Good morning, everybody.
Thank you for our regularly scheduled briefing for October 28th, 2019, which should be a relatively brief briefing.
Let me start by saying that Council Members Pacheco, Bagshaw, and Gonzalez are present.
And if there's no objection, the minutes of the October 21st, 2019 meeting will be approved.
Hearing no objection, the minutes are approved.
Again, because of our budget deliberations, we are not, we do not have a lot of legislation and we'll have a pretty substantial budget deliberations this week.
But let's go around the table and see if we have anything we'd like to discuss.
Nothing to vote from the Governance, Equity and Technology Committee and look forward to seeing everyone at two o'clock.
So Council Member Pacheco, I will turn the floor over to you.
Sure, so there's nothing from the PLEZ committee today and I will, well first I just want to say thank you to the folks who showed up last week at the 150th anniversary or celebration.
We celebrated Seattle's 150th birthday and it was a pretty good celebration.
Councilmember D5 beat D4 in the trivia.
So, you know, Councilmember Juarez's office did a spectacular job in kicking my rare.
They played a role in developing the questions you did I saw the you didn't know that And that said I just want to go and speak in on behalf of councilmember Juarez on her speaking points this morning Her office is sad to report that they had another pedestrian hit last week The woman was at a crossing on 98th and Aurora.
She was hit by a truck.
Her office is currently working with SPD and SDOT to get more information.
Both departments are currently investigating the collision.
In the first 10 months of 2019, 10 pedestrians were struck and killed by vehicles in Seattle.
Six of those deaths occurred in District 5. Every pedestrian is preventable.
While we have several active programs in the city to improve pedestrian safety, I'm committed, she's committed, to making sure that these programs are successful and funded appropriately.
Fawn Sharpe, president of the Quinault Indian Nation, was elected last week to serve as the new president of the National Congress of American Indians.
She won with over 61% of the vote against three other candidates in their presidential debate.
She is a human rights attorney, former judge, and intelligence officer with degrees from Oxford, UW, and Gonzaga, amongst her most Notable accomplishments, she led the Quinault Indian Nation as co-plaintiffs into Attorney General Bob Ferguson's lawsuit against three Fortune 500 companies that distributed opioids across the country.
She is a stark advocate of protecting our earth against climate change.
Most recently, she testified at a congressional hearing last summer on a piece of legislation sponsored by Derek Kilmer that would update the Coastal Zone Management Act to better assist tribal leaders make their land.
people prepared and more resilient to flooding, erosion, and other effects of climate change.
Council Member Juarez is excited for President-Elect Fawn Sharp and her plans to lead Indian countries.
She will serve two years in this new role.
So congratulations.
Thank you, Council Member Chico.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Bankshaw.
Great, thank you.
Well, you know that we're doing budget now all the time and over the weekend I had my first meeting with central staff to talk about all of the Form Bs and I was hoping that we'd have a few more council colleagues to hear this but among us we have come up with a $589,754,005 worth of Form Bs, which is over a third of our entire general fund.
So I want to point out that we're going to have to do some real focused approach on the principles of what it is and how we want to spend our money, and then begin to dive into how we're going to support this.
What was that total?
What's that?
What was that total again?
$589,754,005, which is over a third of our total general fund.
Just sharpen your pencil.
Yeah, right, exactly.
So I went through and looked at this with central staff, and I want to say thanks to Kirsten Aristat, Dan Eder, Ali Panucci, We were all here on Saturday going through this, trying to get our arms around what the next steps are.
So you know that we are currently scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to go through all of the Form Bs.
and Friday was a hold.
And just before I came in here, Patty came down and said they're having a little trouble with the accounting system.
So it's going to slide to Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
This was the original sheet coming from last week for what the time was and which offices, if we can, Council Member Herbold, if you could pass that down.
So just imagine all of this sliding down to Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
and let me know if there's anything you hear and I encourage us to be talking with your staff so people understand what your priorities are because as you know what we've done in the past is to get signatories onto the green sheets and for public disclosure and open public meetings act reasons we're not doing that this year we're going to be raising our hands and voting for each other's green sheets, we're really going to have to be circumspect.
I mean, seriously, with $589 million of these worth, I'm going to want to prioritize.
And the ones that I know we've prioritized to date include LEED, more housing options, more what do we do, like the effort to keep people in their homes, and then the hygiene centers.
As we've all talked up here, and I've been taking notes, those are the big areas that we all seem to be supporting.
And then many of our asks are in the, you know, $100,000 million range.
So I'm going to be asking you when we get together, and we're going to have one-on-ones this week, to tell me again, your priorities, and if things could be cut, shifted, added, melded to make things, to make the asks work.
But, you know, we simply are going to be having to take ourselves seriously and not be handing me a $589 million package and then have to figure out how to balance that.
that's this is important just to I'm sorry that it's moving your schedules I hope you didn't have huge plans for Friday but the this was just handed to me five minutes before I came in here so we will be doing Wednesday Thursday Friday which means you're Today is whatever it looked like for you, and Tuesday is now free entirely.
So yeah, free, put that in air quotes, Council Member Gonzalez.
All right, and for this afternoon, obviously, nothing on the full agenda from the Finance Committee.
Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez.
Thank you so much for an opportunity to speak this morning.
I wanted to just say really quickly thank you to Councilmember Bagshaw, the chair of our Budget Committee.
I know that the job is really challenging, but I think you're really rising to the occasion.
appreciate you shepherding the City Council through this process so I know you worked most of the weekend along with probably some of your staff and Council Central staff so really thank you to all thank you to all of you for for rolling up your sleeves and doing doing the hard hard work.
Nothing from the Gender Equity Safe Communities New Americans and Education Committee for this afternoon and of course no committee no regular committee hearings in light of the budget process that we're having, did want to report that I had an opportunity to attend the Levy Oversight Committee for the Families Education Preschool and Promise Program.
It was a wonderful opportunity to hear from a panel of students over at Cleveland High School.
Talked to us specifically from the student perspective about what it is they feel is working and could work better in terms of providing them greater access to college and career readiness.
So that was a a great opportunity to listen and learn about how our investments are creating impact in the lives of young people throughout the city.
So it was great to be in District 2. and to be at Cleveland High School in particular.
So I want to thank that principal and all the folks for hosting the entire Levee Oversight Committee during that conversation.
Also wanted to give folks a quick little update on some conversations that are happening with regard to the Puget Sound Regional Council.
I sit on the Operations Committee.
There's a conversation that has been ensuing for several months about whether or not to increase the number of representatives on the executive board for the participating membership cities.
Should that change occur and be recommended to the Executive Board, the City of Seattle would be entitled to an additional representative on the Executive Board, taking our Council membership from three to four members on the Executive Board.
It sounds like we're still not quite ready to make recommendations, but there'll be some additional study that is being done.
I want to thank Kelsey Beck from the office office of intergovernmental relations for helping to represent the city of Seattle in that regard and there'll be I think more to come next year as the operations committee continues to discuss the increase of membership relative to the proportion of population increase for each of the participating cities.
And then lastly, I wanted to talk about the opportunity for me to be able to keynote a event this Saturday, November 2nd.
I am really thrilled to be joining the folks over at Entre Hermanos, a Latinx LGBTQ organization that focuses on providing public health and other education engagement services to the Latinx LGBTQ community.
They'll be having a Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos gala event this Saturday at the Renaissance Hotel starting at, I believe, 5.30 p.m.
Really excited about joining them and speaking about how we can continue to partnership.
That is it.
Congratulations.
Oh, sorry one last thing.
Yes, I will be on Wednesday After committee assuming it gets over at a reasonable hour I will be joining the commissioners over at the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission to talk about my proposed bill with regard to limiting Independent expenditures and and prohibiting, effectively prohibiting super PACs and requiring additional transparency in our elections.
I am in the midst of preparing, it is, although it is simple in concept, my legislation, it can be complex and nuanced in terms of the actual amendments that I'm gonna be proposing for the council to consider.
So I'm putting together with the assistance of my staff a comprehensive memo that will hopefully explain the framework for all of you and certainly for the commissioners on the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, but I'm looking forward to joining them on Wednesday.
At the conclusion of our Budget Committee hearings, so hopefully around five-ish, to be able to present a newly released version of the legislation that would create a limited contribution committee that would allow some entities who qualify under that definition to make contributions that are above $5,000 as opposed to prohibiting categorically everybody from donating $5,000 or less to an independent expenditure committee.
So more to come on that, but wanted to give you all a little bit of a flavor of what you can expect.
Again, we're working on a memo that will hopefully lay out the critical components of the legislation, And with the assistance of Joseph Peha over in Council Communications, we're going to hopefully have put together some sort of infographic to help us all keep track.
I love infographics because they're just easily digestible on complex policy issues.
So looking forward to being able to share that with all of you in hopefully either today or tomorrow.
Great.
Thank you.
Very good.
Quick comment.
You know, Council Member Gonzalez, you've done some amazing work in the years you've been here, but I have to tell you, I am about as pleased that you've taken this on and Citizens United finessing and all that.
And one thing that I heard over the weekend, and I just, I, like you, have been so frustrated by what I've seen with this super money that has come in from the super PACs and one of our local corporations recently.
Over the weekend, talking with folks in last week, and what I am hearing over and over again from people that I consider to be sort of normal, involved, into the city, not into politics every day like we are, but are saying, we are going to vote for whoever the big A is not recommending and not putting money in just because we're so mad.
We would rather vote against the corporation than against an individual that may be supported by them.
I was absolutely shocked by that, but I'm hearing it a lot.
And I just want to acknowledge, I also think it is so frigging unfair with those who are running for office this time and who have pledged to use the democracy vouchers.
And if I can be so bold to say that You know, Dan Strauss in my office has been playing by every rule.
He truly is the Boy Scout who just plays everything straight, and he's raised a goodly amount of money.
I would just caution us that during a public session, let's just stay off of elections.
I think it's just dangerous to talk about elections.
There is an individual who is running for office.
And what strikes me as like just ridiculously unfair is this particular individual who has raised a reasonable amount of money now has had $800,000 dropped against him in the last two weeks.
I just think that people need to understand that when we're trying to do something, and Council Member Gonzalez, thank you for taking this up, I just find that about as unreasonable and unfair as any situation that I've seen, and that's happening across the board with all of our colleagues.
Man, I'm frustrated to the max.
I will get off that soapbox.
However, I wanted to tell you one more thing that's really good that has nothing to do with the election, and that is I got a chance to go see the West Wing.
If you have not seen the West Wing yet, this was opened by King County.
It's the southwest corner of the jail.
First of all, you'd never know that you were going in the jail, because you're going in the first floor.
Not where there's bars, not where there are guards.
And this is Downtown Emergency Services Center working with King County and I think the City of Seattle has contributed a bunch.
It is amazing.
And it's a 24-7 shelter.
Currently there's 40 men there.
I believe they're going to add 60 more.
They need to get an outside staircase.
24-7 beds.
And the glory about it is that you can go in any time, day or night.
You know, if you have an odd work schedule or you're looking for whatever your work needs are, you can come back and take a nap in the afternoon.
You know, and when you're tired, you need to rest.
And when you're hungry, you need to eat.
And this place is providing that.
So Daniel Malone from DESC gave me the tour on Thursday.
I was so excited.
I took some people back on Friday to see it.
It's really worth going.
And if you just go over there, they will give you a short tour any time.
But I really recommend we see this.
Because as we're talking about what we need to do to address people who are on the street, I think this is one very doable thing that is making a big difference.
And yes, sir, it's expensive, but it's really meeting the needs of these individuals.
So thank you.
All right.
So I'm off.
I'm off.
Then you went to advocating for part of that five hundred eighty nine million you were complaining about.
That's already done.
That's OK.
I really appreciate Councilmember Bagshaw your expression of support for the concept of my legislation related to reforming some of our election process.
I think you're spot-on in terms of identifying that we do have a very unique system in Seattle, because we passed honest elections in 2015, overwhelmingly, I might add, to really set up a framework that is prioritizing direct communication between candidates and people they want to represent through the Democracy Voucher Program.
And otherwise, in the whole intent and purpose of the Democracy Voucher Program, was to minimize to the greatest extent possible big money being able to buy our local elections.
I think this becomes even more important in the context of district-based elections as opposed to citywide elections.
Obviously, it's important no matter what, but I think that the impact of oversized significant contributions really does tip the scales of democracy in a way that are contrary to what the intent was of the honest elections democracy bill reform that, again, was overwhelmingly voted in favor of by the voters in the city of Seattle.
And so it's hard to, it's a fine line for us to walk between what we're seeing happening in the real world and the policy proposals that I am making in terms of continued reform of our electoral system.
But I also think at the same time it is incredibly relevant.
I mean, we are seeing real-time examples of why this legislation is really critical to upholding the intent and the goals of the Democracy Voucher Program and really You know, how do we shepherd this legislation through that is really going to address the, if not the actual corruption of our electoral system, the appearance of corruption within our electoral system.
And what we don't want to do is create a situation where people don't trust the outcome of our election system because of how money has played a role.
And again, unfortunately, what we're seeing here is real-life iterative example of data and information we're going to be compiling and looking at analyzing and utilizing to continue to support some of the policy proposals that are included in my legislation.
So I'm excited to finalize this memo and get it out to all of you for your consideration.
I'd like to be able to introduce this before the end of the year for no other reason than to make sure that we're continuing to daylight the policy issues in a way that is transparent and subject to ongoing public debate.
Obviously, because we have budget deliberations, we're not able to have a committee hearing on it or a full policy discussion, a working session on it, but I hope to be able to do that in short order immediately after the conclusion of this election cycle and our budget process.
Thank you, Council President.
Understood.
And it's obviously gotten national attention from the presidential races on what's happening in Seattle.
So, Council Member Herbold, take us home.
Hey, I just want to say I'm really proud to serve on a council that cares about fairness and leveling what is now an uneven playing field.
I'm proud to serve in a city that cares about the same.
Many said when we passed honest elections that power and money would find a way to circumvent the intent of that legislation.
And here we are.
And here we are.
And it just shows that in public policy, Our efforts towards reform are always iterative, and we always have to be nimble to changing circumstances.
And so thank you, Councilmember Gonzalez, for bringing this forward.
I think it's good for Seattle.
I think it's good for the nation.
And once again, I think Seattle is the North Star of the country on progressive policy.
Thank you as well to Councilmember Bagshaw for your work on the budget.
You've got a big job ahead of you, and I really trust that you have the best interests of the public and are going to, again, in the interest of making sure that there is fairness in our deliberations.
I'm really proud to have the chance to work with you on this, and I know we're going to do good things with this session.
There are no items related to the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development and Arts Committee agenda coming up this Monday on our full council agenda.
I do want to just mention a couple of items, events that I have.
on my calendar to attend on Friday.
And I only mention this just because there are some really important District 1 residents who are being honored this week.
The Lehigh annual gala and auction will be recognizing the work of some district one residents who have been really important in developing the vision of Camp Second Chance, which I think has really helped us as a city think about how we can leverage the successes of tiny house villages to assist us in sort of our need to create a continuum that moves people out of homelessness, out of unsheltered homelessness into permanent housing.
Thomas Bernacchi, Cinda Stegner, and Mark Worden among others are going to be honored on Friday for the work that they've been doing at the Myers Way Camp Second Chance.
And then also on Saturday, really big deal for the Delridge neighborhood in their many, many year efforts starting back in 2009 to develop and open a grocery co-op in a food desert.
So the grocery co-op.
Yeah and so they have had a long-term agreement with Downtown Emergency Service Center for the Cottage Grove development there.
Cottage Grove has been open and operating for many many years now.
Permanent supportive housing complex and because folks in the community when they were developing Cottage Grove were interested in using some of the ground floor retail space, DSC has very graciously, for 10 years now, held the space empty to allow the Delridge Co-op to develop its vision.
And it's coming together and they're going to be having a groundbreaking this Saturday.
Again, a really big deal.
It's a big deal because of the collaboration with the ESC, also fulfilling the commitment to the neighborhood to activate the space and have ground floor retail, but also to really address a really important food security need for folks in that neighborhood.
So that's happening groundbreaking on Saturday.
It's a really big step.
Yeah, I'm excited about it.
Thank you.
OK, we'll see everyone at 2 o'clock.