Seattle City Council Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development & Arts Committee 121019

Good morning and welcome.

It is 9 39 a.m.

And it's December 10th 2019. This is the Civil Rights Utilities Economic Development and Arts Committee.

I'm Lisa Herbold, its chair and council member representing District 1 West Seattle and South Park.

Just a quick review of today's agenda.

We will start with a words worth presentation followed by public comment and then we will move into our items of business.

which include a number of appointments from various different commissions within the bailiwick of this committee.

Then we will move to from the appointments to a couple of easements for Seattle Public Utilities.

Then we'll have a series of briefings also from Seattle Public Utilities.

One, a risk and resiliency assessment framework briefing.

Another, an accountability and affordability strategic plan briefing.

And then finally, we will conclude today's meeting with a Seattle Public Utilities entrance audit plan.

Something that we do every year both at the start and at the end of SPU's annual audit.

So if with no No comments on the agenda, I will move to approve the agenda and We'll hand it over to our civic poet I'm so pleased that you're able to join us today.

And if you could introduce our poet today.

But if you could start with just a little bit of an overview of the Civic Poet program, I think that would be really, really great for our viewing audience.

Wonderful, and thank you for having us.

Absolutely.

So the overview of the Civic Poet Program is most importantly connected to the role of the arts and social change.

It is an element of the city of literature and an extension of UNESCO site, which means that Overall, not just Seattle, other cities who are part of UNESCO are invested in using the arts for social change and social justice.

And my role as a civic poet will be two years.

It is a two-year program.

So engaging people in community, wanting to know what people say, and using poetry to bring that out.

Great.

So I believe you are the city's third civic poet.

I am.

And you were chosen by your peers, am I correct in that?

in what the process is.

So it's quite an honor.

It's different than, a little bit of a different process than the classic Poet Laureate that we see in other places.

I think it's designed to be more of a grassroots and from the community recognition of your skills and talents and capabilities.

It is that.

It is a panel and it takes quite a bit to be able to be selected, and I feel doubly honored because it's the second time in 13 years that I've had the gift of representing the city.

I was the city's poet populist, which meant that everyone voted throughout the city in an election to have me be a poet representing the city for a year and to have the honor again.

I feel like I better do an even better job.

Great, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

So I am very excited to introduce today's poet.

Chaewoon Kim is someone I've had the blessing of working with before, so doubly delighted to introduce them today.

They graduated with a BA from the University of Washington, double majoring in comparative history of ideas and gender, women, and sexuality studies.

They have worked at nonprofits, Powerful Voices, and Young Women Empowered as a program facilitator, teaching artist, and mentor within the arts.

They create within various mediums, speculative fiction, poetry, urban mythology, performance, visual and fiber arts.

And I'll let you introduce the title of your poem.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for having me this morning.

Yeah.

Good morning, everybody.

My name is Chae Eun and my poem's name is called Whatever You Want Me To Be, Ajumma.

All the small moments of diverting attention like, damn, let's just look some other direction, I sidestep and here comes Hood Ajumma with the tattooed on eyebrows and always the blunt questions I sidestep and she says, slightly yelling, slightly just being a loud Korean auntie, what are you, a boy or a girl?

And here goes a sidestep game, a tactical diversion, the distraction from always spectacle.

The boy laugh comes through my body real slow.

Maybe if I smile big and speak sincere from my heart, move honest, I can avoid answering her question, what are you, a boy or a girl?

But there it is, really, her curious smile, the real one, too big to be mad.

I say with the sidestep, with the slow, deep boy laugh that makes me, even me, somewhat curious, like, damn, but are you a boy or a girl?

I say with a sidestep toward her, Ajumma, with the tattooed-on eyebrows and the half-alarming, half-refreshing directness.

Check in with the body feels warm, but okay.

She's slightly yelling, slightly just being a loud Korean auntie.

What are you, a boy or a girl?

I reply, I'm whatever you want me to be, Ajumma.

It's a sidestep like, damn, this question gets so exhausting, but auntie smiles too big to really feel so badly.

So I try to sidestep and look at her steady and honest.

What are you, a boy or a girl?

I'm whatever you want me to be, ajumma.

Somewhat bemused, but fully satisfied for the moment she starts cracking up and pats me on my shoulder.

I think my Jedi mind trick worked.

Moments like this becoming gentle.

Understanding is difficult to hear if your mind is too loud.

Sometimes my mind gets so loud with things that are not mine.

The discomfort flush in my cheeks, attached to a whole lot of other things that have nothing to do with the single blunt question from Hirajima with the tattooed on eyebrows.

I'm sidestepping people with unsmiling faces again and again in daily life.

Unsmiling faces who want nothing other than to harm me with What are you, a boy or a girl?

My mind gets so loud with things that are not mine.

Like, I guess I can understand why looking at me is sort of confusing for you.

Sometimes I think it's confusing for me only because y'all keep looking so confused at me in the first place.

But I do think there's something even deeper that's happening here, not to say this world shouldn't be better or nothing like that, but this thing like, oh, why?

How come it feels the same sensation echoes me on edge, making me knee-jerk, sidestep when smiling faces do come with their questions?

The sensation of heat I feel in the body becomes hard to distinguish the difference.

Somatic reaction patterning really fathoms deeper bruises, urged to sidestep the questions, what are you, a boy or a girl?

My mind space turns stuffy, gets so loud with things that are not mine.

A shortness of breath, self-consciousness, forced fake calm mindfulness of the fake calm mindfulness of the desire to squash out the light of the lesson because the churning in my stomach is uncomfortable.

The clarity when all my mind becomes quiet.

Things not mine evaporate into empty space.

No self, no sidestep.

It's a gentle understanding becoming that is difficult to hear if your mind is too loud.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Tan.

Lovely.

Thank you for having us.

It's good to see you, Jordan.

All right, so we are going to take these appointments in some logical order here.

And, oh, but first we have public comment.

That's right.

Thank you, Noel, for reminding me.

We have one person signed up for public comment, Marguerite Richard.

Please step up to the mic.

Newell will be keeping time and your time is two minutes.

I may have a disability but I know how to see that clock.

Thank you very much.

You don't need to remind me of nothing.

Good day everyone.

We having a serious problem.

This is Human Rights Month and I'm a human and if you say I don't have no right then we need to have an open discussion right now.

because I'm a peacekeeper, I'm a peacemaker, but these people have destroyed the black community's peace down here.

And what I'm talking about is that there was a beating of a young black female, 24 years old.

I don't know all the information, but I know the woman's aunt, her great aunt, gave me a phone call and told me that it happened.

It wasn't one cop that beat her.

I heard it was seven of them.

And she didn't look like Shae Lynn, the way I would have known her and met her for the first time.

No.

And so we're dealing with that again, like, happy new year.

What's happy about it?

I've been coming down here for a long time, making discussions just like anybody with a rational mind would do.

And you're over civil rights.

Had Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. not died when he died, where would we be right now?

I don't know, because he's dead.

So he left it for us to be change agents and agents of change, which I am.

And I'm getting sick and tired, like Fannie Lou Hamer said, of being sick and tired of what?

Foolishness.

And folk got college degrees.

They can go get an education and whatnot, but you don't know how to talk to me like a civilized individual, but you can ask people to vote for you, put you in office, but then you don't have the answer behind the answer.

I'll be back.

Thank you, Mrs. Chard.

So we have a number of appointments this morning to a number of different authorities and commissions.

I'm going to take them in somewhat of a grouping.

We'll start with item one.

Nool?

Item one is appointment 01391, appointment of Robert D. Kaplan as member of Museum Development Authority Governing Council for a term to July 31, 2022. Thank you, Nool.

Folks can join us at the table.

Great.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Let's start with a quick round of introductions.

Hannah Smith, Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

Thank you.

Doug Raff, I'm the Chair of the Museum.

Thank you, Doug.

I'm Bob Kaplan.

All right, great.

You want to kick us off maybe with a quick description of what the PDA does, and then we can move into the appointment.

The Museum Development Authority is one of the city's eight public development authorities, chartered in 1985. Its goal is the development of the Downtown Museum, the Olympic Sculpture Park, and is housed within the Seattle Art Museum.

It's governed by a nine-member council with three members appointed by the mayor, three by the Seattle Art Museum, and three by the MDA governing council itself.

Great, thank you.

And can you just give us a little bit more texture, or maybe, Doug, you can do that, about what the function is of the PDA and how it serves the Art Direction Seattle.

We technically own some of the museum's properties.

And we lease them to the museum on long-term leases.

And we also have issued some of the bonds that support the museum.

So the rent from the museum pays those bonds.

And that's why we're controlled a third by the mayor, a third by the museum, and a third from the citizens.

And as an ongoing role in the city, what is the ongoing role of the PDA?

Because I understand- It will exist as long as those bonds are unpaid.

Got it.

So the function is really focused on fulfilling the obligations associated with the bond.

Financial support of the museum for the buildings.

OK, great.

You want to?

We're very pleased to have Bob appointed.

We've had a vacancy for almost a year.

And I believe this is a commission appointment.

Is that correct?

This is the museum appointment.

He was appointed by the museum.

The PDA, right, the PDA appointment of the appointing authorities.

It is the PDA that is bringing Bob forward.

So that's great.

And you want to talk a little bit about your interest in serving on the PDA.

I'm a trustee of the museum and concerned about the museum's welfare.

The MDA is an essential part of the operations of the museum as landlord and partner in developing assets for the museum.

And we haven't had a new appointment for a while.

It's been over a year.

Appreciate your willingness to come forward with your wealth of information and history and knowledge and your work serving as a trustee of SAM.

So appreciate your willingness to take on this new role.

Thank you.

All right, great.

I'm excited about it.

I really appreciate all of your service.

With that, I will move Appointment 01391. I will second Appointment 01391. And I will vote aye in favor of Appointment 01391. Thank you.

This will move on to the full Council on Monday.

Next, we're going to move into appointments 2 through 10. That is inclusive of all of the Arts Commission appointments and the Seattle Music Commission appointment.

And we'll read them into the record.

It also includes number 11. Correct.

2 through 10 and 11. Thank you.

Number two, agenda item two is appointment 1521, appointment of Kyla DeMonte as a member of Seattle Arts Commission for a term to December 31, 2021. Agenda item three is appointment 1519, appointment of James Miles as a member of Seattle Arts Commission for a term to December 31, 2020. Item four is appointment 1520, appointment of Mikhail May Williams as member, Seattle Arts Commission for a term to December 31, 2020. Agenda item five is appointment 1488, reappointment of Giselle Major as member, Seattle Arts Commission for a term to December 31, 2020. Item six is appointment 1489, reappointment of Sarah Wilkie as member, Seattle Arts Commission for a term to December 31, 2020. Item 7 is Appointment 1490, reappointment of Cassie Chin as member, Seattle Arts Commission for a term to December 31, 2021. Item 8 is Appointment 1491, reappointment of Don M. Chirwa as member of Seattle Arts Commission for a term to December 31, 2021. Item 9 is Appointment 1492, reappointment of Chieko Phillips as member of Seattle Arts Commission for a term to December 31, 2021. Item 10 is appointment 1530, appointment of Yagi Michael as members Seattle Arts Commission for a term to December 31, 2021. And item 11 is appointment 1526, reappointment of Daniel Damien Pack as members Seattle Music Commission for a term to August 31, 2022.

Fantastic.

Thank you, Noel.

Let's just go right down the line and do a quick round of introductions, and then we'll pass it over to Director Engstrom, who will talk a little bit about the Arts and Music Commissions.

My name is Yegi Michael.

Thank you.

Greetings, James Miles.

Good morning, Mikhail May Williams.

And I'm Kayla DeMonte.

Fantastic.

And I'm Randy Engstrom.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you all for joining us.

Let's just kick it off a little bit about the function of both commissions.

Sure.

So the Seattle Arts Commission was chartered in 1971 and has existed to support the arts and cultural ecology of the city.

It does its work in three committees.

One is the Facilities and Equitable Development Committee, which focuses on issues of space and affordability.

That is the committee that oversaw the CAP report.

It's exploring the development of a cultural space public development authority and is really wrestling with issues of gentrification and displacement.

The second group is the Public Art Advisory Committee.

Seattle chartered the second 1% for Art program in the country in 1973, and it stewards all of the city's permanent and temporary and portable works collections.

The third committee is the Cultural Investments Committee.

Since 1971, the office has invested over $50 million in the cultural community, individual artists, large cultural institutions, and everything in between.

And there's a committee that oversees the investments that the office makes through its nine funding programs.

The Seattle Music Commission was chartered 10 years ago out of the City of Music Initiative, which is focused on a city of live music, a city of music business, and a city of musicians.

It does its work in two committees.

I shouldn't be explaining this.

I should let Mikhail explain this, since she used to actually run the Seattle Music Commission.

But there's a Youth and Community Committee, which also works very closely with the Arts Commission.

on ensuring there are pathways for young people into careers in the music industry and in the creative industries more broadly.

And there is an advocacy and economic development committee which is really focused on how we are paying and providing jobs and doing workforce development in support of our creative communities and specifically our music industry.

This last year, I've had the privilege of stewarding both bodies and look forward to how they are both able to collaborate and work distinctly on the areas for which they were chartered.

And we're really excited.

Working with the commissions is probably the best part of my job just because Every single person to a person is an incredible leader in their community.

And they all bring so much to the table.

And the opportunity to try to synthesize that in service of our creative communities is a real privilege.

So I appreciate it.

I could talk about every single person if you want me to.

I agree.

I think we should focus on the folks that we have here.

But I want to focus on the new people.

Everyone else has had their moment in the sand.

Yes, absolutely.

So that would be great.

We, just for the viewing public, we'll just introduce, I think...

11 different, maybe 10 individuals.

Four of them are new appointments and all four of them are here.

As a matter of practice, we don't require the reappointments to come and present.

And I really appreciate the fact that the new appointments have taken time out of their busy day to come and tell us a little bit about themselves and why they're interested in serving.

Yagi, would you like to start?

Yeah, right now I do public art and I've been doing this for over 20 years and I'm very active in the community and in the city.

I also work for an organization that deals with art, and I'm the art program director there, so I'm always dealing.

My plug, go ahead.

The NDN Nature Consortium is a very good West Seattle nonprofit organization that work around the community.

promoting art and teach young youth environmental lesson through the art, so I'm leading that program.

So I'm interested because I'm also active in the public art in Seattle, so my interest is how to create more opportunity for the especially for the underserved community and minority in the city and get more resource and also bring more public artists in our city.

Thank you so much for your willingness to serve.

I appreciate it.

And just a little clarification, the commission has different appointing authorities.

Yegi is a council appointment.

The other three folks who we're going to hear from next are all mayoral appointments.

James, do you want to kick us off?

So, currently I'm the Executive Director of ArtsCore, which provides free arts programming in school and after school to over 3,000 youth in South Seattle and South King County.

Arts has been an important part of my life.

Before I ran ArtsCore, I was an actor in film, TV, and Broadway for about 20 years in New York.

And before that, I was a teacher.

So arts and arts education is key to the existence and thriving abilities of young people in the city.

And that's important.

Good morning.

So my name is Mikkel, like I said.

And as Randy pointed out, I was the, I believe the first creative industries advocate in the Office of Film and Music.

was in that position for two and a half years and was on the other side of this equation many times, putting up commissioners for appointments.

It's thrilling to be here.

Currently, I'm in charge of marketing and events for a company called Enercom, which is in the music industry.

Prior to that, I've had a long history of working in both the arts and music.

multiple cultural organizations, art museums, Sundance Film Festival, the Maryland Institute College of Art, and then Bumbershoot is what brought me back to Seattle, which is my hometown.

And through my work in the Office of Film and Music, I was able to work not only with the Music Commission, but also through that made some inroads and connections to the Office of Arts and Culture.

And the Arts Commission really focused on how we can collaboratively look at creating educational opportunities, a career pipeline, and then bolstering and growing the economy.

So I'm thrilled to be in this seat potentially doing that work on the commission.

Thank you so much and really appreciate your willingness to go from working for the city to volunteering for the city.

That is a real testament to your commitment to this work.

My name is Kayla DeMonte.

Again, I currently am the managing director in an organization called Citizen University.

We work to build a culture of powerful, responsible citizenship through programs across the country.

I moved to Seattle about 10 years ago to work in the festival community, have done some work with Bumbershoot and Folklife and others, have also done some volunteer work with the Vera Project for Culture, and served on a committee of of the commission, the Community Development and Outreach Committee when that was part of the work and have supported the Mayor's Arts Awards for a number of years.

And I'm particularly excited to sit on this commission to both serve as a bridge between the city and the citizens of Seattle to spread the good work of the arts community in both directions.

Fantastic.

Thank you all so much.

So it looks like for the Arts Commission, we're looking pretty good as far as vacancies.

It doesn't look like we have any.

Is that right?

We are full.

All right.

And we've still got a little work to do on the Music Commission side, but we're plugging along.

Yeah, we have four positions that have been put forward that we're hoping to confirm any day.

We have two more on the Arts Commission that we're still trying to confirm, I should say.

We have one council and one mayoral appointment that the paperwork wasn't all the way in for today.

We did get these four, we're really happy.

And we have a bunch of work to do.

We have about six folks that we want to put forward, we're hoping, in the next couple of months for the Music Commission.

And then this was a year where a number of terms wrapped up.

So in addition to the backfill that we had, we have a couple of other positions that will need to get filled as well.

Fantastic.

All right.

Well, we're on our way.

Not a lot of grilling happening today, given that we are a committee of one.

And so I'm just going to Okay, right to it and start doing the strange and awkward Motioning and seconding and voting So we'll start with appointment number two Appointment zero one five two one.

I will move second and I will vote aye none opposing none abstaining Appointment 01521, we'll move on to full council.

Appointment 01519, I will move, I will second it, and I will vote aye in favor of appointment 1519. None abstaining, none opposing.

The appointment will move on to full council on Monday.

appointment 0 1 5 2 0 I will move I will second I'll move I will vote aye in favor of appointment 0 1 5 2 0 none abstaining none opposed and it will move on to full council on Monday appointment 0 1 4 8 8 I will move second I will vote aye in favor of appointment 0 1 4 8 8 None opposed.

None abstaining.

It will move on to full council on Monday.

Appointment 01489. I will move.

I will second.

I'll vote in favor of appointment 01489. None opposing.

None abstaining.

It will move on to full council on Monday.

Appointment 01490, I will move in favor.

I will second.

I will vote in favor.

None opposed.

None abstaining.

Appointment 01490 will move on to full council on Monday.

Appointment 01491, I will move in favor.

I will second.

I will vote aye and none opposing, none abstaining.

Appointment 01491 will move on to full council on Monday.

We're almost done.

Appointment 01492, I will move in favor.

I will second.

I will vote in favor.

And none opposed, none abstaining.

Appointment 01492. We'll move on to full council on Monday.

Appointment 01530. I will move in favor.

I will second.

I will vote in favor.

And none opposed, none abstaining.

Appointment 01530. We'll move on to full council.

Lastly, for this bunch, appointment 01526. I will move in favor.

I will second.

I will vote in favor.

None opposed.

None abstaining.

Appointment 01526. We'll move on to full council on Monday.

Thank you all for your willingness to serve and congratulations.

We appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right, so next we've got group The next group, which item 12, which is the Disabilities Commission, and items 13 through 16, which is the LGBTQ Commission.

Noel, can you read those items into the record, please?

Item 12 is appointment 1525, reappointment of Jason Morris as member, Seattle Commission for People with Disabilities, for a term to April 30, 2021. Agenda item 13 is appointment of Deepa Sivarajan as member, Seattle LGBTQ Commission for a term to October 31, 2021. And that one should be a reappointment.

Number 13. Item 14 is appointment 1509, appointment of Juan C. Rodriguez as member, Seattle LGBTQ Commission for a term to April 30, 2021. Item 15 is appointment 1512, reappointment of Kerry Laram as member.

Seattle LGBTQ Commission for a term to October 31, 2021. And item 16 is appointment 1510, appointment of Victor Liu as member of Seattle LGBTQ Commission for a term to October 31, 2021.

Great.

Thank you so much, Noel.

So this, just to orient myself here before we move into this, these are items 12 through 16. All right, great.

All right, let's do a quick round of introductions and then come back, talk about the commission, and then talk about the appointments.

Hi, my name is Janet Stafford.

I am with the Seattle Office for Civil Rights.

Thank you, Janet.

Hi, good morning, everyone.

My name is Victor Lu.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Jason Todd Morris.

I'm here for being a commissioner for people with disabilities.

Hi, my name is Juan Carlos Rodriguez, and I'm here for the Seattle LGBTQ Commission appointment.

Fantastic, thank you.

All right, let's talk about the commission.

A quick little overview.

Or commissions, I should say.

There's two of them.

Sounds great.

So the Seattle Commission for People with Disabilities recommends matters pertaining to people with disabilities.

Part of their work plans include to create an inclusive Seattle by raising awareness and bridging communities in the areas of housing, education, and transportation.

One of their biggest accomplishments this year has led to the closed captioning ordinance within the city of Seattle.

And most recently they've also celebrated their third annual inclusion jubilee, providing recognition to folks in the community.

As for the LGBTQ Commission, They voice matters affecting LGB community with the goal to lead their work with a trans justice and racial equity lens.

Part of their work plans have included advocating for housing accessibility and inclusion of services, public health issues and criminal justice advocacy.

One of their most recent partnership efforts have included the candidate forum and advocacy support to the roller derby league leading to accessing space in the Seattle Recreation Centers.

Thank you.

So again, we have three folks here.

Two of them are new appointments, so I really appreciate you guys making time to get here so that we can move you forward.

As mentioned earlier, reappointments aren't required to attend.

Jason, thank you for attending nonetheless.

And I believe the two new appointments are, they are, one is a mayoral appointment, I'm sorry, one is a council appointment and the other is a commission appointment.

Juan is a council appointment and Victor is a commission appointment, is that correct?

All right, so let's just do a quick go around, maybe talk a little bit about yourself and why you're excited about serving on this commission.

Sure.

So again, my name is Victor.

Currently, I'm the Director of Practice Innovation from an organization known as Asian Counseling Referral Service.

And the work I have been doing has always been front and center on equity and social justice.

As an immigrant and someone that is non-gender conforming, I'm really excited to be on the LGBTQ Commission because I think that I will be able along with the commission share unique perspective to increase disparity and reduce disparities and increase access for the underserved LGBTQ community, specifically people of color.

I'm next.

My name is Jason Morris, for the record.

I'm a first-person self-advocate for people with developmental disabilities, and I fit both the federal and state law definition of developmental disabilities.

What I do is I promote and protect the rights of people with developmental disability and actively support their full inclusions and participation in the community.

I would like to thank the council for supporting the Disability Commission endeavors.

It plays a very important part in being mindful of this, of a historic, de-franchised group that plays a vital role in our community and departments in our city.

And I'm always available to our community leaders in putting a spotlight on our efforts in supporting people with disabilities within our great city.

Okay, thank you.

Well, my name is Juan Carlos Rodriguez.

I'm originally from the Dominican Republic.

Lived in New York and been living here in Seattle for the last years.

I finally got used to it, I love it.

Coming from the Caribbean and being in Seattle, quite different.

But I'm an activist, been doing activism for the last 15 years, openly gay.

And especially working with religious LGBTQ communities that struggle.

And there is, the suicide rate is high in the Pacific Northwest.

So this is what I've been working on.

I was the Executive Director for Affirmation LGBTQ Mormons Families and Friends.

Basically, in the Mormon church, we're trying to save lives, literally, especially LGBTQ youth.

And here in Seattle, I've been involved with Latinx and people of color, LGBTQ organizations as well, empowering them and connecting them to services.

And I'm very happy to be here and possibly be appointed as in the Seattle LGBTQ Commission to join this team and I think do a lot of work that is needed here for our community.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

And one of the things I think is really important to recognize is the role these commissions play in helping to drive public policy in the city.

We hope that you embrace this role as a role of holding folks in my position, including myself, accountable.

And in doing so, I think we've been able to move forward really important public policy in the city.

We mentioned earlier the closed captioning ordinance that requires all places of public accommodation that have televisions in them to have their closed captionings turned on so that people don't have to request it.

when they need that accommodation.

That's just one example.

You may have heard one of the items that the LGBTQ Commission has advocated for in the past.

It was announced yesterday.

I'm just looking for the name of the project that's escaping me right now.

But the Eldridge on Capitol Hill was just awarded significant funding from the Office of Housing through our housing levy to fund the city's first LGBTQ senior housing.

Seattle is one of the few major cities that does not have senior housing specifically for the LGBTQ community.

This is something that the Commission, as well as myself, have advocated strongly for for years and it's through adding your voice to this discussion along with LGBTQ advocates.

throughout the city that has allowed this to become a reality.

So really hope you take on this role with an appreciation of the power that you hold to advocate for your communities.

And with that, I'm just going to go through and do the messy work that we do before.

So I'll start with number 12, appointment 01525. I will move, I will second, and I will vote in favor of appointment 01525. None opposed, none abstaining.

Appointment 01525 will move on to full council.

I will first move to amend appointment 01511 to reflect that this is a reappointment of Deepa Sivarajan as member of Seattle LGBTQ Commission to October 31st, I will vote in favor of the amendment.

I will, sorry, I will second the amendment.

I will vote in favor of the amendment.

And then I will move appointment 01511, second appointment 01511, and vote in favor of appointment 01511. 1, 5, 1, 1 as amended.

None abstaining.

None opposing.

And it will move on to full council on Monday.

Item 14 is appointment 0, 1, 5, 0, 9. I will move in favor.

I will second.

And I will vote in favor of appointment 0, 1, 5, 0, 9. None opposed.

None abstaining.

It will move on to full council.

I will move appointment 01512. I will second it and I will vote in favor of appointment 01512. None opposed, none abstaining.

It will move on to full council on Monday.

And then number 16 on the agenda, appointment 01510. I will move, I will second it, I will vote in favor of appointment 01510, none opposed, none abstaining.

It will move on to full council on Monday.

Congratulations and thank you all for your service.

Thank you so much.

Next, we are going to move to Items 17 through 19, which are the Human Rights Commission appointments, and 20 as well, which is the Women's Commission appointments.

10 item 17 is appointment 1524 appointment of Liz Harding as member Seattle Human Rights Commission for a term to July 22nd 2021. Item 18 is appointment 1523 appointment of Wendy B Cisneros as member Seattle Human Rights Commission for a term to January 22nd 2021. Item 19 is appointment 1522 appointment of Jelen M Marwanjo Lwasek as member, Seattle Human Rights Commission for a term to July 22, 2020. And item number 20 is 1516, appointment of Whitney Nakamura as member, Seattle Women's Commission for a term to July 1, 2020.

Great.

Thank you, Newell.

Let's just go down the line and do quick introductions.

Marty Itawu, Seattle Office for Civil Rights.

Thank you.

Ghilan Marwanji.

Hi, good morning.

Whitney Nakamura.

Liz Hodding.

All right, great.

Thank you all for joining us.

It looks like we are all new appointments, no reappointments here with us today.

And we're looking at, let's see here, we've got three from the Human Rights Commission and one from the Women's Commission.

Of the Human Rights Commission, we've got Two of them are council appointments.

One is a commission appointment.

And from the Women's Commission, we've got one person who is a commission appointment, and that's Whitney.

So Marta, let's kick us off.

Can you do a quick overview of what the Women's Commission does and the Human Rights Commission does?

Yes, I'm going to just combine them because basically they're both our advisory commissions.

They advise the mayor, the city council on issues that affect the Women's Commission and issues that affect human rights and just human rights for people in general on all areas.

range is very wide.

So one of the things that I wanted to say is what we had tried and wanted to make sure that we do this year is that we have the commissions, all of our commissions under Seattle Office for Civil Rights get RSJI training.

We want to make sure that they are aware of all the work that we're doing in the city and that they engage that work in their work when they are on their commissions and doing commission work.

So some of the things that we have done is we've got them scheduled and we scheduled them just several months ago with Race the Power of an Illusion.

It was all day training and all of the commissions participated and it went very well.

We also wanted to make sure that we recognize some of the work of the Seattle Human Rights Commission.

a number of things this year.

We have a Human Rights Commission, Human Rights Day, December 12th, which is a couple of days from now, and it's amplifying murdered and missing women and indigenous people and amplifying their voices.

And there's going to be an event at Town Hall this coming Thursday, and it starts at 6 o'clock.

Some of the other things the commissions do is, the Human Rights Commission will do resolutions and things like that.

They look at the work of what other people are doing.

People will come often to the Women's Commission and the Human Rights Commission asking, you know, for them to sign on letters, support them, and kind of help them in their work.

And so that's kind of a lot of things that they do.

And the other thing that the Human Rights Commission has done back in 2012 they have made, did a resolution to make the city of Seattle a human rights city.

And with that, they are now next year going to be having a human rights conference here in Seattle at the African American Museum, and that's gonna be March 13th and 14th.

So I wanted to kind of amplify some of the work in that.

That's fantastic, that's a great overview.

We appreciate you taking the time.

Thank you.

So that's all I want to say, because I want them to be the voices to hear their voices.

Yes.

If we could just do some introductions and talk a little bit about your experience and why it is that you're excited to serve on the commission.

My name is Golan Merwanji.

I've been a resident of Seattle for two years, just moved from Georgia, and I want to be more involved in the work.

not only just beyond my day-to-day work, but something that has been impacting a lot of residents of Seattle, which is homelessness and poverty.

And I thought this was a really great medium to do that and transform that social equity and justice work.

So I've been involved with the Seattle Human Rights Commission since July, attended a lot of meetings and trainings, and I've learned a lot about how as a body we impact the work we do on a day-to-day basis.

It has been an open door for the residents of Seattle to come in and share their concerns, which is something that is critical to the work we do to your people out.

We had a delegation from Pakistan attend one of the commission meetings.

So doing and playing that important role of not only just listening, but in bringing change by advising the mayor, the city council, and other advisory bodies and working closely with other agencies, but also other commissions has been truly a learning and welcoming experience for me, and that is something that I want to continue doing.

And so as we move forward in the Commission, as my time more, I experience to do more day-to-day work.

I'm also working towards Human Rights Day, which is in two days, and making sure that that happens, and, you know, in the best way possible.

It's something that we do at the Commission, and I'm looking forward to.

Thank you.

And you're with the King County Department of Public Defense?

That is correct.

I'm their mitigation specialist there, but this is something I do beyond that.

Of course, but that experience you have doing that work, I think is very useful in the commission's work.

Thank you.

Hi, good morning.

My name is Wendy, again.

I have been in Seattle for 14 years.

I'm from El Salvador.

Ten of those have been in the medical field as a patient care coordinator and a medical assistant.

And proper health care is a human right.

So it is essential for me to play an active role in my city and make sure that folks have a voice when it comes to healthcare issues.

We all know that for homeless folks, there's not a lot of resources for proper healthcare.

So I kind of want to be their voice to help out.

I'm currently working at Therapeutic Health Services.

And it's a nonprofit organization that focuses patients with addiction and homeless patients.

So I'm very excited that I'm part of this and I'm excited of all the work that we're going to be doing.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Whitney again.

I was born and raised in Seattle.

I feel deeply invested in and accountable to the communities that I am a part of.

I am thrilled about this opportunity to continue that work in Seattle.

engaging with the issues that impact my life, impact my community.

So I'm coming as a woman.

I'm here as a mother, as a woman of color.

Certainly in my professional commitments in working with local nonprofits but also as a community volunteer and as a community member eager to kind of grow and continue that engagement with those issues.

So yeah, thank you.

Hi, I'm Liz, I'm Australian and I've been in Seattle for about four years now and I've been involved in community organizing and advocacy in Seattle for about four years since I moved here as a graduate student and now I work for a non-profit called Away Home Washington and we're working with four communities across Washington State to end youth and young adult homelessness with a particular emphasis on reducing and eliminating disproportionality for young people of color, especially black, native and Latinx young people and LGBTQ young people.

So I really want to be immersed in the local Seattle community, learn more about what is going on to end homelessness here, bring that back to our communities and exchange knowledge and information across everything else that I'm doing as well.

I'm really excited about the work.

Fantastic.

Thank you all.

Ditto for what I said earlier about the Disabilities Commission and the LGBTQ Commission goes for the Human Rights Commission as well as the Women's Commission.

Hold the policymakers in my role, including myself, accountable.

represent your community's voices and develop policy agendas that represent their interests and make sure that we promote them.

And that means changing the law when necessary or providing funding.

And think about ways in which you can partner with council members.

One of the most powerful things I've had a chance to do as a council member was to partner with the Women's Commission in helping to fund a report called Losing Home.

And Losing Home was the evictions report of a year's worth of evictions in Seattle, demonstrating the large proportion of folks surveyed who moved from eviction into homelessness.

And that report served as a basis of recommendations that has made transformational change in the state legislature in the last legislative session, where we've gone from a system where tenants used to only get three days notice for non-payment of rent, had only an option of paying all the rent within three days.

A judge could not consider any circumstances that might have led the person to not pay rent.

Now the law is 14 days notice, and judges will consider extenuating circumstances.

And there are a number of other items associated with that report that we made changes to here on the city level.

So that report led to changes at the state level, but it also led to some really important changes at the city level.

And it's a really, I think, exciting example how you can partner with a council member who is passionate about an issue to take it from a position of studying an issue, gathering data, and then making recommendations.

It's a really good framework for accountability because if you partner with that council member on the front end, you develop a study that comes to some conclusions that it's pretty easy to hold my feet to the fire or another council member's feet to the fire and fulfilling or acting on those recommendations on the tail end.

So again, thank you all for stepping forward and we'll move on with the the voting.

Let's see.

So we'll starting with item 17. I move appointment 01524. I second it.

I vote in favor of appointment 01524. None opposed.

None abstaining.

Moves on to full council on Monday.

I move appointment 01523. I second appointment 01523. I vote in favor.

None opposed.

None abstaining.

And appointment 01523 will move on to full council on Monday.

Item 7 is appointment 01490. I move in favor.

I second it.

Oh, wait.

I'm moving backwards in time.

Let's try that again.

Number 19, appointment 01522. I move in favor.

I second it.

I vote in favor of appointment 01522. None opposed.

None abstaining.

Appointment 01522. We'll move on to full council.

And then finally, appointment 01516. I move in favor.

I second it.

I vote in favor of appointment 01516. None opposed.

None abstaining.

Appointment 01516. We'll move on to full council on Monday.

Congratulations and thank you all for serving.

All right, no more of that.

It's the last appointment.

Let's move on to item number 21.

Item 21 is Council Bill 119709, an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities declaring certain real property rights relating to sewer and storm drain easements within Seattle as being surplus to city utility needs.

authorizing the General Manager-CEO of Seattle Public Utilities to relinquish such easement rights and to accept new easements, placing the real property rights and interests conveyed by the easements under the jurisdiction of Seattle Public Utilities, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

This item includes a public hearing, so I'll be placing the sign-in sheet on the dais.

All right, great.

Thank you.

Fantastic.

Thanks, Newell.

Let's do some introductions.

Thank you.

Brian Goodnight, Council Central staff.

Carolyn Johnson, Seattle Public Utilities, Real Property Services, Senior Agent.

Good morning.

I'm Judith Cross, Director of Real Property, Seattle Public Utilities.

Fantastic.

As Newell mentioned, this item includes a public hearing.

So we're going to do the presentation first.

We'll take a pause for the public hearing.

And after opening and closing the public hearing, we'll have a discussion and a vote.

Who would like to kick us off?

Brian, thank you.

Sure, yeah, thank you.

From time to time, in order to properly install and maintain its facilities, SPU comes before the council to request the acceptance and relinquishment of easements.

And so this item and the next item on the agenda do exactly that.

The first item relates to the drainage and wastewater system, and the second relates to the water system.

And as you mentioned, this one has a public hearing, so.

And the relinquishment, the easement relinquishment has, requires the public hearing.

The item 22 does not.

That is correct.

Thank you.

Did you want further explanation of this slide?

He's just read this.

I think, let's see, I think he's pretty much covered it.

Let's move on.

Right.

There you go, okay.

These are our benefits for doing this work, for being able to come before you today and make this presentation.

Did you want to review those?

Well, relinquishments and acceptance, permanent property rights in multiple locations, that's what we're looking at today.

I think we have three that we're doing.

Relinquishments means that we have had prior easements and now it's necessary for them to be released due to the development, redeveloping an area and maybe moving the pipe to a new location.

And then we at the same time might have an easement in that same project that would be a new easement, a new location of a new facility.

So today we are relinquishing and accepting new rights and releasing rights.

As it states here, this is no cost to rate payers.

And today we have batched, I think it's four, three or four that we're presenting to you today that we're relinquishing and accepting in our drainage and wastewater line of business and presenting to you today for your approval.

So batch means multiple relinquishments?

Yes.

In a similar area or all over the city?

All over the city.

Yes.

And yeah.

And these are our locations.

These are all different projects presented to our real property services section.

And we are here today to get your approval on releasing them or accepting them.

And we have the authority to batch them as a way of saving time for SPU, for the council.

How does the public, since there's a public hearing associated with these easements, how does the public notice occur when you have batched relinquishments?

Yeah, so when we're actually preparing our streamlined acceptance ordinance, we do inform the parties who have ownership as a developer.

They are informed that they can participate and share any comments that they may have with relinquishment.

And is this a trade of property rights or will?

This is a granting and releasing.

Granting meaning a private property owner is granting us the authority to have an easement located on their property.

These are all on private property.

Are we receiving any revenue for the

No.

Just for the legislation.

Nor are we granting any revenue.

That's correct.

So as Carolyn mentioned, we do have a fee to actually prepare the legislation, but there's no revenue being generated by us accepting these easements and there's no transfer of funds as the relinquishment.

And the fee itself is a fee that is necessary for the transaction?

It's a standard fee.

It's a standard policy fee that we charge in order to, you know, facilitate this process and to be able to bring it before legislation.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

With that...

And these are our locations.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Brian, anything else to consider?

No, thanks.

With that, I will open the public hearing for item number 21, Council Bill 119709. Nobody has signed up for the public hearing.

I will then close the public hearing for 119709. And with that, I think I'm going to just move right into voting to approve Council Bill 119709. I move in favor.

I second.

And I will vote in favor of Council Bill 119709 with none opposed and none abstaining.

This will move on to full council.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next one.

Agenda item 22 is Council Bill 119710, an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities, accepting easements granted to the City of Seattle for installation, operation, and maintenance of hydrants, water mains, domestic meter vaults, fire service meters, and appurentances necessary for water utility purposes at various locations in Seattle, placing the property rights and interests conveyed by the easements under the jurisdiction of Seattle Public Utilities and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

So whereas the earlier action was relinquishing easement rights and accepting new easements, this is only going to be accepting easements?

Yes, yes.

And this is from private developers.

that need to put main water lines on private property to facilitate the ability to receive water from Seattle Public Utilities.

And we have seven locations that we're presenting.

Again, batching?

Yes, yes.

And this is our fifth year of doing that, which is a streamlined process for You guys, for us, and we're very happy to be able to do that.

And for the developers.

For the developers, too.

Yes.

Absolutely.

These are our locations.

These are all individual sites, all different developers approaching Seattle Public Utilities through our Development Services Office.

And again, there's no cost associated with the easements to the developer nor to the rate payer.

Aside from the fee?

Aside from the administrative fee.

And it's a, just so I understand, it's a fee associated with the actual cost to the city to process.

It's not a fee associated with the value of the property.

That's correct.

And can you talk a little bit about why that is?

If we're granting the right to use the property, why we would not have a larger fee beyond the administrative costs associated with it?

So actually, the easement that will be granted is for the infrastructure that the developer is installing for the utility's benefit, so that we are receiving property rights to go back for access purposes, operate, maintain, inspect.

of infrastructure that's going to be turned over to the city of Seattle.

So we actually own the infrastructure.

The easement itself is granted to us, and the developer does that in order to allow them to develop the property for installation of the water infrastructure.

And then their fee that they pay is for the cost of the actual easement preparation and the legislation preparation.

And that's part of our director's rule for separate charges.

Great.

So this is actually giving the city the access to.

maintain the infrastructure that is necessary for the development.

Correct.

And that infrastructure, yes, is on private property.

So we're gaining that property right to enter private property.

And they are being charged in a lot of other areas, not affiliated with us, but yeah.

Great.

All right, this is great.

I have no further questions.

There is no public hearing associated with this bill.

And so I will move the Council Bill 119710. I will second the bill and I will vote in favor of Council Bill 119710. None opposed, none abstaining.

It will move on to full Council on Monday.

Great, thank you very much.

Agenda item 23 is a Seattle Public Utilities Risk and Resiliency Assessment Framework.

Thank you, Newell.

Greetings.

Hello.

Thank you all for joining us.

Do some introductions, please.

I'm Mami Hara, General Manager of Seattle Public Utilities.

I'm Michael Godfrey, Resiliency Planner.

Good morning, Chad B. Clair, Seattle Public Utilities Emergency Management.

I've been working on resiliency with Michael.

Great.

Well, thank you for coming and presenting this report and also the following one.

I know these reports resulted from some strategic business plan work that we did together last year, and you had sent them to us earlier this summer, so I'm glad that we've been able to find some time to hear the results of that work.

Brian, you want to kick us off?

Sure.

I don't have much in addition to what you said, so this stems from the Resolution 31760 from late 2017, which did adopt the 2018 to 2023 Strategic Business Plan for SPU.

Sorry.

No, no problem.

And just to put it on the record, so section 16 of that resolution is what requested this report.

And it identified a number of factors that SPU has described and other ones as well.

And the intent is that it will inform the development of the next strategic business plan update, which will be coming next year to council.

Great.

All right.

Thanks.

Hand off to Dr. Hara.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to discuss our risk and resiliency framework and later our affordability and accountability plan.

I'm very excited about this work and Michael will give you a lot more detail about the risk resiliency plan and later on Jonathan Swift will give you information about the affordability plan.

But first, I want to thank you for your team's work and council's work in helping to shape our last strategic business plan and for requesting these plans from us that then support the further strategic business plan.

They have been very influential in our work already.

It's been a lot of work at the department to develop them.

We decided to not use a consultant to develop them, but to use a homegrown approach, which would then embed these efforts into our culture.

And so it's been a very widespread effort among about 150 folks and more, you know, for the different plans.

And you've already seen some of the results that have benefited our rate payers.

You've seen through savings on our interest rate, some of our interest rates on loans and also renegotiation of our solid waste contract, we've been able to bring the rate, the anticipated rate path.

from the last strategic business plan down from 5.2 to 5.0, which has been significant.

But even more importantly, these plans have started to influence our culture and to embed the focus on affordability, accountability, and risk and resiliency into what we do in our practices and policies.

And so we've just started to work on the third component, which is equity and empowerment.

You can see that risk and resiliency and affordable accountability along with Agony of Power and are going to be foundational to the development of our strategic business plan in the future.

And so we will then hope to come to you with the third component at some point when we're done before the development of the strategic business plan.

So now I'm going to turn it over to Michael to go over the plan.

Hi, I'm Michael Gottfried, and I'm working as a resiliency planner in SPU, but there are a number of people who are working on these issues.

Next.

In 2017, city council requested that SPU prepare risk and resiliency management assessment, and we delivered that assessment this summer.

It identified the biggest risks that SPU faces.

It tracked our progress to date on those, and it looked at next steps and a planning framework.

For SBU, resiliency is the capacity to plan, respond, and adapt to disruptions, changes, and opportunities.

It's about reducing long-term risks and improving capabilities.

And at the end of the day, it's about sustaining vital public services through stresses and shocks.

As Mami has just talked about, there's three major initiatives at the utility, and they're all very interlinked and interwoven.

So resiliency and equity, we've been working very closely with the environmental justice and service equity team to advance both of these things together.

And we have completed an equity SPU toolkit this year, and that has involved stakeholders from across the utility, so it's very integrated in our work.

And currently, we're meeting with branch equity teams, and we're sharing our findings and linking these two efforts together.

Resiliency and affordability is also very, very important.

And I think something really exciting about resiliency is what's often called the resiliency dividend, which is that a dollar we spend now is worth $6 later.

If we get ahead of things, there's so many benefits in terms of reducing risks and saving lives and creating jobs.

We've all seen the wildfires down in California and the hurricanes that have buffeted the East Coast.

And again and again, we see that when we get ahead of these things, there's huge benefits for the public.

Can you, back on the previous slide, when you say that you're working with the environmental justice and service equity team to advance both resiliency and equity together, you're talking as a a planning principle at this point, right?

Is that accurate or do you have a concrete example of something that, an initiative that is being undertaken that advances both of those goals?

Or is this more of a planning principle for purposes of the strategic business plan that you're talking about?

I believe that that work is always ongoing.

Yes, it's a planning principle, but even the work that the mayor's office and we and council have been doing together around customer assistance and affordability, that is very much around equity and also making sure that our community is resilient because we're not exacerbating displacement and the kind of negative unintended consequences of infrastructure improvements and investments.

So that's just one aspect of that work, but it's very central to what we do.

So the report to council was divided into a number of chapters.

Each of them broadly focuses on various risk areas and it talks about what we've been working on.

And those are a list of the chapters.

This is a risk table that will get into a little more depth, I think, of the impacts of the different challenges and opportunities that the utility faces.

So for the first one, earthquakes, we would face a loss of service, broken infrastructure and facilities, potentially islanding of neighborhoods.

The next one, for climate change, drought, extreme downpour, sea level rise, wildfires and other impacts.

And then for the next one, cyber attacks have been in the news a lot this past year, and we realize there's a loss of IT services and stolen information.

And then under extreme weather, we have a very robust response to flooding that usually occurs every year.

And then there's volcanic eruption, dam failure, and terrorism are other things covered in the report.

And then under the financial category for investment priorities, aging and substandard infrastructure, we're constantly in the process of addressing that and updating systems.

There's regulatory requirements like the ship canal tunnel.

that we're responding to, and there's projects by other agencies like Estad that we're coordinating with as well.

And then under economy and markets, affordability, of course, is a huge issue of great importance, and there's a lot to that.

We're also dealing with population growth and siting facilities in a densifying city, recycling markets.

And then under operations, we talk about in the report how in the next five years, around 50% of our staff is eligible for retirement.

And that's going to be a big change.

And then under technology, there's emerging and new systems.

decentralized systems, updating IT systems, there's both opportunities and risks in that.

And with all this work, we're looking at it through an equity and empowerment lens.

Can you talk a little bit about the risks associated under economy and markets, debt and revenue loss?

Sure.

I think with All the projects that we're taking on as a utility and dealing, for example, with upgrading the system for seismic, we're always trying to be good stewards of the public funds.

And during economic cycles, when you have ups and downs, people might use less services.

And so that presents different challenges for us.

So I think there's, that's kind of a mix of challenges.

And then under technology, what do you mean when you identify new treatment as a risk?

Well, for example, we're identifying or science is identifying new contaminants in the system.

There's global warming also.

heating, water supply.

So those things can require new forms of treatment and that can be an expense as well.

So just to focus on two examples from the table, earthquakes, of course, get a lot of attention, and Washington State is only second in the nation to California in terms of earthquake risk.

And there's a photo from the 2001 earthquake with Governor Locke.

So some examples of what SPU has done in this area is since 2018, we did a water system seismic study.

And that identified a whole variety of investments that we're going to be making over the coming decades.

There was a 1990 study.

And since then, we've invested about $100 million in the water system.

And currently we've got a project underway where we're identifying sites next to the water distribution pipelines where we're going to stock replacement pipes.

So in the case of an earthquake, that material is readily available and we can restore service as fast as possible.

And then we have a very robust emergency management training and exercise program that Chad is in charge of and we, exercise on a variety of scenarios.

And we're one of only two municipalities in Washington State to have a FEMA-approved debris management plan.

And what benefits does that give us?

Well, in the case of an earthquake, for example, there's going to be a lot of debris, and we need to have a plan of where to store that, what to do with it.

The fact that it's FEMA approved means that it meets a high level, and it also would probably allow us to get federal funding.

And then climate change work.

The utility has been doing great work in this area for a while, and relating to your question on equity, we're working with other partners in the South Park community to look at the impacts of sea level rise and what kind of actions we can take for that neighborhood.

Then we're working on water management adaptation for the drainage and wastewater line of business.

In the water line of business, we're looking at drought.

We're looking at extreme downpours and the effect that has on the system.

The picture to the right is an image of the Cedar River watershed during drought.

And in our solid waste line of business, we're looking at the issue with plastics and waste prevention.

And in terms of our operational footprint, we're reducing our carbon footprint for both our fleets and our buildings.

And within the utility, we have a community of practice that's really exciting where we meet quarterly across the lines of business.

We look at what everybody's doing and we are putting together an action agenda in this coming year on climate to align everybody on those actions and look at how to be most effective going forward.

And then people discuss their external partnerships, people they work with on the outside, conferences, so that we can make sure that we're really working with the latest science and the best practices.

Can you talk a little bit more about the waste pollution mitigation item as it relates to plastics and what you found and how the utilities works are going to align with those findings?

Michael can pick up from me.

Our waste pollution mitigation is not just around plastics.

It's also around trying to reduce food waste and other aspects of waste.

There is an enormous amount of of energy and material resources that are inherent and any kind of material goods and food.

And so the first most important thing is we're trying to message out that people should really, you know, reduce what they consume, you know, kind of reduce what they purchase and, you know, expend and absolutely waste as little as possible.

But in terms of plastics, you know, you've been working with us in terms of, you know, all of the work that we're also doing around consumer responsibility, you know, first and foremost, I mean, I'm sorry, producer responsibility.

so that producers are providing less plastics in packaging and thinking really hard about the impact of the decisions that they make for the products that they produce.

We are also working on, you know, we have recently put out the first large city straw ban, you know, that helps to make, more than anything, promote awareness of the importance of managing plastics pollution.

And we are also doing a lot of work with innovators in this area to try to help to promote and assess the potential market for innovations that help us to both manage the impacts of pollution, but also, you know, reduce the need for pollution.

And plastics.

I know that legislative reform in this area is preferable at the state level, but if there isn't state legislation, related to expanding restrictions on single-use plastics.

Can we expect to see something coming forward in the city?

Yes, and it may be in some cases that state legislation is preferable, but it's actually not preferable in all cases.

There is work being done by folks who promote plastics in order to create state legislation that preempts the effectiveness or the ability of cities to make their own legislation to manage plastics.

Those are not good.

So I just want to raise some public awareness about that issue.

and that we all have to look very hard at the net result of any kind of proposed legislation at a broad state level.

Here in Seattle, we have some pending legislative work to require a number of changes to plastics.

you know, including eliminating the use of fine mill plastics, which are not conducive to reuse and requiring, you know, heavier mill plastics for bags, changing the pass-through fee from 5 cents to 10 cents, you know, for bags for, encouraging the use of compostable bags when plastic bags are called for, because that then has another life, as well as use of paper bags over plastic.

Thank you.

Sure.

Any, should we expect anything as it relates to, I just remember from a previous briefing we had talked about other plastics such as disposable flatware and I'm trying to remember what other items, sure, had been talked about, but I think there were some others.

Well, with disposable flatware, at least for commercial establishments, we included any kind of single-use plastics in, you know, like disposable flatware and straws in what we've been kind of nicknamed the straw ban from 2018, and that only applies to commercial establishments.

a growing conversation in the world of plastics and environmentalism around plastic water bottles and other kinds of plastic containers.

But we, as far as I am aware, do not have anything yet that's ready for your consideration.

Thank you.

A very important aspect of resiliency is, of course, relationships, and it's also how we integrate this work into our plans.

We are working with a variety of partners, including the EPA and our sister departments in the City of Seattle, and we've made presentations to the citizen advisory committees, and we're making presentations and going to make one to the customer review panel.

And in terms of the solid waste management plan amendment, we have integrated resiliency into that plan, which is finishing up now.

So it's really baked in.

And as a concluding slide, we've talked about a lot of the work underway, but there's even other actions we can discuss as well.

The federal government through the EPA is requiring the American America's Water Infrastructure Act, which requires an assessment of water utilities of a certain size, about what they're doing for natural hazards and terrorism.

And we're in the process of working on that, and it will be completed in March of this coming year and certified.

We talked briefly before about the Climate Action Agenda, which just includes so many efforts by people within SPU and different lines of business doing great work and aligning that work and moving forward with even more focus.

And then Drainage and Wastewater is working on their integrated system plan, That's a really impressive plan that is looking very comprehensively at all kinds of changes to the system, including climate change and the increased pressure that puts on the system, seismic and affordability issues and equity issues as well, and that's all being brought together so that future investments in the system are really comprehensive.

And then at the beginning of this coming year, we're holding a leadership forum on drivers and innovation so that we can really position the utility looking 10, 20, 50 years into the future in the best position to take advantage of opportunities and to really set ourselves up to deal with the challenges that we're facing.

And currently under development is a risk management framework that's going to provide a kind of common framework for all the lines of business and how they assess risk.

So we're all on the same page.

And as mentioned, the strategic business plan is under development right now.

Risk and resiliency is one of the top three, and it's going to be really integrated into that, so it really affects everything we do going forward.

And we're also working on a resiliency planning manual that will really guide our planning development for different lines of business and work units.

Can we just go back to the last slide?

I'm sorry.

I just want to take a minute and go through this and have you explain what's the story that this slide is telling.

You have a number of circles going out from the theme of resiliency.

And in each, there is a grouping of common factors common individuals, as I believe they're all feeding into the concept of resiliency.

Do you mind walking us through that a little bit?

Sure.

So the first yellow ring is our policies and plans.

I think for resiliency to be really real, it has to be integrated into all these documents and describe what our next steps are and how that looks in terms of the structure of what we get done.

And then in terms of city and county plans and policies, which is the green circle, We're working with our sister departments.

I mean, I think when you look at something like seismic work in our emergency response, we're doing a lot of coordination with Seattle City Light and the Office of Emergency Management and SDOT because I think the risks we all face together as a city.

Resiliency is really a citywide thing.

And then when you get into community stakeholders, it's very important that we're sharing this work with people out in the community and making sure there we're reflecting what they see as risks, and if we're seeing something that's a greater risk, explaining why we think it's important.

There's a lot of different risks and challenges, as you know, and I think having those discussions creates support, and it alerts us to blind spots we might have.

And then when you get out to the federal level, like the America's Water Infrastructure Act, We're working closely with them.

And what's interesting is that, in a sense, they're looking at assessing the risk.

And we're looking even more broadly as a utility.

But we're constantly working with those different partners.

So I think there's just a lot of layering.

Thank you.

I just want to take a moment more with this for two reasons.

One, I have focused my thinking on how The risk and resiliency plan influences the strategic business plan, but as you can see, the goal is for it to influence a lot of other planning documents in the city, and I think that's important to note.

And then as it relates to community stakeholders, would love to hear a little bit about how the customer review panel has engaged in this work.

I'll speak to that.

First, I do want to say that this diagram is very conceptual.

There are a lot of influencers and drivers like council and the mayor's office that are not on this diagram, and those are very, very important.

And there are a whole number of plans that are being influenced that are not listed here.

And so this is just to say it's conceptual.

The customer review panel, it's an interesting question because so much of their work even before the development of this plan has been from their perspective to make sure that we're attending to the wide range of risks and investing appropriately around those risks.

And so we have presented this framework to them and the overall picture that the framework fits within, I think that they are glad to see a formal approach that helps to articulate and eventually help us to prioritize what we should be investing in, which is the next step of work that we'll be presenting to them in January, I believe, as a framework for helping to categorize risks and then to align the prioritization that comes from that with how we invest?

So I have a number of next steps, a vulnerability matrix detailing the most significant risks for Seattle Public Utilities, the inventory and assessment of existing work for high-priority risk areas, identification of critical interdependencies with other agencies and organizations, and identification of disparate community impacts and opportunities to take equitable and corrective actions.

Is there, have you identified sort of a timeline for all of these items or are you just going to kind of take it as it comes and move forward?

Is there any direction or input that would be helpful from the council in helping you to continue to elevate the importance of this work?

Thank you very much for offering.

May I get back to you on that question?

Because I know that our team has been making significant progress on all of these fronts.

And I'd first like to give you a status update so that you can then assess what else is needed and what time frame.

All right.

Sounds great.

Thank you.

I appreciate your partnership on this.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for yours.

All right, item 24.

Jen, item 24 is Seattle Public Utilities Accountability and Affordability Strategic Plan.

Great, thank you, Newell.

And Brian, any opening remarks?

Thank you.

I'll just say, so the request for this report comes from the same resolution, 31760, from late 2017. It was section 15 of the resolution that requested it.

And I will let them take it from there.

Fantastic.

We have a new presenter.

Yes.

Hi, I'm Jonathan Swift.

I work for Seattle Public Utilities.

Thank you so much for taking the time and asking to have a presentation on the accountability and affordability plan.

This was a really big body of work that Mami mentioned.

So what I'd like you to really take away from this is not the full breadth of it, but to give you some good examples, some real examples that might resonate with you.

So what I'm going to hit on is just an overview of the plan.

I'm going to hit some highlights.

I'm going to talk very briefly.

It's already been mentioned now twice of how this work integrates or will integrate with the strategic business plan.

And I'll go very briefly into implementation and next steps.

So this is, of course, where the plan originates from and the genesis of it is the council resolution.

But there's a why behind it too, right?

And what I've been with the utility for a little bit over a year, and I think one of the things that's really been impressive to me about the folks, the 1,400 folks who work in the utility, the 150 or so people that I work with developing this plan is, They know this.

They know this.

They're challenged by the issue of affordability.

They want to do something about it, but they want to know how, how.

And so we know that our rates are unaffordable for many customers.

We know that there are increasing needs and costs, I mean, from aging infrastructure to just some of the regulatory issues that we're facing.

And so those things are in tension, right?

And then, of course, the value is not always clear to our customers, right?

It's just interesting working here for a year, you know, talking with my wife who's a very, you know, active public sector person.

She didn't realize that we had our own watershed, right?

So, just these really basic things that people not understand that they're just the value of the quality of services that they get.

Below this is just really the timeline at a very high level.

We've gone from delivering this plan to the council.

We're now in implementing actions, and I'll briefly mention this again.

We're actually taking action on 25 of the 47 actions.

We anticipate being finished with 25 of them by the end of 2020. And then, of course, incorporating this framework in the strategic business plan.

And so we're already starting to do that work as we're working with our customer review panel.

So I'm just going to show this, these interlinking rings, and I'm going to talk about each one of these practice areas that we focused on.

And so we selected six areas of how we do our work.

It's not everything that the utility does.

But there was some prioritization that occurred here.

We decided to refine and focus on these different practice areas, and I'll talk about the reasons why we did that.

Of course, the regulatory alignment, partnerships, efficiency and improvement, customer assistance, budget, financial management, and capital, all those things interrelate with each other, and there's a lot of embedded issues around improvement, around efficiency within all these different areas.

But it's really important to point out that, you know, the organization decided this is where we're going to improve first.

It doesn't mean it's the end, but it's the beginning of the iteration of how we're going to do this.

So the work, as Mami briefly mentioned, was quite expansive.

It cut across the entire organization, and this was intentional.

A lot of times what happens with this type efficiency, affordability, accountability work, whatever you want to call it, it's done by an outside consultant.

It dies on the vine because people don't really own it.

And so we wanted to really change how we did that work so that people really felt not just a part of it, but heard.

Was this, you mentioned that the risk and resiliency work was not done by an outside consult.

It was done in-house similar?

Both the plans were developed in-house by staff with good expert in-house leaders.

Great.

You should consider sharing your experiences with other departments on sort of the benefits of that approach.

Thank you.

And so it was a lot of very lively discussions, a lot of really good constructive arguments and some very engaged work with our executive team as well.

So one of the things that we started with, and this is really, you know, just a philosophical approach in terms of strategy, is build on where you're at and identify gaps going forward, right?

And so what I'm going to share with you are some examples of there's a lot of great work that's occurring within the utility.

We have a lot of pockets of excellence, but how can we do this better as an enterprise?

And so SPU has a foundation.

But we started by asking this question, okay, so what exists now?

And what are some problems with that?

But also, what are some great things that are doing now?

And how might we extend those?

So, of course, you know, I've mentioned there's a bias towards action.

We have 47 actions that might be a mistake.

I'll just say that.

And, you know, I'm going to actually just say this and mommy might kick me under the table.

We have 47 actions.

We know that some of them will learn that they're not doable, right?

And so the intention wasn't to say we're going to do specifically all these 47 things, but we're going to learn as we go through this, which embeds some of this continuous improvement concept within this.

So I guess I'm really asking, don't hold us accountable for every single item within this.

But our intention is good.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm sure you have a story to tell about why some things become less important.

Right, right.

So I'm going to start with capital planning and delivery.

Very important piece here.

It's you go where the money is.

So our six-year capital plan is $2 billion.

So this is a place that we started.

And we identified lots of opportunities, lots of opportunities to streamline the capital delivery process.

So I'll give an example of this.

Probably no surprise to you, but capital projects can take a very long time.

And what we discovered that is on average when we do the bookends of capital project delivery, from inception to turning over to operations take anywhere between about four years to 30 years.

And that's a lot of room for growth, right?

And so one of the large areas that we focused on is with capital delivery itself, how can we increase the throughput?

How can we deliver things faster?

And how can we reduce soft costs and reduce some of the iterations?

And so we have about 12 items that we identified to move forward.

And then nine of those actions are actually occurring right now.

We have an active inner line of business team that actually comes together every two weeks to see how we're doing with that work.

And of course, it goes without saying, but I'm going to say it.

Focusing on this area, it's such a big part of the budget.

When projects go beyond their timeline, there's a significant cost around that.

So I'm really trying to focus on project delivery on time and on budget.

saves not just utility, but the rate payers.

Absolutely.

Spot on.

So another important practice area is customer assistance.

And customer assistance is a group of actual tools that we have in place.

And we really ask this question, do we have the right tools?

Are we using them well?

Why is this such a significant area?

I mean, it's such a key to affordability.

We have 77,000 people in the city who are eligible for our utility discount program, but only about 26,000 people access that.

And so we're really asking why.

Why is that?

Are there things that we can do better?

We're dealing with a lot of different numbers.

You just said 26. I think the report says 24,000 in 2018, but we've recently received another report that said it's 34,000, which would suggest that 10,000 new customers were added in 2019. So we'd just love to figure figure out how we're counting.

And the reason why this is important, obviously, is because we know that there are many, many, many more people who are eligible for the utility discount program that are signed up.

And so we're doing everything we can to track our progress.

And so, yeah, having a better sense of that would be really helpful.

So what did you learn from this particular practice area?

Well, that we have a lot of room for growth.

And so just really basic things in terms of how we to notify people how we interact.

We, even with some of the basic technology tools that are available to us, we don't use them in ways that people would expect us to.

And so we have several pilots that we're working through.

Some of them revolve around shutoffs.

Some of them revolve around emergency assistance.

Asking this really basic question rather than saying, hey, we've got a program, take it.

What do you actually need?

How could you access this in either a culturally appropriate way or in a way that's actually going to be useful to you?

A lot of the approaches that we are piloting right now are cognizant of the fact that it is difficult and time consuming for folks to apply for assistance or to request help.

And so we are trying to use predictive analytics and, you know, other low, super low barrier approaches that allow people to access our assistance.

predictive analytics with the goal of identifying folks who would be eligible?

With customer shutoffs, UDP customers, we would aim to have zero folks who are on UDP that we shut off their services for.

So we are trying to use predictive analytics to understand what might be some indicators so that we can proactively offer assistance to those folks in case that they may be facing some kind of financial hardship that would make it difficult for them to pay their bills.

And how will you measure success in this area?

The way that we would measure success in terms of shutoffs of UDP customers is that we would not shut off any UDP customers' services.

Yeah, I think, I mean, just to be realistic, it's, you might want to consider a staged set of goals.

Of course, of course.

So if your aspiration is none, right, then it's to reduce from where you are incrementally and to test the benefit of what you're doing.

Because if your goal is zero and you had 238 cutoffs in 2018, in 2019 you're going to fail.

That's understood.

That is understood.

So we should have a plan.

We should have a phased plan that allows us to.

A phased plan and how to get to that phased, those phased outcomes.

I think it would be really, really helpful rather than setting the goal so high and also not having a clear pathway for how to get there.

We don't have all the answers and that's why we're using pilots and we expect to use an adaptive management approach where we correct, you know, as we learn information.

And so right now we do not have, you know, we don't have a map that tells us every step of the way, but we have some ideas that we're trying to test right now.

All right.

Yeah, I mean, I would be interested in, you know, tell me I'm all wet if this isn't the right way to go, but of just the utility actually setting a percentage goal for reductions of utility shutoffs for 2020. And I think that might be a good way to go and one where we can see progress and build from that progress.

Okay.

Thank you.

So efficiency and improvement, this actually is built into the entire plan, built across the entire plan.

And it's, when we're talking about efficiency improvement for the utility, this engendered a lot of really good conversations.

We're really starting to talk about this sort of plan, do, check, adjust.

And, you know, Mommy mentioned this adaptive sort of approach that you try something, you learn, you have a hypothesis, you have an experiment.

And so what's interesting about this is that there are a lot of examples where people have tried to do things like.

within the utility, LEAN, Rapid Office Kaizen, lots of different, you know, acronyms and different things like that for improvement.

And they've had some success, but they haven't sustained those improvements over time.

And so that really became the theme that we started to settle on.

How do we build a sustained process of improvement, build that learning into the organization?

So one of the key things out of the gate that we've begun we actually have our third session this Friday, is we have a cohort of lean leaders who are learning lean problem solving, and they're applying it to their work right away.

And we have them partnering and paired with their peers as well as with coaches.

And it's been really great.

We've already had some ups and downs with some of the work, but there's a lot of great learning that's occurring.

But you have to build it into how people are doing their work in order to sustain it.

Regulatory alignment, another big area.

We spend hundreds of billions of dollars on either complying with regulation.

We are not just regulated, we are a regulator.

We have an impact on whether this economy is vibrant or not.

And so this became a very significant issue.

And again, this is an area where the utility has some really profound examples of great work that they've done in thinking and moving upstream.

And so what I mean by that is we don't just always accept some sort of compliance model.

You will do 17 inspections this year, you know, by the EPA, and next year you will do 17.5.

We actually try to influence it upstream as it's becoming law, as it might be being reconsidered, or when it hasn't been reconsidered, can we do something different?

Really great example, with our drainage and wastewater division, they did some really great work around our National Pollutant Discharge Elimination Permit, where we were doing compliance monitoring at certain sites on a frequency that didn't improve any outcome.

And so we were able to prove that with data.

And we actually used a lean event to improve the process.

And so we were able to redeploy people as well as just make that process more efficient and making sure that we're still complying.

And they were open to that because of just the really good way that we did that work and did the analysis.

use that sort of on-the-ground experience to affect the regulatory environment or what the expectations are.

That's right.

And so moving forward, we have a lot of different examples that are both specific and general of how do we embed that across organization into the culture of influencing, impacting early and often.

How do we use data and how do we engage with regulators as partners and how do we be partners with the regulators in order to improve outcomes?

But that is the more incremental work around that area of effort.

But as you know from our many discussions on this issue, our integrated plan is also part of a larger strategy to really try to get the most benefit, you know, at a lower cost for our community.

It's important work and appreciate the, again, the looking upstream and using Seattle's experiences to influence that regulatory environment, which may not be best suited right now for what we want to accomplish.

So practice area of partnerships, you know, I'm going to sound like a broken record with this, but there are a lot of great partnerships that are already occurring.

And I found that very quickly, some very exciting things that people are doing.

Pockets of excellence within the organization.

Mami briefly mentioned, but I'm going to use this as an example.

When I say partnerships, I mean really mundane things as well as really exciting things.

So a partnership actually, our solid waste contract, that's a partnership.

There are more exciting things in terms of people, not just in exchange for money and doing a service for us, but also that we may have some assets, and they may bring some skills or some abilities, sharing cost, sharing risk, that may be helpful for the city.

And so Mommy had mentioned the straw ban.

That was an amazing partnership that took a lot of back and forth with the Lonely Wheel Foundation.

And what they found valuable is the persona that Seattle has as a green city, that this could be used as a platform for really launching something nationally and potentially internationally, something we would have never conceived of.

And they brought skills to fore and resources that we would not have been able to contract for or really even have dreamed of.

And that's amazing.

So moving forward, how do we grow that?

That's really the key question here.

And so we have a lot of great partnerships that are in action.

There are some nascent and developing pilots.

You know, one example that Mommy also mentioned, and you may know more about, is with food recovery.

Basically, one-third of food waste is actually edible.

It's usable.

While we do compost a lot of it, it doesn't have to go that way.

That's the worst possible use for it.

So what are some better uses for this?

So we have a pilot that we're moving forward with of, you know, what are some key customers?

What are some organizations?

We have some restauranteurs who are partnering with us to make better use of something that really is It's seen as valueless right now, but it has real value.

People are hungry within the city.

And there's lots of other great examples.

We're trying to build this sort of community of practice, this work, and also build it into an enterprise-wide approach where we're learning from each other.

In that food waste reduction initiative, I think some of that work is coming down to us from state legislation that, if I recall correctly, Governor Inslee championed last year.

It may not be directly influencing us, but there was a significant initiative to really focus on that work on the state level.

I'm not sure how aligned our efforts are or how much our efforts derive from that work, but it is something that a number of jurisdictions recognize as an area for improvement.

Thank you.

And we're a member of the Pacific Coast Collaborative, which is a large regional effort to work on food waste and food recovery.

So one of the driest subject matters within the work was around budget and financial management.

This also engendered the most heated discussions.

What do you know?

Yeah, it was really interesting.

A lot of pent-up demand.

And so, you know, using a lot of, you know, general words around long-term financial management and streamlining process, things like that.

But, you know, one of the themes that came out of this work was how can we better democratize the data that we have, make it useful, actionable, and really influence managers to really pay deep and close attention to their financial situation or making sure that we are providing that and they understand how to get it.

So really basic stuff in terms of financial monitoring of line item budgets, projections, making sure that data is timely, that the process is not getting in the way of making it actionable.

A lot of times what, not just SPU, but I think there might be a few other organizations in Seattle and other places, sometimes this notion of precision is sacrificed.

It gets in the way of timeliness.

And so that's what we find.

And there's no such thing as perfect financial data.

But if you have to wait for six months before you know what your actual spending plan is, there's some work that needs to be done.

So are you looking at creating sort of more internal dashboards or what sort of thing?

Right.

And we've made some really great progress in terms of internal dashboards for all the lines of business and then a roll up to the executive's office.

And it's been incredibly helpful.

And it's been a wonderful collaborative effort from the folks in finance and in our planning group.

And I've really appreciated that new transparency.

That's great.

Thank you.

And so that's, I'll just go back to this.

We opened with this, MAMI opened with this, but it's a good place to end as well.

The intention is for this work, this accountability and affordability work, not to sit and float alone, but to be integrated and a part of the strategic business plan and to continue as we move forward.

And similarly, the customer review panel was briefed on this report as well?

Yes.

So they were briefed three times.

Okay.

Yeah.

And they did- Got deep.

They got deep.

And they provided input and some insights back before we submitted the report to council.

So you briefed them when it was- Before it was finished.

Drafted.

Yes.

Yeah.

That's great.

Yeah.

Thank you for that.

Thank you.

Any highlights you care to share about how their input influenced the final?

Really, it was funny because of all the things that I was surprised about, we initially wrote the report as too negative.

that we didn't highlight enough the good things that we were doing.

So that is what, and you see a lot of examples of the case studies, of the great examples, and you can actually hear it in my presentation as well.

So that was the influence that I had.

That's great.

Yeah.

That's fantastic.

So similar question as for the risk and resiliency report, as far as you've got 25 actions in progress, not holding you to do all 49. 47. But if there's something that we can do on the council side to elevate that work and help you get to, if not a finish line, because I don't think you're ever really at the finish line with this kind of work.

But moving it forward, I'm happy to do so.

I'm just thinking like, you know, whether or not we should adopt a resolution that identifies sort of what the major priorities are and timelines are.

I would be willing to do that.

Thank you very much.

The answer is also similar.

We'd love to get back to you with much more detail so we can identify the best things to move forward.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Last item on our agenda, item 25.

Seattle Public Utilities Entrance Audit Plan.

Welcome.

Thanks for joining us.

Can you give us some introductions?

Yes.

My name is Tyler Perrick.

I'm a senior manager with Moss Adams.

I'm Tod Ryland.

I'm an audit manager at Moss Adams.

Fantastic.

I appreciate your joining us.

This is the front end presentation.

Come and visit us twice a year.

You want to take it away?

Thank you, Council Member.

Yes, so this is our audit planning communication with the Council.

We are here to present and audit the financial statements of 2019 for the Seattle Public Utilities three funds, the Drainage and Wastewater Fund, the Solid Waste Fund, and then the Water Fund.

I wanted to highlight a couple things around the responsibility of Seattle Public Utilities management and also our responsibility as auditors.

Seattle Public Utility Management is responsible for kind of the preparation and the actual reporting of the financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.

And as our responsibility is assessing whether those financial statements are in accordance with those generally accepted accounting principles and also with government audit standards.

Our, at the end of our engagement, our reports will be, we'll have three reports, three audit reports over each of the funds' financial statements.

And additionally, we will issue another report on kind of the internal controls related to the financial reporting of those funds.

And finally, we will, if necessary, we will have a letter of recommendation from any observations that come about from, through our audit procedures.

We wanted to highlight that this is a long process.

It's about a nine-month process where we come in, we kind of do our risk assessment, brainstorming, and that September time frame, October we came out and did some internal control testing at the SPU offices, as well as November we have Our IT-specific auditors also come in and look at IT-related controls and automated controls in November.

Here we are in December.

And then we come back out in March-April timeframe for the majority of our testing.

And then we'll present, issue kind of that April timeframe and then present back to the council in the May-June timeframe whenever that meeting's scheduled.

And how do you use the results of the test of the internal controls to develop the audit?

Yes.

So every year, first, we kind of go through, we look at a clean slate, if you will, and we look at the different risks specific to that year.

So, for example, if there's a change in an accounting system during a year, there's inherently a heightened risk.

of that kind of that data transfer within that year.

From our internal control standpoint, even though we do our planning in the fall, if there's anything that comes up when we're doing our testing during the fall, that could change our approach to that March-April timeframe.

So it's a kind of a continual, nothing's really mutually exclusive.

It's a kind of a free-flowing, yeah.

I wanted to highlight that as part of our risk assessment, there is a sense of materiality, essentially meaning that we can't test every transaction.

So there's a, we assign a dollar threshold that we then apply to different accounts as it relates to the financial statements of each of the three funds.

quantitative and qualitative are some of our factors that we look at this materiality.

So as we're looking at the higher risk areas, which we'll get into a little bit later, there is a dollar threshold that we are testing to.

The risk assessment phase that I was referring to is something that we look at at the beginning of every audit.

Really, we're looking at kind of the areas that are most important to the end users of the financial statements, whether that be the recognition of revenue related to the three funds, any regulatory charges, any plant work, so capital assets, the different capital projects that were mentioned previously.

And then anything that is more subjective to management, so an estimate, an allowance, something that's not as concrete, those are kind of areas that we look at for consistency, kind of how things are recorded year over year, and also look at trends and historical information to get comfortable with that.

And we will then, for our final audit, when we come back out here in March, April, we look at kind of the results of those internal controls testing.

to apply to how we're going to approach that testing in that timeframe.

I wanted to highlight that as part of our risk assessment that we do, we do identify fraud risks related to potential material misstatements within the financial statements.

But as part of our professional standards, our audit is not necessarily designed to identify fraud or not identify fraud.

But so it is a component of our risk assessment.

But there is no assurance that there is fraud or not fraud within the financial statements.

Just that our audit is more of assessing whether the statements are free of material misstatement.

The financial statements are free.

All right.

So just, you're basically saying there's, the audit does not result in any guarantees of, because it's, you're not focused on identifying fraud, although you do consider the possibility of fraud being a factor.

Correct, yeah.

So our procedures, we have specific procedures designed towards those fraud risks if they've been identified.

But given our concept of materiality, we can't guarantee that we'll find fraud if it's there.

So then this slide just kind of goes over our significant audit areas.

We touched on a number of these when we were discussing the risk assessment.

A couple other ones that I would like to highlight, the cash and investments for that section, we take reliance on the state auditor's office and the work that they perform at the city level.

So we're able to kind of scale back our procedures in that section a little bit.

We also focus heavily on accounts receivable and other receivables because there is a lot more of the management estimate aspect in there as in terms of whether receivables are actually collectible and at what amount.

Bond related accounts, just making sure that the covenant compliance is all as it should be, that the calculations are being performed properly, all the disclosures and I's that need to be crossed, T's that need to be dotted, T's that need to be crossed related to the new issuances and the debt fundings that those are getting done as well.

And then also with the environmental remediation liability, it's another area with some significant estimates since it is a future event that hasn't happened yet.

And then lastly also the note disclosures in the financial statements themselves.

We work with management on those and making sure that all the disclosures meet with the U.S.

GAAP requirements there as well.

And are these audit areas that you focus on the same from year to year or do they change?

In general, they're the same year-to-year based off of the nature of the funds that we're looking at.

So the biggest one is going to be utility plant just because it's such a big section of the balance sheet.

But we will sort of shift our focus and add emphasis in different areas based off of known events that are going on.

A lot more debt being issued in the current year.

We'll obviously focus more effort in that section.

And we also meet with management kind of throughout the year to see what has transpired during the year to help us assess where that risk is for that current year.

And just lastly, wanted to briefly touch on some of the new accounting pronouncements that GASB has put out.

Effective for the current year, there's a number of them.

I'm not going to touch on all of these because most of them are not applicable to the utilities.

The most significant one would be GASB 87 related to leases.

So it's changing up the way that leases are accounted for and the way that they have been accounted for for many, many years.

That standard is not applicable until fiscal year 2020, but management has already started working on Assessing the impact of that standard and we're working with them on that as well The only other one effect or the only one effective this year that would impact the utility is Gatsby 88 regarding disclosures on debt and There's no change to the actual accounting, but there'll be a slight additions to the footnote disclosures in the financial statements and

Now help me understand there.

I see there are at least three others that are identified as effective in 2019. Why aren't those, why wouldn't they have an impact?

So for those ones like the GASB 83 certain retirement obligations, that would relate to assets that have a future liability associated with the retirement of the asset.

So in the case of utilities, they don't hold any of those assets.

So that statement's not going to have any impact.

Similarly, for GASB 84, the fiduciary activities, anything that might potentially be impacted by that standard is actually held at the city level, not the utilities, so it has no impact on our audits or the utilities financial statements.

Thank you.

And then just a couple other ones that will be effective in the coming years or this year.

Again, these ones have no applicability to the utilities, so no need to go into those in detail.

All right.

So basically the regulations change from year to year.

Some of those affect your work and some of them do not.

Exactly.

And so you will now begin the next stage of your work and you come back to council again when?

Generally, it's kind of that May, June time frame.

Okay, great.

And I just want to thank you for being a steady, consistent, and productive force for the utility and your collaborative work with utility.

I know you appreciate their collaboration with you all.

They do with you as well, and you're helping us be a strong utility that benefits the rate player, so thank you very much.

Thank you for the opportunity.

All right, with that, it is 1151, and the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, and Arts Committee meeting is adjourned.