Good morning, everybody.
Thank you for being here for our regularly scheduled council briefing on October 15, 2018. We have in order our written order of the agenda is to do the legislative overview of the agenda first, and then a preview of today's city council actions.
Unless there's some objection, I think maybe we could do the full council actions first and reverse them.
Yeah, we don't have a lot on the agenda today given the budget process, so having said that, Why don't we start with, I'll just start off by saying there's no items up for vote today from the Governance, Equity, and Technology Committee.
And because of the budget process, we do not have a meeting scheduled this week.
And so, Council Member Swat, you've got the floor.
Thank you, President Earl.
Good morning, everyone.
No items for City Council meeting today from the Human Services, Equitable Development, and Interest Rate Committee.
And also, our next meeting will be after the budget.
I know that we have the beginning this week of our issue IDs and for those of you who would like to have another day in your life, my gift to you is that on Wednesday of this week, our issue ID is cancelled.
So you have a full day on Wednesday to schedule whatever you need to do.
We'll pick up on Thursday the 18th for issue ID.
And the next public hearing for our budget is next Tuesday, the 23rd here in council chambers at 5.30 p.m.
And nothing this afternoon.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Waters, before you begin, I neglected to carry some water for Council Member Herbold.
I have a proclamation that I'd like to pass around for signature.
She will not be here this morning for the briefing.
It's a proclamation by the City Council honoring the 40th anniversary of the Central Co-op, and I think many of you are familiar with the Co-op.
It's been around for a long time.
except on Capitol Hill, and they are a co-op designed to help people of either lower income or limited means have access to food and other buying opportunities.
And so I think it's very appropriate for us to honor October 16th as the central co-op day celebrating its 40th anniversary, so I wanted to pass that around.
And Council Member Juarez, I apologize for that, breaking the action there.
Great.
Are you doing the second one for the resolution?
Who's doing the United Nations ones?
Is that you too?
I'm not familiar with what you're talking about.
Good morning everyone.
Let's see.
We have a lot of exciting news going on everywhere.
So last week Councilmember Bagshan-Johnson joined me and the Mayor and Todd Lewicki and President and CEO of Seattle Hockey Partners and Lance Lopes.
the project manager for NHL Seattle to announce an NHL three rink, 180,000 square feet practice facility and team headquarters at Northgate Mall.
Yay.
Way to go, Deborah.
The project will cost about $70 million in private construction dollars.
The preliminary designs look amazing and will be a great asset for the greater Seattle area and community.
As you know, Simon Properties is developing not only that, but they're also putting in two hotels, 1,200 units of housing, and a bunch of other amenities for the community.
And we're excited about that and having NHL their offices, their staff, and we really wanted the training facility to be within the Seattle city limits, not in any other city.
Project management will focus on both the team and community.
We'll use the space and how to make it accessible.
We're going to target youth.
particularly young girls and low-income families.
Last week, I presented...
Can I say something about this?
Yes.
So, colleagues, once in a while, there is one of us that is really up and front and forward on a project like this, or a project of any kind.
I just want to extend my great thanks to Councilmember Juarez.
She made me laugh because I heard the back-channel story about this, that while we were doing the negotiating, we were working on it, She got word that the folks that wanted to bring hockey here were thinking about taking a 10-acre plot down in Tukwila for the one of three, or maybe all three.
And she said, no.
Not like, well, we can talk about it.
It was like, no, you're not doing that.
We're having it in Seattle.
We're eventually going to have it in Northgate.
But I really want to acknowledge the fact that once in a while, one person really changes history, and you did.
Thank you, council member, because after two years of hell, the least they could do is put it in the city of Seattle.
So I'll leave it at that.
Yes, check that off the list.
Then we'll get a basketball team next.
Yes, ma'am.
Last week I presented the Mayor's Proclamation honoring Indigenous Peoples Day in City Hall.
I want to thank Councilmember Herbold and Councilmember Sawant for speaking.
The event was filled with beautiful song and dance and music celebrating Native American history, culture, and sovereignty.
So quickly, this Friday, I will be on tour of my district, visiting three organizations, building community, and making District 5 a welcoming and inclusive place for families.
Number one, we're very excited about this.
Lehigh is officially opening the Tony Lee Apartments.
This is a six-story mixed-use building that provides 69 units of affordable housing aimed at families.
The Refugee Women's Alliance will operate a four-classroom preschool inside the Tony Lee.
So the doors are going to be open for the little folks to come on in.
This has been a project that I've been involved in and working on since 2014, 2015. So it's wonderful to finally see it happen.
It's the old fire station.
It's like 120th off Lake City Way, 125th.
off Lake City Way.
And that was quite a project because some people in the community wanted something else there, but instead we now have the Tony Lee.
We really want to thank Sharon Lee and working with her.
It was great working with them.
I will also visit Outdoors for All, a nonprofit that specializes in adaptive recreation, Outdoors for All.
works to make sure that veterans and people with disabilities can access the great outdoors with accommodations for kayaking, biking, skiing, and more.
They attended Live in D5 this summer, and so we had an opportunity to learn more about them and the, you know, the bikes that you can sit for people who are, yeah, recumbent bikes for people.
So that's actually somebody who has MS and who can't really ride a bike and you don't want me on a bike, I might have to get one of these bikes.
Yeah, or a motorized one.
or make somebody else haul me around.
Lastly, I will visit a tiny trees classroom, an outdoor classroom for children in preschool.
The classes take place at Seattle Parks.
That's it.
Very good.
Thank you, Council Member Juarez.
Council Member Mosqueda.
Good morning, Mr. President.
There are no items from the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee on today's full council agenda.
The actual committee for the HER, Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee, will reconvene December 6th, and there will be no meetings in the meantime.
Today, I'm excited.
I'm going to be joining with the mayor and maybe some of you as we attend Deborah Smith's swearing-in ceremony at the Norm Rice Room to be the new executive director, CEO of Seattle City Light, and excited that she has taken this opportunity to take on the many challenges and opportunities that Seattle City Light presents and look forward to working with her.
I'm on Friday going to be taking a tour of the port with members of the ILWU and talking to them about how they helped to make this one of the greenest ports and also one of the most prosperous ports here.
I appreciate all their work.
I also want to say thank you to Councilmember Juarez and her staff and the entire team who helped to organize a day in District 5 last Friday.
We had the opportunity to go into District 5 and up north on the west side of Aurora to really see the lack of sidewalks and we know Councilmember Juarez has been a huge champion in making sure that we Connect the streets and that we create safe streets quite literally we saw sidewalks that ended in business owners parking lots we saw sidewalks that had Telephone poles erected right in the middle of them and people who were diverted to walking Into traffic basically on Aurora because of a lack of sidewalks so I know that this is something that you all have been working on for a long time trying to make sure that we get a the money and the resources to put sidewalks in for safe streets, and I'm gonna happily work with you to champion those.
You're a big hit out there.
Oh, really?
Well, that's good.
And, you know, we talked about Safe Routes to Schools, which is where I had the chance to meet Councilmember Johnson in the past, and excited to be working on this, and also, you know, sad that we're still working on many of the same issues that have been brought to light a long time ago.
So they know how much of a champion you are out there, and it was exciting to see much of the work that you've put into play in action out there.
Very good.
Thank you very much, Council Member Scudetto.
Council Member Johnson.
I'll be brief.
We have one item on introduction or referral this week, and that's an item that would approve and confirm a full unit lot subdivision of what used to be called the University Trailer Park.
State law requires us to take action on these full unit lots of divisions within 30 days of receipt.
So that's going to be referred straight to full council, be in front of full council next Monday.
Our role there is to determine if the applicant has met all of their applicable requirements.
Both our Department of Construction and Inspections and our Department of Transportation and our central staff all confirm that they have.
So that should be a pretty smooth sailing in front of us next Monday.
Very good.
Council Member O'Brien.
Thank you.
There's nothing on this afternoon's agenda from the Sustainability and Transportation Committee, and of course, we don't meet this week.
I will just take one second to highlight that we had a special committee meeting last Friday.
Thank you for a number of you who were able to attend that.
We were getting a report back on the racial equity toolkit, which was analysis looking at the different outcomes for different races of proposed legislation around backyard cottages and mother-in-laws the environmental impact statement was the final of that was released a little over a week ago and we wanted to highlight that racial equity toolkit and it was Really as is often the case when we do these toolkits.
It's very informative You know, we all know that simply the one of the requirements to have a backyard cottage is that you own a house and so and we know that homeownership in our city is racially disproportionate you're more likely to be a homeowner if you're white than if you are a person of color and the report looked at the demographics of that I think their homeownership rate for white versus african-american is about twice the rate and so we also talked to a number of low-income homeowners including homeowners of color and ask them about, as part of the Racial Equity Toolkit, you know, is this suite of tools going to be enough to help you take advantage of some of these backyard cottage or mother-in-law units?
And what we heard was a series of challenges that may be unique to certain communities they face.
And so I still believe that the overall policy is a really good policy to create more housing options.
And if we want to make sure that everyone in our community can benefit from this policy change, We're going to have to be pretty intentional in creating some additional programs.
And so that's some of the work we'll be working on in the next couple of months.
But that was teed off yesterday, and I appreciate folks for being there.
And Council Member O'Brien, thank you for your continuing advocacy and leadership on this.
And I also want to acknowledge Susie from your office, a lot of work that she had done, and Allie Panucci.
And I'm just wanting to work with you in this next year coming up and seeing if we can't move this forward.
Very good.
Thank you, Council Member O'Brien.
Okay, why don't we move to our legislative overview for 2019. Bring our OIR team aboard.
We are missing our state director is on her way to the hospital this morning, so she will be out on maternity leave for some time.
Just jump in with introductions, and we'll get right into the agenda.
All of you should have a draft, and it is that, a draft in front of you, if you don't.
Lily Wilson-Kodega, Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations.
Christina Postlewaite, State Lobbyist.
Cheryl Schwab, Deputy Director of OIR.
And we are before you today with the first draft of our 2019 legislative agenda.
Just a quick reminder, this incorporates feedback that we've received from our departments and all of you, although this is just an initial draft.
So if there are omissions, things that you'd like to include, you can continue to let us know as things come up.
We are going to review this today section by section and talk through some of the highlights that we know are going to be top priorities for the council moving into this legislative session.
And I just wanted to give you a brief overview of some of the kind of the broader issue focus that, again, we really tried to articulate in this initial draft.
Again, housing, rent regulation, behavioral health, particularly a focus on operational versus capital investments.
Block the box, automated traffic lane enforcement, and any legislation that can help us improve congestion given the upcoming period of maximum constraint is a high priority for many of you.
The expansion of portable benefit legislation to help independent contractors.
Expanding our state's recently established legal defense fund that's modeled after the policy you all enacted here at the city first.
And then extending protections for immigrant workers in the workplace are all going to be high on the list.
Firearm safety, including expanded local authority criminal justice reform reentry support, as Council President Harrell has brought forward to us, as well as protections for survivors of sexual assault.
And although the state Supreme Court recently struck down the death penalty as arbitrary and racially biased, legislators will likely pursue legislation in this coming session, which we will continue to support and track and report to you all at our regular briefings.
And congratulations to you all.
I know many folks here did a lot of work on that policy, so congratulations.
And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Christina, our state lobbyist.
Thanks, Lily.
So just a quick review of the next steps in our process.
We'll need feedback from yourselves, from different city departments, from everyone who's touched this document, please, by the 24th.
We'll have a second presentation before you on the 29th.
And our contract team will be joining us at that time, too.
So that's a great opportunity to ask.
questions of some of the issues in their portfolios as well.
The goal is passage on the 5th of November, which will take place before committee assembly days.
We're hoping to have a completed document so we can kind of get down there in Olympia and start working on all of this.
Sorry to interrupt you, I just had a question on what you just said.
I'm not sure the process on giving you feedback in terms of we can give you feedback, but then we don't have the benefit of our colleagues knowing what feedback they're giving you.
And then, but we also run the risk of because of OPMA issues is talking amongst ourselves and trying to jointly give you feedback.
So, I have to work offline on how that looks because if you get nine pieces of feedback, it could be conflicting.
There could be conflicting feedback and I don't know how you're going to navigate and we should know about it.
So, I have to think about how we, I'll share feedback, give you feedback, and work together, and not violate the OPMA.
That's helpful.
Council President, I'll just mention as well, at this point, your priorities seem very much aligned, and we haven't come across that.
But if that does happen in the future, we're happy to work with you all to make sure that we're resolving any potential issues that come up there.
OK.
Sure.
Oh, of course, thank you.
Just a quick session overview.
It's a long session, 105 days.
It's a budget year, so a lot of big decisions are being made.
We'll begin on January 14th, and of course, with the upcoming election, there could be some great implications for what we can do down there.
We're very hopeful, but we're looking forward to November, to knowing what the landscape will be.
So jumping right into homelessness, housing, and safety net, this is a big topic anticipated this year.
With the announcement around Western state, mental health funding will be a top priority for the state, for the legislature, and the governor.
We'll be working on enhanced funding for homelessness services, public health, behavioral health, and substance abuse treatment, other important human services.
Quick thing about public health.
Interestingly, over the years, public health funding has been just cut and cut.
And we think about, in homelessness, so many things and so many investments that we need.
One thing I'd like you to keep an eye on is with the the outbreak in San Diego, that they actually had a very concerted effort to put up hand-washing stations around their city, not just for people who are homeless, but for anyone to have access to.
So if we're If we can, on public health, clearly we need much more funding across the state.
And as you said, with mental health, much more funding is needed.
Behavioral health, once again, once, you know, all of this happened, but it all connects.
And I just want to make sure that you're really feeling comfortable that you understand these connections, and that if there is discretionary money that can come back to Seattle-King County to expand public health.
But then also, like we talked about, the hand-washing station, small but mighty move to keep people healthy in our city.
Of course.
Thank you, Councilmember.
We'll also be working on the local option bond bill that we pursued last year.
We're currently working with a broad coalition of stakeholders on a version for this session.
We're encouraged that we could see this going forward again, and we'll keep you apprised of any changes related to that.
We are also working on fully funding the housing trust fund.
We collected about 11 million dollars here last year.
High water mark is around 200 million and we're currently at 107, so there's some work to be done there as well.
So I know we've talked about that as well, but the $100 million, I mean, it's nice.
$200 million, nice.
But as we remember from the McKinsey report that came out just last spring, they're talking about the need in our region for a $400 million investment.
And if we're looking at tri-counties, it's 175,000 units that we are short.
to get people inside, and this is across the spectrum from very low to market rate.
I've reached out and have been talking with business and labor over the last few months about a coordinated, even four-county strategy.
So I'd like you to keep that on your radar as well, whether we need authority to do something like, and akin to our tri-county at Sound Transit, But have four counties together where we are really regionally looking at how do we get the kind of and the numbers of housing.
And as we've said, we can't do this on the backs of city taxpayers alone.
It's got to be regional.
One county is good.
Four counties is going to be better because the need to be coordinated.
want to say blessings on Speaker Chopp because he's been really pushing that housing trust fund, but it is a fraction of the money that we really need to solve the problem.
And I just thank you for the feedback, Councilmember Bagshaw.
I know Christina and Karen have been very active within a coalition of housing advocates and are really looking at, you know, the housing trust fund as one piece, but Really looking at kind of an entire package of housing affordability tools.
And I know a lot of you have been exploring the LA model that is, you know, a strong partnership with philanthropy and business and labor.
So we would love to continue to partner with you around those solutions.
you that very much because what I'm hearing is a drumbeat of understanding that Housing First is real, that Housing First with the services that people need who are currently experiencing homeless is a coordinated effort that will make the difference and then simply we need more units and that's not new.
This council's been arguing that for a long time, but we've never had the resources in a coordinated regional way to make that big jump, and that's what I'm interested in this year.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Continuing on this topic, we'll also be looking at a potential new REIT authority as a source, a relatively stable source of funding for investments for affordable housing.
We'll be continuing to work on tenant protections and also looking into property tax relief programs, so increasing the income eligibility for the property tax exemption to better reflect the state of this issue in King County and Seattle.
Moving along to transportation, unless there are any questions.
We'll be continuing, we'll be working on automated enforcement, which is what Lily mentioned earlier, so seeking authority for automated enforcement through traffic safety cameras to reduce the number of vehicles blocking critical intersections and transit-only lanes.
And we're continuing to be very much involved in the conversations around TNCs going forward.
In the public safety law and civil rights area, we know although there's some issues moving forward on the ballot, we will continue to pursue firearm safety policies.
We know that is a high priority for many of you.
That includes both Senator Frock's background check bill that would have raised the age to 21 years old and required an enhanced background check to purchase an assault weapon, also the requirement for statewide safe storage, safe firearms storage, and prohibiting the possession and sale or manufacture of large capacity magazines as well.
We've also seen a lot of, there have been some changes around the de-escalate compromise, a lot of changes kind of within the court system.
We do anticipate the legislature to take up the compromise bill that they passed last year.
very early on in session that was an agreement by both law enforcement groups and community groups that changed the deadly use of force statute and also increased some training requirements and resources.
So that will continue to be a high priority for the city.
The Keep Washington Working Act, did I get it right this time, would restrict the use of state resources to assist with registration or surveillance programs and prevent state agencies from detaining or transferring any individual to ICE without a warrant.
And it would also require the Attorney General to look at model policies for limiting immigration enforcement to the fullest extent possible.
So that will also be high on the list.
In the education arena also, many of you have probably seen the superintendent's recent proposal.
While the state met their McCleary obligation, there's still a lot of concern around funding gaps for local school districts.
And Superintendent Reykdal has called for a capital gains tax to generate $2 billion over two years.
Half to offset in his initial proposal that will still have to go through the process submitted to the governor who will announce his budget in December.
But half of this proposal would offset a proposed reduction in the state property tax.
I think the initial estimates are about $1,500 of relief for King, Pearson, Snohomish counties on, for the average homeowner on their property tax bill.
And the other half would be used to increase education spending for school nurses, counselors, career and technical education, dual language programs, mental health, school safety, and $150 million for students with disabilities.
I think he'll be moving forward working very closely with the governor's staff to incorporate his proposal into the governor's budget.
We'll see what that looks like when he announces that in December, and then they'll have both chambers of the legislature to reckon with.
But I do sense that there's a lot of attention around, although the legislature has met their McCleary obligation, really understanding that some districts are really struggling with some of the changes and some of the limitations that they're now facing.
And I think this fits very squarely in the area of progressive revenue reform that you've all been very clear with us is an important area to pursue.
We also have, will continue to pursue free college access programs through the Washington State Promise Program that we understand, you know, there are, those are significant funding challenges, but those are proposals that have continued to be introduced each session that we will continue to support, as well as apprenticeship programs and an expansion of the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship.
Before you go on, I just wanted to invite, to thank all of our guests for being here.
And what my colleagues should know is that these are some of our ESOL students from Literacy Source.
And we welcome you.
Just a brief explanation of what we're doing now.
At 2 o'clock this afternoon, we have to vote on legislation, and this gives us an opportunity to talk about that every Monday morning.
And what these employees are doing now are they're telling us about, in Olympia, when we try to get state laws passed, how we The positions that we want for our state law, we of course govern the city law and our state legislators, we work with them and so we're going over those issues.
on the state basis that we'd like to see and this is our team that helps us do that.
So, we're just discussing state law so we can get some issues addressed on the state basis.
So, that's this discussion and we're, we talk about it sort of informally.
So, thank you for joining our informal conversation.
Thank you.
Please, Christina.
Our final section is the environment.
Around the carbon emissions issue, we've been supportive of efforts to put a price on carbon.
This did not move forward last year during session, and legislative action is likely going to be dependent on the outcome of initiative 1631 in November.
So we're clearly tracking this.
A hundred percent clean concept is being reviewed prior to session and we're actively working with stakeholders on this topic.
We're also supportive of other efforts that aim to reduce carbon emissions like electrification of transportation and stretch code.
This would provide public utilities with the authority to provide incentives for electrification infrastructure and would help promote electrification and EV usage.
This has been a big priority for Seattle City Light for several years.
This will again be a priority for us.
Residential stretch code.
This would address emissions from the residential building sector.
This would give local governments the option to choose from tiers of residential energy code established by the State Building Code Council and would give the city the ability to adopt a more energy efficient residential building code.
We're working with a lot of stakeholders right now on this issue.
And lastly is Matka.
The city has several large projects that will be eligible for Matka funds in the next couple of years, the lower Duwamish and the East Waterway.
This account has been really unstable with the dips in gas prices and the use of this account for traditionally general fund projects.
So we're looking to stabilize the account and ensure that there will be funds to cover our matching grants.
Solutions are still being discussed, but one includes having a potential surcharge on the hazardous substance tax when the account dips below a certain point.
So we'll be continuing working on this issue.
To be honest, I'm just doing the recap, so I don't sit here and say nothing the whole time.
So if you have other questions or comments...
Yeah, I'm just doing the final when you're done.
So if you have more questions, we're happy to answer those.
Until then, but if not.
Commissioner Johnson.
Just a brief comment.
Christina, when you started talking a little bit about the public health issues, we've got a really great paragraph that talks about the desire for us to remove barriers for marijuana delivery services and harmonizing laws prohibiting underage marijuana use with laws prohibiting underage alcohol use.
I wonder if we might add tobacco into that.
I know that there's going to be another push in Olympia next year to raise the legal smoking age to 21, and not an issue that I have been on the forefront of, but I've got many constituents that have contacted the office to voice support for increasing the minimum age required to purchase cigarettes.
Thank you.
Happy to incorporate that.
Okay, so what our game plan again, according to Christina, would be to give feedback by the 24th.
Give you feedback and we'll figure out a way to make sure it's compliant and we sort of know what we're doing.
What's going to be very helpful is when we use this document and start populating with the actual bills and laws that are either consistent or inconsistent with our agenda so we could see how this fits into our vision.
So this is a great document, great start.
I look forward to working with you.
I'll just add that we'll be back on the 29th and we will have our contract lobbying team with us So if you have questions for them, and then if possible, hopefully to pass this on the 5th of November, okay, very good Thank you very much team for being here.
Thank you Okay, did any of our this is again the O-I-R-A brought our guests here did any of you want to say any words to our guests before we adjourn you may want to say that Councilmember Juarez
Is my microphone on?
Who's here from the North End from our D5 coalition, our literacy source folks?
Council Member Gonzalez and I had attended one of your graduations and obviously worked closely with Lynn in the work that you do.
So I'm really glad to see a lot of you here in City Hall because we've obviously been to your offices a couple times.
So thank you for being here.
It's a real treat to see all of you in the audience today.
Very good.
Thank you, Lynn.
Yes.
Please.
I just want to say thank you so much both for allowing us to come today to visit.
This is very interesting.
Just press the button on the bottom.
It should work.
Hello.
There you go.
Thank you so much.
Letting us come this fall term at Literacy Source we are studying civics is our center wide theme.
And so all of the classes and all of the students are learning about how to participate in our community in various ways and how to engage more actively in the city of Seattle.
So we really appreciate being able to come to City Hall.
I also want to say thank you so much to the city of Seattle for and Council Member Juarez particularly for funding our Ready to Work program, which is ESM with employability skills, and for funding our New Citizen program, which provides support for our citizenship class and for individuals going through the citizenship process, and just for supporting all of our wonderful residents of mostly North Seattle, but some other places as well.
So thank you for this opportunity.
Thank you.
Thank you for being there.
Council Councilmember, where is day or something going around here?
Okay Okay, we'll see everyone at two o'clock when that will stand adjourned.
Thank you very much