A RESOLUTION opposing Washington Initiative Measure 976 (“I-976”) and urging Seattle voters to vote “No” on I-976 on the November 5, 2019, general election ballot.
I'm okay. Thank you. Casper. Brian. Sure before the clerk reads the next agenda item as provided under RTW. 42.178555 will now consider the adoption of Resolution 31911 and the conclusion of the Council Member comments. We will hear from comments from the public who wish to speak on the resolution. And the requirement is that we give an approximate equal opportunity to speak on either side of the issue, and that's what we will do. And having said that, will the clerk please read agenda item number two into the record? The report of the City Council Agenda Item two Resolution 319 11 Opposing Washington Initiative Measure 976 and urging Seattle voters to vote no. On AI 976. On the November 5th, 2019 General Election Ballot. Okay, so what I'm going to do before I turn the mike over to Councilman, whereas I'm going to actually move it in second and then we'll hear from Councilmember. Whereas while that's a live resolution, okay, so I will move to adopt resolution 31911 has been moved and seconded a councilmember. Whereas will you please present the argument? Yes, I will. Thank you. I was in the impression that we're doing public comment first, but that's fine. So. I think we'll hear from the council members first. Okay, then I'm fine. I'm sorry. I'm looking it. We could do it either way. Just 1/2. That's okay. I can do it. I just was told the opposite, but that's fine. I just want to say. No. I think we're going to go to council members first. Well, thank you. Age before beauty. So thank you. Council president or do we read into the record? It's been really great record and has been moving in second and so you could just present it. You only have to move it just to tell us why you think this is good policy for us to adopt. All right. I will. So this was on the introduction referral calendar September 30th, and you should all have a copy of you. I think you got it last week. A copy of the resolution, resolution 31911. So thank you. Council President Resolution 31911 Urges Seattle voters to vote no on Initiative 976 and outlines the reasons why, if this initiative passes, it will cripple our transportation system and threaten statewide transportation investments, including, but not limited to connected Washington local transfer transportation benefit districts, sound transit ferries, rail and freight mobility, transit options and public safety. Our region has grown exponentially, and all municipalities, large and small, are working hard to keep up with the demands of population growth, particularly transportation, particularly in King County and particularly in the city of Seattle. Statewide transportation improvements have been hard fought and are the result of great in part not I'm sorry partizan work at the state and in here in our tri county region. Pierce, King and Snohomish, for example, Sound Transit is a voter approved, voter accountable authority that provides multimodal, multimodal transit options across the home king and Pierce County. The people have voted affirmatively to invest in transportation, yet this initiatives is framed as a money saver by rich return to a $30 car tabs, quote unquote. It would, in fact, reverse the will of the people, increase congestion, delay construction projects and put 4 billion of state funding at risk. In addition, this initiative targets public funds that pay for services for seniors, veterans, children and the disabled. Our most vulnerable A96 is on the ballot for the general election in November, and I urge Seattle voters, voters and my colleagues to join me in voting no on this harmful initiative. Mr. President, at this time, I would like an opportunity to read a few of the whereas into the record. Please do, Casimir. Whereas there are, as you know, it's a four page resolution, there are 11 very important key and critical, whereas is, however, there are four that I want to read into the record for the viewing public. Number one, whereas the Washington initiative measure 976 here and after 978976 would undermine progress made by the City of Seattle Sound Transit in the state of Washington in building a more equitable and sustainable transportation system that responds to the challenges posed by the region's extra extraordinary growth and ongoing climate crisis and past failures. To build a mass transit system that could efficiently and cost effectively serve the needs of Seattle in the 21st century. By eliminating major funding sources for light rail expansion, bus services in Seattle, and the primary sources of non highway spending at the state level. And. Whereas, I 1976 would repeal funding authority for all or substantial portions of transportation benefit districts in Seattle and 61 other cities across Washington State, a sum of 60 million per year that is largely dedicated to improving safety and maintaining infrastructure and as in Seattle, to reducing crowding and expanding access to the bus service. Third, whereas I. 976 would also eliminate or reduce funding now dedicated to low income transit access and orca passes to all Seattle Public High School students, sale promise scholars and income eligible middle school students. And. Whereas, 976 is intended to eliminate 20 billion in funding for expansion of light rail to West Seattle and Balad along other elements of the 2016 voter approved Sound Transit three measure. As I shared council president, there were 11, whereas as I pulled for a particular that I thought were very important not only for my colleagues and the public, but certainly the viewing public as such, I would hope and I move that sale. City Council passed resolution number 31911. Thank you. Thank you. Cast. Whereas with any of our colleagues like the opportunity to speak on this, what I am checking now is we're going to hear public comment from members of the public. I'm checking to see if it's appropriate that councilmembers could speak after public comment. Is that would you prefer? I'm flexible either way, but I don't even know if I if the rules allow us to do that because typically we hear from the dyas and then the public and then we've also had some requests to do a little differently. But right now, be a great time while I'm getting a ruling to hear from one of our colleagues. So, Councilmember Herb, what would you like to say? A few words. Thank you. As Councilmember Suarez noted, the Transportation Benefit District provides 350000 hours of service, a lot of hours of service that has resulted in Seattle being one of the only cities in the nation that has actually seen an increase in transit use in the Regional Transit Committee meeting last month, I'm a member of that regional committee. King County staff indicated that Seattle could lose up to 175000 hours of bus service in 2020. That's half of the service funded by the voter approved Seattle Transportation Benefit District. One third of the City Service C line service is provided through the Seattle Transportation Benefit District, and 976 would of course harm funding for light rail projects, including Seattle and Ballard Lines. So really appreciate bringing this resolution forward. It's critically important for our transit needs here in Seattle. Thank you. Kathryn Herbold, Councilmember Swan, would you be okay to say a few words now and then we'll hear from the public unless other customers wanting to speak. And you'd like to say something. We'll hear from Casper Baxter as well. So, Councilmember Solana, thank you. President Harrell. I will, needless to say, be voting yes on this resolution, which strongly urges Washington State voters to vote no on Tim Iman's initiative. 976 not only will name, not only would 976 if passed reduce or eliminate funding for public transit. At a time when we have to greatly accelerate our measures to address the climate crisis, it would make the existing measures more regressive, absolutely unconscionable. But we also have to make a note that the reason Tim Eyman and the right wing keep getting an echo in our state is because of our broken tax system, where it is the nation's most regressive tax system. So in addition to opposing such regressive measures like a represented by 1976, we need strong leadership to fight for progressive revenue sources like, you know, for example, the Drum Pro Seattle Coalition, which fought for the high earners income tax and got member Herbold and I co-sponsored that legislation which has now cleared its first hurdle in court and is on its way hopefully to clear its second hurdle. So we need progressive measure or revenue measures like that to stop the right wing from getting an echo for regressive measures. But in the meanwhile, is absolutely critical that the state's voters reject 1976. Thank you, Councilmember Swan. Councilmember Belcher. Great. And thank you, colleagues. I certainly am going to support what you are arguing for. But I also want to say thank you to our legislature and thanks in no small part to our eastern Washington legislators. Oftentimes, I think we find ourselves on opposite sides of various arguments. But in the transportation world, we all agree, and we have supported legislation to improve state highways. I believe that every single county in Washington has received benefits fixing their highways through previous work that the legislature has done. I want to acknowledge Senator Curtis King as an example of someone, a Republican from Yakima, that I can work with to help reduce congestion here and also to support the highways for his constituents on the eastern side of the mountains. Voters in our city want more bus service, and we have frequently and repeatedly voted for levies that support that. And I recognize that what would happen if I 1976 passed is that many of the funds that are used for very important things that we all support, such as paying for orca cards for seniors recently, for our high school students, for seniors and veterans. And I would very strongly consider that to be in opposition to what we are doing here in the city to try to make transportation available and affordable for all. Thank you. Councilmember Becerra, Casper Pacheco. I'll just be brief. I just want to say that I will be supporting this resolution and applaud Councilmember Juarez for all her work doing this. I just want to really echo something that I've heard consistently through Vision 2050 about our region growing and with 1.2 million new jobs and 1.8 million new residents expected in the next 30 years, we know we need investments in our infrastructure to keep all of us moving. So I will be supporting this resolution and would like to go on the record as saying as I think that initiative 976 is malarkey. Okay. Thank you for that, Councilmember Pacheco. Councilmember Mosqueda. Thank you, Mr. President. And thanks to Councilmember Suarez for bringing this forward. I think it bears repeating what Councilmember Swanson mentioned. Many folks who are struggling are clearly concerned about the cost of their car tabs, and that is the result of our upside down tax system. So as we work to support Initiative 976, we also in the same breath call for us to right side up our upside down tax system. We have to have revenue to invest in transportation. We have to have revenue to invest in our crumbling bridges. We have to have this revenue to make sure that our economy functions. We are talking about a transportation system that allows for goods to get to the only deep water port in the western states here. We're talking about a major hub of transit and infrastructure that relies on us to have good functioning roads where we have to pay for that somehow. We have to make sure that small businesses and large businesses have the ability for workers to commute to get there, because we haven't built the housing that we need and we need that transportation infrastructure system. In order for us to do that, we need to rely on this revenue. That initiative 976 helps and I am sorry that that initiative 976 will take away from us if we if we see this pass. So we must oppose initiative 976. I want to underscore something that Councilmember Bagshaw also mentioned. This is not just about threatening our roads and our and our bridges. It's about taking away the very fabric of the system that helped provide services to seniors, veterans and children and the disabled. So I encourage folks to continue their effort to get the word out. No on 976. That's what this council is advocating for today, to get information out about what is really critical. And that is clarity and not confusion that's been propagated by, to my mind, yet again. Thank you to Councilmember Juarez for continuing to underscore our commitment to get the word out to voters to vote no on Initiative 976. Thank you, Catherine Mosquito. Any further comments from any of our colleagues from the dais? Okay. So that concludes comments from council members and will now provide an equal opportunity to hear comments from members of the public who wish to speak on the resolution. The total time allotted for comments will be 20 minutes and speakers will be called in alternating order between the two public comment sections, either for or against the resolution because we have one sign up in opposition to a resolution and five sign up in support. I'm going to start off with the Opposition, which is Mr. Iman, and then I'll go to the support, which should be Matthew Leong, and then I will likely continue to hear the support and then give Mr. Iman on the back end equal amount of time, because we could just go 2 minutes to instruments without ever having to try and come up five times. And so that does make a lot of sense. So, Mr. Iman, why don't we start with you for 2 minutes, but then you will be called back after that, after we hear from the support supporters of the resolution. Mr. Iman, you have the floor, sir. Well, thank you very much. This is a government resolution telling voters how to vote on a citizen initiative. It is an arrogant, improper use of tax dollars. Voters do not like politicians telling them how they should vote. This hasn't been a public hearing. This has been a politician hearing. This kind of manipulation, however, does not work with the initiative process. Everybody in the state gets to vote on it. You guys can rant and rave all you want. It doesn't really matter. Your vote counts exactly the same as every other voter in the state of Washington. So that's fine. And it doesn't surprise me that there is a poll out that shows that this is passing 70% across the state and it's leading in Seattle, 52 to 48. Those 52% of Seattle voters that are in favor of this measure aren't doing it because they like me. They find that it's completely dishonest to be taxing people on a $10,000 car and taxing it as if it's worth $25,000. And the tax burden, even for the people in Seattle, is absolutely reaching a tipping point where even they are realizing their property taxes are going through the roof. Every other tax is going through the roof. They're struggling. They're having a tough time. And this initiative comes along when the legislature had for two and a half years a way to be able to fix this problem. To say that a $10,000 cars were 10,000 for taxation purposes. They didn't do that. For two and a half years, voters have been saying do something about this problem and they've done nothing. When this initiative qualified in January, they had an entire legislative session to fix the problem, and they didn't. They could have put an alternative on the ballot. They didn't do that either. They've done absolutely nothing. And why is it we believe that by voting this initiative down and keeping a dishonest tax in law, that somehow they're going to turn around and start fixing it. Now people are getting ripped off. Everybody knows it and the politicians aren't doing a thing about it. And this initiative is the only way the people can actually fix the problem, get rid of this dishonest tax and come up with a better system, one where it requires voter approval and one where they have to actually tax the vehicle like it's worth 10,000. On the support side, Matthew Lane you have 2 minutes, sir. And then for Matthew, go to Kelsey Measure actually. So my name is Matthew Lang and I'm lead organizer at the Transit Riders Union and a proud member of the No. 976 Coalition. The Coalition has decided that I will actually be the only one that is going up to speak today. So I if there's any objection, I'm sure that they will bring it up. I've been on this campaign trail for about a year now, testified at Olympia, been working really closely to make sure that this initiative fails because it is going to be extremely harmful to all people in Washington State. A bus, bike, pedestrian rail and other multimodal cuts in our city will be extremely harmful to the members of the Transit Riders Union that use all those modes of transportation. Workers are going to suffer because of this initiative. Tens of thousands or thousands of jobs in the construction industry are going to be cut as we stop building roads, as we stop fixing potholes throughout the throughout the state. I've been hearing that entire counties might have to cut their entire bus systems because they rely so heavily on the transit benefit districts. I tell you, supports the leadership of the council on this and wants to make sure that we keep our market opportunity programs for youth, seniors and veterans, that we keep our transportation equity program, which is developing an equity analysis to bring transit to traditionally underserved populations. Currently, 53% of all carbon emissions in our city are coming from passenger vehicles or cars and trucks. Allowing any cuts to services to bus service would be in direct opposition to our stated emissions and commute trip reduction goals. So in that vein, the Transit Riders Union and the No. 976 Coalition support the leadership of the Seattle City Council in denouncing 1876, please vote yes on Resolution 30 1911. Thank you. Thank you. I'll call the names since I have them here. Kelsey Messier, would you like to speak? Andrew Johnston Would you like to speak true or not here? Steve Zamsky Would you like to speak? No. Vote no on nine, seven, six and Brown. Rachael Brown, would you like to speak? Rachel Okay. And I think Joyce LAMB was here, but she signed up for another area. So the way I sort of mis poorly described the, the sequence of events because I probably put the opposition side at a disadvantage because I was assuming that all of you would speak since you all signed up. So I think it appropriate to give Mr.. Mr. Iman another minute. And if you want to say another minute and then we're going to close by public comment, would you like to say another minute? Mr. Iemma And I did told you that you would have more time, assuming that the other side was going to speak longer. And that was a little unfair to your side about choosing. A time I really appreciate. Bruce, say you now the rules and let me know how it is going to work. I'm I'm very grateful for that. I think that just the basic point I'd want to make is if it was a private company that was gouging people like this, taking more money, then they're really entitled to the government shut them down. But because it's the government itself taking more money than there should from the taxpayers, all we're getting is excuses. You're saying it doesn't matter whether or not it's dishonest. It doesn't matter if it's artificially inflated because we're spending the money that we shouldn't be taking from you and relying on really good stuff. And what we're dealing with is we have a state that has a three and a half billion dollar tax surplus, which is more than enough money to backfill any affected government program. Get rid of the dishonest tax. Use the surplus in order to be able to backfill the affected programs and transition to a system that is a heck of a lot more fair, that under 976 they have to get voter approval and they have to use Kelley Blue Book or the actual value of a vehicle so that if a $10,000 car is going to be taxed, it's going to be taxed at $10,000. That seems reasonable to me. What I find just inconceivable and I'm out of time is that you can't recognize the fact that people are extremely upset about this, and they're very upset because their elected officials aren't telling them and acknowledging that it's a problem. Instead, you're saying, just take it because we're using the money on really good stuff. And I think most people think if it's dishonest, you shouldn't be imposing at all regardless of what you spend the money on. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With the supporters of the resolution. Like one last bite of the apple here. I've just got one more thing to say. So I just bought a 2019 car and I'm going to have to pay about $450 this year in my car tabs. And I'm okay with that because I have the privilege to be able to do that. And I understand that access to transportation is one of the biggest markers for poverty in the country. If you don't have access to transportation, you can't get to work, you can't get around the city. We have to be able to provide these opportunities for all people in our city. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I'm going to close the public comment section. We've had ample comments from the diocese and so I'm going to prepare this matter for a vote. Just one moment here. Protecting the things I do. Yeah. Just a moment, please, because my colleagues are actually stealing his papers over here. Okay. All those in favor of supporting resolution 31911. Please say I. I opposed the ayes have it. The resolution has passed and the chair will sign it. Please, please read the next agenda item into the record.