AN ORDINANCE relating to land use and zoning; granting conditional approval of the University of Washington 2018 Seattle Campus Master Plan; and amending Chapter 23.32 of the Seattle Municipal Code (SMC) at pages 61, 62, 63, 77, 78, 79, 80, and 81 of the Official Land Use Map.
Agenda item two Council Bill 119426 An ordinance relating to land use and zoning granting conditional approval of the University of Washington 2018 Seattle Campus Master Plan and amending Chapter 23.32 of the Seattle Municipal Code at Pages 61, 62, 63, 77, 77, 80, 80 and 81 of the official land use map. The committee recommends the bill pass as amended. That's from Johnson. Okay. So this council bill in the next court file following it are related to the two and a half year major institution master plan process that the University of Washington Seattle campus has been undergoing with us. We as a council have a and the city have a particular agreement with the University of Washington. And we've been doing this dance on that agreement to today. And today is the final set of actions that are necessary in order to get our version of this council bill across the finish line. So I want to start by just talking about what is in here and what it will do, and then ask people if they have any questions or thoughts and then will conclude from there. So in response to the rapid growth of the city, the University of Washington submitted to this council a draft master plan and following input a final master plan which then went to the city's hearings. Examiner and the City University Community Advisory Committee. All those bodies of individuals, including the Department of Construction and inspections, weighed in on the proposal and the hearings. Examiner held a hearing with all the parties of record, which included several folks from the community. The hearings examiner then recommended adoption of the major institution master plan to the council with some conditions, and then the Council added some important conditions. One of those was requiring the University of Washington to provide 300 units of affordable housing at 80% ami on top of 150 units that the hearings examiner had conditioned to reduce the drive alone rate to the University of Washington from 15% to 12%, with some interim goals tied to the opening of light rail stations to include parking associated with residence halls and caps on parking spaces, and to lower that parking cap to require showers, bike parking and trail widening and pedestrian separation on the human trail to work on exempting child care space from gross floor area cap some individual zoning of some individual parcels that are close to the light rail stations, the support of using priority hire and contracting, exempting small businesses from floor area caps and encouraging the diversity of retail ownership on campus as well as best practices for reducing stormwater runoff. That was in our resolution that we adopted in September. That resolution then allows for a sort of back and forth between all the parties of record. And then a bunch of additional comments came to us in December for consideration and a committee last week. The Committee of the Planning Leaders and Zoning Committee recognized that the University of Washington is planning to provide those 450 units of affordable housing. Nearby Transit asked that the University of Washington build affordable housing and included a range of unit types and commit to a long term affordability within those units of affordable housing. Request the child care be incorporated into those units. Request that the bicycle parking and childcare voucher programs be analyzed by the University of Washington and request an annual report on topics of interest to the Council and other stakeholders. We also had some additional discussion and debate on some heights of buildings, again by the light rail station. With all those changes made. The committee voted unanimously to approve the master plan process. And following that approval, the this then goes to the University of Washington Board of Regents for their approval should they approve. We are done. So do not approved. No one has any idea what happens next. But let's return from our council. Central staff has ably navigated us through this quasi judicial matter for the last two and a half years. And as a. Read literally thousands and thousands of pages of documents. And to him, we are eternally grateful because quasi judicial processes don't allow for us to have any negotiation with any parties of record, including the University of Washington or any of the appellants, which mean that we have to have all of our conversations out here in the public audience, which requires a lot of time and energy on this part to make sure that we are doing all of that appropriately and also really understanding all the issues that are on and off the record. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions that folks may have opening up for other comments that people might want to make, and then happy to add a few final closing remarks. Thank you, Katherine Johnson. Any comments or questions from any of our colleagues on the council? Okay. Customers want. Thank you, President Harrell. I will be voting in favor of this ordinance because I do not oppose the expansion of UW and there are some smaller benefits for the public built into the plan as the University of Washington negotiated this expansion. However, what has been most noticeable is the total disinterest on the part of the YouTube administration and the state politicians that they report to to invest in the needs of the workers in the community that make YouTube run. When our movement one of $15 an hour minimum wage four years ago, the YouTube administration first tried to say that it did not apply to them until students and workers of YouTube build a movement to force them to back down, which they succeeded in. Now the YouTube administration is attempting to privatize the hospital laundry, eliminating over 100 good unionized jobs. And we have to note that most of those jobs are being held right now by immigrant people, many of them women of color. I attended an electrifying rally of hundreds of workers at YouTube last Thursday where workers told you the president un-American to say in no uncertain terms that they will no longer tolerate her near million dollar salary while she guts their jobs and continues to hold their pay hostage in such a way that many of them have had stagnating living standards. The administration forces the workers to go on strike, as they said very clearly at that rally, to get a decent living. Then I will be standing with them. And it was also important that UAW Local 4121, the Union campus union that represents the graduate students, were also there in solidarity with the Rosie unions and said that if the U.S. unions went on strike, they would honor the picket line. The Europe administration has also totally disregarded the need for affordable housing for students and workers. This legislation authorizes YouTube's next phase of growth over the next ten years. It authorizes 6 million square footage of development with an additional 35,000 students, 1900 staff and 840 faculty. So you would think they intend to build tens of thousands of units of affordable housing to accommodate that growth. And you would think the city of Seattle would demand something on the scale of thousands. However, the university is even resisting developing 450 new units of affordable housing, which is really a paltry number when you consider the actual need. The university currently employs close to 29,000 workers and has more than 43,000 students. When the UAW surveyed academic student employees last fall, they found that fully 82% of them were rent burdened, and on average they were spending 44% of their income on housing. We know that other workers, like the thousands of youth, laundry workers, food service workers, office staff, gardening staff are adjunct and part time faculty custodians and many other workers are in similarly perilous economic straits, even though this is a supposedly world class university with, you know, really fabulous salaries to the executives at the top. The university is failing its students and all its tens of thousands of staff, and even more so, it is failing to meet its social obligations to the entire Seattle community. Many youth workers and students are forced to make choices between rent, food, medicine and other necessities. The growth and expansion of this public university is very good. Our society needs a greater commitment to education and human knowledge. However, if it is not accompanied by a massive commitment to affordable housing, that education will not be available for all. An institution like U Dub with a budget of 8 billion per year with 400 executives, can build more than 450 units of affordable housing over ten years. I should also mention that the behavior of the UTEP administration is actually no different than the majority of the city council and the mayor of the city who have failed to address the problem of affordable housing. And in this preceding budget, the majority of this Council voted against 11 separate amendments for affordable housing that were brought forward from my office and the people's budget movement. I will be voting yes on this UTEP expansion because the expansion of public education is a good thing. But I also urge workers at UW and ordinary people in Seattle who want to have an affordable city and an affordable campus community to continue building, building a movement to demand affordable housing for all, to save the youth laundry workers jobs, to fight for a decent contract for all the unions at your dub, and to stand in solidarity with the unions if they decide to go on strike. Thank you, Councilman, for those words. Any other comments from any of my colleagues, Councilman Johnson, you want to. So some closing words. Just briefly, all I wanted to remind my colleagues of a couple of things that we've done leading up to today. A couple of years ago, we adopted the mandatory housing affordability rezoning in the University District, which is both resulting in new market redevelopment that is desperately needed in the neighborhood, as well as new funding for affordable housing . The $13 million that the city is planning to distribute through our notice of funding availability that has resulted from a major at least 4 million of that has come from projects in the University District. More of those projects will come online, which will mean more units and more funding for affordable housing. We've got a one light rail station open in the neighborhood now. We've got one set to open in the next couple of years, and we've got a university that stands out as not just a state's flagship university and as an educational driver, but an economic driver here, too. I believe this master plan lays out a bold vision for how we can continue to expand economic opportunity for folks at all income levels and recognizes the impact that the university has on its neighbors and asks them to be equitable in sharing those responsibilities about things like affordable housing, infrastructure, investments like the protected bike lanes, and reducing its single occupancy vehicle rates from something far below what it is today. You know, for me, I am really proud to have spent so much time and energy working on this, but it's a team effort. We already highlighted the work of Woodson, but I think I should also mention Spencer Williams and his successor Noah on for helping us to shepherd this issue across the finish line. This continues to be a quasi judicial matter. So even after the council votes on this today, we are required to continue to maintain a quasi judicial ex-parte communications until all of the potential avenues for appeal are concluded. So we may have many folks in the audience celebrating action today. We are prohibited from celebrating along with them until all the avenues are closed. And I know that nobody other than a very small Venn diagram overlap here of folks that care about land use and care about football would say this or maybe would care, but hopefully this passage today is a good omen for things to come when the Rose Bowl happens in just a couple of weeks. So with that, I'm happy to ask for my council colleagues to support Council Bill 119426. Very good. No further comments. Please call the role on the passage of the bill. Macheda O'Brien Swan I. Bagshaw High Johnson President Harrow High six in favor and unopposed. Bill passed and chair of the Senate. Please read the clerk file into the record. Agenda item three Clerk File 314346. Application of the University of Washington to prepare a new major institution master plan for the University of Washington Seattle campus at 4015 Avenue. Northeast Project Number 3023261 Type four. The committee recommends the application be granted as conditioned.