AN ORDINANCE amending the Seattle Comprehensive Plan to incorporate changes responding to Resolution 31577 to increase the Plan’s emphasis on race and social equity and improve its readability; modifying or adding new goals and policies in several elements of the Plan that describe the City’s objectives for distributing housing and employment growth; and amending Sections 5.72.020, 23.34.008, 23.45.516, 23.47A.012, 23.47A.013, 23.49.056, 23.49.058, 23.51A.004, 23.58A.040, 23.69.030, 23.75.002, and 23.84A.040 of the Seattle Municipal Code to revise references to the updated Comprehensive Plan.
On the report of the Planning Land Use and Zoning Committee. Agenda Item five Council 118 683 Amending the Seattle Comprehensive Plan to incorporate changes responding to the Resolution 315 77 to increase the plan's emphasis on race and social justice equity and improve its reliability, modifying and adding new goals and policies in several elements of the plan that describe the city's objective for distributing housing and employment growth and amending Section 12.72. The committee recommends that the bill passed as amended. Thank you, Councilmember Johnson. Thank you. Council President Accountable. 118683. Update Seattle 2035 which is our comprehensive plan. We update the plan every year, but this year as part of a major update and has been in the works for probably about five years now. As I mentioned this morning, we've been discussing this bill for about six months now through no less than ten committee meetings, as well as eight meetings of other committees and two public hearings. We've heard a lot of testimony and received a lot of comments, and the committee made significant changes to the plan with over 180 amendments. As we all know, Seattle is growing and changing rapidly, and we're lucky to be experiencing such continued prosperity. But the city changes to this plan are needed to help us respond to and guide this growth so that our city can continue to be an equitable city, to address climate change impacts and to ensure that we have homes that are affordable to all of our residents. I know that there are a couple of amendments that we'll be discussing, so maybe I'll save my overarching comments till after we've had a chance to discuss those amendments. Thank you very much, Councilman Johnson. Should we take the House mayoral? Should I go first? Would you like to go first? I believe Amendment One is the community involvement element. Okay, you go first. Thank you. So Amendment One to Council Bill 11 8683 is to clarify sections of the new community involvement element without changing the effect of 11 8683. It adds a number of definitions defines the term community plan is a plan that also specifically addresses neighborhood or geographic based planning as a plan developed in collaboration with the community around a shared vision that includes a specific set of strategies to meet the community and city goals. It also amends the discussion under inclusive and equitable community involvement. On page one and attachment three as as follows. So that it reads Equity is essential to any community involvement process to improve relationships and outcomes. The city is committed to conducting inclusive and equitable community involvement that effectively reaches a broad range of community members, particularly those affected by communities decisions. There are a number of other amendments specifically relating to considering specific areas with. Specific. Characteristics when making a decision about allocating city resources for community planning and including neighborhood planning, and those specific areas being areas designated as urban centers or villages in the comprehensive plan. Areas with high risk of displacement. Areas with low access to opportunity in distressed communities. Areas expressing significant improvements in transit service. Areas experiencing a growth rate significantly higher or lower than anticipated in the comprehensive plan. Areas identified identified for multiple capital investments that could benefit from coordinated planning in areas experiencing environmental justice concerns. I worked with members of the DNC, specifically Irene Wall and Cindy Barker, in both developing the element as well as folks from OPD and Councilmembers. And I really appreciate Councilmember Johnson allowing for additional time to do the required legal noticing around this this new element. Thank you, Councilmember Herbold. We'll vote on the amendments separately. So, so, so. Sure. So we did have testimony. We we didn't have enough time, but we had we had for 40 minutes. I'll tell you what. I'll let me finish the amendments first and I'll address the public comment issue after. So Councilmember Herbold has made amendment. I'll describe that as amendment number one to council bill 118683. Second. All those in favor of Amendment one, say I. I opposed the idea that as First Amendment, I have a Second Amendment I like to describe and it's clarifying the meaning of environmental justice and C 12.3 and clarifying what I believe. And I think what the public believes is the public health and the safety concerns that a community may experience. You may have and of course, this is the section where it talks about what characteristics should be considered when allocating city resources for community planning. And I thought that that was a an appropriate clarification. So I'll describe my amendment as amendment number two and I will move that would be adopted. Second case has been moved in. Second, to adopt amendment number two, any questions? All those in favor say I. I oppose. The ayes have it. And before I hear Council Member Johnson or Councilmember O'Brien or others speak on the count plan, there's been at least some friendly outburst that there's a need for a public comment. And in fairness to those individuals, we had many folks sign up on the rental legislation and we only had an I didn't even get through. Maybe they're still 30 or 40% of the folks that I didn't get to. And so they might have been at the bottom of list, which sometimes happened. So if one would like to move to vote on extending public comment on the comp plan, I would entertain that motion. If not, I will proceed without that. So moved and seconded. So it's been moved on. Second, and to extend public comment for the comp plan. All those in favor say I, I opposed the ayes have it. So why don't we give Kris and others a public comment sheet? And what I'm going to try to multitask, I shall lay one out there on the comp plan. We're all saying, oh, well, okay, now I got to sort of go through six sheets, though, so I'll find it. And while I do that, Councilmember Johnson, why don't the council members have some dialog and we will have public comment before we vote. Okay. So did anyone else want to speak? Because I'm going to need a minute to go through this. Maybe I'll just sing a few bars about the thank you's before I speak to the underlying bill. So there's a lot of folks who put a lot of time and energy into this, not only this year, but over several years. And I just want to lift up those folks who have spent a lot of time and energy with me on the comprehensive plan while you sort through all those sheets to try to identify which folks are going to come forward. But I want to say thanks to Tom Hauger and Patrice Carroll, who are here in the audience from the Office of Planning and Community Development, and their bosses who now I'm going to start referring to as Sam and Diane, which I think is kind of a funny little alliteration that I didn't put together until today. But Sam, myself and Diane Narasaki, who I think have done a really great job of championing this through the last several years. Susie Levi from Councilmember O'Brien's office and Andrea Kranz from Councilmember Herbold office have spent countless hours working with us on this topic. Eric McConaghy and Liz Whitson, who are unsung members of our council center staff, have helped shepherd us through several of these, and their supervisor, Carol Freeman, has been intimately involved in many discussions as well. And I'd be remiss if I didn't especially thank Amy Gore from my office, who has really been a rock on this topic, helped us not only get through, as I'll reiterate the ten discussions that we had on this topic in our committee, the eight discussions that we had on this topic and other committees, the two public hearings that we had on this topic. And that was just this year alone in the council process, let alone all the other public processes that we've had on this topic over the last four years. So I think we've spent a lot of time on the comp plan this year. And the great thing about the comprehensive plan is that if you didn't get what you wanted this year, there's always next year because we take the comprehensive plan up every single year. Thank you, Councilmember Johnson. I'm going to do a little pivot strategy on the sign up sheet. It's just going to be hard for me to do that. So I'm just going to ask that you identify yourself and I will allow you 2 minutes in any order because I think we just have a handful of people. So because I can't go through all the sheets and there are more people that are not here than are here. 40 And I think most of us are like right after that. So look through 40 or 50. Okay, well, let's just try it my way. And I get 2 minutes. I'll do it in one. Okay. I'm going to do it. Okay, that's. Good. Yeah. So on the comp plan. Your name. Please? Cindy Barker. Cindy. At the plus meetings, I talked last time as I voted out about getting the comp plans, sausage making. Right. Well, I still think it's not quite right. It's pretty chunky at the moment. At the close meeting, there was literally pages and dozens of changes that were passed in in sweep. They were not discussed in detail. And I understand that there was a need to focus on policy, but a lot of stuff got put in. So there was a lot of little discussion and the timing was very bad for the public hearing. There was a lot of input prior, but the amendments have been very confusing and our ability to give good comments when we have 1 minutes is very hard and we're not seeing our letters acknowledged, so we're not even sure if you're reading it and absorbing it. So you should not pass this today. Those pledged changes need to be given a little more review, especially ones around concurrency in the form change and how how that concurrency is handled. Amendment One does show you what can be done with a little more time. Gaps were filled and community engagement made stronger, and I strongly support Lisa's improvement. But on your respective committees, you have to live with these results. You have to make the policy based on the comp plan. And I don't think you're seeing all the connections. For example, if you allow housing on city open space, do you have to deduct that from the available land open space? That is in the complaint goals there. Just you don't have a coherent plan. We want a coherent, comprehensive plan. Thank you, Cindy. You're done. Correct. Yes, I done. I'm doing okay. That's right. And and I'm here to ask you today not to vote for the 2035 comprehensive plan. And I've got the materials, if you would care to review them in a huge hurry, illustrating the details of what's wrong with this thing. There's, I think, a severe lack of informed public consent that Sandy referred to. People like people like her know what's in it. But I think their input has been pervasively, thoroughly ignored. And the people who attend public hearings and stuff like that, they get a superficial presentation that avoids controversial elements. And this very hearing canceled but then brought back when people are already on their way to work, kind of exemplifies that. They have to say this legislation is being advanced by the council faction, whose appreciation of Seattle public sentiment last week was cast into some question. And it doesn't have to be signed up today. Thank you, Mr. Kaye. Chris? Chris Lehman. Go ahead. I see Chris Lieberman's name in here and I see. Colleen's name. Colleen is actually Colleen McAleer. Yes. I see you're way up there in 38. Go ahead. Go ahead. Thank you for hearing our comments and thanks for allowing the extra time. Colleen McClure with Aloha Community Club. And we've been at this as long as you guys have been at this, as far as putting comments in to make it a really good plan to us, Seattle's growing and we're totally in favor of that. The process, despite the fact that it seems to be going for two years, seems still a little bit rushed. Folks who are working during the days don't always have the opportunity to get in and comment at this time. There's a lot of amendments. A really good. One that had or. Two that came out today were for those. The Flume process also needs to be retained because little up zones, the code, the way it's written says small things can get up soon for our neighborhood. We've lost a lot of affordable housing around Children's Hospital, which is used for families, students and lower income folks. So the burden is upon them and the flume process really does vet that. And so we are really anxious to retain that process. Any time you're changing affordable residential units of any type, we also are looking for more of the preservation of the urban tree canopy. Today we just signed on to the Urban Bird Treaty for the migrating birds. They live in trees and if we have legislation that's totally infilling backyards. Etc. Those happen to be gone for critters and disturbs the environment. Thank you. Barking needs to be better balanced. Small businesses. People are running from door to door with house cleaning services, tradesmen. Those are the folks that. We. Just need to present. That is an opportunity for them to. Thanks for coming. Around for listening. Thank you. Chris Lehman coming. The Council president correctly stated that this meeting was canceled. Under state law, you cannot act on this comp plan ordinance. Use this opportunity to improve it as urged by the previous speakers and the public. And and most of you probably can't know that from what the mayor and the chair's propaganda say. But this repeals almost all of the comp plan. It even dropped the word sustainable from the title symbolically restored by your committee. But unfortunately, without putting back the repealed provisions that protect sustainability and livability, the once balanced urban village strategy becomes growth at any cost. Repealed are policies against demolition and displacement, barriers to spot rezoning policies for real yards and large trees, and valuing parking as well as for mobility, safety and vitality. To say the least, this draft is not ready. It is unbalanced and and a new it is a new comp plan without the analysis, transparency and outreach associated with the associated with the original passage in 1994 for real outreach and needed improvements. Send it back. Do not act on it today. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Ward, according to bites at the apple, by the way, but as you point out. The other one is a separate list. Okay, very. Good. And a separate thing. So it's actually not. I think this would be a very sad day in Seattle if we passed the 2035 comprehensive plan to vastly change from the current plan, which was actually fairly changed from the previous plan, which gave a lot more benefits to to residents. So this will be a tremendous boon to developers. It'll make housing completely unaffordable, even for the first month's rent. Addressing the previous issue from earlier. It'll be completely unaffordable for most renters and increase homelessness substantially. So that's going to impact that issue as well. And for most homeowners, it will greatly increase taxes, which will increase gentrification in the South End as well. There are so many changes in the comp plan, hundreds and hundreds of pages many times that this woman spoke earlier about you couldn't understand it if you don't speak English. But even for those of us who keep track of this was hundreds and hundreds of pages. We cannot keep track of that. So I suggest that you delay this just like you were delaying. Just please. Sir. Hello. My name is Richard Ellis, and I'm. A homeowner in the Wedgewood community. Thank you, Rob Johnson, for representing me. I'm here to talk about trees because the current comprehensive plan amendments basically try to neuter a lot of tree protection for. One councilmember, Mike O'Brien. There is nothing in this at all in the when you talk about climate and climate change, it doesn't talk doesn't mention the word trees at all. If you look under climate, what we're going to do, you like my hat? That's what we're trying to do. It says don't. Do the track. I was just making sure I knew with the gist. Of mention of trees in regards to carbon storage, urban island heat effects were stormwater runoff. Where's the beef when it comes to climate change? I mean, trees, urban forest are a big part of this and there's not even a mention in the comprehensive plan. Other things. The language has changed. If you look in the language talks, instead of saying protect anymore, it says promote doesn't say protect trees. It says now promote trees. This is a neutering. The your own urban forestry commission has made a lot of recommendations hardly any have been installed in this project. You have. Using golfers. Challenging things like acknowledged the need to balance industrial uses with environmental areas. The dormant greenbelt environmental justice issues related to the nearby residential areas which often have. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Household can wrap up, please. Can you wrap up, please? The point is, you're not even following your own Urban Forestry Commission that has been giving you recommendations. Have you read the recommendation? Why are they known as a very corporate? Can you wrap up, please? Thank you very much, sir. I don't think I don't see any more public comment for the plan. Do any of my colleagues wish to discuss the matter any more? I'm don't saying I see two hands up as see consumer herbal. Thank you. I just wanted to speak to the fact that Council Member Johnson's approach to deliberations around the comp plan and having each of the committees schedule time to discuss areas related to the comp plan that are relevant to our committee. Work gave me an opportunity to propose and successfully pass amendments that relate to work I'm responsible for. As I understand a public utilities work related to economic development, work related to arts, culture, music. So that was, I think, very, very a useful exercise to get greater engagement from from council members on the comp plan. So thank you. Thank you, guys. Herbal. Katherine Johnson, do you have any closing remarks? I think you said them, but if you'd like to, I'll give you one more opportunity here. Just a few. That'd be great. Thank you. Council President. You know, one of the things that I think is critically different about the comprehensive plan after we spent a lot of time working on it in committee, is the community involvement element, which the original proposal Sundown did not have. And we spent a lot of time in committee talking about that community involvement element. And I appreciate the amendment that you brought forward today, Councilmember Herbold, because I do believe community involvement is going to be critical for us as we move forward and and really becoming the city that I know we want to become, the element that we worked on stresses, outreach and engagement to a broader group of folks to ensure that we're hearing from in responding to historically underrepresented communities, which is critical. It's a creation of a totally new chapter, which I also think was critical and ensures that that chapter focuses on a coordinated, strategic approach, not just for all decision making in the city, not just for land use and transportation and parks and open space, but everything that we think will determine and impact people's lives. It's got some really important changes to help us to continue to address climate change, including a goal of increasing our trees canopy, which was not included in any of our previous comprehensive plans and many policies, updating our approach to transportation to help keep people and goods moving safely and reduce our reliance on single occupancy vehicles. It includes goals and policies to implement many of the hollow recommendations around addressing for our affordable housing crisis, including policies to help us track and mitigate displacement, allowing for more flexibility in urban villages and basing growth estimates on transit access and displacement, which we can use to mitigate negative growth impacts in areas that risk displacement. It does not include the boundary changes that were proposed and are still being discussed by the Harlow focus groups, as well as the neighborhood boundary workshops that many of my colleagues are aware of. It also does not include the implementation of proposed zoning changes to increase heights in urban villages. Both of those changes are going to be coming as part of next year's process. We've got a full nine months to a year to continue to work on those boundary changes and zoning changes within urban villages. The last thing that I would say is I'm really proud as a fifth generation Seattle, out of the work that Councilmember Herbold and I did to help protect the assets that make Seattle really unique, the strategies for increasing open space and parks in innovative ways and work to preserve and inventory cultural and historic assets, I think are going to be really critical as we continue to see a growth and an influx of folks in this city. As a fifth generation Seattle, I'm really proud of the work that we're doing to really respond to the pressures of growth in a way that is inclusive but also recognizes our city's history. And I think that this council process promise, though not perfect, according to many members of the public, I think has been a great step forward. So I encourage my colleagues to vote yes. Thank you, Councilmember. If there are no further comments, please call the role on the passage of the Bill O'Brien. Hi Swan. I beg pardon. Burgess Gonzalez I hi Juarez I Herbold I President Harrell. I am favored on a post. Bill passed in the chair was sign it we've gone through. Margin items. Is there any further business to come for the council? I'm seeing that. So for that, we stand adjourned. Thank you. Have a great day.