Council Briefing 3112024

Good afternoon, everyone.

Today is March 11th, 2024. The council briefing meeting will come to order.

The time is 2.01.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Moore?

Present.

Councilmember Morales?

Here.

Councilmember Rivera?

Present.

Councilmember Saca?

Here.

Councilmember Strauss?

Present.

Councilmember Wu?

Present.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Here.

Council Member Kettle.

Here.

Council President Nelson.

Present.

Nine present.

Thank you very much.

If there's no objection, the minutes of March 4th, 2024 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

All right, we've got a full agenda today because we've got our final report from OAR's state legislative team, wrapping up what ultimately happened this year in Olympia.

And then next we have an overview of the draft One Seattle Comprehensive Plan, and I'm thinking folks will have some questions and be fully engaged.

And then that's followed by a proclamation from Councilmember Kettle and then our usual committee reports.

On tomorrow's City Council agenda, there are 20 items on the introduction and referral calendar, including the weekly payroll bill, a resolution affirming and making updates to the list of statements of legislative intent or slides that were part of the budget passed last fall.

a land use ordinance on height limits exceptions in Georgetown, an ordinance on Council Member Morales' Connected Community Development Partnership bonus pilot program, a resolution on City Lights wholesale energy risk management policy, a resolution approving the Seattle Transportation Plan, and then 14 appointments to the following bodies, the Pacific Hospital and Development Authority, Ballard Avenue Landmark District Board, Pike Place Market Historical Commission, Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority, Seattle Arts Commission International, and the International Special Review District Board.

The consent calendar consists of minutes from the last two council meetings and the weekly bill payment ordinance, and then five appointments to the Seattle Design Commission.

And you might have noticed that we issued an updated agenda today that does not include the SLI resolution.

We initially planned to hold a vote on Resolution 32129, but that would require suspension of the rules, which is the way this annual resolution has been handled over the past few years.

You know, when you put something on the IRC and then vote on it in the same day, that requires a suspension of the rules.

But this resolution, while you've all had the opportunity to weigh in on it, comment on it, et cetera, so it's not controversial, it's not purely procedural and time sensitive like setting a public hearing date.

So to be consistent with our policy of avoiding voting on resolutions the same day as they were introduced, unless there's a really pressing reason, I decided to remove that item from the agenda for a vote the following week, just so you all know why the agenda changed.

So if you are scrambling for items to write in your committee reports, don't worry.

You might want to move a little more quickly this week than usual because we're going to move on to the state legislative session update and then get into our other matters of business.

Director Tarleton and her team are here to tell us what happened last week and what they think the governor will do and what that means for Seattle.

and then also their presentation, as usual, public.

The presentation and other supporting documents were distributed prior to this meeting and will be available to the public after the meeting on the agenda.

All right.

Director Tarleton, take it away, please.

Thank you very much, Council President Nelson.

Members of the City Council, I'm Gail Tarleton, the Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations here at the City of Seattle.

And another legislative session in Olympia has been a wrap.

So Samir Jenejo and Ana Johnson will fill you in on what happened through Sunny Dye last Thursday and give you a sense of...

all the opportunities here for the city as well as around the state for what happened in Olympia in the 60-day session.

Ana is going to kick it off for you this afternoon.

Good afternoon, council members.

Ana Johnson here with OIR.

I'm the state legislative liaison.

Today we're going to go through how the final budget shaped out, so the operating capital and transportation budgets, and then also go through where some of the final policy bills ended up.

So we distributed before this briefing a policy matrix or a budget matrix that has way more detail of kind of different topics in the budgets.

Today we're just going to go through some of the highlights and then also talk about some areas where the City of Seattle is going to receive direct appropriation from the state.

So starting in the operating budget, two of our priorities this session are listed here that were funded in the final budget, starting with $2.5 million for Seattle's Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program for Public Use and Drug Possession in accordance with the Drug Possession and Public Use Ordinance passed this past fall.

This will be direct funding that will be available in fiscal year, state fiscal year 2025. The city also will receive $800,000 to help with startup costs for an AI center downtown with a collaboration from industry and UW.

Some big highlights for the operating budget to benefit the entire state include $4.4 million to eliminate the local government 25% match for the Basic Law Enforcement Academy or BLEA training.

Previously, local government had to subsidize 25% of the cost to send officers to BLEA training.

There is also $150 million for public and private utilities to provide one-time bill assistance rebates for low income and moderate income residents on their electricity bill.

And there's $62 million to address broadly housing and services for those who are unhoused.

There's also $12 million in Climate Commitment Act, or CCA, revenues to support local governments, organizations, tribes that are searching for, accessing, and reporting on federal grant awards and tax incentives.

And additionally, there's $25 million for the Department of Social and Human Services, or DSHS, their Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance for refugee and asylee services.

I'm sorry to raise my hand and interrupt, especially since we have a full budget, but can you go back to that $4.4 million item?

I hadn't seen that before, so where did that come from, and do you know how much it'll save Seattle?

I don't know specifically for Seattle.

I think it probably depends on how many officers were sending to BLEA training.

This was actually a bill that passed this session sponsored by Senator Mullet.

It's probably in your council bulletin.

And previously local governments, yeah, had been funding 25% match to send officers to the training.

And now that's been eliminated to help improve workforce and retention for local government.

Thank you.

So another big priority this session, both for the city and for the legislature, was to address the behavioral health crisis, substance use disorder occurring in our community for our residences.

And so this state operating budget does a number of things in the behavioral health space.

We've included some of them here.

And just to kind of go through some of the highlights, there's $16.9 million for assertive community treatment teams or PACT teams.

This is a King County program.

There's also 2.6 million for substance use or drug overdose prevention campaigns.

These are associated with two bills that passed this session, also in your council bulletin for K through 12, as well as higher ed.

There's 3 million for three additional health engagement hubs, which are facilities that were established last session via the Blake bill.

And there's 3.7 million for street medicine teams.

1 million of that is for King County specifically.

2.5 million for recovery navigator programs.

This program also exists within King County.

900,000 for public health dispensing machines.

$5.2 million to expand the distribution of naloxone and $1.2 million to purchase a supply of naloxone specifically for first responders.

$1.85 million for downtown or DESC's Opioid Recovery and Care and Access Center, which is located in the City of Seattle.

$1 million for Evergreen Treatment Services, also located in the City of Seattle, and $1.1 million for community-based harm reduction programs.

Erica Kaurudar, Moving on to some of the highlights in the capital budget, the capital budget included 95 million 95.6 million of federal funding of broadband equity access and deployment program projects or.

Erica Kaurudar, Bead for short there's also 127 million increase for the housing trust fund 45 million for clean building performance grants.

$4 million for clean energy retrofit dollars that is specifically for city-owned tier one and tier two buildings to help cities with energy audits.

$50 million for clean energy community decarbonization projects, $105 million for community EV charging grants, $25 million for green jobs and infrastructure projects, which cities are also eligible to apply for.

Additionally, there's $25 million for the rapid capital acquisition program.

This is to help with the encampment resolutions on state right-of-ways and help with rapidly acquiring properties to rehouse folks.

There's also $3.5 million in the capital budget also for DESC's opioid recovery care and access facility.

And there's also $20 million for preparation for the FIFA World Cup.

A direct appropriation that the city will receive from the capital budget is $1.25 million.

And this is for the Seattle Public Utilities to help them acquire a property in South Park, which will help with a water treatment facility as well as flood mitigation.

I'm not going to go through this whole slide, but I just wanted to prepare this for you all to be aware of all the different types of community projects that are going to be receiving funding directly from the state capital budget.

So these are some of the organizations and projects that will receive funding, these exist throughout the entire city, all the legislative districts, some of it is for nonprofits, some of it's for healthcare or behavioral health facilities, some for early learning for housing.

So this is included in the documents, and you can refer back to it later.

But lots of great projects that received funding in this supplemental capital budget.

I'll go over the transportation budget now.

The transportation budget included almost $200 million for ferry system improvements, including the purchase and conversion of hybrid electric ferries.

Also, $30 million for traffic safety measures, including funding for impaired driving and curtailing speeding.

The transportation budget also fully funds the 520 project cost increase.

That is $52 million cost increase in this current volume, and then $770 million in future years.

The budget also provides $2 million to WSDOT for cleanups of right-of-way encampments, also $1 million for World Cup transportation planning.

And in some city priorities, the city will be getting $4 million for Avenue North safety improvements.

This is a part of the move-ahead $50 million that the city received in the move-ahead package a couple years ago.

So we're now receiving the first $4 million of that $50 million.

We're also receiving additional funding for a study that the OPCD is doing on reconnecting South Park, the removal of Highway 99 in South Park.

The city previously received $400,000 for that study and asked for additional money to make sure the study is actually helpful to the community.

So we received additional $300,000 for that study.

Also, SDOT will be receiving $500,000 for a digital conflict area awareness program, which is meant to help facilitate autonomous vehicles by creating a program that would create machine-readable information for these vehicles and other operators to be able to see conflict areas that are like school zones or construction work zones, emergency zones, areas in which that they should avoid.

This is a pilot program that SDOT will be doing and then submitting a report to the legislature.

Moving on to some highlights of bills that passed.

Many of these you've probably heard about, and so I'll just kind of go over them quickly.

But these are bills that did end up passing into law.

So House Bill 2044 related to the non-subplant restriction for King County.

2348 relates to the Harborview funding gap.

House Bill 2354 is a new requirement for tax increment financing.

So establishing requirements to assess impacts on all junior taxing districts before we do a TIF.

In the climate environment space, a lot of bills that you might have heard in our briefings before, but I'll go over them briefly.

House Bill 1185 is creating or updating an extended producer responsibility program for mercury containing light products.

House Bill 1368 requires buses to go zero emission as they begin to phase out and depreciate.

House Bill 1689 is the bill that accelerates Puget Sound Energy's clean energy transition.

House Bill 1676 is updating and improving the incentive structure for tier one and tier two buildings to help with their compliance with the state energy performance standard.

House Bill 2156 creates more solar consumer protections.

House Bill 2301 is a bill that improves organic material waste management.

And Senate Bill 5931 is a bill that begins the regulatory process for 6 PPD as well as tire products.

And then finally, Senate Bill 6058, this is a bill that begins the process to link Washington's carbon market, CTA market, with Quebec and California.

In the general government space, Bill 5838 would procreate an artificial intelligence task force to make recommendations for the regulation of generative AI.

Senate Bill 6040 relates to prompt pay.

It changed a little bit in the process, and what it ended up is now requires the PARP, which is an advisory review board, to review the extent to which prompt pay statutes currently meet the needs of small businesses, particularly women and minority-owned businesses.

And House Bill 2000 relates to the Office of International Relations and Protocol, which is in the Office of the Lieutenant Governor, making improvements and changes to that office to ensure continued international leadership and international relations for the state.

Health care and behavioral health, there are a number of – I will mostly focus on behavioral health bills that passed this session.

It was a big priority this year.

Again, many of these we've talked about in the past.

House Bill 1929, establishing the Post-Impatient Housing Program for Young Adults.

1939 is enacting the Social Work Licensure Compact.

And also a number of bills related to opioid drug overdose prevention and awareness.

The 1956 and Senate Bill 5906 create an overdose prevention campaign, a statewide prevention campaign, and also one that would allow the OSPI to also make substance use prevention and awareness materials for schools.

And House Bill 2112 does something similar for higher education, also requiring these institutions of higher education to make naloxone and fennel strips available to students on campus.

Senate Bill 6095 authorizes the Secretary of the Department of Health to issue prescription or standing orders to control and prevent the spread of any threat to public health, which could be a behavioral health related.

And then number of bills on behavioral health workforce, like House Bill 2247 makes a number of changes to increase the behavioral health workforce.

Senate Bill 6228 makes changes on the insurance side of things, requiring health plans to authorize 14-day of inpatient SUD treatment on first utilization review.

House Bill 2396 is also on public outreach campaigns on fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.

And Senate Bill 6251 is structural.

It relates to behavioral health administrative service organizations, which are, in our case, in the county, and then also ensures that they are integrated with the upcoming 988 system.

Housing and homelessness, the number of housing bills passed this session.

House Bill 1054 prohibits associations and common interest communities from regulating the number of individuals, unrelated people that may occupy a unit.

House Bill 1892 creates a workforce housing accelerator revolving loan program.

House Bill 1998 requires a city to allow co-living housing and also prohibit cities from imposing certain regulations or restrictions on co-living housing, which are also known as single residence occupancy.

Senate Bill 6015 requires a number of small changes to ensure the city's enforcing certain parking configurations for residential development.

House Bill 2329 requires the Office of the Insurance Commissioner to conduct a study on insurance coverage issues for housing providers who are receiving housing trust fund resources and serving extremely low-income households.

House Bill 2071 directs the Washington State Building Code Council to convene groups to recommend changes to apply the Washington State Residential Code to multiplex housing and also recommend changes for the International Building Code to allow smaller dwelling units.

Senate Bill 6175 is about office to residential conversion.

So this will allow a city to establish a sales and use tax deferral program for the conversion of underutilized commercial property to affordable housing.

House Bill 2012 is a expanding of property tax and existing property tax exemption for nonprofit organizations by allowing nonprofits to receive funding from additional sources like city and county funding sources.

And House Bill 2003 creates a leasehold access tax exemption when public lands are used for affordable housing.

Some labor bills, again, many of these we mentioned.

2382 provides death benefits for TNC workers.

1905 is extending the Equal Pay Act to all people in a protected class.

House Bill 2266 relates to safety and health issues for workers in performing construction activities, who menstruate or express milk or both.

Senate Bill 6007 concerning employment standards for grocery workers.

Senate Bill 5793 relates to paid sick leave expansion.

Senate Bill 5778 relates to employers prohibiting employers from taking adverse action against employees who refuse to attend or participate in employer sponsored meetings when which the primary purpose is to communicate the employer's opinion concerning religious or political matters.

House Bill 2022 is relating to construction crane safety.

And one of the local government requirements is that it requires local governments to align permit issuance for street closures and provide certain notices related to construction cranes.

And Senate Bill 6105 relates to safer working conditions for workers in adult entertainment establishments and does a number of things.

All right, moving on to public safety and criminal justice, starting with House Bill 2088. This bill extends liability protections to crisis teams like co-response and behavioral health crisis teams.

House Bill 2153 is a bill that It does a number of things, but it's meant to help with the theft of catalytic converters.

House Bill 2217 is a bill that provides that cases of criminal offense committed by those under the age of 18 stay within the jurisdiction of juvenile court.

Senate Bill 5424 is a bill that allows flexible work for law enforcement.

So a bill that creates essentially permits the ability to have law enforcement that work part time.

Senate Bill 6157 is a bill that permits DACA recipients to be able to apply for civil service positions such as local law enforcement.

Senate Bill 6009 is a bill that eliminates the use of hog tying by law enforcement.

And then listed here at the last bullet is all four gun violence prevention bills that have passed related to restricting firearms in sensitive places, requiring the reporting of lost or stolen firearms, more accountability requirements for firearm dealers, and then a bill that also allows the destruction of firearms by local law enforcement or Washington State Patrol obtained through criminal activity.

And then within the social programs and education space, there was a number of bills related to childcare access, affordability, workforce listed here.

So House Bill 2111, this bill clarifies requirements for subsidized childcare.

House Bill 2124 expands program eligibility for subsidized childcare.

House Bill 2195 strengthens the state's early learning facilities funding within the capital budget.

Senate Bill 5774 improves DCYF's fingerprint and background check system for those who want to be employed in the child care workforce.

And Senate Bill 6038 expands an existing B&O tax exemption for services for children up to 12 years old, where it previously was only up to programs for serving children up to seven years old.

And then House Bill 1889 is a bill that allows people to receive professional licenses and certifications regardless of their immigration or citizenship status.

House Bill 1945 is a bill that streamlines the program access for food assistance.

This bill essentially says if you're already on Working Connections Child Care or ECAP, which is the child care subsidy program, then you're already eligible for food assistance.

House Bill 2415 is a bill that increases the maximum amount for the Diversion Cash Assistance Program under TANF, and this is an emergency cash assistance program that eligible individuals can receive.

It increases the amount from $1,500 to $2,000.

And then House Bill 2007 expands the TANF time limit extension program.

For transportation, House Bill 1989 increased the graffiti abatement and reduction pilot program within WASH.PAST.

Then also House Bill 2384, which is a traffic that we've talked about many times was a big priority for the city.

And so I have listed and went through a number of versions as I went through this session.

And so I listed kind of some of where it ended up.

And so some of these are, would be very helpful to the city, including authorizing civilian employees to review infractions detected through cameras, making permanent our current pilot program.

authorizing cameras to be used to detect speed violations on state routes within city limits.

Also, ensuring that the revenue can be – all revenue will be going to the local government except for after four years, 25 percent of the revenue would go to a state account.

Also, restricts the use of the revenues for traffic safety activities.

Establishes some maximum fines for traffic camera violations.

allows local governments to adopt income-based fines, and it also allows the transit lane cameras to be mounted onto buses.

There's a number of bills that did not make it, so this is not at all an exhaustive list, but these are some of the ones that we were watching closely that did not make it.

Transit-oriented development, the EPR bill for paper and packaging products, a couple of housing bills related to compliance with the housing element of the Growth Management Act, citing of traditional housing, neighborhood cafes, also even numbered years elections, bill related to hospital mergers and acquisitions, the residential tenants bill, unemployment for striking workers, the bill creating an office of independent prosecutions at the state level, a couple of state bills, tax bills were modifying the REIT tax and also lifting the local property tax that did not pass, and also a bill decriminalizing Jane Watkins also did not pass.

Many of these we can expect to come back next year in some form or another.

That's our presentation and thanks again for listening and happy to answer any questions.

So did we win?

Just kidding.

I know it was a short session and there was a lot that was going on there toward the end.

So a qualitative assessment of this past session and what it means for Seattle and also what the governor will do.

I'll let Ana and Samir describe the process that these bills and the budget have to go through in order to be signed into law by the governor.

A general assessment for a short session, I'll just say that it's not just a short session, it's a political campaign year.

And so the legislators really like to get out on time, on sunny day, to be able to start their campaigns.

As I've mentioned to you, I think in previous sessions, this will be a tumultuous amount of change at the state government in 2024. We'll have a new governor elected, an open seat there.

A new attorney general, an open seat there.

A new insurance commissioner, open seat there.

And a new lands commissioner, open seat there.

So key executive branch elections are on the ballot this year.

Many state legislators, senior state legislators, have announced their retirement last week and the week before.

And so there will be changes in leadership in the Senate, potentially in the House, not clear.

And so for these many policy bills to have moved through and actually been adopted is an extraordinary amount of work accomplished in a really short period of time.

And what it usually reflects is that a lot of these pieces of legislation, and Samir and Ana and I were talking about this, they're years in the process, right?

They're in the sausage-making process, but it takes years for many of these pieces of policy to cross the finish line.

And so many things that did cross the finish line have been in the works for a number of sessions.

And this is the norm.

And that's why I always say there's an opportunity to win in the short run, and there's an opportunity to win in the long run, as long as you have the staying power to persist.

Because as Sameer finished with the policy bills, many of these that did not pass this session will come back again, maybe next year, maybe the year after that.

And in a general sense, I do want to say and to clarify an important thing, there were six ballot measures that were sent to the legislature that would be on the statewide ballot.

The legislature chose not to take action on three of them, and so they will go to the statewide ballot.

The three that the legislature chose to take action on, which Samir and Ana reported on last week, the legislature chose to pass into law.

And so those three pieces of legislation are actually now state law.

They don't go to the governor's desk for signature and they don't go to the ballot.

So there will be three ballot measures statewide on the ballot this year that did not get acted on by the legislature.

So there will be more happening at the end of the election season.

We'll find out the outcome of those three ballot measures.

And Samir and Ana did not touch on the implications of that, but Samir and Ana, you may want to mention to the council what will happen to some of the budget actions that were taken this session that presume a certain access to revenue that may or may not be there.

So, Ana, you may want to mention that.

Sure.

Namely, I think we're mostly tracking the Climate Commitment Act revenues.

Largely, the budget writers within the budget stipulated that the Climate Commitment Act revenues will not be available to 2025, and they're also subject to null and void if the initiative to repeal the Climate Commitment Act does pass.

So many things that we're excited about as a city, grant programs and direct appropriation for things that CCA revenues were used for, are hinging on the initiative in the fall.

So specifically, actually, our $4 million appropriation for Aurora used Climate Commitment Act revenues in the funding of that.

So that is not available until 2025. And then additionally, if the CCA is repealed, that $4 million is null and void.

And we'll have to come back to the legislature to ask them to appropriate different source of funding for that in the future if that's the case.

But yeah, so certainly a lot at stake with that initiative.

And then with the capital gains, the capital gains is used to subsidize a lot of early learning, childcare, and the K-12 space.

So definitely would impact on our residents and our early learning providers as well if capital gains is repealed.

Thank you very much for that synopsis.

I appreciate that.

Council Member Moore.

Oh, thank you.

Well, thank you very much for this great wrap-up.

Lots to...

I've got so many circles I have to go back and read the details of.

But thank you for all of your work, actually, through this legislative session.

Very much appreciative.

I just had one point of clarification relating to the $25 million for DSHS, Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance for refugee asylee services.

So it was my understanding that $2.5 million of that money was directly given to Tukwila to provide additional shelter for the asylum seekers who have come before this body as well as numerous other bodies.

Is that correct?

There is an additional $2.5 million, so not inclusive of the $25 million, that's provided to the City of Tukwila for reimbursement of their costs for sheltering those people.

So there will be $2.5 million immediately or soon to be available to the community?

I believe almost all of that money is fiscal year 25, which starts on July 1st.

It's only about 250,000 of the 25 million that was authorized in the fiscal year 2024 budget.

And so that is available, but it goes to the school districts where there are individual students in those school districts requiring assistance.

So the vast majority of the 25 million not available until 1 July 2024.

Right.

My understanding from the paper was that $2.5 million of that $25 million was directly given to Tukwila to provide for shelter for the asylum seekers.

Was that separate, Samir, or in addition to?

It's in addition to the $25 million.

Okay.

So there is that money immediately available.

Thank you.

Council Member Saka.

Thank you, Madam President, and thank you, Director Tarleton, Ana, and Samir for another very insightful presentation, and thank you for guiding us through, well, guiding me through my first state legislative session as a Seattle City Councilmember.

I have a question that pertains to the transportation budget on specifically slide six there.

That second bullet states that $30.8 million is invested for various traffic safety measures, including at the end $2.5 million for combating impaired driving.

So presumably that's some form of emphasis patrol of some sort.

But is there any, is part of that 30 point, so question one, is part of that $30.8 million, do we have any initial read or sense of like how many of that is going to be invested in like WSDOT assets within the city of Seattle?

So that's question one.

Question two is, I think on the fourth bullet there, $2 million to WSDOT for right-of-way encampment cleanups.

Do we have any, like, how does that compare to what the spend has been historically, more specifically last year for that same line item?

Yeah, on the traffic safety piece, that's something that we don't have a sense yet as to how much of that would be coming to projects within the city of Seattle, but that's something that we'll be tracking.

And then on the encampment cleanup, so the last year they funded...

16 million dollars for the cabinet resolution program which is what that funds a lot of the outreach um and services uh so this specific funding is two million dollars is for the actual cleanup of sites um and related to sites that are some sort of safety risk uh and so we're also not sure how much of that would be on within the city but that's something that we're uh interested in learning more about from washout as the budget gets signed into law we'll be reaching out to them to find out more Thank you.

Okay.

I'm not seeing anybody else's hands raised, so we'll draw this to a conclusion.

I know that we're all gathering for a reception next week to honor Director Tarleton's departure from the city, but I just wanted to take this opportunity during her last appearance before this council to thank you for your years of service to the city and the state and the country.

So thank you very much.

We'll miss you.

Thank you, Council President, and it has been an honor and a privilege to serve this city and all of you on the council and our mayor and all of the fantastic employees in this city.

Thank you so much.

Council President, I did have my hand raised.

I'm sorry.

I might have gotten up there late.

I was just going to say the same thing that you just said, which is thank you, Director Tarleton, for your service to our nation, our state, our region, and our city, and doing a little bit of research.

I believe this is your 11th legislative session in a row after you were elected in 2012?

If you only include regular sessions.

If you include special, it's a few more.

So over a decade of legislative sessions after being elected countywide as a port commissioner in 2007. So if you do the math, a number of legislative sessions back to that, we're not going to count the years.

And doing a little bit of research, I read, and maybe you can confirm for me, that you were the first woman to address a joint session of the Russian Parliament in 1996.

That is a true statement.

And if we look, colleagues, that was...

That was a different world.

Nearly 30 years ago, and it just demonstrates the amount of work that you do to be able to break through ceiling, glass, walls, doors, all of it in the service for the great people of the United States, Washington, and Seattle.

So thank you, Director.

Ms. Thank you, Councilmember.

And thank you, Council President, for your time.

Thank you, Samir and Ana, for a fantastic two sessions under your belt now.

And for this wrap, it was a really informative way of saying a lot happened in a really short time.

Just remember that that can happen.

Ms.

Thank you.

Ms. Oh, yes.

Thank you very much.

All right, moving on, we have a presentation from the Office of Planning and Community Development and the Mayor's Office on the Mayor's One Seattle Comprehensive Plan.

Before I, while they're coming up to the table and giving hugs to Gail over there, I just wanted to mention that what we're doing here by having a briefing on this proposal on a Monday, I'm going back to the old practice of providing an opportunity for people to hear about incoming complex legislation that will all be really engaged in, but that benefit people, especially who do not serve on the particular committee that will process the legislation, in this case, the Land Use Committee.

What we're doing here is we're taking the opportunity of us all being together to get an introduction to this plan.

And we're not hiding the ball and preventing public comment by having it on a Monday and not on a Tuesday or anything like that.

We're just taking advantage of the time we have together to start to dig into this plan because it's gonna take a while to get public feedback.

And you are probably going to do this, but I will mention that there are community meetings on this plan on March 14th, March 19th, March 26th, April 3rd, April 16th, April 25th, April 30th, and May 2nd.

So there's ample opportunity for hopefully the whole city to get involved as well as council members.

Go ahead and take it away, please.

Introduce yourselves and you may begin.

Chris Devias, Mayor's Office.

Rico Kidding-Dongo, Director, Office of Planning and Community Development.

There we go.

Michael Hubner, Office of Planning and Community Development.

Thank you.

So I'm going to kick it off with a few comments.

Good afternoon, council members.

Thank you for hosting us today.

We appreciate the full council's interest in learning more about the growth strategy in the mayor's draft comprehensive plan, as every district in the city has a role to play in accommodating future growth.

As you are aware, our city in the wider Puget Sound region is growing rapidly, and Seattle has led in planning for an accommodating job and housing growth.

Fun fact, since 2010, the city has added more people than the entire population of Bellevue.

And housing production has proceeded at a fairly phenomenal clip as well.

At various times over the past decade, Seattle has led both large cities in Washington State and across the nation in the number of housing units built per capita.

Since our comp plan was adopted in 2015, we have added 70,000 homes.

meeting our current 20-year growth target in just eight years.

This statistic also illustrates that growth targets are not the same thing as zoning capacity.

Even today, with this rapid expansion of housing in Seattle in recent years, our current zoned capacity for new housing stands at 165,000 units.

This does not include our current proposed plan.

and the additional capacity that will be added with it.

So when we talk about the draft plan accommodating 100,000 new units, this is our baseline projection for what will get built.

But it is by no means the limit on what can be built given our zoned capacity.

As there's been a lot of confusion around this point, it seemed worth emphasizing.

OPCD will also have more to say about this during their presentation as well.

Now I'd like to briefly turn to highlighting how the Mayor's Growth Strategy is designed to create housing abundance in our city.

The proposal builds upon the city's successful ADU law from 2019, which has served as a model for other cities across the country.

The proposed changes will provide even greater infill opportunities for middle housing in neighborhood residential zones.

The plan supports more options for starter homes for young people and downsizing opportunities for older residents.

And we expect much of this middle housing to be more affordable than what is currently on offer.

In addition, the proposal identifies select areas and neighborhood residential zones to up zone to low rise or mid rise, going well beyond the requirements of HB 1110. The mayor's plan also focuses on transit corridors with capacity for many more apartments and condos within an expanded network of regional, urban, and neighborhood centers, ensuring we take advantage of our transit-oriented investments.

The proposal also makes it easier to provide needed affordable housing throughout city neighborhoods especially home ownership opportunities.

And the Mayor's plan envisions corner stores throughout neighborhood residential zones, which could mean more cafes, restaurants, and pubs with an easy walking distance.

In sum, we believe the new proposed zoning that will accompany this plan will add tens of thousands of new and more affordable units in a range of sizes and types across the city.

And in crafting this proposal, the mayor has strived to balance the need for more housing with the very real risks associated with displacement in a rapidly growing city.

Ultimately, we know that zoning alone cannot address the high cost of housing in Seattle.

Market forces beyond the city's control, such as high interest rates and construction costs, can wreak havoc on production and affordability.

Yet there are some factors that do fall within the city's control.

To that end, through his one Seattle housing agenda, Mayor Harrell has directed city staff to take a hard look at what we can do to speed and ease housing production and increase affordability.

While we've already taken some major steps towards this goal, we are committed to identifying and doing more.

So with that, I'm going to turn over the presentation to our esteemed OPCD director to present the formal slide deck.

Thank you.

Thank you, Krista.

Just to lay expectations, she is far more polished than I am.

So all of you know this.

The comprehensive plan, the update that we're doing currently is to project what the next 20 years of growth and development look like for our city.

It's something that we are required to do by the state and by the Peterson Regional Council.

It used to be required on an eight-year cycle to do the update.

Now it's every 10 years.

This is work that we started two years ago.

We have a...

The Seattle 2035 plan, our current comprehensive plan, you can pull down online to see details of what our plan is that we're operating under today.

And that is the foundation for the plan that we're updating currently.

So in the time that we have with you today, we're going to give you an overview of the draft plan.

We're going to talk about our new growth strategy.

We'll give you an update regarding our regional and urban centers.

We'll talk about the new concept of neighborhood centers.

We'll also talk about our urban neighborhoods and implementation of HB 1110. And then we'll talk about our public engagement plan for the year.

So we know that we are living through a housing crisis, and this is something that's happening nationwide in addition to happening here in Seattle.

We know that for Seattle, that the production of housing units has not matched the creation of new jobs.

We have grown as a city in the number of jobs that we have in excess of the housing units that we provide.

And in addition to that, and partially because of that, housing costs have become exceedingly unaffordable, both rental and ownership opportunities.

We are trying to address all of that in this plan, in addition to addressing issues of exclusion and displacement and trying to find opportunities for generational wealth opportunities for BIPOC families.

So we're in year three of this effort.

We kicked off the project launch in 2022, did a robust environmental impact statement scoping period, as well as a large public engagement effort at the beginning of last year.

Spent most of the last year in the development of the draft plan.

And then we'll talk to you a little bit later about what our plans are for later this year.

With the launch of the plan now in March, we'll begin a two-month period of public engagement, understanding that there's two separate public engagement processes for doing eight open houses that are related to reaching out into each of your districts related to the draft plan itself.

And then with the draft environmental impact statement, we have a requirement for two public engagement sessions there as well.

And just for clarity, there are three components that we're releasing to you.

One is the draft plan, which includes over 14 elements, which are the chapters of the plan.

And they...

provide a structural framework for policy making for the city and the cross coordination of all of our departments.

We have the neighborhood residential zoning report That report will give you insight into Seattle, into our proposal for Seattle's implementation of HB 1110, and then the draft environmental impact statement, which is required for any action of this scale, particularly with the up zone that's being contemplated.

And with that, I will pass to Michael Huebner.

Thank you, Rico.

Can you hear me okay?

I'm neither as polished as Rico nor my colleague Chris Devias in the mayor's office, but I'm going to cover just some high points from the content of the plan, focusing on the growth strategy, um but just first wanted to characterize the document as a whole as a high-level policy document it has 13 elements or chapters they cover a range of policy topics you can see on the slide from transportation to land use to economic development and and more if there's interest among council members we can certainly come back um to either Council committees, other forums to brief you on the content of those policy elements.

We're going to focus on the growth strategy, which is the heart of the plan today.

Briefly, the balance of the goals and policies and the other elements can be summarized as advancing four key moves in the plan.

One is housing and affordability.

The growth strategy is really the heart of that and growing the supply and diversity of housing across the city.

But we also have an expanded and enhanced housing policy element and a housing appendix with a wealth of data that supports the growth strategy and our work on housing policy.

Under equity and opportunity, there are numerous policies across the plan that speak to racial equity, social and economic equity across the city, focusing on making community investments in communities that have suffered from decades of underinvestment, supporting a range of anti-displacement tools and elevating the role of community as we engage people around the implementation of the plan and partnering with communities in implementing it.

And finally, climate and sustainability.

One of the key features of this plan update is also responsive to some new state law that guides this work, is a new and expanded climate and environment element.

This element supports the city's aggressive targets to reduce and eliminate carbon pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades, and also addresses the climate impacts, heat, smoke, flooding, and others that especially are impacting our frontline communities of color across the city.

So you'll see all of those themes reflected across the elements of the plan.

Next slide, please.

Next slide.

I'm gonna turn to the growth strategy now.

We're gonna do a fairly quick flyover of its features and then open it up for some questions.

To begin with, the growth strategy, what it is, it's a policy roadmap, if you will, that helps to guide the location and types of development of land in the city to accommodate housing and jobs in the future.

The city's current strategy is the urban village strategy.

It was adopted about 30 years ago in the early 1990s with our first plan under the State's Growth Management Act.

This strategy focuses nearly all of our growth within small areas of the city that are designated as urban centers or villages.

The strategy has been successful in helping the city grow and in creating and enhancing walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods across the city that have access to regional transit.

locations like downtown and Roosevelt, Columbia City, and many others across the city.

The new growth strategy builds on what has worked in urban villages, but addresses gaps and unmet needs going forward for housing in all neighborhoods.

And the One Seattle Plan identifies five place types that make up the entirety of the city.

The first is regional centers.

These, in the current plan, are called urban centers.

We're renaming to reflect their regional importance.

They're designated by the Puget Sound Regional Council as regional growth centers.

These are the city's densest neighborhoods.

They have a mix of housing and jobs and amenities and access to regional transit.

The next place type is called urban center, previously urban villages.

We're now calling all of these areas of concentrated growth centers at different levels of intensity and size.

So urban center is the next one down in that hierarchy.

Previously, we called those urban villages.

They also provide a dense mix of housing and jobs and services that have more of a citywide role in meeting the needs of our communities.

They're designated by the Growth Management Planning Council as countywide centers.

We have a new place type, another layer down the rung, of center types called neighborhood centers.

These are like regional and urban centers, but much smaller at more of a neighborhood scale and provide a mix of housing choices and goods and services to meet people's everyday needs in a neighborhood setting.

And a new place type called urban neighborhood encompasses the balance of the residential areas of our city.

It's in the urban neighborhood that we will be implementing the new neighborhood residential zoning that I'll describe in forthcoming slides.

But as well, we have transit, frequent transit networks that run through urban neighborhood that we will also be looking to up zone to higher density zoning for smaller apartments or condominiums that are adjacent to transit.

Just for the record, there is another important place type, especially for accommodating jobs called our manufacturing and industrial centers.

They were updated in both the comprehensive plan and in zoning in 2023. We are not proposing any further changes to the MICs or manufacturing industrial centers with this major update.

Next slide, please.

So here's the map that shows the new strategy.

If you can see on the legend here, the very dark blue are our regional centers.

The navy blue is our urban centers.

The light blue circles are the neighborhood centers.

Navy's the urban center.

The balance of the city in cream and with the orange transit routes shown on the map is the urban neighborhood place type, and gray are the manufacturing industrial centers.

As Krista noted in the introductory remarks, there are some important points regarding the overall impact of this strategy on accommodating growth in the city going forward.

As a whole, They function to provide more diverse housing options across the city.

And you can see the geographic spread of these place types provides a diversity of housing options in many areas.

But it also provides that capacity that is necessary to meet and really go well beyond our state and regional obligations under the Growth Management Act.

We have a growth target of 80,000 housing units over the next 20 years.

We anticipate that with the zoning changes that would follow on this strategy, that we would grow by at least 100,000 units over the next 20 years and the capacity that would be created through this new zoning.

And we don't have a zoning proposal at this point in the process.

We will later in 2024, and we can generate some harder numbers on this.

But we anticipate that the capacity will be twice that 100,000 number, at least 200,000 potential housing units.

So that's a lot of room to accommodate growth as we look forward over the next 20 years.

Next slide, please.

I'm going to just dig a little bit deeper on each place type, especially noting some of the key changes.

Next slide, please.

Regional centers, we have seven regional centers across the city.

Six of these are existing urban centers in the current plan.

Those include four regional centers around the greater downtown area, along with the University District in Northgate.

And the existing Ballard Urban Village, we are proposing to designate as a regional center.

This isn't a land use change for Ballard.

It really is more of a recognition of the density and the existing and future transit investments in Ballard.

It qualifies as a regional center with a PSRC, and we think it needs to be elevated.

And that'll help to qualify Ballard, for example, to the same transportation funding that is prioritized for regional centers by the PSRC in the future.

We expect the regional centers to play a big role as the city grows going forward.

A third to 40% of the housing we anticipate will be in these regional centers as well as most of the employment, especially office employment.

And we'll be implementing any further land use changes or investments that are needed to ensure that they can play that role through a set of sub-area plans the OPCD is working on now, starting with downtown.

and completed over the next several years, those will be amended into the comprehensive plan itself.

So that's an important planning process that's happening in parallel to the ComPlan update.

Next slide.

Urban centers.

We have 24 urban centers across the city.

23 of these are existing urban villages, and there is one new proposed urban center at the Northeast 130th Street light rail station, which is coming into service in 2026. We've also, and you can see here on the map, you'll see there's some hard boundaries, some clear boundaries on some of the centers and more of a fuzzy boundary on others.

The fuzzy boundaries represent the six urban centers where we are proposing an expansion to encompass more of a full walk area around transit and the business core of each area.

They include Greenwood-Finney, Upper Queen Anne, West Seattle Junction at Avalon, Admiral Morgan Junction, and Othello at Graham Street.

We will be implementing any land use changes that are needed within the expansion areas through a zoning proposal that OPCD will release later this year, along with proposed boundaries for each of those expansion areas.

And we will be doing a robust second round of community engagement in those local areas as we release the zoning proposal.

Next slide.

Turning to neighborhood centers.

Next slide, please.

There are also 24 neighborhood centers.

That is an accident.

We didn't plan it that way, but there are 24 each of the urban and neighborhood centers.

As you can see on the map here, these are much smaller areas.

Again, they don't have defined boundaries in this proposal.

These are more locations and relative sizes that we're conveying to the public and to you today.

The neighborhood centers are like urban centers, just much smaller.

The idea here is to build on existing neighborhood commercial districts and bus rapid transit stations and other frequent transit nodes to provide more housing choices in a relatively small radius of about three blocks around those central places.

The idea here is to provide more housing near the things that people need and make their lives in a neighborhood rich.

every day, the stores, urban amenities, transit access, through new zoning for more apartments within these small circles.

Again, what you will see later this year is a specific zoning proposal for these neighborhood centers, and we will do a round of community engagement in each area of the city to get feedback on that.

Next slide.

Here is just one example of the kind of existing neighborhood node.

This is in Maple Leaf on Northeast Roosevelt Way.

And this shows the array of shops and services, parks, schools, healthcare facilities, and transit that's available in this node.

And the idea is to provide more housing opportunities within the several blocks surrounding the central place.

Next slide, please.

Next slide, yes.

Finally, urban neighborhoods.

The urban neighborhoods are the balance of the residential areas in the city.

They play a two-fold role in accommodating housing going forward.

One, and this is really the main one, is that most of these areas showed in the cream color here are in neighborhood residential zoning.

That's a current zoning designation in the city.

It allows up to three units with an accessory dwelling unit attached and one detached.

These neighborhood residential zones would be replaced by new zoning that is compliant with the state law, House Bill 1110, to allow a range of middle housing types.

Middle housing includes duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, in some places sixplexes, townhomes, cottage housing, courtyard apartments, and stacked flats.

So it's quite a list of a variety of of low-scale housing types that can meet the needs of more households and a more affordable cost.

Four units would be the limit on a typical Seattle lot of 5,000 square feet in most of these locations.

Six units, where it is close, within a quarter mile of major transit stops.

There's a part of this proposal is to tailor this zoning to be less impactful in areas of higher displacement.

There are affordable housing incentives and a corner store option, which I'll touch on briefly.

The other thing going on here is along the transit routes you see in the darker orange here is that we would be looking at areas that are currently in neighborhood residential zoning and consider up zones to more of an apartment zone like one of our low-rise zones directly along the transit routes.

Next slide, please.

This is just an example of the kind of design study sketch work that we did in the neighborhood residential report.

That's not in the plan itself, but in that additional supporting document, this shows some four unit per lot options on a 5,000 square foot lot.

And you can see they could take a variety of forms and arrangements attached, detached on an alley with no alley access.

What would that look like?

How would that fit on a typical Seattle lot?

Next slide, please.

And here are some three-story, three-unit options as well.

We will continue to see some development that's at three units on a lot, and it could look a variety of ways, not confined to the model that currently is only available for development at three units with that one principal unit and two ADUs.

There's more flexibility to provide different types of housing at three or four or even more units per lot, especially larger lots.

Next slide, please.

To address the inclusive and affordable vision that we have for neighborhood residential areas, there are a couple of things going on.

First of all, the new housing that could be built under the middle housing provisions of our new neighborhood residential zoning would enable builders to produce the kinds of units that cost a lot less than a typical full-scale detached single-family home.

All of the types I talked about coming at price points, they're significantly below what a detached home would typically cost in Seattle now.

But we know that's not going to meet the need of all households, particularly under area median income, and we're proposing two incentives for deeper affordability.

One is required under state law that where you would otherwise only be able to build four units, an additional two units, up to six, would be allowed as long as two units in the project were affordable at and there are a variety of levels stipulated under state law that we would meet.

We think that we need to go do better than that with our affordable housing incentives, and we're proposing a deeper incentive specifically near major transit stops to add an additional story to the development.

Across all of the new neighborhood residential, we'd be talking about three-story development.

This would allow for four-story development, particularly to meet the needs and a model that would work for nonprofit affordable housing developers to build infill projects that provide affordable home ownership, again, near transit.

Next slide.

very briefly on the corner store concept.

This isn't a residential provision in the proposal, but it does provide a way to undo decades, really, of separation of residential and commercial uses that has made the reality for many Seattle neighborhoods that you need to get into your car to meet your everyday needs.

This proposal would allow non-residential uses, small commercial, cafe, or even other non-residential uses that are things that people need every day, daycare, perhaps other uses, on-corner locations, not only in neighborhood residential, but potentially in our low-rise zones as well.

These could be accommodated through conversions of existing buildings or in new construction.

Next slide.

And then a final note on how we're addressing the areas at risk of displacement through this proposal and.

A cornerstone of this entire plan is to enable the city to grow without displacing our existing communities, one of those strategies is in this neighborhood residential concept, the new zoning we heard loud and clear from Community.

when we did engagement earlier in the process, a lot of concern about if we were going to be updating, up-zoning existing neighborhoods, that some people may be forced out, be they legacy homeowners or renters that are in single-family units.

So what we're proposing is a two-tiered zoning concept.

Most of the city would align with the housing types and the density that I just described to you at four units per a typical Seattle 5,000-square-foot lot.

in the area shown in red on this map.

And this is a very preliminary map of areas that could potentially be covered by this provision.

We would lower the...

We would adjust the development standards to essentially achieve a lower density of about three units per lot in most cases.

The idea here to be to reduce market pressure and speculation and other unintended consequences that could force people out.

We very much look forward to talking with community members about this proposal.

And I think among the many things in our proposal today, this is really a work in progress to really crack that nut of how can we provide the housing that neighborhoods need, but also mitigate unintended impacts that are forcing people out.

And I'm going to turn it back to Rico to briefly give you a picture of what engagement is going to look like with the community over the next couple of months.

Thank you, Michael.

So as I said, we began a robust public engagement over the last two years, and now we are planning to be out in community on a weekly basis over the next two months to give people the opportunity to hear from us related to all the components of the draft plan, as well as to ask questions about the DEIS and the alternatives.

So as I mentioned before, we will have seven open houses, face-to-face engagements, one in each of your districts, plus one virtual open house online for folks that aren't able to attend in person.

And this will be opportunities to engage with city staff, with planners in our office, to ask questions about each of the elements, as well as the growth strategy.

We will also do two public comment hearings for the DEIS, be doing some focused stakeholder engagement, and then we have a robust online engagement hub with a DEIS story map.

where people can go online, do a deep dive into all the components of the draft, provide comments in real time, and see what other people are saying about the draft.

So as our council president has already noted, this is the list of all of the open houses that we will be doing in March and April, along with the one that we'll do at the end, at the beginning of May.

And we'll open it for questions.

Thank you, filling in for the council president here for a few minutes.

Thank you everyone for being here.

I do have a couple comments I wanted to make and then some questions and then until council president gets back, I will call on everyone else.

So thank you again.

This is complex work.

It's often tedious.

And I know that once we get into the community engagement piece, it can also be stressful.

So I wanna thank you for all of the work that you're doing.

As one of my colleagues said, folks have a lot of feelings about land use, that's for sure.

So this comprehensive plan, and I will say I'm speaking as land use chair, so thank you for being here.

This plan is about the future of Seattle's housing and jobs and our climate strategies.

Right now we have a once in a decade chance to build more affordable housing, to decrease rents, to create economic opportunity and bring good jobs to folks across the city, particularly to underserved communities, and to build a smarter, more efficient city that's serious about addressing our climate emergency.

So I want to acknowledge some important changes that are in the plan, including inclusion of comments that we heard throughout the engagement process the last couple of years where communities said that they want to see more neighborhood commercial They want to see more opportunity for access to goods and services within a walk-in distance from their homes.

There is also an important goal around greenhouse gas reduction, and I think that's important.

And we know that we're hearing from community members, from some of our state legislators also, that the plan feels like it is planning for our existing circumstances and not for the future that we wanna see.

So I do have a few questions, but I think first it's important to say that the plan is late.

And so that means for us as council that our process for reviewing is going to be late too.

So I just want colleagues to understand that we are now in a 60 day comment period.

There will be several months after that for OPCD to incorporate comments into the draft.

Then we have to wait and see if there's an appeal.

Hopefully that process won't happen.

But by my timeline, it's possible that we won't see legislation at all this year.

So maybe, Krista, you can let us know if there is an anticipated date by which the mayor plans to transmit legislation to council.

That's a great question.

That's a great question, Council Member Morales.

We do not have a date at this point in working with OPCD.

I think you're looking closer towards the end of the year, much as I am pushing for sooner than that.

But we do know that you all need to take your time and go through your process.

And I'm going to let Michael just address our track record on being late on these plans because it is unfortunate that we are so behind on this.

But Michael, maybe you can provide a little bit of context, which at least, while unfortunate, might make you feel a little bit better about not getting this done quite on time.

And I'm not suggesting that we will get it done on time.

You're making me feel like a parent apologizing for their child being late with their homework.

But on a serious note, this is a complicated...

Thank you, Councilmember.

This is a very complex endeavor to update the comprehensive plan.

We've had new expectations from the state.

We're not the only city that's wrestling with this in the region.

The Puget Sound Regional Council did a survey of its members recently.

Most of the respondents, the dozens of cities indicated they're going to be releasing their drafts later than this, in quarter two or later this year.

So we're all working as hard as we can and making progress.

The State Department of Commerce realizes that.

And actually looking backward, city of Seattle, we were curious, we have never adopted a comprehensive plan strictly by the deadline by the state.

We're not concerned about it slopping over into 2025 a little bit.

The main thing here is to get this right with enough community engagement and enough time for the council certainly to do your deliberations and make any changes.

So once, thank you for that.

I guess what I will say, colleagues, is that once we do have the legislation, I'm going to suggest that we consider a cross-committee strategy for briefings based on element.

I think that's how it's been done in the past, and that seems like an effective way to make sure that the transportation element is presented in the Transportation Committee and housing and housing, so on.

So, but that...

That probably won't be until next year.

If I might, Council President, I do have two questions, additional questions.

So on housing, our number one goal needs to be to bring housing costs down so that people stop leaving the city.

We need to make rents more affordable and we need to make home ownership a real possibility for folks, for working class families.

I know you've talked a little bit about this already, but it's estimated that about 250,000 people will move to Seattle over the next 20 years.

We're already behind in keeping pace with production of housing based on the incredible growth that we had in the last decade that we weren't anticipating.

So can you talk again about why this draft only provides 100,000 new units given the anticipated projected growth in the city?

I'll reiterate a little bit of what Krista introduced this topic saying and add a little bit more detail to that.

So first and foremost, what's important about the land use changes made with this growth strategy is the amount of zoned capacity that ultimately it creates because we adopt the plan.

It shows generally locations for growth.

We bring a zoning ordinance forward.

Council adopts that zoning.

It provides more density of different types of housing in different areas.

Currently, our capacity for even without doing anything with this updated plan, and we do a buildable lands report, an urban growth capacity report, King County calls it.

We completed that a couple of years ago.

The city already has capacity right now without doing anything.

for over 160,000 units.

It doesn't mean that that's exactly the right type of housing in all the areas we want to see add housing choices in the city, but we know it's a pretty big number to begin with.

And we know that this proposal, while we don't have a precise number yet until we generate a new zoning proposal, we feel very confident that it will provide twice the capacity of that 100,000 number that we think is a reasonable number that's within the range of housing growth we studied in our draft EIS.

But the most more important number is how much capacity we're creating.

So that's what I would emphasize with you.

We think that's enough to get to 200,000 or more new in population and really sets us up well for the future.

I know we'll be talking a lot about this.

So I guess the last thing I'll say is that we need to create more affordable housing in as many places as possible in the city.

And much of what we've seen is market rate that is simply not affordable to most folks, which is why our small businesses, many of our businesses are losing workers.

So I know we will have a lot of conversation about this.

I just wanted to put that on the table.

That is...

obviously something we're gonna keep talking about.

My second question is about jobs.

And I have to say, when I look at, it's page 22 of the plan itself, I think you had it as slide 13, but this map of the regional centers, there's nothing in the south end, which I find really problematic.

So this plan, I know the regional centers are something that are designated by PSRC.

The definition of a regional center, a place of regional importance due to the presence of substantial housing, office, retail, cultural and entertainment uses along with access to regional transit.

So this calls out places as key economic drivers of our city, places where growth will be encouraged.

And there are zero regional centers south of downtown.

There's not a single one in South Seattle.

And the reason this is such a challenge for me as the representative of South Seattle, I understand these are regional designations.

But what we're doing here is continuing the status quo.

We're excluding the South End from intentionally planning for economic development opportunities.

We're dooming ourselves to the same mistakes we made in the past and creating deeper economic inequality.

This area was already identified as an area of low access to economic opportunity in the last comprehensive plan.

So there's nothing different here.

And so my question is, in addition to working with PSRC to revamp the way they're doing these regional center designations, what can we be doing?

to change our vision, to change our goal for expanding economic opportunity to places beyond the existing regional centers.

So I appreciate the question and I look forward to us doing some work both in the land use committee and in front of full council related to how we're providing equity across the city, including in your district.

I do think it's important to note that district two has a large number of urban centers, right?

Which do provide for job growth, job opportunities, and higher density of housing than in our urban neighborhood designation.

But we clearly still have more work to do.

And so I just look forward to continuing the conversation.

We will get into it when we do our open house discussions, and then also as we work with you and everyone else on the council.

I appreciate that.

And you all know that this is something I've been hounding on for years.

So it is really important that we set an intention and actually start planning for how we do this.

Because what this regional center map says to me is that all of our investment in economic growth, in job training, in workforce development, in attracting industry to our city.

It's all being invested in the north end.

And I have a lot of young people who need jobs.

There are a lot of immigrant and refugee populations in the south end.

There is a need for economic opportunity.

And when I look at this page 23, where all the new jobs that are being planned for are in one half of the city and the other half gets no investment, it's really problematic.

And does nothing to address our racial equity goals when it comes to access to economic opportunity.

So I will stop there except to say that my biggest takeaway is that this plan feels like it's planning for our current conditions and not planning for a vision of what we know is coming in terms of growth and what we could become which is a city of really healthy, vibrant, well-connected neighborhoods.

And I know this is a draft.

We have a year of community engagement and more planning and more stakeholdering to do.

So I would just encourage everybody to get involved in this process and help us turn this into something that is really valuable for all of our residents.

And I do wanna thank you again for all the work you do because I know how hard it is and I know how hard you've been working.

So thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Madam Council President, and thank you for the presentation.

I really appreciate it.

I just have two questions and two quick comments in between.

And I don't think this came up before, but on page 14, or page 8, on the policy elements, as chair of the Public Safety Committee, why wasn't public safety a policy element?

Because as a block watch captain, as part of the Queen Anne Block Watch Network, business watch, it has a major play and it helps create that safe base, which is so important for growth strategy, economic development, the arts and culture community.

And I just wanted to ask why public safety was not considered a policy element, number 14, if you will.

I can take that on.

So the main emphasis of the comprehensive plan is to make sure that we are providing the facilities and services that we need as we grow.

In the capital facilities element, importantly, there are a number of range of services, of public services, and the facilities associated with them that are planned for, specifically in line with our growth strategy.

Among those is public safety in the capital facilities element to make sure that we have the the stations and the buildings, and we're right-sizing our services.

There hasn't historically been a public safety element, per se.

It's not one of those required by the Growth Management Act.

I would say that the policies that are in that public police and public safety component of capital facilities honor and ensure that we're planning for public safety at a size that's commensurate with how much we're going to grow as a city.

Okay, thank you.

It is important.

Maybe we have to get Director Tarleton back before she retires so we get this on for the Growth Management Act next year in legislative session.

In terms of the five place types, and this has come up before, it strikes me that on the neighborhood center piece that we should have a major-minor.

I think we have the opportunity to have more neighborhood centers, maybe with a block, block and a half, within the commercial line, if you will.

Most of these are not gonna be circles, but more lines of communication, long, skinny rectangles, if you will.

And it seems that we could have more in terms of growth along neighborhood centers if we had kind of a two-part.

a one and one and a half block version, a smaller version.

I know tons of examples of this, as opposed to maybe the three block version, which is definitely there's places for that.

But I think if we had two versions of neighborhood centers that we could add to what we're looking to do and great opportunities for densification.

On the urban neighborhood piece, Trust me, I get so many emails from so many different sources, I just want to channel them for a second.

I think they would tell you that we're very townhome-focused, and we need to have more variety to that, so I just want to channel all those emails I get, and the fact that townhouse-centric is what I'm hearing a lot, so I just want to feed that back to you.

And as a former Queen Anne Community Council person, I just want to bring up add-dos and dad-dos.

imagine that.

And it's interesting because I think we have opportunities to get that kind of varied sources.

And, you know, ownership is a key piece with the Adudadus.

And this goes to generational wealth displacement.

And I think we could build on, you know, what we did previously, which, of course, my former life, there was issues.

And a lot of that actually centered around ownership, which is ironic coming full circle, that ownership could really, and Adudadus, could really help in terms of displacement and generational wealth.

And the last question is, as your District 7 representative, City Hall is not a very good place for a District 7 town hall.

I would recommend the Armory or some other facility that's more central in D7, not at the end, not down here where it's hard to get, you know, some difficulties.

So I would recommend a Seattle Center, center of D7, Seattle Center, the Armory would be a great place to have a town hall for D7, and City Hall could be reserved for a, you know, end city-wide catch-up type of...

you know, event, so I just wanted to ask consideration of, you know, changing the location of the D7 Town Hall to perhaps the Armory or something like that.

Thank you.

Taking notes, taking notes.

Thank you for the suggestion.

Colleagues, I was not tracking who had their hand up, so who had their hand up next?

I can go last.

Mine's a quick question.

Kathy.

Okay, Kathy.

Great.

Well, thank you very much for this presentation.

This is a great introduction and obviously there's a lot of work to be done and I look forward as a member of the Land Use Committee to working with you on this.

And I just wanted to reiterate some of the value statements that Council Member Morales has expressed as well as Council Member Kettle, which is that You know, the goal is to increase the supply and diversity of housing options.

And I think, as Council Member Kettle has said, the feedback that I get from District 5, from homeowners, is that it's just too townhouse-specific and too townhouse-centric.

And that people are really looking and much more receptive to a sense of housing diversity.

So, you know, stacked row houses, cottages, stacked houses.

And I'm trying to look at how we actually incentivize that through this plan rather than winding up with a lot of just block after block after block of townhouses that truly are not affordable.

So just putting that out there to really look at incentivizing diversity of the housing stock and also really looking at how we create affordability within that because I think we can all say that townhouses are not affordable options.

So how do we create the ability for ownership opportunities that are affordable, because I think too much of what we have is building affordable apartments, which is great as a move in, but ultimately we need to be creating, and I see this as an amazing opportunity, to really build and reestablish a middle class in Seattle.

And too much of what we have right now is at either end of the spectrum.

So how do we utilize this as an engine to move people from rental housing into home ownership opportunities?

How do we get people from immigrant, refugee, BIPOC communities, black communities, into ownership opportunities rather than continuing to perpetuate this rental area that we have, which does not create stability for our city.

It doesn't create intergenerational wealth.

It doesn't expand our tax base, which we desperately need for the social services that we need to provide.

So I guess I would just really plea almost, that we really keep that in mind.

Because this idea that we're going to reduce the risk of displacement by removing one unit from a lot, so we have three instead of four, I don't really see that as a viable displacement tool.

Right now we are allowed three units on a lot.

We have a house, we have an ADU, and we have a DADU.

None of those are affordable.

So we really need to look for more aggressive displacement strategies and more aggressive affordability strategies And I haven't seen any mention here of the Mandatory Housing Affordability Act applying, and I think that that's really important.

That needs to be a key piece of this, as does the multifamily tax exemption credit, really looking at those two strong laws and bringing them, maximizing their efficiency and use within this context.

So I have a gazillion questions, but I'll just leave it at those sort of value statements.

Thank you.

Councilmember Strauss, were you next?

Oh, was it me?

Michael, Director Kirandongo, great to see you, Kara.

Thank you for this report.

I have fewer questions just because of my persnickety-ness over the last number of years.

Just wanted to confirm what I heard you say just now, Michael, that the regional center designation in Ballard is the zoning and capacity within the community today already meets the criteria for PSRC.

And this is essentially we already meet those criteria, but we're not designated and thus we can't receive different funding or grant sources from PSRC today.

Once we are designated, we would have that ability.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

It's a recognition of the current conditions, the current plan for Ballard.

I would add, though, and hopefully that I hope that this is an important point as well for constituents in your district is we will be working with that community to do a sub area plan for Ballard to plan for the future of the coming, the light rail and any other changes that might be needed going forward.

But it's a recognition and it opens up a door for some funding.

And I think we're all looking forward to the feedback that we received during the current 60 day comment period.

I will add just some commentary.

Colleagues density does not equate to capital equity without ownership opportunities and this is something that has come very front and center to me i know there's a lot of issues with condo liability which prevents free market construction of condo opportunities it has struck me though that just building Building density is helpful to rental costs, to ownership costs, and it does not move the needle on ownership opportunities without the ability to condoize this density.

That's not something for you to respond to.

I'm just putting it on the record.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you.

Let's see.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Yes, thank you, Council President.

I'm just winging it here.

No, no, you're good.

It's the way to go.

Thank you all for coming here to present this.

I know it's tough to have a presentation, and then you've got to go to community and listen.

I just had a couple comments.

I think the one thing that I'm looking for a number of things, the medium-age...

of a Seattle-itis 35. And I have a ton of friends who want to start families.

They start them a little bit...

I'm a millennial, older millennial.

They start them a little later in life, and they want to be able to have a kid, live next to a school.

So one of the things I hope to be looking for is, like, family-sized housing around our Seattle public schools.

I think that would help them out tremendously, as we know they get their funds from how many students go to their school.

I think that's gonna be, like, super, super important.

The second thing is, and I think Councilmember Moore mentioned this about, we have a ton of renters.

Over half the people in Seattle are renting, and so we're gonna be paying attention to what...

how can we shift some of those people into home ownership?

If they don't want to, that's fine.

I know a lot of people, you know, don't want to buy a home because it's very expensive and they can't afford it in Seattle because of how expensive it is.

But having, like, more affordable options for renting is going to be huge for folks, like, are just working class.

You know, they don't...

they are right above that threshold, right, where they don't fall into the affordable housing category, but they're just right there where they don't make enough ends, they don't make enough, you know what I mean, they don't make enough What is the saying?

They don't make enough to make ends meet.

Sorry, my mind kind of blew there.

Another thing too, I get a lot of emails and talk to a ton of people like baby boomers who are in the last stage of their life and they wanna be able to age in place without being forcefully, not being able to afford to live in the city.

So thinking about ways in which they can stay.

And the number one thing I hear from folks particularly in the central district.

And a lot of times we look at one house and we're like, we need more density at that single family home.

They have like 10 or 12 people that live in that home because they can't afford to live in anywhere in the city.

And I know I've seen that a lot with a lot of families that are trying, they are multi-generational.

They're trying to hang onto that home.

They have the grandma, the great grandmother, the mom, and the kids.

And so thinking about technical assistance to help them figure out navigating if they want to convert their house into a duplex, a triplex, an ADU.

I live in a triplex.

You know, just trying to figure out how they can transition their house for generational wealth, I think is really important when we talk about displacement strategies.

We talk about it with zoning a lot, but we're really missing the implementation piece of the technical assistant part.

And director, I know we've talked about that and you know, so those are the things that we'll be looking forward to.

And then also the infrastructure piece, like creating the environment around all the housing that's coming, the grocery stores, which they are a lifeline to a lot of communities.

And quite frankly, a lot of the pharmacy stores that have shut down because of public safety issues, our grocery stores are a lifeline to a lot of communities that we have a lot of pharmacy deserts in our city and where only people can go to get their medication are at these grocery stores now.

So thinking about those pieces for the comp plan.

So thank you all.

Council Member Wu.

So I agree with most of my colleagues' value statements, and also wanted to add, like, how do we look at departments like SDCI in allowing for quicker permits to build the housing, and how do we help legacy homeowners be able to build on their property?

And, you know, five years ago, we looked, so you could look outside, and there's cranes all over the city, and now it's kind of, interesting how there's less of those cranes, meaning that there may be less housing available in the next couple of years.

So how do we expedite that process?

But my question is, looking at slide 24 or 30, there's two numbers on that slide, but would you talk a little bit more about how these high displacement and low displacement risk zones were chosen?

Do we know which slide that was?

Yes, thank you.

I think it's 2430.

Yes, so it's not terribly large on this slide, and I apologize for that.

We tried to fit a lot of information into this presentation, but you will see that map at the lower right is an analysis that we did for the Seattle 2035 plan eight years ago.

It's a displacement risk index.

That map is based on a large volume of data on different characteristics of neighborhoods, including who lives there, what market pressures there may be in those areas, what the existing building stock and how many renters, how many owners, And we intersect all of that data and create an index that tells us which areas of the city have relatively higher risk of concentration of households that could be displaced.

Those are the areas in red on that map.

The blue areas at the other end of that color ramp are the low displacement risk areas, and there are neighborhoods in between.

We used that map overlaid with our existing single family or neighborhood residential areas to approximate areas that are in neighborhood residential zoning that may be at higher risk of displacement and may benefit from a different approach to zoning.

And that's what you see in the larger map here.

We're going to work with community, get community feedback on that map of the red versus the cream color.

We're going to do some additional data analysis ourselves to feel more confident about where a targeted zoning approach would be most appropriate.

Because I know there's a lot of high displacement in the central district, but this seemed to be outlined in the larger map.

But we'll be interested in digging deeper in this next couple months and hearing from community because we look at housing displacement, but also community displacement.

So thank you.

Council Member Salka.

Thank you, Madam Council President.

Thank you all for this really insightful overview of a really complex, thorny topic.

And, you know, it's an area that, although I don't sit on the Land Use Committee, you know, it is an area that I'm interested in learning more about and paying attention to.

And, you know, later we will stand up, I believe, a but this is really important stuff.

So thank you all for your engagement and the insights.

I agree substantially with a lot of the elements of what my colleagues have just expressed here.

You know, I'll highlight a few sort of principles and value statements from my perspective that are also important to me.

So...

Anti-displacement is one of them.

And whether every person deserves to be able to age in place if they choose.

And also, as we look to kind of fill the gap and grow responsibly and play catch up to a certain material respect, People who are most at risk, well, historically, who have bared the brunt of growth and density challenges shouldn't continue to do so here, in this case, as we plan for the next 10 years plus of growth in Seattle.

So aging in place and having strong, effective anti-displacement strategies, I think are really critical.

And also I strongly support thoughtful growth.

That kind of highlights a comment that Council Member Hollingsworth mentioned a moment ago about making sure we have appropriate infrastructure in place.

as we grow and to meet the diverse needs of people, including grocery stores and, yes, pharmacies and any number of other amenities.

Like, because if not, this whole 15-minute walkable neighborhood, you know, like, it's a pipe dream for many, unless and until we get a lot of that really important nitty-gritty last-mile, last-minute details, like...

grow in accordance with that.

So also plus one on the MHA, MFTE opportunities to make sure that's better kind of reflected and contemplated and we'll continue to think about ways we can enhance those and better incentivize those on our end as well.

Growth.

That's the name of the game here.

How are we growing and growing responsibly?

And in many ways, I think we're playing somewhat of a catch-up game for some less than, arguably less than ideal policy decisions of prior policymakers.

And so we're not only playing catch-up because of the lack of supply and affordable housing, but We also have to better contemplate and look ahead what's going to happen on a going forward basis for the next 10 years.

So I don't know yet.

I don't have a strong opinion.

I do need to learn more and hear more what my constituents are, you know, more of their concerns as this process plays out and other residents in Seattle here.

Yeah, and I do appreciate that this is intended to be the floor, not the ceiling of growth.

I guess my only thing that I'll be monitoring there is, and people understand kind of how I think, in terms of policy making, decision making, I look at two things.

Well, I start looking at two things, history, and just to understand best practices, in some cases, what we should specifically avoid doing.

And then also benchmarking is really important.

What are our neighboring jurisdictions doing that have found success, not just in this state, but across the country.

But history is really important aspect of this floor, not the ceiling notion.

And I don't know, like have, Has Seattle or other neighboring jurisdictions, when they set the sort of floor, have they had the political courage and will to build and expand upon that as needed to meet the true needs of the city?

I don't know.

It's a rhetorical question.

It's food for thought, but something that I'm going to be pondering as I kind of make my way through this.

And yeah, so those are principles, value statements that are important to me.

Thank you all again.

Thank you, Council President, and thank you, Mayor's Office and OPCD for this initial, what I'm calling an initial briefing on this very meaty topic.

I don't disagree with many of the comments made by my colleagues.

I have a couple points of clarification.

On the open house schedule, I assume these are evening hours that these things will happen at.

There's no time frame to allow folks to come out.

I think they're 6 to 8 p.m.

Thank you for that clarity.

And then on slide 22 on the housing affordability piece, and I agree with Council Member Moore and Council Member Saka's point about MHA and MFTE, I assume that this piece on six units anywhere if at least two units affordable is attempting to address something similar, but can you expand on what that affordability requirement is?

What AMI or what is there a contemplated

That's an excellent question.

I'm tempted to answer it on the fly, but I want to get it right.

We can get back to you with those details.

It's in state law, and it's consistent with how we approach affordability levels here at the city.

Thank you, Michael.

You can get back.

That'd be great.

And then I just wanted to echo some of my colleagues' comments about...

You know, land, home ownership being a really important piece.

There was just an article, as you all know, either last week or the week before about if you're single, you are not likely in your lifetime to be able to be a homeowner.

And so how do we address folks' ability to be homeowners, particularly folks who, you know, have, who are low income?

And BIPOC in this city and then also those who have been able to Afford land as council member Hollingsworth were saying how do we?

ensure that folks are able to keep that generational wealth, if you will, possibility as we look through this next 20 years.

And then also, I hear a lot, at least in the district, I represent the issues with aging in place and a lot of young people coming back who've grown up here and not being able to return and be able to afford to live in the city that they grew up in.

So Those are issues as well.

And that's whether they rent or they own.

It's just not a possibility.

And so being able to thoughtfully think through these issues.

And then I'll lastly just say on the infrastructure piece, and I didn't hear it mentioned, but child care.

as an infrastructure piece as part of this comp plan, I think is really important as something that impacts every district in the city and something that I hear a lot from the constituents in my district as well.

So looking forward to engaging and hearing what the constituents across the city say and looking forward to more conversation about this.

So thank you.

I'll just say, first of all, I don't think anybody's mentioned this yet.

I really appreciate the corner store that I've been pushing for something like that.

And that was part of a regulatory reform package that was before council, I believe, in the McGinn era within my old boss Richard Conlon was supporting that.

Look, I've always said my only value statement is going to be that we have to align our regulatory environment with our policy goals.

I say this all the time, and if our policy goal is more housing that more people in Seattle can afford to live in, then we have to make sure that our laws and our rules and regulations are in line with that, and zoning is only one piece of that.

We've also got the building code.

Is there anything in the building code that is preventing the construction of some of the forms of housing that some of my colleagues have said that they appreciate and want more of?

There's also our incentive programs.

We've heard talk about the getting the MFTE program renewed so that more people can participate.

All the incentives that we have on the books, MHA, etc.

So there's a lot going, there are a lot of, and we also have the housing levied, let's not forget, and many of us talked about affordable home ownership opportunities.

I've grumbled that the billion dollar levy only has 50 million allocated for to build more workforce housing, priced ownership opportunities.

I mangled that.

So there's a lot going on, and then we've just got the competing demands in the different kinds of zoning that will guide future development.

So I just wanted to recognize that this is going to be a complex process, and we're just beginning.

So thank you very much for your work, and I'm just going to stop there and look forward to the next session.

information dump, really do hope that, you know, and I'll put a plug in for sooner rather than later, because we've all been waiting to get to work on this, so.

With that, thank you very much.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank all of you for all of your comments.

Okay, moving right along.

We now have the item, we're now on item five, signing of letters and proclamations.

Council Member Kettle has a proclamation recognizing March 16th, 2024 to be Paula Mueller Day.

Council Member Kettle, please lead the discussion on the proclamation for any additional feedback before I request signatures to be affixed to it.

Thank you, Council President.

You know, we've done a number of proclamations, including some for individuals, and this is an opportunity to provide recognition for somebody who's been taking that extra step and volunteering in their community over a long period of time.

Paula Mueller is a standout in the Queen Anne community and impacts beyond that, too, throughout District 7, but particularly with Magnolia, Interbay, Uptown, and Westlake.

Board of Trustees, the Queen Anne Community Council, early on, but also chairing it recently.

And tied to that, she also, in terms of emergency preparedness, has been very active with the hub captains in MIQA, which stands for Magnolia Interbay Queen Anne, in terms of that opportunity, being prepared if the big earthquake comes along.

And these little things really play into our preparedness across the board, and particularly in the realm of public safety.

A fellow block watch captain that created the Queen Anne Block Watch Network, which then really brought our community together to help our community face the challenges that we had.

But that volunteerism just doesn't stop there in these kind of organizations.

It's really on the ground.

And one of the things, and the Friends of McLean Park, And I bring up Friends of McLean Park because it's not just McLean Park, it's actually the East Greenbelt.

And the amount of work that Paula Mueller, her husband Alan, community members in the area, but all around Queen Anne, they come in and working with other groups to really clean up a park.

But not just the park, but the adjoining Greenbelt.

It is incredibly...

The amount of trash that has been pulled out of McLean Park and the East Greenbelt is beyond comprehension.

And it takes the work of volunteers, dedicated individuals like Paul D. Mueller to make things happen.

Every community needs to have those kind of people that stand up and then take the action.

And Paula's at the point now where she's been retired, so her volunteer career is slowing down, particularly related to Queen Anne.

And so we just thought this would be the perfect opportunity to recognize her service to the community And I ask all my colleagues here to support this proclamation.

Thank you very much.

I have a question.

You might have covered it, and I don't have the proclamation right in front of me, but how many years was she on the Queen Anne Community Council?

Well, there's two stints.

She was on the board in the 70s for a number of years, and then she's been on the board for the better part of the decade, including chairing the Queen Anne Community Council, which was very important because that's where the real leadership takes place.

Because as you know, volunteering requires a lot of people who take on these jobs that, you know, don't pay, but they come, you know, they quote unquote are part-time in a way, but they really become a full-time effort.

And that's what being chair of the Queen Anne Community Council has been for her.

Thank you.

I just, I asked that because I remember as a staffer a long time ago for, before, I don't know, before 2013 or 15 for about a decade, I got a lot of emails from Paula Mueller about a lot of different topics, some having to do specifically to Queen Anne and others on broader policy goals.

And so I was just wondering what role she might have been in way back when.

Former businesswoman, so it's probably business related for those.

That was before I was a small business owner even.

Anyway, I appreciate you bringing this forward because she's clearly been a leader and has helped us, the city, in many different ways.

Are there any other questions?

Comments?

Okay.

Seeing there's no further discussion on the proclamation, will the clerk please read the roll call to determine which council members would like to affix their signatures to the proclamation recognizing March 16th, 2024 to be Paula Mueller Day.

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Rivera?

Aye.

Council Member Saca?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Wu?

Yes.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Kettle?

A thankful aye.

Council President Nelson?

Aye.

Nine signatures will be affixed to the proclamation.

Thank you very much.

More to come on that proclamation.

Okay, we'll now move on to our next agenda item.

You know the drill.

This is where we talk about what's coming up and what we did before.

The roll call order is Moore, Morales, Rivera, Saka, Strauss, Wu, Hollingsworth, Kettle, and me.

So, Council Member Moore, take it away.

Thank you very much, Council President.

I'll keep it short.

We have our next Housing and Human Services Committee meeting this Wednesday.

We have three items on the agenda.

One will be a briefing from the Unified Care Team, and the other will be a briefing from Seattle Housing Authority.

And we also have an appointment to the Pacific Hospital PDA Commission.

So, thank you very much.

Thank you.

That was even faster than I expected.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

The next Land Use Committee meeting is March 20th.

Last week, was it last week already?

Yes, I attended the Growth Management Policy Board meeting with the PSRC.

We received an update from the Puget Sound Partnership on sound recovery work.

Just quick bullets, the Puget Sound ecosystem is not doing well.

But with the collective effort, we can restore it to health and make sure it can adapt to climate change and other pressures.

Many of the indicators that Puget Sound Partnership uses to measure the health of the Puget Sound ecosystem are not making progress toward recovery.

And the discussion really centered a lot around stormwater and utilities.

That is some of the work that will probably continue.

And they're looking forward to working with the city to make changes that are needed, as well as there was a little bit of conversation about new funding from the feds and policy changes that are needed.

We also at that meeting heard from Barbara Rosen from Enterprise Community Partners and Maria Tobin with the South Sound Military and Community Partnership, which is a group of families, military families in the South Sound.

And they were making a presentation to Council Member Rivera's point on zoning for early childhood education.

I think across the region, the lack of access to childcare is creating a lot of barriers for working families.

And so they were coming to PSRC to ask if the PSRC can help with model language, for example, on making it easier to permit and build childcare facilities in different communities.

Seattle has already begun this work in 2020. We passed Child Care Near You, which does make it easier to build childcare centers In the city, we're taking advantage of some state level funding for some of that too.

So all that to say, this is not a uniquely Seattle problem, but folks are looking for answers and possible solutions.

And then finally, quickly, district updates this weekend.

I joined the regular volunteer shift of Restaurant to Garden, which is a hyperlocal composting service in the CID.

They work with local restaurants to transform their food scraps into compost, and then they are right now giving that to gardeners in the Danny Woo Garden.

So it was exciting.

They have a one cubic foot community compost thing.

And they are looking to purchase a larger facility so that they can compost from more restaurants in the area.

So very interesting.

This week, I'll be working with or speaking at the People's Economy Lab Community Wealth Building Workshop in Beacon Hill.

I've been working with People's Economy Lab and with Community Wealth Building partners in the area for a few years now.

Some of the work that the Department of Neighborhoods had been doing, I think, will be transitioning over to Council President Nelson's committee or but there is a lot of work happening in the city.

It's very exciting, and so I'm honored to be invited to speak at that in Beacon Hill.

On Wednesday, I'll be touring a new affordable housing complex called Flourish that is in the Rainier Beach neighborhood.

And then finally, my team and I are meeting with many different community stakeholders regarding the comp plan update.

Again, there will be eight open houses.

The first one is this Thursday in Loyal Heights.

The next one will be in District 2 at Cleveland High School.

That's March 19th, 6 o'clock.

You can visit engage.onceattleplan.com to learn more about that.

That's all I have.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Yes, I, along with you, attended the Puget Sound Regional Commission's Growth Management and Policy Board where they did talk about childcare and the importance of just commercial childcare within the city's planning efforts.

I also attended the Firefighters Recruit Class 118's swearing in ceremony along with Council Member Strauss and Council Member Wu.

It was really a great event and so great to see so many new firefighters in Seattle.

We are just very lucky to have folks that want to sign up who say, who will do this job in the city?

And have these folks say, I will.

I will do the job of running into a burning building or assisting a neighbor who is experiencing an overdose and so many other things that firefighters do.

So a big congratulations to the recruit class of 118. This week, I will be hosting the committee that I chair, the Library's Education and Neighborhoods Committee.

We will be receiving this week a briefing from Tom Fay, the Chief Librarian for Seattle Public Schools, which I'm really looking forward to.

And we will also have the Department of Neighborhoods present some appointments for the Pike Place Market Historical Commission, as well as the Ballard Avenue Landmark Commission.

And then lastly, my office will be represented at the Be Loud Breakfast, which is an important event organized by the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center.

Really want to bring attention to this cause, this very important cause.

And then I will also be attending the Youth Care Conference, lunch this week on Wednesday, which is another really important work for young people in the city.

So, Councilmember Sacca.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

I hope to keep my own comments brief as well.

Quick and dirty is last week we had our transportation committee and we talked about two things.

The Seattle transportation plan, which SDOT came and gave an overview of that was released about two weeks ago.

And then we had a briefing also from SDOT on the state of our bridge assets.

And so our next...

transportation committee meeting is next Tuesday, March 19th.

We're gonna continue the conversation on the Seattle transportation plan.

So we're gonna have our own central staff expert, Kelvin Chow, come give an overview of the STP from our perspective and dive a little deeper.

So we'll continue the conversation there, colleagues.

The second item, and again, We're still finalizing the agenda.

This is what I anticipate for next Tuesday.

The second item next Tuesday is we are gonna have the chairs of the MOVE Seattle Oversight Committee, the Levy Oversight Committee, come give an overview and briefing on the levy's progress and performance amongst other things.

So should be good, really looking forward to that.

And then finally, we will have a presentation also from SDOT on new sidewalk prioritization and funding.

So new sidewalks from SDOT briefing next week as well.

That is it from my perspective.

I welcome any comments, questions from any of you all.

And if not, I'll pass it on to Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Council Member Saka.

And Council Member Rivera, I have to also just say that Thursday night was a very joyous night watching the recruit class come through.

And their recruit class, No Bad Days, was a phrase that firefighter Matt Runty used.

Firefighter Runty passed away during the last few years as he was doing his daily mile run before his shift.

And so it was really a cathartic moment last Thursday to have the joyous moment and to celebrate the new recruits and to celebrate Matt Runty for going the extra mile every single day and inspiring us to do the same.

And Council Member Saka, I got to tell you, we had some electrical issues on the Ballard Bridge this weekend, and Liz Sheldon and the SDOT staff were responsive to me on the weekend quickly.

I think I had caught it before other people did, and they were able to get me responsive.

They were very responsive to me, and they had the issue fixed very quickly.

So government functioning.

Coming back to our next Finance Native Communities Tribal Governments Committee, our next meeting will be Wednesday, March 20th.

We will be hearing the Quarter One Grants Acceptance Ordinance.

So this is the briefing ahead of, again, we brief twice.

We will vote the following meeting, which accepts and appropriates external grants, and so this only improves our budget situation.

Eden Cizek of Central Staff will be developing a staff memo shortly, and it's my understanding the CBO and Central Staff will be at committee on March 20th.

We had previously planned that the Tribal Nations Summit overview and review would occur on March 20th.

I believe staff needs more time before presenting so that we do it right the first time, and so I'll be honoring this request.

Colleagues, we are still in the first quarter of the year.

We're still in the analysis phase of our budget work.

Next month, we will begin to hear the analysis of how the 2023 fiscal year ended.

And we will also receive the first forecast of the year on April 8th.

And so if you are pining for information, do not worry because we are planning the most robust budget committee schedule in recent memory.

I think that I'll leave it there for now.

And I got to say that this work is under the underpinning of this work.

is from strong analysis, which is currently being completed by staff.

And so while the analysis is not ready for the March 20th committee, both central staff and the central budget office are standing ready to answer your questions and brief you on specifics to help prepare for the thorough review, which we are embarking on.

Council President, I know every week I tell you I'll get those dates.

Vice Chair and I are still talking.

So we'll get those dates to you just as soon as possible.

Beyond finance, neighborhood, native communities, and tribal governments, as I said, I'm never gonna get finance and neighborhoods out of my mouth.

But in my role as budget chair, I'm also chairing the Seattle City Employee Retirement System Board of Administration, CERS, this Thursday morning, as well as on Thursday afternoon, I'll be attending the Sound Transit System Expansion Committee meeting.

And if you have not received my email about Association of Washington Cities, you will soon on ways that you can participate.

Also lifting up our Secretary-elect John Nehring, Mayor of Marysville, a good friend of mine, and many other opportunities to engage.

So colleagues, any questions?

I think I was the longest, my apologies.

Council Member Wu.

Thank you.

So this week, I attended a couple of meetings, sometimes at the same time.

Southwest Precinct Advisory Council got to listen to Chief Amy Smith talk about the Community Assistance Response and Engagement Care Department, and then also hopped on to the North Precinct Advisory Council right after.

Thursday night, attended the Downtown Seattle Association State of Downtown event.

Thank you, Council President Elson, for your inspiring address.

Also Thursday night, I rushed back over to City Hall to attend the Fire Department's Recruit Class 118 swearing-in ceremony to congratulations to all of our new 36 firefighters, and also met with regional arts and business communities this past week.

So this week, I will be attending the King County Regional Policy Committee to hear an update on the proposed Crisis Care Center levy implementation.

Also, I'm planning to attend the Mayor's Public Safety Forum on Thursday at 6 p.m.

at Seattle Center, also will be broadcast live on the Seattle Channel.

And the Sustainability City Light Arts and Culture Committee We'll be meeting on Friday the 15th at 9.30 a.m.

and we will be going through a number of appointments for the International Special Review District Board as well as the Seattle Arts Commission and their briefing on the Wholesale Energy Risk Management Policy.

I also wanna add as my last thing, thank you to those who have, for everyone's patience regarding some power outages this weekend regarding the low windstorm we had, but hearing that Seattle State Light acted fast and was able to get everybody back online.

I will pass this to Council Member Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Council Member Wu.

So parks, utilities, technology.

I want to thank my colleagues for passing nine in favor, none opposed, the Cedar River Watershed bill that passed.

I know 9-0 is a beauty.

It won't happen often, but, you know, here we go.

So parks, utilities, technology committee will have Wednesday, March 13th at 2 p.m.

We will go over a presentation for...

We've already had a presentation from Utilities and Technology.

We will go over parks.

They will talk about what they have down the pipeline for 2024, keeping them safe, accessible, and clean, and all the projects that they have going on in the city.

We have a whole ton of exciting parks in our city, and what they're doing to maintain them will be great.

We'll also have an overview surveillance technology by our IT.

This is in conjunction with automated license plate recognition.

There's stuff that's in the Public Safety Committee, but this will give us an overview of the process from our IT department as well.

Also regional committee, we had the regional water quality committee.

I joined that with council member Kettle, just gave us updates on infrastructure and reports about some of the things going on regionally as well in district.

Aquarium tour last Friday, which is phenomenal.

That's opening this summer.

Waterfront experiences 10 to 12 million people that come every year.

That's great.

We also hosted our public safety meeting, which next week will be our last and final public safety meeting.

It will be our fourth one.

This one was our third one, which was held at the Central Area Senior Center, which was great.

We had a great turnout, great questions, a lot of people joined us and i think it was really important for community to stay engaged as they are coming to these meetings and connecting with neighbors that are having some of the same issues they're able to hear directly from our seattle police department about certain things in their neighborhoods and get answers from folks which is really super super helpful also attended state of downtown heard council president nelson's inspiring remarks so thank you for that Downtown is the economic center of our city, the front porch, and we need to continue to support it as we are on our pathway to recovery and making sure that Seattle is super successful.

But what I will say is I'm very hopeful of what is to come in our city and the opportunity that we have with the World Cup and downtown and the waterfront and climate play.

and all these different convention centers and then how that creeps up into district three and all other districts benefit from obviously downtown being well and having all of our tourists and being a place for connection and community.

So next council member Kettle.

Thank you, Council Member Hollingsworth.

Yes, I did join Council Member Hollingsworth for our Regional Water Quality Committee meeting.

I also want to say thanks to the West Precinct for the opportunity that we had with Council Member Saka, and also our meeting that I had with the Indigenous Advisory Council.

Very important to get those insights from both.

Moving forward, we have our next Public Safety Committee meeting is tomorrow.

It's on Tuesday morning.

Everyone is cordially invited to attend.

It's gonna be on SPD staffing, a very important topic.

Along Public Safety as well, I'm gonna be attending the Creating a Safer Seattle Public Safety Forum on Thursday.

Thursday night.

On Thursday as well, during the day, we have the PSRC Transportation Policy Board meeting.

And on Friday, I will be reading, speaking of proclamations, I'll be reading the Mayor St. Patrick's Day Luncheon Proclamation in Fremont, actually.

And so, I look forward to that, in addition to the parade on Saturday.

And finally, thank you, everyone, for your support of the proclamation.

That will be presented on Saturday afternoon at the Queen Anne Community Council Center, the Queen Anne Community Center, to Paula Mueller, so thank you again for that.

And with that, Council President, that is the end of my notes, and over to you.

Thank you very much, everybody.

The next meeting of the Governance Accountability and Economic Development Committee is this Wednesday, the 14th, at 2 p.m.

And we have three items on the agenda.

A presentation and possible vote on an ordinance accepting $50,000 in funds from the State Department of Commerce that would go to reimburse the Wing Luke Museum for repairs needed after a man smashed windows at the museum last September in an apparent hate crime.

The city and state have jointly committed $100,000 for repair related to this incident.

And next we have a departmental briefing from the Department of Human Resources and a briefing from the city auditor's office, both of which report to the governance committee.

So those are quite lengthy.

The last two items are quite lengthy presentations.

So I believe those are both linked on the agenda right now.

So committee members, Take a look at those before you come.

I think you'll get more out of the presentations when they happen.

That's all I'll mention.

Been busy, but several of us did attend the DSA event and it was, you got my message correct, so I won't say anything about that, except for that was my very first time on a jumbotron and it's good that I didn't realize that before I spoke.

All right, everyone, if there is no other business before us, let's adjourn.

I'm not seeing any other business.

Okay, it is 4.15, and this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.