Seattle City Council Select Committee on Citywide Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) 2819

Good.

Good morning, everyone and welcome to our regularly scheduled Friday morning February 8 city wide select committee on mandatory housing affordability.

It is 9.37 on Friday morning.

I'm Rob Johnson, Chair of the Committee.

With me are Council Members Mesquita Gonzalez, Council President Harrell, and Council Member Herbold.

Thank you all for being here.

I imagine we'll have a couple of other folks join us this morning.

And welcome, Council Member Bagshaw.

Thank you.

This morning, we are going to proceed through a series of 80 different amendments.

We're gonna start with a series of text amendments that are not specific to individual geographies, and then we're going to go through by district the individual map amendments proposed by council members.

As part of our discussion for today, I'm cribbing a little bit from our budgeting process, and what I'm going to do as we go through these amendments is I'm going to start by asking central staff members to explain the amendment.

Secondarily, I'm going to ask the sponsor if they'd like to speak to it.

Thirdly, I'll ask if there's any discussion or any questions from my colleagues.

And lastly, I'll ask if anybody would like to add their name as a co-sponsor.

As you can imagine, as we go through 80 amendments, the more brief those discussions could be, the faster that we can all get out of here and avoid this snowpocalypse that's coming.

However, I will also add that in order to make the process in the future go more swiftly, if there's not a large-scale discussion about an amendment, I'm planning to roll a lot of those consensus amendments into one large consensus amendment for discussion when we do have a vote on February the 25th.

So my plan is to sort of assess the room and assess the response to these individual amendments.

And if they are not controversial, then on the 25th, we'll start with a discussion of what would be a broad-scale amendment that is a roll-up of a large number of amendments that have some consensus.

We'll talk more about the logistics of how we'll handle that on the 25th, but that's how I'm planning to handle our discussion this morning.

So with that, as a reminder to members of the public, we've got two more select committee meeting discussions this month, a sixth evening public hearing here at City Hall on Thursday, February 21st, starting at 530. and then a meeting to vote on potential amendments and underlying pieces of legislation on Monday, February 25th at 2.30 p.m.

or directly following our regularly scheduled council meeting that day.

So welcome Council Member O'Brien and without further ado, Noah Ahn, would you please read the abbreviated title of our three items into the agenda for today?

agenda items 1-3 council bill 119443 an ordinance relating to land use amending the Seattle comprehensive plan to incorporate changes related to mandatory housing affordability as proposed as part of the 2019 comprehensive plan annual amendment process.

Council Bill 119444, an ordinance relating to land use, relating to mandatory housing affordability, MHA, rezoning certain land and modifying development standards throughout the city, implementing MHA requirements and modifying existing development standards to improve livability, and amending, adding, repealing, and recodifying sections of the Seattle Municipal Code, and Council Bill 119-445, an ordinance relating to land use and zoning, amending Chapter 23.32 of the Seattle Municipal Code to rezone land in the Northgate Urban Center, and amending and adding sections of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Well done, Mr. Allen.

We've got the entirety of our central staff land use team at the table.

Why don't we start with introductions, Ms. Panucci?

Allie Panucci, Council of Central Staff.

Eric McConaghy, Council of Central Staff.

Ketel Freeman, Council of Central Staff.

Council of Central Staff.

Liz Schwitzing, Council of Central Staff.

Thank you all.

Why don't we start with walking through of the proposed text amendments, unless there are any opening remarks you'd like to give, Ms. Panici.

Thank you.

I'd just like to go over a few things of how we'll organize the discussion today, and then we'll jump into the text amendments.

But please stop me if you have any questions.

As described by the chair, today we will discuss amendments sponsored by council members.

This includes changes to the text of the land use code, as well as changes to the proposed zoning map changes.

We will start by discussing the specific text amendments found in Appendix 1 to the memo, that's page 5 through 104. I want to note that the specific code language is still being drafted.

We'll continue to work with executive staff and our law department and council members to finalize the amendment language prior to the potential committee vote on February 25th.

So the specifics of that language may be modified between now and the meeting on the 25th.

Following the discussion of the text amendments, we'll walk through proposed map amendments found on page 105 through 172 of the memo in attachment 2. The complete set of map changes that are proposed in the introduced council bill can be found online and is linked in the memo.

Today's discussion focuses on areas where council members have proposed a specific zoning change to the initial proposal.

I want to note that yesterday the office of planning and community development released the addendum to the final environmental impact statement that addresses the hearing examiner remand and concludes the environmental work for the proposal.

The addendum is complementary to the historic resource analysis and information that was found in the final EIS.

Over the coming weeks we will work with council members to identify any additional changes they may want to make based on the complementary information provided in the addendum.

In addition to the text and map amendments, included in the memo is an outline for the companion resolution that's included in attachment three to the memo starting on page 173. So concurrent with the three pieces of legislation, council will be adopting that resolution, recognizing that implementation of the citywide MHA land use code changes alone is not sufficient to achieve all of the goals of Seattle's neighborhoods.

This resolution communicates council's commitment to either taking action itself or requesting that the mayor and executive departments carry out a variety of citywide initiatives.

The issues identified in attachment three are not exhaustive.

and are not a complete set of items that may be included in the companion resolution.

Central staff will continue to work with council members to identify content for that resolution, and we'll post a draft of the resolution in advance of the public hearing so the public has an opportunity to review and comment at that hearing.

So unless there are questions, I'll move on to the text amendments.

Great.

So we will be working from the table on page five of the memo.

The first amendment is A1, and it is an amendment that will allow additions to existing buildings in residential small lot zones above the maximum net unit area.

The proposal would restrict the maximum unit size for a dwelling unit in RSL zones to 2,200 square feet.

This would allow structures that exist today to do small additions, or if you're a single story house, to do a addition directly above.

I have nothing to add.

Questions?

I'd like to co-sponsor.

Co-sponsor, Council Member Mosqueda.

Likewise.

And Council Member Gonzalez.

Amendment A2, apartment structures in RSL zones.

So the proposal limits the number of units in an apartment development in residential small lot zones to three dwelling units.

In addition to this restriction, there are also density limits that apply in RSL zones, height limits, setback requirements.

floor area requirements and that sort of thing.

This amendment would modify the absolute limit on the number of apartments in RSL zone.

So there are two options for the committee's consideration.

Option one sponsored by Councilmember Johnson would remove the absolute limit on the number of units in an apartment development.

And on larger lots would allow more than three units.

Option two would increase the absolute limit on the number of units in an apartment structure to allow a four-unit apartment building.

And welcome Councilmember Juarez.

Thank you for joining us.

Councilmember O'Brien, anything you'd like to add?

The distinction in my mind between the two amendments.

Ali, maybe you can do the math for me.

To do a four unit, to have a large enough lot to do four units in RSL would be just under 8,000 square feet lot?

Correct.

So that's a pretty large lot, which I'm sure a handful exist like that, and I know people could buy multiple lots and combine them.

The current limit under the proposed legislation that it only allows three would mean a typical building type that we've seen historically, which is a four-unit apartment building.

Looks like a house, but it's got four doors, and you have two units.

right and left downstairs and two units right and left upstairs.

Seems like a nice building type for the RSL.

So expanding it to four would allow that building type on those rare occasions where there is a lot that size that makes sense.

So I think that's why I'm pushing for that.

If someone had a really large lot, you know, 12,000, 14,000, 16,000 square feet, the distinction would be you'd build two Four unit buildings as opposed to one a unit building which in my mind might fit in more with a character of what I think RSL would be promoting at the same time the I don't suspect we're gonna see a lot of RSL development on 12,000 square foot lots, so I'm not sure the distinction makes a big difference, but That's that's my amendment my option to I Would like to support you in this but councilmember Johnson, can you talk about if you

If we did option one, which appears to have your name on it, that it would allow on larger lots development of more than three units, but it would be size dependent and design dependent.

So can you just describe the difference between the two?

There's a number of factors that limit the possibility of development within proposed lot size square footage, including things like our floor area ratio, things like design standards and setbacks.

I think this is a small philosophical difference between Council Member O'Brien and myself that I would ask maybe for our colleagues leave to have the two of us continue to work over the next couple of weeks on a proposal that would garner support from the two of us.

This doesn't feel like it's a hard one to work out.

Good.

Well, I would really appreciate the two of you doing that and I'd like to add my name to this.

Okay.

Further questions, discussions, Council Member Mosqueda?

Thank you Mr. Chair and thanks to the two sponsors of these amendments.

I support the effort to try to find common ground between the two.

I do want to emphasize as you're having conversations the desire to make sure that there are no limits so that we're not back in the same situation trying to amend Unit more by unit or limits every year.

I think would be helpful for us in the future So I was prepared to support your amendment.

Mr. Johnson or mr. Chair, but I'm happy to have you guys work it out great further discussions I'll just just add that again the existing legislation or my proposal.

There's there's no limit on the lot It's just how many units in one building.

Is that correct?

In an apartment structure, specifically.

Yeah.

But I'm confident we can find something, and we'll chat with everyone.

Okay, so I'm going to call that not a consensus item for discussion at our meeting on February 25th, and we'll bring forward an amendment for individual vote on that day.

Ms. Panucci, Amendment 3.

Amendment 3. This is related to accessory dwelling unit requirements in residential small lot zones.

The proposed legislation in general applies the same standards that exist today in single-family zones for accessory dwelling units.

to the RSL zone with a few minor exceptions.

One is that all ADUs must be located in the same structure or behind the principal dwelling unit and regulations about the height of exterior stairs.

This amendment would remove those additional requirements that would apply in RSL zones but not in single family zones and allow the standards to be the same at the time when the council is considering accessory dwelling unit.

legislation at some point, hopefully later this spring.

There may be further discussion about reasons and justifications for distinguishing some of the requirements for accessory dwelling units, but this would put both zones at the same starting point.

Any questions?

Yes.

Okay.

So a couple of folks supporting.

So Council Member Herbold, Gonzalez, Baxhaw, Muscata.

So I'm going to call that a consensus discussion.

A4.

A4.

A4 is related to garage standards in RSL zones.

This amendment would apply the same standards for garage entrances that are applicable in other single-family zones.

The proposed legislation, as introduced, could allow for a row of front-facing garages for certain development types.

So this would just require some more creative design thinking for the developer to avoid having a just row of front-facing garages along the sidewalk or street.

I have nothing to add.

Any questions?

Nope.

So Councilmember Gonzales is a co-sponsor on that one.

And Councilmember O'Brien as well.

I'm going to call that a consensus item.

A5?

A5 relates to the density limits in RSL zones.

So as was discussed in a previous amendment, the proposed legislation applies a density limit in RSL zones of one dwelling unit per 2,000 square feet.

In looking at the lots that are proposed to be rezoned to RSL, there are a number of lots that are so small that it would not allow for those lots to add a second dwelling unit.

So what this amendment would do would allow for any lot within an RSL zone to achieve at least two units.

There are yard requirements, height limits, FAR requirements that would still limit the overall bulk of the building, but this would just allow for a smaller lot to have a duplex.

I think as we continue to discuss what the future of residential small lot looks like this allows for I think a shared set of goals here that keeps the Principal structure intact but allows for a small-scale cottage to be built in the backyard I think that's the intent of this but councilmember O'Brien and the the date in here would mean that someone couldn't come along a year from now and Subdivide a lot into really small and then get to it just would allow existing lots, correct.

I

Further discussion or questions?

Okay, so I'm seeing some co-sponsors, Council Member Muscata-Bankshaw-Gonzalez.

I'll call that a consensus amendment.

A6, Ms. Panucci, is that still you?

I think I'm turning this over to Kito.

So moving from development standards for residential small lot zones to multifamily zones, A6 would amend the density limit for small sites and low-rise zones to allow slightly more development on a site.

The proposed bill would remove many density limits that apply in low-rise zones, but maintain a density limit for smaller lots, lots less than 3,000 square feet.

This would amend that density limit to allow slightly more development on smaller sites.

Questions about that, colleagues?

Okay, Council Member Miscada as a co-sponsor.

Council Member Gonzales as well.

We'll call that a consensus item.

A7, Mr. Freeman.

So under the proposed code and under existing regulations, certain features can exceed the height limit of the zone, including pitched roofs.

This amendment would modify the pitch of roofs that can exceed the height limit so that they can be slightly flatter.

Questions about that?

I'm gonna call that a consensus item.

A8, Mr. Freeman.

Amendment A8 would harmonize incentive zoning regulations for high-rise development in First Hill with the mandatory housing affordability program.

This is an amendment that Councilmember Baxhaw is sponsoring.

Under the proposed legislation, incentive zoning provisions in First Hill would be entirely replaced by mandatory housing affordability.

under incentive zoning provisions, up to 40% of extra residential floor area for high-rise development in First Hill can be achieved through purchase of transferable development rights, green street improvements, and open space improvements.

This would retain the ability for development in First Hill to achieve extra residential floor area through those means.

Any co-sponsors?

Questions from folks?

Co-sponsors?

Council President Harrell and myself.

I'm going to call that a consensus item.

A-9, Mr. Freeman.

A-9.

We may be bouncing around a little bit as we split the workload a bit.

A9 is about requirements to meet green building standards in multifamily zones.

Under the existing code, projects in multifamily zones can achieve extra floor area by meeting a green building standard and providing additional public benefits such as screening parking or providing affordable housing.

The proposal to implement MHA would increase the FAR limits in these zones and would just set a base above which green building standards are required.

And so there is a helpful diagram on page 38 of the memo that provides an example of how this works.

But essentially, if today, under today's code, the maximum FAR in a low-rise one zone is 1.1.

But if you're building above, 0.9 FAR limit, you have to meet the green building requirement as well as provide those other public benefits to reach the 1.1 height.

The MHA proposal increases the floor area limit to 1.3.

And in that change, it says anything above a 0.9 FAR limit, you have to meet the green building requirement.

So to achieve the additional floor area you can get today as well as the additional floor area that is added through the MHA legislation, you have to meet the green building requirement.

What this amendment would do is it would raise the bar slightly.

of the FAR limit above which you have to meet the green building requirement.

So essentially, under existing code, in order to gain the 0.2 FAR increase, you have to meet a green building standard.

This resets it to that same requirement so that you only have to meet the green building standard to achieve the additional 0.2 FAR.

This one's obviously very self-explanatory.

I could try that again.

No, no, no.

I think if council members want to dig into more details on this one, I would encourage them to do so.

But I think the simplest way to say this is that we want to try to continue to incentivize more green buildings, but we don't want to give it away.

So this creates a slightly higher threshold for the performance of a building standard.

and doesn't automatically give it away when you actually do the MHA FAR increase that you get through MHA.

So from my perspective, this may be one that we need to pull out for individual discussion because this could result in a little further need because of the quizzical looks that I'm getting from a lot of my colleagues.

But why don't we pause and see if there are actual questions absent my joking on this topic.

And if there are not, then what I would suggest is that this is a meaty enough topic that we keep this one for an individual vote and discussion when we circle back around on the 24th.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilmember herbal.

So let's do an individual vote on that one when we come back around on the 25th, please Councilman mosquito I just want to co-sponsor it I also want to indicate we've heard a lot of support for this from folks who want to do more passive house construction Just saw the first a passive house apartment last week in district 2. So I think this is a great one Look forward to the discussion Okay, a 10

Okay, so this is the small commercial space requirement.

This amendment is based on some other standards that are already existing and similar to the Pike Pine Conservation Overlay District.

There are development standards that require that new development include spaces for small commercial uses.

So development, over five, that new development in pedestrian zones, over 5,000 square feet would be required to provide small commercial spaces and kind of creating more opportunities for affordable commercial space.

We have a couple options here sponsored by various council members.

Option one is sponsored by a council member Council Members O'Brien and Herbold, this option would require that these small commercial spaces be permanent.

And option two, sponsored by Chair Johnson, would allow for these spaces to have a five-year expiration.

Things that people want to add to that?

Council Member O'Brien, Council Member Herbold?

I just want to speak to the fact that amendments like these were also used for discussion purposes during the University District discussions of up zones on the Ave.

We did hold that up zone and these types of amendments I think would address some of the concerns that we've heard both in that district as well as in other commercial districts about the concern of a loss of affordable commercial spaces.

I did recall, though, that there was a suite of other amendments that accompanied this.

So I just want to signal my interest in maybe looking back, because I think there were about three or four different options.

And I just want to make sure that we're covering our bases.

But this is, I think, a good first step.

And I think one of the other things to add here, if I'm not mistaken, Ms. Ho, is that this applies only to principal pedestrian streets within those zones.

So we're going to be discussing later applying the pedestrian designation to several corridors throughout the city.

But we also, in addition to that, apply principal pedestrian streets within those pedestrian zones.

So this applies to a limited number of commercial spaces just on those principal pedestrian streets within neighborhood commercial zones with a pedestrian designation Councilmember O'Brien

Yeah, I think in my mind, I think the policy distinction between the two options here, both decent policy objectives that I just want to weigh out.

By having the time limited, what that would allow for, my understanding would be existing or new small businesses could locate in one of these small spaces.

And as that small business grew, They may want to expand into adjacent spaces, and if that coincided with the time limit, could stay in place, essentially, by expanding into neighborhood spaces, which I think is a legitimate policy objective.

The flip side, though, is that as they expand, those spaces are no longer small for that next generation of small businesses.

And by not having a time limit, we would say, look, if you're a small business and you start to grow and need to get a different space, you would need to find another space to vacate that existing small business so that the next small business could come into it.

I lean towards the latter one, which is why I'm sponsoring that amendment.

But I certainly understand the desire.

But I do feel that this is a challenge that we're going to face on an ongoing effort.

And so having some permanent small spaces, I think, would be a good thing.

I think given the back and forth and the interest, Council Member Herbolden, having additional thoughts and questions expressed on this one should result in us having an individual vote on this one the next time around.

I apologize.

Council Member Gonzales, please.

I will hold my questions since this will be subject to more conversation, but I have Policy, I think there are several policy questions around and we need some additional data.

Like for example, what is the current percentage of You know 5,000 plus square foot commercial space in some of these areas that were looking at applying MHA to and really sort of what I'm looking at is what is the case for permanency in this space.

I am inclined to support Council Member O'Brien and her bold amendment to require these smaller commercial affordable spaces to be permanent.

really on the sole basis that I feel like we've lost a lot of small commercial affordable space.

And we've lost that to the construction of very large unaffordable commercial space.

And so I think there's a question to be had that could be better informed by some additional information about the stock and what is currently in the market before we make this decision.

Great.

So we'll hold that one for an individual vote when we get back to it on the 25th.

Okay.

A11.

A11 is related to the Pike Pine overlay.

It currently has a provision that allows a 15% FAR increase for projects that include 50% of their floor area and housing affordable to households less than 80% of area median income.

The legislation proposes to delete that provision and this amendment would retain it.

Council Member O'Brien, anything to add?

Any other co-sponsors interested in that one?

Council Member Herbold.

I'm going to call that a consensus.

So we'll add that to the consensus package.

8-12.

A-12 is upper level setback requirements along University Way Northeast.

Building on what Councilmember Herbold was saying, this is also similarly coming out of the discussions from the University District Rezone from a few years ago.

At that time, there was a proposal to rezone the ave to SM85 or the Seattle Mixed Zone 85 or 75 feet.

At the time, the council decided to hold any changes along the ave and requested that a proposal come back with the citywide MHA proposal.

The proposal now is to maintain the neighborhood commercial zone and increase the height to 73 feet, but it didn't include an upper level setback requirement that would have been incorporated in the Seattle mixed zone.

So this amendment would require that when buildings are built above 45 feet in height, that there is an upper level setback.

This helps sort of at the street level maintain the more pedestrian scaled character of those buildings, but still allows additional development capacity in the zone.

Questions about that, colleagues?

Council Member O'Brien.

Sorry, how big a setback is it?

A setback with an average depth of 10 feet from the street lot line would be required above a height of 45 feet.

Okay.

And so, and the average, does that mean you have no setback for the first 10 feet and then a 20 foot setback above that?

Or is it more like a sloped liney thing that you have to stay within or?

That's a good question.

I need to sort of look into that a little bit more.

But it requires a setback above 45 feet.

And typically, in some cases, they do a deeper setback in certain areas to create sort of a...

An undulating...

Yeah, like a rooftop amenity space or that sort of thing.

So it's the averaging of those areas, but I can follow up with additional information.

Got it.

I fully support this.

I think that this is an appropriate place to do that, and I think it helps mitigate some of the concerns we've heard from folks, so you can list me as a co-sponsor.

Great.

So that's Council Member Bagshaw-Gonzalez and Herbold as co-sponsors, so I'm going to call that a consensus agenda item.

813.

A13 is development standards for live-work units.

This amendment would require additional development standards for units that are proposed as live-work units.

It would establish a minimum size of 300 square feet that is designated as the work portion of the unit.

That aligns with requirements for the minimum size for a small commercial space and require a physical divider between the live and work portions of the unit.

The intent of these changes is to improve the privacy for the residential function and ensure that the front of these spaces are used for business purposes and ideally create a more sort of activated pedestrian environment at the front at the street level.

I think one of the challenges that we've seen in the implementation of some of the live-work units, particularly townhouses in what would be traditionally neighborhood commercial zones, is that though they may be a business that operates out of there, it's difficult to understand that or see it.

And so I think this is intending to try to incentivize more actual open businesses that you might want to walk past or walk into, as opposed to what we see right now, which is a lot of leaded glass as you walk past a lot of those live-work units.

Did we do the same set of amendments with the Queen, was it the Queen Anne MHF zone?

I believe that that's correct Council Member Herbold.

I believe your memory of that is accurate but I look to our experts at the central staff table to see if that is their recollection as well.

They look very confused.

They do look confused, all right.

I do know that the standards for live-work units have been modified several times during the pedestrian zone changes.

There were some tweaks made.

This takes it a little bit further, because with those changes, we haven't seen the results that were intended.

And so this just requires a little bit more to ensure that there's clearly work and live space defined in the units.

I will support that.

Okay, Council Member Herbold as a co-sponsor, Council President Herrold, Council Member Gonzalez.

I have a quick question.

I support this.

I have a question.

Sometimes I have heard from developers and people living downtown that we require commercial space in areas where it's difficult to find renters for that commercial space.

Is it possible also, and maybe this is a part of what has already been dealt with, but that some of those units could become live work?

units, even though that they are identified as commercial?

In some cases where commercial space is allowed at the ground level, LIVWRK can qualify.

But in most cases, when there is actually a street level requirement for commercial uses, LIVWRK, like in pedestrian zones, doesn't meet that requirement.

And the reason is that, in general, the LIVWRK units don't provide the same street activation.

And so over the years, the city has, and legislated by the council, sort of narrowed the areas where those requirements apply so they're not as broad as they once were, but it's trying to balance ensuring that over the long term we continue to have spaces for neighborhood serving businesses and neighborhoods because when the residential market is very hot, there is a desire to just build residential units because they lease up very quickly or sell very quickly.

But in the long term, if all buildings are built with only residential, there won't be amenities left and so it's a it's a bit of a balancing act so in some cases live work qualifies and in other areas it does not.

So I'm wondering whether we should consider loosening up the live work requirements so for example if you have commercial space that hasn't been rented for a certain amount of time to do what you're proposing here that you've got commercial in front but allow some residential behind dividing up the space.

And maybe I'm getting too complicated here, but it strikes me that the more options we can give to both have smaller spaces for commercial if needed and more residential space is a good thing.

We hear you.

So I think that that seems like an opportunity for a possible new amendment to bring forward and I'll ask central staff to keep working with you on that concept.

Thank you.

A14.

A14 is co-sponsored by Council President Harrell and Council Member O'Brien.

This is related to the new Seattle mixed Rainier Beach zone proposed around the Rainier Beach light rail station.

That area would include new street-level parking standards, and this amendment would target that greater flexibility for surface parking only to projects that include the types of economic development projects that the community is seeking to support through that district.

Look to the sponsors to see if they have anything to add.

Council Member O'Brien.

Yes, I'll just say that there's been a clear request from folks in the Rainier Beach neighborhood who've been working for a number of years on trying to establish some economic opportunities.

And the ideas they have would require a certain type of vehicle access that's what we would not typically put in a neighborhood commercial zone.

And I think the original language Kind of had a blanket allowance for this to happen across the zone And I think that for certain uses that makes a lot of sense but for other Uses that we might see and you know around light rail stations anywhere We prefer to not have a service parking lot in front of the building and so in conversations with specifically with the Rainier Beach action coalition They said that this language would allow them the flexibility to go forward as they're looking for sites to do a project and I think it would still preserve more broadly the type of urban design we'd like to see in that neighborhood.

So there may be a little bit of inconsistency from property to property, but I think that flexibility is appropriate in this case.

Anything you'd like to add, Council President?

Just to be very specific that what we're trying to encourage, of course, are certain types of activity, light manufacturing, colleges, childcare centers, food processing work.

Fine art schools vocational schools, etc.

And so we're trying to encourage that kind of development, but still Still create a pedestrian friendly environment.

So I think this reaches the right balance between Parking needs and economic development a community that is prepared for it.

So further questions or thoughts colleagues I'm gonna call that a consensus item for the 25th and congratulations.

We're halfway through the text amendments folks A15.

A15 is preschool uses.

This is sponsored by council members Mosqueda and Gonzalez.

So we noted that in several sections of the council bill as introduced there are certain benefits granted to projects that included preschools that do not apply to projects that include child care centers.

And in the Land Use Code, child care center is a broader term that includes preschool.

So this amendment would replace the term preschool with child care center to encourage the inclusion of child care centers in new development rather than just preschools.

Anything from the sponsors?

Councillor Mosqueda.

I'm really excited about including this.

I hope that folks on the council are supportive.

When I was in D1 a few weeks ago, I asked every single business that we went to, would you be supportive of incentives to ensure that there was space for childcare on the first or second floors?

Overwhelmingly, every single person was very supportive, both for them as individuals who live in the neighborhood, but also for their workers to make sure that child care is accessible.

And as folks know here, on average, Seattle is the highest cost child care in the country, especially for infant care.

As we look at expanding options for folks to live in the city, we also want to make sure that it's affordable for them to have child care.

So increasing the supply of child care facilities near residential and commercial spaces I think makes a lot of sense and will save our residents a ton of money in the end without having to commute.

Yeah, I would just add that there have been a lot of studies that have come out last year that really talk and highlight about a phrase referred to often as child care deserts.

And this is the concept that in places where there are families who need child care needs are experiencing an extreme shortage of both child care providers and child care friendly spaces for those child care providers to actually set up a child care center.

And of course, that's separate but also related to the issue of the lack of affordability of child care in our city.

So I feel like we have a real responsibility and a real opportunity through this process to incentivize and require that these spaces be created as one tool of many that will be needed to address the realities of child care centers in child care deserts and Washington State is not immune from this concept.

We have we unfortunately rank very high in terms of the state's being ranked as child care deserts and I think this is a common-sense policy for us to support particularly in conjunction with the work that we're doing in my committee around the families education preschool and promise and that is going to hopefully also support the development of a pipeline of additional child care workers.

And we're also doing some work at the state level in the state legislature to hopefully modify some of the restrictions that are currently in place that make it really difficult for child care providers or people who want to get into the child care provider industry from actually doing so, because many of those regulations land use regulations and whatnot are designed for suburban or rural child care facilities and are creating significant problems in terms of generating additional child care deserts here in Seattle.

So I saw co-sponsor hands from Council President Harrell and Council Member Baxhaw and Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Baxhaw, did you have something you wanted to add?

Just adding one more phrase and that is yesterday in Seattle Times there was an excellent op-ed acknowledging the fact that the demand for childcare is far outstripping supply resulting in astronomical costs of roughly $12,000 per year and year-long wait lists for childcare.

So anything that we can do to help promote this, I'm in.

I know several folks that would be delighted to be only paying $12,000 a year for childcare.

So A6, I'm gonna call that a consensus item and we'll move on to A16.

Okay so A16 is additional tree regulations and this is co-sponsored by Chair Johnson and Council Member O'Brien.

So based on the kind of building upon some of the work we did in the planning land use and zoning committee last year in terms of drafting a tree protection ordinance.

This is kind of looking at some of that work and incorporating it where it's appropriate in the MHA bill.

And so this amendment would actually increase the so there is a new tree score requirement that is accompanying the residential small lot for new development and this amendment looks to increase the tree score requirement thus that would result in more trees being planted or preserved with new development and would also potentially create a new fee-in-lieu option for satisfying tree planting requirements.

add protections for trees that are planted to meet these planting requirements in RSL, and require arborists working with the city to be certified by the International Society of Arboriculture.

in terms of creating tree preservation plans.

Excellent pronunciation, Ms. Hill.

Questions?

Thoughts?

Please, Council Member Ikshaw.

One quick question.

I will support this.

I'm very interested in our Urban Forestry Commission's response that we received yesterday.

Has this been incorporated in the language?

Do you know?

Specifically, okay, I'd like to make sure that we take a look at it.

Specifically, what they have added is that to allow a fee in lieu shall be paid to the city to replace and maintain the tree or trees in neighborhoods where they were removed.

Clearly, there's a balance between keeping the trees that we really regard as special, but also making sure that we're able to continue to plant.

in other areas and have the money and resources to do that.

So I'd just like to ask that we take a look at the Urban Forestry Commission's recommendation as we are going forward with this amendment.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I remember in our discussions of tree regulations in the PLUS committee, there was some discussion about the use of arborists versus the use of tree professionals.

And the advocates were urging us not to require arborists for some part of the legislation, and I just want to confirm that the requirement for arborists to certify those arborists working for the city, that is a discrete body of work that you're referencing, not the question that came up during the tree regulation debates about the work that we would be asking tree professionals to do.

Correct.

That's my read of it as well, though, if I'm wrong, Ms. Ho, I'm sure will correct me.

Let me.

Please, go ahead.

So in terms, so this is specifically in terms of tree preservation plans.

So asking for a certified arborist to provide that.

So that's a pretty low bar from what I understand, my research from understanding people in the field.

I'm happy to be corrected on that if that might be too high a bar, but I think it's not unreasonable for the city to know that the person submitting the plan for the tree preservation specifically is someone who is knowledgeable in the tree professional care work.

Yeah, that is, I think, a distinct function from what we were discussing in committee, needed to be only provided by tree professionals.

So thank you, I'd like to sponsor this amendment as well.

And my expectation is that when we've got that tree legislation back in front of us, we'll continue that discussion about the certification nature of tree professionals and whether or not they're gonna be required to be arborists or just have gone through a city certification process.

So more to come on that.

So that's a co-sponsor from Councilmember Herbold.

Yes, please, Councilmember Gonzalez.

I just want to confirm that the tree professional certified person.

You guys use a lot of different terminology.

We're not talking about city employees.

So these are not city barbers.

These are external contractors.

Okay, and How does this policy proposal or amendment impact, are there any sort of crossovers into our labor relations as it relates to this body of work at the city?

Are there any labor implications related to this amendment?

Not that I'm aware of.

I mean, we have other direct or indirect.

The green factor requirements in particular, specifically, I just looked at them.

They do require a certified tree professional, which this would include someone certified by the ISA.

I'm not going to try that word again.

And so there are multiple instances where the city has required, and the Department of Transportation also requires So it's something, there is precedent in the city.

I would also note, there's a bit of a distinction here.

This is a plan that the applicant needs to submit to the city.

The city has to still conduct the review of that plan, and we have people who work in tree review, I don't know what their credentialing requirements are, but that doesn't take, a body of work that the city is currently doing it and contract it out.

It's the applicant's responsibility to prepare the plan, submit it to the city, and then be reviewed by the city's professionals.

And what we're asking here is that the applicants hire an arborist who is certified by the International Certification Organization for Arborists.

Right.

I appreciate that.

I just wanted to make sure that there wasn't any implication to the body of work that is currently being done by city employees.

And I think I saw Council Member Bagshaw raising her hand to be listed as a co-sponsor.

Did I have that right?

Okay.

So I'm going to call it.

Oh, yes, please.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Co-sponsor.

Okay.

So we'll call that a consensus item for the 25th.

A-17.

All right.

As Council Member Johnson mentioned earlier, mechanically designating an area with a P designation as part of the zone does not necessarily convey additional development standards and protections that apply through the land use code.

There's another step that's required, and that's designating streets as principal pedestrian streets.

So Amendment A-17 would add Northwest 90th Street and Mary Avenue Northwest and the Crown Hill Urban Village as principal pedestrian streets.

Northwest 15th Avenue Northwest and Northwest 85th Street are already principal pedestrian streets in Crown Hill.

Council Member Bryan.

The Crown Hill neighborhood is currently going through a neighborhood planning process that will not be completed until a while after we're done with this process.

But they recently did some work with both city staff and kind of outside kind of urban design professionals and have identified these streets as possible or the more likely areas where they might be able to see more of a kind of neighborhood main street if you will and so they made that request for this.

It's consistent with what I think is accurate and so that's why we're putting this forward.

Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

I would like to co-sponsor this.

And from those of us up in D5 that don't have sidewalks, we like to err on the side of having pedestrian-friendly, elder-friendly, child-friendly sidewalks and streets.

And so that people can actually use the infrastructure to get to light rail and bus stations.

So I'll co-sponsor this.

Any other questions?

We'll call that a consensus item.

A18.

This one is similar.

It's for the North Beacon Hill community.

It would add 15th Avenue South as a principal pedestrian street.

It's accompanied by a map amendment that we'll talk about later that adds pedestrian designations on Beacon Avenue South and 15th Avenue South.

Council President Harrell, anything to add?

Well, I'm obviously sponsoring this.

This is just by way of background.

I think good policy the Beacon Hill merchants Association are Our strong advocates for of course preserving their businesses and making sure it's pedestrian friendly and we have the the Retail fronting if you will on 15th and around 14th Avenue South to Stephen Street So I think it's a good move any further questions or thoughts.

We'll call that a consensus item for the 25th Let's move on to the B amendments

Okay, B1, Annual Inflation Adjustments to Payment Amounts.

So this is an amendment in response to a report the council received from the Office of Housing that looked at different indices to adjust the payment amounts.

So currently the proposal was to use the Consumer Price Index all items.

And but upon further study by the Office of Housing, they determined that it did not seem to actually track with the housing market as well as an alternative index, also a CPI, but it is CPI shelter.

And so based on their analysis, they thought that it tracked, they saw that it tracked more closely to the rise in average rents in Seattle over the past 5 to 10 years than the CPI all items or known as CPI-U.

So just to note that because CPI shelter reflects changes in the housing market, this index The use of this index for annual adjustments means that the percentage increase in payment amounts would likely be greatest when the housing market is strong and that payment would increase less or not at all during market downturns.

So this amendment would use increases in CPI shelter to automatically adjust payment amounts instead of CPI-U.

questions or thoughts about that, colleagues?

Council Member Herbold.

I would like to sponsor that amendment, or co-sponsor that amendment, but I also want to flag my continuing interest to look at the need to adjust the fee in order to strike our goals to have 50% performance and 50% payment.

There are good reasons for why the payment option meets the needs of the city and affordable housing and the fact that those payment dollars can leverage the development of more affordable housing.

But we've also heard from our communities that they really want to see performance in these buildings.

And so I know that there is a point at which we are going to evaluate this program and make a determination of whether or not we're kind of hitting that 50-50 suite spot, but I'd like to have more of a discussion about how and when we're going to do that.

I believe there might be an amendment later that addresses this.

Next.

Oh, it's coming up next.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Yeah, no problem.

Yes, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to co-sponsor this one and I was remiss in not asking to co-sponsor A18, the last one as well.

Great.

So I'm gonna call that a consensus item for the 25th.

So let's move on to the reporting requirements, B2.

Okay, so B2 is an amendment and we have a couple of options for this one, but it is in the MHA framework bill that was passed a couple years ago.

They're included in this legislation where some reporting requirements intended to help council make adjustments to the MHA program, including payment amounts, looking at payment amounts.

And so this amendment originally had this report date of July 1st, 2019 for the Director of the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections and the Director of Housing to provide counsel with an assessment of program performance, specifically in regards to payment versus performance outcomes.

But given the delay in implementation, it seemed to make sense to extend this date for this report.

We have a couple of options here.

Option one, sponsored by Chair Johnson, would move this date out to July 1st, 2021, to allow for more data to be gathered.

And option two, Council Member O'Brien's option would move this out to next year.

Council Member O'Brien.

Sorry, what were the difference between the dates?

It's just one year.

One year.

20 next year versus two years.

So I think this is worthy of ongoing conversation.

I think the desire that Councilmember Herbold touched on earlier is something that I share of trying to figure out, understand as soon as possible how this is performing and recognizing that as marketing conditions shift, performance will also shift.

And so striking that balance between how soon can we get meaningful information?

And if we go too soon and we really don't have enough data to do anything, what's useful?

So I'm interested in talking some more with staff and Office of Housing folks to get a sense of what that sweet spot is.

And the reason why I suggested 2021 originally was so that we had about it.

Most developments take about a year to go through the development cycle.

So I figured we've adopted this thing in 2019. We have about a year development cycle permits in 2020, and then we've got some outcomes to report on in 2021. But this doesn't seem like a big controversial thing, but I welcome thoughts or suggestions from my colleagues to point us in one way or another.

Please Council Member Juarez.

Okay, great.

Any other thoughts, questions, Council Member Herbold?

Well, there are two options.

Two options, 2020 or 2021?

I would like to co-sponsor the 2020.

Okay, so we've got a 2020 co-sponsor and Council Member Herbold.

And Council Member Juarez, did you have a preference about which of the years you prefer, 2020 or 2021?

2021. Okay, it's a it's a two to two at this point.

Councilman Muschietti, you're pulling the microphone towards yourself.

I think the earlier the better is helpful.

Let's call this one for an individual vote and we'll bring it back up on the 25th.

You know, again, this doesn't seem like something that is going to require a lot of our time and attention and hopefully we can work out something in the intervening few weeks.

Okay, let's move on to item B3.

All right, so the proposal currently in front of council has payment amounts that are derived from the performance requirements, and those payment amounts are based upon market data that is about a year and a half or so old at this point.

So cap rates and rents, capitalization rates and rents have changed since that initial proposal was developed.

Amendment B3 would establish a date of this summer for updating those payment amounts, July 1st, 2019 date.

In the same vein as amendments B-1 and B-2, this would be done through an amendment to the framework ordinance, ordinance 125-108, which established the council's intent for implementing MHA.

Council Member O'Brien.

Thank you.

So, this is similar to the conversation we just had about trying to get the right balancing point.

to encourage the right amount of performance, but also allow some flexibility and recognition that the money that goes to Office of Housing and Loan Payments has more flexibility for how we deploy those dollars for different levels of affordability and different types of housing.

The reality, of course, is the market is continually changing.

This process has taken a little longer than we anticipated a few years ago.

And so what we've seen is that some of the baseline amounts that we're charging, as Kito mentioned, are based on some data that is starting to get a little old.

I'm not proposing that we make the changes in this process, because I think it's going to take a little longer for us to do a little more analysis.

But I would love to get that done as soon as possible.

So the idea would be that sometime in the next few months, by July 1st, to have that analysis done.

And my proposal to you, colleagues, would be that we would act pretty swiftly to update those amounts so they're, you know, almost immediately to bring those kind of more up to the latest measure of market conditions as kind of reestablishing a new baseline for going forward later this year.

Council Member Herbold.

I'm just signaling my support.

Okay.

Council Member Juarez.

Okay.

Great.

We'll call that a consensus position for the 25th.

B4?

Yeah, one thing, just staying on B3 for a minute, one thing I forgot to mention was that this amendment also contemplates the council looking at the boundaries between high, medium, and low areas for the purposes of MHA implementation as part of that July 1st, 2019 review.

Moving on to B4, this is an amendment.

Hold on, sorry.

Council Member O'Brien.

If I were to speak to that too, just remind folks that those, the high, medium, and low areas weren't just kind of random paint colors on the map.

They were actually derived by analysis and costs of living in those, or cost of housing in certain neighborhoods, which again, as marking conditions change will likely shift and so similar a similar thought process for me about but it's been a few years so let's go ahead and update that if we have new data and it's possible that some of the boundaries may have shifted.

Further thoughts or questions about that element please Council Member Musqueda.

I may want to just follow up with the sponsor and the chair on this amendment in the interim.

You know, I do have some questions and not necessarily concerns that would indicate to pull if other folks are comfortable with it.

But I would just like to follow up with you on this one to make sure I understand how it fits into the broader agreement that was made initially.

So amendment before this is an amendment that Councilmember Herbold is sponsoring.

This would authorize off-site performance for the mandatory housing affordability residential program, the notion being that developers could partner with a non-profit to develop some portion of the affordable housing off-site.

Under the framework, off-site performance is allowed under the mandatory housing affordability commercial program in recognition of the fact that developers of commercial properties are not necessarily in the business of building housing.

This would use the same, more or less the same development standards that apply to the MHAC offsite performance and have it apply to MHAR.

Sure, the only distinction I would want to underscore that isn't in the written version of the description is that in order for off-site performance to be permitted, there has to be a partnership with a non-profit developer to act as a steward of those units.

That's one of the reasons why off-site performance typically, we don't typically use it for MHAR because of the difficulty OH has in monitoring the affordability of those units, but in those cases where there is a non-profit steward of those units, it seems like this would be an appropriate option and it's a request that I'm moving forward from the Homestead Community Land Trust.

And there are a couple of points that feel like it's important to make as part of this discussion in signaling my support here.

One of those is that the offsite performance is intended to be within the same area, so urban center, urban village, or within a mile of the project.

And the developer choosing an offsite performance option has to provide a security equal to the in lieu payment so that if for some reason the Agreement that they had with a housing developer and the nonprofit community were to fall through That we would have some security that we would still have the same Funds available to us to to deliver the units that were promised So I think that those are two important points and and put me in favor of this one.

So please add me as a co-sponsor I'll and councilmember mosquito as well So, and Council Member Gonzalez, so we'll call that a consensus item for the 25th.

B5.

B5 would, this amendment would waive MHA requirements for unreinforced masonry buildings that add units in existing buildings if they retrofit the building and qualify for the 2030 district challenge pilot, which requires meeting certain energy efficiency goals and other green building standards.

So what the 2030 district, pilot does is it allows buildings in certain geographies that are unreinforced masonry buildings to add additional floors to the existing building if they are retrofitting the building and they're meeting the screen building standard.

What this amendment would do is if you were converting the existing portion of the building to residential units.

Right now, if you're doing a conversion to an existing structure that adds dwelling units, MHA applies.

So you would have to contribute to MHA either by providing affordable units or paying in.

What this would do is it would not apply the MHA requirements to the existing building in recognition that the cost of the green building standards, as well as the cost of doing the structural retrofit to make that building more earthquake safe, is a high enough bar, but you would be required to contribute to mandatory housing affordability for the additional floor area you can achieve.

So any new floor area you're adding above the existing building, you'd still be required to contribute to MHA.

The existing building would be exempt if you are doing all of those other, meeting all of those other requirements.

I'd like to add my name to this.

I also want to remind all of us that this unreinforced masonry has been an issue we've been working on for a number of years and there's legislation right now that would help.

Something that's called the PACER financing project and that stands for Property Assessed Clean Energy Resiliency Program.

So, there may be monies available for people who own these buildings as an incentive to restore them and especially restore them back for affordable housing.

So, if you would just help me keep note of that, I just sent a note to Lily Wilson-Odega to make sure that they know it's something that's important to us as well.

And I think that was Council President asking to be listed as a co-sponsor.

Any further?

And Council Member Gonzalez.

Any further discussions?

Council Member Mosqueda as a co-sponsor as well.

We'll call that a consensus agenda item for the 25th.

Let's move on to B6.

B6 is sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

This amendment would add a section to the council bill expressing council's intent to take steps if the imposition of requirements under MHA are determined to be unlawful to prevent the continuance of the new zoning and increased development capacity in the absence of other substantial affordable housing requirements.

So this signals that if the If the MHA requirements couldn't move forward, the council will take additional action to either require affordable housing using a different approach or rethinking the up zones.

Council Member Herbold.

Yeah, I think this just underscores the intent of this legislation as described on page 2 of the central staff memo in exchange for the ability to build additional floors, floor area or units.

Areas rezoned under the proposal would be required to include affordable housing units on-site or make a payment in lieu to build affordable housing units.

So, again, the reason for the increased zoning capacity is to allow us to extract the contribution towards affordable housing.

put the, if we cannot collect the contribution for affordable housing for some reason in the future, we really need to rethink the bargain that is implicit in this legislation.

And I think, you know, this is a similar provision that we've adopted in previous zoning changes, so I think it's consistent.

Any further questions or thoughts about that, colleagues?

Council President Harrell is a co-sponsor.

We'll call that a consensus position for the purposes of the 25th.

C1.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Please, Council Member Muscaty.

You know, if it's the consent of this body to include it, I'm not going to argue that it should be pulled out.

I do think it does set a bad precedent, though, because we already do, as a council, have the authority to call into question something that has been deemed not legal later on.

And so I just want to signal that I don't, I'm not going to pull this out, or not suggest that this get pulled out, but I don't want us to go down the road of setting this precedent.

Understood.

C1.

C1.

The city uses a set of criteria for determining where a zone is appropriate.

Many of those criteria include discussion of transit service.

This amendment uses a term frequent transit service that the council defined last year.

That's approximately transit service that's 15 minutes or more in an hour.

Questions, colleagues?

Consider that a consensus position.

D1.

D1.

So these last two are amendments to Council Bill 119443, which amends the comprehensive plan.

The first one is a Fremont neighborhood plan policy.

This policy currently refers to an area within the Wallingford urban village.

It does so asking for the retention of the character of that area.

It's redundant to a policy in the Wallingford neighborhood plan that also talks about preserving the character of existing single family areas within the Wallingford urban village.

The proposal that was submitted by the executive for amendments to this policy would shift its focus from an area within the Wallingford Urban Village to the Fremont Urban Village.

The Fremont Urban Village doesn't have any single-family zoning in it, so the proposed policy doesn't make doesn't relate well to characteristics of the Fremont urban village.

So this amendment proposes to delete the redundant Fremont policy and rely on Wallingford neighborhood plan policies to guide council action or city action in the Wallingford urban village.

Council Member O'Brien.

I will not profess to be an expert of the history of how this evolved, but I can imagine that there were discussions of boundaries in what was going to be called Fremont and Wallingford.

At this point in time, it seems to me that there's an interest to just kind of clarify.

And I think, I'm not sure if it was a mistake, but the underlying legislation maintaining a reference to single family areas within the Fremont when there aren't any seemed to be just superfluous, so I'm proposing to eliminate that.

No further questions on that, we'll call that a consensus agenda item.

How about B2, Mr. Woodson?

B2 is the Morgan Junction neighborhood plan policies so there were some revisions to the plans the policies with Morgan Junction and so in response to community interests we this is an amendment that there was this language in the proposed amendment more reflects what the community would like to see in the comprehensive plan.

Councilmember Herbold.

Yeah, this simply establishes a trigger for neighborhood planning whenever 25% or more of the land within the urban village is proposed for changes.

It creates a trigger for neighborhood planning process or some sort of community planning process, whatever we're calling it at the time.

Any further questions or thoughts about that one, folks?

We'll call that a consensus agenda item.

Anything you'd like to add, Ms. Panucci, before we move on to the MAP-related amendments about other technical amendments that may come forward between now and the 25th?

No, just that I guess at the meeting on the 25th, there will be some cleanup amendment that will be included as part of the consent package.

And as a reminder for my colleagues, the way that we're going to plan to handle that consent package is to basically walk the council through that consent package at the beginning of the deliberations and allow any individual member for any reason to pull any item from that consent package for individual discussion and vote.

So just because it's a consent item today doesn't mean that you don't have the opportunity to pull it out for an individual vote on the 25th.

you'll still have that opportunity if something has happened in the intervening few weeks.

We are going to transition now to the map amendments and we're going to go through in order by district with the same process as before.

I think we'll have central staffers walk people through the proposed change, ask the sponsor if they'd like to add anything, ask individual council members if they have any questions, ask for any additional co-sponsors and then use that to determine whether or not these map amendments become part of a consent package whether we pulled those map amendments out for individual votes.

So same process going forward.

We've got about 60 of these.

So we, you know, we're running pretty fast apace, but I would encourage us to try to be focused in our discussions because I know many folks have lunchtime events that they need to try to attend.

Ms. Panucci, any opening remarks on the map amendments for orientation of folks?

No, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague who will do just a quick description of how to read the map amendment pages and then we will jump into describing the amendments.

Mr. McConaghy.

Yep, so I'm still Eric McConaghy, and I still work for you, and I'll run through what this page looks like.

So each of the pages is formatted really more or less the same way, same colors, same styles of lines on the map, some things that might be helpful.

The current zoning is shown as you see here in the upper left of that map frame in that sort of font and style.

The MHA proposed designation, that is to say the proposal that's in the bill that was sent to us by the executive is underlined.

The amendment number is in that sort of oval.

In this case, it's 11. Streets are shown.

That's sort of self-explanatory.

You can see the sort of thin outlines of individual parcels, where there's sort of spaces between parcels.

Just for folks who might not be familiar with looking at maps of this type, that's generally the right-of-way, where you'd find roads.

And you can see, in this case, Southwest Carroll Street, for example.

is shown in that sort of brownish-orange area.

It's right in the middle of the road.

And then if we turn to our attention outside of the map frame, in each of the maps, in the same places, the same sort of real estate of the page, you'll see the address just below the map frame, a reiteration of the amendment number.

You'll see the current zoning, sort of from, that is what's on the ground right now.

Then you'll see what's proposed in the bill, 119444, that zoning that's above the line, and then below the line to the right, you see the amendment that that's the amendment that's represented on this page.

There's a description in this case do not apply MHA etc.

So that's just a quick sentence or so to give a little more meaning to it.

And then finally just wanted to touch on some of these Excuse me, some of these amendments to zoning would require a corresponding comprehensive plan amendment, and that's noted either as no or yes.

They're at the bottom of the page.

This is just meant to be helpful because we'll see lots of pages like this as we go forward, and hopefully it'll help folks who are reviewing this video later or watching right now live sort of keep up with what's happening.

Colleagues, questions about the map or legend as Eric has walked us through it?

Okay, let's move to Amendment 1-1.

We'll start in Council Member Herbold's district.

So this is, yes, Amendment 1-1 is, so the existing zoning is LR3-RC, and it was proposed to just get the M bump, but the request is for there to be no rezone, so do not apply MHA to this site.

Council Member Herbold.

This is an unusual situation in that the only reason that we are requesting this amendment is because this is a very small area that's currently zoned LR3 surrounded by LR2, LR1, and LR2 zones.

And so the way that the community has proposed to have the height consistent with the rest of the surrounding areas is to not propose the M-Bump.

This is the current location of La Rustica and this is a request from the surrounding community.

Questions about this one, colleagues?

I'm going to express reservations on this, Council Member Herbold.

As you know, we've tried really hard to ensure that MHA is applied in all the places where it is applied.

I think we will get to a point later on where I might argue against my own position right there.

So I would at this point signal that I'm not supportive of this amendment but I'm not going to stand in the way of it being included in the consent package because of the small nature of this and the fact that I will be making an intellectually dissonant argument about this later.

Yes, please Council Member O'Brien.

I'm mostly excited to hear about your intellectually dissident argument coming up.

Trying to anticipate when that will happen, so I'll be paying attention.

So question with with this amendment then leave and an LR 3 and without the, that would be the, at this point, the only place in the city where that would exist?

There would be other places too.

So MHA is not being implemented in major institution overlays.

The underlying zoning within those overlays include LR3 zoned areas as well as other areas with current zoning.

In addition, most historic districts have been excluded from the MHA proposal.

So there, in some of those historic districts, there's some low rise zoning?

Thank you.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just have a general comment and I apologize to the good council member from District 1 because this does not apply just to your district.

This is a comment that I'd like to make for the various map amendments.

I'm going to be concerned with the amendments that do indicate that we're going to down zone or not fully up zone under the existing EIS.

I think that in every opportunity that we have to expand housing to opportunity-rich, thriving urban villages, I would like to see us take advantage of that.

And I do have reserves about reducing the capacity to increase our ability to serve folks exactly in the type of places that we're looking at that are in urban villages.

in transit rich areas that could offer more affordable housing to various areas of the city.

So just on a principled stance, I just want to signal to my colleagues, as a citywide council member, I feel it's my duty to look at this entire package as a whole.

I understand completely that we have districts that have specific concerns, and I appreciate that.

I want to make sure, though, that we're looking at how we can continue to expand access to affordable housing, housing in general, especially in our thriving urban villages.

And of the 50 or so MAP amendments, about 35 of them appear to reduce the proposed zoning changes.

So I'm going to express concerns about those as we go through, because it's not just about the units and the numbers, though I'm very interested as we go through if we have examples of the number of houses or a number of units that we would not have if we were going to go with specific amendments.

Because I think that translates to number of people as well that would not be living in those areas.

So I appreciate that many people have had tough discussions within their district.

They know their members and districts well.

We've been out in district as well.

And we've actually tried to push the limits on what we could do within the existing EIS.

Unfortunately, we are constrained with what we currently have, so I am going to express concerns as we go through if we're going to be scaling down what we could be doing under the EIS.

Thank you.

I want to echo Councilmember Mosqueda's concerns.

I wholeheartedly agree with the intent of HALA and MHA, and I know that there are some areas across the city, and again, I understand Councilmember Herbold represents District 1 and I represent District 5, but I look at these issues in the density and how we look and how we grow our city that we certainly look at it through a displacement lens.

We certainly look at it through the heat map of high displacement and low opportunity that has not, and every neighborhood is different.

But I'm hoping that in these discussions that we don't just find ourselves carving out places where people politically think it's not viable to make change.

And that's what I'm concerned about for this city.

Because I think we understand how this city was deliberately redlined and constructed to keep particular people in neighborhoods out of particular areas.

And I'm hoping that we can right a historical wrong and that we can be a city that can do that.

So I will leave it at that.

Thank you.

We've got Councilmember Gonzalez next, Councilmember O'Brien, and then Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you.

So I also have reservations about the suite of District 1 proposed amendments.

At this point, I don't think I can support many, if any, of these.

Five of the 11 amendments that are being proposed for District 1 are actually in my neighborhood because I live in the West Seattle Junction urban village.

And so I just continue to have concerns about not being willing to advance a full density in a space like West Seattle Junction Urban Village, for example, which is a high opportunity area and low risk of displacement area.

And I think that it's really important for us to take a strong stance in those particular contexts to ensure that we are allowing space for others who have not had historical access to those types of neighborhoods to be able to become my neighbors.

And I feel like that's a really important value and concept here.

And I appreciate Council Member Herbold's desire to want to go a little slower in terms of the proposed residential small lot approach.

But I think that where I have the difficulty is that we end up asking for less affordable housing in order to get those residential small lots.

And I feel a sense of urgency around getting as much as we can from these up zones.

And I think that the LR1, LR2s accomplish that at the higher M rate.

Council Member O'Brien.

I concur with my with the last three colleagues mindset.

So just if you're counting noses Councilmember Herbold, I imagine that many of those same Concerns are going to be leveled against me in just a few minutes when we get to district four So I don't want you to feel picked on Well, well done Councilmember Gonzalez, but please Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you.

Um, I So we haven't yet moved into the set of amendments that I think folks have jumped towards talking about, the junction amendments.

So I'm going to hold my comments specifically about the junction, but I just want to speak sort of generally about how much I appreciate the folks in The city, and particularly in my district, who are embracing RSL, that is a huge jump from where we were just six months ago.

And I think we...

are underestimating how big of a culture shift that is and how bold our action is that we are contemplating taking today.

And how if RSL is done well and succeeds in urban villages, we can productively in collaboration with communities who are in single family outside of urban villages, promote a continued discussion and implementation of RSL in other places.

And I think it's incredibly important.

It's not just about going slow for growth.

It's about bringing people into this conversation about this culture shift and about the fact that, again, we have communities of people who completely oppose any changes to single family who are now embracing the RSL model.

And I don't want to sell that accomplishment short.

And I think it is a down payment towards leveraging more productive conversations around single family outside of urban villages.

I also want to distribute just a visual illustration of how RSL will transform single family neighborhoods in a way that I believe is significant.

So I do wanna speak specifically to the junction amendments after they're described, but that's just sort of in general my position on the framework and positive progress that we're making with this new RSL model.

Any other comments?

Please Council Member Goodsall.

I trust that we're going to be able to have an opportunity to discuss this more in the future and maybe even shortly.

But I just want to say that I don't want my comments to be construed as a sort of you know, rejection of some of the goodwill that you have described, Council Member Herbold.

But I do think that this is a moment in time, and this is a very unique opportunity for this city to be bold in terms of its efforts and vision around increasing density in urban villages.

And this is, I think, that moment in time.

And I feel as though we don't have the luxury of time to continue to wait.

to bring folks along.

And we have been having this discussion for years in this city with lots of outreach, lots of engagement.

I think Ms. Sarah Maxana probably has more gray hair now than she did when she started this process.

Thank you.

I certainly do.

And I just really feel like this is the moment of time for us to move this important policy forward in a way that is bold, that is visionary, and that accomplishes the ultimate goal of building more affordable housing.

That is the goal.

For me, that's the North Star, is how are we going to ensure that as we develop density, it meets character of neighborhood, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the answer to the question, so for example, I guess what I have difficulty with is sort of the construct that that the answer to making sure that neighborhoods are livable is just to leave them the same way.

And so I agree, but I think that RSL is, in my mind, doesn't go far enough to be able to meet the challenges that we are having with affordable housing.

The reality is we need more units to be built at an affordable rate to allow more people to live in these neighborhoods.

And so I feel really strongly that this is that moment in time and this is our opportunity to take that bold action to advance this.

I think it's fair to say that reasonable minds can come to slightly different conclusions on this, and we all want to be informed by data.

At the conclusion of these MAP presentations, you'll hear a little bit from central staff about the analysis that they will do about the impact related to the totality of the amendments, which I assume is going to be important factors, particularly for our citywide council members to understand the totality of the proposals that are being made.

But I appreciate all the thoughtful comments and recognition that three years worth of meetings, 40 some of which were led by the city council, several hundred led by community members and OPCD has resulted in a set of changes that are getting us pretty close to the finish line.

And that is, Testament to I think the perseverance of not only us but also many folks out in communities So we're getting there and if there's nothing Process question, please.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair.

You mentioned at the end We'll talk a little bit more about the type of data and impact analysis that's being complete Is it fair to say as we go district by district?

we don't yet have a full assessment of the number of housing units or houses that would be reduced from the various proposals.

So we don't have a net impact of each district as we go through the proposals, do we?

That is correct.

Between we were waiting to get the set of amendments that were sponsored and then we will be looking at the potential impacts of the amendments taken as a whole would have on the overall housing productions.

And we will be able to do some analysis of breaking that down by district or urban village.

But the more that breaks down, the less precise it becomes.

Okay that's helpful Mr. Chair and I think that that just goes further to underscore the point that I started with which is you know perhaps this is worth the policy discussion and perhaps it's worth weighing various considerations.

I think that we're also trying to make up for decades of lost time and in doing historic wrongs as Councilmember Juarez mentioned so I to underscore the point made earlier, especially because we don't yet have that data and that's not on you.

We were working as fast as we could to get all these amendments together, but I think we really, it is imperative on us to know the implications for the various amendments, especially if it's going to result in reduced homes.

I could just add, what we do have is analysis that the executive did based on a request from council previously from a select committee meeting last spring, I believe.

There was a request to look at what if the proposal was modified to only apply M-level bumps everywhere in the city, so no M1 or M2 bumps anywhere, as well as looking at what if only M-level bumps were applied in single-family zones, which means that all single-family zones within the study area would just go to RSL.

So we do have that overall, that analysis, and I have broken that down by urban village that I can distribute after this meeting, but that doesn't, that is not a one-for-one comparison to the package of amendments that are actually presented here today.

That's the information I provided last night, Council Member Mosqueda.

And as Ali is saying, for the junction, which we are about to talk about, the number for all of the single family to go to RSL was 37 units, and as you will see when we go into it, the amendments proposed do not convert all single family to RSL.

Some of the single family is maintained at what was originally proposed, so it'll be a slightly lower number than the 37 units.

So that was map 1-1, about 60. So let's see if we can move a little more quickly through the next 59 or so.

Map 1-2?

Yes, so maps 1-2 through 1-6 are

the single family zones within the West Seattle Junction.

So the request was for, we understood for all the single family areas within the West Seattle Junction to be, because the MHA proposal was for those to go to either LR1 or LR2, which would have been a M1 or M2 bump down to RSL to just the M bump.

Council Member Herbold.

And for my, My review of the map of the entire area zoomed in.

I don't think it's for all of the single-family areas.

There are some single-family areas that there's no amendment proposed within the urban village.

We can provide that information.

The following committee will confirm that there are some areas currently zoned single-family that are not proposed to be modified by these amendments.

And so as it relates specifically to these amendments, we know that Sound Transit 3 has identified the West Seattle Junction as the location of future light rail station.

The specifics of the station and specific alignment and the necessary property acquisitions has not yet been decided.

The community has expressed strong support for additional zoning changes.

in order to accommodate transit-oriented development in the junction once an alignment and station location has been identified.

OPCD has committed to the junction and to me and actually to the council in a report responding to a statement of legislative intent related to neighborhood planning priorities that they are going to begin a neighborhood planning process to identify areas for additional zoning capacity They will begin in earnest next year.

They're going to start having discussions this year, though.

An additional concern is that upzoning properties that are likely needed for light rail, either for staging or for acquisition because the properties are in the footprint of the alignment, will potentially increase the cost of Sound Transit 3, because they are under an obligation to provide the, when doing condemnations of properties, they have to pay the property owner for the highest and best use of the property.

And that is going to be a very different sum of dollars between RSL and a low-rise one or two.

And then lastly, as we mentioned before, the central staff has identified working with OPCD that the change in the current single family area is changing it all to RSL instead of something higher.

would be a potential affordable unit count of 37 units.

And again, I believe we can more than make up for that in station area planning that the community will be getting next year.

Further thoughts or questions, please, Council Member O'Brien.

councilmembers.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

One broad comment.

Reflection on what you said, councilmember her bold.

I appreciate the sensitivity to look at these changes yes there is additional development capacity which would likely increase the value there's also a requirement in some cases where we're looking at an m2 bump a significant requirement that these properties if they're redeveloped have to contribute to affordable housing and so I don't want to pretend that we're going to get the formula precise, but the assumption is that they're going to be fairly close to offsetting.

So I don't know that I accept that saying that instead of a single family zone, you're going to LR2, but you're now going to have to pay, I don't know what the zone is, but $20 a square foot for affordable housing in Luffy.

Those may about offset, so it may not increase the value.

I want to speak just for a second as we get into the suite of these things.

If we make it through to amendment 60 or so, when we get down into my district, there's a number of areas where I will also be proposing scaling back some of the up zone that's currently single family, proposed to go to low rise, back to residential small lot.

And I just want to speak to three really important principles.

that are guiding me in these decisions that I think are consistent in the framework as we've been discussing for a long time.

One is that all multifamily and commercial property in the city that's getting redeveloped will contribute to affordable housing.

And the proposals here, your amendments do that for sure, Council Member Herbold.

Another one is that urban villages are drawn in a way that they represent appropriate walk shed for frequent reliable transit.

So that these are the areas we're saying we're well served by transit and we want to see We want to see anyone who's in a walk shed of these areas to be in an urban village.

And so, again, you're not proposing changing that.

So consistent with that one too.

And the third one is that within our urban villages that something more dense than what's currently the single family zone and not changing that.

So it meets my three main requirements.

There are a couple areas where I have some concerns, and I've tried to be sensitive to this in Crown Hill, which is the area which is about transition zones.

Trying to, in my proposal where we've shifted from single from low-rise back to residential small lot to leave buffers between neighborhood commercial and residential small lot of some low-rise.

And I look at some of the maps on here, Council Member Herbold, like for instance 1-5, I can see that along the, I presume that's the north side, there's a proposal to leave you know, a couple lots of low-rise too as a buffer between the neighborhood commercial.

But I noticed on the west side of 42nd Avenue, there's a proposal to go to RSL adjacent to neighborhood commercial, 75 feet.

And I think, again, it's pretty challenging to draw these maps perfectly because the city's not laid out perfectly and there's going to be overlaps.

But I do have some concerns about the transition zones and I think I'm not proposing anything changing at the moment, but I guess I would speak to being more supportive if there were some low-rise buffer between neighborhood commercial and residential small lot.

So what I'm hearing out of that conversation, which I hope will inform further discussions, is that when central staffers walk through a suite of amendments that relate to one particular urban village, if there is a proposal, as you outlined, Council Member O'Brien, 1-5, that you might want to see further analysis done on that we could pull out that individual proposal.

However, in the course of that discussion, you did not ask for that.

So my recommendation moving forward is unless there's objection, we'll call the West Seattle Junction amendments part of the consent package, and if individual members would like to pull out individual parts to discuss on the 25th, they can do so.

But please, Council Member Herbold.

Yeah, I would just like to signal my interest in talking more with Council Member O'Brien about Amendment 5 to see if we could address some of those buffer concerns, which I think are valid.

And just one in five was the example in front of me There's there's a number of them that have kind of similar things And I'll defer to other colleagues to see how strongly folks feel in this conversation.

Council Member Musqueda.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President.

Sorry about that, Mr. President.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I really appreciate in the entirety of the work that you've put into this process, and we are almost at the finish line.

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

MHA month is February, and we are here.

By the end of this month, we will have the opportunity to tell working families across Seattle that there is the opportunity to live in denser, transit accessible, rich neighborhoods of the community that we've been really trying to figure out ways to create more inclusivity over the last three plus ten years.

I appreciate that we want to get through this relatively quickly.

I am going to express my concern with having items 1 through 2 or Amendments 1 2 through 1 6 included in the consent package though I think that there has been a good point raised about the consideration of light rail underway and the ways in which the Area could be changing when the West Seattle station opens in 2030 But I think in the meantime the West Seattle Junction is an area that is growing and many people are interested in living there I myself am interested in living in your district and very interested in seeing how we can expedite some of the zoning that's being proposed now within the existing EIS so that we can grow the number of individuals that can live in that area near these rapid bus lines.

And also recognize that this is a very dense area for renters to live in and renters in particular need to continue to have affordable housing options.

So I think it's worthy of additional conversation.

You know, obviously we're not voting today, but I think it's worthy of additional conversation and would like to pull those.

So then I will ask then for central staff to mark the junction urban village amendments for individual votes for the 25th.

Unless, of course, in the intervening few weeks, as was suggested, Council Member Herbold could meet with her colleagues and come to some consensus position, at which point then we'd present those as part of a consensus package and allow people to understand what that looks like when we're back again on the 25th.

So let's move on to item 1-8 please.

Yes, so 1-8 is the area west of Font LaRoy, south of Southwest Graham Street.

This proposal is to reduce the proposed zone designation in the Morgan Junction Urban Village south of South Graham Street and northwest of Font LaRoy Way Southwest.

To a less intense low-rise multifamily zone designation, so it is currently zoned single-family 5,000 and was proposed to in the council bill to be LR 3 M 2 and the amendment would be LR 2 M 1. Councilmember Herbold.

I'm not seeing any questions about that, so I'm going to call that part of the consent discussions.

Nope, okay, okay, nevermind.

110?

110 is, so this is the area bounded by Southwest Barton, Barton Place Southwest and 21st Avenue South.

The proposal is to reduce the proposed zone designation in the Morgan Junction Urban Village.

Oh, wait, this is Highland Park.

Oh, wait, something's wrong.

Oh sorry, we have a description error.

This is Highland Park in the Highland Park neighborhood and the proposal is to, it's currently single family 7200 and the proposal is to go for our LR1, M1 and the amendment is for it to go to RSLM.

Councilmember Herbold?

Nothing to add.

Any colleagues that would like to pull this out for an individual discussion?

Councilmember Mosqueda.

No if you're just asking for an individual vote on that then we can just register it that way.

Okay thank you yeah that relates to Morgan Junction and the West Highline Park just really because of the proximity to light rail.

Okay.

111. Okay.

111 and 112 are, wait, no, wait, hold on.

I think I'm looking at the wrong one.

111 is to reduce the proposed zone designation within the Westwood Highland Park Urban Village along 26th Avenue Southwest from low rise multifamily to residential small lot.

Current zoning is single family 5,000 or single family 7,200.

The proposal in the council bill was for it to be LR1M1.

Council Member Herbold.

Nothing to add.

I just, at some point, probably after this meeting, would like the opportunity to demonstrate visually how small the areas of these changes are within the larger urban villages.

I don't feel like these maps do justice to the fact that these are very small areas within larger areas that There are no amendments to tweak the zoning.

So I've actually produced that.

I didn't bring it along with me.

So at some point, I'll share that.

I would just, Eric just put up on the screen the district level map.

This doesn't do it perfectly, but it sort of is a key map that sort of shows the areas.

Anything that is white is outside of the study area, so it's sort of showing in the district the areas that are subject to amendments and areas that are not subject to amendments.

Please, Council Member Misket.

Thank you very much.

I'm wondering if the sponsor of the last two here on 112 and 113, could you help me understand a little bit more of what the change would mean?

Hold on, we haven't gotten to those yet.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

We're still on 111. Any further discussion about 111?

I'm not seeing any requests to pull 111 out for an individual vote.

So we'll consider that to be part of the consent package.

So 112 and 113.

Yes, so 112 and 113 are in the Morgan Junction Urban Village and the request has been to...

I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman, my comment before was related to both the Westwood Highland Park and the Morgan Junction.

Okay.

I'm just trying to be consistent.

I appreciate that.

Okay.

What did we say, Council Member Gonzalez?

Intellectual consistency?

Remaining intellectually consistent, yes.

Shall we proceed?

Okay, please, Ms. Huff.

Okay, so 112 and 113 are requests to remove the P designation, zone designation in the Morgan Junction Urban Village.

So currently the zoning in 112 is NC330.

Council Bill would, make that NC3P55 with M bump, amendment would be to NC355.

And similarly, 113 is NC230.

Council Bill would have it go to NC2P40 and amendment is for it to go to NC240.

So the removal of the pedestrian designations, Council Member Herbold.

Yes, removal of the pedestrian designation for now.

This is something that folks from Morgan came and spoke to us in a previous meeting about.

They are interested in pursuing a pedestrian designation and that is signaled in the resolution that we're developing.

But they just feel like we're getting the cart before the horse a little bit.

And in the meantime, the biggest differentiator here would be that buildings could be built without required commercial spaces on the ground floor, which could result in more housing in this neighborhood.

So I mean, I think that the net effect here is positive for us, but I'm looking around to see if there's any.

The net effect of the amendment could result in more housing, at least in the interim condition.

If we were to apply a pedestrian designation, development in this neighborhood would be required to do ground floor commercial space.

If we remove the pedestrian designation, you're allowed to put in ground.

Floor apartments if I'm not mistaken, and I'm looking at central staff.

Oh, yeah, I'm getting some nods Okay, I know kind of what I'm doing.

Okay.

Yes, please council member Bryan save me one of the one of the other distinctions I believe would be where driveways and stuff would be located and so Which I have some concerns about but I totally respect that the neighborhood is going through a process to to do that and I support councilmember Herbold's amendments

So I'm calling this one a set of consensus discussions.

I believe that concludes District 1. Council Member Herbold, any final thoughts?

Let's move on to the Council Presidents District.

21B and 21C are all related to an area that is within the new Mount Baker Park Historic District.

This district was designated the federal level last year, and so it was not considered as part of the executive's original proposal.

21A and 21B are both areas that are currently within North Rainier Urban Village.

21C are the portions of the historic district that were proposed to be added to the North Rainier Historic or North Rainier Urban Village.

These amendments would remove areas 21C from the proposed expansion area and would maintain the current zoning on 21A and 21B.

Council President.

Just briefly, and I sort of described this during the first round, that the designation as a historic district was a result of a lot of community work, a lot of community advocacy.

And this is one of the most diverse areas in the city with Franklin High School being right there and a lot of Good small businesses and a strong community and so sort of carving this out because of its historic district Status and the efforts is just consistent with what we're trying to do in that area.

It's been sort of a a sort of a funky traffic design area for a long time with some anomalies, and I think, again, we are on the cusp of doing some great things in that area around the light rail, and the historic district work is very complimentary.

So, again, the community's arguing strongly for this, and I strongly support it.

Any questions, colleagues?

Council Member O'Brien.

I didn't quite track the description, but are all these areas within the historic?

Yes.

Any further discussions on this topic?

I'm not I'm please councilmember, Miskina Thank you very much.

Mr. Chair, and thanks to the council president for bringing this forward I think as I look at one through one a B and C I'm cognizant of the fact that we have other complications as well that we're trying to address In this package as a whole I I remain concerned because these are areas near Franklin High School near the Transit Center and And I think our goal is to make sure that more residents have access to this transit-like facilities and that we have the opportunity to have people stay in place as well as bring more folks in.

I just want to register my concerns.

If it's the will of this body to keep it in, given the ongoing conversations we're having about moving forward, I understand that.

I'm hearing your concerns as registered, so we'll call those three for individual votes when we get together.

Well, let me be clear.

I appreciate those concerns.

This work, and I figured there'd be some concerns like that.

At some point, I think we have to recognize we are now by districts.

And at some point it's incumbent upon that elected representative to understand the policy concerns of where we're trying to go with affordability.

But listen to the students at Franklin.

Listen to the small African American and Asian and Latino.

in minority businesses in the community.

Listen to people that have been in that community for 30, 40, 50 years.

My parents lived there for 40 years.

And these amendments are a result of, again, a lot of advocacy for what they're trying to preserve in this area.

And this is just one small part of District 2, by the way.

So I hope that you have an appreciation, Ms. At Large, for the water that many of us are asked to carry.

And that's why I was a little silent on Councilmember Herbold.

She was the guinea pig.

I sort of wanted to see how that went.

But again, you know, this is the push and pull that we're up against.

But I actually think that playing into the historic district and there's some other activities that are occurring will get us more resources to, particularly for small businesses.

And I've said this all along, and I've been somewhat silent because I, again, you know, we're not voting today.

What we're fighting, the economic forces of displacement are quite huge.

And as we continue to fight it and as councils after this continue to fight it and the executives continue to fight it, preserving other institutions such as small businesses and churches and small stores I think becomes critical because a lot of these tangible assets still help preserve community.

And even if people, unfortunately, on fixed income may have to flee to, I'll say Auburn.

I always pick on Auburn.

I'm hopeful that we can still have as much, as many tangible assets here as possible, in addition to housing.

So when I look at what we're trying to do in this area, I think that, at least for my policy preference, works toward that end.

So I get your concerns and I hope you understand mine.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Yeah, I think much of what I was going to say has been said, but I also understand Council President Harrell's motivation for advancing these three amendments in the context, in the very limited I would be remiss in failing to express my disappointment that this part of mount baker won' t be seen additional affordable housing being developed within the particular neighborhood and that is an unfortunate situation for us to be in but I understand the motivation I understand it based on other conversations with other departments within our city.

So I appreciate the role that you play Council President Harrell in representing your district and hope that we at large, council members can continue to sort of carry the water and hold the weight of making sure that there is affordable housing.

available in all parts of our city because we are dealing with citywide mandatory housing affordability.

And I think Council Member Muscade and I are gonna continue to hold that role on this dais and take it very seriously as well.

So there was an individual member who asked for an individual vote on this.

So we'll ask for those individual votes to come forward on the 25th on 21A, 21B and 21C.

So no one asked for individuals, why are you doing that?

I believe that that was the position expressed by you council members.

I appreciate you clarifying that and I think that council member Gonzales articulated where it's just a sense of disappointment.

It's also a recognition of the realities that we're currently facing.

given that we have historic district preservation that we need to keep in mind as well.

I understand that and appreciate the concerns that we are all facing, but it is wanting to ensure that we do have the opportunity to have a chance to have a conversation in the meantime, and if there is a need to pull it out on the 25th, we still have that option, correct?

Correct.

Okay.

Council President, I apologize.

No problem.

I'd like to remind my colleagues, we still have three, four, five, and six to come up as well, and seven.

So I have a long memory.

Two, three, I believe.

Two, three adds a pedestrian designation in commercial areas along 15th Avenue South and Beacon Avenue South in the North Beacon Hill Urban Village.

Anything to add, Council President?

No, nothing to add.

Any questions about this one?

We'll consider that to be part of the consensus package, despite your sneezing objection, Council Member Baggio.

2-4, please.

2-4 reduces the proposed height in an area south of the intersection of Martin Luther King Way and Rainier Beach Avenue South from 95 feet to 55 feet.

Council President.

Again, this is commercial.

And again, for a variety of reasons, both coming from small business owners and labor and other types of folks that there's just a strong push to have this commercial zone still, I'll just say lower heights.

And again, I understand the policy arguments where one could say, well, you want to increase this commercial zone.

But again, as I said about my spiel on small businesses, this becomes critical for, I think, the preservation of our community.

And I would concur one of those instances where again, to Council Member O'Brien's question earlier about adjacency, when you look at the map on this one individually, it does create a better adjacency for many of the surrounding low rise zoned areas.

Please Council Member Muscato.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and maybe a question for you or the staff or the sponsor.

I see that it is proposing to reduce the zoning, but the question that I would have within the existing framework that's still allowed under this proposal, would it actually allow for us to have a more affordable construction option, even if it's slightly lower?

I'm wondering if it would be a more affordable construction option, especially given that it's commercial.

Generally, so at 95 feet, our zoning doesn't allow wood frame construction, but you can always build to 75 feet in that zone, which would be a wood frame over concrete building.

So it's probably a wash.

Okay.

And this is just commercial again, Mr. Chair?

Mr. Staff?

Yes.

In the legislation, it's proposed to go to a Seattle mixed zone, which allows commercial uses.

Under the amendment, it would go to a neighborhood commercial zone, which also allows commercial uses.

Both zones allow residential as well.

So it's not purely commercial.

Am I losing residential possibilities by keeping it lower.

This would reduce a couple of floors of residential use.

So let me talk offline a little bit more about you because that wasn't my assumption.

So we'll, let's hold off on this until I have further discussion.

So we're going to call for an individual vote on 2-4.

2-9.

2-9 is an increase in the area around

a fellow park.

Most of that area on the map is the park itself.

This would increase the zoning on the east and south of the park from residential small lot to low-rise one.

Council President?

Being the urbanist and the density advocate that I am, I thought this would be very appropriate to amend this legislation, so it speaks for itself.

Any further thoughts?

I like this one, Council President.

Okay.

We'll include that as part of the consensus package.

I believe that concludes District 2. As a preamble for District 3, Council Member Sawant is unable to join us this morning.

She's regrettably homesick.

I want to acknowledge that in her proposal, we are seeing a series of proposed amendments that will, I think, be looked upon favorably by our citywide council members because in each instance it takes the executive's proposal and proposes to increase the zoning capacity.

And I also want to recognize that it's one of the few places where the executive's analysis did allow for that kind of choice.

I think many of us were frustrated by the lack of flexibility that we were given as part of the environmental analysis.

about places where we might like to see the zoning heights go a little bit higher in places where that might be more appropriate, but where that was not studied.

In Capitol Hill, this is not proven to be the case.

So with that preamble, why don't we walk through the four district three amendments.

Mr. McConnick.

Thank you for that.

So this is 314. This is areas east of Martin Luther King Jr.

Way and South Jackson Street.

It would go from single family 5,000 under the amendment to the bill to LR1 instead of to RSLM as proposed in the bill.

Any questions about this, colleagues?

We'll consider that to be part of the consent package.

315, Mr. McGonigal.

This is located at 1722, excuse me, 22nd Avenue South.

This would go from LR2 under the amendment to the bill to rise M2.

Under the bill as proposed to the executive, it was to LR3M1.

Questions about this, colleagues?

I'm sorry, I'm just trying to keep, this is 315 we're talking right now?

Yeah, I'm happy to reiterate any of that.

Yeah, this is 315. Help me understand, it's just like.

One block or something, or what's going on here?

Who's proposing this amendment?

This comes from individual sort of parties that are interested in having this happen.

The idea was to, I think probably to an amendment in each of these.

The idea was to go to higher zones that couldn't necessarily be achieved by that weren't proposed in the preferred alternative, but were supported by the other alternatives.

And so this would bump this from LR3M1 to mid-rise, more capacity to an M2 bump.

So let me put this in layperson's terms.

This is asked by a private developer to just go up and How does that fit into the adjacent properties?

Is it just a carve out?

And who's there now and who's being displaced?

I can't answer that last question about who's there now and who's being displaced right here at the table, but I could look into that for you if you'd like.

This, in a layperson's terms, and I believe this is why it was considered in one of the alternatives, you can see to the north and west, there is proposed under the bill a mid-rise bump to M2.

And so should this amendment go through, it would add another piece of mid-rise to the zoning on the ground there and would sort of step from the low-rise three up to that NC or neighborhood commercial three.

Council President Harrell, I might be mistaken about this, but I think this is a site that the council has considered in a different context before.

I think last fall the council passed an ordinance designating some portion of this area for remediation as eligible for remediation funds under the Department of Ecology program.

So this might be part of the site that I think is controlled at least partially by Lake Union Partners and Mount Baker housing that is slated for future development.

This note is the Grand Street Commons project.

Thanks to Councilmember Gonzalez's technological skills, I'm looking at it right now.

So, okay, my questions are answered.

So, seeing no objection, we'll consider that to be part of the consent agenda.

Please, Council Member.

I just wanted to add additional context for my colleagues and for the public.

So, I was a little concerned because it's just a specific address and I wasn't sure what that was about, but I appreciate the additional information to jog our collective memories around the connection to the vision around creating a massive amount and footprint of affordable housing with commercial space, et cetera, with Mount Baker Housing, I believe it is, the nonprofit developer and Southlake Union Partners.

And so currently, just so folks know, if you go onto Google Maps and look at the satellite images and zoom in, it's actually an empty lot with some abandoned buildings on it.

So I see this as a good move forward in terms of reimagining and repurposing this part of the city to to facilitate Mount Baker Housing's ability to advance their project.

So with those comments, we'll consider this to be a part of the consent package.

316, Mr. McConaghy.

The current zoning at this site is a single-family 5,000.

As proposed as part of the bill, it would go to RSL with an M bump.

The amendment would go to a low-rise 2 with an M1 bump.

This is located at the northwest corner of 20th Avenue South and South Holgate.

Questions about this, colleagues?

Seeing none, we'll consider that to be part of the consent.

And 317, please.

And 317 would go from a single family 5,000 in the bill as proposed with the executive to RSLM.

The amendment would take it to LR2M1.

Questions about this one, colleagues?

Similarly, I think considering the The fact that this appears to be one parcel, if you could say a few more bars about that, Mr. McConnell.

Yeah, there were, along with other affordable housing providers, the Low Income Housing Institute, Lehigh, submitted to council.

I think several offices received requests to look at properties that either they have sort of partnerships with or have control of the property to have more capacity on those sites.

to redevelop, I guess, in the future would be the notion.

The requests for this site was for more than LR2, but that wasn't supported by the EIS that was prepared.

So this goes as far as it's supported by one of the alternatives prepared under the final environmental impact statement.

And consequently, you see a single parcel before you with this proposal for a change.

That's helpful.

Yes, Council Member Gonzalez.

Just a general question about all of these amendments.

So all of these proposed amendments, unlike the amendments we're seeing in some of the other proposed map amendments, are all up zones, which also bump up the affordable housing requirements as well.

Can you tell me in all of these instances, in all four of these, is this the maximum amount of density that we're allowed to pursue based on the EIS.

Yes.

Thank you.

So with that I believe we'll consider that to be part of the consent package as well and we'll move on to District 4.

So District 4, I'm going to start with maps 4-2a and 4-2b as they sort of work together and carry on the theme that Councilmember O'Brien and Councilmember Johnson have spoken to in terms of addressing transitions.

Amendment 4-2a would reduce the proposed zone designation north of northeast 70th Street from the proposed low-rise 1 to RSL and then amendment 4 to B the area immediately South of this area would go rather from LR 2 to LR 1 so it would create more of a step-down.

Questions about this one colleagues?

Please Council Member Gonzalez.

Oh no, sorry.

Council Member O'Brien.

I just want to flag are we going to get to the intellectually less honest coming soon?

You'll make sure we're paying attention when we get to that one.

We're dangerously close.

So unless there's objection, we'll consider that to be part of the consent package for 4A.

Okay.

Maps for 4A and 4B are somewhat similar, but with slight variations.

So amendment 4-4A is looking at the areas that are in the designated historic district in the Ravenna Cowan North Historic District.

So Amendment 4A would reduce the changes to M-level bump in areas where the historic district overlaps with the existing urban village boundary.

So it would mean that the urban village boundary would not be expanded in this area and rezones would not apply in the proposed expansion areas.

And any area that's already within the urban village would be reduced to an M-level bump.

And much of this area is proposed either for an M1 or M2.

So it would go to an RSL rather than a low rise zone.

And then map 4B would remove entirely any areas that are within the historic district from the proposed rezone.

And so the district actually spans across the existing urban village boundary.

So you can sort of see there is a small area along Northeast 65th and just, I think that's 21st Street there, or 21st Avenue, excuse me.

So all of those areas would be removed from the proposal, MHA would not apply, and the urban village would not be expanded.

So here we are.

We've arrived at that location, Council Member O'Brien.

You know, I struggle with this and will ask my colleagues to allow for an individual vote on this when we come back around to it on the 25th.

And I struggle for a couple of reasons.

One is we are in this neighborhood.

We are all very aware of the massive amount of investments that is coming to the neighborhood in the form of the light rail station that is set to open in 2021. Concurrently, this is a neighborhood that has been very active in neighborhood planning and has asked for, on several occasions, both additional zoning height in that neighborhood to correspond near the location of the light rail station, as well as, originally, a move of the proposed light rail station from what was proposed to be underneath the freeway at Green Lake and I-5 to the heart of the Roosevelt Urban Village.

The urban village has been in existence since the, urban village designations happened more than 25 years ago.

However, we do have a recognition of a new historic district that has been created in the neighborhood over the last year since the EIS was first published.

So I'm not prepared to signal at this point which way my heart's going to land on these proposals.

But I wanted to give my colleagues a range of options to consider because I think that there are real and difficult choices to make in this neighborhood Recognizing the many comments that were made earlier about this being a neighborhood with high access to opportunity and low risk of displacement Particularly with the proximity to the light rail station, so I'll stop there and again confess This is a place where I think we've got some really difficult choices ahead of us and I'd welcome additional thoughts or considerations please councilman Gonzales well

Chair Johnson, unlike you, I'm gonna remain intellectually consistent and express my concern about this particular approach.

I understand the motivation and the logic behind 4-4A and 4-4B.

I feel as though, I see those in the same category as the District 3 Mount Baker sorry, District 2, Mount Baker amendments that were proposed by Council President Harrell.

And so I understand why we are doing that in that context, but I have a lot of concerns about several of the down zones that are proposed in other parts of District 4 for the same reasons that I've expressed in District 1.

I told you it was happening, Council Member Herbold.

I'm just pointing it out.

Any other questions or thoughts that folks want to express, Council Member Herbold?

say they're not down zones, they're still up zones.

They're just reduced up zones from what is proposed.

And that is true for one of these amendments that is not true for the other.

The other one would preserve everything as single family.

So I want to be transparent.

I appreciate that.

It's in general, there has been portrayal of these amendments as down zones.

In the press and in emails that we've received and in and in general.

They're not down zones They are reductions in what is proposed and they are still up zones for what is currently existing Councilmember O'Brien I'm sorry I just want to say stand corrected and I will endeavor to be more precise in my language in the future all over Thank You Councilmember O'Brien

Councilmember Johnson, I appreciate your transparency about your concerns here, and kidding aside, I think this is a challenge of balance, and I share the dilemma that you're in here, or that we're all in here, frankly.

Just to speak specifically to some of the challenges, we are having a massive investment in light rail that will be coming online momentarily.

and the principle of putting significant amounts of housing in commercial space near Light Rail is really important.

I do recognize that this is a neighborhood that broadly over the years has been very supportive around the Light Rail station of additional density.

I believe the Had the YMFY signs in yards at one point, yes in my front yard.

At a time when that was even less popular than today to talk about.

And I do, I think the issue around historic designations is another one that is complex.

I think it's really important.

that we create lots of opportunities for housing and jobs near light rail stations and throughout the city in general.

And I also think it's important that we find ways to preserve those historic areas.

When we get to District 6, we will not be talking about up zones along Ballard Avenue.

There's a historic district there and I don't believe that'll be controversial.

It's obviously been established for a long time as opposed to a relatively new one.

And so I think we do have consistently supported historic districts.

As we add residential neighborhoods to historic districts, I think the scale which we're talking about today is certainly acceptable.

I could possibly see a future where we may have dozens of residential historic districts, which could really push an issue that we'd have to struggle with.

But today, I'm supportive as of in District 2 of taking some action to acknowledge and respect that historic designation.

There may be future conversations going forward, but I think this move in MHA, I talked about the three main principles that I have.

And I could have a fourth one that's maybe a little subsidiary to that, but it's around historic districts and figuring out how we do.

how we manage that.

This one is actually, would change some lines in ways that are inconsistent with some of the things I laid out, but that might be the exception that I'd be willing to make too.

So I'm gonna ask for individual votes on these two items when we get to it on the 25th, and I'll look to see if there's anybody else who'd like to add comments about this.

And I am supportive of what you're trying to do, Councilor Johnson.

I have a deep appreciation for the challenge you're under.

And I know you're a density advocate, but I also know that you, as we all do, we value neighborhood neighborhoods and neighborhood voice as we're making these decisions.

So it's a complex scheme of things, and I appreciate your advocacy for your district.

Council Member Esqueda.

I'll just reiterate, I appreciate your leadership on this.

I appreciate that you're interested in having individual votes.

I think the additional data that we get could be helpful as well.

It could eliminate some of the trade-offs that we're considering here.

I think that this entire council is very concerned about helping to ensure that historic districts receive the attention and resources that they need so that our community can continue to thrive.

But if we think about the fact that we're gonna be steps away from the Roosevelt Light Rail Station scheduled to open in 2021, That's also a huge opportunity to create dense living opportunities, affordable opportunities for more communities to enjoy your incredible district.

So, look forward to having that discussion on the 25th and appreciate your leadership on it.

Great.

Let's move on to 4.6.

Mr. Chair, I'm sorry, I was remiss in the previous two, 4.2 and 4.2a and 4.2b.

Similar to the conversation we just had, these are near light rail station opening in 2021, near good grocery stores, schools and other amenities.

I'd like to see if we could also consider additional data on the 25th as we look at those two.

I'm hearing that as a request for individual votes on those two amendments.

So as Council Central staff are keeping track of those, then let's reverse course on that.

Ms. Panucci, 4-6.

4-6.

This is an amendment that applies to parcels located at 6207 to 6211 12th Avenue Northeast and 1012 to 1032 Northeast 62nd Street.

This would increase the proposed zoning from low-rise one to low-rise two.

One of the few places in the district where we did study something higher than what was proposed, and this is across the street from the historic district, but still in the heart of the Roosevelt neighborhood.

I'm not seeing any opposition to that, so we'll call that as part of the consensus package 410, Ms. Panucci.

410 is a proposal to increase the zoning proposed for 4907 25th Avenue Northeast from NC 255 to NC 275. And I just want to note that the M designation was left off of the amendment sheet that would increase the MHA requirement from an M level bump to an M1 level bump.

Any questions about this one, folks?

OK, we'll consider that to be part of the consent package.

414.

414 would reduce the proposed zoning in the Wallingford Urban Village north of 49th Street from low rise one to RSL.

This is again one of those issues that contemplates transition zones and would ask my colleagues to consider a small transition zone between the low rise one zone to the south and the single family on the other side of the street at 50th.

I'm not seeing any objection to that.

Council Member Mosqueda, you're grabbing a microphone.

Maybe.

Can I hear the presentation on 414 through 417?

Altogether.

Sure, sure.

So 415 is a similar but a different area that is proposed to go from low-rise one, it's the area currently zoned single-family north of 46th Street, and the amendment would modify that to RSL.

And then shall we do 417 for Council Member Mosqueda as well?

Similarly, also within the Wallingford Urban Village, the area's own single family north of 40th between Ashworth and Densmore.

It would reduce the proposal from low-rise one to RSL.

Go ahead Council Member Esqueda.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I guess I'm concerned about the accumulation of the lost units, lost opportunity to live in the area with these three being reductions for our community to live in that area.

I think I would like to see the data, Mr. Chair, and ask if we can way that data against the fact that this area is three miles from downtown.

It's been identified as a high opportunity neighborhood.

It's very well served by transit.

I'm concerned about reducing the opportunity for folks to live there also through the equity lens in terms of how accessible this neighborhood is to much of our downtown core and other job opportunities.

So I think I do have concerns about the three of these together.

Please.

Yeah, I just, and we can talk about this more at the end when we're talking about maps, but I just want to set expectations about what sort of data is possible for us to present to the council.

So the impacts of an individual amendment will have a very modest or difficult to ascertain impact on the proposal in terms of how many MHA units we think will result from the implementation of the overall proposal as well as how many housing units in general.

So we will be, because of the way the city does their planning and capacity building, it looks at the overall zoning changes and the growth estimates and how that growth will be distributed.

So any one individual change I'm not going to be able to say, if you rezone this parcel to this instead of that, that will mean there will be one less MHA unit.

We can definitely do it at the citywide scale.

We can do it at the district scale and somewhat at the urban village scale.

But anything more than that, it will be difficult for us to tell you the impacts of one individual amendment.

So it will be the suite of amendments by sort of larger areas that we'll be able to report back on sort of if you do this.

entire suite of amendments, the impacts overall and by district and urban village would result in X fewer units.

And Ms.

Bonucci, I assume it would also be fair to say that as we continue to contemplate those text amendments that we discussed earlier on, that has an impact on development standards and those development standards has an impact on The kind of units that get produced and all of that would be factored into a complicated equation that you would then run for us about the proposed relationship between all of those internal locking elements in an urban village like Wallingford.

Yeah, that is correct.

And I'm happy to talk with you all more individually if you really want to get in the weeds on the growth model and those sorts of things.

But in general, if it is going from low rise to RSL, what would be required from that property would be if it redevelops is less than what would be required if it's a higher zone.

And if it's going up, more would be required.

So in general, you understand the implications.

We just won't be able to give you a parcel by parcel level impact analysis.

Any follow-up questions, Council Member Muscata?

Council Member O'Brien?

I'm just going to flag that as we get into District 6 in the Crown Hill area, there's a similar discussion about RSL.

I'm going to save the case I want to make until we get there just because I know the landscape there, but I think some of the things I will say are similar to what we've seen here and similar to what we saw in District 1. all urban villages with significant single-family zoning today inside an urban village.

And to Council Member Herbold's point, all of these changes still result in an elimination of single-family to something denser, and the decisions contemplated here are just less dense than what is in the executive's proposal.

But I hear your request, Council Member Mosqueda, that these three Wallingford-related amendments should be considered for individual votes.

Please, unless I'm missing anything, please, Ms. Panuccio, let's move to 418 Eastlake.

Amendment 418 would increase the proposed zoning on the eastern edge of the Eastlake Urban Village from LR3 to mid-rise.

Any questions about this one, folks?

I'll just offer, in several of the conversations that I have been to in the East Lake Community Council, I've heard a diversity of opinions on this topic, but I believe that this amendment is consistent with what I've heard, which is a desire to see taller buildings closer to the freeway and smaller scale buildings as we move closer to the water.

So this change to mid-rise allows for slightly taller buildings to be built on the eastern edge of the East Lake neighborhood.

So I wonder if there are any questions or thoughts about this.

Mr. Lehman, public comment will happen at the end of the meeting.

Please, please, please, please sit back.

Please sit back down, Mr. Lehman.

So seeing no objection to that, we'll ask for a 418 to be included as part of the consent package.

419, Ms. Minnijean.

419 is a single-family zoned area between 16th and 17th Avenue, northeast, south of 68th Street.

This amendment would reduce the proposed urban village expansion area and would not rezone this area, so MHA would not apply.

This is one of the few places in the city where the proposed environmental impact statement expanded the urban villages in Roosevelt.

And in Roosevelt, it took that urban village boundary all the way to 17th Avenue.

What I'm proposing here is to reduce that urban village boundary expansion to 16th Avenue, which has been a request from the community.

Any questions about this or comments, please?

Council Member O'Brien.

One of my framework kind of three guiding principles was urban villages represent the kind of walk shed from a high-capacity transit.

Could you speak to this?

I'm guessing this is depending on how you walk on the border things.

Just exactly on the border.

I mean the way that the proposal is written is that the urban village boundary expansion would go to 17th for the most part just for these couple of blocks because of that walk shed as well as a couple blocks to the south.

Those seven blocks are covered by amendments that we discussed earlier related to the historic district.

This is not part of the proposed historic district but there is a heavily underutilized set of properties on the border between 15th and 16th Avenue that is dilapidated, strongly underdeveloped, and in several cases actually has shells of buildings because they've burned significantly.

So this continues to focus the development patterns on that section between 15th and 16th Avenue and pulls out the section between 16th and 17th, which is right on the edge of that walkshed.

Council Member Mosqueda, do you have something you wanted to add?

Did my face do something?

Yeah, it did.

I appreciate the conversations that you've had in the district, Mr. Chair.

I think that the concern that I have is about removing bits and pieces of the areas where MHA would apply, and I still have questions about how this fits in overall with our efforts to try to approach the urban village expansions, and I am concerned about the implications of these small blocks, might they be, and how they would affect our goals here.

Okay, I'm hearing that as a request for an individual vote on this topic, so we'll consider that one for an individual vote.

Okay, that concludes, I believe, District 4. Ms. Panucci, does it not?

Okay, let's move on to District 5. Any opening remarks you'd like to make?

I'm just going to make some brief remarks because I want to be mindful of the time and I know that we have snow coming and people are worried about that.

District 5 is 85th to 145th.

It's approximately 13 square miles and today we have five amendments relating to Bitter and Holler Lake.

Northgate and Aurora-Licton Springs in the urban village.

I believe there are five items under there.

I want to briefly just kind of go over what we've been dealing with in community regarding the characteristics and the demographics and the history of District 5, and I hope I have the appreciation and the support of my colleagues.

D5 is the only district that has three state highways and one interstate.

As you know, I-5 splits D5, 10 lanes right down the middle.

We have two light rail stations.

We got Northgate coming in in 2021 and 130th coming in much sooner.

I mean, after, well, after Northgate.

D5 has a college, a hospital, a major mall, two hotels, and two more hotels coming online.

We have two high schools, 13 elementary schools, and two middle schools.

We also have five shag housing, as you know, for our elders.

And we are now at 51%, I believe, of renters and 49% of homeowners.

So needless to say, G5 is going through a lot of growth and density in our urban villages and surrounding neighborhoods.

As I said earlier, when we were looking at these five amendments, we certainly started with the issue of displacement.

looking at providing affordable housing, and that would include two and three bedrooms rather than just one-bedroom condos.

And as Councilmember Gonzalez and Mosqueda stated earlier, we have a real emphasis on transit-oriented childcare.

When we have these rich transit spines and all of this density and housing coming in, we are mindful that people are bringing their children to light rail.

and they should be able to drop off their children, hopefully buy groceries, and hop on light rail and be downtown in 8 to 12 minutes.

So, needless to say, with that all said, there is opportunity for growth and we've had an opportunity for community input and discussion.

And with that, we can just go through the five amendments.

Mr. Freeman.

All right.

So, the first amendment, 5.1, This is an amendment for which Councilmember Sawant is a proponent.

This would not upzone an area that is currently developed with two mobile home parks.

The proposal under MHA would be to opt on this to C-155M.

Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

As you all know, on January 28th, this council passed unanimously the work plan of SDCI with the moratorium beginning in February to May with the work plan with the NCI, I'm sorry, SDCI getting back to us on the legislation and the SEPA issues.

And then it will conclude sometime in October and December with council deliberations and public hearing.

regarding the moratorium.

And certainly, this is one of the areas where we looked at.

We did not want to displace 85 senior residents, nor did we want to displace the occupants of the 76 people that live in the manufactured homes in the mobile park.

So I would be co-sponsoring this along with Councilmember Sawant.

I want to thank you to Councilmember Johnson for working on the moratorium with me.

Thank you.

This is, again, one of those places where I want to express my support as well, though it is rare for me to consider that we should not be applying MHA in places.

Because of the one-year moratorium that has been put on these properties and because of the additional work that we will be doing, I would hope to provide some additional zoning proposals that would come to represent maybe a new manufactured Home park district or other such proposals.

I think it is wise for us to not Implement MHA on these two parcels and allow for those individual pieces of legislation that will be contemplated to come forward and govern what potential land uses could look like on this quarter, so I also would like to be listed as a sponsor here, and I think that this is a wise decision to not implement MHA on these two parcels.

And I should add that we are in discussions and have had discussions with the executive about having something more robust than just a moratorium, because the moratorium doesn't stop the property from being sold.

And I think that was a misnomer that was put out there.

And so we know what the moratorium does, but we know that we're going to have discussions to hopefully work for that this property you know, can actually sustain and apply mandatory housing and do other things with that property in the future.

It looked like Council Member O'Brien asked to be listed as a co-sponsor.

Okay.

Any other individuals?

Council Member Herbold?

Council Member Bagshaw?

Council Member Muschietti, you have something you'd like to add?

Yes, thank you.

Just to explain where I'm at on this specific amendment.

I also support Councilmember Juarez's desire to keep this in the consent package precisely because there was already a conversation had about the moratorium and more importantly I think because We're engaged in conversations with the trustees talking about potential ownership opportunities, we're talking about potential denser affordable housing opportunities for seniors.

So to illuminate my position on this and to show that there is consistency still because of the existing moratorium that's there, I'm comfortable with this remaining in.

Shall we move on?

Yes.

Oh.

I'm sure.

Yes.

Please.

Tee that up.

OK.

Mr. Freeman, is there?

Go ahead.

Five, three.

Go ahead, Keelan.

Moving on to five, three here.

So now we are across the highway and the Northgate Urban Center.

This is a site that is currently developed with, among other things, the North Haven senior living facility.

What you are seeing here is likely to change.

This amendment sheet shows a proposal to go from low-rise 3M to mid-rise M1.

consolidate zoning for portions of the site.

A future iteration of this will likely show on the eastern portion of the site a neighborhood commercial to the 75 foot height limit that was a proposal that was analyzed under the alternative to in the EIS and some other treatment for the eastern portion of the site.

This is based on some conversations with North Haven that happened yesterday.

I just add that I think we have our North Haven folks in the audience here today.

And we've been working closely with them for at least two or three years.

And not only would it provide additional housing for our elders, but we're also including building a health clinic as well.

I'm not going to recommend this one for an individual vote.

However, considering that there may be changes from the amendment today to what is proposed as part of the consent package, let's just flag that for a further discussion as we go through the consent package when we're back here on the 25th.

I just want to let Councilmember Juarez know I'm going to be leaving.

I've got something that started 11 minutes ago But I support where you are going with all of this Councilmember O'Brien the same thing if there's anything that you need me to know In the next few days, please do but I appreciate how much work that's already gone in Thank You central staff and we have nothing in d7 so no amendments, so I will be Thank you, and thanks to everybody who came and sat through this for the last three hours.

And I know several other folks may have lunchtime commitments, so they may want to choose to use this as an opportunity to depart as well, and I won't begrudge you that.

What?

Please, Mr. Freeman, let's continue.

Moving on to the next one, 5-4.

This is on the eastern edge of the Northgate Urban Center, and this is correcting what was probably a technical error in what was transmitted to us by OPCD a year or so ago.

This is a portion of the Northgate Urban Center that is proximate to a tributary to Thornton Creek.

This would modify the proposal from low-rise 1M1 to RSLM.

Council Member Warren.

Nothing more to add except I want to thank Council Member Mosqueda for bringing this to our attention.

That's it.

So we'll consider that to be part of the consent package.

Please continue, Mr. Freeman.

Wait, I think Council Member Gonzalez has a question.

Yeah, I just...

I'd like to get a little bit more information about this proposal because this is a.

deviation from the current zoning and the proposed zoning so it's going it's it's it would be proposed to only go to RSL and so I just want to we don't have to have a conversation now because I know we're running late but I just want to flag that I want to have additional conversations with Councilmember Juarez to better understand this proposal and it just have some more discussion about this particular proposed amendment.

That seems like a perfectly fair time to do that, Mr. Freeman.

You said that there was a catch here of an error?

We can talk further, Council Member Gonzalez, but generally the principles that informed most of the proposal for Northgate recognizes that Northgate is a high displacement risk area and also a low access to opportunity area.

So generally across Northgate, most of the increases are lower than you might see in someplace like Capitol Hill.

Another principle that informed the executive zoning proposal was proximity to critical areas.

So critical areas are areas in the city that generally see less development because they are either hazardous due to a geological condition or because they have some value for wildlife habitat.

And so part of what informed what was probably the original proposal from OPCD that was not accurately reflected in the legislation that was transmitted to us was RSO for this area.

And that's due to its proximity to one of those critical areas, a riparian corridor for Thornton Creek.

Okay.

Yeah, that would be the South Fork.

So what is driving this particular amendment is primarily the critical areas component that you've just described?

That's right, yeah.

Thank you.

Sure.

I'm hearing that still as a request for an individual vote on that, Council Member Gonzales, or are your questions satisfied?

I think I have the information I need, so I'm fine with it moving on to the consensus agenda should I have additional concerns.

I know that I have between now and the 25th to raise those and hopefully have additional information.

And you have an opportunity on the 25th, of course, to pull anything from the consent package itself as well.

Thank you.

Let's continue.

So the next suite of amendments have to do with the Aurora Licton Urban Village 510 A through D are all thematically similar.

What they would do would be to establish a pedestrian designation for portions of Aurora generally between the commercial node at 85th up to about 100th Street.

So areas in the Aurora-Licton Urban Village north of 105th, I think, or 100th, that do not currently have a pedestrian designation would not have the controls that apply to the P zone.

So the area that is where, for instance, Handy Andy currently is, would not be affected by the pedestrian designation.

Council Member Juarez.

I think that's all.

Any questions about this, colleagues?

Seeing none, we'll consider those amendments to be part of the consent package.

Finally.

Moving on to 511. This is a relatively new one.

It was not discussed at the last meeting.

This would expand the Northgate Urban Center by about a half a block for an area that is just west of I-5, close to the hospital there.

This alternative was analyzed and alternative 2 to the EIS and it would rezone this area from single family to low rise 2 and 1.

Council Member Juarez.

We'd be in support of this and I want to thank Ketel and also our constituent Mr. Nielsen reached out to us.

He was unaware about what was going on with the amendments and so we want to make sure we got it in the packet.

We should focus that that area is really building with the density that the University of Washington owns and Northgate, North Seattle College is there.

And with the pedestrian bike bridge coming in, you're going to, we're seeing more density of people buying and renting and having more units because everyone is going to be going over the pedestrian bike bridge to get over to light rail.

And north of that we have, of course, the 130th Street.

So this is, if there's time to buy property, it would be now.

One thing just to briefly note about this, it's a technical thing, but this amendment would also require a corresponding amendment to the comprehensive plan bill.

Any questions about this, colleagues?

Seeing none, I'll consider that to be part of the consent package as well.

Let's move on to District 6.

District 6, I'm going to be pinch hitting here for my colleague.

So Council Member O'Brien may need to jump in here a little bit more than in other districts as I haven't been as involved in creating these amendments, but I will do my best to characterize them accurately.

So there are, in District 6, there are a number of amendments that are similar to other areas we have discussed.

6-3 is an area currently zoned single-family in the Crown Hill Urban Village.

The proposal in the bill is to go to Low-Rise 1. This amendment would go to RSL, and this is similar for the next sort of five or six amendments, but we'll walk through them individually.

Council Member O'Brien.

Yeah, Council Member Johnson, the suite of amendments, my preference would probably be to speak of them as a package, if we could do that.

Is that okay with you?

Yep, that's fine with me.

So this would be the area zone single family in the Crown Hill Urban Village, which are amendments 6-3 through 6-11, and they are all proposals to modify what was in the bill originally, and it is consistent with the principle that Council Member O'Brien discussed previously, which is some going from Low-Rise 1 to RSL, some going from Low-Rise 2 to Low-Rise 1, so it's addressing transition areas.

And all these relate to the Crown Hill Urban Village, so is that correct?

Correct.

Yes, please Council Member O'Brien, you have the floor.

Could we also, could I also ask that, let me scroll through here, speak to 616 and 617, those are also in Crown Hill?

Sure.

So 616 is the area of the intersection of 15th Avenue Northwest and Northwest 85th Street.

So the proposal is to go from NC3P, or excuse me, from Low Rise 3 to NC3P 75. The amendment would reduce that to 55 feet.

And 617 is a commercial node at the intersection of 15th Avenue Northwest and 85th Street.

The proposal is to go from NC3P 40 to NC3P55, the amendment would increase that to 75 feet.

Thank you for highlighting that, Ali.

So colleagues, I want to just walk through.

Crown Hill is one of the handful of urban villages that as of today has significant amount of single family zoning in the urban village and consistent with the framework we've talked about.

Everything in the framework would be zoned at a higher density and be required to have some level of affordability with that.

Because there's a significant amount of single family, there's an opportunity, I'll call it, to have a significant amount of residential small lot.

And the base proposal has some residential small lot and what my proposal, my series of amendments here would do would convert some of the underlying proposal from low rise to residential small lot and make some other kind of minor border adjustments to transition from the higher heights of neighborhood commercial to low rise zones to residential small lots before we get to the boundary of the urban village where it would transition to single family.

The work I've done with community out there, and I want to be clear that like every community, there's a mix of opinions in the neighborhood and there's no one group or individual that speaks for that entire community.

But an attempt over the last year to work with people in the community, including going out and knocking on doors and going to a number of meetings to really try to understand where there was consensus.

And another principle that I haven't talked about at the moment, but it's come up before, is that a desire that if we're going to make some shifts that would affect capacity and also affect the amount of affordable housing in one direction, to look for offsetting shifts in the other direction.

And what a lot of folks in the Crown Hill area said, they would like to see increased density along 15th.

And so that is the goal.

There's an amendment to increase from NC55 to NC75 for a stretch there, but then have that step down to a residential small lot.

And I want to speak specifically to why I think residential small lot, why I'm excited about residential small lot in this neighborhood in particular.

I've been on a number of walking tours and have dragged folks from central staff out there with me a few times too, so thank you for participating in that.

There's a lot of folks in the neighborhood that would like to see additional density, but they're concerned about the affordability of that additional density.

And the lots in this neighborhood are somewhat large lots.

They often have relatively small homes on them.

They're already seeing redevelopment in the single family zone where a small house is torn down and a much larger single family home replaces it.

That changes certainly the kind of scale and feel of the neighborhood, which is one concern.

But it also dramatically changes the affordability of the neighborhood.

There's concern in some areas that a lot of shift to low-rise one would have that similar pressure that we've talked about.

Well, the low-rise would be mandated to produce some affordability.

There's some overall concerns.

And a desire to say, we think from the neighborhood that they think that redevelopment under a residential small lot provides an opportunity to maintain existing structures and maintain the affordability level of those, hopefully even maintain the actual current residence of those, while adding additional capacity with additional structures on lots that certainly have room to accommodate that.

or if there's redevelopment that would be redeveloped in a scale that may allow for that flexibility.

I want to be clear that the residential small lot, for the most part, doesn't really exist in the city today, and what we're talking about through this suite of things, through the mandatory housing affordability, is essentially creating a new type of land, and I don't want to pretend that I know exactly how this will play out.

What I can tell you for sure is people will build some things that we didn't anticipate, I'm hoping that there'll be a lot of really good things that happen in residential small lot, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are things that get built that we say, oh, that was not what we intended, and we have to go back and make changes.

There are a number of architects in the community who've been very vocal on engaging in what this looks like, and I think it's important that as we think about how we add more density without necessarily changing the maybe bulk and scale of some of our neighborhoods, that we have some areas we can try out.

And I really hope that Crown Hill is one of those neighborhoods where in the next couple of years we see folks experimenting with what this new flexibility provides.

And I'm optimistic that at the end of it we'll be able to see a lot of things that people, that maybe we say, but probably more importantly, people in the neighborhood say, I like the changes that are happening in my neighborhood.

I like the additional capacity that's added.

I like the fact that there's a range of affordability in this neighborhood.

So the suite of amendments that I proposed here will reduce the density from Of course, it's an increase in density from what's on the ground today, but it would reduce the density on some blocks from what is in the proposal, and it would increase the density in other blocks from what's on the proposal.

I don't know that I could characterize that as we know that that's an equal offset or even how we would measure that, but the intent is to balance that a bit.

and allow for some exploration of residential small lot at a scale that I think could be kind of exciting.

It's not unique to Crown Hill, but it's one of a few neighborhoods that we could see a lot of.

It's interesting because it may not be redevelopment, you know, maybe additional development on top of existing development, which is something that I'm excited to see.

And I think the lots here can accommodate that.

And also respecting that there needs to be some transition zones.

And so, those transition zones are fairly narrow because of the design layout of the urban village.

But I'm really excited to hear what my colleagues think about this.

I've worked pretty hard with community members to strike a balance here that I think works.

I will highlight one other little example.

If you look at Amendment 6-3, That was all proposed to go to low-rise.

We heard from some neighbors in there that wanted to see residential small lot.

When we discussed that, we heard from some more neighbors in there who are, there's kind of an L-shaped cutout at the bottom that Butts Neighborhood Commercial, also transition zone, said, hey, we would actually like to remain low-rise as part of a small transition to residential small lot.

And I believe we actually reached, maybe beyond just consensus, but kind of unanimity in the neighbor, at least from everyone we talked to when we walked around there, that everyone was supportive and low rise on those certain lots and residential small lots and adjacent lots.

So anyways, I look forward to hearing colleagues, any suggestions you have or questions you have or concerns.

Crown Hill, folks.

Councilor Muscatet?

Did I cut anybody off?

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the sponsor of all these amendments.

I do have a few questions.

One is on 16 and 17, are those two combined together?

Do they impact each other?

Is there a net neutral in terms of housing options there?

I'm sorry, just because of the language in the description.

Sure, the 16, what's on the ground in the amendment in 16 is just a couple parcels that is currently zoned LR3.

And for some reason that I don't totally understand, the base proposal proposes that to go to 75. Well, the chunks along the arterial where I'd expect to see more height had only proposed to go to 55. And so I never really understood exactly how that, the one in 16 went to 75, well, not the adjacent ones.

My proposal would lower from the base proposal, the chunk in 16, one, two, three, four, five parcels back down to 55 for a transition to a low-rise two, and then increase the height from 55 to 75 on significantly more parcels.

I can't count them all here.

it looks like it's roughly six times the area so I don't think that those two the net of those two I believe would be a significant increase in capacity on those.

Okay so if I might Mr. Chair I think I appreciate that and those two setting aside those two amendments Generally, as I look at the various proposals that are out here, I remain very concerned.

Number one, I think I wouldn't have these concerns if we were considering applying residential small lot across the city.

I think that would give us a lot of different density options like the type you're trying to consider testing out.

But given that we're talking about 6% of the land across all of the proposed changes in this MHA package, I still think that it is important for us to be looking at how we go to the maximum available under the existing EIS Recognizing that it is very relatively limited as it stands I I know that we're talking about not just we're not down zoning.

I want to be really clear I agree with councilmember her bold language and the language you used a minute ago But even reduced capacity equals reduced numbers of people being able to live in that neighborhood Reduced numbers of housing units and the ability for folks to have access to your asset-rich neighborhoods in District 6. So I'm concerned about a number of the amendments.

I do think, you know, had we had the opportunity to have this be an RSL conversation citywide, it would be different because I think that there's various areas across the city that would like to explore those models you're talking about since we're looking really specifically at various urban villages and the ability to create density in pockets throughout the city I still remain interested in maximizing the diverse amount of houses that and Units that we can create for renters for homeowners for first-time homebuyers We know that they will be well served by your district and all the amenities including access to transit and bike lanes Which we're still trying to get And we want to make sure that more residents have access to that infrastructure that we're putting into District 6. So on a sort of general suite of the amendments you've discussed, I remain concerned about those that wouldn't, as you discussed with 16 and 17, level out to allow for greater density.

I was hoping to get us out of here before the snow started to fall.

Unfortunately, we did not meet that objective.

What I'm hearing from you, Council Member Mosqueda, is a desire, sounds like, to keep the Crown Hill amendments together for individualized votes.

And I want to give you the opportunity to respond to that statement, Council Member O'Brien, but I just want to confirm that I heard that from you, Council Member Mosqueda.

with possibly the exception of the commercial node zoning change from 55 to 75 and from 75 to 55. I believe I heard you say that those you thought were appropriate to be included in the consent package, but that the remainder of the amendments 6-3 through 6-11 should be called out for individualized votes.

That's correct.

Okay.

Councilmember O'Brien, please.

Councilmember Mesquite, I really appreciate your comments not just on this particular changes but throughout the day and I don't have any philosophical difference or I don't believe there's any philosophical difference of what we're talking about here and I think You speak well to the sense of urgency to address a whole host of issues around both affordability and I think climate change fits in there too.

What I would suggest, a countervailing pressure on me is thinking about what redevelopment from single family to low rise would look like and what single family redevelopment to residential small lot might look like.

And while it's possible that someone could convert a larger home into a bigger development that would be consistent with low-rise.

I'm not aware of actually seeing that in a single instance anywhere in our city.

And so, you know, when low-rise gets, when this neighborhood, if it were to be redeveloped to low-rise, we would see the, you know, the demolition of the existing structures and new structures going in, which is part of what happens in change, and it's hard, and I'm open to that.

What I'm excited about is the possibility, though, of retaining some of these spaces where folks can stay in place and be part of additional development and add capacity.

And while it may not add as much square footage as we might see in low rise zone, I think it's entirely possible that we add as many new units as we would see in the low rise zone.

Don't know that for sure, but I'm interested in seeing it.

To your point about looking at low residential small lot across the city, I think that's a fair one and it's something that I'm also intrigued by.

I think the political reality right now is that we are in a democracy and I don't know that our communities are ready to embrace that citywide.

And I think one of the ways we would transition to that would be able to demonstrate that we have this new thing called residential small lot and here's what it looks like.

Drive to one of your neighborhoods down the street and see what you think about that.

And so, I mean, I think the distinction is do we do it in one big step or do we take a few smaller steps?

I get the urgency to take it one big step, and I don't know that we're quite ready to do that.

And so that's why I'm excited about the residential small lot as a step to get there.

I hope the step is a relatively swift step.

I hope we get to see in the next couple years.

What's possible?

Well, when I look down here, it's a different view, isn't it?

Look at that.

I'm glad I bought my ski helmet for my bike ride home today.

But I totally respect the points you're pushing, and I appreciate the dialogue here.

I will likely stay on residential small lot as my suggestion for this, for the reasons mentioned.

And I hope that we have an opportunity in the relatively near future to talk about possibilities of using residential small lot in many more areas of the city.

Anything to add?

Please Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you.

I just want to echo Council Member Mosqueda's points and rationale and you know I think that the concept that somehow RSL is eventually going to get us to to a point where people will suddenly be convinced that density is appropriate for their neighborhood or that increased density is appropriate for their neighborhood.

I'm not sure that that rings true for me as something that I think will actually occur.

I mean, the amount of resistance that we've had even to this gentle amount of upzoning is pretty extraordinary and I appreciate that we have you know accommodated some concerns in the current package and in prior packages certainly when we were taking this by neighborhood by neighborhood we were able to more deeply engage and some of these neighborhoods that had you know very high risk of displacement ratings for example and and I think that that's an appropriate thing for us to take into consideration but I become incredibly worried about the net effect citywide in terms of affordable housing options in every part of the city when we start slowly chipping away at neighborhoods that are have been evaluated, analyzed, and determined to be high opportunity and low risk of displacement.

Now, low risk of displacement, I understand, does not mean zero displacement.

It does mean that there is an opportunity for us to take a step forward in making sure that we are implementing policies in those areas that are truly going to result in more affordable housing units rather than less than the ones that are originally proposed.

So I continue to have concerns about this particular direction.

I see this suite of amendments and the arguments that you have made in favor of them.

Um to be similar to the ones that council member herbold has been making for the west seattle um area and so I'm gonna stay intellectually consistent here and And say that I continue to have a lot of concerns both about these and the others for those reasons So, uh, we've got a couple of amendments left to discuss but before we get to that council president has an emergency order I just wanted to switch subscript real quick.

I will say council member brian.

I'd be like your small steps approach, but that's not what I needed to say.

So at 11 o'clock today, the emergency, the mayor did declare a civil emergency describing what we're probably seeing now, which will be not only heavy snowfall, but wind gusts to the tune of 30 to 35 to 45 miles.

So the emergency order is in place now.

It is in place when it was filed with the clerk, which was around 11 o'clock.

We as a council, and I'm saying this in an open public, setting that we can act we can endeavor to act within 48 hours if we do nothing and take no action the The order stays in place and basically this order you all have it now in your inbox It just gives the mayor the ability to make purchases for salt or other types of Products to assist us emergency aid whatever is necessary basically, so I So it's in place.

We have 48 hours with which to act.

If we do nothing, it stays in place.

We can rescind it at any time when we can meet.

And then lastly, your point of contact will be Dana Robinson-Sloat in terms of what may happen Monday.

So we do have our meeting, I believe, postponed from 9.30 to 11. Our briefing, I believe, will be 11, but depending on how it is, that may even get canceled.

So stay tuned, but use Dana as your point of contact, okay?

Okay.

And this commercial is over.

So you don't anticipate that you would need us to take an action During this meeting in order to validate that emergency order that the mayor.

I don't need I'm not recommending at this point that we convene within 48 hours at this point You have the we could tweak these emergency orders.

I think this is actually a pretty solid one it's it's it's it's wasn't necessarily been sent to the governor and Again, look at it, and we can always rescind it on Monday if we so choose.

Okay?

Questions about that for the Council President?

Please, Council Member Mesquite.

Thank you, Mr. President.

While we have the viewing audience's attention, just any additional information on the hours for shelters for our homeless population?

Do we know if those will be 24-7, or are they still going to have to leave at 7 a.m.?

Yeah, I do not know.

Okay.

In fact, right now, I have to go back to the office.

I'll see if we get the right notices out.

Thank you so much.

Chair, if I, there was an email that just went out that I could speak to that point a little bit.

This is from the news release from the office of the mayor that is just in the section that discusses the human services department.

The city of Seattle is extending the severe weather shelter at the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall through Sunday night, February 17th.

HSD will partner with Mary's Place to open a downtown emergency shelter for families.

The HSD and Parks and Recreation are opening a 24-hour warming shelter for families with children at Garfield Community Center through Monday morning.

And there may be more announcements coming, as well as the Seattle Center Armory will operate on normal schedule today.

And there's some other announcements throughout but that is the update we have and chair Johnson if I may just hopefully punctuate this The Seattle Police Department has also recently announced just with in the last hour that they are asking residents in the city who see somebody who might be cold and in need of shelter to dial 9-1-1.

So this is pretty unusual for us.

We typically don't use 9-1-1 for that type of call, but Seattle Police Department is encouraging members of our community to call 9-1-1 if they see someone who appears to be distressed or maybe not in distress, but it may be in need of shelter and Seattle Police Department will make sure that appropriate resources are deployed to assist those individuals.

sobering statements, but necessary ones in a time of crisis.

We have two amendments, I believe, left to discuss that are not Crown Hill related.

Okay, amendment 6-15 is the block between 8th Avenue Northwest and 9th Avenue Northwest and Northwest 56th Street and Northwest 57th Street.

The proposal in the legislation is to go from single-family to low-rise one.

This amendment would reduce that to RSL.

Council Member O'Brien.

Thank you.

I heard from a constituent who lives on this block almost a year ago, which is just to remind us how long we've been discussing these maps, with some concerns about low-rise one, preference to RSL.

Since I put this amendment forward, I've heard from other folks who live on that block with a strong preference to keep it at LR1.

I actually went out there yesterday and biked around the block and down the alley between them, and I think that low-rise one is actually A more appropriate fit for that.

So I will I would ask that we not move this amendment forward unless anyone else wants to sponsor it if that's an appropriate request at this point councilmember Johnson what I'm hearing from you is a removal from Further consideration and that is perfectly appropriate

Okay.

618, I believe.

618, the final amendment.

This amendment relates to the area adjacent to the troll in the Fremont Urban Village.

The proposal in the legislation is to go from low-rise 1 to low-rise 3. This would do...

reduce that to a low-rise one, and this is informed by input from the community, and we will be looking at the data provided in the addendum to the FEIS, but it relates to some potentially historic buildings in this area.

I appreciate that.

Colleagues, this is an area, again, I'm not the expert on the history, but if you look at the underlying zoning in the neighborhood, this is a low-rise one.

chunk of parcels that is surrounded by low-rise 2. So there was clearly some desire in the past to keep it different.

I know that the desire is in part around a series of homes on the south side of, I think it's 36 there.

that certainly have a lot of historic character.

I'm not an expert on speaking to the particular era they came from.

I think they're Victorian, but I'm not positive.

And so the request from community members was to, in an effort to maintain some of the historical character of that, to not move this up from low-rise one to low-rise three, which would be an M1 bump.

And what I'm proposing here is to keep it at low-rise one, which is an M bump.

So it would still be part of the consistent framework within the urban village that would be required to contribute to affordable housing.

If this amendment goes through, the adjacent parcels around it would be at low-rise three and it would be at low-rise one, so that would be a distinction.

And it preserves some flexibility going forward to do some more work for designations around some of those structures that I think are The character is pretty important.

Just so folks are familiar, these are homes that are across the street from the troll and on the street that is extremely slippery right now because I was out there the other day.

And we share this amendment, about half is in your district and about half is in mine, Council Member O'Brien, so I'd like to be added as a sponsor associated with this.

Further questions about this one, colleagues?

Council Member Gonzalez?

Yeah, I just had, it's, I just wanna understand the rationale a little bit more.

So maybe you can talk, this is an area that already has quite a bit of density, so I'm just wanting to get a clearer sense of, given that there is already pretty, a pretty good amount of density there, why take this approach?

Currently on the ground, there's a distinction between these parcels at low-rise one and the adjacent parcels, essentially fully surrounding it at low-rise two.

And again, I wasn't part of the decision to make that distinction, but I believe through previous neighborhood planning processes, because of the historic nature of some of the homes, and I say historic with like a lowercase h, I don't believe they're designated.

They don't have an official designation.

That they, for whatever reason in those planning processes, there was a distinction to be made.

The underlying proposal, the base proposal, moves everything to low-rise three.

And so it would eliminate that distinction.

My proposal is to maintain a distinction.

It would be a little greater distinction, because everything else is going from low-rise two to low-rise three, and this would stay at low-rise one.

It would still get the bump from low-rise one today to low-rise one with an M designation, which has additional capacity.

I can't remember his additional 10 feet of height.

But it is intended to not put pressure on redevelopment that's happening in the area on those specific sites and to allow some possibility for some designations going forward.

That may or may not happen.

Again, it's, but there's been a lot of pressure in that neighborhood for a long time and for whatever reason, the people that own those buildings haven't redeveloped most of those and so I'm not sure what impact this would have one way or the other, but I do know that there are a lot of community members that would like to see a handful of those kind of historic looking Victorian homes stay preserved if that's possible.

I just have ongoing concerns about that approach.

And I think that the other proposed amendments in Mount Baker and Ravenna, we decided we are advancing or putting on the consensus agenda amendments that acknowledge the historic resource designation.

But I think the trigger there is that there's actually been a designation.

So I worry about the precedent and opening the door to allowing more carving out of some of these spaces on the basis that people believe the homes to be historic.

And so I just, I'm a little concerned about the precedent that that sets.

And again, particularly in an area that is already part of an urban village.

understand those concerns, and to be clear, there's at least one person in the audience who's in a meeting with me this week that I believe, or in the last couple weeks, that part of the community members had requested to leave it at low-rise 1 without the M-Bump, so no zoning change at all.

And I don't agree with that, because I do believe within an urban village as close to transit that everything should participate in it.

The level to which it participates, whether it's an M bump, an M1 bump, or an M2 bump, I think that I certainly feel that we can have some discretion within that framework to set that, and I do think that the The lowercase h historic nature of this allows us to stay on the lower end of that bump.

But I would not be supportive of doing no designation and essentially carving this out.

Unlike what we did at Mount Baker and in Ravenna, at least one of the proposals in Ravenna is to carve those out and say we're not going to upzone those at all.

I still agree that there should be an upzone here.

It's just a more modest one as opposed to a higher one.

But your concerns, it's a balancing act, and I think everything you said, like Council Member Mosqueda on the previous one, I completely agree with the concerns there.

I guess I'd probably say, and I'm just balancing it a little more this direction at the moment.

And I'm hearing your request, Council Member Gonzalez, as a request to pull this one out for an individual vote when we get to it.

We can leave it on the consensus agenda, but I just want to think a little bit more between now and then about this particular proposal.

But I see Council Member Mosqueda making a face.

Oh.

I would, I'm in the same boat of desiring additional information and to have a conversation with you and maybe the folks for central staff about sort of the precedent as well.

So if you would be interested in having those discussions on the 25th, I would also, I think, like to see this added to our list for consideration then.

If I, colleagues and public, I will actually not be here on the 25th.

Yeah, and so my schedule did not align with the schedule that came forward in this, but I will be available somewhere in the city all next week to have discussions about this, and would love to engage with folks about that.

And, you know, I may be calling in on the 25th, depending on, but that's, I know that's not the same as an in-person discussion, so.

And we have not had a chance to connect about this, Council Member O'Brien, so we're talking about it in real time, but one of the alternatives for us to consider could be holding off District Six amendments until the final committee, or full council discussion, rather, on the 18th of March.

So we, let's continue to talk when we have a chance.

Colleagues, I believe that concludes the amendments.

Ms. Panucci, any final words of thought?

No, that concludes the amendments.

I just want to reiterate that we will be continuing to work with all of you to finalize amendments following the public hearing and before the potential committee vote.

I would note we had said somewhere in the conversation that we'd have more of a discussion on the potential impacts on the housing unit estimate and the MHA unit estimate.

I might suggest, given the weather and the time, that what I can commit to doing is preparing a more detailed memo that, frankly, would be probably more useful to you than me on the fly, trying to walk through what these impacts could be in advance of the public hearing that we could make available to the public as well.

And I'm happy to meet with you individually in the meantime to talk through some of the pros and cons of going one way or the other.

And I would also just offer that based on sort of my back of the envelope calculations, we have about half of the amendments that we discussed today as part of the consent package of amendments for discussion on the 25th, and about half remain.

So as conversations progress over the next couple of weeks, I would strongly encourage my colleagues to talk to each other.

so that we don't have individual votes on, for example, 40 different amendments, but to do the best that we can to keep that number focused on a smaller number so that we are not progressing long into the evening on Monday, February the 25th.

Colleagues, we're about to kick it off to public comments, but I wonder if anybody has any last-minute thoughts that have occurred to them that they feel like they'd like to share before we move on to public comment.

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also want to congratulate you for your inclusive and intense process working with various communities, having meetings in-district.

How many meetings did you say you had on this process?

I believe we've had 42 council-led meetings and more than 200 meetings led by various city departments over the last three years.

Very impressive.

Thank you for getting us to this last and final hurdle.

I also want to just thank my colleagues.

I know that there was an intense conversation today, and we have two more weeks plus to have more conversations about the various amendments.

But I know that we are all very interested in making sure that we are providing clarity on the amendments that are being included.

So the data will be helpful.

The ongoing conversations with central staff will be helpful.

and community at large will be helpful.

I also want to reiterate that I think it's important for us to remember that even though some of these changes are being proposed, that doesn't equal demolition.

What it does is that equals legalization of existing units that are throughout our city that have been rezoned and considered illegal.

the apartment that I live in on 10th and Lee in Queen Anne is now not legally allowed to be built in that neighborhood because we have taken a multi-family zone and over the decades have re-zoned it into a single-family zone.

So what we're talking about really is trying to look at the existing fabric of our city and right some wrongs that would allow for additional folks to be able to live in that city.

I want to make sure that as we do that we are very thoughtful as council member O'Brien has talked about, and I think as we've also talked about before, that when we think about development, we think about those who've been at risk of displacement for the longest, those who are lower income, those who are seniors who are on fixed income, and trying to make sure that we're thinking about how we build a city that protects those who are here and also allows for those who've been pushed out to come back, also allows for those who want to come to our city to be able to live here.

So as we think about changing the density requirements around the city, it is truly looking at the historic roots that allowed for more people to live in the city across various areas and correcting some of the historic wrongs as Council Member Juarez talked about.

I'm gonna be bringing forward to the committee at the next time we meet some of those sightline maps that we've discussed that show from the early 1920s the ways in which single family zoning has actually increased instead of decreased as you would think it would do as we're adding about a thousand people a week to our region, growing by about 18% over the last few years.

We want to make sure that we are looking at that history as we think about growing in the future, but I don't want folks to think that it automatically equals a change in the neighborhood.

The neighborhood character is because of the people.

It's because of the small businesses.

It's because of the community centers.

And as we think about creating more opportunities for those people to be able to stay in place and for more people to enjoy it, I think we are hitting a right balance of looking at How do we ensure that people, small businesses, community centers, can thrive throughout our city and that more people can have access to it?

So, thank you for your ongoing leadership to get us to this point.

And I hope we think about that balance as we go over the next two weeks.

Thank you, Council Member Muschietti.

Any other thoughts that folks would like to share?

Okay, hearing none, I want to now open up for public comment.

We have about 40 individuals who signed up to give public comment, though I anticipate many of them have actually left considering the weather conditions outside.

Out of respect for those that are here, we're going to allow for two minutes of public comment.

And I would ask you to come to one of the two microphones at the front of the auditorium so that we can all to make sure that we try to get home safely.

The first person who signed up to speak is Alex Zimmerman.

Alex, you're going to be followed by David Bloom and then John Fox.

Thank you, sir.

My lovely Fuhrer, my name Alex Zimmerman.

I love you.

I love you for many years.

You're doing very good job.

1,000 pages, 1,000 pages, 1,000 pages of nice, beautiful job.

Is this everybody will be happy right now?

Council will be happy, 700,000 idiot will be happy, 50 percentage poor people who Pay for rent and housing too much, we'll be happy.

Rabbit in this room will be happy, need little bit hard.

Everybody happy.

I like Seattle.

Everybody happy in this city.

Yeah.

People dying sometimes.

Yeah.

200 homeless.