with everybody who is facing just an absolutely I think it's a heartbreaking crisis in all the three states.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant for those comments in that report.

Are there any questions or comments on that report?

Hearing none, I will go ahead and hear from Council Member Strauss now, followed by Council Member Herbold.

Good morning, Council Member Strauss.

Good morning, Council President.

Good morning, colleagues.

There are seven items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on the Introduction and Referral Calendar.

There are three appointments to the Urban Forestry Commission, two appointments to the International Special Review District Board, an appointment to the Pike Place Market Historical Commission, and CB 119889, a landmark designating ordinance for the Via Cammini building in the University District.

There is one item from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's agenda, CB 119827, which rezones land in the Rainier Beach area to facilitate the development of affordable housing, as Councilmember Morales spoke to earlier.

And the next meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee is on Wednesday, September 23rd, starting at 9.30 a.m.

There are three agenda items on that agenda, which is a discussion and vote on the annual round of comprehensive plan amendments as discussed last week.

A discussion and vote on the 2020 and 2021 comprehensive plan docket setting resolution.

for the amendments to be considered next year and a public hearing and vote on CB 119877 which extends the ability for SDCI and Department of Neighborhoods to conduct virtual design review and landmarks preservation board meetings due to COVID-19.

Last week in District 6, I met with District 6 residents and discussed with neighbors, focused largely on homelessness in our community and at our neighborhood parks, Ballard Commons, Gilman Park, Leary Triangle, and Baker Park.

I visited some of these parks on my own and with residents, Leo and Whitney, to discuss what is going on in our community and what can be done.

I also spoke to our neighbors about addressing residential traffic calming and support for Northwest 73rd at the termination of the First Avenue State Healthy Street.

So hopefully some good updates coming out of that.

And I joined the Green Lake Community Council meeting.

It was really great to see everyone virtually.

I'm really, I'm very relieved that I was able to develop a lot of the relationships with folks in the Green Lake community before we had to transfer virtually because while it's nice to see everyone virtually, much more meaningful to do so in person.

This week, I continue to have district resident meetings during office hours, and I will be attending the Regional Transit Committee and the Growth Management Policy Board committees this week.

Thank you, Council President.

That is my report.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Are there any comments or questions on that report?

Hearing none, we'll move down the line to Council Member Herbold, and then I will conclude this portion of the agenda.

Council Member Herbold, good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you so much.

Good to be here.

As far as we have the Public Safety and Human Services Committee meeting, we had that meeting last week.

There is no meeting this week.

We have another meeting of that committee coming up on Tuesday the 22nd.

Just a couple quick updates as it relates to departments that fall under the public safety and human services committee.

As was discussed earlier, the human services department and King County worked to open up what they're calling a smoke shelter in Soto.

This is a 24 hour a day, seven day a week temporary shelter.

Its capacity has actually been recently expanded to 100 people.

I believe there are only 20 people that stayed there on Friday night.

But on Saturday night, more than 80 people living in shelter made use of the shelter Saturday night and into the day on Sunday.

And because of the expansion to 100 people, there's room for more.

The navigation team has been active in letting people know about the existence of the smoke shelter.

They spoke with 68 individuals directly on Friday, handed out over 100 flyers with information about the shelter, as well as helping dozens of people access basic needs that day.

The smoke shelter will remain open through at least tomorrow morning and perhaps beyond.

I also want to make note of an issue that I've raised here before.

The Human Service Department Senior Center programs, you may know, rely really heavily on Metro's access vans to provide meal delivery and go-to meals to help seniors practice social distancing.

I'd been hearing when we were having our budget rebalancing discussions that this model was set to end in September.

Metro announced the good news recently that they are continuing to use the access bands for food delivery until at least the end of this year to support this modified program model in response to COVID-19.

So I thank King County Metro for making that good decision on behalf of seniors in our community who rely on the delivery of healthy foods.

Last week, we learned that the Human Services Department awarded about $11.6 million in funding for homelessness services to allow providers to help cover costs associated with COVID-19 in 2020. Awards were made resulting from a recent RFP process intended to cover unanticipated COVID-19 expenses.

as well as to support program modifications for health and social distancing compliance in shelters, day centers, hygiene centers, and permanent supportive housing.

The $11.6 million is comprised of federal coronavirus relief funds, state of commerce grant funds, and city general funds.

The Human Services Department used the RFP process to capture sort of lessons learned to better understand how providers are changing their work due to coronavirus.

And these lessons learned will help in future funding rounds.

as we work to adapt provision of services to social distancing practices.

I want to make note and thanks to the work being done and coordinated out of the Emergency Operations Center as it relates to the fires in California and Oregon.

21 members of the Seattle Fire Department were redeployed to assist in addressing the fires.

An additional member was also deployed as part of the incident support team.

And there's a fire department brush truck staffed with three fire department personnel that are still down in Pierce County.

And the City Emergency Operations Center support staff person from the Seattle Parks and Recreation was also deployed to assist Pierce County Emergency Operations Center.

So I'm sorry, I misspoke.

These are redeployments that are being done here in Washington.

And then also want to make note that the fire department COVID-19 tests that are being distributed and administered at four sites throughout the city, and this is a program that is being run by the fire department, the cumulative amount of tests being done or that have been done between June 5th and September 12th are upwards of 180,000 tests to residents of our city.

Those are all the items that I have to report on.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold, for that report.

Are there any comments or questions on that report?

Hearing none, thank you so much.

I will go ahead and conclude this portion of today's agenda by giving my report.

So, report of the Governance and Education Committee.

Our committee, my committee met last week on Friday, September 11th.

2020. Thank you to all the members and Councilmember Peterson for attending that committee hearing.

I want to thank Department of Education and Early Learning Director Dwayne Chappell and members of DEEL staff for joining us at the meeting to give us an update on the investments made to date as a result of the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy, which the voters, of course, approved in 2017. That presentation is publicly available via the Seattle City Council's website.

Again, thank you to the members of DEEL for joining us and giving us that briefing.

Really appreciate it.

We also heard a briefing on legislation as described by Councilmember Peterson and Councilmember Lewis.

I won't go over those again.

On this afternoon's introduction and referral calendar, there are no additional items from the Governance and Education Committee.

However, I did want to highlight one piece of legislation that appears on the introduction and referral calendar this afternoon.

You will note in your review of the introduction referral calendar that there is a proposed ordinance to grant the city attorney's office the authority to provide legal counsel to council member Shama Sawant in a case regarding a recall petition that has been filed.

This appears on the introduction referral calendar as item number six or council bill 119891. Pursuant to RCW, that's a state statute, 4.96.041, the necessary expenses of defending Council Member Sawant in any and all judicial hearings to determine the sufficiency of a recall charge shall be paid by the City of Seattle, including all costs associated with an appeal of the decision rendered by the Superior Court concerning the sufficiency of the recall charge.

Again, this bill is necessary in order for Council Member Sawant to avail herself of that statutory provision that I just read into the record.

There are short timelines prescribed by the law, which is related to this particular court case that is already underway.

And there is an initial hearing that will occur on Wednesday, September 16 as it relates to that recall petition.

It is my understanding that the City Council should take action on this ordinance as I just described it in advance of the hearing that is scheduled for September 16th, obviously today is September 14th, in order to allow our city attorney's office to provide legal counsel to council members to want as soon as possible.

So as such, I wanna make sure that you all know that I will be scheduling a very short special meeting of the full city council tomorrow Tuesday September 15th at 1 p.m.

Cody in my office will coordinate with the clerk's office on making sure that we have a quorum available at the meeting to Ensure that we can conduct the meeting necessary at this special meeting again there will be one singular item on that that agenda and that is the council bill one one nine eight nine one that I've just described as appearing on the introduction and referral calendar.

Really, I will open it up for comments after the end of my report, but wanted to quickly just address the full council agenda.

This afternoon on our full council agenda, I'll ask members to consider agenda item 3, which is council bill 19878. That council bill authorizes the execution of a collective bargaining agreement between the City of Seattle and the International Association of Machinists.

and aerospace workers that District Lodge 160, Local 79. The parameters of this collective bargaining agreement were previously reviewed and approved by the Labor Relations Policy Committee, and its key terms include really quickly the following.

The CBA is a three-year agreement on wages, benefits, hours, and other working conditions for the time period of January 1st, 2019 through December 31st of 2020. This bargaining unit includes approximately 40 regularly appointed city employees.

The agreement provides for wage adjustments in 2019 and 2021, as well as a re-opener on annual wage increases for 2021. Finally, the collective bargaining agreement includes agreements on shared health care coverage payments and other matters such as the employee contributions to the premiums for the Washington State Paid Family Medical Leave Program.

That is the end of my report.

I'm happy to open it up for any questions or comments about any aspects of my report.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Council President.

Thanks for the preview of Council Bill 119878. Since I'm not on the Labor Relations Policy Committee, I was happy to hear there's a potential re-opener provision for wage increases since I know we're gonna be getting the budget proposal from the mayor soon and the situation is relatively dire in terms of the deficit that we're facing.

And so if there's any additional information about what would enable the re-opener, I'd be interested in hearing that.

I can also talk with you later about that.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

So I just want to be really clear that it's not a potential term around a re-opener.

The ordinance that we will be considering this afternoon would approve a collective bargaining agreement that does, in fact, include a re-opener on annual wage increases for 2021. And so I think your question is a technical one around what will cause a re-opener to be triggered.

In that instance, I would just say that it is within the power of the executive to request that the reopener be reopened.

I, along as the chair of the Select Labor Committee here, I have every reason to believe that that will be triggered.

The AWI conversations for all of the bargaining units across the city are going to be top of the agenda for the Labor Relations Policy Committee as we move forward.

You are welcome to connect with Karina Bull, who was staffing this particular bill, along with many others on any other technical questions you might have regarding that.

Thank you, that clarification helps a lot.

Thank you so much.

Any other comments or questions on my report?

Council Member Sawant, please.

Thank you, President Gonzalez.

I just wanted to let members of the public know that and also my colleagues know that I'm not commenting on the ordinance that the council president just described for which a special meeting will be held tomorrow because my office has been advised by Wayne Barnett from the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission that I should recuse myself from that issue, which means it would not be legal for me to comment on that issue during council meetings.

Thank you.

Thank you Councilmember Sawant for making that clear on the record and given the need for Councilmember Sawant to recuse herself, she will not be, she will be excused from attending the special full council meeting tomorrow and I will coordinate with her.

how that excuse could be reflected, excused absence can be reflected on the record either this afternoon or at the top of the full council meeting, special full council meeting tomorrow.

So I think it's important for the public to know that Council Member Solant will be recusing herself and will not be voting on the council bill related to the legal defense.

Any other questions or comments for the good of the order before we shift into executive session?

All right.

Hearing none we're going to go ahead and shift into executive session at this point.

Give me just a minute because I seem to have lost my script here.

Here we go.

Sorry about that folks.

Okay.

As presiding officer I am announcing that the Seattle City Council will now convene an executive session.

There will be two executive sessions.

The purpose of executive sessions are to discuss pending potential or actual litigation The council's executive sessions are an opportunity for the council to discuss confidential legal matters with city attorneys as authorized by law.

A legal monitor from the city attorney's office is always present to ensure the council reserves questions of policy for open sessions.

I expect the executive sessions to end by no later than 12 o'clock p.m.

today.

If the executive sessions extend beyond noon, 12 p.m.

today, I will announce the extension and the expected duration in open session.

Council President, our IT team will take about five minutes to ensure that the appropriate attendees are online.

Excellent.

And then we will take take the role.

Correct.

OK.

Everybody just hang tight while we work on those technical issues.

We should be able to get started here in about between five to 10 minutes.