AN ORDINANCE relating to the Department of Finance and Administrative Services; authorizing the Director of Finance and Administrative Services to negotiate and execute a real property lease with Epic Life Church, for a site located at 10503 Interlake Avenue N; and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.
Agenda Items 436 Capital 119 780 relating to the Department of Finance Administrative Services authorizing the Director of Finance Administrative Services to negotiate and execute a real property lease with Epic Life Church for a site located at ten 503 Interlake Avenue North Council Bill 119 782 relating to the financing of fire facilities, creating a fund for depositing proceeds of limited tax general obligation bonds and 2021 Council Bill 119 781 relating to the Seattle Department of Finance Administrative Services authorizing acquisition acquisition of real property being identified in King County Records. It's good to see you. Thank you so much. Madam Clerk. Council members. The clerk read items four through six into the record and will discuss these items as a package. But we will take a separate vote on each bill. Councilmember Herbold, as the lead sponsor, would you like to address these bills first? Absolutely. Thank you. I will address all three of them together. Council Bill 11 9780 is a bill that establishes an interim lease for fire station 31. The site lease itself addresses issues such as lease terms, monthly rent, parking and funding. The lease term period goes from January 1st, 2021 through December 31st, 2026. Council Bill 11 9781 primarily authorizes fees to purchase property in the vicinity of 113th Ave and Meridian Avenue North as the permanent site for Fire Station 31. And the bill limits the maximum purchase price for the property to $4.5 million. Council Bill 11 9782 does a number of things. It creates a new fund called the 2021 Multipurpose Limited Tax General Obligation Bond Fund. The purpose of the fund is to receive funds and distribute LTG bond proceeds. We will not be issuing the bonds right now. We are going to be punishing that fund with funds from an inner fund loan. That's $8.2 million of an interphone loan from the Construction and Inspections Fund to this newly created fund. We will then pay back the $8.2 million to the Construction and Inspections Fund once we issue the LTE LTE go bond fund. And then finally, the bill itself creates a new capital project within the capital improvement program. The new capital project is called Fire Station 31. Replacement Project. And really appreciate the leadership of Chief Scoggins, FRC Director Kevin Calvin Goins, Local 27, and Councilmember Juarez, who is also a sponsor of this legislation, really tipped tip of the hat to Councilmember Juarez for her efforts during the budget process last year and identify $100,000 of funds as a way to jump start the need for this replacement station. Thank you. Councilmember Herbold, are there any other comments on the bills before us? Um. Council, president, council or more is here. Did you want me to address briefly the three, or did you want to do this? Yeah, we are. We are discussing all four bills right now. We'll take separate votes. So if you have any comments on any any of the the three bills, now's the time to make those comments. Great. Okay, great. Yes. Items four, five and six. First of all, thank you, Councilmember Herbold, for covering the basics and some of the detail on the financial plan. Obviously, I'm glad to see this legislation before us today to relocate fire station 31 in the Northgate neighborhood in District five. A special thanks, of course, to Chief Scoggins, Calvin Goins, Bass and Kenny Stewart, the president of Firefighters Union IAFF Local 27. The fire station is located south of Northwest Hospital, north of Northfield College and west of I Am and Northgate Mall. As many of you recall, the growing Northgate neighborhood lost our station 31 last summer when firefighters were all relocated to other stations. Relocation was necessary due to environmental testing, which revealed unhealthy conditions. And as you remember, this has been an ongoing issue for a few years. And since then I've been pleased to be in regular contact with both Chief Scoggins and director Calvin Goings about next steps. They review the current station capacity, the current system demand on the station, and the forecast for future demand, according to Chief Scoggins, Fire Station 31 is one of the busiest stations in our city. In addition, the relocation of firefighters last June resulted in higher response times that exceed the fire department standard. So high response times that makes us very happy. In the end, the city concluded that the current station 31 is too small to meet the needs of anticipated population growth in the North End, particularly with light rail coming at Northgate and hopefully our other station up the road and on 130th. But in any way, immediate needs of growth and increased service demand. So rather than trying to salvage an environmentally unhealthy and uninhabitable station that will soon be too small, the recommendation was that the station should be replaced. And so with that, I urge my colleagues to pass. Item Council Bill 119780 Council. Bill 119782 Council. Bill 119781. Thank you. Thank you so much. Councilmember Warrens. Any other questions or comments on any of these three bills? Customers want lawyers. Thank you. And the bill is, of course, support improving the infrastructure of this yellow fire department, including the development of the new fire station 31, which is essentially being authorized by these three bills for council members who agree with the power station 31 charge. I just wanted to point out, for the benefit of the public that the building agenda item five is. Totally routine legislation authorizing the internment loan. The city uses an indefinite loan to make your funding immediately available when it can most efficiently be used and stage the plan for how the loan will be repaid. And I hope members of the public notice the difference between how the political establishment has talked about this and de-fund loan products proposed by Mayor Durkan. That is not at all talked about it. And the interest on loan proposed by Councilmember Morales and NE in our Amazon tax bill to make COVID relief stimulus checks immediately available to the neediest of Seattle's working class families, ultimately to be paid for, of course, by the tax on big business. Rather than discuss the substance of the Amazon tax and the COVID relief and the jobs program that it will fund, the political establishment instead has mostly focused on the administrative, intertwined loan legislation in an attempt to sow confusion and distract from the substantive issues the mayor has toward new station, saying, quote, The entire fund loans, the funds that they want to rob, I am not sure that they have the authority to do that because those were all voter approved initiatives. As importantly, to the extent that there is the ability to having to fund loans, which is a budget technique, we may need that just to balance the budget this year. So there is no scenario under which people will receive checks this year. And I think that's really not responsible to tell people during these really hard times and good oatmeal. Durkan will clarify if she also thinks that irresponsible to tell the fire department that they will be purchasing the land for Fire Station 31 this year, funded with this indoor fund loan, obviously an indoor fund loan of $200 million for COVID 19 relief for up to 100,000 working families. Is that a totally different scale than the $8 million on loan at worst, ongoing question today. And it would be appropriate if elected officials were openly to discuss whether the city had actually had funds to cover a loan of that size, which is precisely why we made sure that City Council's Angel staff's research was presented that strongly demonstrates that the city does have sufficient funds. Instead, the mayor has dishonestly claimed that it was somehow technically impossible or even illegal to carry out an internal fund loan, which is a common tactic used by the political establishment to confuse ordinary people in their fight for social justice. You know, for example, in Congress for decades, they have justified opposing single payer health care by claiming that it is just impractical and too complicated. And working people should not believe that those lies for one moment. So I will, of course, be voting on yes on all three legislation, including the totally routine legislation authorizing the interest on loan to provide the bridge funding for the fire station 31 project. And I urge members of the public to see this example of how an interest loan authorization legislation was approached as a completely uncontroversial issue compared to the way the mayor has reacted to the Amazon tax legislation related interest. If you council members want any other comments or questions from my colleagues herbal. Captain Kathryn Swann partially made this. But I just want to underscore, this is a very, I think, different in scale. This Interphone loan is for $8.2 million and the source of the Interphone loan is a is a very different source so that the source is the construction inspections fund for a small number of dollars. It is not $50 million from four different voter approved levies. I'm not commenting on the legality of of the latter funds. I'm just saying that this is a different source of of funds for the the Interphone loan, and then it's a much smaller number of funds. I think he can't remember any other comments. Okay. Great. Thank you so much to both councilmembers Herbold and Suarez for walking us through these bills. Looks like there are no other additional comments, so we're going to move forward with each bill and councilmembers will have a final opportunity to provide comments if they wish before we vote on each item. So we'll begin with item four. I will move to pass Council Bill 119780. Is there a second? Second, second, second. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded to pass the bill. Councilmember Herbold has already spoken to this bill. Are there any additional comments on the bill? Hearing and seeing the clerk. Please call the roll on the passage of the bill. Want. I think. Strauss. I. Purple. Hi. Suarez. I. Lewis. I. Morales. I. Mascara. I. Peterson. Hi. President Gonzalez. I. Nine in favor, nine opposed. Thank you. The bill passes and the chair will sign it. And I'd ask that the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation. Item number five I will move to pass Council Bill 119782. Is there a second? Okay. It's been moved in second bid to pass the bill. Are there any further comments on the bill? Hearing and seeing none. Will the court please call the role on the passage of the bill? So I. Strauss. I. Purple. I. Whereas. I. Lewis. I. Morales. I. Macheda. I. Peterson. I'm President Gonzalez. I. Not in favor and unopposed. The bill passes and the chair will sign it and I laugh at the company's affixed my signature to the legislation. Moving on to agenda item six, I will move to pass Council Bill 119781. Is there a second? Second. Second. It's been moved and seconded to pass the bill. Are there any further comments on the bill? Kasim Nunn. Well, the Clark piece called Roll on the Passage of the Bill. The one. I. Drought. I verbal. I. Whereas. I. Lewis. I. Morales. I. Let's get to. I. Petersen. I. President Gonzalez. I. Nine in favor. None opposed. The bill passes and the chair will sign it. And I'd ask the clerk, please affects my signature to the legislation. Okay, colleagues, we are now in other business. I understand there's one item of other business, so I will hand it over to Councilmember Strauss to quickly walk us through that item.