AN ORDINANCE related to the Seattle Transportation Benefit District (STBD); authorizing a $40 vehicle license fee pursuant to RCW 36.73.065 and 82.80.140; and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.
Bill passes and the chair will sign it. Will the clerk please affect my signature to the legislation? Okay. Next grouping items 32 through 34 with a quick please read the short titles of items 32 through 34 into the record. Agenda Items 32 to 34 Council vote 119951 relating to the cell transportation benefit districts. The committee recommends the bill passes amended, but council members Macheda Gonzalez, Suarez, Luis Morales, Savant and Strauss in favor. Councilmember Herbold oppose and with an abstention from Councilmember Peterson. Council 119936 relating to transportation network company drivers. The committee recommends the bill pass and council vote 119937 relating to taxation. The committee recommends the bill pass. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Okay. Agenda item 32. Are there any comments on Council Bill 119951 Agenda item 32. Council members want Americans, Mr. Peterson. Sorry. Just 1/2. I'm going to my point. Yes, this bill increases the vehicle license fee, also known as card tabs by $20 to fund transportation cards. One of the most deeply regressive and punishing taxes in Seattle, I know many have opined that that having card tabs will actually have a good impact against car emissions, which are one of the most important factors in reducing carbon emissions and actually taking Seattle toward zero emissions. Absolutely. We need to do everything in our power to reduce emissions and take them to zero. But in reality, if you look at the economics of car jobs, what ends up happening is it punishes that section of poor and working class people who end up having to rely on their vehicle just to get to their livelihood and to their days, especially because many of them have been pushed farther and farther away from their place of business. Yes, it is also true that there are many, that there's a big section of our poor and working class neighbors who cannot afford cars, and this does not affect them. But that is ignoring the fact that such deeply regressive taxes are actually punishing to the poor and low income and working class people who are affected. And that what happens is literally when poor people cannot afford to pay their car tax, they get their licenses revoked and often get arrested for driving without a license. As I mentioned in the committee meeting last week when I was arrested during a direct action demonstration for the $15 minimum wage outside Alaska Airlines offices in SeaTac in 2014. I was held overnight in a jail cell with low income, and for women who are one and all being arrested because of poverty related traffic infractions, including unpaid cards. That is only anecdotal evidence, but it is very much in line with the statistical evidence of how this impacts ordinary people and poor people. Unfortunately, in committee, when I moved to replace the regressive Khadafi with a microscopic increase in the Amazon tax on pandemic profiteering corporations, every other council member voted no when given a choice. All eight other council members, all Democrats, supported the regressive tax on workers rather than a tax on big business. Now our only options are to support this regressive tax or lose essential transportation funding. And I am absolutely not going to support any loss in transportation funding. So I will vote yes on this bill. But I wonder the register that the City Council did have a choice of a progressive revenue source and refused to make that choice. He goes from because Peterson. Thank you. Council President. So this is Casper 119951 about the transportation benefit district related to the transportation benefits issue, the vehicle licenses. So this is a tough one for me because I had wanted the money to go straight to bridge maintenance and this. So the council budget action we took separately was to have it go directly to bridge maintenance and that that failed on a 4 to 5 vote or the alternative pass in a54 vote to have a have a process to discuss that and see what the uses of funds should be. So I want to help to shepherd this process in a good, safe manner. There are other sources of transportation dollars as well, so I know that we'll be having a broader discussion about that. I did. I was on the record weeks ago saying that I would support an increase to the vehicle license fee. So I want to I want to honor that and move forward with this. I also appreciate the comments made by Councilmember Herbold last week about about this. And so, again, this is a tough issue. I think I'm just going to go on the side of voting in favor of it, because we want to get the clock started on on collecting this revenue, because I know we can put it to good use collectively. Thank you. Councilmember Peterson. I appreciate those comments. Any other comments? I see Councilman Mesquita, then Councilmember Lewis and then Councilmember Herbold. Thank you very much, Madam President. Thank you, colleagues, for all of the work that you've done to support this revenue effort, but also to, I think, strengthen the final language that accompanied it. I appreciate Aaron House working in our office on the amendment language Councilmember Perez, the council president Gonzalez included and passed and I want to thank members of the building construction trades, ironworkers, laborers who will have a seat at the table as we look at the data for determining where the investments go. And just again, to underscore my comments from earlier, recognizing that there is a lot of shared priorities when we look at infrastructure related to bridges that our busses and bikers and pedestrians do use these bridges. So looking forward to that conversation and having a data driven analysis to really point this in the right direction here in the very short time frame that we've now scaled back. So thanks to the community at large and looking forward to getting more information from you all as you can be in very soon, but I think was the right thing to do for folks together. And thanks again to our friends from the building trades for being part of that discussion, along with the transit advocates and broader community that will be coming together. So. Councilmember Lewis and then Councilmember Herbert Herbold. Thank you, Madam President. I'll be brief. I voted for this previously in the in the Budget Committee. Certainly was disappointed that the initial proposal on the dedication of these resources for bridge maintenance didn't go through. I will be voting in favor again today at the full council, but remain committed that if not on this funding resource at the end of the stakeholder process, that this Council will continue to look for four ways to find additional resources to meet the maintenance funding goals outlined in the recent audit. I'm for bridge maintenance and that will still be considered a potential source as we go through the community stakeholder process and to determine where some of these resources can go. I and and by voting today, I am affirming that that is a process that should go forward and that we should have this discussion about how we are going to make these important investments. So with that, I'll be voting in favor, and I appreciate the moment to just make those remarks. Thank you, Councilmember Lewis, for those remarks. Councilmember Herbold. You're a mutant, so you are ready. I wasn't muted. Oh, my goodness. All right, well, so. Just trying to keep things. Interesting here. Again, council members voted five four to such a substitute. A version that adopted a fee. This is a. Version that I was a co-sponsor of. But at that time, the the the vote was to remove the specified funding for bridge maintenance instead. In this version, a stakeholder process will develop a proposal for use of the funds. I voted no on the revised proposal because I'm concerned that the Council is handing the decision of whether we should provide funding necessary to partially implement auditor recommendations to a stakeholder group who might decide that the funds should be used for other purposes. I believe it's up to the Council and the mayor to make the tough decisions on how to implement recommendations of the city auditor. Sometimes that that means funding items that there are competing needs for. But by doing so, because the city auditor has identified it as as as critical. I'm concerned that this practice creates a troubling precedent that undermines SNC 3.40.050, which reads that under the section audit report's follow up required that it is city policy to follow up on audit reports by the city auditor. And folks might argue, well, we can we can find other funds to follow up on audit reports by the city auditor. I just want to note that the move levy goes through 2024. The Council won't have the opportunity to discuss Levy funding until that time. And so our options for dedicated transportation funding to address maintenance on our critical bridges is very limited. The 2015 Move It Move Levy was set up a little differently than the previous Bridging the Gap levy, and the previous levy dedicated a higher proportion of funds to maintenance than the move levy does. So again, the MOVE Levy started moving in a direction away from maintaining critical infrastructure. If we're going to move towards maintaining critical transportation infrastructure that is multimodal transportation infrastructure, we are not going to have the opportunity to do so for some time. The mayor, as we all know, has chosen to proceed with the repair for the West Seattle Bridge. I wholeheartedly agree with this decision, in part due to significantly lower capital costs and the time it required to to build a new bridge. The ongoing maintenance costs will be higher for the West Seattle Bridge. And so this is going to be an issue that I am going to be continuing to weigh in on. And, you know, again, as I said, just just to keep things interesting here, I'm going to actually vote consistently with my my committee vote and not support this legislation. Thank you. Councilmember Mosqueda. And is there anyone else who wanted to make any comments on Kaspersky to please. Thank you so much council members. And I'm always nervous when people want to keep things interesting and appreciate the comments that were made. But I did just want to write and say for the record earlier in my comments about the support from the building construction trades. I wanted to thank the ironworkers. They sent a letter in that said the iron workers support the budget for bridge maintenance being proposed by Councilmember Peterson. But we also understand the need for community oversight group. We feel it should be made up of labor and community stakeholders. We're excited to have a seat at the table and looking forward to working with you. That's the piece I wanted to read. And for the record and again, thank our friends in the building trades and make sure that that comment got recorded for the record. It's. Thank you so much for those comments and that conversation. We had a really protracted conversation about the amendment that led to this final council bill in Budget Committee. So I don't want to belabor the point. I do want to thank the original sponsors, Councilmembers Peterson, Lewis and Herbold, for bringing forward the legislation to authorize a 40 million vehicle license fee. There has been some comments in committee that this is an increase in the license fee. It's actually a decrease in the vehicle license fee. Folks, through the end of the year will be paying $80 in their vehicle license fee. And starting in 2021, that will be reduced to a total of $40. So this is not an increase in in the vehicle license fee. And I wanted to make sure that the record was correct with regard to to that particular issue. Secondly, I and I continue to to hear and understand and appreciate Councilmember Herbals comments and concerns around the the question about the stakeholder process and and its relevance to future policy decisions by the City Council in short order related to how we're going to spend that the dollars and I remain committed to making sure that we have the benefit of that stakeholder information. But of course, at the end of the day, it's always up to the City Council to make budget appropriation authorities within and within our charter mandated duties. So again, there will be recommendations but not mandates coming out of the stakeholder group. And I think we will benefit from having the stakeholder group come together and take a look at best use of these dollars. I recognize that the vehicle license fee in the past has been largely dedicated to transit purposes and not to bridge maintenance. But we have a new set of information before us that does provide us with additional information around the need to take care of our bridges as sort of a basic part of our infrastructure that connects busses and cyclists and pedestrians and single agency vehicle users throughout the city. And I think it's important for us to take that into consideration. So so I hope we will be able to have that abbreviated stakeholder process that will yield us some really rich information and recommendations that we can consider in our deliberations as we look towards shaping a spending plan. I also want to acknowledge that there that Councilmember Hubbard, you've mentioned that some city resources related to constant revenue streams or consistent revenue streams for bridge maintenance. And I also just just think we'd be remiss in not acknowledging that we also have some great members of our congressional delegation, for example, who have been championing additional funding at the federal level for bridge maintenance needs, especially the West Seattle Bridge. So I want to thank Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal from our congressional district here in particular, who just last week was able to secure some additional funding for the West Seattle Bridge. And I think that there are going to be, I hope now with the new administration, more opportunities for us to work closely with our federal delegation, to continue to advocate for federal dollars for for this this particular need in in sort of a long term strategy. So I think there's a lot of work that we can do here. The vehicle license fee gets us about $7.2 million a year. Our needs related to bridges is a total of $100 million. So we certainly need a lot more resources available to to really meet the minimal need, which I understand the city auditor identified as about $34 million. So I think we're all committed to to figuring this out into making sure that we can balance all of the varying needs related to our infrastructure and our transit network. So I appreciate the opportunity to continue to work with all of you on those important issues. All right. Well, I think I don't see any additional comments here. So we're going to go ahead and close that debate. And I'm going to ask that the clerk please call the role on the passage of the Bill Morales. Mosquera by. Peterson. All right. So what? Yes. Strauss Yes. Herbold No. SUAREZ Yes. Lewis Yes. President Gonzalez. Yes. Eight in favor. One opposed. The bill passes and the chair will sign it. Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation? Item 33. Are there any comments on Council Bill 119936. Agenda item 33. Hearing no comments. Will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill? Morales. Yes. Mascara Yes. Peterson Yes. So what? Yes. Strauss Yes. Herbold Yes. Juarez Yes. Lewis Yes. President Gonzalez. Yes. Nine in favor and opposed. The bill passes and the chair will sign. It will occur. Please affix my signature to the legislation. Agenda Item 34 Are there any comments on Council? Bill 119937. Agenda item 34. Hearing no comments. Will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill? Morales. Yes. Macheda I. Petersen Yes. So what? Yes. Strauss Yes. Herbold. Yes. Suarez. Yes. Lewis. Yes. President Gonzalez. Yes. Nine in favor and unopposed. Thank you. The bill passes and the chair will sign. It will occur. Please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf. Okay. We have arrived now at agenda items 35 and 36 colleagues, as I mentioned, at the top of the agenda.