Seattle City Council Land Use & Neighborhoods Committee 21220

Good morning.

The February 12th meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee will come to order.

It is 9.34 a.m.

I am Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

I'm joined by Councilmembers Lewis and Councilmember Peterson.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

And I know if anyone here in the crowd was expecting to speak on the reappointment of Director Torgelson, we have moved that to the next committee meeting.

So I would like to begin by acknowledging that the land we are on, which we gather, is the territory, the land of the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish, Suquamish, Muckleshoot, and Tulalip peoples, past and present, and want to honor them.

in every way possible.

This is our first meeting.

I'd like to begin by saying how glad I am to be the chair of this committee.

We'll be considering big issues about how we grow as a city and how we keep what is unique to our city.

This committee will touch on everything from housing affordability to addressing our climate crisis.

Our committee work plan this year includes adjustments to backyard cottages and MHA ordinances adopted last year, opportunities to use the land use code to make child care more affordable and accessible, strengthening tree protections, considering comprehensive plan amendments, addressing unreinforced masonry buildings, reviewing legislation to protect manufactured homes and communities, and so much more.

Today we have two great items on the agenda, a briefing and possible vote on a contract rezone of 4600 Union Bay Place, and a briefing from Seattle Department of Constructions and Inspections and Office of Sustainability and Environment on their response to Resolution 31902, which calls for an update to the Tree Protection Ordinance.

In order to spend more time hearing from the public today, as I said, we are postponing the reappointment of Director Torgelson until next committee meeting when we will plan to discuss and vote on the appointment.

That meeting is Wednesday, February 26th, starting at 9.30 a.m.

here in Council Chambers.

At this point, we will be taking public comment on items that appear on today's agenda.

This is my first committee meeting, and from my I would just like the record to reflect from here until throughout my tenure, I'm going to be very strict about public comment, which means that when I am chair, it will only be items on the agenda and I will be very strict about the two minutes or one minute as it will pertain today.

This is not intended to be a reflection on the participants in the audience today.

It is how we set the standards moving forward all throughout the year, all throughout four years.

And so I do see a lot of people that I am familiar with and that I'm friends with and that I really enjoy speaking with.

And so public comment is a great way to express your opinions on what is before the committee today and also know I would be happy to meet with anyone and everyone at a later date and time when it is not during committee and public comment.

And so please take no personal offense to the very strict rules around public comment, and so today the mics will be turned off after the time that you have been allotted.

And so public comment is not allowed on item one, which is the contract rezone of Union Bay Place, because it is a quasi-judicial item.

And the council rules for ex parte communications do apply here for item number one.

And so I do welcome everyone to speak to item number two, which it seems that the majority of folks are here to talk about, and I'm excited to hear about.

I will be calling up three names at a time.

Because we have 31 people signed up, 31 people spoke for two minutes.

We would be here for an hour before we got to the business of the committee.

We are limiting to one minute.

Groups of three or more can have three minutes.

And if you are participating in a group, please know that you are only allowed to participate in one group.

And again, these are rules that we are setting the standards for the rest of the year.

There's no intention to apply to any one group in particular.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We will be out of town on the 26th and came specifically to speak about the SDCI director.

No, I just want to...

I'm sorry, this is...

Ma'am, this is out of order, ma'am.

I'm happy to speak with you at any time.

Thank you, that is the appropriate way.

And please, what just occurred is considered a disruption as far as council proceedings are occurring.

That was a warning and I'm simply stating this for the record for further council meetings in the future.

So I'm excited to get into public comment here.

This committee has dedicated up to 20 minutes for public comment, and it does seem that we will likely extend that.

We want to hear from as many speakers as possible, and to help us do that, please keep in mind that Clapping and cheering or booing or other types of disruptions will take away from that 20 minutes.

This is your time and we want to hear from you.

Speakers are again limited to one minute for public comment, three minutes for groups.

The microphones will be turned off.

As a reminder, public comment is limited to the items on the agenda.

Again, I'm excited to have everyone up.

So I'd like to call the first three names.

And please do use both microphones.

So the first three names coming up are Jim Davis, Julia Shetler, and Frank Bacchus.

Please join us.

Great to see you, Jim.

Is that on?

I'm Jim Davis.

I live in East Magnolia.

Yesterday, an out-of-town tree services company finished cutting down an exceptional deodorant cedar in my neighborhood.

The tree was in a landslide-prone zone near an elementary school.

When I asked about the tree being exceptional, the crew didn't even know the definition.

I do want to give compliments to the SDCI inspectors who came out in a timely manner to assess the situation.

We need to license tree service providers now who do business in Seattle, just like other cities do.

You know, or this will continue to happen.

People need to know the rules when they come to do tree work in our city.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jim.

to work with you on protecting trees in the community.

So thank you for your comments.

Good morning, Julia.

Hi, my name is Julia Shetler.

and I'm currently a student at the UW.

I'm here today to ask you to pass the tree ordinance to protect our existing trees and plant more for the future generation.

I was born here and grew up in a duplex with my family in the Green Lake neighborhood.

Our alley is zoned for multifamily and has gradually been developed.

Over the years, almost every tree in our alley has been removed, even the ones that were on the edge of property lines and could have been saved when new buildings went up.

We like having more density and being able to walk to stores and cafes.

Saying that we must choose between density or trees is a false dichotomy.

With common sense protections for existing trees, creative approaches to development, and programs to plant new trees, we can truly have both.

Please pass the ordinance exactly as proposed by the Urban Forestry Commission.

You will be on the right side of history and future generations will thank you.

Thank you.

And again, I do request if we, the more clapping we have, the fewer people that can speak.

And again, if folks do want to come up in groups, that's more than welcome.

So after Frank will be Suzanne Grant, Megan Cruz, although it seems that speaking to the SDCI.

So after Megan is Carolyn Rodenberg.

Hello, Carolyn.

Joshua Morris.

And June, that's the one.

Thank you.

I'm Frank Backus.

I've lived in the Seattle area for, in Seattle actually, for the last 59 years of my 83 years, and I like what the city has done for the Thornton Creek Basin.

There's less flooding and such now because of the actions of the city, and I support that.

The trees are really important, and I would really strongly recommend that you do what the Urban Forestry Commission has recommended.

Other places are way ahead of us.

I think Portland passed something like this probably five years ago.

And it's important to follow up and make sure that what you're wanting done is done.

So I support that.

That's all.

Thank you.

Suzanne, Carolyn, Joshua, June.

I'm Suzanne Grant, and I have a group of three.

This is for the committee.

And are the other members in your group, are they also signed up?

I request the two-minute time.

They're joining me.

There's an unwelcome sight in the neighborhood.

A developer is being greedy.

There's a hole in the sky where a tree once stood.

Such a lack of life and sound.

All that's left is bare muddy ground.

A magnificent tree was murdered.

The mighty dollar cut it down.

There's a hole in the sky where the tree once was.

Somebody's making money.

Stand up.

There's a hole in the sky where the tree once was.

Somebody's making money.

Laws protect exceptional trees, but the city grants exemptions to these.

Instead, they reward the developer's greed and sanction the murderer's deeds.

There's a hole in the sky where the tree once was.

Somebody's making money there's a hole in the sky where that tree once was somebody's making money no more leaves shimmering with golden light no more gentle shedding of rains nor tulip blossoms rustling in the wind now nothing remains but that hole in the There's a hole in the sky where the tree once was.

Somebody's making money.

There's a hole in the sky where the tree once was.

Somebody's making money.

There's a hole in the sky, in the sky.

Instead of a spreading canopy, there's a hole in the sky.

in the sky instead of a 90 year old tree.

There's a hole in the sky, in the sky, that tree did not belong to you or me.

There's a hole in the sky where the tree should be.

Pass the tree ordinance now.

Stop cutting those exceptional tree down now.

Thank you, Suzanne.

That was a very wonderful presentation.

I will, I do have to make for the record to reflect that that is a second warning for disturbance because of I really love this song.

I am saying I have to maintain consistent boundaries forever, so thank you very much for that.

Megan Cruz?

Mr. Chair, if I may also just add, I'm very proud to have Suzanne as a constituent in District 7. Thank you so much for that presentation, and I look forward to our conversation later about the tree ordinance.

Great.

So if Carolyn Rodenberg is present, Joshua Morris, and June.

Carolyn, hello.

Hi.

It's good to be here today.

I live on Queen Anne Hill.

And so I really appreciate Suzanne's song because that tree was special to me as well.

I'm here to say that we need to license, register, certify our tree cutters in the city so that they follow the rules that we have.

I have an advertisement from Angie's List.

It says, it's finally time to get rid of those nuisance trees.

Have some problem trees in your yard?

Hire the best pros in Magnolia and have them removed.

your neighbors in Magnolia, trust Angie's list.

Say goodbye to those trouble trees.

We need to stop this kind of advertising, and we need to license people so that they understand that, and this is an exceptional tree in the photo, so we need this stopped.

Thank you.

Thank you, Suzanne.

Carolyn, excuse me.

Sorry, Carolyn.

And Joshua Morris, after Joshua will be June, Barbara Bernard, Annie Tho.

Good morning, council members.

Good morning.

I'm here on behalf of Seattle Audubon as their urban conservation manager to thank the council, the mayor, staff at Office of Sustainability and Environment, and Department of Construction Inspections for the time and resources that have been committed towards strengthening protections for trees in Seattle.

My vision for Seattle is a place where birds and people thrive.

That's not possible without a healthy, protected, growing urban forest.

Over 100 species of bird rely on trees, as do millions of visitors and residents to our city.

We're losing trees.

If the loss estimates reported in the 2016 canopy assessment are accurate, it's at a rate of about 100 acres per year from our neighborhoods.

There's tremendous public support to turn this around and myriad good reasons to do so.

We can become denser, more affordable, more equitable, more resilient to climate change, and stay leafy too.

Simpler, smarter, stronger tree protections must be part of the solution.

I continue to urge you to work with the Urban Forestry Commission.

Incorporate their recommendations into a funded and enforced tree protection ordinance.

Thank you.

Thank you, Joshua.

And Noah, is the taller microphone not working?

It should be on just...

There it is.

It's working.

Great.

June, welcome.

Hi, I'm June Blue Spruce.

I live in Columbia City, Seattle.

I want to show you this map.

This is the canopy as of 2016. That's four years ago.

This is a map of surface temperature.

So as you can see, The places where Seattle is most deforested are the hottest.

That's pretty obvious.

And those happen to be in the part of the city where I live, Southeast Seattle, Central Seattle.

If we wait until December to pass this ordinance, it won't take effect for over a year.

How many trees will we lose in the meantime?

Trees are part of our public health infrastructure.

They provide oxygen, filter air and water, stabilize soil.

For humans, they have multiple health effects.

A developer would not be allowed to breach a sewer line or a water line to build a house.

Why are they allowed to decimate trees?

Thank you.

Thank you, June.

And then Ruth Danner, although it looks like Ruth and George are here to speak on SDCI.

Maybe they have, if you're here, you're still able to speak.

Yeah, Barbara.

Hi, I'm Barbara Bernard, Concerned Seattle Citizen.

Thank you for listening to us today.

I want to mention again, I did this at the December 18th meeting, that I'm privileged to take time off of work to come and speak to you.

All the people that I know that are just as concerned, even more deeply, they don't have that time and privilege to be able to take time away from work.

Seattle needs to be more forward-thinking when it comes to preserving our urban canopy.

Development and density has to be approached with smarter designs that consider the existing footprint and connective environment.

On my block particularly, we're on a landslide area in an ECA, and now four of the lots have been scraped and developed.

I don't think when they're approving some of these permits that they're actually looking at, oh, what did we do the last year before?

So that's something that's a concern.

I want to live in a city where I'm proud to know that everybody's doing what they can to preserve the tree canopy because the state of our climate crisis.

And I just want to encourage that we pass that stronger tree ordinance today.

Thank you.

Thank you, Barbara.

Annie?

Good morning.

My name is Annie Tho, and I am a chairperson for a neighborhood group called the Neighborhood Tree Keepers, and we're working very hard to try to get this ordinance passed.

And one thing I want to say is from my study about trees, it takes about five years just to get a tree established.

And at the rate that we are clear-cutting, clear-cutting our trees in Seattle, how can we possibly replant and grow an 80, 102-year-old tree?

And so I'm asking, can we think outside the box?

If we're not even gonna consider this urban forestry draft till next December, and it may not even get passed at that point, this is 11 years that we've been watching trees getting clear-cut here.

We need to do something now.

There might be executive orders that departments could be doing.

There might be some moratoriums on exceptional trees that could be done now.

Let's think outside the box.

Thank you.

Thanks, Annie.

And so Ruth Danner, did I skip Annie?

No.

Left, great.

Judith Benditch, Janet Wei, Robert Seidman.

Good morning.

I've already sent you two letters, fairly comprehensive letters on why you should be passing the legislation now.

And I have two exceptions to the urban forestry ordinance.

One would be that you have an independent forester position like Portland has to enforce the ordinance because it's not getting enforced now.

In fact, it's deplorable.

the way it's being enforced, if at all.

Secondly is that you also adopt Portland's suggestion that there be 12 inches, not measuring some trees that have to be two feet in diameter for exceptional trees.

I also want to compliment the council members on meeting, enacting legislation, I think it was yesterday, regarding evictions that happened like that, a snap.

We've been sitting here waiting for this for 11 years.

So that process is the total antithesis of what's been happening with our trees, which have been decimated.

As you've heard, as you've seen pictures of, as you've seen heat flow charts.

So it's time to do it now.

Do it, please do it now.

So we have Janet, Robert, Steve Zemke after that.

Thank you.

Good morning, council.

My name is Janet Way.

I'm one of the founding members of Thornton Creek Alliance.

And I'm here today to tell you that the Seattle City Council has many times declared its concerns about climate change and attempted to address it with legislation.

But in fact, the fact is the most effective way to address climate change is to preserve existing trees, especially conifers, and allow these air scrubbers which suck up carbon to remain and grow.

These trees also perform many other ecological functions, providing oxygen, water quality functions, wildlife habitat, especially for migratory birds, and shade, which protects Seattle from this heat island effect.

This image is an illustration that shows you the impact of heat island effect.

And the heat island effect doesn't just affect Seattle, it affects Puget Sound and the whole surrounding area.

It's very damaging.

I'm going to send you...

Janet, I'd be happy to meet with you further.

Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Bob Seidman.

How are you?

Okay.

Well, I'm going to quote from an op-ed piece from the Seattle Times of July 10th, 2019, which is still timely.

It was written by Melinda Mueller, who may be here, and if she's not, I'm going to recite her words.

According to the Seattle Audubon Society, 1,200 acres of canopy cover had been cut down by developers.

since 2009. She goes on to say that the City of Seattle is not enforcing its tree protection ordinance that requires developers to replace on-site or off all large exceptional trees they remove.

Mueller also goes on to say that the Department of Construction and Development makes no mention of this ordinance in its instruction to developers.

What I really want to say about the canopy is that we are sacrificing our current assets.

Thank you, Robert.

I'd be happy to take your written comments as well.

And for anyone else in the audience, if you have prepared written comments that you were not able to fully share with us today, I'm happy to take them for the record.

Thank you.

So Steve, Woody Wheeler, John Tho, Bill Waldman,

Steve Zemke, Chair of TREPAC.

So already heard 11 years and counting and you're looking at adding at least another year to 12 years.

The reality is that in the current ordinance, it says the director shall have the authority to enforce the provisions of this chapter, issue permits, and establish administrative procedures and guidelines, conduct inspections, and prepare the forms necessary to carry out the provisions of this chapter.

They can do a lot right now.

It's up to you to urge them to do that.

As already mentioned, on developers replacing exceptional trees and trees over 24 inches in size, that has not been occurring for basically 21 years.

That was in the 2001 ordinance.

So DCI has no record of the tree replacement.

So who oversees tree protection in DCI?

There is no urban forestry division in DCI.

Tree ordinance compliance and enforcement seems to be loosely distributed throughout DCI.

As such, there is seemingly no one accountable.

It's time to move the accountability to the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

DCI has had- Thank you.

Thank you, Steve.

Woody, how are you?

I'm well, thank you.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for keeping this ball rolling.

We'd like it to roll faster.

I'm going to invoke Cleveland, Ohio, which I've done before.

It's been called before the mistake on the lake.

But now, some call it the green city on a blue lake.

They have an ambitious tree plan.

And the slogan is, together, we're making Cleveland the forest city once again.

We already are one.

Let's keep it that way.

The plan has three major goals.

A shift in thinking about trees, reversing the trend of canopy decline, and assuring that the city accepts full stewardship for tree infrastructure.

Why can't we in Seattle, the emerald city in the evergreen state, shift our thinking?

Why can't we refer to trees as essential rather than expendable parts of our city's infrastructure?

I can see I'm running out of time, so I'll be one of those that sends you this later.

That's great.

I did an inventory of one up zone and found that 12 acres of trees were going to come out near my neighborhood.

If you extrapolate that times 26, it's shocking how many trees are falling.

Thank you.

We'll be happy.

I love it.

Thank you.

And if you could leave your comments, we'd love to take them.

John Tho, Bill Waldman, Colleen McClure.

Hi, thank you for listening to us.

We're all saying the same thing.

I've lived in Victoria Heights for 30 years and in the last 10 months I've seen one developer Gamut 360 come in and mow down seamless numbers of trees, mature trees, and he is now set to mow down a 300 foot deep lot, double lot that's 150 feet wide, that the city has invested millions of dollars in making swells to prevent the erosion.

And this new site that he's going to be mowing down in the next month or two is going to just exacerbate the floods that are going into Lake City.

And so I got 10 seconds left.

This, he has already mowed down 12 feet of rhododendrons that are 150 feet wide.

Everyone in my neighborhood knows that.

Thank you.

And we have now reached the conclusion of the 20 minutes for public comment.

I would like to confer with my fellow council members.

If there's no objection, I would like to extend the comment period for another 20 minutes.

No objection.

So hearing no objections, the public comment period will be extended until 1020 for an additional 20 minutes.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

John?

Bill.

Bill.

Did we just hear from John?

I'm John.

You're John.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Thank you, Bill.

OK.

I am quite sure that the developers and those responsible in At least my neighborhood who have built the million-dollar townhouses and the large apartment buildings and planted the $5 trees in the $1 holes are themselves living in neighborhoods with very nice trees.

Just do it and do it now.

Why wait?

Thank you, Bill.

Colleen, how are you?

Good morning.

Colleen McAleer, and I'm representing Laurelhurst Community Club today.

We have over 2,000 residents.

And a couple of things, I respect a lot of comments from my colleagues, and I won't repeat them, but a few things I'd like to point out.

In some of the legislation, I noticed when the person from Portland came in December, she talked about the in-lieu pot, the replacement pot, and how that's really not working so well.

So I think we need to pay a lot of attention to that as we develop legislation and rules, because the Robin Hood approach of taking very exceptional trees and replacing them, as our colleagues said, with, you know, $2 trees or something is not equitable.

And it takes, you know, 50 years to grow a good tree, maybe 20. And they can put up a house in a year and a half.

So that's not equitable.

We need to fix that.

And secondly, a lot of talk about bad tree cutters.

We need hotline, 24 hours.

A lot of times these dudes show up on the weekends, it's Sunday morning, like, what's happened?

The tree's down and it's gone.

So I think that should be part of the legislation and enforcement.

Thank you.

Thank you, Colleen.

Up next, we have Kim McCormick, Colleen Weinstein, John Lombard, Anne Seams.

And apologies if I mispronounce anyone's name.

Thank you, Kim.

Yes, my name is Kim McCormick.

I am a co-investigator.

I live in District 5. I'm a co-investigator in a local study of merlins.

They're a small falcon.

picture, so you know what they are.

Until recently, merlins were listed as a species of concern in Washington.

Their population has rebounded because they've adapted to urban nesting.

To date, we've identified 11 distinct merlin nest territories within Seattle city limits.

They nest in mature conifers in established residential neighborhoods, the same neighborhoods that are being clear cut.

The average nest tree height is 120 feet.

These are big trees.

A few years ago, a nest in our study failed and the nestlings perished because the tree was removed during the breeding season.

So I support mandating at least two weeks posted notice of the tree removal application to allow for time for intervention when active nest trees are involved.

For more information, please see the Urban Raptor Conservancy website.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kim, and thank you for all you're doing.

Colleen, how are you?

I'm well, thank you.

Good morning, my name is Colleen Weinstein and I'm a horticulturalist and resident of D5.

The past decade in Seattle and the lack of an updated tree ordinance represent missed opportunities for Seattle citizens.

Opportunities for tire swings, hammocks, tree climbing, playing with sticks, cool spots to set your picnic blanket, a spot to seek shelter in a rainstorm, piles of leaves to jump into, and spectacular fall color.

You get my point.

There is significantly more value in a tree than the land it grows on.

We are losing a canopy that has taken decades to grow in far better environmental conditions than currently exist.

We are replacing mature conifers 60 feet and taller with 15-foot deciduous trees and asking them to grow vigorously in less than ideal conditions.

Increased tree protections, conservation partnered with enforcement, education, and incentives to plant more trees for developers and property owners will further improve the proposed tree ordinance.

Thank you.

John, great to see you again.

Good to see you, Dan.

Good morning, council members.

I'm John Lombard.

I wrote the book Saving Puget Sound, and I've been a leader of Thornton Creek Alliance and the D5 Community Network in District 5. Seattle was promised a new tree ordinance 11 years ago, and it hasn't happened yet.

I was disappointed to see that the official schedule for a new proposal is to have one presented to the mayor and the council at best by the end of this year.

This despite the fact that the Urban Forestry Commission has already drafted a full proposal and the outreach that's already been done to underrepresented communities found strong support for tree protection.

As Councilmember Strauss and Peterson heard in December, Portland does not share our lackadaisical, unambitious approach.

Let's get serious.

Protecting our mature trees is crucial for our quality of life and crucial for our role protecting the climate.

I hope the council puts pressure on staff to speed up this process.

Thank you.

Thank you, John.

Anne, great to see you.

I am a magnificent tree.

I am a Ballard tree.

And I've seen so many of my brothers and sisters in Seattle and especially in Ballard Fall.

It is in your power.

You need me.

I don't need you.

You need me.

Your children need me.

Your neighbors need me.

The city needs me.

The state needs me.

It's in your power.

Do the right thing.

Don't delay.

The climate crisis is on right now.

We have no effing time to lose.

This is your youth, your future, and every tree counts.

Every tree counts, especially us mature trees.

So please listen into your heart.

Do what's right.

Listen into your gut.

This is what you need to do.

And it's now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anita Shelton, Andrew Houston, Peg Stahili.

My apologies for mispronouncing.

Anita.

Hi, I'm Anita Shelton.

And the larger, the taller mic also works if you'd like.

I'm a resident of D6.

Trees are the answer.

Do your job.

Pass the Tree Protection Ordinance as written by the Urban Forestry Commission now.

Thank you, Anita.

Andrew, Peg, and then Chris Tiffany is up after that.

Good morning.

My name is Andrew Grant Houston, also known by my friends as Ace the Architect.

I just wanted to say as someone who went to school in Austin as well as worked in Austin that I would definitely recommend looking at the tree ordinance there.

It's something that's very clear for both architects like myself as well as community members as to what the expectations are, particularly since that's a city that sits on an aquifer.

Along with that, I say that you should be looking at the forest for the tree.

So as we look at the tree ordinance holistically, that it fits into our climate goals as to how this addresses both the past of clearing forests to make our neighborhoods as well as our future.

We rely on trees for many things, namely absorbing carbon in the entire Puget Sound region.

Still, carbon is energy, so reducing the energy expanded means that we tax our canopy loss.

We reduce our carbon footprint by allowing people that work in the city at all levels of income to be able to live in the city and not have to drive cars.

I would recommend, lastly, to be looking at the work of Mayor Anne Hidalgo in Paris and her 15-Minute Neighborhoods.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Andrew.

Peg, Chris, and then Jessica Tickson after.

Hi, Peg Staley, former chair of the Urban Forestry Commission.

I request you think out of the box.

Increase staff that are on this.

Require a multi-departmental approach.

Include SDOT and SPU and the Parks Department as well as facilities.

and bring in experts because I would like to see this passed in October at the latest.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jessica Dixon, Michael Foster.

Hi, I'm Chris Tiffany.

I live in Whittier Heights.

I've lived there 26 years.

And when I first moved in, there was a big old Hawthorne tree in the neighbor's backyard that I could view out my kitchen window.

And over those years, I saw the following birds.

Merlin, Rufous Hummingbird, Downy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Tree Swaller, Stellar's Jay, Crow, Black-capped Chickadee, Bush Tit, Buick's Wren, Robin, Yellow Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Wilson's Warbler, Starling, Cedar Waxwing, Savannah Sparrow, Song Sparrow, White-Crowned Sparrow, Golden-Crowned Sparrow, Dark-Eyed Junko, House Finch, House Sparrow, Varied Thrush, Hermit Thrush, Western Tanager, Spotted Tohee, Fox Sparrow, Black-Headed Grosbeak, Ruby-Crowned Kinglet, Pacific Slope Flycatcher, Orange-Crowned Warbler, and Black-Throated gray warbler.

Since my neighbors had that tree cut down, I've only seen about a tenth of these birds, and I just ask that you pass this as quickly as possible.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jessica Dixon, Michael Foster.

Hi, good morning.

I'm here today on behalf of Plant Amnesty, the members of Plant Amnesty.

For 30 years, the mission of Plant Amnesty has been to promote the health of trees in our city.

Our founder, Cass Turnbull, was very aware that unless we did something different, unless we recognized, protected, and yes, ultimately incorporated our big trees into our denser, taller city, that time would come when we'd only find them in our parks.

But just imagine, the rest of our city would become a hot and desolate place.

Therefore, we support the following recommendations from the Urban Forestry Commission, requiring permits to remove trees, requiring posting notice of tree removal, tree replacement based on the size of tree removed, prohibiting cutting of exceptional trees outside development, tracking all tree loss and replacement, and providing the adequate funds to implement and enforce the ordinance.

We urge the city to...

Thank you.

Thank you, Jessica.

Michael Foster, and after Michael will be Steve Robstelli, Richard Elliott, and then Michael Oxman.

Hi, Michael.

President Trump wants to plant a trillion trees, so I'm not going to make the economic case for planting trees today.

I'm going to tell you that we're in an emergency, that Doug firs won't be able to have babies and raise them to adulthood safely within 60 or 80 years in western Washington.

We're completing a million tree campaign in King County.

According to the Seattle Metro population, our fair share of one trillion trees would be 600 million trees.

Pass the ordinance you've got immediately.

If you can't do that, put a moratorium on neighbors and developers torturing the existing mature trees.

Our pollution levels are hurting people.

People in the city are more and more unhealthy in every neighborhood.

Our air traffic has gone up 40 percent in the last few years.

We're all breathing that.

This is an emergency.

Take action like it is.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Is Steve?

Hi, Steve.

Steve Ripsello, I'm one of your constituents, and I certainly hope you don't go in the way of Michael Bryan.

In the last three or four years, he spoke to me once, and he tried to compare me to Mr. Zimmerman.

And I do not carry a shield, and I do not swear at you.

Are you speaking to an item on the agenda?

I will go to the item on the agenda, the three ordinance.

Thank you.

And I'm going to tell you that in Seattle, an arborist appears to be anybody with a chainsaw, any sick tree happens to be in the way of making a penny or slow down a development.

And that needs to change.

Also, I will severely protest your idea that we cannot talk about the agenda of the entire committee because that is limiting folks so much.

It's very Trumponian, different handlers, same idea.

Great.

Glad to see you, Richard.

And then Michael Oxman is the final person on the line.

Thank you, council members.

My name is Richard Ellison.

Ellison, am I involved?

Ellison, that's it.

Losing my minutes here.

It's time trees in Seattle had a voice in land use decisions.

Say city officials were proposing new tree criteria for assigning values to trees.

Excuse me, this is a Seattle Times article from 1999. I was a member of the Urban Forest Work Group under Jan Drago back then, and we spent two years working on the new updated ordinance to protect trees.

Well, here we are more than 20 odd years later.

Heritage trees, like many large exceptional trees, landmark style type trees, have no protection.

They will have no protection under the new proposals.

Something must be done so that it is not an option to a developer to save a heritage tree.

Current city codes do not protect trees.

Developers don't protect trees.

They are landlords.

You know, who knows?

I'm running out of time already.

We'd love to take your written comments if you have it.

And again, happy to meet with anyone who would like to meet.

Michael.

Howdy.

I'm Michael Oxman.

I'm an arborist.

And we just lost one of our city council members.

But to the two new city council members at the dais, I say this keeping in mind that four city council members retired rather than face the criticism that they failed to update the tree ordinance for over 10 years.

So I have an eight-point letter which I'm about to submit to you.

And we asked on December 18th, what about our demand for a moratorium on issuing permits for removal of exceptional trees?

Citizens stood here for two minutes at the podium during the public comment period asking the Land Use Committee to pointing out that the city has stalled on passing meaningful tree protection regulation because, get this, the tree's real estate value exceeds environmental and social values.

That's why we're here today.

That's why this has been stalled for a decade.

Thank you, Michael, and we're happy to take your written comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Would anyone who did not sign up to speak like to speak?

Sir, if you could sign in.

Yeah, please come sign in.

I think we've, and I've got another, I've got the rest of the signing sheet if you'd like.

You're fine.

Wonderful to have you.

My name is Leah Hall and I live in Rainier Beach.

I took work off today to tell the story about four acres behind my house that was full of mature trees and a habitat for many birds and all kinds of wildlife.

And many of the neighbor kids would go and play in there and like build things with sticks and I feel like Now, it's a desert, it was clear cut, and there are 30 homes to be built, many mansions that are over $650,000 a piece.

And my neighbors cannot afford houses like that.

The people that are going to move in are not connected to this place like we are.

So I just ask you to consider that we need to give a voice to these places and to the people that live here that don't have time to come here today and speak.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Kathleen Kirkhoff.

I am in District 6 and I've lived in Seattle all my life.

I want to emphasize the need for a moratorium.

I reviewed a study that the city had done, completed in March 2017, which very clearly stated that we're losing trees all the time and that our tree ordinance is not being enforced.

We can't have enforcement.

We can't afford to lose more trees.

So I say put a moratorium on it now.

And so we can find out, you know, if you will need to find out where we are and how do your data and your all that stuff, why let them keep clear-cutting everything without any repercussions, without paying any fees that they're supposed to pay, without replanting?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Patricia Hallsell.

I wrote you a letter.

I'm the owner of an exceptional tree in the Fremont neighborhood near the Lennon statue.

It's 60% of my property and it straddles the property line.

The other 40% belongs to a developer who wishes to develop the parking lot.

Back in 2008, the tree was declared a heritage tree, and two days later, a previous developer, in a fit of pique, then butchered the tree.

It's managed to recover somewhat, and now it is healthy.

We've had scientific tests showing that it's healthy, and it does qualify as an exceptional tree.

The developer still is hoping to remove it.

So we're on borrowed time.

We're about to lose an exceptional tree.

I just wanted to call your attention to that Thank you.

Thank you.

Make sure that we had Noah connect make sure that we connect after the meeting.

Thank you Hello good day, my name is Fred West I just want to tell you that I moved into a property maple leaf in 1991 it was adjacent to a wooded lot and And that wooded lot had huge western cedars on it, Douglas fir, there were owls, there was a whole canopy that was adjacent to Sacajawea Park.

Just a couple years ago, that lot was bought, and there's hardly a tree left on it.

There's the world's largest house on it, and there's just no more wildlife there.

What I've observed, though, is that the large mature trees need to be in a stand.

They stand together.

Otherwise, they will blow down.

So there's an interlocking relationship both to our community and the world of the arborist.

One other comment, in the summer, when it is hot, where do you want to park?

Do you look for a little shady place with your car, you know, to sit?

We need the trees.

Thank you, Council.

Thank you.

And we have reached the conclusion of the additional 20 minutes.

Do I see anyone else who has not spoken who would like to speak?

Wonderful.

Seeing none, we will close.

Seeing as we have no additional speakers, we will move on to the next agenda item.

I do believe that the first agenda item will be quick, and I will reserve my comments on the tree ordinance for just a moment.

So please, our first item of business today is a briefing and possible vote on CF-3144-34, Contract Rezone of Union Bay Place.

Will our presenters please join us at the table as Noah reads the item into the record?

Agenda item one, clerk file 314434, application of Barrientos Ryan LLC to rezone an approximately 20,000 square foot parcel located at 4544, 4550, and 4600 Union Bay Place Northeast from commercial two with a 55 foot height limit and M, mandatory housing affordability suffix, to commercial two with a 65 foot height limit and M1 MHA suffix.

Thank you, Noah.

And we are joined at the table now by Yolanda Ho of Council Central staff.

Yolanda, would you like to get us started?

Yes, thank you.

All right, so today we will be, excuse me, I will be providing you with an overview of the contract rezone application at 4600 Union Bay Place Northeast, clerk file 314434, and describe the process moving forward.

As a reminder, this is a quasi-judicial hearing, which means that the appearance of fairness doctrine applies, prohibiting ex parte communication.

Council, in this instance, is acting like judges rather than legislators.

And the decision that you all will be making is restricted to considering the information that is within the record that is compiled by the hearing examiner.

And that record was compiled at an open record hearing on December 3rd, 2019. So this first slide is just provides the official name of the clerk file, the application of Berrientos Ryan LLC to rezone an approximately 20,000 square foot.

parcel and address, and the intent is to rezone this site from Commercial 255 with an M suffix to Commercial 265 with a MHA M1 suffix, which is located directly east of the University Village.

A quick overview of the development proposal, it would be a 98-unit apartment building, with about 2,000 square feet of ground floor retail, six floors, approximately 65 feet above grade.

They are also planning on a 1,700 square foot publicly accessible courtyard that is adjacent to the retail space, structured parking for 63 cars and 92 bicycles.

And the plan is for 20% of those units to be affordable to households between 65 to 85% of area median income.

through the Multifamily Property Tax Exemption Program.

So just showing you where the site is located, as I mentioned, just to the east of University Village.

And currently the site is occupied by two one-story concrete structures and a surface parking lot.

You can see the Burke-Gilman Trail just runs kind of northeast of the site along there.

I'm just going to move on to the actual image of the site as it is currently.

So that shows there's two buildings.

There's kind of one hidden by the tree there to the far right.

They're kind of currently light industrial slash commercial tenants.

The parking lot was previously occupied by the Laurelhurst Oil Company.

And it has been determined by the Washington Department of Ecology to have been sufficiently cleaned up to meet state standards, so it's ready for redevelopment.

Adjacent uses are a mix of warehouses, surface parking lots, in addition to a couple of new mixed-use developments along the street.

And again, you can see Burke-Gilman kind of up above the site there to the left of the label.

So this image shows the current zoning and where the site is located, north of Northeast 45th Street again.

And it is that dotted line there is the university district urban village, urban center, sorry, not urban village, a boundary.

So it is located just outside of the urban center boundary.

This site was, well, that whole block there was rezoned under the citywide mandatory housing affordability legislation passed last year.

So they received the standard M suffix bump, as we called it.

So it originally had been zoned C240 and then was moved up to C255 with the M suffix.

And you can see to the west there's C275 with the M suffix, and to the east is single family 5000 zoning.

This illustration is a view kind of looking roughly northwest-ish, showing proposed massing with the additional 10 feet, so that green portion of the building shows that 10-foot increase, height increase, and how it would fit into the context if all other properties were developed to their full potential.

And this illustration shows the grade change from U Village to the west through the site to the single-family zoning to the east.

Here you can see that the single-family zone is located approximately 125 linear feet away, and there's about a 30 to 40-foot increase in elevation so showing kind of the that the increase in height is You know the the impact is not necessarily To there's like vegetation buffer and with the height increase kind of minimizes the impact of the height increase and yes

Thank you.

Is it okay if we ask questions during?

Thank you.

So this project is in my district, District 4. And just to clarify for the viewing public, because it's under a special quasi-judicial process, you know, while council members like my colleagues and I want to engage with the community, ask all sorts of questions, get input from the community, that's part of our jobs.

under a quasi-judicial, we are not able to do that.

We're able to ask questions now, however, now, and questions pertaining to what's in the clerk file from the hearing examiner, correct?

That is correct.

Okay.

Yeah.

Just first question, and I'm sure we'll have more at the end, but, and just to, you know, be aware of the hundred people we just heard from, are any trees going to be ripped out to, for this development that we know of?

No, so if we, I'm happy to flip back quickly to, so there are actually no trees on this site, so the trees are beyond the property line there.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And I will be discussing some, I'll be showing some renderings of the project, and it looks like there will actually be additional trees as a result of this project, where there are none currently.

I was just going to ask for the you just answered my question if there were going to be trees Incorporated into the final design because my understanding from you know spoiler alert looking ahead a few slides It looks like there will be but

That's correct, yeah, and we can move on to that.

If we could switch back to that slide, thank you.

I just find this slide to be very informative for me to explain what my lived experience in this space is using the Berkman Trail regularly, which is that there is a significant setback from the property to the single family zone as compared to what could look like on a map, which is just a thin line.

as well as the grade and elevation change where this site would become at the same height as the properties to the left or to the south of this, and just keeping a consistent grade.

And so I found this slide to be very informative, demonstrating that while on paper this may seem like a large change, it is in keeping with the neighborhood and the environment there.

Moving on, this image shows the proposed building and associated streetscape.

The publicly, the plaza I mentioned around the retail is kind of towards the left of the building there, so the building kind of is set back a little bit further along that area, so to allow for this more plaza space on the private property.

And as mentioned, although they are a bit ghosted out just to allow for the viewer to see the actual building, there will be street trees and other street sidewalk treatments, including some bioretention.

designs that are on the private property and then additional vegetation and additional plantings along with the trees within the right of way.

And there will, so currently there is not much of a sidewalk condition along this block and so this will actually create a more walkable space based with the new development.

And this is just one more image showing at the street level and the proposed street scape improvements, including the sidewalk and trees and other plantings.

And also that there is additional development that is happening along the street.

So along the left side of the image here, we can see that there's a future building that will be at the full 75 feet height.

And then that, Just beyond is another building that's currently under construction.

So what this will look like in the future will be quite different from where it is now.

As our city grows and changes, I've spent a lot of time on Blakely Avenue.

That's very different.

Very different.

And just to finish up on my presentation, just want to note that both the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections and the Hearing Examiner recommended approval of the project subject to two conditions, these being that the development be in substantial conformance with the approved plans that are in the record here, the master use permit.

3030253 and also that it meet the mandatory housing affordability requirements as it is indicated by the zone.

So, and neither of these decisions were appealed after their publication.

Thank you, Yolanda.

May I ask one question then?

Sure, yeah.

Which is, can you remind us of the process for a contract rezone and what happens before the rezone gets to this step?

So what happens is that the applicant files with the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections and so they go through the regular permit review and so that kind of moves along as required, you know, with the back and forth of the permits.

and getting the drawings in.

And then there's also the design review board will weigh in.

And so that was part of the process as well.

And so there's kind of, it's an iterative process for the developer.

And then once that is final, once that process is complete to the satisfaction of SDCI, that they will then move on to the next process for the hearing examiner to, So SDCI will issue its decision and recommendations and also do the environmental review through SEPA.

And then so once they've completed all those aspects, that gets packaged up and everything moves on to the hearing examiner who then considers the merit, you know, looks at all the information in the file and considers that and issues a decision or recommendation to the council, which is where we are now.

And so that's, so in some case, in this case, the council has more or less delegated to the hearing examiner to provide the opportunity for an open hearing on the matter, which no one from the public actually spoke at that opportunity.

So, and so, and then the council then considers what is in the record and makes its decision on, and should there be additional appeals or anything at this point that we would deal with that, but we did not receive any for this, particular instance.

Excellent.

And is there a deadline for council action on this application?

Yes, so given that there were no appeals to the hearing examiner's decision, the council must is required to take action within 90 days.

So that would get us to March 9th, I think.

So yeah, so that's what we seem to be well, we are well within the time period of taking action.

And I have a number of other questions that your presentation answered.

So thank you for having a very comprehensive presentation.

Councilmember Peterson.

Thank you.

Thanks Yolanda.

Question about the mandatory housing affordability.

Is the real estate developer going to build any affordable housing units on site?

So they are electing to participate in the multifamily property tax exemption program, which is voluntary.

So they are electing to provide 20% affordable units at the 65 to 85% area median income.

They will not be performing, so they will not be building affordable units under the mandatory housing affordability program.

They are electing to pay instead.

And that, I can provide you with that amount if you are interested.

Thank you.

If you have it handy.

Yeah, so based on, they, yeah, so the information they provided was slightly different from what I am going to be providing in that they had initially assumed that the contract rezone would be just the M suffix, not an M1 suffix, which is what we are considering today.

And so with the M1 suffix, they would be paying about 1.8, 1.9 million into MHA.

And that's in exchange for getting an extra 10 feet, essentially?

Correct.

Okay.

10 feet in height.

And then in terms of the community engagement, you talked a little bit about the process in advance.

Is there anything you can tell us about what the community engagement was?

Did the real estate developer go out to the community, ask their input?

Yeah, so based on the record, it looks like they held four meetings with the Ravenna Bryant Community Association beginning in 2017, so quite a while now.

And also with the Laurelhurst Community Association, they held a number of coffee meetings with homeowners east of the site in the single family area that we were discussing before.

you know, responded to the feedback around some of the concerns around shading of the Burt Gelman.

And so they adopted their design to kind of reduce some of the shading and kind of narrow the footprint of the building a bit and added parking, which was a concern as well from the community.

And in the record are 38 letters of support for the rezone as well from individual homeowners in the area.

And it looks like, you mentioned they added some parking on site.

It also looks like there is plenty of transit nearby.

So on Sandpoint Way, on 35th Ave, also on 25th Ave.

So that's great that the density is being put where there is reliable transit.

It's probably premature to ask this question, but I know a lot of us are interested in seeing more childcare facilities available throughout the city, you know, in this ground floor retail space, which usually takes a longer time to fill up.

The residential units tend to fill up quickly, but the retail space ground floor does not.

And we also have a shortage of childcare facilities.

Do you have, and this might be a conversation for later, but is it possible to put childcare facility in the ground floor there?

So there's 2,000 square feet approximately planned for a retail space.

And based on the plans, it looks like it's two, so two 1,000 square foot spaces.

So I'm no expert necessarily on child care.

I have a child in child care, but it looks like a lot bigger than 1,000 square feet.

Those might be needed for such facilities, but I also would need to look into that more.

But my suspicion is that their intent is for it to be retailed, right, like a cafe or restaurant, and that's with, you know, sidewalk cafe kind of look to it.

But it does not preclude the possibility of having a child care facility there.

But I would need to know more, have more information about kind of space requirements for child care facilities.

Just two more questions real quick.

Councilmember Peterson, can I just piggyback on that, which is that within this committee, we will be taking up a number of different initiatives to increase the affordability and accessibility of child care.

In spaces like this, which are ground floor and new buildings, I have found it to be difficult for local businesses, small businesses, and childcare facilities to be placed, oftentimes due to the renovation costs that are associated with meeting state code for childcare or what it really looks like.

Cafe Turco in the Fremont neighborhood is a great example of a place, a restaurant that has really made what can be a cavernous space, a very homey space.

And so I am looking forward to working with you to make sure that the projects like this include child care.

That's not what we're here to discuss.

Further questions?

And I know there's lots of common ground on that.

I know Councilmember Mosqueda, that's a big...

issue for her as well, so we'll have lots of folks to work with us on that, which is nice.

Just two quick questions.

You mentioned that there were support letters and there was no appeal, so that's sort of a good sign about community engagement and support.

Were there any letters of opposition that we know of?

There were some e-mails.

I think that there's a couple of e-mails, but I think those may have been early in the process, too.

So I don't want to say that there was anything that was uniformly against it, but it seemed like the developer had responded to a lot of the community concerns throughout the design review process and just meeting with folks and thus no appeals.

Okay.

Actually, that's all I have.

Great.

Councilmember Lewis, questions?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

So just so I'm clear, Yolanda, I just wanted to ask a follow-up question from our discussion about the payment of the mandatory fee for affordable housing.

My understanding, though, is that the building will have 20% affordable units through the multifamily tax exemption that will be on-site, correct?

Is that okay?

Yeah, so those will be part of the building, of having those affordable units there, correct?

At 65 to 85% AMI?

Correct.

So in addition to those multifamily tax exemption units that are on-site, the city will also be getting $1.8 to $1.9 million through the MHA?

That is correct.

Okay, thank you.

Wonderful.

Any further questions at the table?

All right.

So shall I describe what we should do now?

That would be great.

I do have some understanding here.

We can work together.

So if the committee supports this proposed rezone, there are two documents for that the council will be considering.

So in the memo that is attached to the agenda, there is a draft findings, conclusions, and decision document, attachment to the memo, that grants the proposed rezone subject to the conditions that I spoke to earlier.

that the applicant execute a property use and development agreement that implements the provisions of Seattle Municipal Code Chapter 23.58B and 23.58C, which are mandatory housing affordability.

and limits development to the project shown in the final approved plans.

So should the committee support that, we will then have a council bill that will be introduced to the full council, so that goes just directly to the full council.

That will amend the official zoning map and approves the property use and development agreement.

In the interim, I'll be working with the applicant to record and execute the final properties and development agreement that will be attached to that ordinance.

So given that there are a few steps that still need to be taken, my intent would be to get that council bill onto the introduction referral calendar on February 24th so that the council can, could be, it's ready for a vote on March 2nd.

Although, is that not after the 90-day period in which you described?

No, we are still within.

Wonderful.

Yeah.

And so I am not seeing any appellants to this application or amendments to consider.

I would defer to Council Member Peterson.

Are you?

Thank you.

I'll move it.

I'll so move it.

Second.

Yeah, so moving the grant, moving to grant the application in clerk file 3144.34, Yes, second.

Great, thank you.

So those in favor, please vote aye and raise your hand.

Those aye.

Aye.

Those opposed, vote no and raise your hand.

This motion passes.

And Yolanda, you've already described the next steps, and so I believe that concludes this council item, and we look forward to taking this up on March 2nd.

Thank you.

Our next item, item number two, is SDCI's update on the work to strengthen the tree protection ordinance.

Will the presenters please join us at the table as Noah reads this item into the record?

Agenda item two, Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection's tree protections update.

and Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Thank you, Sandra, for joining us.

Great to see you all.

This report is a response to Resolution 31902, which I worked on last year alongside Councilmember Sally Bagshaw.

The resolution calls for strengthening the Seattle's tree protection rules and requested that SDCI and OSC develop a scope, schedule, and budget to work with Council on new legislation for the tree protection.

Would folks like to introduce yourselves?

And then I have just a few comments to make before we get going.

Mike Podosky, Department of Construction and Inspections.

Shonda Emery, SDCI.

Sandra Pinto, the Bader, Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Wonderful.

And again, I just want to thank everyone who has joined us here in the audience today for all of the wonderful commentary that we heard this morning.

Many of the comments that were shared by the public are things that I also feel when we talk about heat and the natural shading that trees provide, the cleaning of the air and the protecting of cooling.

I have experienced this throughout the city in so many different ways and it's very important.

The birds, the habitat for the birds, many of my closest friends are arborists, certified arborists to that degree.

And the Audubon Society, is Josh still with us?

Josh knows a good friend of mine, Brendan McGarry, who is both an arborist, an educator, and a birder.

And so I can't share with you enough how much this tree ordinance truly means to me in the protection of our natural habitat throughout our city as we grow and change.

you know, where the block that I grew up on has a number of very large trees, so much so that I can pretty much point out the block that my parents live on from anywhere in the city based on the tree line, right?

And so, I personally am very invested in this.

When I was in AmeriCorps, I was red card certified as a wildland firefighter and I spent the majority of my time in the woods working with trees and protecting trees, understanding disease, understanding what really is required in a natural habitat in a wilderness environment, the needing to prune the trees up to 10 feet to reduce fire.

We stacked a lot of sticks, I will tell you that.

And when I lived on 63rd and 20th in Ballard, I got to experience the neighborhood that I grew up in bulldozed.

It was a very emotional experience for me.

And I watched the spectrum of developer builders come in, some very amazing and some less so, and the difference between builders that would require a tree to be cut down before they would purchase the house, as compared to some really great opportunities, like on 20th, and I believe it's 61st, where the townhomes were actually built around an existing tree, and that tree provides value to those townhomes in a way that cannot be recreated in the amount of time that the townhomes are built.

And so there is a way that we're able to continue to grow and create density in our city and preserve the trees that make our city so unique.

I also understand the importance of groves or in school marms as we called them while we were in forestry and the importance that that natural habitat provides for each other tree within that grove.

These are things that are very personal to me in my work and that's why When Council Member Bagshaw took this work up, it was very personal that I took it on.

And over the last year, we've done a lot of really great work to make sure that the whole city family has buy-in in this process, to make sure that the executive's office is bought in, to make sure that SDCI, OSC, that you're bought into this process.

And that is something that is very important for us to do moving forward.

And so for anyone in the crowd today that is feeling like, We might be taking too long or that we should just pass something right this very moment.

Please rest assured.

This is the first meeting of the Land Use Committee.

And while it should have been the first item, it is the second item that the Land Use Committee is taking up.

Council Member Peterson and I both share a very deep passion and we'll work on Council Member Lewis.

I know you support it, you know, and so we've got four years and we've got a lot of different tools that we can use and I think that the most important way to move forward is through a collective working together within the city family.

And so I do want to thank Councilmember Peterson for hosting the December meeting focused on the Portland I have experience and contacts in Portland and will probably be bringing them back.

I want to thank you for your fast work so we didn't have to wait for the new Council.

I'm happy to meet with folks.

For a lot of the people who spoke this morning, I already know you from either meeting at the Queen Anne tulip tree, which we tried to save, or the tree, the elms on the west side of Queen Anne, or the trees in Ballard.

I'm just very excited to get to work.

And thank you for being able to meet the initial deadline within the tree resolution.

For those who may not know, the original proposed due date for this report was sometime in March.

And as staff working on it, we moved it up to the end of January so that at this first meeting, we could get to work on the tree ordinance.

So I just thank you so much for your fast work.

Thank you.

and thank you for the opportunity to share our work with you.

Today, we would like to provide a bit of background.

Sandra, my apologies, would everyone, you already introduced yourselves, excuse me.

So yeah, I just would like to provide a little bit of background for the conversation, talk a little bit also about the progress that the city is doing on updating the urban forest management plan.

and then dive into progress on tree protection regulations and the specifics of resolution 31902 specifically.

This is the first quarterly report and we're going to be sharing with you scope, schedule, and budget as well.

So Seattle, trees are fundamental to Seattle.

We pride ourselves as being one of the greenest cities in the country.

Trees are very important for the durability of our city, especially as we continue to grow.

There are nine different city departments that work on urban forestry.

We think that's important because each one of them brings important expertise, perspective, and resources to this commitment.

But we also know that coordination and collaboration is key.

And to that effect, the executive created the city's urban forestry core team with representatives from all of these departments.

And we meet often to make sure that we are proactively communicating and coordinating our work.

One of the things that we are doing is updating the urban forest management plan, and I'll talk a little bit more about that.

We also have been working, SDCI and OSC specifically, on updating tree regulations, but we have also tapped the core team expertise and bounced ideas off of them, and we will continue to do that.

So, the Urban Forest Management Plan.

It sets the goals and the framework that guides our policies and programs to accomplish our goals.

This work is being informed by information that we gleaned from the 2016 canopy cover assessment.

We learned a couple of things.

One is that at the time, we were at 28% canopy cover.

The goal that the plan has established is 30% by 2037. So we're at 28%.

We also learned that there tends to be fewer trees in areas of the city where there's a majority of people of color or low income living in.

And then these areas have 20% canopy cover in average.

And then again, compared to 28% citywide.

So that's something that we're keeping in mind.

And we also learned that 72% of our canopy is in residential areas.

So it is very important to realize that the city really needs to work with community on the stewardship of these trees.

The update has been working and focusing on inclusive engagement.

This is something that we haven't done properly in the past.

And this time we are making sure that we are reaching to historically underrepresented communities, communities of color, low income population, linguistically isolated households, immigrants and refugees, as well as Native Americans.

And we're also working to create a stronger connection between the density and the climate change objectives that the city has in creating stronger measures and accountability.

And I forgot to say, please feel free to ask questions as we go along.

We're happy to answer them at any time.

Thank you.

And then I just wanted to share kind of like where we are in terms of the Urban Forest Management Plan work.

Before we began drafting the plan, we really wanted to make sure we got input.

So we partnered with SPU's Community Connections Program.

They are part of SPU's Environmental Justice and Service Equity Group.

And the idea was for them to work with community-based organizations and community liaisons to reach out to underserved communities in culturally adequate and appropriate ways and in language.

We held listening sessions with nonprofit partners, with tree advocates, with tree service providers, with government agencies, volunteers, and the Urban Forestry Commission.

And we also engaged a consultant to do an initial assessment on the city's programs and policies.

So we took all of this information and we produced a first draft.

What we are doing now is we re-engage community connections to have them share with community our draft goals, strategies, and actions to make sure that we are properly representing and reflecting the priorities that they share with us.

And this work is going to be wrapping up this month.

We have also been working on incorporating the departmental input into the draft plan.

And then next steps, as we undertake engagement phase number two, we are going to be preparing a draft that we're going to be sharing with the public for public input in the third quarter.

And then we're going to incorporate that input and share a final draft with council in late 2020. And with that, and now Shanda is going to be sharing progress on tree protection regulations.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sandra.

First, I'd like to mention some of the progress that we've made so far.

We've increased education and information, and then we've also improved enforcement and then increased resources and staff.

And so as far as education, we've updated the SDCI website to include new advice or updated advice on the tip sheets, as well as new information about the value of trees and ways to include plain language in the website for understanding what the existing regulations say.

As far as enforcement, we have updated a, or recently adopted a new director's rule.

And in that new director's rule, it clarifies how fees are calculated when trees are cut down illegally.

This is very important as it also gives us the ability to, well, it gave us the ability to increase the fees as a greater deterrent for illegal tree cutting.

And then SDCI has hired two arborists, and those arborists are available to help us with not only just doing a plan review for the site plans, but they also are helping us with code enforcement cases as well as conducting trainings for our staff at SDCI.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

So just going back to talk a little bit about the new director's rule, I don't know if there's a summary of the clarification of fees somewhere else in the presentation or not, but one of my takeaways from an extensive meeting with SDCI earlier this month that I had was that the current schedule and formula for assessing the fees is fairly Byzantine and a little convoluted based on a whole bunch of different factors.

One thing that I took away from that is that the department would like to see an even more kind of clarifying or streamlined piece of the ordinance that this committee will ultimately pass that kind of provides more clarity on that.

I was just wondering for my own edification and for the audience if you could discuss that rule in maybe a little more detail and maybe you could talk about what the current regime is for assessing fees and the impact that potential on clarity has on enforcement.

Sure, absolutely.

So right now we use the what we call the cost approach and under that we use the actual replacement cost for the tree at a local nursery.

So that's what we use and then on the second page of the rule.

Can I?

Sure.

So if you're cutting down a 50 year old conifer, how do you assess that cost?

Is it just a cost of putting in like a two-year-old sapling, or how does that work?

The cost approach is based on in-kind replacement.

And then for the larger trees, we use the trunk formula.

And that's something where it's a little more complicated, like you say.

The trunk formula is a different way of looking at it.

And I kind of quote here from, you know, what the rule says here.

It says, it provides a method to determine the valuations and penalties when trees have been removed from a site.

And then it also, the main thing that I really want to point out with this rule that is been really helpful for SDCI is it helps us evaluate trees when we can't get onto the property because that's been historically a real problem for SDCI.

We found that trees have been removed over the weekend.

And when code enforcement staff goes out there, there's nothing for us to look at.

And so this rule has given us the ability to assess penalties from a distance, from the sidewalk, which has been huge for us.

One thing I'd like to point out.

I was going to mention later is just this past year, we were able to assess a fine of $33,000 for a tree that was removed with this rule.

That was just one tree.

Job well done.

Thanks, and I would just mention too that in response to councilmember Lewis this question as Shonda has pointed out We've made some great improvements with this rule, but recognize that there still are some more There's still some more work to do with enforcement So we would continue to make this easier to use and to make sure it's the strongest deterrent that it could be right And I have a quick follow-up question.

Mr. Chair.

So it no, I appreciate that clarification I guess part of my concern is that You know, while we are in a position to levy appropriate fines given the exact specifications of the tree that's being removed and that can better quantify the significance of losing that tree, part of my concern is that, you know, if we have an enforcement mechanism that's sort of, you know, based on a formula or based on, like I worry that the scale of the deterrent can be minimized because, I mean, I don't know that the owner of that $33,000 tree necessarily was aware that that was potentially what the penalty would have been, right?

So, I mean, for it to be a deterrent, the...

you know, the impact, I mean, just speaking as someone who, you know, who was a prosecutor before I came to the council here, I mean, I think for deterrence to be an effective strategy, the penalty has to be apparent to the person who's considering the conduct.

So, I mean, you know, I'm all for having higher, you know, statutorily delineated penalties if that's kind of what it would come down to.

It's something I would like the department's guidance on to know, you know, what that would be and how it would be set, or maybe if there would be like different tiers of penalty kind of based on broad categories of the tree, even if that leads to a regime where people that would be penalized under the current regime might end up paying a little more than they would have under what we are now, and some people would end up paying a little less.

I think the clarity might be worth it as a tradeoff in terms of the power of the deterrence.

We'll work on that, and we'll report back at a future committee.

Great.

Thank you.

And when you do meet with us further, if there's ever anything that we can do to help you provide greater resources for enforcement, I would love to know what those are.

And I don't need to know them right this moment, and I would love to follow up with you about that.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So currently, we're working on a number of issues right now, and some of the highlights that I'd like to share with you today.

is that we are expecting to issue a new draft director's rule very shortly.

Our hope is to strengthen the tree growth definition, add clarity and strengthen tree protection measures for both significant and exceptional trees, and then require mitigation for tree removals, including an affidavit for tree service providers that will need to provide a signature prior to doing business in the city.

This would be acknowledging that they are aware of our current tree regulations.

The other thing is that this new director's rule, we're looking to provide greater protections for large and mature trees, which we've heard.

Another thing that we're working on right now is tree tracking.

We're working with SDCI's or Seattle's IT staff to develop new business practices, including technology updates to track trees on the site plans.

This will include preserved trees, existing trees, planted trees, trees part of mitigation.

This will allow us to make adjustments as needed and then monitor the progress.

Another thing that we're doing right now is SDCI and OSC are working towards public outreach.

And we've heard that public outreach needs to be done in a culturally important, go ahead.

Sorry, I wanted to ask something real quick before we left from the work underway slide.

So I just want to go back and maybe ask a little bit more about the conversation around the updated mitigation for tree removal.

before we moved further.

I'm just kind of curious.

You know, I think that that's going to be, for me at least, one of the main things I'm looking at in designing this ordinance.

I mean, part of the reason being, you know, we're a major city.

We're one of the fastest growing cities in the country.

We're going to have more development.

There's going to be more housing.

We need to have more housing.

We have a housing crisis.

Inevitably, some trees are going to have to be removed to make way.

for that growth and that development.

So inevitably, we're going to have to explore meaningful mitigation that can compensate for the loss of those trees that do ultimately have to be removed for projects that are essential.

So that's just something that as far as we can shape it early, I'd kind of like to know where that conversation is now, if you're comfortable sharing a little more.

The ordinance as it stands does allow for trees to be removed when that would not allow the development anticipated in the zone to go forward.

Most often we see that in single family and multifamily zones.

Currently mitigation is required for trees, exceptional trees that are allowed to be removed when they're in the multifamily and other zones.

And the code gives the director authority to define the exceptional trees and set forth the mitigation provisions in this rule.

And so that's why we're looking at the rule now as a way to enhance the protections of trees with those two as kind of the levers that are at play in the rule.

So we have a list of species of trees and sizes of the trunks that helps to define them as exceptional.

And we're doing some analysis now to see if we might increase the number of trees, reduce the size of the trunks that would qualify as protected, which would, lead to enhanced mitigation if some of those trees should be allowed to be removed as part of the development process, as well as looking to models such as in Portland for what they require when they do allow protected trees to be removed.

And that could also be something that would be housed in this rule.

What would some of those mitigation strategies be?

So like in-kind replacement of trees, like in-lieu fees, I guess I would imagine would be one.

I'm just kind of curious.

in like how the conversation's evolving now and what some of those strategies might be.

The code now supports a mitigation program that would incorporate replacement requirements.

At certain levels in the Portland model, certain widths of trees, there's a one-to-one replacement requirement and a species compatibility.

And then for larger trees, it's more of an in-kind replacement.

They do allow for payment in lieu in Portland.

That is something that

We've been asked to explore in the resolution that you talked about at the beginning of the meeting That may or may not be something that we could accomplish in this rule, but it is you know on the Table for us to take a look at my that is an excellent response and I will share that I have right here volume number one of multiple volumes of what the Portland what the city of Portland did to study and implement their tree ordinance and and Right now, we will be having quarterly briefings about the tree ordinance and the progress that we're moving towards.

This first briefing is focused on the scope, schedule, and budget of implementing and creating the tree ordinance.

And so, we'll talk more about Portland, but those questions that you just raised are exactly the questions that we need to have answered this year.

Right, right.

And I'm just trying to take advantage, too, of the committee to give a little feedback to the departments in terms of flagging things that would be a future interest to myself.

So I appreciate you indulging that.

I have a little bit of a follow-up, too, with that in mind.

You know, one thing that I've been doing a lot recently is researching potential methods to incorporate the public health and global climate change impacts that trees have with some emerging technologies or urban design practices.

One of the things that I found really interesting is these startup developments of these things called city trees that have been developed in some Western European countries.

A German startup company called Green City Solutions is pushing them.

An article in Curbed reported their value to be at about $20,000 per these trees.

They're basically an amalgamation of moss panels that have the effect of when put together, about 275 individual traditional trees in terms of having an effect on the heat island effect and improved air quality.

If there were ways to create incentives for people to incorporate into design review or incentives for developers to incorporate these kinds of things into their structure really early in the process as a potential mitigation strategy, it'd be something I'd be interested in looking at.

I understand that there are additional aesthetic considerations as well as erosion control considerations of trees that would be separate from from those But you know I am I want to make sure that in designing this ordinance, we're truly designing an ordinance around protecting essential trees rather than something that could be used to prevent unwanted development, purely to prevent unwanted development.

So that's going to be something that I'm interested in looking into and seeing if we can start the process even earlier to incentivize.

that have the incorporation of things that accomplish some of the other functions of trees with some emerging different technologies as well as protecting historically significant essential trees that are irreplaceable.

We're happy to work with you on those interests and we'll work with your staff so that we can take a look at that information and help you out with that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So SDSCI and OSC are very committed to dedicating resources to engage and connect in a culturally appropriate way for historically and underrepresented communities, especially areas of the city that are low income and have low tree canopy coverage right now.

It may be a good fit for us to work with the Department of Neighborhoods or SPU's Community Connections to do this the right way.

We have heard and we would like that public outreach efforts include many people including homeowners, renters, developers, builders, realtors, neighborhood groups, environmental organizations and climate and environmental justice organizations to name a few.

So resolution 31902 was issued by City Council and the Mayor.

It identified strategies to explore and protect trees in Seattle.

These include strategies to retain protections for exceptional trees including the expanding of the definition of exceptional trees, adopting a definition of significant trees, adding replacement requirements for significant tree removal, and then simplifying the tree planting and replacement requirements, including mitigation.

And then it also directs SDCI to look into establishing, as we discussed, a payment or a fee in lieu option for tree planting.

This could potentially be in situations where there isn't enough space to plant trees in the city.

And then as I stated previously, tree tracking removals and replacement, and then requiring all tree service providers to meet minimum requirements.

One thing that I'd like to point out here is that we don't know what the right threshold is at this point for defining significant trees in that draft rule, but that we are exploring a wide range of options right now.

Many of these tasks described here do require a great deal of complexity and exploration and just the fact that this is a tree, a living thing in an urban environment.

Can I ask one follow-up question on that real quick too?

So, I do want to go back to kind of talking about the exploration of the in-lieu fee.

Just to flag that, you know, at this early stage while we're still looking into it, just to make sure that equity is a big consideration for the departments and exploring it in the sense of, you know, as we're, As we're removing trees, like one thing I would be concerned about is if we're removing a whole bunch of trees for like townhouse development in the south end or something, right?

If developers are then in lieu replacing them in.

the north end, so we're sort of deforesting one part of the city to forest another part, that'd be something I'm concerned about.

So I just want to make sure that those are considerations kind of shaping how we're exploring it in ways we could incorporate equity, like in-kind replacement within the same neighborhood, or at least making sure that some of the in-lieu replacement remains in the same neighborhood.

We are working with a University of Washington graduate student on her thesis and she is doing a fee in lieu study nationwide and worldwide of other jurisdictions that are using a fee in lieu successfully.

So this is the proposed schedule which shows, I believe, substantial progress on tree protection updates accomplished at various milestones throughout the year.

As you stated previously, this work does include reporting quarterly.

As you can see here in March, SDCI will be completing the work on the exceptional tree director's role And then we're going to be continuing to work on the tree tracking efforts.

And then in April, May, we will be developing the outreach materials, and then May and June, conducting public outreach.

And then September, October, SDCI expects to be at the point where we can summarize and respond back to the public outreach feedback, conduct a technical analysis, and then be prepared to draft tree protection updates or draft legislation as oriented, including the SEPA review.

And then October, we will be drafting the recommendations to the mayor with issuing a SEPA decision in November.

The final recommendations to the mayor and the council would occur in December.

As far as budget, yes.

I really appreciate this schedule and I know that in the last attempt to pass a tree ordinance and this was well even before I worked on it so apologies to anyone in the crowd who may not who have may have more Detailed information about what occurred it is my understanding that a SEPA appeal did occur and that did take that Ordinance off track is that correct a generally correct understanding?

And so I want to just highlight that your proposed schedule, which I find to be appropriately aggressive is dependent upon The fact that there's not a SEPA appeal.

Is that a correct understanding?

That's correct If there were a SEPA appeal it could stretch this timeline further We'll be approximately in about six months.

This could be a good time too to emphasize that as we've been talking in committee today, that there are a lot of enhancements to tree protections that can occur in ways that don't necessarily need a SEPA evaluation as part of it.

Resources being brought to bear, business practice updates, technology updates, and rules are examples of those.

And we do intend to come to committee with, you know, progress reports on various steps like that along the way.

Thank you.

So as far as the budget, SDCI expects to complete the tree protection updates using existing staff resources from code development, land use services, engineering services, and code compliance work groups.

And then the technology work for tree tracking is already in the existing IT budget.

Great.

And if you could follow up with me after council, after this committee, with just whether back of the envelope or detailed analysis of what that real cost is to your department for using your existing resources, and also what projections you may have beyond this fiscal year as to what fiscal resources you will need to implement this work.

I want to make sure we have an accurate understanding of the resources that are needed.

A lot of which is echoing what we what we heard today and what we've heard, you know I've heard past couple of years on this Piggybacking up what councilmember Lewis said, you know viewing it through a race and social justice lens the heat map that we were shown today Shows how important that is.

There are health benefits for trees in addition to climate benefits.

We want those to be in the neighborhoods that are currently lacking trees.

But also I wanna flag I'm concerned about the In-Lieu Fund as a solution because as Portland, what I really heard from Portland was that that's not working for them.

And certainly we could argue whether it's working for the mandatory housing affordability program too.

I mean you need to have the fees high enough so that people are gonna try to preserve the trees.

because preserving the trees is more important, I think, for the health benefits and the climate benefits than planting smaller trees.

The idea of the 24-hour hotline we heard today, providing more notice, two weeks notice.

Having, I think you already referenced having the arborists who are allowed to cut down a tree, that they're licensed, that they're registered with the city.

then having the, I think we need to talk about at a next meeting perhaps, putting more emphasis on the Office of Sustainability and Environment to oversee the enforcement.

There was mention of having an independent forester, but basically somebody who, you know, whose job and mission is to protect trees so that they have an equal voice at the table when decisions are being made and policies being enforced, because SDCI already has a lot to consider in their scope of work for helping manage growth in the city.

So I'd like to see more emphasis on environmental emphasis to enforce the ordinance.

And then this timeline, At first glance, it appears too slow to me.

I think maybe I'm just, I'm not understanding the final recommendations to the mayor and council.

What I would be hoping to see is an ordinance that's actually delivered to the council well before the end of the year.

It'd be nice to get it before the budget.

But I just want to understand that this, I know you're doing administrative work, like director's rule, which is helpful to do stuff while you can do it.

But in terms of the legislation, I think in the resolution that was passed by the previous council, it sort of were saying, please send us an ordinance.

And so I'm hoping we're getting the ordinance by the end of the year.

I understand your interest in that and certainly have listened to the testimony as well So we'll report that back to the director in the mayor's office and talk to you some more about the schedule Okay, and I appreciate those comments councilmember Peterson because I share a very strong interest in having as aggressive of an approach as possible with this when I looked into the Portland Street ordinance and we have I believe for public copy as well.

This volume one of their recommended draft report to their city council in December of 2010 sets out very similar setup of what OSCE and SDCI have presented to us as far as project ramp-up, outreach manuals, title changes, hires for a lot of these programs, seeking funding.

And so I'll kind of walk through what Portland's approach was because their approach took nine years.

And what SDCI and OSCE are presenting to us would take one year.

And I just, so I want to share with everyone that.

And it's my strong desire to have as aggressive of a schedule as possible.

And so for Portland in fall of 2007 and winter of 2008, they hired additional staff as compared to using existing staff to bring together all of their departments, conducted case studies, and began collecting feedback.

And some of that work has already been done because in Seattle, as we've heard, some folks have been working on this for a decade.

Some people have been working on this for two decades.

And so there's not a direct alignment of our two processes because we've had so many council members start and stop and start and stop on this work.

And again, what I want to share with the public is that this is the first meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee of a four-year term, and that this is very important to two of the members on the committee, so rest assured.

So in fall of 2007, they began some of this work.

In spring of 2008, they convened a stakeholder decision group, members represented from neighborhoods, environmental organizations, builders, Urban Forestry Commission, and their county drainage district.

Members provided advice, but we're not expected to generate consensus.

In winter of 2008 to the winter of 2010, their workgroup summarized key issues and feedback.

They drafted proposed legislation and program recommendations based on feedback received.

So again, that is a period of three years that you are looking to condense 10 years of fits and starts work to be done in a year.

So again, I'm just trying to mirror and compare two different processes.

For Portland in winter of 2010 to spring of 2011, they released proposals to the public, hosted open houses, the urban forestry and planning commissions held work sessions, engaged with the directors of departments that would be impacted, and the legislation was revised to reflect the feedback that had been received.

And then the council adopted their tree regulations in 2011. So that's from 2007 to 2011, you are looking to accomplish in one year.

Again, then implementation moved on.

It was supposed to occur in February 2013, and due to budget constraints, it was pushed until 2015. And that's why I ask, what are the resource needs that you need moving forward so that I know now so that we're not I would like to make sure we are not caught flat-footed because it is my understanding and again a question I would love to know is looking at this page 6 on the volume 1 that there is the fiscal year 2010 to fiscal What are the startup costs that will be needed to get this program running?

Because I understand that once the program is running, there will be fee recovery that is able, that we will have to rely on to operate the program.

And it's very important for me to know early on how much money will be required to get this program started so that we don't end up in a situation like Portland where there's things that aren't working as well.

I think that there's, we have great benefit in seeing Portland now having their tree ordinance implemented for five years to understand, because we know that it takes policy four years to really start working the way it was designed to work.

And so we have that benefit to see how their process did and did not work.

So for all of these reasons where we have 10 to 20 years, depending on how long you've been engaged in this process, We have four to 10 councilmembers I would say who have taken this up.

An effort where this is the second council meeting and we have four straight years.

Councilmember Lewis, can I add you to the...

the list of very dedicated council members to get this done?

Oh, yes.

Yes, great.

So three council members, so that's a quorum on the committee.

And 10 years of the Urban Forestry Commission.

So Urban Forestry Commission involvement for 10 years since it was created in 2009 as well.

Exactly.

So I just, I wanted to take this moment to share that a process that took a decade in Portland, you are looking to accomplish in one year.

And so that is a schedule that I can get behind.

And I agree with you, Council Member Peterson, I would like to see the ordinance as soon as possible.

I just wanna make sure that it's good policy.

There was a public comment earlier referencing a policy that was quickly passed just this year.

And there are many policy implications.

There's going to be a lot of unintended consequences with legislation that is rushed and that is why I'm very dedicated to see it go as fast as possible and developed as properly as possible.

And something that we didn't mention is that actually SDCI has been working with a group of internal experts and also inviting members of the Urban Forestry Commission to have deliberative conversations to grapple with issues jointly and to hear their position and just kind of continue that partnership as well.

Great.

Great.

Thank you.

Any further thoughts?

So I, you know, I just want to, again, do you have any further thoughts on this presentation?

So I want to thank everyone here.

The scope schedule is appropriate.

I'm looking forward to the next quarterly report, and we'll be working together throughout I've been a member of the council for a number of years.

I've been a member of the council before then.

For the general public and for the record, one of my first meetings that I took as councilmember was meeting with arborists.

Very skilled arborists to understand where our opportunities, where the pitfalls may be with this legislation.

is that when this legislation is implemented, it needs to be easy to understand for an everyday person.

It needs to be easy to comply with so that people are complying.

The fee needs to be low enough that people use the fee, and it needs to be high enough to cover cost recovery for the program.

We have the ability to save the trees that we have and create the density we need.

And that may mean that we provide extra height or floor area to ensure that there is enough soil in places for trees to properly grow.

We absolutely must retree historically marginalized communities and low-income communities because we see health benefits tied to these trees.

We see industrial areas and adjacent industrial areas where historically marginalized communities are living as compared to the residential neighborhoods that have historically large amounts of trees that are not near the manufacturing and production of the goods that everyone uses.

And so we need to really make sure that this is an equitable approach.

Growing up in the city, I remember the efforts such as Retree Ballard and ones previous to that.

And so I'm looking forward to retreeing our city.

If there's nothing further, anything that I can help you with?

No, excellent.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for joining us today.

I'm looking forward to continuing to work with you in strengthening our tree protections.

Your presentation was very well done and I really appreciate all the work that you did so quickly to get this done for the first committee hearing.

Thank you.

Any other business?

Go to the order.

Great.

This concludes our February 12, 2020 meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee.

As a reminder, our next regularly scheduled committee meeting will be on February 26, starting at 9.30 a.m.

here in Council Chambers.

Thank you for attending and we are adjourned.