Land Use and Sustainability Committee 6/17/2026

Hey, good morning, everyone.

June 17th, 2026 Land Use and Sustainability Committee will come to order.

It's 936 AM.

I'm Eddie Lynn, chair of the Land Use and Sustainability Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll.

Vice Chair Strauss.

Here.

Council Member Foster.

Here.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Council Member Rink.

Present.

Chair Lynn.

Here.

Chair, there are four members present.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you all for coming to this Wednesday morning meeting to discuss land use.

As always, thank you to our city clerks, council central staff, mayor's office, OPCD, OSE and SDCI for helping us prepare for this meeting.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on the agenda or items within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

At present, we have five in-person and three remote speakers.

Okay.

Each speaker will have two minutes.

We will start with in-person speakers first.

Clerk, can you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 60 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they registered.

In-person speakers will be called first, after which we'll move to remote speakers until the public comment period is ended.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not in their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open and we'll begin with the first speaker on the list.

Just one second.

Our first speaker is Alicia Ruiz.

Good morning Chair Lynn and members of the committee.

My name is Alicia Ruiz, representing Habitat for Humanity, Seattle King and Kittitas Counties, and we are pleased to appear today before you in strong support of Council Bill 12-1215.

Seattle is currently under pressure to meet state mandated deadlines for updating its land use code, and one significant source of delay has been administrative SEPA appeals of legislative actions.

a step that state law does not actually require.

Critically, this bill does not weaken environmental protections in any way.

Full environmental review remains in place.

What it does remove is a duplicative procedural layer that has no additional protective function.

In doing so, Seattle would join King County, Bellevue, Tacoma, and Everett These cities in our region have long since exempted legislative secret decisions from administrative appeal.

This isn't a weakening of environmental standards, it's a common sense procedural alignment that allows the city to meet its legal obligations without unnecessary obstruction.

For Habitat for Humanity, delays in land use processes have real human consequences.

Every month loss or procedural backlog is another month a family waits for a stable place to call home.

Council Bill 12-1215 helps clear the path for more housing and more homeownership to become a reality sooner.

That is why we are proud to support it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Caroline Villanova.

Thank you council members for the opportunity to comment.

My name is Caroline Villanova and I am the Director of Government Relations and Community Impact at the Seattle Parks Foundation.

We are fully supportive of advancing the planning to meet additional housing needs in the city.

However, we are concerned that CB 121215 could remove a tool for environmental protections in the city at a time when these are being dismantled at other levels of government.

We're concerned that by allowing exceptions for housing, which are needed, we may be risking other land use decisions being included in the exemptions.

For example, the type five decisions also include park related projects.

So not just housing and development.

So we are just encouraging council to consider what these impacts might be.

especially for a livable and climate resilient city.

We really need ways to move forward with appropriate housing development that does not add risk to our regional natural systems.

we're concerned that by removing this ability and relying only on public comments alone we risk missing flawed environmental analysis and at a time when we're seeing a push to speed up this process we don't want the environment to be a trade-off for cities growth We really urge the Council to reconsider CB121215 and work to better understand the risks on behalf of this change and determine a stronger way forward.

Thank you for your leadership and the opportunity to comment today.

Thank you.

Next up we have Sandy Shetler followed by Josh Friedman and Steve Rubstello.

Good morning.

I thought it would be 60 seconds, so I'm going to talk really slow.

I'm just kidding.

I'll send you an email with more details.

But I'm commenting on 12-12-15.

For ordinary residents, appealing to the hearing examiner is the only realistic way to hold government accountable to protect the environment.

We're told, don't worry, you can still appeal to the Growth Management Hearings Board or Superior Court.

But these are only possible after legislation is done and signed, and they require an attorney and a lot of money.

They're out of reach for most people.

This would further remove agency from the average person while keeping it for the wealthy.

Most importantly, Seattle averages only 2.7 appeals per year.

Removing the public's right to appeal all environmental legislation because of 2.7 annual appeals is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Imagine applying the same logic to City Council public comment.

Council meetings would be more efficient without public comment.

but we have decided as a city that public participation is worth the time because democracy is not measured by efficiency alone.

Authoritarian governments are efficient, democracies are transparent and accountable.

Please do not eliminate the only practical path ordinary residents have to participate in environmental review and hold government accountable.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Next up we have Josh Friedman.

Chair Lin and members of the committee.

My name is Josh Friedman, and I'm a conservation activist and land use attorney.

I live in the Seward Park neighborhood, and I'm here to comment on your proposed SEPA amendments, CB121215.

Thank you for doing the hard work of helping to bring Seattle's SEPA procedures into the 21st century.

As you know, SEPA and its procedures were largely drafted in a very different time, before almost all of the other environmental protections that we now hold dear.

Imagine a world with no Endangered Species Act, no Superfund law.

That's the world that SEPA was designed for.

As a result, the aging procedural rules that we still have on the books are no longer compatible with the modern world and our modern needs, including the housing affordability crisis that is forcing longtime Seattle residents, young and old, out of their neighborhoods.

Change is difficult, and I expect that many of your constituents will find change to be scary.

Thank you for doing the right thing for our city.

Your leadership will do a great deal to help address our community's affordability needs.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Steve.

This may not surprise you, but I believe the citizens have a right to have impacts on their actual living conditions and their government.

This is part of a series of taking people out, you know, those dirty little peasants.

Land use is something that should be done only by people with a lot of money and people who have real purposes.

Now, the fact that we have pretty much eliminated all of the inputs for people, there's no more design review of any real consequence.

MHA does not preserve the units that are affordable.

and you know we just wipe out trees yeah it's very simple right now on my street there is another development going up and SDOT decided the trees can go and for the very good reason the developer asked and that's all that's required I think that I have noticed one great change because I've been through the city halls a little longer than some of you, is that when I started, the reports that were coming out in the city were pretty darn straightforward.

And when we were lucky enough to change policy, the last paragraph, the decision, was the only thing that had to be changed.

And one of the reasons why I think we really need SEPA is that I think, in my opinion, is that many of the reports now reflect what the report writer thinks the city wants to hear.

And I think it's a good reason.

Thank you.

Thank you, Steve.

Those are last in-person speaker.

We'll now move on to our remote speakers, starting with Jennifer Godfrey.

Hello, I am speaking in opposition of 121215. I would like to preface this by saying that I'm not paid to make this statement.

I would please consider who's speaking for profit or not.

Change in the form of stripping environmental protections is scary, like how the most extreme right wing are devoting their lives to eliminating environmental review, as we see out east every day now.

We can do better in a progressive and environmental city that is part of the Pacific temperate rainforest, parts of it containing the highest standing biomass in the world.

There is nowhere like this in the country.

Some people move here and think, wow, you have a lot of trees, not knowing what was natural for this ecosystem and how we can coexist without killing all of it as we densify.

With only a skeleton of environmental enforcement, SDCI has been repeatedly scaled down, and appeals are a necessary environmental protection for the public.

David Mann in the Court of Appeals asked, how will counsel know they have the best information in front of them?

Environmental review is like a doctor's exam before surgery.

No one would just opt to have surgery without assessing the risks and benefits.

Proposed action on the land is like surgery on the environment and the ecosystem we share.

They have risks.

many of which humans do not fully understand.

The best way to save money and streamline the appeals would be to do a really great job on environmental review in the first place.

And we can absolutely have housing and environmental protections.

Lastly, I'll say we can do better than take the advice of the builder-speculator lobby that wants nothing but deregulation, greenwashed by certain publications that don't interview subjects or have comment sections.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Logan Schmidt.

Good morning, Chair Lin and committee members.

Logan Schmidt, representing the Master Builders Association of King of Snomish Counties and a D5 resident.

I'm back, strongly supports Council Bill 12-12-15, and I want to be direct about why.

This bill is not a rollback of environmental protection or public process.

Public engagement and common opportunities remain.

What this bill removes is the post-decision administrative appeals layer, not the front-end participation to make land use decisions legitimate.

The substantive standards remain fully intact.

Environmental review is already woven into Seattle's comprehensive planning framework and regulatory code.

What this bill removes is an administrative appeals layer that state law doesn't require.

that the hearing examiner has already been dismissing on statutory grounds, and that many in the region, including King County, Bellevue, and Everett, have all recognized as duplicative.

Seattle's not deviating from a regional norm is catching up.

And catching up matters.

Washington State has set clear deadlines for updating land use regulations.

Seattle's come close to missing them because administrative appeals of legislative SEPA documents can consume months of process before a single substantive question is even resolved.

That's not environmental protection.

That's delay for delay's sake.

If Seattle is serious about building housing at the pace and scale this region needs, removing this bottleneck isn't optional.

It's necessary.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Last, we have David Haynes.

Hi, thank you, David Haynes.

get rid of the tools that Seattle sellouts are trying to use to throw a monkey wrench into future developments.

Just because somebody has their home, they shouldn't be allowed to weaponize and deny other people building back better.

And I want to know where the legislation is to take away some of these side streets so we can rebuild the community with green walkable blocks instead of being forced to walk on the side of the sidewalk.

And I'd like to point out, it's not sustainable to ignore the toxic industrial trains pulling liquid nitrogen gas and overloaded uncovered coal cars through the waterfront of Seattle, choking off the fresh air for everyone.

We need to address that.

And I want to know where councils' efforts are when it comes to taking away the restriction that the corrupt self-dealing landlords on the city council put into the comprehensive plan that guarantees that regional centers will not build back a more robust density.

They will be building back lower quality, low level buildings that appease the sellouts.

You don't want people building back better in their neighborhood that competes with them, that keeps people under six stories.

It's not fair.

It's revolting.

And it's like a we need to have a collaboration between the city and the county.

The eminent domain of need take away all of these godforsaken human trafficking slum motels and build back emergency housing, put incentives for different developers and the list that the police chief has of all the abandoned buildings The city and the county need to take possession of all that land and take a zero off the property values because they've been unfair to the community for too long.

Anyway, ah, let's see here.

Well, good luck with your decision.

Oh, the one Seattle plan needs to be purged because it's

Thank you, David.

Thank you, David.

Chair, that was our last commenter.

Okay.

Chair?

Yes.

Point of personal privilege, just noting that public commenter Steve Rubestello, benevolent leader of Fremont, formerly GreenLake, had mentioned that he's been around these city halls longer than some of us.

He was speaking about and to me.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

Thank you, Vice Chair Strauss.

Thank you.

I think Steve's been around pretty much longer than all of us, certainly longer than me.

As there are no additional registered speakers, we'll now proceed to our items of business.

We'll now move on to our first items of business.

Will the clerk please read agenda items one through three.

Agenda items one through three.

Reappointments 3533 through 3535. Reappointment of Jamie Martin as member, Equitable Development Initiative Advisory Board for term to February 28th, 2027. Reappointments of Sophia Benalfieu and Diana Perez as members.

Equitable Development Initiative Advisory Board for terms to February 29th, 2028 for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Wonderful, and thank you.

I see we have our representative from EDI.

When you're ready, could you please introduce yourself?

Good morning, Council.

My name is Toypah Mathno.

I am with the Office of Planning and Community Development and within the Equitable Development Initiative team.

Moving forward, I'm going to shorten it to just say EDI, just for time.

Let me pull up really quickly.

I have lovely slides to talk about.

I would say I have the great privilege of bragging about my board members today.

So hold on.

Bear with me for one moment.

OK.

Okay, all right.

So, yes, I'm here today to, we have three board members who are looking for reappointments.

And just a quick reminder that our EDI Advisory Board, their main purpose really is to help provide any sort of recommendation to the city around equitable development strategies and goals.

And this is really to provide guidance around allocation of funds to the public.

and at the same time, all promoting these opportunities for communities who have been historically marginalized.

That really includes communities of color, immigrant refugee communities, the LGBTQ+, and people with disabilities within the Seattle area.

And the admin support for this board is coming from the OPCD staff.

For our EDI Advisory Board, we have 13 members, all subject to council confirmation.

And just a quick reminder, one term is three years, but no member is allowed to serve more than two consecutive terms, meaning back-to-back.

And three of those members are city council-appointed, and three are mayor-appointed, and seven are appointed by the board.

As I mentioned earlier, we have three board members who are up for reappointments.

That's for position 10, 8, and 13. All of these board members are board appointed and have just completed their first term with us and are looking to be reappointed into their second term.

So the first person I would like to brag about is for position 10, Dianna Perales.

She is a native-born Ecuadorian who has been in Seattle since 2015. Her background has worked in nonprofit with the focus on applied research and evaluation around equitable developments, civil engagement, leadership development programs for the underrepresented communities that we mentioned before.

She holds a Bachelor's in International Global Studies and Master's in Social Work.

Currently, right now, she's with the King County Children, Youth, and Young Adults Program with the DCHS as an evaluator.

And next, position number eight for Jamie Madden, originally from Boston, has been in Seattle since 2016, has worked with the community builders as a real estate manager.

He oversaw a bunch of projects that really range from low income, middle income, and market rate housing, new construction, acquisition, preservation, rental home ownership, and retail.

He's also directed the Enterprise Community Partners in the Pacific Northwest within the Seattle area.

And he's launched the Home and Hope initiative to transform public properties into housing and early learning centers and founded the Washington Early Learning Loan Fund.

He's currently a principal with Madden Consulting and a housing developer at Beacon Development Group.

He's also, if you guys didn't know, he recently wrote a book titled, Bittersweet Lanes, How We Create Homes Focused on Affordable Housing Crisis.

That is a mix of his memoir, but also thinking about housing and development for community groups.

Last but not least is Sophia Beneful for position number 13. She was born and raised in Ethiopia, came to the US in 2013. She's currently the Executive Director for Ethiopian Community in Seattle, which is actually a past EDI grantee.

They fully completed their project back in 2023. Highly recommend a visit.

She used to work for Oxfam and CARE.

Back at Oxfam, SOFIA was a lead global program, led for a global program called R4 Rural Resilience, based in both in Ethiopia and later in Boston, Massachusetts.

The program really was implemented in four different countries in Africa, has now became a major part of the World Food Program's climate risk management approach.

and while she was at CARE, she worked as a senior technical advisor on climate change and resilience, supporting the design and implementation of various programs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

And for Sophia, she really does have the belief and knowledge when designing and implementing any sort of program that's both equitable and sustainable, you need to really include the knowledge of the community that it serves and to partner alongside with them.

So those are our three board members I have the privilege of bragging about.

I open for any questions or comments.

Thank you so much.

Such an impressive, wonderful group and very excited for their continued willingness to serve our city in this role.

Colleagues, any questions or comments?

Okay.

Well, thank you so much.

I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointments at 3533 through 3535. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, it is moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointments.

Are there any final comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to confirm the appointments?

Vice Chair Strauss?

Aye.

Council Member Foster?

Yes.

Council Member Rink?

Yes.

Chair Lynn?

Yes.

Chair, there are four votes in favor and zero opposed.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the council confirm the appointments will be sent to the June 23rd, 2026 city council meeting.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, council.

We will now move on to our fourth item of business.

Will the clerk please read agenda item four.

Agenda item four, Office of Sustainability and Environment Food Access Programs overview for briefing and discussion.

Okay.

Thank you.

Our representatives from OSE are joining us, and please get situated, and once ready, please go ahead and introduce yourselves.

I'm Sharon Lerman, Healthy Communities Director in the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you.

Hi, good morning.

Bridget Aigo, Food Policy Advisor at OSE.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

All right, look at our slides up here.

This is always the hard part.

We're getting there.

All right.

As I said, thank you so much for having us.

I'm Sharon Lerman, Healthy Communities Director at OSC, and I want to bring some regards from our director, Liliana Ayala, who couldn't be here today but is sending her regards to you all.

I'm going to give us a real tiny overview of our office and then turn it over to Bridget to share more about our food policy and programs work.

The mission of OSE is to ensure a clean and healthy environment for every resident in Seattle.

In doing that, we prioritize communities most harmed by racial, economic, and environmental injustice, and we serve in a special role in many policy areas, including food, which you'll hear about today, aligning across departments and with community toward a shared vision.

We innovate new programs and ideas, and we develop cutting-edge policy.

We work in many issues to reduce pollution, to strengthen resilience, and advance equity.

Our primary areas of work are in environmental justice investments, clean transportation and clean energy, urban forestry, and food systems.

And today, we'll focus on our work to increase food access and sustainability.

I'll say quickly that OSC has been leading cross-departmental food policy since at least 2012, and in that time, we've We've developed and updated the food action plan, we've stewarded policy related to the sweetened beverage tax and the community advisory board, and we've built innovative programming that you'll hear more about, like Fresh Bucks, healthy food in schools, buying with purpose, and more.

I am really thrilled to share how we coordinate our work across departments and how we're moving forward collectively to advance impact.

Thanks so much for having us, and I'm going to turn it over to Bridget to kick us off with a food policy overview.

Okay, thank you, Sharon.

Thank you, Chair Lynn, for having us here today.

We're very excited to talk about our food work.

Today, I'm gonna present Seattle's food work at a pretty high level.

I'm gonna cover things like how it's structured, how different departments contribute, the coordination role that OSE plays to help keep everything aligned, and some of the results and impacts that we're tracking.

We'll also look more closely at the programs and policy that OSE leads directly.

And one of my goals in this presentation is just to help address some of the questions that I hear most often and have heard most often in my nine years in this position.

So those are things like, why does the city work on food?

Why are multiple departments involved?

What exactly is OSE's role?

And what results are we achieving?

So I'm going to start off with a simple but important point, which is that food touches everything.

Some people, we all often think of food as a single issue, but it really does connect to nearly every major priority in city government.

So this food systems map shows how food production, distribution, and consumption interact with other systems and sectors, environmental, economic, social, and political systems.

For example, we know food shapes health and nutrition.

Food also impacts the environment.

Nearly a quarter of Seattle's consumption-based emissions come from food.

Food drives our regional economy through jobs, farms, distributors, and retailers.

Food influences culture, community resilience, and quality of life.

And because it intersects with public priorities and resource allocation, it is deeply tied to policy and governance.

One other key point that this map is trying to convey is that the food system both affects and is affected by these other systems.

And so one other example is take food and climate.

What we eat, how we manage food waste, all of this influences climate pollution.

Climate change and severe weather events in turn affect supply chains, food prices, food affordability, and food security.

So this is sort of some of the framing I want to bring to this.

Because food touches everything, no single department can effectively manage all of our food work alone.

And that's why you're going to see in the next coming slides that our city's food initiatives are intentionally distributed across multiple departments, each bringing unique expertise to this complex work.

So Seattle's food work today and historically has been organized around these five interconnected areas that are shown in this graphic.

Department of Neighborhoods and Parks support community gardens and urban agriculture.

Offices of Economic Development and Labor Standards support small businesses and workers.

Offices of Planning and Community Development integrate food into land use and zoning.

I just looked this up yesterday.

The word food is mentioned 70 times in our comprehensive plan.

Human Services and OSE lead major food security and food access programs.

And of course, Seattle Public Utilities leads food waste prevention and recovery.

So this structure reflects that reality that food intersects with many city priorities.

And real progress, we know, requires coordination across all of these departments.

And it's not just one single program working alone.

Sharon mentioned this cross-departmental model has been in place in Seattle since we adopted our first food action plan in 2012. And it does continue to shape how we organize food today.

Across all of these departments, though, a key point of alignment is our laser-focused on equity and systems change.

We center equity because food system disparities are not evenly distributed.

Some communities face deeper, more persistent barriers.

This is clearly visible when we look at the data by race, by zip code, by income, and by language.

Another shared focus across all of these departments is that we're really focused on strengthening food security and food access.

More than 90% of the city's investments in food support food security and food access strategies.

And we approach this work through a whole systems lens, again, considering the social, environmental, and economic impacts.

So we're designing and implementing programs that create multiple co-benefits that are designed to deliver immediate relief, but also long-term systems change.

So at its core, this work really is about ensuring people have physical and economic access to safe, sufficient, nutritious, culturally relevant food.

That's how we define food security.

But it also means improving the everyday conditions that shape access.

Where is food located?

What options are available?

Is it affordable?

Is it culturally relevant?

And then, of course, practical hours, practical factors like hours, transportation, payment types, even mobility needs.

So how do we keep track of all of those different domains and dimensions of food access and food security?

This is where the Food Action Plan comes into play.

This is our citywide roadmap for building a more equitable, sustainable, and resilient food system.

It's organized around the four goals that you see here, increasing community food security, supporting locally grown and traditional foods, preventing food waste and climate pollution, and advancing an equitable local economy.

Under these goals are eight strategic priorities and 47 specific and unique actions that span food access, land use, workforce development, local supply chains, environmental sustainability, and even stewardship of the plan itself.

And one of the most important functions of the Food Action Plan is that it gives departments, all those seven to eight different departments, a shared direction and common language for doing this work.

It really does ground our work in those core values, like racial and social justice, holistic systems thinking, meaningful community partnership and accountability.

OSE plays two roles in the city's food work.

So we lead cross-department coordination to steward the food action plan.

Think of us as sort of the backbone that keeps priorities and investments aligned.

So in practice, this means we convene an interdepartmental team and workgroup so that departments aren't operating in silos.

We collect data across programs to track progress.

We lead reporting, communications, and cross-sector alignment and engagement.

and we lead on providing advice and strategy on citywide policy and program development.

At the same time, and this is what we'll focus on next, OSC directly manages several cross-cutting programs, fresh bucks, healthy food in schools, and buying with purpose.

And then, of course, alongside our work, other departments lead key efforts in food access, urban ag, food waste, and economic development.

Another way to think about the food action plan, since you'll be having a presentation on this next, it's kind of like a comprehensive plan, but for the city's food work.

and OSE's role is to help tie that all together so that our collective efforts function as a coordinated portfolio.

These are just a few examples of what this coordination looks like in practice.

Summer meals.

Seattle Parks and Rec provides trusted community sites to host the meals.

HSD administers the meal program and the outreach.

And OSE helps connect local fresh food purchasing opportunities into the program.

So each department brings different strengths, but together we are delivering a stronger program than any one of us would alone.

The Food Equity Fund is another example.

OSE helped Department of Neighborhoods develop the original policy framework and RFP in 2019, working alongside the Sweet and Beverage Tax Community Advisory Board.

Today, Don leads the annual RFP, the grant making, the contracting, and holds all of those community partnerships.

This program works, and it's hugely successful because it paired policy expertise with deep community relationships.

Finally, our emergency food response shows this cross-department collaboration at its best.

During COVID, OSC and HSD coordinated emergency feeding, grocery assistance, school-based food support, logistics, communications, and community partnerships.

It was a rapid, unified response that brought food insecurity rates down quickly during a massive crisis.

More recently, we used this same coordinated approach during the federal SNAP disruption just back in October and November, reducing impacts on households.

The key takeaway is that our food work is a team effort.

Individual departments lead specific programs, but our most impactful initiatives are the ones that bring together these different departments and resources and expertise.

As a result, our food system investments and partnerships are delivering outcomes and impacts over the entire food system.

So if you scan this slide, you'll see that we're tracking data in a variety of metrics, from food assistance provided to residents, to acres of public land that are under food production, to economic impacts and support for food workers, to food waste prevention.

These results also demonstrate the very interconnected nature of our food work.

So for example, investments intended to improve food security and access are also strengthening local food producers and local businesses, reducing waste, advancing climate goals, and building community resilience.

So I'm not gonna go line by line by these impacts.

I encourage you to check out our latest progress report and the interactive map that we've developed.

And we are in the process right now with all of the departments to update our progress report with 2025 data.

So now that we've talked about how departments work together across the food system, I'm going to highlight a few of the programs that OSE leads directly.

These programs, I think, illustrate both our programmatic and implementation role in this work and also how we advance several food action plan priorities through direct investment.

Fresh Bucks is Seattle's healthy food incentive program and one of the city's largest food security investments.

Today, more than 17,000 income-eligible Seattle households receive $60 per month to purchase fruits and vegetables at participating farmers markets, independent grocers, and supermarkets throughout the city.

This program is advancing multiple goals at once.

First and foremost, it helps households afford healthy food, and it effectively reaches communities that are disproportionately impacted by food insecurity.

Independent research has also shown that this program increases fruit and vegetable consumption and improves food security outcomes.

And at the same time, these dollars are spent at local retailers and farmers markets, generating an estimated $16.4 million in local economic impact this year alone.

Healthy food in schools is OSE's main investment in improving child nutrition and connecting schools to our local food system.

This strategy works on two levels.

For students, it provides free fresh fruit and vegetable snacks to more than 5,500 students at 29 schools, ensuring kids have access to healthy food during the school day.

At the systems level, it helps Seattle Public Schools buy more fresh, local, culturally relevant foods and strengthens the school meal programs through cross-sector collaboration.

Students are introduced to more than 50 different fruits and vegetables, culturally relevant proteins, and are served an additional 300,000 snacks each year as a result of this partnership.

This is another example of a program that's advancing multiple food action plan goals.

Over 60% of purchasing for this program goes to local farms, more than half to BIPOC-owned farms.

And so again, it's a clear example of how one investment in one program can improve student nutrition, support local ag, advance equity, and strengthen the food system all at the same time.

This, by the way, is the partnership that we are building upon for Mayor Wilson's proposed universal meal investment in the FEP levy.

Buying with purpose takes a slightly different approach.

Instead of centering on a single program or population, This strategy uses city purchasing power to drive broader food systems change.

Buying with purpose helps city departments and partners make food purchasing decision based on six shared values that are in that food action plan, local economic development, fair labor, environmental sustainability, health and nutrition, racial equity, and cultural relevance.

The idea behind this is simple, but it's very powerful.

If institutions are already buying food, how can those dollars do more for our food system and for our communities?

The impact of this is growing.

City programs this year are on track to purchase over a million dollars in local food from over 140 local farmers and producers.

And major institutions that we partner with, like Seattle Public Schools and University of Washington, are starting to adopt similar approaches.

We actually have a blog post coming out this week highlighting some of this data and those institutional partnerships.

So what makes buying with purpose powerful is its scale.

If we align purchases across institutions, we can strengthen local supply chains, support local farmers and businesses, improve labor and economic outcomes, all through the decisions that organizations are already making.

Programs that we've talked about so far focus on direct service and implementation, but OSC also plays a broader policy and strategy role, and we help the city respond to emerging food system challenges and opportunities.

A big part of this work, as Sharon mentioned, is coordinating the Food Action Plan.

We support the Sweet and Beverage Tax Community Advisory Board and alignment across SBT-funded departments.

We also help the city navigate issues that don't sit neatly in one department.

In recent years, that's included coordinating the emergency food response during COVID, preparing for the potential impact of federal policy on SNAP, advancing grocery access policies, and exploring food and climate connections.

We also do a lot of engagement on state and federal policy.

And because OSC sits at the intersection of food access, sustainability, economic development, and public policy, we are often asked to identify challenges, convene partners, analyze options, and shape strategic responses.

So in many ways, this type of policy work complements our direct programs.

So while initiatives like Fresh Bucks and Healthy Food in Schools are working to deliver immediate benefits, our policy and coordination work across the system is what helps to ensure that our investments and decisions are influencing the food system over the long term.

This is my last slide, so I'm going to wrap up.

And I just want to underscore that food is a shared citywide priority.

And I want to thank all of you here.

I know that many of you intersect and interact with our food work quite regularly.

And thank you for your support over the years.

The Food Action Plan is what helps keep us aligned in all of this work.

And I truly believe in nine years at the city, five years at the state before that, no single department can meet the scale of need or opportunity on its own.

And our progress in Seattle really does reflect that strong cross-departmental coordination bringing together of programs, of data, of funding, of community partnerships to drive those multiple outcomes that I've been speaking about.

Just a reminder, at this work, we have two roles here at OSE.

We manage some of the city's largest food access and food security programs, and then we also lead that citywide strategy.

This structure allows us to address food insecurity, climate impacts, and community well-being in a more integrated and equitable way.

And it really does position us, I think, to keep building on the results that I've shared today.

So that's the end of the presentation.

I just want to thank you again for the time and opportunity to be here today.

And Sharon and I are happy to answer and respond to any questions.

Thank you so much.

Colleagues, any questions?

Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you for your presentation.

It was really fantastic.

I wonder if you can just share more with us about any impacts or how we're incorporating sort of a response to recent floods in King County when it comes to food access and particularly the components around sort of supporting our farmers and our local ecosystem.

We had the opportunity recently to meet with a food distributor who does work, and I'm blanking on his company's name, so apologies there, but who does work connecting local food from farms out to food banks and other providers, and just spoke about the impact of the flooding on our local farms and how that's showing up in the rest of our system.

I wonder if you can just speak to that.

And obviously a lot of this comes from FEMA and investments from the county, but is there a city role there as well?

Thank you so much for this question because you're really bringing to light the impacts of climate and severe weather events and the ripple effects through the food system.

We are actively tracking this issue.

We work super closely with King County, the Department of DNRP, Natural Resources and Parks.

and we have been involved in coordination calls, monitoring the impacts on farms.

There have been multiple county departments and also private entities that have pooled together resources to help impacted farmers and also help them navigate FEMA funding.

And I would say the county is definitely the lead on this, but we do actively participate.

And the other way that we support just farm viability in general is through that purchasing.

So the buying with purpose strategy and this value chain coordination that we do across farms and vertically integrating farm products into city food programs, I would say is sort of a longer term response to supporting farms.

I also just want to say locally, and this is really human services department, but when we had that massive flooding in South Park, I know this is a different flooding event, but this is gonna be a thing now.

Human Services Department was just on the ground right away coordinating food security and food assistance for impacted households in South Park.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you so much.

Any other questions?

Council Member Rink.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all so much for the presentation.

I really appreciate also your centering that our food systems touch so many different policy arenas.

It's really complex work and requires an interdepartmental response.

And with that in mind, you know, I want to uplift just a point about the 2023 G20 food footprint report.

Particularly that report found that the G20 countries representing the largest economies in the world, those food consumption habits of those countries are having a tremendous impact on the planet.

And though they only make up about 10% of the world's countries, they're producing about three-quarters of the total carbon emissions for the entire food system.

And if the entire world ate like G20 countries, we would need seven Earths, two planets to sustain, and really it would exceed our food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 263%.

And so with that in mind, I think it's really important to uplift when we're talking about food, food production, you know, what we eat, there's tremendous climate impacts, particularly with the animal agriculture industry.

And so with that in mind, I know the other body of work that OSC is engaged in right now is on the Climate Action Plan, I'm wondering if you can speak to our food action plan and how it interacts with our current climate action plan, knowing that we're seeking an update and this is certainly something I'm interested in pushing on in our update, but historically, how is the two plans interacted?

Yeah, thank you for this question as well.

So I'll start by saying the updated Food Action Plan addresses climate and environmental impacts directly.

We have an entire strategic priority within that plan focused on this, and it's exactly for the reasons that you mentioned.

Food is a very large driver of climate pollution, and climate change is going to impact the food system.

The previous Climate Action Plan was very focused on mitigation and emissions reductions, and the Climate Action Plan that is being updated right now, of which I am a part of that process, is going to look at both mitigation and adaptation.

And so this is an incredible opportunity for us to knit together Food Action Plan and Climate Action Plan.

and that's exactly what we're gonna be doing.

Some of the biggest climate action opportunities that we are addressing in the Food Action Plan and looking to lift up in the Climate Action Plan are those dietary shifts that you mentioned, preventing food waste in the first place, and really building those resilient supply chains.

And so those are sort of the three themes that you will see in both plans.

and one of the key ways that we are already doing this is through that Buying with Purpose initiative, which also addresses environmental sustainability, at least on the demand side.

Does that answer your question?

Yes, it does.

Thank you so much for bringing up this topic.

Yeah, it's hugely important.

Thank you so much.

And just to further put on the record, I know I can appreciate the previous Climate Action Plan having a focus on emissions.

I think we really wanna maintain that focus in a lot of ways, but acknowledge also the growing concerns around water and the availability of fresh water and full acknowledgement that it takes 2,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef, I think is an important element to uplift.

As uncomfortable as maybe that all makes us, I think we need to be really realistic about some of the real constraints and things that are facing our food systems.

And Chair, if I may, I just have one other question for our discussion today because I really wanna commend the work done by OSC and HSD last year to quickly respond to the pause and snap during the federal government shutdown, commending this body for moving toward a declaration of a civil emergency so we could get dollars out the door.

Should we find ourselves in this situation again with Congress?

Can you speak to what the response and impact we can see from this city?

I think you'll see a lot of what you saw back in October and November, and thank you again for all the support and authorizing funds to get out very quickly.

We know there are, well, SNAP participation is declining, unfortunately, and that's not because the need isn't there.

That's a direct result of the impacts of HR1 and federal policy.

But at the time that we responded last year, there were 50,000 households in Seattle alone who rely on SNAP, representing over 70,000 individuals.

So we took it very seriously, and the response that we deployed last year and will deploy in the future is really that coordinated response across departments and in coordination with the mayor's office and city council as well.

We tend to look at all the places where people access food, where they live, where they play, where they learn.

And that's why you saw this very multidimensional response where food banks and meal programs were given more resources to help address higher demand during that time.

We partnered with Seattle Public Schools to do school-based food boxes.

And I think one of the most important things as well is just the constant communication and coordination and hearing directly from community partners on the ground about impacts that they're seeing.

And thank you so much for that work.

And just building on that point, obviously the impacts of HR1 on SNAP enrollment are particularly devastating.

That's why I think we as a city should be so proud of the work that we did together to expand the Fresh Bucks program through the Seattle Shield initiative, giving the program its first programmatic inflationary increase in its history and expanding eligibility to 4,000 households.

I just really want to commend the work of OSC on the Fresh Bucks program because it's really tremendous that we're able to operate this and you all run a very, it's a very lean program and the impact is really profound.

So I just want to thank you for your work on that and thank you so much Chair for having OSC provide this presentation today.

Thank you, Councilmember Rank.

Any other, and for the record, Council President Hollingsworth has joined as well.

Thank you for joining us.

Councilmember Vice Chair Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for the great presentation today.

I'm gonna relate this all back to budget.

As some of you all know, my amendment, it was my first budget amendment ever, was expanding Fresh Bucks by using general fund.

Previously, it had been dedicated revenue source, which limited our ability to provide fresh bucks to more people.

And that amendment has increased the structural budget deficit because it's in the general fund.

And so from here, kind of tagging onto what Council Member Rink was sharing and clarifying a little bit more, all of your programs, your delivery, your ability to get food into the hands of people, is determined and dependent upon the decisions that we make on the dais about how much money you have access to.

And I say that again because of that First Amendment that does increase the structural budget deficit, but not by enough, in my opinion, to make it something that we should remove.

I say that because if we as the council had not made the decision during the SNAP benefit crisis last year to provide you extra money to be able to deliver, I believe we were spending about a million dollars a week for four to six weeks, if I recall correctly.

Can you share, and that was on top of us already through the work of council president Joy Hollingsworth, making sure the meals I'm gonna get all the names wrong, but we added a lot more food to the contracts that we have here in the city and then there was the snap benefit crisis.

Can you talk about a little bit of what Council Member Rink shared You've got a great map on here of who does what in our city for food.

Can you share how that SNAP benefit or SNAP crisis response, how that was in addition to or coordinated with?

I see it as what are the things that we do every year and then how did you implement that emergency response?

Great, thank you.

So I'll start by saying that the emergency response was a coordinated effort with the mayor's office, OSE, and HSD, and then of course, city council who authorized the funds.

And so we all got together and we looked at where are we already working so that we can just leverage existing contracts and relationships to put more funding into the system.

HSD manages and runs the contracts with food banks and meal programs.

So they handled that piece of the day-to-day needs in the city.

And when there was an infusion of more resources, they were able to contract very quickly with the food banks and the meal programs.

OSE, in turn, because we manage contract with Seattle Public Schools on a day-to-day through our Healthy Food and Schools program, we were able to leverage that contract and those relationships to be able to put more food assistance into the system through school-based interventions.

I will say that even outside of that SNAP crisis, food insecurity is higher now than it was during COVID.

and this is a result of inflationary pressures, food prices, overall economic pressures.

And so we know that demand for our services is outpacing what we can provide at this point.

Last year, during the budget process, City Council put some one-time resources in 2026 that went into food banks and meal programs.

It was about $4 million total.

And then the expansion of Fresh Box, which was just over $6 million.

Those were one-time investments in 2026 to help meet the the need that we saw there and some of the impacts that we were seeing from federal policy on SNAP benefits.

And I'll just remind you that those were one-time investments and the need is huge right now across programs.

I mean, you led me right to where I was going.

So I really appreciate that, which is what I saw during the snap crisis and then our response with additional one-time funds is because we are seeing more people needing food security at this time.

And we also have this structural budget deficit that I've helped create with more access to fresh bucks, right?

But how are, is how are we managing the conversation with community of what are one-time funds?

And I'll just say, if we have the ability to expand those one-time funds to be ongoing, I would love that.

I just see a very difficult budget decision coming down the pike for us.

And we use the one-time funds to say, we've got the money this year.

We don't know next year.

If we can, we will, but we can't commit there.

Is that a conversation that's happening in the community?

How can we best support your organizations to have stability?

I would say we've, noted that these are a one-time ad in all of our communications about these programs.

I don't know that community who is receiving the services or the programs necessarily thinks about it or understands what it means, and we are looking forward to working with the Mayor's Office, the Budget Office, and with City Council as you all move through the budget process, and happy to definitely support, you know, effective communications to all stakeholders as we know more as the budget process unfolds.

Yeah, I just say that because stability is so important and to have the right expectations of how we will all work together to support all of these meal providers, that's my North Star and my goal because I see Council President smiling there because we both have an interest in making sure that people are fed well.

So I'd invite if Council President is interested as well, like I'd be happy to meet with folks so that we can best understand this budget that we're moving into.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Colleagues, any other?

Thank you so much.

I do have one kind of question.

In terms of preserving our farmlands, whether in King County or the region or even nationwide, my understanding is that sort of pressures from urban sprawl has been seen as the number one sort of driver of loss of farmland across the country.

We obviously have our urban growth boundaries and our Growth Management Act, which has been trying to deal with this issue for decades now.

But could you just speak to a little bit about sort of the tensions between kind of urban sprawl and the impacts that that has on farmlands?

I will speak at a very high level, but I can follow up with more information on this.

I would say that certainly there's land use pressures on farmland, and it's very, very expensive right now.

Land is incredibly expensive for many of our small farmers and our large farmers.

I would say it's not just those pressures, though.

I mean, the same affordability crisis that we see for residents and households exists for small businesses, for farmers, for distributors as well.

Again, I can follow up with more information, but I do want to note that there was a WSDA, so Washington State Department of Agriculture, farm viability study that is underway.

The first part of that study already came out, and it gives a comprehensive view of all of the pressures that ag is facing.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, we'd love to have a little bit of follow up or we can follow up offline.

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you so much.

Seeing no other questions, I think we're ready to move on to our next item, but really appreciate the presentation this morning.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

We'll now move on to our fifth item of business.

Will the clerk please read Agenda item five?

Agenda item five, Office of Planning and Community Development sub-area plans overview for briefing and discussion.

Okay, thank you so much, our representatives.

And once you're ready, please go ahead and from OPCD, please introduce yourselves and tee up any presentation you have here, give you a moment.

Sure, thank you.

The teeing up presentation might take a second, but hi.

Thank you, Chair Lynn.

My name's Allison Miller.

I'm the Community Planning Manager for the Office of Planning and Community Development, and I'm here with my colleague.

Good morning, Council Members.

Jeff Wentland, Land Use Policy Manager at OPCD.

Okay.

Hi.

Thank you for having us today.

Today we're here to talk about the 2026 Comprehensive Plan Annual Amendment, which is kind of fully inclusive of our sub-area plans package one that we are working on transmitting to council in the month of June.

So today we just wanted to kind of give you all an orientation briefing about, to kind of go through, what is the comprehensive plan annual amendment?

What do the sub-area plans package one look like?

And talk a little bit more in detail around the regional center's plans as well as the manufacturing and industrial center's plans.

So again, today is just an orientation so that we can kind of go through what are these plans, why are we doing them, what's in them before you actually see that transmitted package.

And then once we actually transmit those, we will have had this out of the way so that we can dive into the details of each of the plans.

So first off, you'll be seeing this package of plans as the 2026 Comprehensive Plan Annual Amendment.

And so to just talk a little bit about what that is, this will be the first annual amendment process in several years.

That cycle was paused while the city was working on the update to the comprehensive plan.

And so just as kind of a refresher, under the Growth Management Act, cities may only amend their comprehensive plan once per calendar year.

And that's, you know, everything must be introduced and adopted as a single piece of legislation.

And so we're planning for the next few years, you will be seeing some sub area plans as part of that package.

Like I said, in 2026, that is the whole package that you'll be seeing.

And so those will include both regional centers and MIC sub area plans.

To talk a little bit more about what those packages and proposed packages will contain, I want to talk a bit about the centers that we're doing planning around.

So as you can see in our 2025 comprehensive plan amendment, we have seven regional centers designated and two manufacturing and industrial centers.

as a whole, OPCD is working simultaneously on nine sub-area plans.

That's a lot for us to work on.

That's a lot for also you all to consider.

And so we've tried to kind of chunk out the work in a way that is hopefully not too overwhelming for us or you to review.

So in the proposed package one, proposed for 2026 adoption, you'll be seeing the Downtown Regional Center plan, the Northgate Regional Center plan, the Duwamish MIC, and the Ballard Inner Bay MIC.

All four of these plans will, I think the next slide is kind of recent status, but all four of these plans have gone through a substantive planning process, engagement, and we think are ready for you to review.

The next five plans are all currently in planning right now.

We're doing engagement, technical analysis on all five of the the next plan.

So we're anticipating sending a package to you in 2027 to consider and then a final package in 2028. An important thing to note that's kind of driving the timing here is the Puget Sound Regional Council.

They have a requirement that by the end of the calendar year 2027 that we adopt and amend sub-area plans for all of our existing centers to our comprehensive plan.

And so those first eight sub-areas are all of our existing centers that have previously been designated by PSRC.

Ballard is our newest regional center that was identified in the 2025 comprehensive plan.

and so that's on a slightly different timeline in terms of designation for by PSRC and that's why you're seeing that in 2028.

Before you move on and colleagues would love to have just a more sort of interactive just because this is pretty technical stuff and confusing and including for me sometimes.

And could you just talk about what the purpose of sub-area plans are and how those relate to our comprehensive plan.

So earlier you talked about sort of annual amendments were put on pause.

We obviously adopted our comprehensive plan late last year.

Can you just, again, sort of talk through why do we have sub-area plans and the schedule that is being proposed?

Sure.

I'm actually going to skip ahead a couple slides.

So in terms of regional centers, these were designated in our comprehensive plan, and they define regional centers as places with an important regional role.

They have substantial housing, office, retail, and other uses.

and we're also planning for these centers to accommodate a very large share of the city's growth over the next 20 years.

And so as such, really need that additional cross-departmental approach to understanding how zoning relates to transportation, relates to housing growth, relates to business development.

And so it's kind of, and OPCD's rationale for doing the sub-area planning work.

And then they are also required by the Puget Sound Regional Council in order to maintain the center's eligibility for millions of dollars of federal transportation dollars.

So it's important planning, place-specific planning, and there's a requirement in terms of funding.

Thank you, and didn't mean to get you out of your- No, that's great.

And just so for looking at the status of the package one plans and where we've been the first half of this year, all four plans have gone through a draft plan comment period.

So we've released draft plans to the public, accepted comments over a period of time.

They've also each gone through their own individual SEPA process, and in the past six months, we've been offering briefings and conversations to all the council offices and have completed those for I think all council offices over the course of the last six months.

And so since the comment period, we've been incorporating edits based on those comments and working with our interdepartmental partners to incorporate additional edits.

And so we're at this point are moving forward with transmitting this package of plans to you to consider.

And just, just hold on one second.

Just want to note, so the Duwamish Mick is currently under appeal right now, and so depending upon what happens there, that could cause impacts to our schedule to, okay.

Just wanna note that for the record and for council briefings, just wanna encourage colleagues, if you would like a briefing, sounds like you will do an individual one.

Thank you so much.

Vice Chair Strauss.

Thank you, Chair Lynn.

I'll just take the opportunity, love to see both do great work.

I know that I've been requesting a meeting to talk about the mix.

I know that my schedule is sometimes the problem, so I don't think that this is necessarily on you.

I'm just taking another opportunity to say I'd been hoping to have that meeting before we got to today, and so I'd love to meet with you all to go through this line by line.

I won't have any other questions today simply because I've been tracking this for quite some time.

I would love for the Ballard Regional Center planning to happen earlier.

Colleagues, the mayor a few years ago transmitted a budget that did not include funding to study the Ballard Regional Center and so I will be looking forward to making sure that that is there and if we need to be able to do that sooner and faster because right now we're leaving transportation dollars on the table.

Meanwhile, with the Ballard Regional Center, Metro continues to not provide adequate bus service.

Sound Transit continues to give us, we're still on life support, we're not dead yet, so I'm feeling hopeful.

And the Seattle Transit measure that's before us has not been able to deliver any clear route to having and I'm not even asking for better bus service for the Ballard Regional Center.

I am simply asking for the same level of bus service that the rest of the city has.

while we are being asked to take on more housing and job growth.

So that's my bully pulpit.

Anything that we can do to move that power regional center planning faster, I'd love to get into it.

I'd love to meet with you to go through this line by line.

As I said, colleagues, after the maritime and industrial process of 2023, I won't have many more questions for the committee today.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Strauss, and would just like to register my concurrence on the importance of making sure that our transportation investments line up well with our growth plans.

So just those go hand in hand.

Thank you.

Please go ahead and proceed.

So, yeah, I think I mostly went through this slide, so I'll keep going.

Actually, I think we talked a little bit about this slide as well, but why plan for regional centers?

A huge piece is making sure that we can accommodate the growth that we are projecting in these centers.

That requires kind of looking across departments to create vibrant livable mixed-use spaces, and helping us kind of address key goals for more detailed implementation in these centers.

The comprehensive plan is a very high-level plan.

These sub-area plans help us get into more fine-grained detail about urban design, housing strategies, focusing on equity specific to each location.

They're all very different centers with different challenges and different assets and opportunities.

Additionally, the goal here, as you can kind of see in the diagram, is to nest that specific detail for each center within the high-level policy context of the comprehensive plan.

And they also help us kind of build upon the success that we've seen in the past.

You know, we've seen some great investments in downtown and Northgate in the last couple years, Take, for instance, the waterfront district and investments there, or connecting Northgate to our regional transit system and developing some additional pedestrian connectivity.

But there's still a lot of work to be done in each of these centers, and so the idea of the plans is to kind of build on that success and point to some specific actions in the next 20 years.

So when you kind of dive more in depth into the plans, we want to talk about what you can expect to see.

Like I've said, the plans will lay out specific goals, policies, and actions to guide that future residential and job growth.

To that end, you will see a center-specific future land use map.

That's not something that was in the comprehensive plan.

This is a more detailed land use guidance for future zoning.

So just to be very clear, there are no zoning changes associated with the plans themselves, but they are guiding the work of OPCD in making future land use recommendations when those occur.

The plans also pull together planned investments from across multiple departments in housing, open space, and capital facilities, really helping us across departments see how these investments build upon and speak to each other, and we're not just kind of planning in a vacuum.

They include specific transportation project lists from the Seattle Transportation Plan.

We work very closely with SDOT in coordinating that land use and transportation piece.

And even kind of more broadly than the investments, they guide policies and actions across city programs.

Getting a little bit more in depth into how we've organized the plans, you can see kind of examples on the right hand side, but they start fairly high level with several themes.

Under each theme, there are goals that represent the results the city hopes to realize over time.

policies are more fine-grained under that, which will help guide future changes to specific rules or strategies.

And then the plans also include actual actions that are steps that the city may consider taking over the 20-year planning period.

Each action identifies a city steward that is sort of tasked with moving that action forward when the kind of resources and opportunities are are there for each center.

And so I also wanna be really clear, these plans didn't just sort of come out of nowhere.

We've been working on the Downtown and Northgate Regional Center plans for the past several years.

They started with very robust community engagement, really focused on our racial equity toolkit goals that we developed for each project.

There are multiple ways of engagement where we sought out community engagement and worked with community members to shape the goals and vision for each specific center.

That engagement was paired with detailed technical assessment and analysis for each center across PSRC's core technical areas, housing, economy, environment, and climate change, transportation and land use.

and development.

Those pieces of background information, the community engagement and the technical analysis went into developing a draft vision and policy framework that we vetted with our interdepartmental partners very heavily.

And that all then went into the plans that you will see in front of you, which like I mentioned, have since gone through kind of draft plan public review and further edits.

based on that feedback.

And I'll now hand it over to Jeff to talk about manufacturing and industrial centers.

Okay.

Thank you, Allison.

I'll just say a brief word about the manufacturing industrial centers.

So what are the manufacturing industrial centers?

These are areas of concentrated industrial and maritime activity with limited other uses, and they primarily serve industrial businesses and the high-quality living wage jobs that they provide.

As Allison mentioned, they're also designated regionally by the PSRC.

There are only 10 mix in the whole four-county region, and Seattle has two of them.

So sub-area plans are required for these areas, just like for the other centers.

And on this map, Seattle's two MICs are indicated in gray.

The Duwamish MIC is at the mouth of the Duwamish River.

It contains Seattle's container port.

And the BIN MIC is between Inner Bay and Ballard, and it contains the Pacific Northwest fishing fleet.

Next slide, please.

So, oh, the MEC plans.

The highlight here is that these plans really build on the consensus from 2023. So in 2023, the council passed a holistic update that contained a dozen new comprehensive plan policies for these areas.

You adopted a whole new zoning code for industrial lands, and that work was built on a lot of engagement, deep engagement and negotiations.

Didn't just address land use, but also had workforce development commitments, transportation commitments, ways to be a cleaner, greener city with better transitions to neighborhoods.

So all of that was really robust work, and these plans leverage that work.

So we're not really breaking new ground.

We want to stick with the consensus that we built together.

so we recommend passing these plans.

And I just want to note that we at the City have worked very closely with many partners, but in particular the Port of Seattle and the Northwest Seaport Alliance, and we value their partnership on these plans greatly.

So that's just a quick summary of the MEC plans, and looking forward to speaking with you more about those in detail.

I think that concludes our presentation.

Happy to answer any questions.

Okay, colleagues, any questions?

I do have just one sort of question comment on that last slide.

You know, earlier I was asking our office sustainability and environment about sort of pressures on farmlands.

And I sort of see a related issue here in terms of pressures on our industrial maritime lands and competing pressures for housing, and obviously housing is a priority for many ways, but how do we balance these different needs of these other jobs, these other land uses?

Could you just speak to sort of in a, I believe we have a condition from the PSRC on some of our sub-area planning, but could you just speak to in general from a big picture perspective, kind of like the tensions around protecting industrial maritime and any conditions we have from PSRC?

Well, the regional policies are pretty clear around prioritizing manufacturing industrial centers for those uses.

And a big rationale for that is that these uses can't go other places.

We only have one deep water port.

We only have one freshwater place to be a home port for the fishing fleet.

inside of the locks.

And you can't move those things.

The city has lots of great places for housing, and Mayor Wilson has a very high priority on building lots more housing in healthy neighborhoods, close to amenities and services, but not on our industrial lands.

So in a nutshell, the regional policies support that general framework.

Thank you.

Okay, colleagues, if there's no further questions or comments, I think we can move on.

Really appreciate the work.

It's good to have an intro here of what's to come and look forward to future discussions.

Thank you so much for your time.

Okay, and we will now move on to our sixth item of business.

Will the clerk please read agenda item six?

Agenda item six, Council Bill 121215, in order to enter the council land use decisions, amending sections 2376050, 2376062, and 2505680. This is the municipal code to clarify processes for council land use decisions for briefing and discussion.

Okay, and if you could, Director Lish Whitson, if you could please introduce yourself further back.

Sure.

Lish Whitson, Council Central Staff.

Okay, wonderful.

And colleagues, we had a presentation a couple weeks ago.

I'm not sure if there's significant updates to the presentation, because I'm not sure if we need to to kind of repeat the presentation.

But certainly if there's questions or comments, I have just a couple comments that I'll share, but I'll let colleagues speak if you have any questions or comments.

We obviously heard a bit from from public commenters and we will continue to have future meetings, no vote happening today.

But colleagues, any questions or comments?

Chair?

Yes, Vice Chair Strauss.

Thank you.

Just stating at the last presentation, I shared that I had some concerns.

I met with Director Whitson and have dug into this policy more deeply and my concerns have been resolved.

Okay, wonderful.

Thank you so much, Vice Chair.

Colleagues, any other questions or comments?

Well, I'll just provide a couple comments for the record.

This obviously is an important issue, one that is meaningful both for public but also for our own processes and trying to pass legislation and trying to just plan.

As we see, there are impacts from appeals to our ability to to sort of plan our own legislative processes.

Our phase two centers and corridors will be significantly delayed due to ongoing SEPA appeals and a recent Court of Appeals decision.

I think that some members of the public were already aware that that was the likely impact, but just want to acknowledge reality that this is...

this is the impact from these appeals and there's a lot of comments about wanting to have this forum and venue for community sort of feedback or input and just from my opinion that this is not a great forum for community input or feedback.

It is critically important for me and I think probably for many of my colleagues that we do a good job of robust community engagement as we engage in our comprehensive plan or any sort of changes to our zoning.

I just personally do not see the hearing examiner process as a great place for that engagement, for that feedback.

But if we are to remove this appeal process, I think it will be more incumbent upon us as a city council to make sure that we are doing that engagement, that we are double checking OPC's work with environmental review.

And so I think that, you know, we've in a sense outsourced some of that to the hearing examiner.

And I think it will then fall back upon us.

And so I just wanna recognize it.

I think that that is one potential outcome if this legislation passes.

I also just wanna, point out that this is a voluntary process that we've chosen to allow and in many ways we are inviting currently under our current code, in many ways we are inviting these appeals and we are inviting these delays that occur as a result of these appeals.

and so you know I think there's been a lot of sort of questions and concerns about sort of the impacts of these and I just think that ultimately it falls upon us because this is a voluntary choice that we're making to create this avenue for these appeals and so that's I again personally don't think it's a good use of our time or the public's time to go through and to have this uncertainty.

And that's why I'm proposing this legislation.

That's my comments for today.

But again, thank you colleagues.

Thank you to Director Whitson.

Any other comments or questions on this legislation?

Okay.

Well, thank you so much, colleagues.

I do want to note, as we are wrapping up for the record, that as Chair of...

So we've reached the end of today's meeting agenda.

Just one announcement.

As Chair of the Select Committee on the Comprehensive Plan, I want to note that the public hearing on Resolution 32203, previously scheduled for June 22nd at 3 p.m., has been canceled.

at this time there is no alternate date planned.

Okay, is there any further business to come before the committee before we adjourn?

Okay, hearing no further business, we are adjourned.

Our next scheduled committee meeting is Wednesday, July 1st at 9.30 a.m.

Thank you.