Seattle City Council Briefing 102521

Good morning, everyone.

The October 25, 2021 Council briefing meeting will now come to order.

The time is 9.32 a.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Lewis?

Present.

Morales?

Here.

Mosqueda?

Present.

Peterson?

Here.

Sawant?

Present.

Strauss?

Present.

Here.

Whereas Council President Gonzalez.

Yeah, a present.

Thank you so much.

If there's no objection, the minutes of October 18th, 2021 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

Really quickly on the president's report, as a reminder, this afternoon's city council meeting was canceled due to the lack of committee reports.

I want to thank everybody for looking at your schedules and taking into consideration whether or not we needed to have a afternoon meeting this afternoon.

No one registered an objection to the cancellation so we went ahead and canceled that meeting.

So the next City Council meeting will be next Monday, November 1st at 2 o'clock p.m.

during our regular time.

Also this morning in your inboxes you will receive a communication from my office announcing the extension of the City Council's current telework policy.

We will be extending that telework policy through January 19, 2022. this decision in my mind seemed very necessary when looking at both the current state of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic from the public health and practical, but also there were practical perspectives related to the transition from my office as being the current council president to whomever the next council president is going to be and wanted to be.

I'm respectful of the reality that there would need to be a transition period there in order for the new council president to evaluate ongoing policies related to telework in compliance with COVID-19 and public health implications.

So please keep an eye out for that communication for me to the entire legislative department for more information.

And of course, as always, I'm available to you as is my staff to talk about any aspects related to that communication.

With that being said, I'm going to go ahead and dig into the preview of today's City Council Actions, Council, and Regional Committees.

I imagine this section will probably go quickly since we don't have committee meetings at the time.

So, today's order is going to be Councilmember Lewis, then Morales, Mosqueda, Peterson, Salant, Strauss, Herbold, and then I will go ahead and conclude this section.

So, Councilmember Lewis, you're up.

Good morning.

Thank you, Council President.

Yeah, this will be a very brief report from me.

I'm going to have office hours this Friday.

Obviously, I don't have any items on this afternoon's agenda since we don't have a meeting today.

The only other thing I want to do is give a brief shout out of deep appreciation to all of our employees at Seattle City Light who are out there doing incredibly difficult work under very difficult circumstances in the wake of the very, very stormy weather we've experienced over the weekend.

that have left so many of our neighbors without power.

I myself was without power for most of yesterday, having gone out yesterday afternoon and was restored later yesterday evening.

I count myself very fortunate.

I know thousands of my neighbors are still without power.

But I do just want to say that My dad worked for Seattle City Light for 31 years out there on utility crews.

I remember him getting up at one in the morning because a storm had created a power outage and going out into the dark.

patrolling areas with downed power lines, clearing those spaces, running new cables, getting power back online for the people of this city in a quick and efficient way that our utility is famous for.

And I really want to lift up that work of everyone in IBEW Local 77, IBEW 46, all of our electrical workers that make up the city family.

The work you are doing is heroic, and to those of you out there who have not yet had your power restored, I know that our city employees are diligently working to do it and just want to lift up and make it known that we appreciate your work and that this is a critical city service that we are really putting our shoulder into.

With that, Madam President, I don't actually have anything else to report.

I will save previewing my CBAs for those actual sessions this week in the interest of time and look forward to a special land use committee meeting later this morning if I'm not mistaken.

But I'm sure Council Member Strauss will clarify in his report if that is indeed the case.

So, thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Lewis, and you are correct.

The Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee will convene at 10.30 a.m.

or as soon thereafter as we conclude our council briefing this morning.

So I'm sure Council Member Strauss will have more to add there.

Okay, any comments or questions on that report?

Hearing none, we'll keep going down the line.

Next up is Council Member Morales, and then after Council Member Morales will be Council Member Mosqueda.

Good morning, Council Member Morales.

Morning, thank you.

I do just want to clarify.

I understand that we have executive session this morning.

Is that correct?

OK, so Council briefing won't officially adjourn until after we conclude our executive session.

Yeah, OK.

Okay, so good morning everyone.

I have nothing on this afternoon's agenda since we don't have a meeting.

Last week I attended the Board of Health meeting.

There were several updates that we had there.

We also had a presentation on gender-based violence.

We heard from Mary Ellen Stone from the King County Sexual Assault Center.

Resource Center, Meryl Cousin from Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence, who we also heard from here last week, and Abigail Echo-Hawk, who directs the Urban Indian Health Institute.

And they were presenting on the pandemic's impact on survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence and their families, as well as on the impact on the organizations that assist them.

Just briefly, you know, they indicated that some of the impacts on survivors include exacerbated trauma and mental health crises and increased vulnerability for children for whom securing protection has become more difficult.

as well as increased stress among survivors and as we know the community at large.

So it was an opportunity for the Board of Health to hear about the impacts and really just highlighted that programs that serve survivors and their families really are struggling right now with capacity issues and resource issues and are looking to us for increased support.

We also had a discussion about a proposal to repeal the bicycle helmet law.

The issue arose after research last year found that black cyclists receive bicycle helmet related infractions.

The rate 3.8 times higher than white cyclists for Native American and Alaska Native riders.

The rate was 2.2 times higher.

So.

We know that there is a disparate enforcement of this law.

And so that's led the board to have a conversation.

And we did have a robust debate about whether to repeal.

I believe there is consensus among the Board of Health members that the law is applied in a biased way.

Nevertheless, the chair decided to delay the vote until next month because there was concern about whether there was an alternative to repealing that could be considered and still keep the law on the books.

So several of us were advocating for repeal of the law, but I think we're going to have a little bit more discussion.

And the plan at this point is to vote sometime next month.

Director Dennis Worsham did not give his report because the meeting was running kind of long.

He'll be sending a written update to folks, but I did connect with him afterward to get an update on the news about vaccine rollout for children, COVID-19 vaccine rollout for children 5 to 11. As we've all heard over the weekend, the FDA is reviewing and the expectation is that tomorrow a Pfizer vaccine for children 5 to 11 will be approved.

The process there is that the CDC then will review and approve and the expectation is that the whole process will be completed by early November.

And one thing that the director shared with me is that the Biden administration has procured enough vaccine for King County to cover all of our 28 million children.

They will begin shipments later this week, so that as the approval process wraps up, we will already have vaccine here.

And public health has already matched many of the schools with a vaccination provider to help with school-based administration, as well as getting primary and pediatric providers geared up and ready to go.

So it sounds like here in King County, we will be ready on day one of the final approval to start rolling that out.

This week, I will continue the week without driving challenge from the Disability Rights Washington.

This stormy weather has certainly been a perfect backdrop to the event, showcasing the perils for people who have to walk or roll or bike.

We've seen wet leaves, which we know can be a hazard for people who walk or use wheelchairs or who bike over them.

Strong winds can topple trees and we understand that we lost two members of our Washington community this weekend to a toppled tree.

And heavy rain, of course, can be a hazard similar to wet leaves and lowers visibility for everyone on the road.

So I want to thank stability rights, Washington for hosting the event and, you know, the elected leaders who have already signed up transportation officials who are already seeing firsthand.

where our infrastructure is failing people who cannot drive.

Hopefully, this will eliminate the need for improvements like more home zones, sidewalks, protected bike lanes, and better transit for everyone.

That is all I have this morning, colleagues.

Thank you.

Excuse me.

Thank you so much, Council Member Morales.

Are there any comments or questions on that report?

hearing none we'll keep going down the line next up is Councilmember Mosqueda and then after Councilmember Mosqueda will be Councilmember Peterson.

Good morning.

Good morning Council President.

I just want to say thank you Council President for your leadership and the work that you've done throughout this time of COVID.

It has been no easy task to be our fearless leader for the council in this time of COVID and Just wanna thank you for the extension of the stay at home order.

I think that that helps protect the health and safety, not only of our team members, but for the entire public and it helps lead by example for other employers as well.

So thanks for taking those steps and to set us up for health and wellbeing for our teams and for our families, especially as we hit in the holidays when we're more likely to see people that help preserve the public's health.

So thanks for that news.

Colleagues, I wanted to follow up with information for our upcoming Select Budget Committee meeting.

As you all know, there is no Finance and Housing Committee meetings at this time, but we are all deep into this Select Budget Committee meeting.

I want to thank you for your ongoing participation in these discussions.

We are headed into week five of eight.

We will soon be receiving a memo from my office, as we send every Monday, to summarize what to expect this week and what to expect in the upcoming weeks.

Thank you for submitting all of your amendments on time last week.

We received nearly 200 amendments, colleagues.

That will include folks who have given us a heads up that they are planning to walk on a handful of amendments and the total amendments that were submitted.

This process and your submission with two additional council members onto each of the CBAs that were submitted on time gives the central staff enough time to draft those amendments and allows for us to have robust discussion in our select budget committee meeting.

Those select Budget Committee meetings that will focus on the amendments start tomorrow.

We have all-day sessions Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week.

Again, a reminder, we start at 9.30 a.m., 30 minutes of public testimony.

We will go right into the deliberations on the items on the agenda at 10 a.m.

We will then have a recess from 1pm to 2pm and we will conclude by 5pm each day.

This is an opportunity for us to discuss those amendments that central staff has worked with you to finalize.

Again, the central staff is finalizing these amendments on a rolling basis so that we are prioritizing those that need to be published today for our Tuesday committee presentation on Wednesday.

You'll see the amendments published on for the committee meeting on Wednesday.

You'll see those published on Tuesday and for the committee meeting.

on Thursday, you will see those published on Wednesday.

This approach ensures that council members receive the necessary and factual description by allowing central staff to craft the amendments and make sure that all of the information is factual.

This is going to be a document that is owned by central staff, but of course, you as council members get the final chance to review the amendment before publication to confirm if there's anything that needs to be changed from a factual nature.

Well, the central staff amendments are theirs and their documents from a nonpartisan and non-office specific perspective.

During the committee, you council members, of course, have the chance to provide additional information.

There is a chance for you to provide information about any of your budget proposals to help us understand the why you have asked for something that's either an increase or a decrease.

And this is your opportunity to provide description.

The central staff amendment then can go hand in hand with that description, but your materials may also be distributed to the committee separately.

and they can be added to the legislative record after the committee meeting.

So for example, in the past, I've shown charts.

You know I love charts and pie charts.

So if you have any sort of data that you'd like to provide, you're welcome to do that.

That will be part of the legislative record after the committee.

To share additional information in advance, please compile the information into a single PDF document and include it in the header or title of the document that this is supplemental information for the budget.

The budget amendment number should be listed on your document so that it's very clear that your supplemental information from your office corresponds with what the central staff have created.

Ali sent this information in her central staff email to all of you late last week, and we will be reiterating the process for including the information in advance for your colleagues in the memo that we are sending out here momentarily today.

The document that we're talking about, if you do have any additional factual information that you'd like to send that, again, corresponds with what the central staff has created, please make sure that you are distributing it the day before the committee discussion.

Please make sure the amendment is emailed to all committee members and all council members, including Director Handy, Ali Panucci, and Patty Worgen, and the deputy clerk's offices.

Again, I want to make sure that you know that this information is going to be sent to you in a memo as well.

early heads up that if you do have additional corresponding information or facts you'd like to share about your amendment that you will be discussing, we will have the chance to have you do that tomorrow.

Excuse me, we will have the chance to send that to you later today in the memo that we're sending.

I do want to also note that with nearly 200 amendments, colleagues, the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday meetings are not an opportunity for you to show your support as a personal council member.

for each of those amendments.

Please, please reserve adding your name to an additional budget amendment for only the very few items that you really must have your name on.

It is not imperative that we have five, six, seven, eight, or nine council members on a CBA for it to be included in the chairs proposal.

It is only important for you to have gotten those two additional co-sponsors so that we could have the amendments fully vetted and walk, excuse me, fully vetted and prepared for tomorrow.

There will be a handful of walk-on amendments over the next few days as well, but please reserve the signing on of additional amendments this year just for a very few given the high number of amendments.

I know for all of you who've Been engaged in this work last year remotely and for colleagues before the last 2 years.

It was customary to sort of raise your hand and indicate if you support something, but given the high number of amendments this year, please be very conservative in where you raise your hand, because it is not going to be.

necessarily helpful for me to sift through all 200 amendments if every single council member is signing on to them.

And again, the number of colleagues signing on to an amendment does not equal inclusion into the council's draft proposed budget that you all will be receiving here soon.

So I will make sure to reiterate that tomorrow, but I do want to make sure that members of the public know there's a lot of shared support, a lot of shared priorities across the council.

If council members are not raising their hand to sign on to an amendment that is not an indication of a non-support, it's really an effort to try to be very conservative in adding your name to any additional amendments at this juncture.

So we'll make sure to reiterate that for all of you again tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday, but we will not have the process of having a screen to show sign-ons.

go through that.

If there's any verbal additional sign-ons, we will make sure to note that in the meeting.

But thank you for your work in advance to be very conservative about adding your name to any additional council budget amendments at this point.

Just a very quick reminder of the committee process.

Our committee on Tuesday, October 26th, will start with public comment.

We will then have a packed agenda that will include Finance General, FAS, Department of the Legislature, the Ledge Department, excuse me, the Mayor's Office Budget, the City Auditor's Office Budget, Seattle Information Technology Budget, Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle City Light, Seattle Public Libraries, Department of Education and Early Learning, Arts and Culture, Office of Immigrants and Refugee Affairs, SDCI, OPCD, Department of Neighborhoods, Sustainability and the Environment, Office of Economic Development, and Office of Labor Standards.

We will be grouping all of these department presentations into certain categories, for example, Workforce and economic development, arts, culture and thriving communities.

And so you'll have a chance to see all of the, the, the department's sort of categories.

So it's an easy conversation to follow, but there will be a lot of materials.

So, each day, you will get a packet of information from Patty.

Thank you in advance.

Patty that summarizes all of the great work from central staff.

That packet will provide you the information you need for the following day.

So again, today, Monday, you will see the information ready for our Tuesday meeting and encourage you to set aside some time later in the afternoon or if you need to in the evenings.

To review the proposed packet so that we can all walk into each of those meetings very well briefed on the amendments that each council member is bringing forward.

Thank you colleagues.

I will remind us of the process again tomorrow and make sure that you have a clear understanding of what to expect throughout the day and we will make this.

a very seamless process.

Thank you all for your ongoing work, as I think we have had a record number of budget bills in the last two years, given our work on Jump Start, COVID relief, and then deploying federal relief dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act as well.

I just want to thank you again as we head into this process.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you so much.

Any comments or questions on that report?

We will all be spending lots of time together this week as we go through the Select Budget Committee process.

So thanks to our good chair for setting up the process and shepherding us through it.

Okay, so next up, I think it is Councilmember Peterson.

And then after Councilmember Peterson will be Councilmember Smaller.

Good morning, Councilmember Peterson.

Good morning, Council President.

Good morning, colleagues.

Of course, no full City Council today, so no items from our committee.

But our committee will meet on December 1st and on December 15th.

That's the Transportation and Utilities Committee.

We'll meet 9.30 in the morning on those two days.

In District 4 and throughout the city and our region, obviously, yesterday, a severe windstorm brought down many power lines.

I want to join my colleagues in thanking the frontline crews of Seattle City Light for working through the night to restore power to thousands of customers and also to our fire department who is out there for any of those downed wires that were causing electrical fires.

As I understand it, just within the city of Seattle, there were 44,000 customers out of power yesterday.

Of course, even a larger number for the Puget Sound region that we see reported in the media.

Seattle City Light is reporting within the city of Seattle's city limits, they're down to about 3,000.

The outage map shows a higher number, but it's amazing the progress they've made from 44,000 down to 3,000.

If you do experience a new power outage, you can call 206-684-3000 and press 1. You can also go online and look at the outage map.

We know people are suffering without power and crews are continuing to work as quickly as they can from city lights.

This storm and our response to it's just another reminder of the vital basics of city government, such as electrical power, clean water, clear roadways, and the need to maintain our basic infrastructure, keep us safe and our economy moving.

That concludes my report.

Thank you.

Short and sweet.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Any comments or questions?

All right, I'm not seeing any hands raised.

Of course, we will head down now to Councilmember Salant, and then after Councilmember Salant will be Councilmember Strauss.

Good morning, Councilmember Salant.

Good morning.

The next meeting of the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee is scheduled for November 30th at 2 p.m., as I've mentioned in the briefing sessions previously, and we will be discussing the rent control legislation from our office and possibly a legislation related to the city of Seattle divesting from financial institutions who are investing in fossil fuel pipelines.

My office and the central staff members are working on developing that legislation right now and I'll keep the City Council updated on its progress.

My office has recently been contacted by several renters at Rainier Court, which is a group of buildings near the Mount Baker neighborhood, owned by Southeast Effective Development, or SEED, and managed by Coast Property Management Company.

The renters in these buildings have struggled in vain for years to get the owners and property managers of their buildings to address their concerns.

These renters are working people who make our city run.

They are seniors.

They are families with children.

Many of them belong to immigrant communities and communities of color.

The vast majority of renters are of low income and are eligible for assistance under Section 8 housing voucher program and they have attempted for years to address pervasive problems in the apartments, such as lack of heating, in some cases years of lack of heating, mold, bed bug, and cockroach infestation, hallways with accumulating garbage, the absence of internet access for low-income residents, broken stoves and refrigerators, non-functioning toilets, and leaking ceilings.

For many of the renters, the daily reality of living in these buildings has been a nightmare.

Not only have both Seed and Coast failed to address the numerous problems and housing code violations, many of them extreme, they've also sent rent increase notices of $100 to most of their tenants in the last weeks, which is absolutely unacceptable.

My office has held community meetings with the tenants.

We have collected all their complaints on the code violations and working with them.

We have submitted their housing code violations to the City of Seattle Department of Construction Inspections.

Some of the tenants, I believe, had already submitted some of their complaints to the SDCI before my office got involved, and I really think that was important as well.

My office has also contacted the Department of Construction and Inspections to alert them to this, and we will be, of course, in constant communication with them.

This is very much the kind of work that my office had done with the Chateau building in the Central District.

Council members will hopefully remember that those tenants were also in a similar situation, many of them immigrants or people of color, community members, many of them seniors, many of them low-income.

And they courageously got organized alongside my office, alongside Tenants Union, BCIO, and progressive labor unions like UAW 4121. And together, our struggle was able to win serious victories that were practically unheard of going against a cadence, which is a property corporation.

And our hope is that the tenants here will also get organized in a similar fashion.

And certainly the desire to make change is high among the tenants.

I'm not sure if council members watched this, but if you haven't, please watch the common news story that was published, that was played, I think Thursday night.

on the nightly news and it showed clearly how the tenants are fighting back and also how egregious it is that the landlords have sent $100 rent increase notices in the midst of these deplorable conditions that the tenants have been faced with.

An ordinance sponsored by my office and approved by the city council in 2016 prohibits rent increases at buildings with serious housing code violations.

That ordinance was named.

the Carl Hagelin Law, flowing from a brilliant struggle in the autumn of 2015, the year before, in District 2 on Rainier Avenue, and my office alongside then Council Member Nicolacata, the Tenants Union, and other progressive housing advocates in the city.

We stood with the tenants, and it was another crucial struggle that yielded real victories for the tenants.

An infamously exploitative landlord named Carl Hagelin had attempted to raise the rent for his tenants in this building, again, with terrible housing code violations.

The renters organized and through that struggle, the tenants forced Hagelin to eliminate the rent increases he had previously sent and forced him to address many of the violations.

And then, as I said, in 2016, the year after, we won the Carl Hagelin law.

And the tenants here in the Rainier Court buildings have also set up a series of concrete demands on seed and coast, obviously demanding that they address the problems, but they are also demanding that there are no rent increases.

They are also demanding an end to the discrimination that they have faced on a systematic basis based on race, nationality, language or otherwise.

They're also demanding sufficient maintenance staff to address repair concerns.

And one of the most important demands they have is to approve access for tenants to install affordable internet hookups in units.

And in fact, I have personally just in the last few days spoken to field technicians in Lumen who are also members of the CWA in Communications Workers of America Union in the Seattle region and they do exactly this kind of work and they are excited about helping set up internet hookups in these buildings as well.

The bottleneck and the obstacle has been Seed and Coast who have refused to allow that to happen and the low-income residents have been without internet, you know, low-income internet access, low-cost internet access since 2017. And this is obviously especially problematic in the middle of a pandemic when our community members, working people, have relied on the internet like never before.

So it is a very important struggle.

We will be working on it with the tenants, alongside the tenants, and we'll be announcing upcoming actions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Any comments or questions on that report?

All right, so I'm not seeing any hands raised.

Thanks again.

So we'll go ahead and go down the line and we will hear from Council Member Strauss next, and then Council Member Herbold.

Good morning, Council Member Strauss.

Good morning, Council President and colleagues.

Here in District Six last week, I spoke with 21 residents from across the district, four from Ballard, four from East Ballard, four from Green Lake, three from Finney Ridge, two from Fremont, three from Greenwood, and two from Tangle Town.

We got to speak, there were a couple of meetings on the zoo agreement, a couple on pedestrian safety, four regarding homelessness in the district, two about public safety, a meeting about 72-hour parking enforcement, and another meeting about the Everspring Inn, and most importantly, a meeting about the climate crisis.

Due to the budget schedules, as colleagues, you all know, our office, my district six office hours are changing week to week.

Last week, I held extended hours, and this week I will be holding extended hours as well.

This week's office hours will be this afternoon and on Friday.

For the viewing public, we have budget meetings from 930 AM to 5 PM Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, which is why office hours are happening on Monday and Friday.

Last week in District 6, I joined the Food Bank, Ballard Food Bank, at their grand opening of the Hub for Hope, which is more than a food bank.

It is a grocery store, a health care center, rental assistance, and so much more.

So congratulations to Jen Muse and everyone, board of directors, and all the staff at Ballard Food Bank.

Last week, my staff also attended an informational meeting about the DESC Woodland Housing Project, which will bring about 95 units of permanent supportive housing to the district.

I was able to meet with the Ballard Alliance on Tuesday about the interim design plan for the Ballard Avenue Street Cafe.

And on Thursday, I attended the Woodland Park Zoo Gratitude Gathering to unveil the land acknowledgement honoring the signatories of the Treaty of Point Elliott and the Coast Salish people, spoken in both English and Lushootseed, which is possibly the first of its kind.

It was a really beautiful event.

So thank you to everyone who made that possible.

Friday, I was also able to meet with a resident regarding 65th Street Northwest Pedestrian Crossing around Adams Elementary.

There are some short-term improvements we'll be making and we look forward to working with the PTA to identify the safe routes to school improvement for Adams Elementary.

This coming week in District Six, my staff will attend Fremont Community Council tonight.

Tomorrow morning, I'll be joining the North Seattle Industrial Association meeting.

And on Wednesday, I have my regular meeting with Chief Diaz, which was rescheduled from last week, as well as I'll be meeting with Director Ben Noble this week, recently scheduled.

In District 6, I'm also continuing to hold operational coordination meetings with government entities and non-government entities to make meaningful interventions and impacts on visible homelessness in specific places in District 6. That work continues and I look forward to being able to share more soon.

Last week, my general work, I was able to meet with past president of AWC, Ed Stern, attended the Regional Transportation Committee, and I joined Seattle Channel for Inside Out with Councilmember Herbold.

It was great to see Brian Callion and Councilmember Herbold.

And I also was able to meet with the Seattle Conservation Corps.

Colleagues, I'm not sure if you're aware of Seattle Conservation Corps.

get a lot of attention and they do really great work.

This program provides job opportunities for people living homelessness to work for the city and transition into stable employment.

It comes both with workforce development and case management while giving people a job.

and working for the city.

So I look forward to sharing more during my CBAs this week, colleagues.

And lastly, I was able to meet with North End colleagues to learn more about the 200-unit housing and longhouse project on North Seattle College's campus.

The longhouse project, Council Member Juarez's team was there as well.

They have funding pathways for the capital dollars and still need to find operational dollars.

So more on that later.

This coming week, I'll be meeting with Sound Cities Association members regarding regional transit committee on Tuesday.

and we have budget meetings all week, so looking forward to that.

Here in the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee, the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee will meet today at 1030 or after council briefing and executive session concludes to consider clerk file 314367, a contract rezone application for 14302 30th Avenue Northeast.

As a reminder, contract rezones are are considered quasi-judicial, so under council's quasi-judicial rules, council members should reframe from ex parte communications with proponents or opponents of this contract rezone application.

And I know that Council Member Mosqueda is unable to attend, Council Member Juarez does not have power, and so hoping both Council Member Peterson and I heard Council Member Lewis say he was able to attend.

If not, Council Member Morales, we might call on you.

Lastly, the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee will meet next Monday, November 1st, also at 10.30 a.m.

or after council briefing to vote on the rezone application just mentioned.

Thank you, colleagues and Council President.

That is my report.

And finally, I just want to raise up Scott Thompson, who manages City Hall, has been working for the city for 21 years, and it's his last day this coming Friday.

So I just wanted to take this moment to share my gratitude for Scott and all of his hard work keeping this building functioning.

So thank you, colleagues.

Thank you, Council President.

Of course.

Thank you so much, Council Member Strauss.

Any comments or questions on that report?

Not seeing any hands raised, so we'll go ahead and go down the line here.

Next up is Council Member Herbold, and then I will conclude this section before we transition into executive session.

Good morning, Council Member Herbold.

Good morning.

Thanks so much.

So there are no items from the public Safety and Human Services Committee agenda on the full council agenda.

There's also no full council agenda today, so we also don't have a committee meeting this week.

Committee meetings are suspended.

As far as the updates from my department, quick update from the Human Services Department.

Applications for the Seattle Relief Fund are open today at seattlerelief.com.

The Seattle Relief Fund offers $16 million in direct cash assistance to community members whose income is low and who have been most impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.

You can visit www.seattlerelief.com for more information about eligibility criteria and how to apply.

As a reminder, these funds were appropriated in the Seattle Rescue Plan, which was passed by the council last June.

As far as from public health, I just want to remind everybody that vaccine verification requirement enacted by King County Public Health Officer Dr Jeff Duchin goes into effect today, October 25th for people ages 12 and older.

An analysis by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found that the vaccine verification policy at restaurants, bars, gyms and fitness centers alone could prevent between nearly 18,000 and 76,000 infections.

421 to 1700 hospitalizations and between 63 and 257 deaths over the next six months.

Starting today, anyone 12 or older must show proof of vaccination or proof of a recent negative test in order to enter certain businesses.

And those businesses include outdoor recreational and entertainment events with 500 or more people, indoor restaurants, bars, and taverns with seating capacity of 12 or more, indoor entertainment and recreational establishments, such as gyms, public pools, movie theaters, museums, and sports stadiums.

I really support this requirement and stood with King County when it was announced as well as with mayor because I stand with workers and I stand with the small businesses that are struggling to stay open.

Businesses cannot be expected to survive if they have to keep closing and opening, closing and opening.

This is a policy that not only independent restaurants and bars have sought, but workers in those businesses have asked for this mandate.

These workers wanna be able to keep working, not be sent home for a period of time every time a coworker gets sick and the business has to close.

If you have questions about how the requirement works, go to kingcounty.gov forward slash verify.

87% of King County residents have received at least one vaccine dose, yay.

And you can find places to get vaccinated if you are not yet at kingcounty.gov forward slash vaccine.

Just as a personal, I was recently in New Orleans and they have had a mandatory vaccine requirement for entrance to most public places since August.

And everybody that I spoke to about that mandatory requirement.

is really proud of what the residents of New Orleans, the small businesses, the artists, the musicians have done to step forward and do what they have to do in order to take care of themselves.

And their vaccine mandate has been in place since August.

I just want to make reference to the sad fact that there were a number of shootings throughout this weekend, including Saturday evening and early Sunday morning in Pioneer Square, Othello, in Columbia City, South Delridge, adjacent to I-509.

As we know, shootings, shots fired, people injured, shooting deaths are all up.

Through the end of September, there have been more shots fired than during the entirety of 2020. This really, again, highlights the crucial importance of violence prevention work that the council has funded.

All of these cases remain active investigations.

and detectives are asking anyone with information to please call the tip line at 206-233-5000.

I also just want to very briefly before I move off of public safety, thank Council Member Morales for sharing information received in the Board of Health meeting from Merrill Cousins as it relates to domestic violence and of violence that families are experiencing.

I had a similar conversation with Southwest Precinct Captain Grossman.

Often when we hear the words domestic violence, we often think exclusively of partner violence.

And Southwest Precinct Captain Grossman has told me that he has noticed an increase of parent to student violence in the home.

and is also linking this increase to the impacts of social isolation over the last year and a half.

And I've requested some data from the federal police department to see if the statistics sort of bear out the observations of Captain Grossman.

Just some quick updates around events coming up this week.

Before I get into this week, one big event that I think I forgot to mention last week in my preview is last week the West Seattle Junction Association had a fantastic open house to hear about the really exciting proposal that the BIA is considering with Community routes, housing for affordable housing on some of the existing surface parking lots really, really appreciate the visionary forward looking efforts of the community to think about.

what is needed in the junction moving forward rather than just sort of focusing on the value that the parking lots in the past have brought to that business district.

But looking forward to how bringing more people to live in the junction will also increase traffic and make a stronger business community and of course address a big need that we have in west seattle for affordable housing coming up this week i'll be joining the mayor for a new city booster shot district one location at neighborhood house their announcement will be on tuesday i'll also be joining the highland park action council meeting with enterprise in the office of housing to discuss potential to develop affordable housing on seattle city lights Dumar substation property on 16th and Holden.

That's been a long interest of the Highland Park community and really appreciate the work that the Office of Housing has been doing with Enterprise to come up with some different possible scenarios where affordable housing can be built on that particular location at a low public subsidy.

I have office hours on Friday from 2 to 6 p.m.

Friday evening.

And also just wanted to make a note that SDOT has issued an alert that due to a fallen utility pole and power lines, they've closed the South Park Bridge.

They expect it to remain closed today.

The utility and power lines are down on East Marginal Way.

SDOT and City Light have been working around the clock in storm conditions to clear the debris and repair wires.

And again, joining my colleagues here in thanking everyone who's been doing this work through the storm and their efforts.

Thanks.

Thank you so much, Council Member Herbold.

Not the greatest news to end on, but thanks for sharing that with us all.

Okay, colleagues, any comments or questions on that report?

I am mindful of time, because I don't want to eat too much into Council Member Straus's Land Use Committee.

I will give a very quick report on behalf of the Governance and Education Committee.

Really quickly, the Seattle Districting Commission is now fully appointed.

The commissioners, which were previously appointed by the City Council and Mayor, have unanimously appointed Patience Malaba as the fifth and final member of the Districting Commission.

The first full commission meeting will be this Wednesday, October 27th from 11.45 a.m.

to 1.15 p.m.

So I want to congratulate the entire districting commission and look forward to seeing their work develop.

Last Thursday there was a meeting of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority Governing Committee and I attended that along with Councilmember Lewis.

At that meeting we received a briefing from KCRHA staff regarding the development of their sub-regional plans.

and their 2022 proposed budget.

This budget briefing included presentations of three budget requests that they've submitted directly to the City Council.

Council Member Lewis and I have advanced those three items as proposed Council budget actions that of course we will be discussing later on this week during Select Budget Committee deliberations.

I just wanted to let folks know that in the meantime Council Member Lewis and I are going to continue to meet with staff and external stakeholders in the area to evaluate these proposals and identify the best path forward given our limited resources and funding that's available in the city's 2022 budget and appreciate Chair Mosqueda's reminder at the top of this meeting to be mindful of the things that we are advancing in light of the large volume of council budget actions.

I don't have anything else to report.

Happy to answer any questions or hear any additional comments.

I'm not seeing any hands raised, so I'm gonna move us into executive session.

As presiding officer, I'm announcing that the Seattle City Council will now convene in executive session.

The purpose of the executive session is to discuss pending potential or actual litigation.

The council's executive session is an opportunity for the council to discuss confidential legal matters with city attorneys as authorized by law.

A legal monitor from the city attorney's office is always present to ensure the council reserves questions of policy.

For open session, I expect that the time of the executive session will end.

Around 10. 45 am.

If the executive session is to be extended beyond that time, I will announce the extension and the expected duration.

And again, as a reminder for members of the viewing public and members of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee, Councilmember Strauss's Land Use and Neighborhoods meeting will convene as soon as we adjourn Council briefing, which Council Member Strauss, since we might go until 1045, would you like to indicate to members of the viewing public and your colleagues what time they can expect to reconvene on Zoom for your committee?

Thank you, Council President.

Let's just call it 11 o'clock on the dot.

Great.

So there you have it, members of the viewing public and colleagues, you will have until 11 a.m.

to reconvene for Councilmember Strauss's Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee.

Appreciate your patience.

We did go a little bit, a little bit longer this morning, but we will wrap this up.

So let's go ahead and go into executive session now that I've made that announcement.

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