Sustainability, City Light, Arts and Culture Committee 4/18/25

Good morning, the Sustainability City Light Arts and Culture Committee meeting will come to order.

It's 9.31 a.m.

April 18th, 2025. I'm Alexis Mercedes Rink, chair of the committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Moore.

Present.

Council Member Saka.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Solomon.

Here.

Chair Rink.

Present.

Chair, there are four members present.

Wonderful, if there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted, and with that, Welcome everyone to the Sustainability City Light and Arts and Culture Committee.

Thank you for being here this morning.

Looking at our agenda, we will begin with a vote on an ordinance related to the Renewable Plus Program and two additional ordinances approving easements for City Light.

Then we will be hearing directly from Seattle City Light General Manager Don Lindell regarding the recent Seattle City Light Network investigative report which was made public last week.

We will hear more from General Manager Linda later in the meeting, but I know many people, I join many people in feeling horrified and unsettled and upset about the findings.

The findings of this investigation not only highlight the issues with alcohol consumption during working hours, but a culture rampant with sexual harassment and assault in an already limited women workforce.

It should also not be lost on us that earlier this week, council signed a proclamation marking April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which stated that, quote, the city of Seattle is dedicated to continuously evaluating and improving our efforts to prevent and respond to sexual violence, ensuring that our strategies are effective, inclusive, and responsive to the needs of survivors.

It's the job of the people on this dais to protect the people who live and work in this city.

So we will hear more about the report and what the organization is doing to address these findings during this and future Sustainability City Light and Arts and Culture Committee meetings.

But for now, I want to say to any young woman considering working at City Light and the City of Seattle more broadly, we see you and we are demanding accountability and change.

And with that, we will now open the hybrid public comment period.

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

Clerk, how many speakers do we have signed up for today?

Currently, we have zero in-person speakers signed up and there is one remote speaker.

Each speaker will have two minutes.

We will start with in-person speakers first.

Clerk, will you please read the public comment instructions?

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

The public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

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

Speakers will alternate between sets and in-person and remote speakers until the public comment period has ended.

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

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

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

The first remote speaker is David Haynes.

Please press star six when you hear the prompt, you have been unmuted.

Thank you, David Haines.

I think it's pretty clear that City Light demonstrates how pathetic leadership is in the government and how they will pull their punches on the abuse that continues.

It's like how many people were involved in bad activity versus how many people were fired compared to how many people got to keep their job, get retrained, continue to collect their paycheck, still get their retirement benefit packages, and still get to be in charge, I think it still comes down to leadership.

But if you've got, you know, like a diverse array of leadership that's going to pull their punches, continue to give raises and praises, I think we need new leadership on all levels.

Because city council is considered an executive oversight.

And if you're going to pull your punches, then we need to replace you as well.

All right, with that, there are no additional registered speakers and we'll now proceed to our items of business for today.

We will now move on to item one on the agenda.

Will the clerk please read item one to the record?

CB 120952, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department authorizing the department to establish eligibility requirements for customers participating in the Renewable Plus Program, charging a rate for delivery of dedicated renewable energy and its associated energy, excuse me, associated renewable energy credits supplied by the department under the renewable plus program and amending section 2149089 of the municipal code briefing discussion and possible votes.

Thank you, clerk.

And with that, I will invite our representatives from city light to speak to this.

And as a reminder, colleagues, we've received our initial briefing on this item during our last committee meeting.

And for our City Light representatives, as you're getting settled in, once you get settled, if you could take a moment to introduce yourself for the record.

Good morning.

This is Dawn Lindell, and I'm the general manager and chief executive officer for Seattle City Light.

And I'll let my compatriots introduce themselves.

Good morning, my name is Lori Moen.

I'm the manager of solutions design and analysis with Customer Energy Solutions.

I'm Craig Smith, the chief customer officer.

All right, so good morning, committee chair Rink and council members.

We are back today to take any additional questions and have the council vote on the ordinance to establish our renewable plus program rate.

As we shared with the committee at the last meeting, this is one of many customer facing programs administered by City Light's talented team.

at Customer Energy Solutions.

Customer Energy Solutions' goal is to meet our customers' expectations of products and services or solutions to reduce their energy usage and or provide additional renewable energy options.

I want to give a shout out to the multiple staff across the utility who worked on developing this innovative program.

I also want to thank our large customers, including Amazon and Climate Pledge Arena, for their close collaboration as we strive to meet their bold climate goals while not passing costs onto our other rate payers.

With that, I will open it for questions.

Wonderful, thank you for being here.

Colleagues, any questions on the Renewable Plus legislation?

And taking a moment to recognize, Council Member Saka has joined us virtually.

Thank you, Council Member Saka.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

Great to see you all.

Thank you for coming back, and I appreciate the conversation that we got to have before the last committee meeting.

I was wondering if, just for the benefit of the record, you could provide just a brief summary.

We're talking about the two PPAs signed in 2024, that history coming to what we are doing today, removing the minimum consumption thresholds for participation.

Could you just give us a brief reminder of what we're voting on right now?

Certainly.

Yeah.

Thank you.

We are coming back to the Council to establish a rate for a program that was authorized under an ordinance in 2022 to provide a bundled energy product to our large commercial customers.

This means we're supplying renewable energy kilowatt hours and the renewable energy attributes that go along with that power as an additional cost per kilowatt hour on their bill.

Following that, and what does that funding then do?

Sorry, could you repeat that?

The additional funding that they're paying into.

The funding will fully pay for the administrative costs of the program, the renewable energy credits associated with that program, and it will recover the development costs of the program.

So it'll be virtually net neutral on behalf of both the participant and the non-participants.

Oh, excuse me.

It'll be neutral on behalf of the non-participants.

Thank you.

We'll take a step backwards here.

If we could talk about the two PPAs that were signed in 2024 as an example of the product that we're creating here.

Happy to do that.

So yes, we did sign, I did sign, two PPAs, purchase power agreements, last year for two new solar installations.

And of course, those solar installations will be creating renewable solar energy.

And those are the first two renewable new renewable, I guess I should say new renewable purchase power agreements that we have signed and that this program has really helped us to fund or will help us to fund.

We'll have 87 megawatts.

Green light on your microphone.

Yeah, so it adds 87 megawatts of generation and the plants are located in central Oregon.

So in a sense, this is a public-private partnership where we are using the funding that we are...

People are electing to pay additional funding to help support this project so that we're able to create renewable energy.

We have the dams, but we're not building new dams right now, right?

We have to look at new renewable energy sources.

We're not quite to Tidal yet, but maybe this type of program could work on Tidal.

The type of energy source we have today is the solar that's not near Seattle.

And so maybe if you could just explain a little bit more of how that partnership works.

We've got a solar facility in central Oregon.

We're using transmission lines to get it up to our network.

this program sounds like is paying for us to be able to do this again and in different ways.

You can explain a little bit more.

Sure, thank you, Council Member Strauss.

So what I will preface this with is that we need to almost double based on our last integrated resources plan, we need to almost double our net capacity in the next nine years.

That means we need to add 1,825 megawatts worth of additional capacity.

and this is the first 87 megawatts for that.

We are looking at solar, wind, supplemented with batteries, which will help on the first day of our difficult weather patterns.

We're in the hunt for any geothermal that we could find, and we are exploring small modular reactors as well.

So we've got to find baseload resource and the weather dependent renewables, and so we're very excited about this 87 megawatts.

While we would love to build additional solar, and we'll certainly be looking at rooftop solar in Seattle, rooftop solar here will work really well in July, August, and September, and not so well the rest of the year because we just don't see the sunshine like we do in other parts of the state.

This utility has greatly benefited from bringing California solar north.

And sometimes we're even able to do that where they pay us to take the energy.

So we are looking for places to build and to partner on the build of additional solar.

If we partner with other utilities and partner with nongovernmental entities, to create this additional resource, then the communities that we serve pay less for the same renewable energy.

And that, we think, is a benefit to everyone to help get this built.

So yes, we are in the process.

These two new solar fields are still being built.

We expected them to be online this year, but they're actually going to be delayed to be online next year simply because of supply chain issues.

And those continue to be a challenge for us following the pandemic.

But we are super excited about this first 87 megawatts toward our 1,825 megawatt goal.

Thank you.

If I might, Chair, I'll just keep continuing on.

So how do we ensure that, from what it sounds like, a participant such as Climate Pledge Arena could elect to have additional fee on their bill.

So this is on top of their existing city light bill for their consumption.

So they're electing to take an additional fee.

Is that how we prevent the cost not being shifted to people who are not participating?

Can you help me understand the design of this rate?

Sure.

Lori, do you want to talk to that?

Sure.

So this rate is founded on the premise of not shifting costs.

And with our current energy scenario, it's actually a net benefit to have this new solar resource coming into our territory.

So there is, for all customers, an added benefit.

And when we look to price this product, we...

identified all of the costs inherent in delivering it to the customer, and we've rolled those into the rate.

And the rate is to recover all of our sunk costs in the first three years, and thereafter to be market-based, based on the value of the renewable energy credits associated with that product.

Sorry.

And so with that rate covering all of the sunk costs, does the rate then change?

Talking through how the rate changes after that first three years?

Sure.

So the rate has a component of an administrative cost that will be updated every standard cycle following this first three-year period, so every two-year cycle.

We'll look at administrative costs.

We'll look at the market value of the renewable energy credits associated with that.

And we'll look at the subscription level in the program.

Right now, we expect to be at 84% here in the next few months, but we fully expect to sell out this first tranche at 100%.

And so those are the three factors that go into the rate.

Really, what we expect is that the value for renewable energy credits will grow over time, and so the rate will likely increase with that market.

So that leads me to ask, what does the participant receive?

They receive the retired renewable energy credits.

So they can use that to demonstrate their commitment to renewable energy, to climate change.

They can use it to justify certification.

For example, from the International Living Futures Institute, there is a certification that they can receive to say that they are greenhouse gas neutral and have 100% of their energy covered by renewable energy resources.

So this is also a way for participants to help invest in renewable energy by helping us with those sunk costs on their subscription.

Are they guaranteed a certain type of it?

It sounds like they're guaranteed, is it just from this one facility?

So they are guaranteed a certain amount of energy from the solar.

How are we storing it if it's dark outside?

Well, you're talking about how do you track an electron.

And with some of that, it's somewhat mathematical.

So we're allocating.

the guaranteed output of these two programs to the customers that are enrolled.

And they're guaranteed to get their subscribed amount from whatever power is generated.

And with solar resource, we know that that's variable.

And so even though we have a guaranteed amount, it may produce more, it may produce less.

And so everyone gets an allocated amount per their subscription that they can state is where they receive their power from, even though we know that electrons don't flow in those specific categories.

Chair, I'm almost done.

So if I'm putting all the pieces of this puzzle together, we are currently building a solar facility in eastern Oregon.

It's sunny every day in eastern Oregon, so we've got about 365 days of solar generation, and we are charging the participants the sunk costs plus some of what they're using, or how are we...

Do they get a set amount out of that 365?

If there's 365 participants, they get one day's worth of sun.

And then after that sunk cost period is done in three years, then that rate just goes back to whatever they're using.

Is that essentially what we're getting at?

Well, first, I don't think we are promising the weather because while we are phenomenally good, that is a little bit out of our control, even in sunny Oregon.

We are certain that we are getting the set amount of energy that we are incorporating into our system, and we are flowing it to serve load.

And the customers who sign up for the Renewable Plus program will receive energy.

And of course, all of our energy, with the exception of 9%, which we are not exactly sure, 9% that we can't definitively say where it comes from when we buy it off the market.

All the rest of our energy is clean energy.

And so they are receiving, and we offset that 9% with renewable energy credits too.

So we can pretty well guarantee that these customers are receiving clean energy and can fully make that claim.

And then their investment is bringing 87 more megawatts of clean energy to life for this community.

And we are greatly appreciative of that.

And in return, those renewable energy credits, every bit of renewable energy comes with the energy and a piece of paper that says it's clean.

And so they are essentially getting the piece of virtual paper, I guess we probably don't use real paper, virtual paper that says, hey, this energy is guaranteed to be clean that we are bringing in to serve our load.

I hope that helps.

So they're subscribing for certain proportions of their annual use And then we're matching that to a proportion to the output of those two facilities.

And then we true that up every year and allocate the cost.

And folks, over time, will be able to, depending on the output of the facilities, to raise or lower their subscription.

So it's a subscription-based program.

Chair, I'm very excited about this.

As you might tell, this is us using our public utility to leverage the customers within our rate payers' interest in investing in renewable energy.

not spilling over and not unintentionally costing other ratepayers additional dollars.

So we're keeping this focused and it's the way to keep our power system as clean as possible.

So very excited for this.

Thanks for letting me ask so many questions.

The questions are appreciated, Council Member Strauss, and I share in your excitement about this legislation.

Colleagues, any additional questions for our panelists today or on this legislation?

I have just one question just to contextualize since we're talking a lot about 87 megawatts.

Can we translate into what that means for households?

How many households could that power a year, theoretically?

Or putting that into terms of what kind of power does that bring us?

We probably can in just a few tension-filled moments.

Can you hear me?

The guaranteed output is 184 megawatts.

And our typical Seattle resident uses about one megawatt hour of power a year.

So that's roughly 184,000 single family homes.

That's exciting.

Fabulous.

Thank you for contextualizing that for us.

Right.

Well, certainly I want to, again, voice my excitement for this legislation.

We're talking about the opportunity for our large commercial industrial customers to invest in the development of new renewable energy.

And if I'm doing my math correctly, when we're looking at a goal of 1,825 megawatts making progress of bringing out 987 megawatts.

That means we got 1,738 megawatts to go, but don't check my map.

With that, colleagues, I move that the committee move forward with voting on Council Bill 120954. Is there a second?

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend the confirmation of the ordinance.

Any final comments?

All right.

Will the committee clerk please call roll on the committee recommendation to confirm the ordinance?

Council member Moore.

Aye.

Council member Saka.

Aye.

Council member Strauss.

Yes.

Council member Solomon.

Aye.

Chair Rink.

Yes.

There are five in favor, zero opposed and zero abstentions.

Wonderful.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the ordinance to be sent to the April 29th city council meeting.

Thank you all.

And now moving on to items two and three, City Light will present and members will discuss these two items together, but we will be voting separately on each ordinance.

Will the committee clerk please read item two and three into the record.

Item two, Council Bill 12053, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department accepting the following easements for electrical distribution rights in King County, Washington, placing said easements under the jurisdiction of the City Light Department and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts, briefing discussion and possible vote.

Item three, Council Bill 12054, an ordinance relating to City Light Department accepting the following easements for electrical distribution in King County, Washington, placing said easements under the jurisdiction of the City Light Department and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

Discussion and possible vote.

Wonderful, thank you all for joining us at the table.

If you could take a moment to state your name into the microphone for the record and then begin your presentation.

Thank you.

So again, General Manager and Chief Executive Officer Dawn Roth-Lindell for Seattle City Light.

Good morning.

Bridget Molina, Council Legislation Coordinator for Seattle City Light.

Good morning.

Bill Devereaux.

I'm the Director of Environmental Management and Real Estate for City Light.

And good morning as well.

Andy Strong, Environmental Engineering and Project Delivery Officer.

So good morning, Committee Chair Rink and committee members.

Today, we are here to seek approval for what is considered routine electric utility actions.

Exciting to us, not exciting to many.

The Seattle City Charter requires that all acquisition and disposal of real property interests must be by ordinance.

City Light typically annually requests that the City Council accept by ordinance all the electrical service easements acquired through land use permitting actions since the previous ordinance.

We have two related ordinances before you today.

the Distribution Easement Acceptance Ordinance, the Platted Easement Acceptance Ordinance.

I will now hand this over to Bill Devereaux, City Lights Real Estate Program, I'm not sure of your title.

Thank you, Environmental Real Estate Manager, to run through a quick slide deck outlining what is included in the two ordinances before you today.

Thank you.

Well, good morning.

Periodically, we come to usually once a year is what we aim for, which is pretty much a batch system of easements that we've received over the last period.

And these are each easements that came in as property rights we received, not property rights that we gave.

And so that's why it's less controversial.

We've received, and they're all for providing power to a customer.

And there are two types.

And the reason why we batch them, just so you'll see at the end, There's 190 of them that we're presenting today, and that would have been 190 ordinances.

So it doesn't make sense to do it other than this way because we're not giving away anything.

If we were giving away, we'd come to you probably with individual ordinance.

So the first type is the distribution easements.

And there are 61 of them on this ordinance.

And each of these easements are for providing power to a private customer.

But they're not for the customer that's actually receiving the power.

It's when we have to provide power or provide access to that customer through someone else's property.

And I assume you can see the PowerPoint presentation online and so we could have a person who needs to have power and a pole along the street that the line has to go over someone else's yard well that yard we need an easement for so that's what these distribution is are about And then on the other type is called a platted easement, and there were 61 of the distribution ones.

There's 129 of our platted easements, and each of these are either a unit lot subdivision or it could be a boundary line adjustment or a short plot where we have a set of property that's now small sets of property, and each one has to have an easement to provide utilities besides electric, but for us it's electric.

And so there were 129 of those this year.

And so that's pretty much our entire ask today is for that you would accept both of these sets of easements, one for distribution and one for shorter plats.

Colleagues, any questions?

I'm seeing Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you for not requiring us to take individual votes on each of these items.

Looking through the legislation where it calls out each of these parcels in each of the locations, again, just very grateful this is such a routine business that comes before our committee.

And also thank you for highlighting if we were giving something away that would be a disposition that would be disposition policy, which is different than the easement policy.

Just here providing my appreciation after looking through all of the pieces of property that are listed.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Colleagues, any additional questions?

All right, and I don't have any questions for today, but appreciation for you bringing this forward.

With that, as stated before, we will be just voting on these separately procedurally, but back to back.

So first, I move that the committee move forward with voting on Council Bill 120953. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the ordinance.

Any final comments?

All right, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to pass the ordinance?

Council Member Moore.

Council member Saka.

Aye.

Council member Strauss.

Yes.

Council member Solomon.

Aye.

Chair Rink.

Yes.

There are five in favor, zero opposed and zero abstentions.

Thank you.

And now I move that the committee move forward with voting on council bill 120954. Is there a second?

It has been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the ordinance.

Any final comments?

All right, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to pass the ordinance?

Council member Moore.

Aye.

Council member Saka.

Aye.

Council member Strauss.

Yes.

Council member Solomon.

Aye.

Chair Rink.

Yes.

There are five in favor, zero opposed and zero abstentions.

Wonderful.

The motions carry and the committee recommendation that these ordinances will be sent to the April 29th City Council meeting.

Thank you.

And with that, we'll be moving on to item floor four.

Will the clerk please read item four into the record?

Seattle City Light Network Investigation, briefing and discussion.

Your phone with that, I will invite our presenters to come up to the table.

And presenters, when you have a moment to settle in, please state your name into the microphone for the record before you begin your presentation.

Thank you.

So Dawn Roth-Lindell, General Manager and Chief Executive Officer for Seattle City Light.

I'm going to start at the other end of the table because I actually want to introduce Rob Santoff to tell him thank you.

Rob had the very difficult job of stepping into the network director position.

the organization while this investigation was going on.

We did change leadership, and Rob stepped up to be that leader through this very difficult time.

I also want to thank Davana Johnson, who is next to me, as our officer over people and culture.

Devana has had an extremely difficult time over multiple years working very hard to bring this to light and to work this through to full transparency.

And it was under her leadership that we were able to make that happen.

So truly grateful.

And I will just ask them to introduce themselves very briefly.

Devana Johnson, People and Culture Officer, Seattle City Light.

Rob Santoff, Transmission and Distribution.

How's that?

Okay.

Rob Santoff, Transmission and Distribution Operations Director.

Thank you.

So now I would like to take some time to discuss and answer questions about the outcome of a recent investigation that Seattle City Light initiated followings a pattern of very disturbing and concerning misconduct in the network group.

The network group is part of our transmission and distribution operations division.

I believe in full transparency.

We worked with the press to provide them with the story and to agree on the timeline for publication.

We published this story on our external city blog, Powerlines.

Prior to this, I met with City Lights leaders to share the details of the situation.

They were provided with talking points and instructed to ensure that everyone in to hear the details of the misconduct and the outcomes, to give them an opportunity to digest this and to ask questions in a smaller group environment with people and leaders that they know.

In terms of the numbers, City Light employs 1,800 people.

The network group has 90 members.

40 people were investigated for allegations of misconduct.

Five were fired.

Seven were suspended, nine received written warnings, 13 were assigned training.

Not all 40 employees were disciplined, including apprentices who may have felt pressured and who told us they did feel pressured to drink in order to succeed in the program.

While any instance of misconduct is one too many, we know that these behaviors do not reflect the vast majority of City Light employees.

This is a situation that calls for clarity, decisiveness, and a plan for moving forward.

Our focus is on action, which includes preventing similar incidents from occurring at City Light and fostering a positive workplace culture, which includes physical and psychological safety.

We have been making changes in parallel with the investigation as our weaknesses have become clear.

We also have a solid plan in place for continued improvement.

I wanna run through our plan so far.

It's not an all inclusive list.

And I also want to assure you that we remain open and agile with respect to ideas from others, including local leaders who have faced similar issues and have graciously reached out to me to share their journeys.

We have already launched and completed mandatory reporter training for all people leaders, including myself.

The key control in this going on so long and not addressing this issue sooner was the lack of mandatory reporting.

We've added anti-retaliation posters in our buildings with a hotline for anonymous report.

This sounds like a light approach, but information is in fact powerful.

And this information was missing for these employees in this group.

Their leadership enforced a code of silence, creating a cone of silence in the group with statements like, we saw things at the lowest level and we don't take things downtown.

Employees did not know their options.

Adding training available to all employees so that everyone could understand what mandatory reporting means for their leadership and for people and culture staff.

Also letting them know how to contact the ombudsman if employees want to discuss something without mandatory reporting and to explore other available options to them like HRIU from the city of Seattle.

Engaging in coaching and providing employee support for those directly impacted by the allegations and findings.

This includes supporting the victims through this time.

We are using our current culture survey as a guide to improve communications, change management, and how we work together.

Only 29% of our employees agreed with the statement, City Light is responsive to ideas and suggestions for improvement.

And only 34% agreed that City Light values employee input feedback and suggestions.

Only 33% believe that we work effectively across business units and functions.

This clearly identifies from our employees opportunities for improvement, but we have strengths to build on too, including that 87% of our staff agree that the people they work with treat them with respect.

86% enjoy working with the people they directly work with, and 86% say that their supervisor promotes a safe working environment.

In the network team, this was not the case, but overall, Seattle City Light is a great place to work.

We will build on our strengths and work on our improvement needs.

Developing and delivering leadership training so that all leaders going forward receive skills training to make them capable leaders as they are promoted is key.

We take our best accountants, our best technologists, our best journeymen, our best engineers, and we give them the opportunity to promote.

But we have not done a good job of preparing them with a new set of skills in order to lead people effectively.

Leadership skills that include conflict resolution, problem solving, and effective, safe team building.

We also in this last year have been disciplining employees who violate anti-harassment and on-the-job policies outside of this investigation.

With 1,800 employees in the course of doing work, some will make mistakes each year.

This has been true this year outside of the network, as I've said, and we've addressed performance issues up to and including termination in other areas as well for misconduct.

This situation and network was different in that it was truly a cultural issue as well as a misconduct issue.

We are now conducting routine checks of work vehicles and work areas to ensure they comply with workplace expectation.

This will continue forever.

We have specific goals in place for on-site leadership visits per month for supervisors, managers, and directors to be in the field with their employees.

We are also reinforcing our existing workplace expectations.

We will not tolerate drinking or recreational drug use before work, at breaks, at lunch, dinner, or between work and overtime shifts.

This is a terminable offense.

It puts our professionals and our public at risk and is 100% unacceptable.

Sexual harassment also is not okay and will be dealt with swiftly.

This includes anything related to grabbing people's bodies, making comments about private parts, handing people tools and making lewd comments, showing porn or near porn, talking about sex which has no place at work.

We will not tolerate retaliation in any form, which includes things like icing people out of overtime opportunities, shunning people, not making eye contact with a person you're upset with, but making eye contact with everyone else in the room, making snide comments, and doing anything else designed to make a person feel bad in retaliation for real or perceived wrongs.

Longer term, we want to see a workforce in our craft that mirrors the communities that we serve.

One option is developing a two and a half year apprenticeship to move local 46, who are low voltage electricians, into local 77. which are high voltage journey level.

The Local 46 is a much more diverse group of people.

We also are exploring new recruiting and support paths for our four year apprenticeships.

What I want you to know is that we are addressing this situation head on with directness and accountability.

It's not a gray area situation to me, nor will it be going forward.

I will go ahead and pause now for your questions and comments.

Thank you General Manager Lindell for accommodating my office's request for you to be here today.

Colleagues, this committee is functionally a utility board and has the responsibility of oversight and that is our task at hand today.

And I encourage you to ask questions and have this dialogue about this critical matter, especially as we think about our path forwards for City Light.

Colleagues, questions?

Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much, Director Lindell, for your presentation and for the briefing that we received on this.

I guess reading through the allegations again, I really am just...

my heart is pounding at the level of anger that I feel about what our employees have been subjected to, as well as just the incredible risks that they have put other employees at, as well as the risks that they've put our general public at.

And in a time when People are questioning the value of government in and of itself.

To have this happen is just, it's appalling and unacceptable.

And I'm very, very pleased to hear about all the steps that are being taken.

But you know, this went on for six years.

I don't really accept that these minimal steps that have been taken are actually going to make much difference because in reading through the report, there were incredible allegations made in 2017. There was more allegations made a month later through the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries.

Allegations made in 2018, allegations made in 2021, allegations made in 2022. We have six years, again, more allegations in 2022. And it says that finally, you know, City Light in 2023 engaged an outside investigator, which is great, which led to this, sort of implying that they didn't have enough beforehand.

And yet, when you look at what the original allegations were...

You know, a chief crew member operated his truck as a rolling mobile bar with loud music all evening every night with his journey worker serving drinks and the crew sharing porn.

That another crew chief once consumed more than four drinks and operated equipment while impaired.

that a journey worker once smoked marijuana at work after getting yelled at by his crew chief.

Then another chief crew chief once consumed more than three drinks and was so impaired she could not dial the phone correctly during a job.

That was an allegation made in 2017. That's a comparable allegation to what came forward in 2022 and 2023. So there needs to be significant change in the way allegations are dealt with.

And when you get one allegation, and I'm going to be bringing this forward, and I realize that this is subject to collective bargaining, but we should have random drug and alcohol testing for these positions.

If there's an allegation that drinking is happening on the job, the way you substantiate that is you require everybody to undergo mandatory random drug testing and alcohol testing.

Too many people's lives are literally at risk.

So to me, that's an actual concrete safety measure that needs to be contemplated and pursued.

In terms of the sexual harassment, the sexual assault, the pornography, I don't even know where to begin to talk about how we dismantle that culture.

And I think just simply putting up anti-harassment posters and doing some mandatory reporting training is not enough.

You have got an old boys fraternity culture here.

It's deep.

It may be narrow, but it's deep.

And what you've outlined here, it's a surface beginning.

It recognizes that it's important, but you have got to do so much more.

These are human beings whose lives are being put, these women are suffering PTSD.

It's noted in here you're providing counseling.

It's noted from the evaluator that the experiences were so profound they could recall it in minute detail what had happened to them years later.

And many of these people have been given the privilege of keeping their jobs.

And I understand the rationale for the apprentices, that many of them too perhaps were victims as well.

I understand that and a sense of forgiveness.

But you need to work with those apprentices on attitudes as well.

So I also want to know how you are going to keep apprised of what's happening in the culture week by week, month by month, and how you're going to keep reporting this to council.

Because we can't just have this nice report and have your great words and your commitment and decide that it's all over, because it's not.

And with what's happening nationally, where women and minorities and people of color are under assault every single day and that's now becoming the norm, we have to do better.

We have to set an example.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

I, too, have struggled through this report.

And one of the things that we are getting ready to start, we are working on a path right now, I believe that we create the culture from the bottom up.

So what, and from the top down.

So often organizations make the mistake of believing that a leader can make a statement and therefore everyone will follow it.

That simply isn't the case.

Instead, people create the culture within their own work groups and that's the culture they actually experience every single day.

The leader sets the tone.

But the actual culture experienced by the people in any work group is truly created by the people in that work group.

So as the leader, I am setting the tone.

We will be doing an exercise where every supervisor is given the tools to be able to have the conversation in their work group.

And it's not one conversation, because culture change does not happen overnight.

It happens over years.

So we will be having the initial brainstorming sessions and having each work group meeting with their supervisor to determine the culture they want to create in their own work group.

We will build on those work group cultures to create our organization culture.

The organizational culture will definitely have collaboration across business units and continuous improvement, the continuous improvement particularly speaking to this, but will also contain input then from every single employee for their own work lives.

We are working on culture every day.

In fact, Mr. Santoff, yesterday afternoon, held a meeting with the network team on the strength of one concern person raising an issue with our ombuds.

The difficulty that this organization had in addressing those early concerns, because they were investigated each year, This utility did an investigation.

Each year, those people raising concerns chose to remain anonymous.

That is the issue.

So what we have to do is create a psychologically safe environment where people feel confident that leadership hears them and that leadership will act on what they tell them.

That is the only way that people can remain safe, raising concerns in a workforce.

I have been very clear with the leadership of this organization on what their responsibilities are.

I need leaders at every level to acknowledge that they must lead, and sometimes that's hard.

that they must mandatorily report even when an employee is begging them to keep their secret.

We cannot keep secrets about unsafe behavior, whether to that employee or whether to other employees.

So I'm hopefully have given Mr. Santoff a little time to think about what he might like to say about the addressing he had to do yesterday with that network employee group because it is incredibly difficult for employees who are literally raised in their workforce to believe that one kind of culture, weird though it seemed when they entered, is wrong.

And many employees left the network group over the years to find a different place to work and yet retain that code of silence.

We cannot have that anymore.

We have to be brave enough to speak up to fix things.

and Mr. Santoff continues to encourage that bravery through support to his employees.

Yeah, thank you, Don.

As Don said, I had an opportunity yesterday to meet with the network group, I held two meetings.

First thing in the morning yesterday, held a crew chief meeting, and we had what's normally a half-hour, 45-minute meeting, two-hour meeting to discuss this phase of culture improvement that we're going through and what our next steps need to be.

It was myself, manager, supervisors, and crew chiefs in that room, and I explained the seriousness of what had happened They all know this.

Most of them have seen the reports.

But we talked about it honestly and openly in that forum.

We talked about the culture that we wanted to have as the leaders of the network group where everybody is safe to come to work.

both from a physical standpoint and a psychological standpoint.

As we talked through that at the end of my piece of that session, I opened it up for questions.

And that question and answer session went on and discussion went on for an hour and a half approximately.

And during that time, every crew chief in the room, every supervisor, myself and the manager made a commitment to each other to move our culture into the proper place, where we can have that psychological safety along with our physical safety.

So it was super encouraging to talk to the group yesterday, the leaders of that group, and get a full commitment from everybody in that room.

Then in the afternoon, we had an all-hands meeting, and we explained to the rest of the network group what we had talked about as a leadership group, where we were heading, and why we were heading there, and how we were going to support that in an open forum.

Now, this was super encouraging yesterday, but I realize that's only the first baby step towards where we need to go as a utility and as a network group.

So we will continue those conversations and we will stay diligent on holding each other accountable.

Fully explained to the newest employee all the way to the most veteran employee that we're holding each other accountable.

That means all the way up through manager and myself, if we're doing something that is not in alignment where the workplace expectations going forward, they need to hold us accountable just as much as we need to hold them accountable.

Thank you.

Thank you, Rob.

And then I would also like to offer Devana Johnson to be able to talk to those early allegations and the steps that this utility took to try to get folks to come forward.

As I hand off the microphone, I want to note that even having the outside investigator, that outside investigator had to talk to more than a dozen people, a dozen interviews, before they could find one person brave enough to break that cone of silence.

That started opening the conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dawn.

So initially, when we received those anonymous complaints, and they came in in a variety of ways, including through labor and industries, the staff on my team, our employee relations group, went out and talked with individual employees and also talked with the leadership.

And I would say that the difference that The difference in 2023 really relied on the fact that we had, I'm sorry, in 2023, what allowed employees to come forward, to begin to come forward, to begin to talk about that was a complete leadership change.

From the crew chief all the way up the chain, including the director level, those folks were no longer in the workplace.

and I think people started to think maybe something has changed and maybe if I come forward and talk in detail about what's been going on that something will actually be done.

Another thing that I'll say is throughout the disciplinary meetings when the employees were in talking with Don about the situation, was then and still exists an extreme amount of fear.

People were afraid.

People were afraid that they would lose their livelihood.

People were afraid that they would be reviewed poorly if they didn't cooperate and go along or at a minimum remain silent.

And so in many ways, You know, I've not been in that kind of a situation at work, and I can't fault some of them for just sort of standing by and trying to protect themselves.

There was a huge amount of embarrassment by some of those folks.

They felt like they had been cowardly and not coming forward, and they really made a commitment to do something, to do things differently.

And so I know that people have commented on the...

in their mind minimal number of terminations, but the people who have remained expressed a sincere commitment both to the general manager and also to the leadership team that was in those meetings to move forward in a different way, but many of them were in untenable positions.

Thank you for those questions and comments, Council Member Moore.

I heard in there also a request to make sure that this committee and council revisits this topic with city leadership and certainly as chair of this committee, we can work with leadership to make sure we are providing the oversight and seeing how we're making progress.

Thank you.

I see Council Member Stratham, Council Member Salomon.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to each of you for being here today.

In the course of the executive sessions that we've had on these subjects over the last number of years, you've seen my unfretted rage.

because none of this is acceptable for our city employees, for our city residents receiving these services.

As I was applauding us a few minutes ago for being the leverage for our rate payers who want to participate in doing good for this world, we as municipal utility have no place for this type of culture to exist.

I raised my hand because I was getting into some information that had been shared, and I was going to ask additional questions.

But I'll start with just this opening that my take on this is that the survivors have everything to lose, whether it's poor performance reviews, workplace threats, or, as you mentioned, their livelihoods.

And they have nothing to gain if we do not investigate and find substantiation in their allegations.

So we talked about, or it was shared with us, that these investigations have occurred over the years, that we were not able to move forward with discipline because the folks were anonymous, and survivors' ability to come forward is the foundation for us to be able to root this unacceptable behavior from our city.

what is the framework or pathway for survivors to take?

You mentioned the anonymous reporting and whistleblowing avenues, but how are these anonymous reporters supported to publicly substantiate these investigations?

Sure, so one of the steps that I have taken is to meet with...

Amara Khan, who is the director who's over Ombud.

And she and I are maintaining a close relationship and asking ourselves that very question on how do we proceed.

And we are now and will continue to reinforce with all employees the options that they have, both to come forward anonymously and then to come forward in a safe place.

And it is going to take more than words.

It's going to take continued action.

And seeing that we truly are creating a culture that is different from what we have had at City Light for a very long time, decades.

So what we can do is travel that path, ask employees for continued feedback, gather their input and be responsive to them.

I am sure that all of the council members also know that we must have the brave people come forward and tell their truth, that we cannot simply act on anonymity.

Unfortunately, having led people for more than 30 years, I have had experiences where employees get angry at each other and both bring forth allegations, some of which are real and some of which are not.

So we need to be able to investigate and find what is true.

and act on what is true.

So that's the challenge that the organization faced when people didn't believe that if they brought forward their concerns, they would be acted on and change would be made.

So we've got to reinforce that change will be made, that we will hear, and we will complete the investigation.

Did you want to add anything?

One thing I just might add is that we did get some concerns raised about conduct this week, and that's part of what prompted Rob to have the conversations And so one of the things that we're trying to do is make sure that as soon as issues get raised, that the people that work most closely with them, their leadership, their management, their supervisors, that those folks are gathering employees together and having conversations about what's going on.

Because much of what was perpetuated was done because it was done in secret.

Thank you.

Chair, may I continue?

Of course.

I'll ask you, CEO Lindell, to come back here along, as Council Member Moore did, because I want to know what are the actions that you mentioned that we need to take actions, not words.

What are the actions that we are taking?

I know having this report in the news and public is one action.

What else are we doing to ensure people know that they can come forward?

so that they're not driven by fear and they don't feel that they need to be anonymous to know that they will be supported because this culture is unacceptable for our city.

What actions are we taking for them to know they don't need to keep quiet?

Yes, thank you, Council Member Strauss.

So we handled this very differently than it's ever been handled before.

And that included going to the media to break the story and asking them to embargo it until we had had the opportunity to meet with all of our employees and share the information.

We followed up that, and we did that by having first a meeting Wednesday evening with all leaders.

and giving them the information, letting them ask the questions that they had, raising the issues and concerns that they had, and making it very clear to the leaders that they have accountability and responsibility on these matters going forward.

We also ask them to lead.

So the next day, they had a three hour window from one to four to have those meetings with their employees and lead.

So that sets the stage and creates a new dynamic, a dynamic that was not there, that their leader is responsible and accountable and open and willing to deal with a very difficult subject, take all questions, even those they didn't have answers for, but be willing to hear those and escalate them.

That was followed on Tuesday by an all-hands meeting.

I had more than 800 attendees to that meeting where I stood in front of this organization and said, ask me anything.

Ask me what, raise your concerns, raise your ideas, raise your issues, and let's bring those forward.

And so in that meeting, we heard the same thing we're hearing here, and rightly so.

Outrage, frustration, lack of understanding on what went on before, and a desire to find an appropriate path forward.

And we talked through that.

We will be continuing that path.

Culture is developed over a long time, and it takes not one conversation, not three conversations, not conversations over a six-month period, but conversations continuing over years over these matters.

And as people make mistakes, we need to go ahead and let people understand what has happened and how we are handling those mistakes.

So we will not do that by name, but we will do that by the kinds of conversations that Rob described, where we are asking leaders to understand their role and to lead, and where we are asking employees to understand also their role and how they create culture for each other.

So we really wish to raise the performance of every single professional who works at this utility.

And every employee who works there is indeed a professional in their area.

And we are working to make a wholesale change, which will happen over time and a person at a time as we change the commitment.

Thank you, Chair.

I've got a couple more questions that I'll save for the end.

I just have one to follow up in this line of conversation.

I appreciate you sharing that you received additional complaints even just this week and took swift action to start attending to them by giving supervisors the tools that they need as well as employees the tools that they need to have joint accountability.

But my question here is what happens if those are the same individuals that are perpetuating this culture that we do not allow?

we do not support and we do not look to allow in our city.

What happens if the people who are perpetuating this are the same people that you're given the tools to in the sense that all they have to say is that, yeah, we made the verbal agreement that we'll share with you, but we're just gonna, once you leave the shop or once you leave the truck inspection, we're just gonna continue doing the thing that we were doing before you got here.

What's in place to ensure that that's not occurring?

Sure, so again, thank you, Council Member Strauss.

One of the things that we've put in place is the random inspections that you referenced, and they're random.

The second is that we found that leaders were not spending adequate time in the field, and now there are requirements.

There are actually goals that those folks are held accountable to for the amount of field visits that they are completing and the amount of time that they are spending with their crews to build those relationships so that people know their leaders, they see their leaders where they are working, and they build the comfort level to know them as people to be able to come forward.

They're not far away people, they are people who are right there.

We are building the culture from the ground level up, so we are asking employees to contribute to that and making that known to them.

I have fired the people who were creating the culture.

I have fired them.

We know who the ringleaders were.

That came out pretty clear from that investigation that we did.

And those people are no longer employed.

As Davana Johnson mentioned, every person that we came was required to communicate to me and did so very emotionally and wholeheartedly.

They had to communicate to me what they were going to commit to do to make this culture different, the steps they personally were going to take to make this culture different, and further, how they were going to ensure that they would not retaliate and could work with the people who were named in their reports because they got a report with names of their accusers.

How were they gonna come back to work and work with those employees?

So I have that commitment directly from them, as do both of the people aside me and others who were in the room from a leadership perspective.

The other thing I'm going to mention here is that the union has stood up in full force against the behavior that we were disciplining for.

So this is not a union versus management situation.

This is a union in full support, making statements publicly that were on the news, that says we do not agree with this past behavior.

We are going to look forward to behaving in a very different way.

And we are putting safety first.

And as council members have noted, it was an incredibly unsafe environment.

physically unsafe environment, let alone psychologically unsafe.

And we, this utility is incredibly lucky that we did not have a much more serious slate of injuries or even a death through the behavior that we saw.

We cannot have that happen.

And so we've got union and management hand in hand saying we will make it different.

Thank you.

Thank you, council member Strauss, council member Solomon, then council member Saka.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to thank you all for being here today, and I want to acknowledge those that have suffered in City Light from this behavior.

As we have discussed this, you know how I feel, you know where I'm coming from on this.

echoing a lot of the comments that have been set up here before.

And I was heartened to hear you say that inspections are happening because I recall when I had my security consulting business and we were doing, you know, we were guarding some equipment for a movie shoot and I just happened to show up at one of those locations and found out that the guy that I had sitting on that location was smoking a joint.

And I said, okay, give me your gear, you're gone, go home, you're done, right?

I would expect that some kind of thing from your leadership.

And in the Air Force, we call it snap inspections.

You just show up unexpected and you see what's going on.

And if you see anybody that's engaged in not doing the job properly, they're gone.

You send them home, right?

You report them.

You relieve them of duty.

And I'm hoping that, you know, as I hear what you're talking about, that you've had meetings and you've been talking to people.

As one of my former Air Force colleagues would say, talking is done.

OK, time for talk is done.

What are you going to do?

And if that means that when you show up on site, you send somebody home, you suspend them on the spot, you put them on admin, unpaid leave, then that's what you do.

Because I know, having been around, I know what kind of culture exists in the good old boys network.

I've seen it in a number of careers.

and the way you change it is, this is not one you take a scalpel to, you take a chainsaw to it.

This is one where a chainsaw is appropriate.

The snap inspections, the immediate relieving people of duty.

I'm even thinking of, since it's hard to do a follow-up because people are afraid they wanna remain anonymous, and the current system kind of hampers that anonymous reporting, well, damn it, let's make it easier.

Because if you've got people who are legitimately in fear of retaliation, make it easier for them to come forward.

So just some of the things I wanted to offer.

I heard you say about having leaders lead.

Okay, great.

They either lead or they leave.

One of the two.

So again, I appreciate your leadership on this.

I appreciate what you all are doing here.

Again, can't mention the strong feelings I have about those who perpetuated this.

as well as the strong feelings I have for those who have endured it.

So again, thank you for being leaders in this, and let's continue to work together to change that culture.

So thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

Thank you, Council Member Salomon, Council Member Saka, and then Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

And I guess first off, I wanna thank Council Member Moore for her moving comments I think it did an excellent job of capturing the essence of the underlying challenges and our shared frustration, sense of shock, outrage, and concern.

And I initially was gonna raise my hand first.

I intentionally did not because I think three of five council members on this committee happen to be men, but given the fact that The victims, the survivors, and the nature of allegations, mostly women involved, I think it's fitting and appropriate, the first person, one of us to speak, was a woman.

So thank you again, Council Member Moore, for your moving comments.

Couldn't have said it any better myself.

I guess I'll just add on a few things from my perspective.

CEO Lindell, I don't envy your position overwhelming majority of the the conduct occurred before your tenure and you had nothing to do with it but now you're here now you own it just like me I had nothing to do with some of the nonsense that went on before me but now I own every last one of the problems and then therefore the solutions and so And accountability and responsibility for me is something that I don't run away from, I run towards.

And as leaders, I think that's the mindset we need to have.

So you mentioned the cultural challenges.

and the divisions of responsibility pertaining to that within your organization.

I've always thought in Seattle in particular, just at a high level, we have a unique opportunity in Seattle to better close the gap between our stated values and people's everyday lived experiences on the ground, in this case, within your organization.

I think the same principle shows up, manifests itself in various individual specific policy discussions and then within organizations and departments within the city as well.

And here's a classic example of that at the organizational level.

And so you mentioned the leader sets the tone, but culture is set by the individual frontline teams.

That is absolutely true.

I'll just share that, from my perspective, everyone, 100% of the people, have a shared responsibility to improve the culture.

But only one person within this org, from my perspective, has the direct accountability for that.

These frontline people, mid-level managers, they're not directly accountable for it.

You are, as a leader.

And so if someone's not getting it done throughout the org, changes need to be made.

You can stay anywhere, just not here.

So just wanted to kind of level set on the responsibility, which is shared for culture and improving it, and accountability.

You can choose to delegate that responsibility as you see fit.

But we're looking to you and your team.

I see many of your leaders sitting here at the table and in the audience.

They should understand that too.

But we're looking at you.

So look forward to, I'm encouraged by some of the initial actions and steps.

Look forward to learning more and helping to track and monitor progress.

And glad that there's more trainings, doing some direct all-hands meeting conversations, et cetera.

But the problems run deep.

The fact of the matter remains, we're not going to train our way out of this.

So all that is to say is I too would like you all to come back.

Chair, please do invite them back.

I think later this year is appropriate and then on an appropriate cadence thereafter, just to check in and report back on the progress.

Accountability.

I have faith in, today, I have every faith and confidence in your ability as a leader to get it done.

Please don't let me lose that faith and confidence.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Sacca, and I own it.

Thank you, Council Member Sacca.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you again, Chair, and thank you, Council Member Sacca, for your comments.

And I think, too, Councilmember Strauss's comments about survivors had everything to lose and how do we change that.

And I think that I would like to actually have you have the opportunity to come back to us with very specific steps, how we...

create an environment where they don't have everything to lose.

And I think perhaps one of the, it seems like part of what's going on here is clearly a power deferential, and no pun intended there.

But, you know, people, the chief gets to decide who has overtime opportunities, right?

Who advances?

What's the review?

Maybe looking at providing some diffusion of that responsibility so one person doesn't get to be the king maker, basically.

having perhaps a system of 360 feedback, having additional people review that feedback.

I very much like the fact that you're now going to have leaders be required to do more field visits so that they are establishing those relationships so there's some trusted person outside that one crew leader to go to.

the idea, and I just want to confirm that it's random checks of work vehicles.

Okay.

So, I mean, I also think I would like to see a policy of random drug and alcohol testing, even if there are anonymous allegations made.

At that point, to me, that creates a basis to require that to happen.

So I think that I would like to see...

The other thing I wanted to ask you about when I heard you say that...

and this had come to mind was, you know, how do the people who allegations have been sustained but they've been allowed to stay, how do they feel about having to work with the people, their accusers?

Well, I would flip that and say, how do the people who were victimized by them feel about having to continue to work with those individuals?

Was there any asking of them?

Was there any input from them about how they feel about the fact that they did have everything to lose?

They came forward in those.

While you may have taken some disciplinary action, those people are still there.

And they may be there for legitimate reasons, but nonetheless, they're still there.

So what feedback, what participation have you gotten from the people who were harmed, people who had everything to lose and who did come forward, and how they feel about having to continue to work with these individuals?

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

So I'll start with the last question and work a little bit backwards.

So what we provided to the victims, the accusers, was the support.

external support that we hired to provide support through this entire process, um, and to work with them on that.

I did not, excuse me, specifically ask them, um, those that had, uh, those that had raised, um, the concerns, um, some of them are no longer, are no longer here.

They've, you know, they've, uh, left through the course of, um, their own retirement plans, et cetera.

But I don't believe we specifically asked them, but I'm going to ask Ms. Johnson to elaborate a little bit on that.

So we have made positive contact with all of the people and culture team and also their management team have talked with each individual.

As we were leading up to sharing the results of this investigation more publicly, our security team met.

Each of those employees had safety plans in place so that they made sure that if they were to have any sort of negative experience in the workplace post-release of the investigation, that they had a clear line of communication to us to share that information and what's going on.

And my employee relations team has individual relationships with each one of those employees, and there's an open line of communication between them.

Thank you, Devana.

And then I will also ask Robin just a minute to speak to the changes we are looking to make in the overtime handling because we are working that simultaneously.

Yeah, so our overtime policy was a little uneven and not managed with full transparency in the past.

We have an overtime committee that meets joint management and union.

That committee finished our overtime policies about two years ago.

So now we have a stringent policy around overtime, and there's a call-out order that folks have to follow when we're...

assigning overtime for call outs and such.

When we finished that as a committee, I went personally and trained every operations group that was impacted alongside of our 77 business rep. I did the training for the groups.

And as we had question and answer session, the 77 rep and I kind of jointly answered those.

I'd answer one and he'd answer one in support of each other.

So we've cleaned up the old overtime discrepancies and things like that with the new policy that's implemented as of about two years ago.

Thank you, Rob.

And then on the random drug testing, we're still digging into what path, what exact path to take on that.

We have recently reviewed Washington law on that.

We will be working with our attorneys.

We do, I believe, do random drug testing for CDL holders.

So that's in place, but not everyone who works the crews is a CDL holder.

And so what I have seen in other utilities, for example, would be that if there is a severe safety incident, for example, then we would, as a matter of course, just automatically do random drug sampling at that.

I worked as a senior executive service member in the federal government, and every single one of us had random drug testing.

In fact, one year I had four of them.

It was getting hard to get my work done with the number of times I was randomly tested.

And my husband, who's a retired two-star general, had that same experience.

But what we need to do is make sure that we are complying with Washington state law, that our unions are in alignment with the steps that we're taking but I do want to assure you that we are on that path as well.

So I very much appreciate the suggestions and please keep them coming.

As we've gone through this process, everyone is outraged and something must be done.

And as the person accountable to ensure some things are done, we've done a lot of talking about what are those things.

I don't think we've got them all yet.

So I think we'll continue to learn and continue to improve on the outcomes.

And I'm a big proponent of trying things and keeping the ones that work and ditching the ones that don't and trying something else.

And so that is why I've mentioned and I've had no less than three leaders, two of them in the city and one, well, all of them, regionally wide, but too in the direct city organization, reach out to me with, you know, who have faced some similar issues, perhaps not as big, but some similar issues and have been very good in sharing in where they're headed and what they've learned on the journey that they've been on over the last few years.

So I will continue to partner with them to broaden the ideas.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

I've got just a few more questions.

I wanted to step out of the way to allow other colleagues to speak and acknowledge that we would not be here today if CEO Lindell, you had not taken this public with the Seattle Times story.

My questions continue.

If this culture of silence and intimidation continues, remains in our city, what will be done?

You said you fired the ringleaders, but what if more reports come in?

What happens if past behavior occurred and stopped today after you went in and spoke to the supervisors and those reports come in tomorrow?

What's gonna be done if more reports come in?

Sure, we will continue to investigate.

And we will continue to address it in the open way that Mr. Santoff did yesterday.

Because I think there's a lot of power in people knowing that they can come forward together and that they're not alone.

So I don't believe...

I do believe we'll continue to have misconduct because again, with 1,800 employees, people will make mistakes.

I don't believe that we still continue to have such a cone of silence.

We are taking all of these steps to eradicate that.

Will that happen overnight?

Nope.

Will we stay at it?

Yes.

So we had on the basis of one anonymous complaint, we acted this week and we will continue to do that.

That's helpful knowing, especially going forward.

I guess, again, the question comes back to if culture within some of these work groups has been going on, has stopped today after your actions, and those reports come forward, Do the survivor, will they receive the same level of support and guarantees as if this was continuing?

If we are looking at a behavior that has existed within these work groups but stopped today, will those investigations be done as thoroughly as anything, any ongoing behavior would?

I'm not positive I understand, but yes, we will do thorough investigations.

We will ask people to come forward and have the conversation.

Did you want to add anything?

I think the only thing that I would add is we've had issues.

You know, this investigation took quite some time, and during that time period, other issues, ancillary issues were raised, and we continue to look into those issues and address them and move them through our process.

So our commitment that we've made to employees is that if you bring a concern forward, we will address it.

How will we know if we're successful?

What are the accountability measures?

I know we've talked about accountability a number of times in this committee today.

What are the actions that we're going to be taking so that we know whether we're successful or not?

Sure.

So one of those is an ongoing process by which we do our culture survey.

And so I want to see those low numbers I mentioned nudge northward.

And I'd rather see them sweep northward, but culture change takes time.

So we'll see and be able to assess how successful we are that way.

We will continue to hold leaders accountable, as has been mentioned here, and we'll continue to ask the questions.

If I'm going to be accountable to you, I can't come here without having contacted the leadership through the organization and understanding where they are and what steps they're taking in their organizations to change the culture.

So I will have to be able to report out to you what I'm hearing about from middle management.

So I think that's another step.

I've said so many things already.

That's where we are.

Thank you, CEO and Lindell.

I'll just summarize the comments that I've shared with you over the past few years in executive session here in the public.

And as it was reported in the Seattle Times article that partaking in a culture of drinking and sexism was required for entry into the network's good old boys club.

Beyond this being completely unacceptable, this cannot be allowed to exist within our city government, providing services for the residents of our city.

If, from my position, if employees perpetuate even a hint of this behavior, they need to be swiftly disciplined, including the ability to fire them.

Let there be no uncertainty from me that there's no room in our house to allow people to continue working for our city or to leave quietly if they've been found to engage in harassment or created a culture of intimidation while working for our city for our residents.

You don't just have the support from me to dismantle this culture.

I am demanding the accountability to root this culture out of our workplaces within the city of Seattle, within the City Light Utility.

So it's not just the support that you received from me, but it's a demand.

I look forward to seeing you again, and thank you for answering all my questions today.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Colleagues, any additional questions right now?

All right, my turn for questions.

I also would just want to state first and foremost that my heart is with the survivors of this.

And my mind is focused on how we take every step to make sure the misconduct ends and the culture changes immediately.

And I want to thank you all for thoroughly answering many of our questions here today.

The city of Seattle must aspire to be the best employer of the city in this city.

And to that end, a couple of things I wanted to focus on on this matter.

How would you advise Seattle residents who may be witnessing some of this misconduct?

How would you advise them to handle that or report that to your leadership?

Certainly, we would welcome any reports from any citizen on any topic, and certainly on this one.

So they are welcome to call in, and we have a...

The number that's on the trucks is 206-684-3000, and that goes to the Combined Utility Cost, call center, but we have fielded customer concerns through our customer service lines, through direct contact to the CEO, and to others on the leadership team.

So we will accept any feedback from customers via any path.

Thank you.

And I know as a woman in leadership at this city, I have to, again, name that the culture of misogyny needs to end for the sake of women who work at the city.

And 6% of City Light staff are women.

And we know that there are a number of confirmed cases of sexual harassment and assault on women workers that have been detailed in this report.

But also want to name that City Light is not the only department that struggles with this issue.

And so how, as you're proceeding in this work, how can we as a city ensure that this becomes a safer place for women to work?

What does culture change look like for City Light in this regard?

Council Chair, so yes, I agree.

And as a woman in this industry, and in fact, having come up through the information technology, which is even more male, inside an all male dominated arena, I certainly have experienced my own concerns and issues.

And I'm glad that we are here in 2025, where it is a different world that recognizes that women bring great value, great value to the workforce.

So, I do want to say the 6% number applies to the network group.

We actually have, do you know how many?

29.6% women in the utility-wide workforce.

in the utility-wide workforce.

And that still is not represented.

That's not representative of the community that we serve.

So we are continuing to partner across the city with other leaders.

In fact, both Ms. Johnson and I have been on a mayor-initiated group to look at workforce development across the city.

And City Light will be playing a pivotal role in helping reach out to communities that are underrepresented and communities of people.

Well, I would say, and kinds of people.

I don't know exactly how to characterize that, but people who typically are not getting the opportunities and thinking about how can we open the doors wider?

How can we prepare people to compete effectively for these positions that we have in our organization?

And I invite women in this community to come forward, work for us, and help us change this culture.

I think that will also be very helpful to have more voices speak and more voices who are with us to make this different.

I do point out again that our culture survey shows that 87% of employees do feel respected in our workplace.

So I do not believe this is a widespread organization-wide problem.

That does not lessen the impact in the part of the organization where this was a problem.

And we are in the process of identifying that, speaking that truth, and making the changes necessary to make that number 87% go even higher and ensure that people in very traditionally male roles feel differently going forward and have a different experience.

It's not just about how they feel, it's about what they experience.

Thank you for that and thank you for clarifying that point also about women representation within City Light.

I think that's important for the public to know.

This situation has obviously been very troubling for the city.

I do want to take a moment to applaud leadership in this moment, though.

General Manager Lindell, as was stated, this issue has been going on for earliest reports to go back six years.

Who knows how long this issue has been before that.

You have been with the city for less than a year.

Just over.

Just over?

I missed your anniversary.

Time is weird.

I apologize.

But just over a year to that point and have really stepped into trying to manage this situation.

And we look forward to working with you and trying to manage the situation moving forward.

And I ask, do you have any leadership for any other city departments, office leaders who may be working through similar issues as you've been trying to navigate this?

Yes, thank you.

One other thing that we did very differently with this issue was that at the time we had the embargo lift off the media, I also emailed all of the department heads across the city.

all of them, all of the whole cabinet, so that they could be aware of what we were doing, what was about to hit the media, have access to all of our speaking points, all of the leadership speaking points, which includes the actions that we have been taking and have been thanked overwhelmingly.

Honestly, I've been humbled by the thanks from the cabinet members who have greatly appreciated the transparency.

I am getting stopped in the lunch, you know, the, I don't, Food court, thank you.

The place you go to get your lunch that has all the places to eat.

I'm stopped by random employees of all city departments thanking me for the transparency with which we have handled this.

And I think, you know, again...

giving daylight to the problem enables it to be addressed from multiple arenas.

And it's out of sharing that daylight that I've had the blessing of having other department heads who've had experiences and are going through experiences in this same type of issue come forward with what they've done that's worked and what they're trying to do as well.

And so we'll continue that sharing.

We'll continue that opportunity to grow.

And I think when we take things out of the darkness and we take things that we don't talk about and we make them things that we do talk about, that becomes very powerful.

And that really has been a key part of making this different than it's been handled before.

Thank you for that.

And my final question for today, and as we wrap this up, there will be a lot of action taken up over the next couple of months as we continue to work on this.

And do you have the resources, the necessary resources to tackle these cultural challenges?

And is there anything you need from the city or from council as you're navigating this time?

Thank you, I greatly appreciate the question.

The utility in total is under-resourced when we benchmark against other utilities of similar size.

That has been difficult, and in fact, union leadership cites that as part of the reason this may have gotten as out of control as it did, because there simply wasn't adequate oversight and people were spending way more time together than they were elsewhere does not in any way excuse the behavior.

But I think that they may have a valid point with the work-life balance or lack thereof that the employees involved in this were experiencing.

That extends to our engineering group, which is part of why we have struggled so much with having timely Energization on developments and so we are in the process of assessing those resource needs you know, it involves our procurement people and involves people in culture and We will likely be coming to the table with carefully thought out carefully planned requests and for the appropriate amount of staffing as we proceed through addressing the issues that we have in the utility.

So I very much appreciate the offer.

I do not have an ask today on that, but I very much appreciate the offer as we continue that assessment.

Thank you.

So we'll continue this work together, colleagues, to figure out and really chart a path forward and provide that proper oversight again to make sure that we are making progress.

I want to thank each of you again, Rob especially, stepping into the role of overseeing the teams in this work.

Thank you for stepping up to lead in this moment.

And thank you, Davina, as well, for your work in this area.

With that colleagues We take it more steps forward and making sure that the city of Seattle is the best employer in the city We have a ways to go but determined to do that work.

So thank you all for being here today Colleagues we have reached to the end of our agenda Is there anything for the good of the order I?

Wonderful.

Thank you for being a part of this important discussion today.

Seeing as there is no further business, seeing as there is no further business, I am going to close things out.

I have misplaced my papers.

There we are.

Hearing no further business to come before the committee, we are adjourned.

It is 11-17.

Thank you.