Good morning, everybody.
Thank you for being here.
A regular scheduled council briefing.
Council members Bagshaw and Sawant and Juarez will be absent from this morning's briefing and this afternoon.
So I just wanted the public to know that.
And we are going to, I'm going to give a short, we're going to do a preview of today's full council actions first, and then we'll move into an executive session.
and you should have our state legislative update on our legislative agenda in Olympia for you.
We've suspended a presentation this morning, and I think our plan is to have them back next week.
But good morning, everybody.
Okay, so let me start off by today's full council actions by just announcing a few things.
This afternoon, we're doing our our sort of perfunctory legislation where we do retire all legislation that have been pretty dormant for the last year.
It's consistent with our rules.
It's whether it's a resolution, a bill, a file or an appointment.
And so that'll be the, I think at the top of our agenda, which is our annual retirement bill.
We also have on the Governance, Equity, and Technology Committee meeting, our regular scheduled meeting tomorrow at 930. And we have the beginning of the confirmation process for Ryan Vancell, the hearing examiner.
And many of you have gotten an email that if you've had experiences with him or his work product or his office that you wanted to play a role in the evaluation.
We just wanted to make sure you had the opportunity, and we've gotten several responses, and so we look forward to kicking off that process.
You may recall that he was actually confirmed for one year, and so he's only been in his position as hearing examiner for a year, although he was a deputy prior to that.
And then we also have a presentation of a organization, or at least a technology known as the Samaritan app.
And many of you might have seen a gentleman, Jonathan is his first name, I believe, but irrespective of the personal, outstanding young man, him personally, he's been coming down a few times during full council and committee.
He does work in helping unsheltered individuals on this really, I think, sort of a cool app, and it's a medallion.
that allows the unsheltered person, and allows another person to contact this person, know their personal story.
And you've heard, you may recall, at one hearing, a few gentlemen talking about their experience in homelessness.
One person was actually sleeping down here in the city hall, and how this application allowed them to receive mentorship, financial assistance, structure around their life.
And so I thought it very wise to first understand how the technology works and then have representatives from both technology and HSD to sort of understand any policy implications.
But before we even explore this technology, let's understand it first.
From what I know of it and what I've researched on it, it looks like it is one of many tools that may help out tremendously.
And certainly some of these individuals that have used it successfully, will come and talk to our committee.
So that's tomorrow at 930. So we welcome anyone to sort of see if this could be another part of our toolbox.
And let me explain, let me channel in Council Member Juarez's energy, if I may, and her staff prepared some notes for me to read in her absence.
And I want my staff to know that Her staff is on her A-game, so you all may want to take notes on this.
It's even color-coded here.
So from Councilmember Juarez, a few words.
The Civic Development, Public Assets, and Native Communities Committee will meet this Wednesday, April 3rd at 2 o'clock, and there's two appointments for the Board of Park Commissioners up for consideration.
And the next Civic Development, Public Access, and Native Communities Committee will also meet Wednesday, April 17th at two o'clock, and they're planning a shorter agenda to accommodate the libraries meeting that follows that same day.
And speaking of the libraries meeting, the Select Committee on the Library Levy, they held their first committee meeting last Thursday.
It was a great meeting with our chief librarian, Marcellus Turner, and his team.
The Mayor's Office and the Library Board of Trustees provided a comprehensive presentation on the 2019 Proposed Library Levy.
Council Member Juarez is excited about the work libraries have produced, and this Proposed Levy continues baseline services and expands on the needs of a growing city.
Seattle Public Libraries has a strong mission and plan to increase access to low-income families and communities of color.
This is the heart of what a library should be, the people's university.
Lots of people are excited about this, and I encourage the public to share their thoughts and their suggestions and to contact any of us here at the table and our staffs.
You can do this in person at the scheduled committee public hearing for Thursday, April 11th at 530. Or, of course, email your council member.
She wants to thank councilmember gonzalez and councilmember harrell for attending and our meeting Our next meeting on that again will be monday april 8th following the council briefing and that will be an issue identification meeting And councilmember bagshaw will chair that meeting And asha vanca teramin the council central staffer will be available if you have any questions and on a Much heavier note.
Last week, Lake City, as I think everyone in the city knows, experienced a tragedy that no community should ever have to experience.
And there were four victims to a senseless act of gun violence, two of which did not survive.
In District 5, in our Seattle community, they came together on Saturday afternoon in response to the shooting to heal and show love.
support one another and honor the families impacted by this tragedy and council members would like to thank Chris Leverson and Annette Hyde-Jessen for organizing such a beautiful event in honor of the individuals and families impacted by last week's event.
A lot of people were there including our own Seattle Police Chief Best, thank you Chief Best and King County Executive Dow Constantine and Mayor Durkin and of course Council Member Warris was there and At the event, there was oversized cars for people to sign that would go to the two people in the hospital and the families who lost loved ones.
And so Council Member Juarez just wanted to really let folks know her heart goes out to the families who were impacted by this senseless tragedy.
Okay, thank you, Debra Juarez, Council Member Juarez.
Council Member Herbold, you have the floor.
Thank you.
There is no Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, Arts Committee meeting this week, and as far as the items that my committee has on the full council agenda today, we have two appointments.
One, the Museum Development Authority appointment.
This is an appointment brought forward by the Governing Council, and the other is an LGBTQ Commission appointment, and that is an appointment for whom the council is the appointing authority.
No regional committees this week.
I had office hours last Friday at the Southwest Community Center, and last week I also had the pleasure of participating in the National Main Street Conference, which was here in Seattle.
and presented on my efforts to create a legacy business program here in Seattle.
Was proud to have a chance to present with a representative from San Francisco who has successfully proposed and implemented a legacy business program in San Francisco.
Also on Wednesday evening, attended the League of Women Voters Voice of Democracy, and a number of folks in our community received awards.
I just want to give a shout out to Tandi Williams, 37th District activist, who received a Voices of Democracy award, as well as the organization Civil Survival, which many of you may be aware of, who does a lot of work with the formerly incarcerated community and justice-involved individuals.
They also received an award recognizing their great work.
This week, I also just want to flag that Kate Becker's going away party is this week.
And Kate is somebody who has led the Office of Film and music ably for a number of years.
Our loss is King County's gain.
They're going to be starting a new arts office over there in the office of the King County Executive.
Thanks.
Very good.
And before Councilmember O'Brien goes, I will let everyone know that this is Councilmember Johnson's last briefing, so we may have to take full advantage of that.
Councilmember O'Brien.
It wasn't lost on me that you're retiring legislation.
I just added to the list retired legislation as Rob do.
I'm going to put Rob on there as a council bill and retire him.
Thank you, Council President.
The Sustainability and Transportation Committee has our regular meeting tomorrow afternoon at 2 p.m.
here in Council Chambers.
Four items on the agenda.
First, we're going to hear from Seattle Department of Transportation on an update to the bike master plan implementation plan.
We traditionally get our modal implementation plans in the fall.
but the bike master plan wanted to go through some more process with community members and so that was delayed until March and so we got that late on the day on Friday and so it'll be attached to the agenda hopefully today and we'll have a good discussion on that.
We will then have our first discussion on a new piece of legislation sometimes referred to as the EV readiness ordinance, EV being electric vehicles.
This is a bill that the Office of Sustainability and Environment worked on in conjunction with SDCI.
And if it goes forward in the shape it's in, it would be a requirement on new construction for making the buildings ready to accommodate what we anticipate to be an increase in electric vehicles.
And so some of that will be around requiring a certain number of charging stations, some of it will be around having the electricity in place so that you can future-proof that and accommodate future growth in that.
So we won't be voting on that on Tuesday, but we'll have our first briefing and discussion to get an overview of what's being proposed in that legislation.
And then we have two appointments to the Move Seattle Levy Oversight Committee.
On this afternoon's agenda, there's a single item from the Sustainability and Transportation Committee, and that's a resolution adopting the University District's mobility plan.
And I'll let Councilmember Johnson speak to that, either now or once you're done.
Okay.
Councilmember Eschada.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Good morning.
Today marks the one-year mark from our 2020 census count.
We're circulating a proclamation for our council to send over to our community partners, to our state partners, and to our national partners, who today will be engaging in a series of events on April 1st to mark that one year from now.
We are going to be meeting our expectations and our goals and working with community to ensure that not only we have a full census count, but that we've built trust with the community so people feel like they have the information they need to fill out as much of the census that they can.
Today in full council, with your indulgence and your signature, I'd like to present this proclamation calling for Census Awareness Day.
As you and I and all of our community members and the mayor included with the executive will be having a press conference at 11 today to really call attention to the fact that we have one year.
One year to come together as a community to make sure that we're well equipped to build the trust within our state with all residents to ensure we have a robust account of everyone in our region, especially building trust with those who are the hardest to count communities who often get left behind.
I'm very excited to work with immigrant rights community groups, unions, with work organizations, small businesses, with the mayor, with Councilmember Gonzalez, who's part of the task force, with the county and philanthropic organizations who are ready to do the work of combating bigotry and fear to ensure that every resident is counted and that no one feels that they're forced to fill out any information That is confusing to them given this administration and our distrust of them as well in terms of how they may use information.
We want to make sure folks feel comfortable with filling out all the questions that they do feel comfortable with.
And we are not holding our breath for information or good results to come from the court regarding the citizenship question.
We are going to charge the path forward and look forward to doing that with all of you.
The next committee that we have for the Housing Health Energy and Workers Rights Committee is April 4th at 930. There's two items on the agenda.
One is a briefing on initiative 124. We're going to do additional issue identification.
We're going to re-review the a central staff memo and we're going to hear stories directly from the workers.
Many of those stories we heard actually at the Friday event that Councilmember Herbold, Councilmember O'Brien, Councilmember Gonzalez and I had the chance to listen to various stories from community members.
And they're going to come and talk about their experiences working in the industry.
As Councilmember Juarez asked at a previous meeting, we will also have the chance to hear from industry folks at a future meeting.
The second item on our agenda is to consider legislation or consider the topic of sick leave being extended to school district employees.
We will not have legislation at the time for discussion, but we want to hear a briefing from our partners at the IUOE local 609, which is the operator 609 and Zachary DeWolf, a board member for the Seattle School Board, who will be talking about the need for making sure that our Folks who are serving food in schools, who are cleaning the grounds of schools also have the opportunity to take a sick leave because those individuals are around our kiddos and we want them to be healthy and safe as well.
There will be an opportunity for us later this week to have a conversation at the Cambria Grove Policymaking health care panel that I'll be speaking at on Thursday.
I'll be meeting with members of the Domestic Workers Task Force to talk to them about rest and meal breaks and how the current process is working as we gear up for implementation this summer of our Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.
On Friday, I'm going to be in District 4, and we'll have office hours from 12 to 2.30 at Cafe Javasti in Maple Leaf.
And then we are going to do a tour of the Picardo Farm patch.
I'll also be attending various celebrations in the evening with some of our community partners I do want to note as well for the Full council that on Let's see, Tuesday last week in Councilmember Sawant's committee, there was a chance to have those individuals who would like to have a seat on the PHPDA, the Public Hospital District Preservation Authority, to come and present on their vision of what they'd like to do as board members.
Councilmember Juarez did ask some questions on my behalf since I could not be there.
But one of the biggest issues that you heard Councilmember Gonzalez and I talk about in the last budget was our desire to make sure that we move forward with the planned Home and Hope projects throughout the city.
My interest specifically being around the Home and Hope project on the north lot of the PHPDA.
Some of the questions, the three questions that I asked of the two individuals that were to be considered were, do you have any concerns about the north lot creation?
Not just affordable housing, but mixed income housing with childcare centers, with the senior center, with a plaza basically for greater social cohesion and interaction for the residents.
What is, if anything, a concern that you'd like to bring forward?
And one of the respondents, Bob Hope, who is in the running to get on this board said, that he hopes that they will have an agreement that he can support when they get to that point.
So I've asked for additional clarification on what this means.
I am hoping that we will get that information before the 2 p.m.
meeting.
I've asked for that information actually on Friday and over the weekend didn't receive anything.
So we're reaching out again.
Just want to flag for folks, this is a really big decision point that the PHPDA has to make and I think it is in alignment with our priorities.
If I get information back, I'll make sure to pass that on.
But it's critical that we have folks who are on that board who want to work in partnership with the City of Seattle and our state partners as we advance.
I also wanted to call out two more important items.
One, we want to recognize that Dr. Amara Khan is the new director of the Office of the Employee Ombud.
She is the ombud that will be sitting in that position starting this spring.
We're very excited because really this process of selecting the ombud came through a robust discussion with silence breakers, with change team members, with directors from departments that were part of the interdepartmental task force.
And Dr. Khan currently serves as the Director of Equity and Inclusive Practices at the Renton School District.
Prior to that, she served as the Associate Director for Global Diversity Initiatives at the Oregon State University.
And she's worked to advance cultural competence on campuses through shared learning and trainings.
I can't say enough about how excited we are to have some of her experiences there and how, how much trust I think she's already built with some of the IDT members, so that gives me a lot of hope in the ombud office.
I want to say thank you to Steve Walker, who also announced that he will no longer be serving as director.
He will be retiring soon from the Office of Housing.
Under his leadership, we have seen a number of not just affordable housing units be created, but truly housing being generated in community, creating a sense of place Coupling housing with services around transit oriented development and so much more and we Want to just take a second to recognize this incredible work over the last five and a half years and lastly as folks noted at the last meeting that we had we passed out the Respectful workplace resolution that was on March 25th that we sent it out.
We gave folks two weeks to give us feedback You have one more week.
So looking forward to getting some feedback.
Thanks to the handful of folks that have already sent us some edits Thank you for that.
And we look for your feedback by next Monday so that we can have our first draft of the resolution ready for for our council conversation on April 18th.
So again, deadline for getting us feedback is April 8th on the respectful workplace resolution that pertains specifically to our legislative brands.
And thank you very much, Council President Harreld.
We included not just our second and third floor colleagues.
We have the city officer, sorry, the city auditor, hearing examiner, and inspector general.
They have all received a copy of that as well for their feedback.
And lastly, thank you Councilmember Johnson for all of your work.
It's been an honor to serve with you as you've pushed the envelope on creating affordable housing across the city.
Thank you.
Don't go.
Councilman Johnson, before you start, I just wanted to fully understand the issues with the PDA.
So I attended that meeting and listened with interest on the north lot development.
And prior to that meeting, I'd been making calls to Olympia to support the north lot development for affordable housing.
So quite aware of the project.
I didn't fully understand.
I didn't have the opportunity to read your letter while I was trying to listen to you.
So what are you concerned about?
Because everyone at the table seemed to be very supportive of the project.
I didn't hear any concerns.
In fact, that was There was a write-up, I think, about the North Lot project.
And so, can you help me understand your concern at this point?
Yes.
So, what I was hoping to hear from the respondents, Doris Ku and Bob Cook, in the committee presentation was a robust understanding of why we want to move forward on the North Lot and the importance of the votes that are coming up to ensure that, I shouldn't say votes, the actions that are coming up to ensure that we are, committed to moving forward with developing affordable housing, the child care, and the senior housing.
What I heard was that one of the respondents said, I hope that they have an agreement that I can support when we get to that point, which sounded a little bit like it was being Couched in there needs to be more information or there's something that hasn't yet been decided.
So in an effort to seek clarification I sent these three questions on Friday as a thought it might have been on Thursday.
Let's see Friday a Friday morning as a follow-up and Have not yet received an answer, but I'm hoping that I can circle circulate that to all of our committee murder.
Okay, I didn't my sense and on a real time based during the interview that they were very supportive of And I appreciate your doing a deeper dive on that issue.
My expectation, and we all have our own vote on confirmations for PDAs and other types of appointments, is that all members actually ask hard questions and seek clarification.
One of the questions I had was, you know, they do a lot of simple grants and major grants, and whether taking on such a project would somehow affect their ability to give grants, which they will not because they are They are using their rents and leases to give back to the community.
But okay, that helps me clarify that, so okay.
Councilmember Herbold has a question.
Quick question regarding the Office of Housing.
Do we know yet who the acting director is going to be?
I have not received that information yet from the executive, but I'll be following up.
And we have received a number of comments from the community members desiring a robust process.
In the communication that we saw from the executive, it does sound like They are intending to do a national search.
So I do believe we will have a robust process.
And we now have an outline of sort of our expectations, thanks to this council.
So I'm looking forward to working with the executive, but we don't, I don't yet know who the interim will be.
And if we've gotten information over the weekend, I'm sure I'll get pinged about that before we end this meeting.
Thank you.
Very good.
Council Member Johnson.
It'll be my last time to be able to say that.
Shoot.
Hi.
To, oh, late breaking information that you feel like you need to share?
Do you want me to go ahead right off the press?
All right Thank you If you don't mind, I'll read this out loud.
It's only a few sentences So in response to the three questions, thank you to Bob Cook for responding at 946 10 minutes ago Thank you for your interest in this information.
The first question Do you have any concerns with the proposed housing being developed on the north lot?
No period Will you be supportive of the housing on the north lot and supportive of the planned child care and senior living services?
Yes, period.
Will you be supportive of efforts to move the north lot project forward without any conditionalities, limitations, or modifications?
I will support moving the north lot project forward, period.
While negotiations for ground lease for the development are underway, there is not final agreement with concrete terms for the governing council's consideration.
It would be a violation of a board member's fiduciary responsibility to presuppose any particular action on a hypothetical plan.
When a proposal comes before the Governing Council, I will consider and evaluate the proposal in the context of the purpose of the purpose in the Pacific Hospital Preservation and Development Authority's charter and its visionary and its vision and mission, then exercise my best judgment in taking position on it.
Will you champion the creation of the Northwest Project as a board member?
Yes.
And that's it.
Thank you very much, Bob Cook, for that late breaking news.
And I apologize for interrupting your last presentation, Council Member Johnson.
It's fine.
Good to know that folks are circling back around.
I think, you know, we all have been fighting for more resources for that project and was happy to see the nine million dollars as a good start in the state budget process.
This afternoon, there are two resolutions that I have been working on that are up for a full council vote.
One is resolution 31873, which would recognize the work around the university district light rail station.
Community folks have been working on a project for the last several years to create a community vision for what kind of civic infrastructure they want to see around that light rail station, given the multiple different geographic representations from Sound Transit, Metro, the City of Seattle, and frankly several different departments within the city.
Rather than having each of those different entities come to the University District community and ask to participate in a public outreach process or community visioning process, that community proactively got together, with some support and resources from us to hire makers.
They went through a whole individual charrette process as well as community engagement process.
And where they landed was a vision for more and better mobility in the neighborhood.
So that when each of those different entities come to them and ask for input, they can just point them to this plan.
It's a plan that I think was well thought through, took several years to come to fruition, and today's resolution just merely adopts.
the council support for that plan.
The second is Council Resolution 31876. It's a resolution in support of a United States Senate Bill 726, also known as the Personal Care Products Safety Act.
It's a bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Feinstein and Collins to protect consumer health and the FDA's efforts to regulate ingredients in the personal care products industry.
This is a really important and personal issue for me as somebody who's watched so many relatives pass away from cancer.
And it may surprise folks to learn that the last major legislation that was passed to ban chemicals in personal care products was in the late 1930s.
We as a country have banned about 35 products from shampoos, conditioners, shaving creams, lotions, the kinds of things that we all put on our bodies every day.
The, you know, folks at the EU have banned about 1,100 of those chemicals.
I believe it is our duty to try to support these kinds of changes to national law.
And I'm dismayed that it has been 90 years since we've taken a hard look at the kinds of things that go into the personal care products that we use every day.
I should probably also say very publicly that this is a personal issue for me and for the missus.
Katie does this kind of work on a daily basis to try to make sure that people understand the kinds of things that they put on their bodies.
So I don't want to get in trouble with Wayne Barnett without having said, yeah, that my wife does this work too.
She's a big believer in what we can do to help make sure that the things that we put on our bodies every day are safe.
A couple last few things we don't have a planning land use and zoning committee meeting on Wednesday morning We had contemplated a couple of small things, but there wasn't enough really to pull together an agenda and I didn't want to Leave it to councilmember O'Brien to shepherd through a few last things across the finish line So I think that that'll wait until the next meeting District 4 representative has been appointed.
I have suggested to both Councilmember Gonzalez and Councilmember Juarez some concepts to potentially include as you all consider the final implementation plan for both the library levy and and for the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy.
No judgment if you choose not to take any of those ideas, but I've been around for the last three and a half years.
So I thought people might be interested in a few final thoughts.
And then lastly, we had a really good discussion, I think on Friday morning at the Sound Transit West Seattle Ballard Light Rail Extension.
elected leadership group meeting.
We've got about a month left of final discussions there, but I want to say I'm really proud of the progress that we have made.
I wouldn't be ditching this job early if I didn't think that you guys had it all under control.
So a lot of good questions that were asked there by folks, and I'm excited to see where you all land.
I'm sad that today's my last day, but in many ways I feel really a great sense of accomplishment about what we've been able to do together.
and I'm proud to watch the legacy continue with the great remainder of the year for the eight of you and whoever's going to be the ninth person sitting in my chair.
Thank you, Councilman Johnson.
Yes, Councilman Herbold.
Thank you.
Councilmember Johnson, as it relates to the PLUS Committee, did I hear you say that it's your understanding it won't be meeting until there's a new person in your position?
Or I had some staff to staff conversations last week and I was under the impression that the co-chair or the vice chair of the committee would be having and scheduling some meetings in the interim.
But I don't know if that's the case.
I think that that depends on his ability to chair those meetings in my absence.
And I do know that there is one issue that may require some timely action, a contract rezone issue that has been remanded to the city where we have to take action within a particular period of time.
I'm not aware of the schedule associated with that, but I leave that up to Councilmember O'Brien as to whether or not he wants to have the second PLEZ committee meeting that we would have at the end of the month.
My understanding is that it's up to him and he can make that decision, although the Council President, I'm sure, is the one who really is in charge of all this.
And we could always refer any legislation to another committee as well and could refer to it.
So, I mean, I'll work on that.
We don't have to have it really works on everyone's schedule here many parts.
I'm happy to be flexible I've assumed all along that we do it.
It's on my schedule and the timing works, so We'll get it done
Thank you.
Council Member Gonzalez.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I do not have a meeting of my committee this week.
I am channeling Council Member Bagshaw at this point because as her vice chair I will be discussing at this afternoon's full council agenda item number three under the finance and Neighborhoods Committee report.
So that is Council Bill 119485. It is a ordinance that will authorize the Superintendent of Parks and Recreation to execute a lease agreement between the City of Seattle and Saleg Holdings Company, LLC.
And this is essentially an ordinance that would allow the Parks and Rec Office to move their existing offices that are currently in the Chinatown International District to a new office space at 300 Elliott Avenue West.
It's a 15-year lease, and the lease can be renewed for two additional five-year terms for a total of 25 years.
And I'll talk a little bit more about the details of the transaction at full counsel.
But in effect, it means that 113 of our existing staff at Seattle Parks and Recreation will move from the Chinatown or International District space that they're currently occupying to a space that is much closer to SPR's headquarters in the Denny Triangle area.
Next, I just wanted to give folks a quick reminder about Take Your Youngsters to Work Day.
So my office will be taking over the hosting of this really fun and amazing event.
I want to thank Councilmember Johnson for having implemented this program at City Hall in the first place a couple of years ago.
So this will be our third year doing this.
My office will be hosting it.
And it will be on Monday, April 8th, which coincides with the first day of Seattle Public Schools' spring break.
There'll be a full day of programming available for kids, including drop-ins from the Seattle Department's K-9 unit, Seattle firefighters, and folks from the Office of Emergency Management.
And we have a ton of swag from the Seattle Department of Transportation as well, things that flash and blink and jump ropes and whatnot.
So I'm sure that the kids who join us will love that.
Don't give away the bells at the beginning of the day.
That's my piece of advice.
If you give away those bells at the beginning of the day, it's bells all day long.
I'm not offended by that If you have yet to sign up your kid or your kid for take your youngster to work day You can still do so it's not too late You can reach out to Roxanna Gomez in my office, and she'll be happy to send you more information about that Council members I really want to encourage those of you who are here on Monday April 8th to make efforts to meet with the kids who are coming in.
I think it's a really important part of what we do here at City Hall, and I think it means a lot to the kids to be able to walk into Councilmember offices and see the actual Councilmember.
You know, we represent diverse constituencies.
I think it's important for girls to see women in these roles.
I think it's important for kids of color to see A majority of their city council is people of color, and I really want to make sure that we are fulfilling our obligation to lead by example.
And so I know that in the past, Councilmember Johnson has said that you can close your door if you are too busy and don't want to see them.
I am discouraging you from doing that.
and would really, really invite you all to welcome these young folks into your offices and allow them an opportunity to see exactly how representative their city council is of them and that they too can someday work at city hall and be a council member or a legislative aide or whatever it is they wanna do.
So really wanna strongly encourage you to welcome them into your office.
And those kids really like the sinks and mini fridges behind the doors.
So open up your closets, folks.
Everything's going to be fine.
It's just like being at home.
It's going to be great.
So I'm really excited about that.
Lastly, just wanted to chat really quickly about some of the things that I'm going to be doing in community this week.
First of all, I just wanted to acknowledge that today is April 1st.
which is not just April Fool's Day, but it is the kickoff of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
And I wanted to just let you all know that there will be a variety of programming throughout the month by many of our community-based organizations who dedicate their work to prevention of sexual assault.
You can keep an eye out for many of those events.
I'll be bringing as many of those events to the table here to make sure that you all are aware of them and are able to boost them on your social media networks and hopefully be able to attend some of those events throughout the month.
There's some really exciting stuff that is being planned by community members throughout the entire month and I know that Council Member Herbold is going to lead the effort on, once again, on introducing a proclamation to both acknowledge Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Denim Day.
So we're very excited about that as well and we'll have community members with us in chambers to be able to celebrate that.
But I think that's in a week or two?
Next Monday.
next Monday, so great.
Also really excited about heading back into community tomorrow, April 2nd.
I will be spending the entire day in District 1, which seems unusual to say since I live there and I spend most of my time in District 1, but I will be there wearing my official hat of council member.
I will be starting off my day touring the River City Skate Park.
In South Park, I will then head over to the South Park Community Center and do a tour there.
And I will be holding District 1 office hours at Resistencia Coffee on Cloverdale, also in District 1. After that, we'll head over to Concord Elementary School, which is one of the elementary schools that receives investments from our families and education levy dollars.
Really excited about heading out there and meeting some of the kids that benefit from our direct investment at the City of Seattle through our families and education levy.
Really excited about that.
And then lastly, we'll end the day meeting with the Duwamish Valley housing coalition group where they will be feeding us tamales and horchata.
And for those of you who don't know what horchata is, that's a rice milk based drink that is served very often in Latino families to celebrate special occasions.
So I'm very honored to be fed and taken care of by community in District 1 all day on April 2nd.
South Park is a very special place to me since I lived there for three years, including during a period of time that was experiencing a peak of public safety concerns, including gun violence amongst our youth, so I'm really excited to to go back to District 1 and to South Park in particular to meet with community.
And for those who are Spanish speakers only, I'm excited to also hold some of these district office hours and community meetings in Spanish and English as well.
Next on Wednesday, April 3rd, I will be at the Treehouse Luncheon.
And on Thursday, April 4th, I will be welcoming the French American School of Puget Sound in my office.
I had the pleasure of being able to auction some of my time off to students at that particular school.
I'm really excited about welcoming a group of 12 and 13-year-olds in my office on Thursday, April 4th, to talk to them about the work that we do here at City Council.
On that evening, Thursday the 4th, I'll be joining folks over at the Legal Voice Cocktails for Cause.
On the fifth, I am excited to head over to the West Woodland Elementary School to visit with a fourth grade class to talk to them about immigration and refugee issues.
They are doing a special project to learn about what does immigration mean in America, and I'm really excited about heading out there and sharing with them a little bit about my story and why it's important for them to continue to be engaged in those issues.
So I'm pretty inspired that it, classroom of fourth graders is so interested and intrigued in that issue.
And then lastly, I'll be attending the One America dinner on April 5th at 530 p.m.
And hope to see many of you.
I think Councilmember Herbold will be sitting at my table.
If any of you are eager and itching to attend the One America dinner, I strongly urge you to do so because it's like the funnest party of the entire year.
But if you are looking for a place to sit, I will welcome you at my table if you are so interested.
That is it.
Thank you very much.
Awesome.
Okay, thanks for going around the table and sharing all this great information.
So as presiding officer, I'm announcing that Seattle Council will now convene an executive session and the purpose of the executive session is to discuss pending potential or actual litigation.
And this gives us an opportunity to discuss confidential legal matters with our legal, with our attorneys as authorized by law and a monitor from the city attorney's office is always present to assure that we reserve questions of policy for our public open sessions.
I expect this session to last for 30 minutes.
So we'll say it'll end at 1030, 1044. And if the executive session is extended beyond that time, I'll announce its extension and expected duration.
And with that, we will move into executive session.