Governance and Utilities Committee 6/11/2026

Good morning, the June 11, 2026 meeting of the Governance and Utilities Committee will come to order.

It is 9.33 p.m.

I'm Joy Hollingsworth, Council President.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Kettle?

Who?

Here.

Council Member Rivera?

Council Member Strauss?

Here.

Vice Chair Warris?

I am the vice chair, so I probably should have been called second.

Just kidding, here.

Present.

Here.

Chair, there are five present.

Awesome.

Thank you, colleagues.

We have a packed agenda, so we're gonna be moving fairly quickly, not quickly, but on point.

We will now consider the agenda.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We'll now open the hybrid public comment period.

Speaker, how many speakers do we have signed up?

Chair, we have one in-person speaker and zero remote.

Awesome, my favorite speaker.

Will you please read the instructions for the comments?

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

Speakers will be called in the order in which they are registered on the council's website and the signup sheet available here in council chambers, starting with in-person speakers first.

If you have not registered to speak and would like to, you could sign up before the end of the public comment period or on the council's website.

The link is listed on today's agenda.

When speaking, please begin by stating your name in the item you are addressing.

Speakers will hear a chime when there are 10 seconds left of the allotted time.

The speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided the speaker's microphone will be muted and allow us to call on to the next person.

Awesome.

So first, I see we have someone online, but we'll start with in person.

Welcome, Bailey Burgess.

Good to see you.

And before you start, if we could get these lights shut down from facing us, thank you so much.

All right, we'll put your time up and go ahead and start when you're ready.

Good morning, council president and committee members.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak today.

It is wonderful to be back at Seattle City Hall.

So my name is Bailey Burgess.

I am the political director for the Teamsters Joint Council 28. Teamsters Joint Council 28 represents 55,000 workers across 12 unions in Washington, Alaska, and Idaho.

Hold on.

We're going to pause your time.

Hold on.

We'll just do one second.

We'll pause your time.

We'll restart your time, and we'll figure out the lights.

No worries at all.

Is that good, colleagues?

That's perfect.

Oh, thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

I'm very good at IT.

No worries.

Okay.

Hold on.

So let's restart the time.

Bailey, we're going to give you your two full minutes back.

All right.

Awesome.

And when you're ready, go ahead.

Great, sorry about that.

Good morning, council president and council members.

It's wonderful to be back at City Hall with you.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to give public comments this morning.

My name is Bailey Burgess.

I am the political director for Teamsters Joint Council 28. Teamsters Joint Council 28 has 55,000 workers across 12 unions in Washington, Alaska, and Idaho.

and we represent hundreds of solid waste and recycling workers that contract with providers like Recology, Waste Management and Republic that provide waste services to the City of Seattle and other local governments.

We are here just to ask some questions or maybe elevate a couple of concerns about the waste management contract on the agenda today.

So the proposed language has no prevailing wage protections, which is something that really matters to us and our workers.

Solid waste workers earn solid union family wage jobs and have really good benefits, and so we're hoping that there's the opportunity to discuss the lack of prevailing wage language in the proposed contract.

We're also hoping for some anti-displacement language and policies within the proposed contract.

Often municipalities will switch their service providers, and usually our workers have the ability to keep their jobs and follow their work.

They are able to maintain the same benefits.

They are able to keep their accrued vacation time as they're following their jobs, but we are not seeing that language in this proposed contract.

I will follow up with all of your offices directly and promise this is not the last you will hear from me, but I just wanted to elevate a couple of those concerns and thank you so much for the time.

Awesome.

Thank you, Bailey.

Next, we're going to go online.

David Haynes, please press star six to unmute yourself.

Just star six.

We saw you unmuted for one second.

Now you're on mute.

Hi, thank you, David Haynes.

You know, I would like to point out that the social housing developer was given carte blanche rules changes yesterday.

And since the governance committee has taken off the accountability, it's concerning that first we have ineptitude at the King County Regional Homeless Authority.

We have failures at the service providers who are padding the cost and things are getting worse.

But yet when it comes to the social housing developer, there seems to be a changing of the rules with a resolution where there's really no oversight, there's no transparency.

It was like the quickest authorization for an agency to basically cater to themselves and change their own rules.

Where, what is it?

like the next seven people that are going to be moving into the Etra apartments are the ones that are being put in charge to decide who gets to make the decisions within, but the renters commission and then the board, but nobody has scrutinized the fact that the Etra apartments was like wrongly paid for like an exorbitant rate, like $61 million.

But yet I think It was no more than $20 million to build the damn thing.

And I swear to Christ, if you scrutinize the legitimacy of that so-called luxury apartment because the bourgeoisie advertise it like it's on Pike Place and all that, there's a building right across the street from the Etra.

I think it's like this godforsaken toxic parking garage building with this big gigantic opening.

and there's this billy amount of hot air and it goes across the street and right into the entrance and the front entrance of Etra.

That alone takes away a lot of the property value.

And then on the other side of that building, there's this train track where the toxic industrial train that you all never acknowledge is poisoning the area.

And you all act like, oh, the social housing developer needs to give more power to keep running

Thank you, Mr. Haynes.

Are there any more public commenters?

I don't see anyone online.

I'll give a quick second.

Awesome, cool.

All right, public comment period is now closed and we're gonna jump right into agenda items.

Will the clerk please read item number one into the record?

Agenda item one, appointment 3510, appointment of Sarah Camp to the Seattle Public Utilities Customer Review Panel for a term to July 31st, 2028 for briefing, discussion and possible vote.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director Lee, for being here and looking forward to the presentation and just get started when you're ready.

Great.

Thank you, Council President Hollingsworth and members of the committee.

The first item we have for you this morning is an appointment to Seattle Public Utilities Customer Review Panel, which provides advice and comment on SPU's rates and our strategic business plan.

As you may recall, we were here just last month to present two nominees for the panel.

We're back today to present our final nominee for your consideration, and her name is Sarah Champ.

This appointment reflects our ongoing work to include voices of youth that have often been underrepresented and are most impacted by our city's utilities.

And Sarah can unfortunately not be here this morning, but Justin is here to speak on her behalf.

Great.

Thank you, Council.

This is Justin Chan, Business Planning and Policy Advisor with SPU.

So as a reminder, the Customer Review Panel was formed in 2013, made permanent in 2018. This mighty diverse and vital panel expanded from 11 to 13 for two young adult seats and advises the Mayor and the Council on our rates and our business plan.

So Sarah Champ resides in downtown Seattle.

Sarah is a waste reduction recycling program analyst with Kitsap County, developing programs to help residents reduce waste, recycle correctly, prevent pollution, and conserve natural resources.

Her background includes water utility infrastructure asset management, giving her a better perspective on how critical public assets are maintained and planned over time.

She brings across cross-span of experience and perspective across solid waste, water systems, sustainability, with a strong focus on equitable access to essential services.

So as a Seattle renter, she understands firsthand the challenges faced by customers who rely on utility services but have limited control.

And as Anjali mentioned about, she is unable to join us today, but we're grateful for her willingness to serve on the panel.

So looking forward to committee's consideration.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you, Justin.

Colleagues, do you have any questions?

Quick comment.

I read through Ms. Camp's information and very impressed and always grateful for people that volunteer their time to serve.

So is there any other questions?

Okay, awesome.

All right.

Well, thank you.

Okay, perfect.

Well, I'm going to move.

Well, thank you, Justin.

Thank you, General Manager Lee.

I go back for saying General Manager Lee and Director Lee.

Both.

You're both.

General Manager, Director Lee.

Okay.

I move that the committee recommends confirmation of appointment 3510. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and second to confirm the appointment.

Are there any other comments on the appointee?

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Kettle?

Aye.

Councilmember Rivera?

Aye.

Councilmember Strauss?

Aye.

Vice Chair Juarez?

Aye.

Chair Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Awesome.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation to confirm the appointment will be sent to June 16th City Council meeting.

Will the clerk please read agenda items number two through 10 into the record?

Agenda Items 2-10, Appointments 3-520, 3-522, 3-525, 3-523, 3-526, 3-521, 3-528, 3-524, and 3-527 Appointments to the Information Technology Department's Community Technology Advisory Board for briefings, discussion, and possible votes.

Thank you, we got nine appointments and reappointments.

Thank you all for joining us today.

You're gonna introduce yourselves, and then you can jump right into telling us about the appointments and reappointments.

Good morning council members, I'm Rajat Agarwal.

I've called Seattle home since January 2019, and I fell for the city almost immediately.

Its nature, its energy, and most of all its people.

That's what pulled me into community work.

I served two years on the board of Emanuel Community Services, which runs a homeless shelter, and I volunteered with Center for Wooden Boards, KNKX, and Seattle King County Clinic.

Today, my focus is teaching technology to seniors at the Pike Market, Wallingford, and Ballard Senior Center.

and within that work one problem keeps rising to the top, that scams.

I've sat with seniors who've lost their savings and their confidence to someone who saw their trust as a target.

The dollar amounts get reported, what doesn't show up in any spreadsheet is the shame and fear that follow and that's the cost I can't stop thinking about.

This is a hard problem with no single fix.

It takes technology, policy, and education working together.

But at ground level, I see something that the data alone can't capture, hundreds of seniors who are one-fold call away from real harm, and who often don't know where to turn.

That's the role I hope to play on CTAP, a bridge between those seniors and this council.

I intend to work on CTAP's outreach and digital equity committees.

I want to bring you what I see on the ground so the city's decisions are shaped by the people most often left behind by technology.

Thank you for considering me.

Awesome.

Thank you.

And we'll have everyone introduce themselves and then we'll jump right in and thank you for that.

That was beautiful.

Perfect.

Go right ahead.

Awesome.

Thank you, Council Members.

I'm Colin Sanders.

I'm an appointment nominee for the Community Technology Advisory Board.

Good morning, Council.

Good morning, Council President.

My name is William Smith, and I serve as the Chief of Staff for Seattle IT.

Good morning.

My name is Shannon Smith.

I am the Acting Chief Technology Officer.

Thank you for the opportunity to serve the city.

Good morning.

My name is Friday Nabulele.

I'm going to be the new nominee for the CTAB, so I'm glad to be here.

I've been in the Seattle area for over 20 years, and I have over 20 years of technology experience.

I love to serve the people.

I was a former refugee.

I know how it is for people to be left out.

So I want to be here to be a voice of the community that I represent.

Awesome.

Perfect.

I know we have two online.

You're just going to introduce yourself real quick and then I'll turn it back to our technology department who will just do an opening and then we'll go and ask questions.

Okay?

So we have two online.

Good morning, council members.

I'm Vanita Subramanian and I'm a new appointee nominee for the Community Technology Advisory Board.

Thank you for the opportunity to serve.

and then is it Kathleen?

Hello, everyone.

This is Kathleen Rohde, and I'm also a new appointee, appointment nominee for the Community Technology Advisory Board.

Awesome.

Please.

Thank you, Council President Hollingsworth and members of the committee.

The second item that we have for the committee this morning is the appointment and reappointment of members to the Community Technology Advisory Board, also known as CTAP.

CTAP advises the Mayor, City Council, and Seattle IT on technology-related matters of public interest.

CTAP serves as the bridge between technology stakeholders and Seattle residents.

It helps conduct research on technology issues, gathers public input, and helps residents, helps conduct research, promote digital equity to close the digital divide.

CTAP's work over the last year has included holding a telecom forum, providing input on cable franchise and AI policy.

and participating in the technology matching fund review process.

The board is comprised of 10 members, five appointed by the mayor, four appointed by the city council, and one GetEngage member, which ages from 18 to 29. Over the last month, Seattle IT is in collaboration with the city council, conducted over a dozen interviews for these appointments.

Seattle IT wants to thank Cameron Yon and your office for being a part of the interview panel.

The interview panel also included members from our Digital Equity and Governance team, and current members from CTAP.

We have a total of nine appointment files for the committee's consideration, five new appointments and four reappointments.

So I know we're all excited to hear about the five new members.

We have Colin Sanders, Friday Anubule, Raja Agarwal here with us at the committee table, and then Kathleen Rode and Vanita Subramani.

have joined virtually.

I also want to acknowledge the reappointment members that are part of today's appointment files.

Philip Ming and Amari Stringer, and Damarlon DeLarsensi, excuse me for the pronunciation of there, then also Ayesha Bomani.

Thank you for serving on the second term.

I would like to now ask for the five new members to introduce themselves, share their background and bio, and why they want to serve on CTAP.

Thank you.

Awesome.

I know Raja, you open came in hard and said, this is why I'm serving, which is wonderful.

Go right ahead.

Awesome.

Thank you.

So again, I'm Colin Sanders.

I have been in Seattle for just a few years now.

I'm a transplant from the South.

I'm from Texas originally.

I have deep experience in software engineering, AI, and hardware infrastructure.

I'm currently an employee at Amazon Web Services and their hardware engineering organization.

focusing on data center build outs, making sure we're doing that the right way.

The note is that I'm recusing myself from any and all technology that could be related to Amazon and Amazon Web Services.

The reason I wanted to join CTIB is I have a large interest in AI equity in particular.

I think it's a very underrepresented and area of interest where there is an increasingly large divide between those who have access to AI and those who don't.

And yeah, I'm excited to serve.

Thank you.

Thank you, Colin.

Next we'll go online.

Thank you again.

My name is Friday.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yes, right here.

I apologize.

Yeah, thank you again.

My name is Friday in Abulele.

I am very interested in technology.

I came from a background with no technology, and I have a bachelor degree in computer science, and I have 20 years solving a complex problem and working with various initiatives.

I'm currently a member of Microsoft AI committee, and I support a lot of NGO.

So I've been in the Seattle area.

I believe that my commitment to the community will help.

the digital equity division and to bring community together and to make amazing decision when it comes to technology that affect people that are underserved, especially on AI technology.

It's a new environment that the city needs to be aware of and work together to make sure that nobody's left behind.

So that is why I'm here to be nominated.

Thank you.

Thank you, Friday.

All right.

That was beautiful.

All right, Vanita.

I'm honored to be considered for appointment to the Community Technology Advisory Board.

As a technologist and user experience designer currently at Microsoft, I've spent more than a decade helping organizations navigate major shifts in technology.

And a big part of my work is taking complex systems and making them more human.

And while the technologies themselves have changed, the questions that guide my work have remained remarkably consistent.

To me, that starts with fundamentally asking who benefits, who might be left out, and how do we make sure that technology is understandable, accessible, and useful to the people it's intended to serve.

That's the perspective I hope to bring to CTAB.

I believe those questions matter more than ever now because technology is so deeply embedded in our daily lives and influences how we access information, opportunities and even communities.

My perspective has also been shaped by my own experiences as a daughter of Indian immigrants who grew up across different cultures and is now raising a family in Seattle.

I've seen firsthand how differently people experience access and opportunities.

Those perspectives reinforced my belief that equitable outcomes don't happen by accident.

They require intentional listening and a willingness to seek out perspectives that may otherwise go unheard.

What excites me most about CTAB is the opportunity to bring my experience to the work while learning from others.

I look forward to listening, building relationships across the community and helping ensure that technology serves Seattle residents in meaningful and equitable ways.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you, Vanita.

And then we'll go to Kathleen and then we'll open it up to questions.

Thank you, everyone.

My name's Kathleen Rohde again, and I'm honored to be appointed as the newest member, a newest member of the Community Technology Advisory Board.

I'm a strategic communications leader and have had more than a decade of experience in the intersection of technology, policy, and public engagement.

My career has been focused on executive engagement and communications, and with that, translating complex technical and regulatory topics like AI and data privacy into clear, actionable communications for diverse audiences and decision makers.

I spent my professional communications career helping people navigate high-stakes moments where technology, public trust, and community impact converge.

Before working in technology for technology companies, began my career in the education equity space with a nonprofit called College Possible working to expand access and opportunity for underrepresented students.

Equity and access to information and technology has been core to my values since the beginning of my career.

I'm a long-time Seattle resident and that's really what has me joining tonight.

I believe we're at an inflection point in how cities can engage with technology on behalf of their residents.

These decisions can shape whether all Seattleites can meaningfully participate in civic, economic, and social life.

What I'd like to bring to this board is the ability to apply taking complicated technology topics and making them understandable, helping build consensus across people and producing well-researched, well-written recommendations designed to drive action.

I'm also a careful listener and apologize that I cannot be there in person but would have loved to and believe that really communicating clearly and enabling technology to support and help people thrive is key.

I'm honored to contribute and appreciate the time tonight.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you, Kathleen.

And thank you to our appointments and reappointments, the people in person and the ones that couldn't make it, but would like to pause here to see if there are any comments regarding our appointees before I make some, uh, make, make some quick comments.

Council member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to thank everyone for being here both online and here in person at the table and for your willingness to stand up and, you know, have your voice heard.

I recognize sometimes you may have to recuse yourself, you know, because of your duties, Mr. Sanders at Amazon.

But it's important to have that voice.

Two weeks ago, I had the head of energy for AWS at my office talking about data centers, because we have to have an informed debate about it.

So please inform, along with your colleagues, the debate that's happening within the Commission, using all your expertise, your academic backgrounds, and all the above, really, your personal backgrounds to really to bring that to bear to the challenges that we face.

So thank you, all of you, to include somebody who has to recuse themselves.

Awesome, thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Are there any other questions for our appointees?

Well, I first want to say I don't know if there's any closing remarks at all from anyone.

No closing remarks, but thank you for the time.

Absolutely.

I'm very grateful.

I know that I believe I went and met with some of the people on the committee before and just the level of expertise and the work plan that came out of that group to give recommendations on digital equity, broadband access, government, like all the things was very, very impressive.

Just to hear the knowledge that was in that room.

So I think you all make a great addition.

Is it Rajat?

Rajat, Vanita online, Kathleen, Colin, and Friday.

Very grateful and thank you all for coming here.

I'm looking forward to moving these appointments.

And so colleagues, I'm going to move that the committee recommends confirmations of appointment.

3520, 3522, 3525, 3523, 3526, 3521, 3528, 3524, 3527.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and second to confirm the appointments.

Are there any other comments on the appointees?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Kettle?

Aye.

Councilmember Rivera?

Aye.

Councilmember Strauss?

Aye.

Vice Chair Juarez?

Aye.

Chair Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Motion carries and the committee recommendation to confirm the appointments will be sent to the June 16 City Council meeting.

Thank you all for being here.

Really appreciate getting to know you all as well.

Thank you.

Okay, awesome.

Will we please read item number 11 into the record?

Agenda item 11, information item 2909, response to the statement of legislative intent for SPU 012SA2 utility discount program for briefing and discussion.

Awesome, and while we're waiting for our presenters to come to the table, I will turn to Councilmember Strauss for opening remarks.

This was his slide during budget season last year, and I know I'm really excited to hear more about the outcomes.

Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, colleagues, for being here.

I'll have some opening remarks.

I have a different set of remarks for closing out.

I just want to say this is more than eight years' worth of asking questions and working towards the changes that we have before us today, and that's why this is a really big deal.

Our Human Services Department has already made improvements to the implementation of the Utility Discount Program.

and we cannot legislate implementation.

So that's just part of our checks and balances, separation of power.

And HSD has increased the number of households signing up for this program who are already eligible 4% in just the last two years.

So we know that these changes are in fact working and there's still more work to do.

So why are we here today?

I guess we haven't really even explained what the utility discount program is, but we'll get into that in just a minute.

Essentially what it does is it provides discount on our utility bills for people who need it.

and why do we have changes today?

We have changes today because we have been using the state median income as the indicator for the threshold of who is eligible.

We have had a cliff of eligibility, so if you make a dollar more than what is eligible, you can't benefit.

we have had increasing affordability challenges in our city council president had a presentation just this last week demonstrating with data how things have changed and the utility discount program is one of the few places we in our city family are able to make a critical and large difference for families that need a little bit of help.

And so this legislation will make about 31,000 new low income households eligible for the utility discount program.

It's estimated that 8,800 of those are senior households, many on a fixed income.

I realize all of these talking points, I'm probably stealing your slides.

So I'm gonna stop actually and let you, BASK IN THE REALLY GREAT WORK THAT YOU HAVE ALL ACCOMPLISHED.

I'LL JUST SAY, AGAIN, CLOSING OUT THIS OPENING, WHY ARE WE HERE?

WE ARE HERE FOR THE PARENTS OF THE FRIENDS THAT I GREW UP WITH THAT ARE PAYING MORE IN PROPERTY TAXES THAN THEIR We're here for the seniors that have had difficulty signing up and were changing all of our processes to make it easier for people to remain eligible.

We're here for the family that is down on their luck just in this moment and needs a little bit of help, or the person walking down the street that you would perceive as being just fine, who's just lost their job and needs help for a couple months.

And so this is a really big and important change.

and we couldn't have done this without Council President Emeritus Juarez asking questions for many years and without the help of Council President Joy Hollingsworth, but more importantly, everyone at Seattle City Light, Seattle Public Utilities and the Human Services Department.

Hopefully I didn't steal too many of the slides and I'll turn it back over to the table.

Awesome.

Please jump in.

I think we'll just do quick introductions.

I'm Andrew Lee, General Manager, CEO for Seattle Public Utilities.

Marcus Jackson, Director of Custom Operations for Seattle City Light.

Leslie Brinson, Senior Policy Advisor at SPU.

Rob Santop, Intern General Manager and CEO at Seattle City Light.

And Tonya Kim, Human Services Department Director.

Just want to start off by saying we really appreciate the opportunity to report on the executive's response to Council's statement of legislative intent on expanding eligibility for Seattle's Utility Ratepayer Assistance Program.

But I want to start by thanking the Council here for leadership on this really important issue.

I know affordability is the top financial concern for most Seattle residents, and while utility bills are not the leading contributor to the high cost of living in the region, more people than ever find it increasingly difficult to cover month-to-month expenses.

Our presentation today has several primary elements.

We will begin by providing background on the city's utility assistance programs and how we got here today.

Next, we will discuss our efforts in recent years to increase enrollment in the utility discount program with the goal of maximizing enrollment of already existing income eligible customers who wish to participate.

And then lastly, we'll outline a proposal to expand the utility discount program eligibility to, as Councilmember Strauss mentioned, 60% of area median income, so shifting from state to area median income, and then expanding emergency assistance to 80% of area median income as well.

And the bottom line of all these recommendations is it expands the number of households that are eligible for these programs, which is huge.

Before beginning our presentation, I'd also like to offer Director Kim and Interim General Manager and CEO Santof the opportunity to make some opening remarks.

Well, Councilmember Strauss definitely hit on some of HSD's functions in our role.

I guess I'll just say, well, number one, I'm wearing the utility discount program swag, and it's suiting because the Human Services Department really works to bring on resources and have resources accessible to community members.

and in this case, you may know us as a funder or as a convener.

We are the direct service provider in this case and so we have Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light supporting our mighty team of 21 employees who are embedded in HSD to do those enrollments, to do the outreach, to have the language, access, build partnerships, recertifications, all of that good stuff that Council Member Strauss has has noted in his opening remarks.

And I wanna just highlight with that team, 21, I think that's small and mighty for the fact that we have approximately 39,000 folks who are enrolled and benefiting as of December.

And just in 2025, the program processed over 13,000 applications.

and they answered 17,400 phone calls and met with nearly 600 walk-in customers.

And so this is a labor of love and it benefits people on a monthly basis and so it's really important.

The other, I mentioned the community events, we are, and there's some very impressive stats on this too, but increasing our outreach, and it's really increasing our outreach also with those who are underserved, and so it's being with community who are trusted partners, and you know this in all sorts of service areas how critical that is. and I'll just say as the service provider, we are ready to help in expansion and we're really excited to lean in.

Thank you.

So I'd like to start out by saying thank you to chair and council members for the opportunity to brief you today.

At City Light, affordability remains at the center of our work.

Over the past several years, we've focused on making sure households facing financial pressure can more easily access the support they qualify for, including state and federal resources.

By working towards simplifying enrollment, partnering directly with community organizations, and aligning our program income eligibility with SPU, we're helping more families, seniors, and working people keep their electricity bills manageable.

We're also guided by Washington's Clean Energy Transformation Act, CETA, That directs electric utilities to keep household energy burdens to 6% or less.

Ensuring that the region's transition to clean energy does not impact our most vulnerable populations.

I want to thank the entire team at Seattle City Light for collaborating with our partners at SPU, HSD, and CBO and committing to a continuous improvement focus on this important effort.

All right, I think we will kick off this presentation.

I have been nominated by these lovely folks to speak on behalf of the Utility Assistance staff.

I just want to acknowledge that there's an army of staff back at SMT and at the central building who have contributed this presentation.

And also today, when I say we, I'm really speaking for all three departments, unless I specify SPU.

All right, this also has been a path.

We have been in conversation with council for many years, but specifically over the last several years.

Council member Strauss, I can remember reaching out while we were in the middle of the program evaluation talking about expansion.

and that program evaluation that we did in 2023-2024 was really a reflection point coming out of COVID, where we wanted to make sure that we were hearing directly from our customers.

We surveyed over 1,000 and to make sure that we understood both how the utility assistance programs were impacting them, but also what was preventing customers from enrolling.

We have had a challenge in our enrollment process over the years, and we really want to make sure that we're getting those barriers out of the way.

and so today's report out is both a report back on how we've been changing our approach to enrollment and reducing barriers in that way, and then as Director Lee mentioned, we will talk about our expansion proposal.

Council Member Strauss did steal my thunder a little bit on these slides.

Sorry.

All good.

So the Utility Discount Program is known as one of the most generous discount programs across the country.

We are incredibly generous with our 60% discount on City Light bills and 50% off discount on SPU bills.

We're also known among water utilities as innovative in providing water, sewer, and solid waste assistance to renters who pay for their SPU service either through their rent or through a third-party biller.

So in situations like the ratio utility billing, I can't remember the S, situation, those renters, if they have a Seattle City Light account, they have access to UDP even if they're paying otherwise for their SPU services.

Currently, and this will become a main part of conversation, eligibility goes up to 70% of state median income, which for reference is about 52%, 53% of area median income.

So during our survey process, these two quotes are some of the most impactful things we heard during our evaluation, really hearing from folks that this program makes a difference.

It is the largest benefit program in the city.

It is funded by City Light and SPU rate payers, and it offers between $1,400 and $2,400 a year in savings for customers.

When we surveyed our customers, about 86% of people enrolled in UDP said that the program helps them stay current and pay their bills.

We also have a handful of emergency bill assistance programs.

Emergency assistance is really intended for more episodic financial hardship versus ongoing affordability, and it really helps prevent electricity and water shutoffs when customers get behind on their bills, when they hit those unexpected financial challenges.

You can see these three programs offer eligibility a little bit higher than the utility discount program.

The emergency assistance programs currently go to 80% of state median income, and then City Lights Project Share, which is a customer donation funded program, goes all the way up to 80% AMI.

One thing to note, currently our emergency assistance programs offer only offer maximum assistance for households with children, an important distinction we'll talk about in a moment.

Overall, in 2025, these three programs offered a little over 5.8 million in assistance.

That was on top of the roughly 50 million in assistance that went out through the utility discount program.

All right.

During this process, we have landed on multiple goals to guide our work, both in redesigning and in expanding the program.

These goals are not comprehensive.

There are many, many within them.

But we really want to make sure that the program is helping customers reduce their or their utility burden.

We wanna make sure that customers are maintaining that benefit over time, that as mentioned, City Light is able to comply with the Washington Clean Energy Transformation Act, and that we're making enrollment simple and low effort, both for customers and for our staff who are processing applications.

These next few slides are really looking at how we've changed things over the last couple of years coming out of that program enrollment that I mentioned, program evaluation that I mentioned.

Enrolling pre-qualified customers has been a key strategy Generally, customers who access government programs are often subject to multiple burdensome income verification processes to prove they qualify for this program and this program and this program.

Our goal for many years has been to leverage those other income verification processes to reduce burden on customers and get them into the utility discount program and assistance programs faster.

We've had a data sharing partnership with the Seattle Housing Authority for about 10 years, where we are able to share data with them, with the customer's consent, of course, to automatically enroll their residents in UDP.

We were able to expand that over the last year or so to include the King County Housing Authority, so getting to Housing Authority residents outside of the city of Seattle, also to Bellwether Housing, and for recipients of LIHEAP, which is the Federal Energy Assistance Program.

We've also entered...

Another piece, coming out of COVID, our partnership strategies generally with affordable housing providers had languished a little bit.

Thanks to a new staff member at City Light, we've really been able to invest energy in building partnerships and have achieved 20 new partnerships with affordable housing providers, importantly including SHAG, which is one of the city's largest senior housing providers.

These partnerships allow us to host enrollment events on site, sort of to go where customers are and to enroll them, leveraging their affordable housing income verification.

And then finally, we are piloting a new cross-enrollment partnership with the King County Seattle Public Health Access and Outreach Team, so that as they're enrolling folks in other programs like OrcaLift, they're also enrolling in UDP.

Again, doubling down on community partnerships was a big, big part of the feedback that we heard during the program evaluation.

We are shifting the ways we're engaging community.

We are both leveraging outside community members to support customer enrollment while also really engaging with them to help us design new policy and procedures to make sure that the historic administrative barriers faced by community members are actually working for folks.

We have shifted to, in the past, we have mostly flyered and advertised for the program, and now we've shifted really to in-person enrollment supports at events.

We've also worked with the Department of Neighborhoods and have trained a cohort of community liaisons to provide in-language support, both at events, but also their expertise in making sure that our residents who speak other languages are able to access programs and that the program changes that we're making are working for them.

I will go to the next slide.

Thanks.

These images are just to capture the work that our communication folks and our program team have really been doing to de-government-speak a lot of the work that we have.

If you look on the far left, that was our paper application before a recent redesign.

And it doesn't matter what those words say.

You can all probably imagine the level of bureaucracy and confusion that's embedded in those black and white lines.

Our team has really gone about looking through and making sure that we are creating application processes that customers can actually complete correctly the first time to reduce the back and forth with staff.

Before this, our staff reported that generally customers were unable to correctly complete an application without engaging with staff.

We're really looking to employ design best practices and input from community to make sure that we're addressing that.

And finally, we've been taking a hard look at our program policies to make sure that we're aligning those with our goals of helping customers get the assistance they need.

A few changes to highlight.

Generally, the program requires customers to reconfirm that they are income eligible every few years.

We recently removed that requirement for senior-only households, age 65 and older.

Our analysis found that the risk of their incomes increasing after age 65 was negligible, but the risk of them losing their benefits as they had to complete administrative processes over time was high.

So we removed the requirement to balance out that risk.

We've also reduced barriers for SNAP recipients to make sure that they are able to get into the program in a streamlined way and use that SNAP eligibility also to renew and reconfirm their income.

And then looking ahead, there is still a lot of work in process over the next two years to completely redesign the renewal process generally and to streamline our income documentation requirements and to make sure that we have all of our communications available in multiple languages.

We are also in the middle of a technology options analysis to make sure that as we move forward, technology isn't a barrier for our customers.

Okay, the good news is that all of this work by the army of folks is actually working.

It's increasing participation.

and my phone is on and that's not supposed to happen.

Right now, use it at 70% of state median income.

We have roughly 107,000 eligible customers spread across the City Light and SPU territories.

At the end of 24, about 32% of them enrolled.

With the additional efforts that we put in 2025, we increased that up to 36%.

We're now at roughly 39% and hoping to reach 40 by the end of the year.

This slide is really to show that as we increase participation of our currently eligible pool of customers, that also increases the cost of the program.

So that's sort of the cost, can increase both when we increase participation and also later when we talk about increasing and expanding eligibility.

So just wanted to point out that we have two pressures on the financial side.

If our goal is to reach 50% enrollment of our currently eligible population, that would run roughly 75 million between the two utilities.

All right, I'm going to transition.

Are there any questions at this point?

Yeah, that'd be perfect.

Let's pause here.

Thank you so much.

Let's pause here and see if we have questions from my colleagues.

Council member, were you first, Council Member Juarez?

We'll go to you, Council Member Juarez.

I apologize.

I didn't get the little hand up quick.

Excuse me.

I was talking to Council Member Strauss about when we can ask questions.

So I will go ahead and ask my question.

It's good to see you again, Leslie.

I'm sorry.

I didn't recognize her before.

I'm like, that's Leslie from your other job.

Now you're here at SPU.

And the same excellent work.

Same wonderful PowerPoints, page numbers.

I don't go away.

You don't go away.

I love that.

And you know what you're doing.

Thank you so much.

I just have a quick question.

And again, I don't want to get too wonky.

On page 8, thank you.

First of all, this is all great.

And you can say...

I'm not one person to thank everybody for doing their job but on page 8 on introducing a new consent process that enables case managers support so what is the new consent process because I've seen that on the when you can sign up for UDP and so we have that data so what is the new consent process I mean just basically what it looks like how are you getting people to say do we have your consent to move forward?

And are you zeroing in on, well actually three questions.

Are you zeroing in on zip codes, any particular zip code that you can share with city council that we usually do with districts or zip codes that we do this with housing and other indicators and data markers.

If you look at the city and you put a heat map and you can see who's needing it the most and you can kind of get ahead of it so you can get to those community events and you know like 98125 or whatever.

when they're having events and saying, you know, I know you guys have booths everywhere.

And then the third thing quickly is, and correct me if I'm wrong, do you still have a contribution program?

I know that, is it with PSE or Sales City Light where folks like me can contribute to the warm house, the warm health, what was it called?

The warm, you can give money.

What was it?

Project Share.

Is it Project Share?

Yeah, City Light has a Project Share program where you can donate through your bills or make one-time donations.

Is that in our bill when we get it online or in the paper?

Doesn't PSE ask us if we want to give money for a warm home or healthy homes during the winter, that donation piece?

They might, but it wouldn't benefit City Light customers.

I know, but what I'm asking is, okay, so can Seattle City Light and SPU have that contribution donation program in the paper bill.

I know my daughters call me Amish mom, my millennial daughters, because I'm not on social media and I don't care.

But I like mail, I like paper.

So when we get the bill, I actually look at it and see if there's a donation piece on there that people who have more can give more.

and I'm pretty sure PSC does that for warm homes in the winter.

So that would be a nice area besides lowering the AMI or elevating and expanding the AMI to have an opportunity for those of us who would like to donate for this UDP.

That would be great.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Would you like me to answer your questions?

Yes.

The consent process that is mentioned there was really that the community organizations that are working directly with clients, primarily through HSD's Community Connectors program, were highlighting that they already have a consent disclosure process, but we weren't accepting that disclosure form so that they could inquire on their client's behalf.

So we now are, we heard from them and we quickly rolled that out across all three utility assistance teams to make sure that we were allowing that sharing of information in a way that was helpful as opposed to putting up barriers.

Okay, thank you.

Your second question was about zip codes and heat maps.

I would love to get back to Council on that.

We do have that, but if I report it off the top of my head, it will not be correct.

It's okay.

I just want to know.

And for the project share program, customers can donate.

You can have it on your bill.

It gets added to each bill, however much you want to donate to a customer, or you could do it one time.

And it goes into the project share fund.

It doesn't contribute toward our cost for the utility discount program, because that's through rates.

And then a note from the audience, we do include it on our bill inserts and on our bills from time to time.

And the only thing I would add is when we do the planning for outreach, language access, where we're really pushing and promoting, we do look at where there are lower-income residents, of course, and who, in the past, we've identified, for example, the real need to push for Spanish-speaking, and so which agencies do we work with.

And so that marketing and outreach component is particularly important to look at the data and see where we're under-enrolling, perhaps.

so we can make sure that we're kind of flooding that zone.

So we've definitely utilized that demographic data as well for planning purposes.

Just one quick follow-up, and it's good to see you, Director Kim.

We use the data from Seattle Public Schools for low-income students for lunch.

So are you working with Seattle Public Schools?

that might be something you might want to think about.

We did that with the Promise Program, right, Council Member Rivera?

So we could target, you know, to get it out there if we're going to provide the service.

And I think with the leadership of people like Council Member Strauss and Council President, well, actually everybody here, I think if we have more, we should give more.

And if you give us an opportunity to do that, I think people will come through.

So thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

I believe we had Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair.

First, I want to provide some support for my colleague on the other end of the dais.

I, too, like the paper bills.

Blood-ites unite.

Yes.

And it's really important.

For one, you can compare this year from last year.

It's like you can see, hey, maybe I have a problem here.

So it's a lot of good information.

So I thank you.

And you have the inserts that come with the bills too.

I take a quick glance at those as well.

So I just want to say thank you, in addition to giving back up to my colleague on the other end of the dais.

And by the way, strong move by putting the slide numbers again.

in support of my colleague at the other end of the dais.

You get off on the right foot if there's slide numbers.

So given that, we're on slide eight.

Can you go to slide 10?

And I just wanted to highlight one thing and I really appreciate, you know, your remarks regarding, you know, that first bullet regarding remove renewal requirement for senior 65 plus households.

As someone who's getting even ever closer to that number myself, I recognize the issue, but I really recognize it for two reasons.

One, my engagement in community, there is a lot of elder constituents, residents, neighbors that I know that live in homes and it's difficult and they want to age in place.

They can't afford to get their house painted, they can't afford a new roof, because that's like buying a new car, which in itself is like buying three houses when they were younger.

So the affordability issue is massive.

But it's more than that.

And it kind of goes to your point about you're not going to really be getting increased incomes, but the difficulty of doing so.

You know, I think of my own mother.

My dad passed five years ago and my brother and I, one brother and I, you know, took care of the financial and legal pieces when another brother was helping out.

Sister lives across the street, six houses down.

Fantastic.

But you know what?

Going back to those constituents, residents and friends, a lot of them don't have that support network.

And the idea that, you know, they get confused in this ever-increasing technological world that we live in.

It is super important that, you know, KISS principle, bottom line, keep it simple.

And so I appreciate that element.

I just wanted to foot stomp this slide and that bullet specifically for the reasons that I just said.

And then also give support to Council Member Warriors.

Thank you, Chair.

I want to just tag on to that for the many viewing public members.

The Human Services Department also has an Aging and Disability Services Division that we can lean on as well, and I know that Councilmember Strauss is a fan of our Division Director, Mary Mitchell, formerly Mary Mitchell, now Mary Pearson, We have case managers as well as contracted very important trusted partners, senior centers and others, who can make sure that they're also engaging folks in a way that we're meeting their needs, being present, having those paper forms and doing that outreach.

And so I just wanted to express that we can lean on our own internal resources.

And what's really nice about Aging and Disability Services, too, is that we have a countywide reach, and some of the services are beyond the city of Seattle.

And so we have that internal mechanism.

And also in support of paper.

We were very specific this year to redesign our paper application with the idea that we know folks, I've been in the midst of elder care, we know folks are not going to be able to use our online technology.

And also paper is a way for us to really test what might work better.

And we can invest in that experience and then roll that out into our technology.

So that's where we're at.

But I don't get a bill, though.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

helpful to know.

We'll go to Councilmember Rivera and then we'll go to Councilmember Strauss for comments.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you all for being here.

Leslie, nice to see you.

It's been a while.

I and this the utility discount program is something I, as you know, General Manager Lee and Leslie from working together in the mayor's office a few years ago, it's something that I really care about.

And I have a lot of constituents elder constituents who have lived in their homes for many, many years, as you've heard me say in the past, and some of these expenses are, you know, difficult for them.

So I want to acknowledge, Director Kim, thank you for talking about all the other areas where you will find seniors, because it's not just SHA, right?

There are seniors trying to, as Councilmember Kettle described age and place and they're just having trouble making ends meet with the affordability issues they're experiencing because they bought their home so long ago and now they're worth so much.

But yet their incomes are not indicative of how much their homes are worth.

So I really appreciate those pieces of this.

And then to Council Member Juarez's point, I just wanna say in terms of both the Promise students and SPS, those are great partners because a lot of the Promise students also that we're serving, 70% of them are low income or in that range anyway.

If I got the 70% wrong, it's not far off.

And so I think these are partners that we can make and the colleges are such a great partner to us.

that if we're not already doing so, I would encourage that as another partnership, Leslie, so that we can reach the families of those students.

That's important too.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

And thank you for everything you all collectively are doing to ensure that this program is being utilized and also expanded.

I know you're going there next to reach more folks in the city who need the support.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you, Council President.

I guess I also realize that we are talking about the Statement of Legislative Intent right now, and we'll be talking about the Council Bill in just a second.

It's essentially the same presentation, so I just want to thank everyone for all of your work on this.

As I said, we've been working and asking questions for over eight years, and I guess we'll talk about the legislation in just a minute.

Part of this is the cliff that we need to attend to if somebody makes a dollar more than what they're eligible for, they are left out in the cold.

And this legislation sets a schedule to continue expanding eligibility beyond 60% area median income.

We've already made that change from the state to the area, which includes a lot more people that have been just out of reach.

And there's more families that we need to help serve in the 60 to 70 and 70 to 80% area median income.

So this bill that we'll talk about in just a second, but is essentially this presentation, kickstarts the work to expand some level of discount to those households.

This legislation really and this expansion and this work, the statement of legislative intent was the pre-work to get to where we are and really helped us be able to stay on this schedule.

And this work that HSD, Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light has done are for our working families, for our elders who are on a fixed income, for those who suddenly found themselves on hard times, and for those who haven't moved or changed jobs, but our cities changed around them.

The family I grew up in would not be able to afford to move to Ballard of today.

As I said, the parents of the friends I grew up with are paying higher property taxes than their original mortgage.

And the K-shaped economy bans that we saw in the presentation last week show how we went from a port city, the gateway to Alaska, a sleepy fishing village, into a tech hub leading the world in software and technological advancement.

Affordability has changed here.

and on top of that anyone in any of those bands could have a change in their life that make them really need this program.

It really only takes three events and 72 hours to transfer anyone from a stable life into potentially being homeless.

This program is not a silver solution to stop that transfer from occurring.

but when you can take 50 to 60% off your utility bill until your situation stabilizes, that's a really big deal.

And so I'm just gonna take while we have this conversation going on, then we'll talk about the specifics of the legislation in just a minute.

I just wanna thank everyone who's worked on this.

And like Council President Meredith said, we don't thank people for just doing their jobs, we thank them for doing a really good job.

and in City Light we have Katie Sautter, Dylan King, Jessica Kenyon, Chris Ruffini, Karsten Croft, Mike Hamilton, Katherine Ainsberg, Melissa Brookwalter, Marcus Jackson, Britt Luzi, Maura Bruegger, Rob Santoff, Mike Haynes, Craig Smith, and absolutely Don Lindell.

in Seattle Public Utilities.

We've got Leslie Brinson, Wayne Liu, Paul Hanna, Bob Hennessey, and they left your name off, but I'm thanking you as well.

I'm sorry about that.

From CBO Saroja Reddy, we couldn't have done any of this without you.

I mean, I've been a dog on the bone about this for a bunch of years and you've been helpful.

You've been helpful in getting us to where we are today and just really cannot thank you enough.

Sure.

All right.

Yeah.

So what I'll do, I'll read item number 12 into the record.

Hang on.

We're not to the bill yet.

We're still doing this.

I don't know.

Anyway, we're closing up.

You're good.

Arkshay Ingar, Christy Parker from CBO, you've been invaluable to this work.

In Human Services Department, we've got Jen Schwalabog, Katie Clemens, Amy Holland, Hannah Thornton, Chaney Kilpatrick, Rob Murembueno, Alison McLean-Wright, Shirky Olo, Maggie Thompson, Director Kim, Alison.

In 2018, we were working for Sally Bagshaw saying, why can't we change these things?

took us all these years, here we are.

And at the City Council, we had Council Member Sally Bagshaw working on this, Council Member Deborah Juarez, Council President Joy Hollingsworth, Anthony and Jesse on my team, they thought I was really going up a big mountain with a really big rock and where were we ever going to get to the top?

Here we are.

And of course, Eric McConaughey, Brian Goodnight, thank you so much.

That was a full list, which was perfect.

It took a lot of people, and I'm sure there was more, but that was amazing.

That's why they wouldn't let me say that whole list at the press conference.

Thank you for that Councilmember Strauss and all your work and leadership on this and I know it took a lot and I know we're going to talk the slide as you said was the pre-work to get to the bill so looking forward to hearing that I'm going to read number 12 into the record if there's no more questions Councilmember Strauss I'll kick it back to you if that's okay to open us up and then we'll just jump right in and we'll invite Brian and Eric yes Brian and Eric to the table.

And so I'm gonna read this into the record.

Item number 12, Council Bill 12122, an ordinance relating to the utility discount program amending the income threshold.

This will be for briefing and discussion.

I don't think we need to reintroduce ourselves, but if Brian and Eric and Saroja, yeah, who, yes, the people that just came in, if you could just introduce yourself for the record and then we'll just jump right in.

Saroja Reddy, City Budget Office.

Brian Goodnight, Council of Central Staff.

Eric McConaughey on the Council of Central Staff.

Awesome.

And I will turn to Council Member Strauss to open us up and then we'll jump right into the presentation.

Thank you.

I have nothing more to add because I just gave my closing remarks, but let's talk about the details of this bill.

I think we've made a bit of a smash-up between our two presentations, so we have a few more slides that we'll walk through before we get to the legislation, if that's okay.

Cut me off if I'm stealing your talking points.

It's not my decision to make.

I'm here at the discretion and the pleasure of these folks.

I'm not sure.

Yes, that's fine.

Yes.

So what we'll do is we'll go through the slides, then we'll turn to Brian and Eric to see if they have any comments from central staff and then questions from our colleagues.

Is that cool?

Awesome.

Let's roll.

Or rock, whichever you like.

All right.

So as Councilmember Strauss mentioned, this is a lot of the pre-work to what these fine gentlemen will talk about.

As I mentioned earlier, Seattle Utility Assistance really stands out across the country and among our peers.

Agencies either cut off assistance at a lower income threshold, often as low as 200% of federal poverty level, which is around 30% AMI, or at around 60% AMI, or they offer a lot smaller fixed kind of monthly credits that don't nearly get at the impact of the utility discount program discounts.

In thinking about this, this slide really just helps us visualize the move between 70% of state median income into the area median income category.

As I mentioned, the 70% SMI is roughly 50% to 53% of AMI.

So the next kind of natural step up would be at 60% AMI.

And just for the record, these numbers come from the 2025 income limits.

They are for consistency through the financial work that we did.

We wanted to make sure that we were sticking with one grouping over time.

Those numbers recently went up to 2026, and they increased by about a few thousand dollars each.

This graph really shows how City Light and SPU customers break out across the zero to 80% area median income scale.

That orange vertical line to the left of that 0 to 52-ish percent AMI are where our current customers who are eligible for UDP fall.

That's how many of them there are.

And then everything to the right of that line are folks that we considered as we were looking at expansion.

You'll see the 50 to 60% AMI tranche is really a fairly big grouping.

And so just moving to 60% AMI, as Council Member Strauss has said, adds 31,000 customers.

there are another 50,000 customers roughly between 60 and 80% AMI.

So, so far we've talked about households by dollar amounts, and I think this slide really helps us land that more in a human-centered context.

Currently eligible UDP customers include seniors living on Social Security, SNAP recipients, and folks earning minimum wage.

Expansion to 60% AMI would take hourly wages up to about $31 an hour if somebody were working full-time.

Expansion up to 80% AMI would have expanded all the way to $42 an hour, roughly, if somebody were working full-time.

Probably the first question we asked ourselves is, what would it be?

What would it look like if we expanded the utility discount program as is, with the 50 and 60% discounts, all the way up to 80% AMI?

This slide demonstrates that that is a very large financial impact, that it roughly doubles the cost of the program if we were to do that.

When we saw that and we saw the 2.4 and 2.7% rate impacts for City Light and SPU, we thought, okay, we need to consider this a little bit differently.

We need to think about either expanding incrementally up the income scale as we can, you know, absorb along the way or tiering the discount.

One thing to note, our current technology doesn't support administration of a tiered discount, so that's part of the reason why we are not yet suggesting that maneuver.

Next.

Another metric that we looked at was utility burden.

The concept of energy burden is well known in the literature, and as mentioned, CETA requires City Light to move toward getting energy burden to be less than 6% of household income spent on energy bills, both electricity and natural gas.

Water and wastewater has a national target that is generally around 4.5%.

The concept of utility burden is something we sort of created because we have this combined utility program to think about what is the burden of our City Light and SPU bills on our customers.

So we looked at the four services, electricity, water, sewer, solid waste, and looked at making sure that those were below 10%.

and with our utility discount program for everyone except our very lowest income customers, we have already met that metric.

So we set that one off to the side.

So here's where I get to steal Brian and Eric's talking points.

City Light, SPU, and HSD are proposing that we expand the emergency, nope, the utility discount program up to 60% of area median income.

We think this approach expands at a rate that can be supported financially.

The City Light 2027 and 2028 rate package that is coming to Council in about a week includes a 0.5% impact on rates to fund this expansion.

And SPU is slightly more complicated with our multiple funds and our multiple rate paths, but this expansion impacts our six-year rate path, which is how we generally talk about all of them together, at 0.1%.

We also think this approach can be expanded, expands a set of pace that can be supported operationally.

It both maximizes the opportunity for auto enrollment with affordable housing since 60% AMI is the standard cutoff for affordable housing incomes.

It allows us a bit more time to roll out and continuously improve the program improvements that we just talked about with community to get to where we can, we have a solidly operating program.

This expansion, that 0.5% rate impact and that 0.1% rate impact, essentially equates to about an extra $6 per year for a City Light residential rate payer, and $3.25 per year for an SPU single-family rate payer.

UDP folks then would get a 50% discount on that increase.

Speaking to the benefit cliff, one way that we have considered addressing that is to expand our emergency assistance all the way up to 80% to AMI to make sure that folks who are on the other side of 60% have options and have assistance to make sure that they are able to pay their bills and avoid shutoffs.

The utility assistance programs operate differently or with different customer bases.

So City Light, this will add about 50,000 more City Light customers to that assistance opportunity.

And then for SPU, where our emergency assistance is available directly billed customers, so those folks who have their own water meter, we would add 13,000 more customers.

I'm just gonna smush up all the numbers.

So that's probably where I can stop on our things.

Would you all like to take over with your slides?

Yeah, yes, Eric and Brian, please.

I guess Cam's gonna help us out.

Yeah, so I'll jump in.

There's just a single slide to help us stay oriented.

What we're talking about today is Council Bill 121222. Say that again because I think I dropped off one of the twos.

121222.

This is sponsored by Council Member Strauss and co-sponsored by the Council President.

As has been discussed, this ordinance and if someone over there, if you don't mind, just jump into that next slide.

I'm sorry to ask you to do that, but thank you very much.

What it would do is it would, effective April 1, 2027, makes this change from 70% of the state median income as the income threshold to 60% of the area median income.

This would be for both SPU, Seattle Public Utilities, and Seattle City Light.

It would also anticipate and call for council to consider legislation during 2027 to look at these other two thresholds.

of a change in April 1, 2028 to 70% of the area median income.

And then similarly, but one year later, April 1 of 2029 to 80% of area median income.

Those were the effects of the ordinance.

And I think with that, I'll pause and let the sponsor and co-sponsor speak to that.

I think that's probably the next best thing.

Councilmember Strauss.

Yeah, I really have not much more to say because we've said it a bunch of times.

And I'll just really put the finer point on it, which is that we still have more work to do to increase the usage of this program by eligible families.

This change that you heard about simply changing from state to area median income allows us to pair the application with other applications for support services.

And we could not necessarily do that before we made this change because it was inaccurate.

for all clients to receive that set of paperwork because it didn't apply to everyone.

It applied to many but not all.

So it's an incredible important change that we're making to increase the uptake, the usage of this program by those who are eligible.

We still have more work to do.

And this really is one of the few affordability and anti-displacement tools that we have direct control over here at the city and here on the city council.

As you see on the slide, the changes are very simple, but all of the back-end work is very complicated.

And that's why it has taken so many years to get us here to today.

And today, we are taking affirmative action to make our Seattle more affordable for 81,000 families over the next three years.

That's all I got.

Awesome.

Thank you, Councilmember Charleston.

I will say thank you for your leadership on this and then all the work that you did.

It wasn't just the SLI last year, it was all the prep work to get to the SLI to get to this.

But I will say oftentimes when we talk about affordability, it feels out of reach for us as elected officials as well because it's, we gotta do housing, we talk about it in these really grandiose ideas and I think this is something people can feel in touch immediately and I am very grateful for that because that's just city based, that's just, you know, basics working better that people can feel and touch every day.

So really appreciate this coming before us as well and happy to co-sponsor with your leadership Council Member Strauss on this as well.

So colleagues, are there any questions about this?

Before, I'm gonna throw it back to Council Member Strauss for more comment.

I'm just playing.

I'm just playing Council Member Juarez.

I didn't have any questions, I just had another comment.

I wanted to ask Councillor Strauss if you forgot anyone to thank.

You good?

Did you thank everybody?

I'm sure I forgot somebody out there.

Yeah, so somebody will be hurt about it.

But we thank everybody, everywhere, for doing everything.

Oprah, Cher, God, everybody.

Thank you, everybody.

Really, what happened to Mary Mitchell?

Where is she?

and Lena Tebow.

She did great work on this, too.

Well, we gave her a shout-out.

So, yes, Lena, the whole team.

I just want to add that, Council President, thank you, because you and I talked, and this is one thing I like about Council Member Strauss.

I'm just going to embarrass him for one second, then I'll be quiet.

I love it when he comes to my office, and he did, was it back in January, February, and he said, and he calls me boss behind the scenes, I don't know why, and he said, I know you're chair Seattle City Light, what do you think?

And I said, yeah.

He's like, okay, you know what I'm doing today, come back.

We talked again, and I said, you know what, Council Member Strauss, just go with it, you got it, you got this, you got my support, you're doing the right thing, you're following the footsteps of Council Member Bagshaw, I've been on the Seattle City Light, often on that committee for almost a decade.

So I said, this is a great idea and you have the energy and go do good things.

Good luck, God bless, don't die.

Here we are.

Thank you guys.

Good job.

Thank everyone.

We done?

Yes, now we're going to Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettles has his hand up.

Is that an old hand?

I think that was an old hand.

Was that an old hand, Councilmember Kettles?

Yes, but I want to thank Councilmember Juarez for thanking Councilmember Strauss.

Council Member Juarez.

Okay.

Or Council Member Rivera, I'm sorry.

I know what you meant.

We know what you meant.

Thank you.

It's okay, she's my sister down there.

I do have a question about how we're paying for the increase, the expansion, and I do know we have rates that we're going to be looking at increasing rates both to City Light and SVU rate payers.

And so I guess my question is, and I'm just going to ask it for the record, I assume that that was taken into account and that with changing of the AMI, even though everyone is paying more as rate payers, that there's still then that benefit to the customers that we're trying to help with UDP.

I guess that's my question.

So we're going to increase everybody's, all the rate payers get increased, but even with that increase with this proposal, we're going to see a benefit to the folks that would be eligible.

And then in part, maybe that's why we're also increasing AMI, changing from SMI to AMI, as we've done other programs in the city.

This is not new.

We've done this also with childcare and some of our other investments, where we're no longer doing the state's median income, but we're doing the cities, because our city is much higher.

It's more expensive than many of the other cities that are in the state, and so it makes sense for us to be using area median income versus the state medium income.

Yes.

OK.

Do you want to lead off, Leslie, and then maybe General Manager Santoff, if you want to comment on that?

Maybe can I jump in real quick to say, and they'll confirm or tell me that I'm wrong.

It's a 0.4% rate increase for City Light and 0.1% for SPU, 0.5% for City Light.

but that's to cover this program, Council Member Strauss.

I'm talking about we're increasing rate payer both at City Light, we're increasing rates, excuse me, both at City Light and SPU above that in general.

So everyone is subject to the rate payer increases and so maybe part of the 0.5 increase and 0.1 increase is to cover UDP but all those rate payer everything is increasing for everybody beyond 0.5 and 0.1.

So I guess what I'm getting to is we're all going to pay more, including low income folks.

And so I just want to, I'm trying to daylight that everyone's going to be paying more and more than 0.5 and 0.1.

It's just that we are increasing, the additional increase will include this 0.1 and 0.5 in order to cover the expansion.

And in addition, this expansion will have a great benefit to the folks that are eligible because we're doing all those increases across the board.

And I see both City Light They're nodding, so thank you.

Council Member Rivera, you're correct.

So this 0.1 and 0.5 is the impact of the expansion for the utility discount program.

When you see the city light rates come forward next week, I think, and the water rates for SPU come forward in about a month, you will see this baked into the overall rate increases.

This is a portion of that.

So you're absolutely correct.

But it's a very small portion of that increase.

It's a very small portion, correct.

Yeah, so then we can provide relief.

We expect about, I'm going off the cuff, 19 million in additional assistance going out as a result of those smaller increases.

Thank you, Leslie.

So I just want to say, and to the public watching, that we recognize There is no avoiding increasing rates.

That's just, sadly, I wish I could avoid that.

But because we are, we're taking into account that it's gonna have a huge impact on a lot of folks in our city.

So we are doing this to ensure that we're able to provide some benefit to the folks that are most impacted by the increases across the board that we are forced to do.

I mean, we have to.

and so I really want to thank you all again because General Manager Lee and I have had many, many conversations about this.

I also had the conversations with General Manager Dawn Lindell, former, about having to increase rates and then its impact to our low-income folks.

And I appreciate that we're expanding the UDP in response to having to do those rate increases.

So thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

Councilmember Strauss, closing comments or thank yous?

No more thank yous.

Councilmember Rivera, you called out something very critical and very important here, and I just want to thank you for noting that, so I want to expand on that.

So for on average, this part of the rate increase that we'll see over the course of several months is about 50 cents per month for a City Light customer or 27 cents a month for an SPU customer who is not on the utility discount program.

as Councilmember Rivera noted that as those rates change even those on the utility discount program will also have to see an increase.

And one of the aspects if you go to the slide previous to this about the four questions What we did with this legislation is we set the effective date for the increase of the threshold to coincide with HUD's dispersal of updated figures for area median income.

And I'm just going to note that there's a little bit of a gap there between January 1st when rate increases change and April 1st, and so we may make a one-year alteration so that we can get people, if we're gonna be increasing rates this year, then we need to be able to have some sort of gap there.

But that's for more conversation.

I just wanna note that that is why the April 1st date is different than the rate increase date of January 1st.

Awesome.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Did you have a...

No.

Okay.

Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you for that.

And I just really wanted to, like I said, daylight that we understand we have to make the increases both on the city light and SPU end.

And I'm all for, as you know, transparency.

And so that's why I raise the fact that we will be increasing those rates.

And because we have to do that, we're also mindful about affordability and the high impacts to our low income residents, including seniors who might have difficulty paying their utility bills.

And that's why we're also looking at doing this, changing our discount program to meet that need.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

I'm looking forward to this.

I know that July 9th we'll have our second discussion about this as we continue to move forward with it.

So thank you all.

Really appreciate your time and work on this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hopefully someone's not playing a water drinking game at home for the thank yous.

They would be very full of water.

Okay.

Item number 13 in the record.

Agenda item 13, CB121221, an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities authorizing general manager slash CEO to enter into a contract with Waste Management of Washington Incorporated to provide recycling processing services for the city of Seattle.

For briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

I like when you talk trash.

So, well, this is recycle, but it's still trash, I guess.

I was talking trash.

Councilmember Juarez likes to talk trash a lot, so we are looking forward to this trash talk.

Yes!

Lead off with quick introductions, if that's all right?

Absolutely.

Yeah, again, General Manager Andrew Lee.

Go ahead, Sally.

I'm Sally Holtzman.

Microphone, Sally.

Oh, sorry, this is Sally Holtzman.

I am the Solid Waste Contracts Manager at SPU.

And Brian Goodnight, Council Central Staff.

Awesome, looking forward to the recycling.

So you all were doing a presentation on, bye, thank you so much.

Thank you, all right, for our drinking games at home.

Thank you, thank you, no.

Okay, so recyclables, processing contract, and procurement process.

So we're talking about recyclables, the contract, colleagues.

We have this, and before you all start, we have this on the agenda if we feel comfortable about voting on the, okay.

I just wanted to just take a temperature check on this.

I'm fine with it, but just wanted it with my colleagues.

Okay, awesome.

All right, let's keep going.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This next item is a proposed ordinance authorizing a contract to process the recycled material collected in the city.

SPU's current recycling processing contract with Rebenco expires on March 31st, 2027. Last year, we issued a request for proposal or RFP for new contracts and reviewed the submitted proposals.

and happy to say that Waste Management of Washington, also known as WM, was selected based on the evaluation criteria in the competitive RFP.

Today we have Sally Helzman, who is SPU Solid Waste Contracts Manager here, to present more detail about the proposed contract.

Thank you, Andrew.

All right, well, good morning, everyone.

Thank you for having us.

We appreciate the opportunity to share with us this contract, some of the details, and answer your questions.

The purpose of the legislation before you today is to authorize Seattle Public Utilities to enter into a contract with Waste Management WM of Washington to provide recycling processing services for the city.

I want to mention right out of the gate that while this is a more expensive contract than our current contract, it will not have any rate impacts.

I'm going to provide you a little bit of an overview of solid waste contracts, just to give you a big picture on how we are running our solid waste system.

We have the recycling processing contract as one of the five major contracts.

It is with Republic, started in 2009, and as Andrew said, it will end March 31st, 2027. We also have a long haul and disposal contract with WM that was started in 1991 and ends right the year later.

We have curbside collection contracts with both WM and Recology, a C&D waste collection contract with WM, and then finally, organic processing contracts with Cedar Grove and Lens.

So we cover in the next several years almost all of the contracts' renewals needed to continue to operate our system effectively and efficiently.

A little bit of background on Seattle's recycling.

Over the past 20 years, as Seattle has grown, our solid waste collections the tons generated, including recycle and compost, have stayed flat or dropped as our population has grown.

This is attributed to the excellent activities of our residents and businesses who have learned to improve upon waste diversion and waste prevention.

We have about 80,000 tons of recycling per year, approximately 62% of these tons are single-family, 35% of these tons are multi-family, and the remainder are small business and self-haul tons, which are the tons taken to the transfer station.

The way the system works is that the city has a list of designated recyclables, and we require customers to sort their material at curbside locations SPU educates the customers.

Hopefully you have heard the phrase empty, clean and dry a lot.

That allows us very successful recycling outcomes.

And I'm not sure if this is standard, but please do interrupt me if needed.

Thank you.

Seattle's recycling processing contract and a procurement process is such that we contract for residential recycle processing separately from our collections contracts.

This is different than many of our suburban neighbors' cities who package or bundle their contracts with the contracted haulers.

WM, Recology, and Republic are three of the main.

City of Seattle has both sufficient tons of our material as well as sufficient management capacity to be able to operate our own recycling processing and organics processing contracts, which allows us, the City of Seattle, to take advantage of having our own and meeting our own goals and priorities.

Cities with similar processing service contracts are Tacoma, Olympia, Spokane and Vancouver in Washington as well as other large municipalities such as Los Angeles, San Diego, New York City, Washington DC and others.

These are large contracts that we are able to manage ourselves and we do get financial as well as environmental benefits.

Seattle's contract with Republic Services started in 2009 As the result of this aging contract, the terms are outdated and insufficient, so we developed a process to come up to date with all of the contract terms.

To prepare for this contract, we did a benchmarking study of national as well as Canadian contracts, and then we did a request for information from interested contractors.

We received seven responses to our request for information.

We took all that information, the benchmarking and the RFI feedback, and we developed an RFP which was issued in April of 2025. We received two responses to our contract, to our RFP, excuse me.

Republic and WM responded.

As Andrew mentioned, WM was the, based upon the evaluation, WM came out as the higher responder to the evaluation.

They scored higher on both the technical and the price.

On the technical, they scored 50%, just over 50% higher.

The technical criteria included commodity capture residual waste rates, processing, marketing, and operator performance and experience, and contingency processing options.

On the price criteria, WM scored 43% lower in terms of the price.

So both technical and price, they outperformed.

We then entered into a negotiations and contract development stage.

I just want to provide with you a little bit of the detail on the evaluation criteria.

As you see here, the final result of the criteria was WM 81.4 and Republic Services 52.1.

As I mentioned earlier, this contract will come at a higher cost to address all of the changes over the past 20 years.

The new contract is estimated to cost approximately 6.4 million in 2027, which is an increase from 1.4 million in 2025. While we did anticipate increases in the recycling contract costs, they were over what we had anticipated, but as noted, they will not result in a rate increase.

The Solid Waste Fund will absorb the cost with no rate path impact.

So why is the price of recycling going up?

Contract's processing costs are based on several factors.

The first one is the recycled materials processing fee.

This is the per ton fee to process all of Seattle's recyclables.

And then that would be the gross cost.

And then the net cost would be minus the monthly commodity credit revenue that Seattle receives based upon how well the commodities are sorted, how well the recycled materials are sorted and turned into commodities that are then sold into the marketplace.

Since 2009, the industry has seen significant changes impacting overall processing costs both in the processing fee requirement, the requirements to process the materials as well as in the commodity credit revenue area.

The difference Differences that we see now that have changed since 2009 are the materials mix in the curbside recycling bin, the things that are in the blue bin.

Many more plastics and types of plastics are the predominant change to the recycling mix.

but this complex, more complex dream requires processing improvements which are generally in the form of automation and technology improvements which come at a significant cost.

So MRF is a mixed recycling facility where we take our materials to be sorted and turned into commodities has changed dramatically in its technology that is used to sort through all of the various materials.

Additionally, the markets now demand cleaner commodities.

If you're familiar, if you think back to around 2018, we had what is called China Sword, where China rejected our recycling material because it was not clean or quality commodities.

And so now, the markets overall, everyone demands higher quality materials, which requires higher quality processing.

And additionally, or finally, the commodity values are continually changing.

Aluminum seems to have continued to grow in its value, but things like glass and lately PET has declined in value.

So that affects the material commodity mix that we, as I will bring you back to, have to address in our overall costs of recycling.

So it's again, the processing fee minus the commodity credit revenue that brings us to the current recycling costs.

On a good note, we do have upcoming improvements to overall recycling revenues.

The Recycle Reform Act passed last year, and as a result of the legislation, packaging producers will fund the recycling costs for all of the packaging products.

The state will implement this.

The Department of Ecology will start implementing this.

is it is currently implementing in this and starting in 2030, we'll start to see reimbursements of all of Seattle's recycling costs.

In 2030, we'll see 50% reimbursement levels.

In 2031, that will go up to 75% reimbursement of our recycling costs.

And in 2032, we will see reimbursements cap out at 90%.

So that will address some of the additional costs that we're seeing in this current contract.

And then finally, we have some important other updates that we had to make to address changes to just overall changes and needs in the recycling industry, both to maintain affordability here in the City of Seattle, as well as to reflect the importance to the City of Seattle residents and businesses of strong environmental outcomes.

High-quality processing is very important to us.

We want to capture as much of the recyclables in the blue bin as possible and turn those into high-quality commodities.

The technical aspects of this contract will allow us to achieve very high capture rates as well as high-quality commodities.

We also want to see improved environmental outcomes and to do that we want to see higher transparency or more transparency in our contracts.

all of our leadership to be able to answer the question, what happens to our recyclables?

In this contract, we have improved communication about where our materials are going.

We will know the names and the responsible recycle marketing businesses that will be taking our commodities.

And we have built into the contract the ability for the City of Seattle to say, if we do not find that that responsible recycling market is actually responsible then we can curtail the work with that company.

We also want to be able to have flexibility in this contract such that if material values change then we can quickly respond to the changes to the underlying commodity value such as the decline of PET now so we're not collecting materials that don't have a value.

We have also added some accountability measures to this contract, additional performance fees, and very important strong yearly audits that allow us to assess how the contractor is doing related to our contracting and processing goals.

So I want to conclude and be able to address one of the questions that was asked in the questions today, a question about prevailing wages and anti-displacement provisions.

The City of Seattle SPU followed City of Seattle contracting financial administrative services guidelines in developing this contract, including all wage requirements.

WM met all of the wage requirements and all of the requirements of the City of Seattle contracting guidelines that were provided in this contract.

So we followed the guidelines that FAS has provided to SPU.

WM and Republic both have a strong commitment to union employees and union shops.

WM has 245 employees in the City of Seattle, 845 union employees in the Puget Sound area, and the City of Seattle thanks both Republic and WM for their commitment to union employees.

WM and Republic both have union and non-union employees at their MRF facilities and their other facilities in the City of Seattle.

and so the City of Seattle has entered into this contract with the goal of the City of Seattle enters into this contract and all of our contracts with the goal of strong partnerships with strong contractors and excellent employee opportunities and we feel that this contract really represents the best of what we are able to achieve in recycling with WM as our partner.

Thank you.

Awesome, thank you for that presentation.

Brian, do you have anything from central staff?

No additional comments, Chair.

I think it was well covered, so thank you.

Okay, awesome.

Director Lee, did you have any comments?

All right, awesome.

Colleagues, are there any comments regarding the contract and the terms?

Council Member Juarez?

No, I'm good, thank you.

Okay, sorry, I thought the smile meant yes.

Councilmember Strauss.

I think he wants to thank someone.

I do.

Councilmember Strauss.

I'll be quick.

Sally Holtzman is a person that works for our city that is stuck between our bureaucracy and our contracts that we contract.

And sometimes there are issues with people getting their recycling picked up or their trash picked up.

Sometimes a driver doesn't realize that that unpaved road is actually an alleyway, even though it's here in the 17th largest city in the nation.

And Sally, you do really hard work on behalf of our clients, stuck between the contract and the hard place.

And I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you.

I will have additional questions that were raised today about prevailing wage and anti-displacement clauses.

If you want to vote this out today, I might bring an amendment to full council.

But not knowing, I don't know.

So this is all real time.

Open public meeting discussion.

You're good.

I think I was checking with colleagues if they feel comfortable voting today.

I'm seeing some head nods.

Councilmember Strauss, are you okay with out of committee and bringing your amendment?

Yeah, even though I hate bringing amendments to committee and I see Bob looking at me.

I know.

Is that, is that, are you okay?

Yes, I'm fine with it.

Okay, awesome.

I got you.

Oh, Councilmember Kettle, you have a question.

I'm sorry.

I didn't forget you.

Yes, Chair, and thank you everyone for being here.

I really appreciate the rundown.

I've reviewed the brief before.

It struck me.

In terms of slide 6, there seems to be a strong disparity between the scores, and what does that tell us in terms of the service that we received today and over the last number of years?

Is there anything that can be drawn from that in terms of the disparity between the scores between WM and Republic?

Thank you for that question, Councilmember Kettle.

I think WM and Republic offer strong recycling processing services.

WM has committed and invested more and more recently in their MRF mixed recycling facilities both here and throughout the Pacific Northwest.

And that is a reflection in the evaluation that you see stronger processing, a commitment to stronger processing, stronger automation, and stronger overall operation of the facilities.

And we expect with the Recycling Reform Act, that Republic will also be doing additional investments in order to improve upon their MRF results and their MRF operations.

The Recycled Reform Act will increase recycling throughout the Puget Sound and throughout the state, and so the Recycled Reform Act is driving a lot of additional improvements that you see in this contract because these are industry-wide improvements.

And so both Republic and WM will have to meet the goals and the requirements of the Recycle Reform Act in addition to having more materials that need to be processed.

So I think that that will change in the timeline that the Recycle Reform Act will come out.

WM and Republic both have continual commitments to updating their facilities.

Okay, thank you, I appreciate that.

It begs the question, when you see such a disparity, it's like, what drives that?

I mean, I guess it's more of a positive related to WM as opposed to a negative to Republic.

I also found with interest and support slide two in terms of the overview and the various types of contract types and having that point that you made at the end in terms of the ability for the city to do its piece.

And to back up my colleague, Councilmember Strauss, it says curbside collection.

Mine actually is on the alley.

So the alleys are important.

So I just wanted to put a plug-in for alley collection as well.

Mine is paved or concreted, if you will.

So that's important.

And by the way, I do empty, clean, and dry our recycling.

Because for some reason, it's me and the family that is the only one who can put everything out into the recycling bin.

So I can confirm that for the entire family.

And the last thing I just want to say, I think it's important for us to do this.

And I appreciate on the organics with Cedar Grove, another area that I do for my family.

and you know to have these different types of recycling and then even the broader the more industrial recycling like it pains me like when a local recycler that's doing like drywall or whatever or some other type of recycling glass that gets bought out by a French international company VC or whatever and then they decide for their own interest that they don't care they're just going to shut down this recycling capacity for our local area.

and we need to be looking out and having that bigger picture so that we have, in addition to what we're seeing here, the industrial recycling and so forth because it's so important in a more general sense.

So that's just an editorial comment added to the questions and the observations of the slide deck and my own family practices, so thank you.

Thank you for being a committed family member.

It is interesting to note that the alleyways are a significant part of the City of Seattle solidway system and the benefit of that is that it keeps some of the trucks off of the main roadways.

So we are always advocating on behalf of well-maintained alleys.

So that's just a good plug for always well-maintained alleys because they keep trucks off of the main streets.

God bless them with steep slope streets, I'll say that three times fast, in Seattle, particularly in my district, between Magnolia and Queen Anne particularly, and the skill that they show to maneuver and then come back into my dead-end alley, it is a feat every week for those guys to do that.

So please pass.

out in the chamber here at the table, please pass the admiration of their ability to drive those big rigs down those alleys.

So thank you.

We appreciate that.

We will pass it on.

And I will see you potentially in the future on the C&E collection contract, which addresses some of your concerns and interest in the more industrial side of the recycling world.

Awesome, thank you Councilmember Kettle.

Colleagues, if we are comfortable, I'm gonna move this out of committee.

We know that we have a potential amendment from Councilmember Strauss as well, so looking forward to that.

And thank you for, I am, I didn't say that in a rude way.

It was the laugh that made it.

Okay, okay.

All right, no worries.

I didn't say that as a joke.

Okay, so I'm going to move that the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 121-221.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and second to recommend passage of the bill.

Are there any final comments before us?

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Kettle?

Aye.

Councilmember Rivera?

Aye.

Councilmember Strauss?

Aye.

Vice Chair Juarez?

Aye.

Chair Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Five in favor and none opposed.

Motion carries.

Committee recommends the passing of the bill.

It will be sent to the June 16th City Council meeting.

Thank you all for your hard work.

It was really, really great.

Thank you.

Okay, so two things.

This brings us to the end of our meeting.

However, before we close, and she's gonna be really mad that I embarrassed her, but Martha Newman, who's retiring later this month, this is your last SPU meeting, Martha.

It's been a pleasure working with you.

You have worked 14 years at SPU, but you started government over, what, 25 years ago?

you have prepared me for the most wonkiest meetings to make me smarter and sound really, really good because you make information palatable, you make it so I can understand it, and then you make it so I can articulate it to other people and I can get it.

Even the most wonkiest stuff, especially on the wastewater, the wastewater committee that I love sitting on that Council Member Kettle used to sit on, he left me and so now I have Council Member Lynn.

But it has been a true pleasure and we're so grateful.

I know that we have some stuffed surprises for you, but if there's no objection, if you wanted to say a few words on the record, colleagues, I would, if you want to.

Come on, Martha Newman.

And colleagues, if you have any comments after, I'll go to you.

Is that microphone on?

Give us one.

I was not expecting to do this.

I was not even expecting to be here today.

So anyway, thank you.

It's been an honor and a pleasure to serve Seattle City Council on all the various committees.

I learned so much from all of you, and I appreciate your dedication to making our city a more livable and welcoming place and all of the hard issues that we have to work on.

So I won't miss all of you as I launch into my next phase.

So thank you.

Don't go, Martha.

Don't go.

Probably the most impressive thing I read in your bio and all this stuff was the two years you spent in Sierra Leone helping farmers learn about rice and how to farm and all those pieces.

And so that was, to me, just shows the type of person you are, just committed to service and community.

So thank you.

So grateful for you.

Colleagues, are there anyone that has any comments?

Councilmember Kettle?

Yes, Chair.

First, I wanted to say thank you.

I've been on public utilities the whole time, even though it's had some changes for the committee.

And in terms of external committees, the council president made some changes, so therefore I'm not on the regional wastewater committee any longer.

But I did want to say that experience, in addition to being on the committee, really points to the great work that you've done and I also appreciate Bob Hennessey too in preparing the pieces related to the council and the work that we have to do in support of SPU and in support of the city and the people of the city.

So I just want to say as often in this time in terms of my past career, fair winds and following seas, which is apropos not just for like the Navy but wastewater.

So thank you for your service to our city.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Council Member Rivera.

Just, oh Martha, I'm so sad.

I am so appreciative of all the help that you provided as part of my YRA 8 committee assignment.

And it's not just your help, it's just all the work that you do and the caring that you have toward this work and all the work that you do is just really impressive.

I am so grateful for it and I know you have to retire.

You deserve it.

I hope you have a great retirement but you will be missed and we're being jokey up here but you will be missed and I just want you to know that On the record, I am so appreciative for your service to the city.

The city was better for your service.

So thank you so much.

And you will be very, very terribly missed.

And I might track you down.

I live in your district.

I'm just kidding, Martha, but really, thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Martha.

Are there any other comments, colleagues?

No?

Awesome.

Martha, thank you.

I know you were not expecting that, but thank you.

Appreciate you so much.

I knew you wouldn't be mad at me for putting you on the spot.

Come on.

You like me.

Okay.

This concludes, colleagues, if there's no further additional, if there's no additional if there's no further business.

This concludes the June 11th meeting on the Governance and Utilities Committee.

Our next meeting, colleagues, is scheduled for July 9th at 9.30 a.m.

July 9th at 9.30 a.m.

Hearing no further business, this meeting is adjourned.

It's 11.31.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.