Good morning, everybody.
Thank you for being here on January 22nd for our council briefing.
I'll dispense of our president's report, and we'll just sort of go around the room and have a preview of today's city council actions.
I know we do have an executive session following this meeting, and I know Council Member Bagshaw, you have a scheduled important meeting after this that you cannot get out of.
And so why don't you go first and we'll come back to Council Member Schwartz.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you very much.
We don't have anything today on the agenda for this afternoon, but we do have a Finance and Neighborhoods Committee tomorrow.
That's Wednesday, January 23rd beginning at 1.30.
We have a reappointment of Angelique Davis to the Civil Service Commission.
A report on the Seattle Retirement Savings Plan.
This is something that all of you may remember that Tim Burgess was pushing before he left and the idea of having a program that would be available not for Seattle City employees but for people who are employed in the City of Seattle that they could participate in our retirement program.
We'll get a report on that.
I serve on that committee.
We had a special consultant that came in from Boston College.
They took a look at this and determined that the city of Seattle should not be trying to do this alone.
It simply would be not cost effective and not provide the benefits to people in the city.
But very strongly recommended that we work with the state.
The state of Oregon actually has a program that we could tie into if we wanted to.
So you'll hear more about that at my committee tomorrow.
We're also going to have a director's report from the Department of Neighborhoods.
And I think, Council President Harrell, you mentioned some of the issues around the RVs, Department of Neighborhoods.
If you'd like me to bring that up tomorrow, we can talk more today.
And I'll add that up.
OK, that's it.
And I will be here until I hear from the city attorney's office.
And I appreciate you letting me go first.
Very good.
Council Member Siwan.
Thank you, President Harrell.
Good morning, everyone.
There are no items from the Human Services Equitable Development and Renter's Rights Committee on today's city council agenda.
However, there is a bill that was discussed at my committee meeting last Friday that I hope to walk on to the introduction and referral calendar.
And I know that my office has sent you all an email about this.
Last Friday in our committee meeting, we were joined at the table by truly courageous seniors from the Halcyon Mobile Home Park in North Seattle who are fighting to save their homes and to prevent the displacement and eviction of all their neighbors and themselves.
If you have not had a chance to watch the Seattle Channel video of their testimony, council members, I would really recommend doing so.
The stories we heard are truly heart-wrenching.
Just to give you a sense of what these seniors are facing, A few quotes from the meeting.
Renee Higgin, a retired bartender and former member of Unite Here Local Aid, told us about having been homeless for years, living in a tool shed with no heat or running water for two years before finally finding a home at Halcyon, where she now tends a garden and grows vegetables for her neighbors.
She will likely be homeless again if the developer succeeds in evicting the mobile homeowners.
She testified, quote, for seven years, I've had the security without worry, and now they're going to take it away, unquote.
Eloise Mickelson, also a retired union member, I believe, from Spia, is a painter, musician, and grandmother who has lived in Halcyon for 16 years.
This is a caring community, Mickelson told us.
We look out for one another.
Some of us really would have no other place to go.
Wesley Shearer, who is a former Teamster driver, has raised a granddaughter who has special needs.
Halcyon is a neighborhood where Wesley and his family feel safety and trust.
He says, help save our community because that's all we have.
As I mentioned last week, the homes of these seniors are in danger because the owner of the Halcyon Mobile Home Park passed away and the property is now in a trust overseen by U.S.
Bank, which is finalizing a deal to sell the property to a corporate developer, Blue Fern, which intends to eliminate these senior homes and build townhouses, expensive townhouses, which they would not be able to afford.
Other cities have protected mobile home parks from predatory development with zoning restrictions.
I've reviewed the legislation protecting similar properties in Lynwood and Tumwater, Washington and Portland, Oregon.
And I have no doubt we can do something similar in Seattle if we have the time to do so.
But just like in the Save the Showbox movement, we have to act very quickly before the developer vests.
To give us that time, Ketil Freeman, who's been extremely helpful from central staff, has been working with the city attorney's office and has prepared legislation to place a moratorium on the, this is the first steps, I'll just pass this around, to a moratorium on the redevelopment of, any mobile home parks in Seattle.
And in fact, what we found was that this is not going to be the first time this will be done.
In fact, Seattle has had similar moratoria in place in the past four times between 1987 and 1990. And at that time also, and just like we are doing now, The moratoria were enacted with the idea of having a follow-up legislation to have a zoning designation for the manufactured home parks, but the city councils at that time failed to effectively use those moratoria to create the lasting zoning regulations, and hopefully this time we won't make that mistake.
So again, the success of this moratorium depends entirely on it being implemented quickly enough.
So I intend to walk the legislation onto the introduction and referral calendar today and to refer it directly to the city council for final action next week.
I know Ted from my office has sent draft legislation to you all last Friday per our council rules.
So I urge you to take a few minutes to review it sometime today if you haven't already, which I understand.
And also please let me know if you would like to be listed as co-sponsor of the bill.
I wanted to let you all know that I reached out to Council Members O'Brien and Juarez with invitations to co-sponsor the legislation on Friday because Council Member O'Brien had already on Wednesday indicated his support for the seniors as a whole and Council Member Juarez obviously is a District 5 representative and I thank Council Member O'Brien who has just walked in for agreeing to co-sponsor the bill and so please let me know if you've had a chance to review it and if you want to be listed as a co-sponsor in Legistar this morning.
And I'm not sure if that needs to be an open meeting or not, you know, we'll get the clerk's advice on that.
So that is on that issue.
And if there are questions, I'm happy to answer.
But if not, I'll go on to the next one.
But I'm happy to answer questions anytime.
Any questions on this one?
I have a few procedural statements I'll make just to clarify a matter.
So first of all, a great explanation and great work in concerning ourselves with the residents over there.
So it only requires five votes to go on the IRC today.
And I don't anticipate that's an issue, maybe after this discussion.
It would be scheduled for the week after.
This is time sensitive.
I learned a new word, moratoria.
Pearl for moratorium, so I got that out of it.
In all seriousness, who else knew that?
Okay, everyone knew that except me, okay.
I didn't go to that.
I missed school that day.
There have been some legal issues that it could raise as these kinds of things occur, and so it's likely that I'll schedule an exec session Monday, not this Monday, but next Monday.
And because we are actually exempting ourselves from the SEPA requirements and declaring somewhat of a public emergency, if you will, that would require three and I believe the mayor's concurrence, I think, but I'm not wondering, I think so.
So anyway, but obviously for the reasons stated, it's a time-sensitive and so we will act urgently to consider this.
Council Member Weres.
If I may address Council Member Swann.
Yes, please.
Yes.
Let me give you a little history just quickly.
We have had been, our staff has been at the meetings, the two meetings with the community groups, and we do understand.
And I've been on the phone, including yesterday, with community members as well.
We are talking about one particular piece of property which has not been sold yet, and that's the Halcyon Manufactured Home Mobile Park.
There are 76 mobile homes, there's 85 people that live there.
At this point, it looks like the developer did file plans, pre-application plans for a permit, which were filed in October of 2018. And their intent, and again, it's a pre-application plan for a permit, was for 196 townhouses.
My concern is that at this point, I want to thank Council Member Sawant for the work and her staff that they have done, and I had an opportunity to look at the proposed moratorium.
So this began as an opposition to a 15-foot up zone and two manufactured mobile home parks, Halison and Bella Bee.
And now it's developed into an emergency moratorium for one year.
which would of course would require us to declare an emergency.
The facts are there is no sale yet, nothing is pending.
I have been on the phone and waiting for calls back to figure out exactly on the ground what's going on besides just rumor and I wanted to just clear those issues up.
So now we have a proposed one-year moratorium and as Council Member Solano correctly pointed out and I had an opportunity to look at the City of Tumwater in the other cases in ordinances in which cities drafted ordinances to protect Mobile home communities and mobile is really just a misnomer.
They're actually manufactured homes.
These are people that actually own their homes and it's their only piece of equity, it's where they live, it's where they're retired.
So it's true that you can in a city, I don't know why this city hasn't done that, you can actually, I'm guessing Council Member Sawant, but since I wasn't, didn't get to share in this, that this legislation would be in an ordinance to protect the current use such a manufactured mobile park.
And of course, that's a zoning issue, meaning that the city would zone that these two parcels can only be used for manufactured home living.
which I understand.
So that would mean that mobile park home owners would be prohibited from changing the existing use of such property.
And that could be a decision, and legal would probably advise us on that.
What that means is that it would go from manufactured home to townhouses.
So this city, we would be required, and if you looked at the ordinance that Council Member was drafted, put together a work plan, and the work plan would require a one-year moratorium, declare an emergency, and provide to council by, I believe, is it September?
Transmit to council legislation, and I'm guessing that that legislation would be that the city of Seattle create a manufactured home park district or a land use designation to protect these 85 people and 76 mobile homes.
I got to quit calling them mobile homes because they're just homes, manufactured homes.
to protect them, and that has been upheld all the way up to the Ninth Circuit, that cities are allowed to do that, and it isn't spot zoning, and as long as it isn't a taking, then we can actually have that kind of zoning.
My concern, and while I appreciate Council Member Sawant's efforts and the research that I did this weekend, is I would like to talk to Council Member Johnson and get this in Council Member Johnson's committee as soon as possible.
and actually have public hearings and no offense to anyone about the show box, but I don't want to see a repeat of that where we immediately assume some issues that particularly aren't in fact declared an emergency and I'm not trying to kick it down the road or not pay attention or have not understand the needs of people being displaced, but that we actually do it right if we were to declare a one-year moratorium.
And so what I would like to do if I could work with council members so on offline, and I've already kind of checked in with Councilmember Johnson, if we could talk a little bit offline about getting it into the PLEZ committee and And actually having some of these legal issues that can be raised and that will be challenged by the people that own this property that have not sold this property and I know there's been talk about I've had people call me to say they want me to look at the will and they want me to like what we're really dealing with is a zoning issue and and I would like to work with it in the particular and correct committee.
Since this moratorium would be an emergency, which would require a three-quarters vote, we would have to have some direct, we would have to have direction over OPCD and SCCI to get us a work plan to have something transmitted to us from the executive by September.
And quite frankly, I don't think we can do all of that in one week.
Though I do appreciate and I will continue to work with Council Member Sawant and my other colleagues on getting this done and exploring why this city does not or does not protect or have a particular land use zoning protection for manufactured homes.
So I'll leave it at that.
Very good.
I think Council Member Sawant wanted to respond.
I know you're on cue.
Council Member Brandon.
Go ahead.
I can, I can, I mean, there are some things I could say to clarify, but you should go ahead first.
Thank you, Council President, and I really appreciate all the work that has gone into this in the last few days as the kind of imminent reality is facing us and appreciate that this is a really complex issue.
Council Member Sawant, I really want to particularly thank your work over the last few days to come up with a solution that, as you mentioned, I support.
I'm co-sponsoring it.
The challenge we're facing here is a complex land use one issue that unfortunately, as Council Member Juarez says, it's going to take a while for us to figure out.
And it's a rare instance where I do believe using our emergency powers to put a moratorium and make sense to buy us some time.
Because if we don't do that, I fear that the time it will take for us to think through the land use policies and other legal issues around that.
irreparable harm will have been done to a particular community that we will not be able to work back from.
And I look at parallels of where we're very cautious about using these powers and creating moratoriums, but I look at the two most recent examples, the show box being one.
All right, thank you.
I didn't raise my hand.
We weren't here for that.
You weren't here for that.
Moratoria.
This all happened because I said moratoria.
If I had said moratoriums, then...
But it never happened.
I was waiting.
Yeah.
The show box obviously is one, but also the work around the Aurora Licton Springs Urban Village.
And the reality that that is a neighborhood that's changing, and there were certain actions that we felt that were going to happen that we couldn't reverse and may lock in the future for a number of decades if we didn't take action to give us this time and space to resolve it.
And I'm going to acknowledge that this is complicated, and I hope that we have support to put an emergency ordinance in place, and I hope that we can do that.
time to prevent the ultimate eviction of sorts of all the folks that live there.
It's going to be a lot of work in the next year to figure out what we actually can do.
And so I think that we're putting that on our plate.
And the issue around housing is obviously a huge one that we're facing.
And the specific circumstances of dozens of folks that are living in the two remaining mobile home parks.
We want to make sure that we are doing the work that we need to do.
We want to make sure that our parks are manufactured home parks are critically important to the work we do going forward.
Yeah, I just had a question about, as of last week, it appeared that the strategy was to be using the mandatory housing affordability rezones as our tool to address this issue, and not approving the rezone associated with MHA for this area.
Can you speak a little bit why that is not adequate?
Yes, I can do that, and that can be part of everything I do to close, unless there are other important questions that come up.
I didn't have any questions.
I just sort of put a little skin in the game that I think I agree with what you said, Council Member O'Brien, in terms of this is time sensitive.
And from a legal standpoint, we just have to act quickly but rationally.
And so I applaud Council Member Morrison trying to think through our existing structure and trying to sort of utilize that as a smart zoning tool.
I'm just not sure.
time lends itself to that process.
And so one of the reasons why I wanted to go into executive session to ask questions like this to get some legal clarity on time sensitivity, because I just don't know where that is.
Again, hearing the concerns of the residents, I think that should drive a lot of what we're doing.
And so, and again, for purposes of today, we're just putting on the IRC.
So we have, and that's why I made it clear, you only need five votes for that.
Again, if it's voted on in a week, we'll need a majority.
And so I do understand the time sensitivity of this.
The last part I wanted to say was, If it is to be studied for a year and we look at the use of mobile home parks as a means of affordability, I continue to think that we need to look at that issue in the context of every kind of living situation.
dadoos or small tiny homes or other kinds of things as we get creative so let's not fall back into the trap of just looking at these issues in an isolated vacuum that whether it's the MHA scheme or I guess it would be our MHA scheme by the way but our housing strategies that this sort of I've never even heard that the concept of What are we going to do with mobile home parks in the next several years?
I think we're down to two now.
I think there used to be many more.
Many other cities have many more, and it's just not talked about.
So at some point, I think we want to talk about this in the larger context of alternative living arrangements in the near future for people that this would be their means to live.
Council Member Juarez?
I just want to wrap something up and make it clear.
I am not categorically opposed to a moratorium for one year.
What I am saying from looking at the case law, and we haven't had an opportunity to run a lot of this by law, I completely agree with what the courts have always held, is that the city is within their rights and it's not a taking to zone.
for manufactured home parks.
It hasn't escaped me that Holler Lake, Aurora Licton Springs, and Bitter Lake are in the high displacement, low opportunity zone.
It hasn't escaped me that there are not that many mobile parks left in the city of Seattle, and they should be protected, particularly in light of what you had just said.
What are the social and housing needs?
And when the courts looked at that, they actually said because of housing needs and people being priced out of cities, it is within the city's purview and it's been upheld that you can create basically safe spaces for people who live in manufactured homes.
So that's not the question for me one way or another.
The question for me is the moratorium immediately.
I want this to pass.
I don't know if it can pass with three quarters of votes because a lot of my colleagues are going to need a lot more information.
The correct committee while I come in council members want and for meeting with this group a lot of them are elders and were confused about whether or not they should be here today if they should rent another bus and I just don't I'm uncomfortable when misinformation gets out there Originally people were concerned thinking that stopping an up zone was going to stop development And I spent tons of time on the phone Friday and yesterday Explaining that a 15-foot up zone is not going to stop development And second of all, it has not, property has not been sold.
So, you know me, I like to start with the facts and then move from there.
And so, I mean, at the end of the day, I may very well agree with Council Member Sawant that we need a one-year moratorium and the work plan should move forward.
But I think I would like to hear from my colleagues, particularly Council Member Johnson at some point, where this is what he does in his committee, that we do it right and that we have all council members voting 9-0 for a one-year moratorium.
And we all believe that it's an emergency and the executive hears us loud and clear.
And that's what I would like to see at the end of the day.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Council Member Johnson?
You know, to echo the words of my colleagues, I think the best way for us to act is to do it with legal prudence.
So many times we've made decisions that have resulted in us needing to make sure that we were on the correct path.
Legally, so I leave those questions for a future executive session, but I will say that next week is one of those mythical fifth weeks where traditionally we don't have committee meetings scheduled and I'd be happy.
We had been saving Next Wednesday morning is an opportunity for a potential special planning land use and zoning committee meeting that we don't need So that gives us the opportunity if the council president chose for us to do so to refer the bill to a special committee meeting next week and if next week we're not a possibility and because of legal noticing requirements, we could also make this case in my committee meeting on February the 6th.
So I don't know what the will of this body is because of the Open Public Meetings Act.
We're talking about this in the view of the public.
So I'll leave it up to my colleagues and what the will of the majority is.
I have no objection either way and look forward to understanding a little bit more about the implications of the moratoria on the potential implementation of MHA in this nick of the woods.
So I want to ask some more questions, but want to offer that I'm happy to take up the responsibility if that is the will of my colleagues.
Thank you for that, Councilman Johnson.
Councilmember O'Brien?
Just briefly, I appreciate that too, and I guess I'll just put out there as another option.
I agree that getting a legal briefing is going to be important.
I don't believe there'd be anything to prevent us from repealing an emergency moratorium if we put it in place.
And I'm just really cautious about the timing.
I think if we want to move swiftly on some land use discussions, we could also put the moratorium in place just to make sure that we don't lose an opportunity there and then have a discussion and see if we need to revise that too.
Okay, why don't we try to wrap it up?
And I for one could have gone a week without hearing the word repeal, but be that as it may, Council Member Sawant.
So a lot of points have come up.
Obviously, I don't know that I'll be able to touch on every single one because it depends on the notes I was able to make.
But on what Council Member Herbold said, as far as the MHA is concerned, I just wanted to clarify that the point I was making, because it was MHA, it was because an MHA committee meeting, I brought up only the MHA aspect of it.
Obviously, this property is part of the upzoning if we don't, make an exception for it.
And I wanted to clarify that if whatever we do on that zoning question is completely non-exclusive to all of this, the moratorium and the special zoning designation in the sense that even if we did the upzone, it wouldn't preclude us from then.
My question is, is the development dependent upon the MHAF zone?
Yes, it will be, I mean, I believe it will be up zoned by an M scale and so that will enable the developer to build.
And they could not develop the townhouse?
I don't know that they could not develop at all.
It's a question of how many they can develop.
That's something to verify.
But as far as, but one thing I can say with confidence is that the MHA zoning or not holding it from the upzoning, all of that, that was never going to be the actual solution.
That was just sort of a common sense thing that I was proposing, that if we're going to hold it for a different designation, then let's not upzone it.
That was my point, but I don't know that legally we're in any way restricted from carrying out this process, even if that upzone happened.
I just felt like it didn't make sense to do the upzoning when we're talking about an alternate process.
The solution was always going to be I'm not sure what the current zoning is.
I'm thinking about enacting a moratorium for now to prevent the developer from vesting and then having a manufactured home zoning designation for that.
Just to explain myself, I didn't talk about all of that at the MHA meeting because I didn't want to take up time that was not actually directly related to the MHA discussion.
But one thing we should be very careful about understanding is that regardless of the answer to that question, one bottom line that remains unchanged is that if these homes are lost, the seniors are actually facing a real prospect of homelessness.
And the best case scenario that they're facing is having their community completely scattered and maybe some affordable housing somewhere at some point.
But if you listen to their stories, you will know that this is going to have a devastating impact regardless of the answer to the zoning question.
So I don't think that unless the city of Seattle is ready to provide them alternate affordable housing today, Unless that is true, we cannot allow their homes to be dismantled.
That much is clear.
So I just hope that council members take that into account and not get bogged down in answers to specific questions, which of course we should answer, but that is not going to change the question of where will these seniors live if these homes are lost.
Time Magazine reported in November of last year that And this is not so much applicable to Seattle, because as Council President Harrell was saying, we don't have too many manufactured home parks here.
But just to talk about the impact of this, Time Magazine was reporting last November that manufactured homes are the one last remaining bastion of affordable home ownership for a lot of working class families.
22 million Americans who make under $30,000 have been able to access home ownership because of the option of manufactured homes.
So, I mean, to be clear, we're not advocating future manufactured homes by any means.
What we are advocating is not allowing these seniors to face devastation in their lives because right now they own those homes.
So it's, to me, those two questions are separate.
We're not, it's not a question of future mobile homes.
It's a question of what do we do now, given that these people have been living here for decades, given that they have sunk in whatever minimal financial equity they've been able to gather through their meager earnings into these homes, and then are we going to take that, are we going to allow that to be taken and then have them scattered?
I mean, there was one person from the Seattle Displacement Coalition who was at the committee table on Friday.
that, and unfortunately there were no other council members, so please watch the Seattle Channel video.
She was informing us that she had been involved in the activism around what happened to another mobile home park.
Yes, exactly.
And then, well, not that, but the one for Christmas.
No, not the one in SeaTac.
They were there too, but I'm talking about in the past, in the 1990s.
The reason I'm mentioning that is because when that mobile home park was lost somewhere in the north, again, not Seattle, one of the people from there is still homeless.
So this is not a hyperbole that we're engaging in.
This is actual reality that these people will be facing, and it would be completely derelict of us as the highest legislative body of the city if we didn't act on it.
Now, on many of the other questions that have come, I'll answer specific questions.
I will say, though, I'm not clear at all what Council Member Juarez's concerns are.
I mean, her staff was present at the first meeting.
There was nothing preventing them from being part of this discussion.
And I'm not sure what the legal concerns are.
I'm totally happy for the executive session to be set up next Monday and so on.
But just to clarify, this moratorium bill has gone through review of the city attorney's office.
Roger Wynn from the city attorney's office has looked at it.
And again, you know, council members are free to discuss with the city attorney's office on this question.
And the land use questions may be complex, but I have a couple of things to say about it.
is that the moratorium has nothing to do with the future.
I mean, we can choose to or not choose to do something with that moratorium.
I would say the whole point of doing the moratorium is to have a zoning designation to preserve these mobile homes.
But as far as the legality of the moratorium is concerned, it has nothing to do with zoning.
It has nothing to do with MHA.
It has nothing to do with what Council Member Johnson discusses in his committee.
So I don't agree with sort of conflating those two issues.
They're completely separate issues.
And as Council Member O'Brien said, the whole point of doing a moratorium is so that we have time to discuss what are admittedly complex questions.
What isn't complex, though, is whether or not we should make sure these seniors preserve their housing.
And from that standpoint, I do not support a delay because a delay is risky here.
It's not a question of legal prudence.
It's a question of political and moral responsibility here.
If we don't act as fast as possible on this, then there's a real risk that the developer will vest, and then what would we do?
Then the question of whether or not we designate as a separate zone, that's moot.
Then we will be in legally much shakier territory once the vesting happens.
So I don't understand the purpose of delaying this in any way.
If council members want an emergency meeting this week in Councilmember Johnson's committee.
I'm fine with that.
I do not support delaying it by any means, though.
And while I support the question of, you know, potential of having an emergency meeting this week, I also, again, want to reiterate, again, that is not going to clarify any issues for the moratorium bill itself, because it's a separate bill.
It has a separate existence.
I also wanted to inform all council members that not only are we not treading new ground on the moratorium, because as I said, there have been several moratoria enacted in the past in the city of Seattle for this specific issue.
We are also not treading new ground on the zoning designation for manufactured home parks.
In fact, I'm right now going through a detailed report that was published by the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability in the city of Portland, which in August of last year, had a discussion on protecting mobile home parks for the same reason, for protecting homeownership of working-class retirees, and Portland has many more mobile home parks than here, but in August of last year, the Portland City Council voted unanimously to take up the manufactured homes designation for zoning, and this report actually, you know, has the the Planning Commission's report preceding the vote, the Planning Commission's report that advised the vote on that zoning designation.
So again, I feel fairly confident about this because it is not something brand new.
It has been done in both in Seattle and in other cities.
So I feel we should go forward with this.
And as far as Council Member Juarez's question of doing it right is concerned, well, we wouldn't be doing it right if we missed the opportunity to make sure that the developer does not vest, that would be indeed not doing the right thing.
So I'll stop there.
Okay.
All right, as we proceed, I would just remind you we only have one item on the agenda this afternoon, so maybe this briefing could move it off.
Sorry, and I do have one more item on my thing.
I'll quickly go through that.
The next meeting of the Human Services, Equitable Development, and Renters' Rights Committee is scheduled for a special time this Thursday, the 24th, at 6 p.m.
at the Miller Community Center.
This meeting will replace the committee meeting that was proposed for Friday, the 25th.
So if you council members haven't already, please have your staff remove that time from your calendar.
The meeting is Thursday the 24th at 6 p.m.
at Miller Community Center.
And the reason we have made special, taken special pains to do it at after work hours in a community location is because we heard substantial concerns from the employees of the Human Services Department and from the human service providers that the Human Services Department works with closely that they were not consulted in the mayor's nomination.
And the mayor's office told us that they did not conduct a search process at all for this position.
which is surprising to us because it's a very important position as the Human Services Coalition's letter says it's a high-impact department.
So this committee meeting will focus on the process of the mayoral nomination for the Director of Human Services Department.
And we will hear from community members about what they would like from such a process and from the director who's appointed.
And so we have asked the Deputy Mayor Mosley to join us and be present at the meeting so he can answer questions about the mayor's decision.
We're not asking Jason Johnson to testify at this initial meeting because it is not in any way focused on him.
It's focused on the mayor's nomination process.
And as you all know, the most important principle of the Race and Social Justice Initiative is genuinely listening to affected communities.
So I look forward to council members' attendance at the Thursday meeting.
Will there be childcare?
Sorry?
Will child care be provided?
I believe so, but I can confirm that for you.
Just a question on that.
Councilman Gonzalez?
Yeah, I wanted to chime in on that last point, but if you have a question, I can wait.
Just a question that I understand that concerns about the process are being raised, but if the executive or Deputy Mayor Mosley have said that There wasn't a process, and I assume that's because he was an interim position and had been an employee for a while, and so they just sort of slid him over to that position.
Tell me, why is there value to say, to have a public examination of the process when they've conceded that there wasn't a process?
It's not so much, it's like a public examination of what happened in the past, but it's important for community members and the employees if they come to talk about what they would like in the process.
Because at this moment, my strong sense is that they're not accepting what the process has been.
So in other words, they will want an actual process to this.
Deputy Mayor Mosley, I hope, will be there, not only to discuss from his end what happened at the mayor's office, but also to listen from community members.
And will interim director Johnson be there as well, or staff?
I mean, they're totally welcome to be there, but we're not requiring them to be at the committee table because we don't want it to appear like it's a questioning of him, whereas community members have been very, very clear with us that they want a discussion on the process, not about him as an individual.
Council Member Gonzalez.
Thank you.
So I appreciate the flagging of this particular concern by Council Member Solant as the chair of the committee responsible for overseeing the nomination and wanted to just circulate really quickly a letter that Council Member Mosqueda and I sent to the mayor this morning in large part as a follow-up to some of the concerns that Council Member Solant has expressed specifically that came to us from the Seattle Human Services Coalition on January 15, 2019, where there were some concerns expressed by the Seattle Human Services Coalition around the process and the inclusivity of the process in terms of doing some meaningful outreach.
Even if the mayor knew that it was going to be interim HSD director Johnson who was going to be nominated, I think they're still expressing concerns about whether or not it would have been appropriate, and I think in their mind it would have been appropriate, to do some outreach to HSD employees, especially the bargaining units that are included within HSD and some of the service providers who often interact with HSD.
And so Council Member Musgat and I wanted to provide the mayor an opportunity to give us as a council some additional information so that we have the benefit of her thinking behind her process and what it was and what it wasn't because honestly I just don't know the answers to those questions and feel like I need to have that information.
I think Council Member Musqueda and I both feel like we need to have that information.
particularly around the inclusion of some of the bargaining units within the Human Services Department to be able to feel like we're taking an informed vote whenever this appears in front of full council.
So I wanted to take an opportunity to circulate both the letter that Council Member Musqueda and I sent to the mayor this morning as well as a copy of the January 15th communication that we received from the Seattle Human Services Coalition.
So again, my reading of the Seattle Human Services Coalition letter, as indicated by Council Member Salant, is not critiquing the actual experience or nomination of Mr. Johnson, but it is focusing on wanting to get a better understanding, for the sake of transparency, what what types of values the executive took into consideration in making a determination to convert interim HSD Director Johnson to be the permanent director for HSD.
And I think those are important questions and for purposes of making sure that there is a level of confidence and that there is a level of information provided to this council to be able to make informed decision on this nomination is really important to the overall process.
So I hope to be able to, both Councilmember Mosqueda and I hope to get a response to our inquiry and when we do we are happy to share it with you all as our colleagues.
Excellent.
We good?
Yes, I mean just to thank you Councilmember Gonzalez for that letter and I will look at that and I hope you and Councilmember Esqueda and others will be able to join us at the committee and also wanted to let everybody know that my office had been following up with the mayor's office for the past several months, asking them what process they're going to use for the appointment or the nomination of the HST director.
And we didn't get actually any response from them in terms of what process they're using.
And then the next thing we knew was the nomination was sent to council.
So it will be good to hear from them.
And hopefully, Deputy Mayor Mosley will be there also in person to answer the concerns about why transparent process wasn't used so that people, both employees and human services providers and the union could provide some input.
Very good.
Council Member Herbold.
So my committee this week meets on Friday due to the Martin Luther King holiday on Monday the 21st.
So the Civil Rights Utilities Economic Development and Arts Committee will meet Friday at 10 a.m.
Have moved the 930 meeting to 10 a.m.
in concurrence with our resolution doing so.
In that committee meeting we will be having a second discussion on a eviction reform resolution and what that resolution does is it identifies problems and challenges included in a recent report from the Seattle Women's Commission and it sets out a work plan to pass legislation to address some of those concerns.
The resolution itself does not identify solutions.
It identifies and names the problems with the idea that if we could have some agreement here on the council on what the problems are, that will help us work on identifying solutions that we can all move forward with together.
So we will be voting on that in committee on Friday.
I'm happy to share a copy of the resolution with anybody who would like to see it.
We also will be having a public hearing and briefing on a Seattle Public Utilities related bill.
relating to the City of Seattle's datum point, updating the vertical and horizontal reference datum for City of Seattle departments and outside entities as a standard elevation reference plane.
All of that to say that the legislation will bring the City of Seattle's code into alignment with current and future National Geodetic Survey Datums.
I'm just really excited about seeing the closed captioning.
Translate whatever it is you just said.
Then finally, we're going to have a briefing from Seattle Public Utilities as well on their seismic program.
This report comes after an extensive two-year assessment by the Seattle Public Utilities on the regional drinking water system and builds on a previous seismic study from the 1990s.
Over the last 32 years, SPU has invested more than $100 million in seismic upgrades to the drinking water system.
There's a lot more to be done.
We're looking at moving forward after the passage of the next strategic business plan of making a commitment to invest up to $20 million per year on seismic upgrades and continuing these investments over a 50-year horizon.
Other things coming up for me this week.
I've got office hours in district this Friday from 2 to 7 at the Senior Center of West Seattle.
And then a couple meetings coming up on Wednesday evening.
There will be a second meeting, this one in Highland Park.
One happened last night at the Fauntleroy Church.
And this is a meeting to discuss the continued operation of Camp Second Chance.
Camp Second Chance is coming to the end of its second year of permitted operation and the office of the Human Services Department is checking in with community members on how folks feel that the camp has been operating and the impacts on the community.
In particular, last night's meeting was really, I felt that it was a really fitting evening, Martin Luther King Day holiday to have this event.
The room was filled with the spirit of Dr. King, a lot of really wonderful support for Camp Second Chance.
Every time anybody spoke, there was unanimous applause in the room.
Really strong, strong support for the continuation of Camp Second Chance up on Myers Way, where the community has been coming together to build tiny homes on the site.
And if you haven't had a chance to visit, I really urge you to do so.
They're actually going to be having an open house in February.
I think it's February 12th.
If you're interested, I can get you some information about it.
So there's going to be another meeting follow up in Highland Park on Wednesday.
I'll be attending that.
And then also tomorrow morning at 7 AM, Seattle Public Utilities.
is going to be doing a walking tour of the Duwamish Valley Action Plan projects.
And the reason why it is at 7 a.m.
is because there will be a King Tide event.
occurring tomorrow morning.
And king tide events are the highest tides of the year.
They typically happen two to four times a year.
Climate change is expected to accelerate these king tides.
And rising sea levels and the frequency of extreme storm surges is expected to possibly happen monthly by 2100. South Park is, of course, one of the most vulnerable neighborhoods for sea level rise, and the walking tour will be focused on a number of really, really important investments that Seattle Public Utilities has been putting into that community to create resiliency, including a stormwater collection and conveyance project, and a pump station, and a stormwater quality project.
So I'm looking forward to doing that tomorrow morning.
Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.
Councilmember Juarez.
Thank you.
Good morning.
Good morning.
So all kinds of good stuff, exciting news from Seattle District 5. So the Lake City Library celebrated its recent grand opening on January 12th.
I had the honor of joining the ribbon-cutting festivities along with Chief Librarian Marcellus Turner and Deputy Director David Mosley.
As many of you know, the library has been closed for eight months from May until January for the renovation.
I want to thank the Lake City branch for providing a welcoming and inclusive space for the community.
The library looks absolutely beautiful, and since I've been going to the library for three decades and with my kids, It's such a wide open space and more room for children and youth and before care and after care, more conference rooms and more of a space where people can actually eat food.
The renovation has just made it more open and that's what we needed in that library that was built, I believe, in the 1950s.
Last week, yours truly, got to go meet with the Girl Scouts and it was amazing.
I had a great time with these young women.
They wanted to talk about sisterhood and leadership.
A lot of questions about politics.
I also did the honorary Girl Scout oath.
I took the oath, so it turns out I'm not an honorary Girl Scout.
I was informed that I am, in fact, Indeed, a real Girl Scout now.
I got a pin.
So thank you, Troop 50887. It was just, it was amazing to be there with all these young women and their parents.
Other exciting news, as you know, every year we do this.
This is our fourth annual Dive in D5.
It's scheduled for Friday, February 1st.
at 5 o'clock at the Shanty Tavern.
We are very excited this year, besides having food and live music and all the things, and we have awards for community leaders.
We have Thomas Constam, who is the local author from, grew up in Lake City, went to New York, and then came home and wrote a book called Lake City.
And he will be there to open up the festivities, so we're lucky that we have him.
Thomas, I spoke to Thomas to come, and he actually lives within walking distance of the Shanty Tavern and grew up his whole life in Seattle, in Lake City, and is excited to come home and speak at our event.
Last week, we held a public hearing related to authorizing an easement in Discovery Park, followed by a briefing and presentation on legislation for the central waterfront lid.
As you know, this is our sixth time bringing this up again for discussion, but it's very important that we do that.
The next meeting of the Civic Development, Public Assets, and Native Communities will be this Thursday, and I think it's at 10. Yes, it's at 10 a.m.
in council chambers, and both items heard last week will be up for a potential voting committee.
So just a quick reminder, the three pieces of central waterfront legislation that will be voted on include the lid formation, that's ordinance, lid formation, ordinance number 6751, a funding and operation and maintenance agreement ordinance, and of course, the protest waiver agreement ordinance.
Central staff will distribute a memo today describing the legislation for those of you who missed the committee discussion and want to get up to speed before the full committee vote or before the committee or full council vote on following Monday.
Following today's briefing, we will have a very brief executive session regarding the legislation.
There's some quasi-judicial matters.
that we need to clear up.
So other than that, that's all I have.
Thank you.
Speaking of quasi-judicial matters, this following statement brought to you by the Law Department.
Application of Century Pacific LLC to rezone an approximate 18,000 square foot site located at 444 Northeast Ravenna Boulevard from Neighborhood Commercial 2 with a 40 foot height limit to Neighborhood Commercial 2 with a 75 foot height limit and implementing an M1 zone is now considered quasi-judicial for purposes.
I encourage my colleagues to continue to refrain from talking to proponents or opponents.
If you have further questions about this, please see our council central staff.
Other than that, there are several items on introduction or referral calendar that relate to the implementation of the citywide mandatory housing affordability program, but none of them are up for consideration this afternoon.
That's it for me.
Thank you, Councilman Johnson.
Councilman Gonzalez.
Thank you.
Nothing on this afternoon's agenda or introduction referral calendar from the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans in Education Committee.
We will, however, have a regular meeting of the Jesna Ed Committee this Wednesday, January 23rd at 10 a.m.
here in council chambers.
We're gonna discuss two very important agenda items.
The first is we will be joined by the Inspector General of Public Safety, Lisa Judge, and her deputy, IG Director Amy Tsai for a presentation of the Office of Inspector General's first ever work plan for the 2019 year.
This is a requirement of the Police Accountability Ordinance that we passed in 2017 and really looking forward to discussing the work plan in my committee this Wednesday and invite all of those who have interest in hearing about her work plan to please join us at 10 a.m.
this Wednesday.
Second, we are going to host the Seattle Police Department, the Seattle Fire Department, and our Office of Emergency Management to hear about the City of Seattle's response protocols when there are 911 outages.
So as you all are probably aware at this point, on December 27th and 28th, of 2018, there was a system-wide 911 outage for CenturyLink phone customers.
The first one on the 27th was about 32 minutes long, and the second one was 11 and a half hours long.
Those are considered major incidences according to our emergency protocols.
And so on Wednesday, we'll have an opportunity to hear from our city agencies about how they responded to that particular outage and what lessons they've learned and there are several lessons that were learned and some work that I believe those agencies are going to need to embark upon in the next you know several weeks to make sure that should those outages occur in the future where we are better prepared both in terms of our communications protocols and and otherwise to make sure that the public is as informed as they need to be should they have an emergency during those outages.
So I look forward to having those folks in committee and hope that you all will join us in committee if you're interested in that particular conversation as well.
Really quickly, just wanted to talk about a few in-community events.
The first one that I wanted to highlight was that last Thursday, my staff and I had an opportunity to tour the new Roxhill Elementary School in District 1, and we got to see firsthand the impact of both our past families and education levy investments as well as the potential for future levy investments at that particular location.
I want to thank City Year for inviting me to join them at Roxhill to see exactly how our city levy dollars support before, during, and after school.
activities that help our elementary school kids learn and thrive while they're at school.
And this tour was particularly important for me because over the next several weeks in my committee, we will be considering the mayor's proposed implementation plan for the city's Renewed Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy.
So we're gonna continue to, in my office, spend some time with community to hear from teachers, principals, students, and their families to make sure that we are getting that implementation plan correct and that our investments are going to be leveraged in the best way possible to close the opportunity and kindergarten readiness gap for kids across the city.
And then next I wanted to just thank the organizers of the Women's March this past weekend was the second year for the celebration of the Women's March here in Seattle, nationally and globally, as well as obviously the celebration of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his civil rights effort.
Super excited that we had another opportunity in Seattle to show up in force and support the ongoing fight for equity throughout our city.
And, of course, I want to thank all those folks who showed up at the Women's March on Saturday.
I had an opportunity to participate in the march by being on a panel on Saturday afternoon with Senator Manka Dhingra and newly elected State Representative My Linh Thai on a panel discussing the joys, trials, and tribulations of being a woman of color in elected office.
And really, again, just want to thank the organizers and the participants for for continuing to be active and continuing to fight.
So this week I'm excited to head back into community again on Thursday January 24th from 4 p.m.
to 6 p.m.
I will be joining the other members of the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy Oversight Committee at a public meeting at the Rainier Community Center to discuss the proposed implementation plan for FAP levy dollars and then on Friday January 25th at 1 30 p.m.
I'll be in district 2 meeting with the Georgetown Community Council about some of their public safety and some impending development concerns in that particular neighborhood.
And then lastly, I will be, this afternoon, asking to be excused.
On Monday, January 28th, I'll be heading to Washington, D.C.
from January 28th through the 30th to attend my first board meeting for Local Progress, which is a national network of progressive elective officials from cities, counties, towns, school districts, and other local governments across the country.
I'm really excited.
head to D.C., attend my first board meeting for local progress, and represent Seattle's progressive policies.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Councilmember Bryant.
Thank you.
The Sustainability and Transportation Committee doesn't have anything on this afternoon's agenda.
We do not meet this week.
The one thing I'll just mention for the public, a big thank you to everyone who made changes in their commute behavior last week because of thousands of different changes to pattern.
While there were certainly additional delays last week, it definitely did not reach the kind of catastrophic levels that folks were fearful of.
The fear now is that folks that are doing those changes will start to backtrack and say, well, I'm just going to go back to my normal patterns.
And we're seeing a little bit of that this morning where delays are increased.
And so I want to applaud the folks at SDOT, WSDOT, King County Metro, Sound Transit.
I think they're seeing amazing loads throughout the system.
And I know folks are working a lot of hours.
to keep an eye on things and manage that well.
And I think they've responded really well.
A couple incidents last week, including a dump truck that rolled over on I-5.
Not the best week to have that happen, but they managed to get that cleared relatively quickly and minimize the impact of that.
So thanks to the folks that are doing the work out there.
Thanks to so many community members, not just in Seattle, but throughout the region, who have made changes, who have the flexibility to make some changes and are doing that.
And just encouraging folks to stick with it.
After this morning, we'll have eight more commutes, assuming everything's on schedule, before this phase is through.
So the end is near, hopefully, in a good way.
But please stick with it so we can get through this time together.
Thank you.
OK, thanks for going around the table.
And we're going to go into an executive session at this point.
So as presiding officer, I'm announcing that the Seattle City Council will now convene an executive session for the purpose of Executive sessions discuss pending potential or actual litigation.
The council's executive sessions are an opportunity for the council to discuss confidential legal matters with city attorneys as authorized by law.
And a legal monitor is always present to ensure that the council reserves questions of policy for our public open sessions.
And so I expect this executive session to last 20 minutes.
So that'll be 11.20.
this morning, and if the executive session is to be extended beyond that time, I'll announce the extension and its expected duration.
So at this point, will the clerk please secure the room and we'll move into executive session.