A RESOLUTION adopting General Rules and Procedures of the Seattle City Council; superseding Resolutions 31639 and 31659.
Thank you. Any further comments? Those in favor of confirming these appointments please vote i. I. Those oppose vote no. The motion carries and appointments are confirmed. Please read the part of the Governance, Equity and Technology Committee. To be part of the Governance, Equity and Technology Committee. Agenda Item nine Resolution 31806 Adopting General Rules and Procedures of the Seattle City Council superseding resolutions 316 39 and 316 59. The committee recommends the resolution be adopted as amended. Very good. So this resolution adopts basically attachment one to the resolution, which are general rules and procedures for our council as a governing body. And this document is a as it is a guide, if you will, to govern our internal management and procedures in conformance with both our city charter and customary practices of legislative bodies throughout the country. Guides and facilitates our duties and our meeting deliberations and our processes as well as the public, and gives us an understanding of council functions. As far as the process we used and you may recall that we tried to do this, look at it at least once a year in May, perhaps more thoroughly every two years, the fourth quarter of last year, a working group consisting of our city clerk and the deputy city clerks, central staff director and assistant city attorneys prepared and recommended amendments, both based on what we saw during the last year or two and what the public has commented on. And we received that review and feedback materials. And then in December, January, it all went out to you as a members of the dais in the City Council in March 30th. We email to all of our colleagues recommended final version. And again on April 2nd we had our first. It was uninjured action for our calendar and on April 2nd to April 16th, we took public comment comment. And then Tuesday, April 3rd was the first briefing at our committee. And on April 17th, the final briefing and the vote. I would like to thank some individuals that worked on this even before we do consider two amendments because they work so tirelessly on that, and I was very proud to work with them. The city clerk, Monica martinez Simmons, the deputy clerks, and Mayor Sanchez and Jodi Schwinn, central staff director Kirsten Armistead, and assistant city attorneys Jeff Slate and Gary Smith and legislation editor Brandon Esler. So thanks for all that great work. And again, I, I'm aware of two amendments and so I will turn the floor overdrive, please. Councilmember Mesquita for an amendment. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know that we have a joint amendment with Councilmember Gonzalez, myself, and Councilmember Johnson. Councilmember Gonzalez, do you want to speak first and then I will follow? No. Thank you. I just got a little out of order. That's okay. So this is Amendment One to Resolution 31806. So I'm going to move the amendment first and then I'll speak to it second. Okay. So Amendment one two Resolution 31806 would insert on as Section D with regard to attendance, attendance requirements and excuses. A Section four, which would read, a council member shall be granted a leave of absence by submitting written notice to the President as soon as practicable of a personal situation that would entitle a city employee to family and medical leave or paid parental leave under Seattle Municipal Code Sections 4.26.010 or 4.27.02. Well, then the notice shall give a reasonable estimate of dates to which the leave of absence shall apply. So in effect, this additional language would allow a council member to take advantage of this the same provisions that are applicable and available to our city employees. So while council members aren't subject to the same limitations on leave as other city employees, it still feels important for us to acknowledge and provide a path for council members to be able to care for their families and have reasonable accommodations to do so. This leave is not designed to usurp or replace the current options for excused absences that are laid out in the council rules. And this option can only be taken advantage of under the same conditions and parameters of paid family and medical leave. The amendment provides a less cumbersome approach to individual votes of the full Council to permit electronic participation in the event that a Council member does exercise the choice to trigger this particular rule, as I just read from the language, notice must be provided to the Council President and the Clerk's Office for purposes of measuring quorum. And the amendment does not and will not mandate that council members participate electronically while on leave. It just simply allows for electronic participation if the Council member desires to do so while on leave. And this amendment only applies to meetings of the full council and not to committee, work or public hearings, should a council member not be able to participate electronically during the period of leave, they shall notify the Council President and the clerk as soon as as soon as practicable, practicable, again, for purposes of measuring quorum. And I'd like to just think council members Macheda and Johnson for their support, collaboration and joint effort on recognizing this within our council rules. Very good, councilmember skater. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm really proud to be a co-sponsor on this amendment with Councilmember Johnson and Councilmember Gonzalez. I think that this amendment, as we've talked about, really does provide balance. It provides choice, privacy and equity by allowing council members to take leave and participate with their families and also participate meaningfully with full council as well . This amendment also comes on the heels of groundbreaking policy to ensure working parents and electeds may be able to balance the needs of family and work. And I'm proud that Seattle is once again leading on this effort. You may remember some recent examples that speak to the need for this type of flexibility for working people, including those who are electeds. Gubernatorial ads for Maryland and Wisconsin show women running for office breastfeeding despite voter doubts that mother's ability that doubt mother's ability to juggle politics and family. I think this is a critical time in our nation's history. We saw record numbers of women and people of color and younger folks who are having younger families stand up to run for office. These types of accommodations are critical, and it's also critical, as we know, for those who need to take care of loved ones, their parents, our elders and our family members to make sure that we can be there with them. I also want to acknowledge that this is about creating a balance not just for genders, but across race and income. And I'm proud that Seattle has done this in a number of ways in the past for other workers, including including paid parental leave, paid family leave, paid sick days, paid sick days and other equity standards. So I think this is a true extension of our committee, of our council's commitment to making sure that all families can participate meaningfully in work. I just want to thank again Councilmember Johnson and Councilmember Gonzales for their work, their staff, my staff especially. I know my chief of staff, Central Creek, has spent a lot of time doing some research on this. And thanks a lot. Apartment Brandon, Gary and Jeff for their work in drafting this along with Amelia. Again, thank you so much for your work on this thanks to the Council president for your willingness and flexibility to include. This as well. I think we all want to be active and efficient partners with you on full council as much as we want to also make sure that we're there for our families when I need. Excellent. Katherine Johnson, just. Briefly, the thing that I like about this is it recognizes the council members are people, too. And I say that intending to get a laugh. But also, you know, in real life, there are circumstances that do pull us away from this wonderful job that we have. And this recognizes that though those life circumstances may be few and far between, we should recognize those moments, take them to be with family, but still not keep us away from the day to day responsibilities of being here on Mondays at 2:00. So I'm grateful to my colleagues for letting me join on on this endeavor and encourage your yes vote on this amendment. Okay. Any further comments? We'll call this amendment one. So has been moved and Second Amendment one has been moved and seconded. All those in favor of that amendment. Please vote I. I oppose the ayes have it. And Council member Herbal. I believe you have an amendment as well. I do. Thank you. I move to amend resolution 31806 Attachment one, Article 11, Section D one, and as presented on Amendment 2/2. Thank you. So I've tried to be a little bit more clear than I was this morning in my description. This amendment adds language to clarify the intent of the resolution in the section specifically regarding disruptions. It specifies. That failure to follow. The direction of a presiding officer or security official applies to the section on disruptions and specifically the provisions a through A included a through H included in that section. The way the language was written previously, there was some concern from the ACLU that without referring specifically to provisions A through H, it allowed failure to follow the direction of a presiding officer to be too broad. That was not never the intent in the first place. And all this language does is clarify what the original intent of of the the language in the resolution in this section. Specifies. There. So you contact my office after we shared the the amendment and they wanted me to extend my appreciation for moving the amendment forward and your support. Thank you. Very good. Any further comments on this amendment only? Okay. So we're prepared to vote for this. I'll call it amendment number two. So those in favor of supporting amendment number two, please vote I. I oppose the ayes have it. Okay, so we have an amended piece of legislation and I think we're prepared to vote on that unless your further comments from any of my colleagues. Council Member BAGSHAW. Will this be effective immediately upon our vote? So it'll be used for this very evening, assuming it passes? Well, it's a resolution. I think it is effective immediately. Yes, it will be okay. Councilmember Swann. Thank you. President Hurdle This resolution makes several changes to the council rules. Many of those changes are small technical changes to make the wording of the rules more consistent and consistent. And I, of course, have no objection to those changes. And of course I supported the amendment. However, there are other changes that could hamper the public's ability to have a democratic influence on the decisions made by the Council. For example, there's a new council rule proposed that would read code at a regular city council meeting. No resolution shall be presented for adoption and no bill introduced unless reviewed by the law department and circulated via email to all council members, a central staff director and the city clerk by 5 p.m. on the preceding business day. And would this council rule would be fine. And also there is a question of consideration to ward staff members, but sometimes there are events or public events, political events that happen over the weekend or in the past week that the Council needs to or should comment on in a timely manner to have an impact. Sometimes the public approaches council to request a resolution on short notice, and I personally do not want to have to be in a position to tell people who have a righteous cause that they cannot be accommodated because a lot of Parliament has not finished reviewing the legislation and that 5 p.m. on Friday has passed. I think that many of the council rules he updates here are okay, but some are less democratic. So overall, I'll be voting no on this. Very good. And I want to thank Councilman Swann's office for letting us know. They did have some concern about basically the thought was to extend the review time for walk on bills and resolutions. And I would agree that there certainly are times where. And C is is we have to be able to be urgent for certain types of piece of legislation and the types of things that we do. We should have a mechanism by which to reach that, which is basically suspending the rules. But we appreciate you're describing to us. Sure. Your concerns. Any of the comments before we vote on this legislation? A skater. Thank you, Mr. President. I also want to just extend another note of appreciation for the work that you did in committee to accommodate the desire to add some language about increased access for those who speak English as a second language. I want to thank Linda and also Monica for your work from the clerk's office to make sure that we got this right. We in Seattle have made a commitment to making sure that those who speak English as a second language can participate in council meetings. The language that you see amended and Section eight really makes this commitment solidified in writing, making sure that upon reasonable request we can provide translation or interpretation services for individuals wishing to participate in our council meetings. And that includes both committee meetings and full council. I'm really appreciative of the inclusion of this language. Again, that's been included in Section eight from your committee meeting, Mr. President. And I also wanted to take a quick second to to announce. And for those who weren't paying attention to Councilmember Gonzalez's amazing committee hearing on Friday last week, we had the opportunity to hear from the folks CUC VU and also from Wax Joaquin talking about language access programs that the OIRA office includes. They have created a list, a comprehensive list of translation and interpretation services. They have put together a incredible language access toolkit that's available on our internal SharePoint website for all of our city departments, and they are working to make sure that we're putting into action the Executive Order ten that was passed last October by then-Mayor Burgess to make sure that Seattle is truly making our committee meetings and full council meetings accessible to everyone. And this was a wonderful presentation. I feel like that presentation, in combination with the language we've put into our policies today, making sure that those who speak English as a second language or limited English can absolutely participate in our democratic process. I'm really proud of the work that you've helped facilitate, Mr. President, and thanks again to Councilmember Gonzalez for highlighting this in her committee. I look forward to working with OIRA to make sure that all departments know how to access this information. The list and the interpretation and translation services so that everyone can have a meaningful language access plan in the future. Thanks to Maha as well, who was our Language Access Director, Language Access Program and policy specialist for the entire city. If you have not heard of her, I encourage you to look her up to make sure that all departments can get access to that information. Thank you for those comments. Again, I'd like to again think there's a lot of work that had gone into this particular review. 2017 presented a lot of procedural challenges and other types of challenges. And I want to thank again our members from the city clerk's office and our center staff director and central staff members and the law department, particularly Jeff Slate and Gary Smith. We look at, again, what makes sense in different jurisdictions, as well as always trying to respect one's constitutional right to participate in a public process. And there's really interesting case law that we try to use to assist us in making wise decisions. And again, I want to thank all of the folks who did some work on this. Okay. I think we're ready to vote. So those in favor of adopting the resolution as amended, please vote i, i. Those oppose vote no. No. Got the no. The motion carries the resolutions adopted. The chair will sign it. These are the next agenda item.