Good afternoon, everybody.

Glad everybody's here.

We took roll before we started the cameras.

Welcome.

Today is June 17th.

This is the meeting of parks and Seattle City Light.

This committee will come to order.

I'm Deborah Warez.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Strauss.

Councilmember Saka.

Councilmember Rivera.

Councilmember Kettle.

Chair Warren.

Thank you.

And I should note for the record that Councilman Rivera is excused for today.

All right.

Let's go on to approval of the agenda.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing or seeing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

I'm going to have a rather lengthy chair's report because we have 10 items, and I want to set for the viewing public and for my colleagues, kind of an overview of where we're headed today.

There will be a regular public comment period before items on the agenda and one public hearing regarding resolution three two two zero six, the Seattle City Light Integrated Resource Plan, the IRP, which is item number one.

Comments should be related to items on today's agenda and within the purview of this committee during public comment, be related to the first item during the public hearing.

There are two resolutions, four appointments, and four ordinances on the agenda today.

The first item on the agenda is a resolution that approves Seattle City Light 2026 Integrated Resource Plan, which we affectionately call the IRP, the ERP.

This is the second time we'll be hearing about the IRP and the Seattle City Light strategy over the next 20 years.

The IRP is republished every four years with progress reports due every two years after each full IRP.

This IRP is focused on addressing changes in customer needs, existing power supply, and assumptions on new energy resources, technologies, and costs.

This presentation is seven slides and will be presented by Mr.

Rob Stantoff, interim GM.

Shabon Dowerty, Katie Ewing, Vereen Martin, Rebecca Klein, Natalie Randall from Seattle City Light, and of course Eric McConaughey from our own central staff.

If those if those um presenters change, you guys can introduce yourselves when you get up here.

The second item on the agenda is an ordinance, Council Bill 12128 from Seattle City Light authorizing a five-year memorandum of agreement and MOA with Washington State Ferries for system improvements on Pier 48 and the Seattle Terminal Electric Electrification Project.

Seattle Terminal that includes uh Coleman Dock and Pier 52.

This is a timely issue as the agreement is to be signed on July 1st.

So we will be taking a vote on that today.

Their slide deck has uh or their presentation is nine slides.

Item number three through six.

On the agenda are four appointments to the Board of Parks and Recreation Commission for three terms, three-year terms.

We will hear from a representative from each of the appointees.

Um my understanding is appointment one will be through a mayoral appointment, Bradley Kahn, number two, Phil Mang coming out of D7, a council appointee, Rebecca Rash out of D1, Council uh appointee, and James Williams out of D6, a council appointee.

This presentation will be presented by Michelle Finnegan, who is the interim superintendent sale and park recreation director.

The seventh item on the agenda is an ordinance council bill 121-229 authoring the entry into the amendment into amendment six.

I think we wrote that wrong, the entry.

This legislation allows the city to accept money from King County to pay for properties that have already been purchased or will be purchased soon.

Their presentation consists of eight slides.

And again, they will be presented by Michelle Finnegan, Lisa Ward from Sale of Parks and Rec, and our own Tracy Radcliffe from Council Central Staff.

The eighth item on the agenda is an ordinance, Council Bill 121230 that would establish authority for Seattle Parks and Rec to acquire parcels of Delridge Native Forest at fair market value.

Yeah, Delridge is in items number seven and eight.

And we'll have the same folks from Parks that I just rattled off earlier.

Michelle Finnegan and Gang.

So items nine and ten we are not voting on, but I'm gonna just say it very briefly, and we'll have the presenters go into more detail.

Item nine is resolution three two two one zero.

And item 10 is Council Bill 121 231 regarding the new retail rate.

These are City Lights 2027 2032 strategic plan resolution and new retail rates ordinance.

These items will be presented together as a resolution informs the ordinance.

The rate ordinance establishes new retail rate schedules, establishes a new customer class and conditions for data centers that demand large electrical loads, modifies eligibility for residential rate assistance, and expands the rate stabilization account mechanism.

And um again that's council bill one two one two three one.

We'll be hearing from these two pieces that we will be hearing these two pieces of legislation across three council meetings due to the size of this legislation.

The resolution will be heard today and voted on July 1st.

The rates ordinance will be heard today, July, today uh we'll see the rates ordinance will be heard today, July 1st, and voted on July 15th.

My apologies.

Um we went, do we go so?

I have June, okay.

So June 17th is today, rate ordinance.

July 1st, be in committee again, and then we will vote again in committee July 15th, and then it will go to full council, hopefully July.

Is it my birthday?

The 22nd.

Full council after the 15th.

It is July 21st, not my birthday.

Okay, July 21st.

Um, today will be a high level presentation, and I ask my colleagues.

Please, if you would please reserve your questions to let them get through the high level PowerPoint.

And we will be submitting written questions to Seattle City Light due by June 24th for a detailed memo response along with an in-depth presentation on July 1st, where members will be able to ask additional questions.

This presentation is 23 slides and will be presented by again Rob Sanoff, Angela Bettran, Christy Grinder Gringer.

I'm sorry if I got that wrong, Leo Lamb, and of course, Eric Mahonic.

I expect a vote on items one to eight.

With that, did I miss anything, Mr.

Clerk?

We good?

All right.

So we will now move on to public comment and uh we'll open the hybrid period.

So we have people in chambers, we have people online.

So let's start with why don't you tell me how many people we have and tell me who's online and who's on chambers.

We have two public speakers signed up in person and three online.

Okay, so we have a total of five.

Okay.

So let's give um let's start with the folks that are here, two minutes each.

And Paul, you want to do you want me to read this or do you want to read it?

Two minutes.

Come up here, cue up.

Who's ever that and you can go ahead and call the names?

You want to start with in person?

Yeah, in person first, two people.

Uh the first in-person speaker is gonna be Anders, followed by Jamie.

Good afternoon.

Um, I'll actually cover for both of us.

Uh Jaime uh Sayas is my colleague.

Uh, my name's Anders Hammersburg.

I'm uh with Washington State Ferries.

Um, on behalf of our assistant secretary, Steve Nevy and Deputy uh John Vasina and our program director David Sowers.

Uh we're here in support of the MOA with Seattle City Light and um Washington State Ferries to provide power for our um electrification project at uh Coleman Dock down the hill here.

Um this is a project that's been in the works for about three years of planning, uh, partnering with Seattle City Light.

It's um our busiest terminal.

Uh almost half of our total ridership goes through Coleman Dock uh each year, and it's part of a larger program to build new ferries uh to recapitalize our aging fleet.

Uh they're gonna be hybrid electric, which means we're gonna have to plug in uh to charge the batteries here at the pier.

So that's um that's the project.

Um we've appreciated the uh the partnership with Seattle City Light to get to this point, and uh we look forward to moving into uh the execution phase of this ambitious project.

Uh we're gonna be releasing an RFP in July uh to do the design build for for the project down at um Coleman Dock.

So we appreciate everyone's support.

Um regarding the last item on the agenda, the large load user um uh proposal.

Our program director has sent a letter of concern to Seattle City Light uh earlier this year when we had concerns that we would be grouped together with other private large load users like data centers, uh, whereas we're a public entity providing a public service um in a fixed location, obviously.

And so we were happy to hear the recent uh update to that proposal, made the distinction between the two, and I believe now the current proposal is focused more on uh a data center type of large load user.

So we appreciate um their partnership in that regard as well.

Okay, what's your name again?

Anders Hammersburg.

Okay, you're from Washington State Ferries.

Yes, okay.

It's item number two, and they have a great PowerPoint, so thank you.

All right, thanks.

Uh-huh.

And you said Jamie, you spoke for both of you.

Yes.

Okay.

Perfect.

Oh.

You're good.

Was he the second guy?

He was the second guy.

Okay, so the second guy is good.

Oh no, he's getting up.

And then we have three remote speakers.

So the Washington State Ferries are well represented today.

Good job, guys.

Remote speakers.

First, we'll have Yvonne, followed by Caroline and David.

When you hear that you've been unmuted, please press star six.

Thank you.

I don't see their time.

Yvonne.

If you can press star six.

Hello.

Um, this is um, can you hear me?

Uh-huh.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon.

I'm Yvonne Griffin, and I'm participating in this meeting to comment on Council Bill, one, two, three, zero, Delridge Native Forest blanket authority.

I'm here today to express serious concerns, not because of the bill's stated goals, because of how it's structured and what it allows.

At its core, this legislation grants broad authority for land and acquisitions without sufficient guardrails.

It asks the public and this council to support future decisions without clearly defining the scope, cost, or long-term implications of this decision.

That raises a fundamental government issue.

As written, the bill does not require adequate transparency around what properties may be acquired, how those acquisitions will be prioritized, or how public funds will ultimately be allocated.

It removes the opportunity for case-by-case review, limiting meaningful oversight, and reducing the ability for the community input at critical decision points.

And in fact, it centralizes decision making authority wise, simultaneously reducing accountability.

We're all share the same goal of protecting nature spaces and supporting environmental stewardship.

Those are values that the communities probably support.

But good opportunity, I'm sorry, but good policy requires more than good intention.

It requires clarity, transparency, and accountability.

Without those elements, we risk having a president where significant public decisions are made without sufficient scrutiny or public engagement.

Equality, equally important, this bill does not fully address the broader impact of the land acquisition on surrounding communities, particularly when it comes to equity access and long-term use.

These are not secondary considerations.

They are central to the responsibility policy makers.

This is not a question of whether we protect our environment, it's a question of how we do so possibly.

Thank you, Yvonne.

Our next remote speaker will be Caroline, followed by David.

Please press star six when you hear your unmuted.

What's her name?

Carolyn?

Hi, uh, my name.

Yes, can you hear me?

Uh-huh.

Perfect.

Uh yeah, my name is Caroline Borsnik, and I am the environmental programs director with Bell Ridge Neighborhood Development Association.

And I'm commenting in support of Council Bill 121230.

So for more than a decade, we've been restoring park spaces throughout the Delrige Corridor while creating opportunities for community members to connect with their local environment.

Over the past several years, we've partnered with STAT on the Delrich Native Forest Project, hosting restoration volunteer events and guided walks on sites that help connect people with the land and foster stewardship.

These have created a welcoming space where neighbors can experience native plants and wildlife right in their own community.

We are in support of the proposed acquisition request to expand and preserve the Delrige Native Forest and benefits for the community.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you, Carol.

Our next speaker will be David, followed by Lauren.

David?

David, if you press star.

Hi, thank you.

David Haynes.

Um I just want to point out that like you guys got a lot of electricity, and when it comes from the dams and it finally makes it to Seattle, there's a loss of some of that electricity.

And then you apply the run down real estate that the electricity gets pumped into.

A lot of it gets wasted, whether it's because of the salam like dilapidated conditions of the buildings that need a 21st century housing build out or whatnot.

But the thing is, is like the cruise boats, they consume seven to ten megawatts.

And I don't know, it's like three thousand homes the equivalent of an electricity, and yet they're still allowed to emit toxic emissions to keep their gas boilers going.

So you smell that stuff like in the waterfront of Seattle.

But we have the port virtue signaling about all this electricity.

Yet, you know, we have this really bad deal where the cruise boats are charged between seven dollars and seven dollars and fifty cents per passenger, and that's about the extent of their payments towards the infrastructure that they use and abuse where we have to raise the property taxes to cover the bond payments for all the hundreds of millions of dollars in debt that the port has created, while they treasonously turn against the community who wants a stadium that gets a reprieve from the road rage coming from the ports of the highway.

But you know, there's a consumption malfunction within some of the electricity, and it's curious that the port gets to pass through all the electricity sent into the cruise boats, but you know, are they allowed to like seemingly like control the benefit of getting access to that to the point where they're like dumping the debt onto the local community and shortchanging?

And it just seems to be like somewhat unfair in like the Del Ridge slush fund to pay more people to expand the park.

You know, that's real suspect to me.

And you know, there's a there's a lot of stuff on this uh committee meeting because the council has canceled so many others, and now you thrust all this and barely give us two minutes before you start interest speaker is Lauren Redfield.

Lauren is not present currently.

I don't see her tile up here.

Is it up there?

Lauren?

Nope.

Did she leave?

She's not present.

Oh, she's she's gone.

Yeah, and that was our last public speaker.

All right, all right.

Sorry about that, Lauren.

All right.

Maybe she'll come back.

Okay, thank you, Mr.

Kirk.

So that was our last speaker.

Public public comment is now closed.

We'll proceed to our items of business in items of business.

Mr.

Mr.

Clerk Paul, will you please read item number one into the record?

Agenda item one, resolution three two two zero six, a resolution relating to the city light department acknowledging and approving the 2026 integrated resource plan.

There will be a briefing discussion and vote.

Thank you.

As a presiding officer, I'm now opening the public hearing on resolution three two two zero six.

Clerk, do we have any speakers signed up?

We actually met on this at the last the last committee hearing.

So we're doing our second one.

Do we have anyone here to speak to public comment on resolution three, two, two, zero six?

Okay, let's hear from our one remote speaker.

David, you'll have two minutes if you can press star six.

David.

Okay, Mr.

Haynes.

All right, does this have to do with the integrated resource?

Yes.

Yeah, you know, there really is a need to address the consumption malfunction within like weak transfer lines that requires purchasing more electricity.

But when you allow like other people to plug in and then dump the debt onto the taxpayers, there's a short change that takes place within people who are using the electricity, like the cruise boat.

And it's still suspect how the seaworthy reliable, an electric like heavy-duty car carrying ferry is.

And you got to go to a different marketing agency, which sounds like a padded cost of extra amounts of money.

And it's no clarification on that.

But y'all just want to like sugarcoat it with another increase.

And it's just unfair that in Seattle and around King County, we have all these run-down pieces of real estate that have these low quality quality transfer lines.

And so we can charge for the electricity, but we don't get the full benefit.

And it's the same with the high wires that are still higher than your buildings' windows, distracting your view, because we have these landlords on city council that put all these restrictions on the comprehensive plan.

But you know, we have transfer lines in Fremont that explode because they build up too much electricity and they need to be used in a sustainable manner.

But when they don't, they get this build-up pressure and they explode.

And it's like oh for it's a perfect place to block off the road and have green remote public speakers sign up.

Are we done?

Right.

Thank you, Mr.

Haynes.

All right, that was our last speaker to speak on the resolution 32206.

Now public hearing is now closed on that matter.

I see our presenters are already at the table.

So with that, um, I'm gonna let you guys introduce yourselves for the record, and then you can begin your presentation.

I understand it's only seven pages long, so if we can have you give through your presentation and then I'll open it up to the to my colleagues, Rob Santoff, intern general manager and CEO at City Light.

Bridget Molina, Council Legislation Coordinator for Celti Light.

Katie Ewing Resource Planning and Analysis for City Light.

Rebecca Klein, resource planning and analysis for City Light.

Good afternoon, Chair Boris and committee members.

Thank you for being here today.

Uh as we complete our presentation and your review for the uh integrated resources plan or IRP.

Uh my name is Rob Santoff, as I stated, intern general manager and CEO at Seattle City Light.

Uh joined today by our power supply and resource team.

Uh we're here to today to answer additional questions on our City Lights long-term planning document.

Looking ahead 20 years to ensure that we meet the future electricity needs safely, reliably, affordably, and sustainably sustainably.

And with that, I'll pass it over to Katie to run through a brief slide deck.

Thanks, Rob.

So we truncated the slides that we presented at the last meeting, and so we'll move quickly through and try to get to questions as quickly as we can.

I have Rebecca and Vereen here as well as Siobhan, and we're ready for your questions.

So we'll just kick it off with the Rebecca's gonna kick it off and talk about the new resource needs first.

Yeah, so our 2026 integrated resource plan shows a need for new generating resources.

Our key modeled study years are on the horizontal axis and along the vertical axis is the annual average generation in average megawatts of the portfolio created by our IRP model, shown as the stacked bars.

On top of that is our forecasted annual average load in average megawatts, shown as the solid black line, and forecasted peak load in megawatts shown as the dashed black line.

You can see that the average annual generation is far greater than the average annual load, but below our projected peak load.

This is because our the generation resources need to be able to reliably meet peak load on an hourly basis, even during extreme events.

And that means during non-extreme weather, which is most of the time, there's an extra generation after we've met our own load.

That extra generation is usually sold in the wholesale energy market.

This portfolio can meet peaks through flexing our on-demand resources, such as our owned hydro plants and demand response programs, as well as some limited access to the market.

Our need for new resources, especially firm energy, is heavily driven by sustained peaks.

For the primary IRP analysis, we limited supply resources to wind, solar, and short duration batteries.

These types of resources are weather dependent, and there is a risk of these resources not being available when we need them and impacting our ability to reliably meet customer needs.

Generic firm energy was layered on top to make sure our portfolio can reliably meet our loads.

In a separate analysis, we evaluated firm clean resources such as enhanced geothermal and small modular reactor technology more in depth, as well as on-demand resources, specifically long-duration storage and renewable peakers.

These resources show significant value and will help meet our future long duration events that are becoming more frequent.

Next slide.

So here's a different view of what Rebecca just went over.

It shows the total resource need in 10-year segments.

So the first 10 years, the total supply-side resource need is about 1,700 megawatts, with the second 10 years being about 1900 megawatts.

You can see it's split between batteries, solar, wind, and that firm energy that Rebecca cited.

So the total for the whole study of resource supply side resource needs is about 3600 megawatts.

And we have another view on the next slide.

This combines the supply side from that was detailed in the first two slides with our demand side resource needs that were presented, I guess last year, and the demand side management potential assessment.

So that is in the top box there with 107 megawatts needed in the first 10 years and 48 in the second 10 years for a total of 155 over the course of the 20 year period.

Then at the bottom, it totals the supply side with the customer side.

And then at the very bottom, this was the first time that we evaluated transmission need as part of the integrated resource plan.

So you can see in the first 10 years, the model called for about 300 uh megawatts of additional transmission, and the second 10 years, an additional 200 megawatts for a total of 500 megawatts.

So the key takeaways from the study are in recent years we've had increased electrification from both building and transport transportation.

This contributes to load growth.

That sustained load growth with winter peaks and increased weather volatility requires increased resource need, including transmission, to bring power from where it is generated to Seattle.

The resources that are non-emitting and readily available are intermittent renewables such as wind and solar.

These types of resources are weather dependent, which has made us increasingly interested in clean, firm technology, energy solutions like enhanced geothermal energy, and that will be a critical part of City Light's future resource portfolio.

Next slide.

So getting back to why we are here today.

And again, the IRP report and its appendices are included as part of the legislative packet.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So that concludes your presentation, correct?

Yes.

Okay.

Are there any questions from my colleagues?

Okay, I do not see any.

So what I need to do here, if there are no objections, oh good, you're back, Councilman Strauss.

The council rules be will sus be suspended to allow the committee to vote on the resolution on the same day the public hearing was held, though this was in committee on two weeks ago.

Um, so I don't see any objection.

I don't hear one.

Okay.

Hearing no objection, the council rule is suspended, and the committee will proceed with voting on resolution three, two, two, zero, six.

I move that the committee recommend passage of resolution three, two, two, zero, six.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

And chair?

Yes.

I did have a question, I just didn't raise my hand well enough.

Go ahead.

Um, thank you.

Could we go to slide two?

And I appreciate that this is the second time in committee that we've had this information because it allowed me to prepare my questions correctly.

Talking about averages and peaks, storage and how do we expand our capacity without necessarily expanding generation, so that we can smooth those bell curves.

Or how do you what do you all call them peak curves?

Do you have a smooth the peaks?

Smoothing the peaks.

There we go.

Thank you.

This demonstrates that we have more than enough power on our average consumption days.

And as we continue to have more and more peak days, both in winter and in summer, as well as having a couple more peaks during the day as well.

This is going to become more and more of a problem.

And so with the ability to store energy, we can potentially smooth these peaks in different ways.

And I know that I have knocked on your door a number of times about a pet project that I would really love to see us use, which is home battery storage.

And so can you talk to us about what works City Light has done to date and what still needs to be done for the general public who is just hearing this from me for the first time?

The idea is that City Light would either pay for entirely or assist in payment for a battery to be at your home that you can personally help smooth those peaks, and in the moments when City Light needs to draw the power out of your battery for the general good of the utility, they would be allowed to do that as well.

As we last statement, and then I'll turn it back to you for your response, is as we move into right now.

We have time-of-day pricing on a voluntary basis.

I believe that at some point we will have that on involuntary basis.

And so there's a lot of real good public benefits, even if it's a private utilization for some of the time.

So, with all that preface, can you talk to us about what the potentiality for City Light to support a home battery project?

Yeah, so thank you for um talking to us a little bit about this before because we were able to prepare um remarks with the help of Joe Fernandez who's in the audience from Customer Energy Solutions at City Light.

Um, so City Light does see a strong long-term value in residential batteries for resiliency and peak management, just like you were talking about, Council Member Strauss.

We explored this concept last year in our battery opportunity study.

What we found is that we currently lack the foundational tools to run a program safely and effectively.

Specifically, we need a way to know where the batteries are located, a policy to allow export back to the grid, and we need distributed energy resource management system.

You'll hear those referred to as DERMS.

Durham system is a technology system to help coordinate coordinate battery dispatch.

We are actively building these capabilities now with Durham's procurement plan for 2027.

And once in place, we expect to start with a bring your own battery pilot focused on customers who already have batteries.

Wonderful.

And so we have to take care of some initial policies first and foremost.

I would assume that from there, then we would need to engage in capital cost estimations.

We would have to create these policies about how we are allowing a private household to use this public good that we would be purchasing and and all of those requirements.

How best can I work with you to keep this process moving?

Yeah, this lives in our um customer energy solutions team, so I think working directly with that customer team is going to be the right way.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

I look forward to continued conversations.

That's all I got, Chair.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

So I'm gonna go back and do a do over here.

Um, I'm gonna go ahead and move it again.

I move that the committee recommends passage of resolution three two two zero six.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

It is moved and seconded to recommend passage of the resolution.

Any further comments?

Not seeing any from my colleagues.

So the clerk please call the roll.

Councilmember Strauss.

Yes, Councilman Saka.

Hi.

Vice Chair Kettle.

Aye, Chair Warz.

Aye.

Chair, there are four votes in favor and zero opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries.

Resolution 3203 2206 will be sent to the June 23rd.

Full city council meeting.

All right.

Um, Mr.

Clerk, will you please read item two into the record?

Agenda item two, Council Bill 12128.

An ordinance relating to the City Light Department authorizing the execution of a five-year agreement with Washington State Ferries for the construction of system improvements associated with Pier 48 and the Seattle Terminal Electrification Project.

There will be a briefing discussion and vote.

Great.

So I'm gonna invite our folks, our presenters or Seattle City Light and uh presenters at the table.

My understanding is this is a nine-page PowerPoint regarding a five-year MOA to the tune of 3.2 million.

What else we got here?

I think that's all I got.

So with that, uh go ahead and introduce yourself again for the record, and you can begin your presentation.

Rob Santoff, internal manager and CEO of City CL City Light.

Uh Bridget Molina, Council Legislation Coordinator for Seattle City Light.

Lizzie Kay, Senior Project Manager.

Green light.

Lizzy Kay, Seattle uh Senior Project Manager with Seattle City Light.

Phil Ambrose, uh Program Manager, Maritime Transportation Electrification Program.

Tamara Jenkins, project delivery director, Seattle City Light.

Um I'll Eric McConaughey on the council central staff.

Great.

So we got the PowerPoint in front of us, we have the ordinance, and we've got the summary and fiscal note.

So I'll let you go ahead.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Warz and Council members.

Uh, thank you for the opportunity to be here today.

I'm Rob Santoff, Intern General manager and CEO at Seattle City Light.

Appreciate your time as we present the proposed memorandum memorandum of agreement with Washington State Ferries.

Today's item supports a major regional priority.

The electrification of Washington State Ferry System, which plans to transition the fleet to hybrid electric power by 2040 and to emissions-free by 2050.

This work includes installation of 16 vessel charging systems statewide, including including electrification of two slips at Coleman Dock, and requiring 15 megawatts of capacity.

Seattle City Lights role is essential.

We'll be extending two new power services from Pier 48 to Coleman Dock using Washington State Ferry owned submarine cables, advancing a major component of City Lights Maritime Transportation Electrification Program and Transportation Electrification Investment Plan.

This project not only supports clean transportation but contributes to significant reduction in CO2 emissions, a 70% reduction by 2040 and a 95% reduction by 2050.

And it lowers underwater noise impacts to marine life, creating broad environmental benefits.

The associated ordinance authorizes City Light to execute a five-year MOA and a long-term operations agreement, enabling this essential project to stay on schedule with the first slip entering service May of 2029 and the second and April of 2030.

I will now turn it over to City Lights Project Team Lead Lizzie Kay to run us through their presentation.

Hey Lizzie, before you begin, I just want to thank you.

You did a really good job on the submarine fiscal note.

Oh, great.

Thank you.

We actually read this stuff.

So I know you think we don't, but we do.

So and I like a good writer, so thank you.

All right.

So today we're gonna start with just an overview of the program a little bit, and then we'll get um a little more specific about the Seattle Terminal Coleman Dock project, and then we'll go into detail about the MOA and the purpose of the ordinance.

So the ferry electrification program with Washington State Ferries, they plan to transition their feet fleet to a hybrid electric vessels.

Um the goal is to transition the fleet by 2040 with being emissions-free by 2050.

Um they plan to install 16 charging systems for their vessels, and they're gonna have 16 new hybrid electric, and they're gonna retrofit six existing ferries.

So one of the main drivers of the program is to reduce the environmental impact of of ferries.

Um, so a large part of that is reducing the carbon dioxide equivalent.

Um, the goals are 70% reduction by 2040, 95% by 2050.

Um, but then there's also the potential to reduce underwater radiated noise.

So I think most people have heard the difference between an electric vehicle and an internal combustion engine vehicle.

Um, electric vehicles are much quieter, so um there's a hope that the um the sound reduction in sound waves will um reduce harm to marine life as well.

I'm gonna break my own rule real fast so I can do that on the chair.

Um, so the harmful to marine life is that for the whales?

I believe so.

I I don't know the science behind it, but uh I believe that it's say harmful to marine life.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Yeah, because of the same yes.

Yes, yes.

Including other marine life.

Yeah.

Okay.

Let me just check in.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Lizzie.

Um, so for this project specifically, um, the Seattle Terminal, also known as Coleman Dock, also known as Pier 52, all three of those were referring to the same area.

Um there's gonna be two slips that will be 15 megawatts each.

That'll be 30 megawatts total.

Um, and the graphic here shows the area that we're talking about.

We have Coleman Dock up at the far north of of the graphic, and um you can see slips three and slip one, those are the two slips that are gonna be electrified first.

The service will be extended from just south of Pier 48 there, and it will be extended using a submarine cable that will be owned and operated by Washington State Ferries, and then our um equipment and Seattle City Lights meter will actually be on Coleman Dock.

Um, this project is a part of our maritime electrification transportation program.

Um so that program was established in 2021, and it is to was to help us uh help our marine sector customers with their non-standard service upgrades, specifically targeting electrification, but it's also to help us coordinate across customers.

So these are large projects, large service upgrades happening on the waterfront, which is a very busy area with a high demand, and so where we can coordinate across customers, we want to try to do so, and I'll go into greater detail on that.

So this is the project timeline.

This graphic is the same orientation as the previous one.

So you know, facing north, you know, north is at the top there.

Um and what this shows is um we have our city light feeders coming from the south in our transition vaults from there, the two submarine cables will leave the vaults and uh go to Coleman Dock.

Something to note here is that the City Light feeder, one of which um one of those was installed with a previous project.

That's our first example of being able to coordinate across customers with the Maritime Electrification Program.

Um, and so with the port and the Pier 66 project, we were able to extend that feeder to where Washington State Ferries will intercept that feeder and use it for their service.

Um, if you've worked in construction, you know that a lot of the cost comes from basically just mobilizing, just getting out there and breaking ground.

So anywhere where we can kind of combine projects and get infrastructure in while the ground is already broken, can save our customers a lot of time and money, and so this is the first example of that.

So the memorandum of agreement, um, it's gonna be 3.2 million dollars total.

Washington state ferry costs is 2.7 million of that.

That includes the estimated costs for the service upgrade with a 20% contingency to cover any sort of unforeseen cost um, you know, and unforeseen conditions, cost escalation, those types of things.

Um, and then it's also the actual cost to extend the feeder through that previous project that we had with the port.

So City Light paid the port for that work, and now with this memorandum of agreement, Washington State Ferries will reimburse us for that work.

Um, and then it also includes for city city Seattle City Light uh cost share, it would be a not to exceed amount of $500,000.

This is for um potential betterments that are identified during design and construction betterments meeting additional infrastructure that we want to include in the construction while while we're there while the ground has been broken, basically.

Um, and that would be anything that doesn't have to do with uh Washington State Ferry service project.

Basically, would be anything for City Light or for another customer, um and that will be five years.

The reason why the MOA is five years is it's meant to carry us through construction, design and construction.

Um it's really focused on the roles and responsibilities of design and construction.

So then this the ordinance itself is that memorandum of agreement, that five-year MOA, and then um also um the uh we plan to negotiate and execute a 30-year operations agreement in the future.

Um the reason why we need to do that is because this is a non-standard service.

You know, City Lights meter is going to be behind a Washington State Ferries owned um submarine cables, and so that's not typical for us.

So we'll need to have the operations agreement for maintenance ongoing access, things of those that nature.

Thank you, Lizzie.

So, with that, I'm gonna open the floor to my colleagues to see if anyone has any questions regarding the Washington State Ferries MOA for Coleman Dock Terminal Electrification Ordinance.

Sure.

Sure.

Chair?

Thank you.

Just following along for many years on this project.

If you could speak a little bit to how the substation that you're utilizing, what it's been used for in the past, I guess the spoiler alert here is I believe it was used to support the Bertha tunnel boring machine.

And as that project wound down maybe a decade ago, less than that, we started transitioning maybe a decade ago to looking towards this use.

Can you give us a little bit of history on how all of those different infrastructure projects are playing into each other?

Yeah, absolutely.

The Board Tunnel Machine for the Alaskan Way Viaduct program, SR99, we functionally referred to it with the Bloss Dot project, had its own temporary substation that helped power the machine.

So we're able to utilize the infrastructure that was put in place to Lizzie's point, which helps with the cost of even standing up this project to connect submarine cable.

So it gets into reliability and sustainability, keeping track of the projects we're doing and being good stewards of the funds that we have to produce those projects, working in partnership.

That's great.

So we are able to utilize past infrastructure for past mega projects for this new one.

Absolutely, you're absolutely correct.

And can you remind me we are doing the deep energizing of the batteries over in Bremerton and just fast charging here?

Can you help me understand how this how the whole program works?

Are we just doing fast charging on our side or how's that all working?

I think my understanding of it.

But yeah, it the charging on both sides is going to have to both be fast charging essentially because of both the side of the battery and the ferry schedule.

You know, they need to be able to plug in, get a charge, and keep moving.

Um and so they will be the basically fast charging large-size chargers on both sides.

Yeah, council member uh to answer your question.

Um in our early uh coordination with Washington State Ferries, they intend to maintain the same frequency of service or planned frequency of service with their ferries docking, and within uh roughly 25 minutes or so disembarking from there, so within that 25-minute period ramping up, charging their onboard vessel batteries, ramping down and then disembarking.

So, and that's gonna be both uh unless something has changed, um, both at uh Bremerton and um uh on the other side from uh Coleman dock, so Bremerton and Bainbridge uh terminals.

Fantastic.

Well, I appreciate all of your work.

You know, I know that uh in Norway we have all electric ferries and they move a lot faster.

There's smaller boats that come more frequently, and their fast charging equipment is amazing.

I know that you're working with many of the same partners who do the battery technology, the energy storage Corvus in particular is a Bergen company, it's a Norwegian company that is producing the energy storage solutions for our Washington State Ferries.

I'm just very excited about all of this.

So uh and to answer your question, yes, the diesel engines do reduce the noise impacts on all marine life, including whales, but what it doesn't take care of is the prop wash that still causes noise issues for marine wildlife.

If you don't know, now we know.

Over to you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss, go Norway.

All right.

Um my vice chair, Councilmember Kettle.

Yes, thank you, Chair.

Did you say go England?

No, I did not I did not say that because I don't think that's really a sport, but what do I know?

Uh thank you, Chair.

And um to to bounce off um what Councilmember Strauss said, you know, the Norway piece, you know, engaging on the maritime piece is really important.

We've been doing it with Bergen, Norway, um, and uh March.

I had a visit to Ireland with Galway, Dublin, and Vengal in terms of their maritime pieces, and and then obviously what we're doing here.

Um, really interesting, and and Chair and I missed last meeting's uh presentation because I was in DC with the Port of Seattle's uh uh commission president and CEO in a joint Port of Seattle City of Seattle visit because of what um meeting with the congressional delegation and others regarding what the federal government is investing uh into the maritime space around the country, and the point was to really highlight the Pacific Northwest and particularly Puget Sound and um in terms of our maritime architecture infrastructure capacity and one of the things that you know came up was like for the cruise lines you know having the electrified you know uh slips for them the piers uh you know having that hookup so then doing this for Washington State Ferries is just another example where we're investing in our maritime space and showing that the Pacific Northwest Puget Sound generally is uh you know very strong and when you throw in the different pieces in terms of uh dry docks I mean cross the board the you know the technology pieces but um clearly you know Seattle City light um is really important partner in this process so I really appreciate the the um the presentation and by the way if we continue to do this work ferries in the future will be produced here in Puget Sound side note so I just wanted to highlight that piece uh you know in terms of building this capacity and building you know what we have here in the Puget Sound region and I echo the point on sustainability the environmental pieces uh that shows that we're being responsible stewards uh for the waters my question is uh you know in terms of the bigger picture you know the you know the challenges of meeting this requirement and tied to that by the way not to go into another area but my understanding for like large customers was you know City Light was selling in blocks of six megawatts you know six twelve eighteen twenty four um this is these are two fifteen each is can you explain that and how in terms of like standard practice for large customers like what City Light does and is this different because of the uniqueness of the maritime cables and the like I think um well probably I have to get back to you with that answer the the folks that kind of handle those contracts and how we um do the power and not sitting right here right now okay but I noticed that you know the the land landward you know the hookups you know so the 1515 I guess if you go to you know 30 that is a multiple of six so maybe that's your answer I don't know.

And yes that kind of ties into the question of data centers.

But it'd be really interesting to understand that and how we develop it over time and and to meet um these these elements so if there's anything further on that anybody else in terms of that now I think that the six megawatt comes from our network system versus our our um loop radial system and my understanding is that with the network system we're a little more um constrained on the size of services for our customers uh this is gonna be fed with from our south substation and so it's it's our loop radial system and so it's a different system but I'm not an engineer so I can't speak to much more than that.

That sounds uh that sounds like a good answer uh for a layman uh you know my experience though is only from the U.S.

Navy so I I won't go into that but the uh that is it chair I really again I really appreciate this and I just I just love the fact that we're investing I'm right obviously there's the environmental pieces and so forth but we're investing in our technology investing in our capacity across the board maritime because it will in the turn uh produce results for us and and given that we're talking about washington state ferries to develop the the capacity so that washington state ferries are built in Washington state so thank you chair thank you commander kettle council thank you madam chair I'll be brief first off just want to thank uh city light team for being here today uh starting first with interim gm and CEO Santov really appreciate you and the entire team uh for carving out the time, love this presentation uh we know that transportation, the transportation sector more broadly accounts for roughly 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and total climate pollution here in Washington state.

And that's why we have a very focused and intentional uh you know, plan to uh and strategy to better address those challenges, and this is part of that right here.

And is the council chair that oversees transportation in our transportation policy in our city?

I'm really really excited about this effort to help electrify our ferry terminal or one key ferry terminal in our city, and excited what this means for the environment, uh transit, the investments in our port, our broader economy, so many this unlocks so many terrific things.

So excited to be able to support it today.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Councilman Rosaka.

Okay, do I see any other hands?

I do not.

Okay, listen up, folks.

First of all, take back the soccer comment because I know I'm gonna get hate mail.

It's a wonderful sport.

What team are we cheering for England?

England.

Norway one.

So we're all we're all happy now.

All right.

So um, since we are done with questions, I'm going to move the committee recommend passage of council bill one, two, one-two-two-eight.

Is there a second?

Second, second.

Thank you.

I had a second.

It's been moved and seconded to remember recommend passage of the bill.

Uh will the clerk please call roll on the recommendation of passage of the bill.

Councilmember Strauss.

All right, Councilmember Saka.

I'm Vice Chair Kettle.

I Chair Warz.

Hi.

Chair, there are four votes in favor and zero opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries council bill one two one two two eight will be sent to the June 23rd full city council meeting.

All right.

We're gonna get to the fun part here.

We're gonna go through items three and six.

Mr.

Clerk, will you please I read items three to six into the record?

Items three through six, appointments zero three, five two nine through zero three five three two as members of the board of parks and recreation commissioners for a term to three years from council confirmation.

Appointments of H.

Bradley Kahn, commission seat, Philip Mang for District 7, Rebecca Roche for District 1, and James Williams for District 6.

There'll be a briefing discussion and vote.

Great, thank you.

So um we have in front of us, and who's who's coming up?

Oh, there we go at the table.

Thank you.

And um let me just say a few words before you I give you an opportunity to move right on in here.

Um, is it just gonna be you, Michelle?

Or director, internal director Finnegan.

Yes, my understanding is uh most of our nominees are online if you would like to speak to them.

One is on vacation, but at the table is just me.

I don't see them now.

Okay.

Currently, there's no one remote unless they might be just watching on Seattle Channel.

They may just be watching.

Okay, so um what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna let you um I'm used to calling you Michelle.

Can I just call you Michelle?

Yes, please.

Okay.

Michelle, um, I'm gonna let you do your presentation.

I'm gonna make a few comments and then I'm gonna open it up to my colleagues.

So you want to you can go ahead.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um I just wanted to give some context to our board of park and recreation commissioners.

It is a 15-member community advisory board.

The composition is made up of eight members appointed by the mayor, confirmed by the city council, which includes eight at-large members and three members from city boards and commissions, and one member specific to the get engaged program.

The remaining seven members live in each of the Seattle district city council districts and are appointed by the city council, except for the get engaged position park board members may serve up to two three-year terms in their position per our operating protocols.

We work to commit uh, we work to recruit a diverse and representative group of board members who lived and professional experiences reflect communities we serve.

We work with the city's boards and commission staff to identify candidates and manage the application process.

This intentional approach strengthens our SPR decision making, deepens community trust, and ensures that a broad range of perspectives are informing our work.

As excited as such, we are excited about the slate of candidates before you today to fill the current vacancies on the board.

We believe their uh their backgrounds are putting us in a good position and will benefit the board overall and Seattle Parks and Recreation and the communities we serve.

Great.

Do you want me to talk about each of them in one?

I would if you if you wouldn't mind, and I have some brief comments on all four and the packets that we received, but I wanted to give you the opportunity to.

Okay.

So our first candidate is Philip Meng, and Philip actually began with the board uh through the get engaged process, and he has continued in the boards and commissions position, having previously served on the city's community technology advisory board.

He's been a dedicated and active member and has um served on the performance oversight committee or subcommittee.

Um we regularly benefit from his participation and uh his continuous uh advocacy for data-informed decision making.

We look forward to being able to continue to work with him in a district seven position.

Brad Kahn is the next nominee.

He leads communication strategy professionally with a focus on forestry and climate advocacy.

He's also served more than 15 years on nonprofit boards, including the Forest Stewardship Council, the Parks Foundation, Green Seattle Partnership, and David and Lucille Packard for foundation.

This coupled with his deeply ingrained sense of social justice and compassion and his long history of involvement with various aspects of the park system, make him a wonderful candidate to the board, and we are excited to nominate him for the open boards and commissions position.

James Williams is a former army captain.

He earned a bronze star for his combat service and was consistently recognized by commanders for his leadership.

He's the father of two young children and regularly spends time at Discovery Park.

He values the role SPR programs and outdoors opportunities in Seattle and wanting to make accessible affordable ways for residents to connect and build relationships.

With this appointment, he would fill the open district six position.

Rebecca Roush has spent over 15 years advancing climate mitigation, climate adaptation, conservation, renewable energy, and environmental justice across NGOs, federal agencies, and philanthropic partnerships.

She's worked for the USDA Forest Service, Amazon, Aspen Global Change Institute, and works as a social scientist at the DOI Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

She has expertise in strategy development, program design, monitoring and evaluation, as well as organizational development.

She lives in the Hiawatha neighborhood with her family and her two young children attend Lafayette Elementary School.

With this appointment, she would serve in the district one position.

Thank you.

I'm going to make a few comments and I'm going to open the floor to my to my colleagues.

First, we had an opportunity to read to look at each appointment packet.

And I understand that Mr.

Kahn Bradley Kahn was a mayoral appointment, and that Philip Mang representing D7 was a council appointment.

Rebecca Rash out of D1 is a council appointment appointee.

And Mr.

James Williams out of D6 is also a city council appointee.

So we have three city appointees from myself and the committee and working with parks, and then one from the mayoral.

So we had a chance to go through the appointment packets, and I just want to share that kind of what you've already said, but I just the notes that I went through is the experience with parks and recreation, climate advocacy, forestry, the get engaged program, the climate mitigation and conservation.

Of course, it's very impressive with the Department of Interior.

Is that Rebecca?

This with Interior.

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

I was looking at her her resume.

And then, of course, we have um we have um Mr.

Williams.

Is it James Williams?

Yeah, who um thank him for his service and um also representing D6, I believe.

Yep.

D6.

So I'm happy with these nominees.

Um I hope my comp I hope my colleagues are.

So with that, I'm gonna open the floor for questions from my colleagues about the four appointees that I'd like to move in one slate.

Do I have any customers?

Consider Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm very excited about the folks that you've put forward, especially stemming from my district.

Uh I do have some challenges with the process in which we've engaged in.

For those that don't know, I meet with the parks department a week before we come to committee every time so that we can hash out the questions.

It answered a lot of questions for the other legislation that we have today.

Was there a reason that we didn't discuss this last week?

Must have been an oversight, so no, there was not an intentional reason.

Okay.

The issue that I'm having is that the parks department has not afforded me enough time to be able to even have a call with my wonderful D6 residents that you're putting forward.

And while you're stating that these are council appointees, I don't think that the parks department has done, and this has been a challenge for many different departments that we've moved to district electeds, where if you are asking me to have you're asking us to work with our district appointed board members, yet the process today has not afforded me an opportunity to get engaged with them, and that's what I'm challenged by today.

And so I just have to say that the candidates that you have putting forward, I came in here expecting to vote no based on process because I'm um I don't I'm it's not I'm not in a good place with the parks department on the process today, but the quality of these candidates, I'm gonna vote yes, and that was a product of how stunning they are.

But I'm here just putting on the record that it's really important that we use the process that we've set up to avoid these unnecessary points of conflict, and my ask is that we do a better job of connecting the board commissioners who are district representatives to having a relationship with the council members that they are overlapping with because I want to make sure the commissioners have as much knowledge and access to me as possible so that they can be successful because I know that the parks department has three sets of oversight: the mayor's office, the commission, and the city council, and I have been challenged when there has not been good connection between the commission and the council, and I've found a lot of really great benefit when there has been that connection.

So I'm putting on the record today, I'm challenged by the process in which we've engaged in, and the quality of the candidates have moved me from a no to a yes just in about 15 minutes.

So thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Councilmember Saka.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I do want to echo the sentiment of Councilmember Strauss.

I my office wasn't engaged in um, you know, that there's a purported D1 nominee.

Uh and purportedly by city council in my office wasn't engaged in this um whole process.

So just a call to action and and stronger collaboration and and request for you know stronger collaboration up front.

Uh and that said, and this isn't about any one person or individual, um, but we do live in a district-based system, and we and you know, every time you and I think uh regularly, superintendent.

You know, I care deeply about the needs um and in projects and programs and and district one.

Uh so that said, really encourage a um you know, a better, more introspective look at how we approach these kind of on a going forward basis from a process standpoint.

But I think the slate overall is very well qualified.

Uh and so I'm I'm gonna be supporting the slate.

Thought about abstaining, but I'm gonna support this the slate and just asking for tighter coordination on a going forward basis.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Osaka.

Councilmember Kettle.

Uh thank you, Chair.

Ms.

Finnegan, thank you for being here.

Um I've reviewed the you know the resumes, the the packages myself, and uh I'm happy uh there's a D7 aspect to these.

I don't know, but uh um first, you know, uh Mr.

Williams with his uh Army service and then coming in, and then also with uh um Dr.

Raush.

Roche and you know, one of the things I wanted to highlight is um because there's this you know narrative out there related to tech and and our business community and uh you know the engagement of Amazon.

Um, you know, I had Amazon in my office talking about their energy person, AWS's energy person, so like number one person to follow up on our city light conversation, which I really appreciate in addition to their support.

But I really uh I've done volunteer efforts at Amazon and I really impressed with the workforce at Amazon, and they're willing to and volunteer and engage, and I'm I'm counting them all as D7 uh since Amazon's headquartered in my district.

Uh so I really appreciate um and knowing Amazon the way I do what it takes to get to these different positions, and so um uh you know strong set, and so I appreciate uh, you know, them coming forward to the uh council.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

So if I can just respond, um I want to note for the record that we did put out these packets on Friday, uh June 12th.

And as far as the process and procedure, I want to take some responsibility here since I was the one that looked at and uh for three of them and making sure that we had district representation as someone who has fought for and was the first elected class of district representation.

I've always fought for district parity, district representation, and I'm actually the council member that had these forms changed so they would list the district that these folks come from because what we learned is throughout not just you but every committee, every commission.

They never would move to a district system, and even after that, they would never list what district they came from.

So we were missing big chunks of the city, and so I thought, well, you know, if we're gonna work with the city departments and we're gonna do appointments to commissions or committees, then we have to start listing what district they come from.

So we do have that parity.

And we do the same thing in budget as well.

We do it with every commission, like you know, sometimes we shift things around.

Sometimes we're like, okay, we can understand why that's in the south end, or we can understand why you want more folks up on the north end, or why we need more people out of D6 or more people out of D1, as Councilman Rosaka was saying for West Seattle.

So with that, I would take some responsibility because um I was the one that was happy with these appointment with these recommendations, so thank you for that.

So that being said, um I want to go ahead and move forward.

Are we good, guys?

Okay.

With that, uh, I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointments three to six listed on the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointments.

Are there any other further comments?

Not seeing anyone, okay.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Strauss.

I council member Saka.

Aye.

Vice Chair Kettle.

Aye, Chair Warz.

Aye.

Chair, there are four votes in favor.

Great.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that council confirm the appointments be sent to the June 23rd full council meeting.

All right.

Congratulations to those folks that got appointed, and thank you, Michelle, for presenting.

Um let's move on to item number seven.

Mr.

Clerk, can you please read that into the record?

Agenda item seven, Council Bill 12129 and ordinance authorizing the entry into amendment six of the conservation futures interlocal cooperation agreement between King County and the City of Seattle for open space acquisition projects.

That would be a briefing discussion and vote.

So before we begin, I just want to say something here.

This thing has changed so many times for King County Conservation Futures levy program, because sometimes it's called the sometimes it's called the tax.

Sometimes it's called the levy.

Three, okay.

So we'll just make sure we're we're clear on all the acronyms here.

Um with that, I'm gonna let you go ahead and introduce your team, and then we can move through your uh let's see what you got here.

Eight-page PowerPoint.

Thank you.

I have to take the tutorial.

Thank you, Chair Juarez.

I am still Michelle Finnegan, interim Superintendent, Seattle Parks and Recreation, joined by the Oh Lee Sword uh property management interagency advisor.

And Tracy Rass of council Central staff.

So we're here today to present two pieces of legislation related to our acquisition program.

I'd like to provide a little bit of background and then we'll turn the presentation over to Lise to walk you through this particular legislation.

As you know, Seattle Parks and Recreation has a long history of acquiring land and property for parks, open space, and recreational facilities through historic programs like the 1968 Forward Thrust Bond Initiative and the City's 2008 parks levy, as well as through this funding source that we're talking about today, the King County Conservation Conservation Futures Levy Program, strangely known as CFT, because of this conservation futures tax.

So we will probably be using CFT as our acronym today.

I know.

All three of them.

I got it.

Okay.

So the conservation futures levy is a countywide property tax starting in 1989 and is used to match city funding for acquisitions of parks and open space.

One of the priorities for current CFT program funding is open space and underserved communities, and therefore they have a match waiver process to encourage such acquisitions.

The SPR team has been successful in leveraging these funds to address gaps identified in our parks and open space plan for high-density low-income communities experiencing equity and health issues.

There's smaller efforts with the King County foreclosure program.

They'll have an ordinance coming in in a few months for you all to consider from that.

So this is one of many ways that we acquire or recommend to you to acquire land.

So with all that, I will turn it over to Lise to share details of our current partnership with King County and the projects that we are that they have recently approved.

Hey Lise, did you present on this back in 2022?

It's an annual process.

But I'm seeing a lot of love for D1 and D2 here, so that's nice.

So this legislation authorizes the mayor to amend an existing interlocal agreement between King County and City of Seattle for open space acquisition fund projects funded by the conservation futures levy authorizes the acceptance of up to $7,248,000 from the King County Conservation Futures Levy, or we affectionately call it CFT, for the purchase of open spaces in Seattle.

So the rest of this slideshow will address purpose and goals background on CFT funding and the amendment funding summary and uh show map of proposed project locations.

So uh our goal here is to leverage funding, precious funding to support park acquisitions, and this amendment is broken down into two components.

Um existing projects and new projects.

And in this particular amendment, we were successful in getting reallocations towards north uh properties in North Beacon Hill, Westwood Highland Park, residential urban village, and Longfillow Creek that were uh have have already been purchased, and the remainder of the amendment addresses acceptance of close to seven million dollars uh for potential acquisitions uh in uh Belltown, Delridge, uh Native Forest and Longfellow Um Lake Ridge Park Edition, excuse me.

Uh a little bit of background for new council members, um, the conservation futures levies a countywide property tax that was enabled by a state statute to protect forest farms, passive outdoor recreation areas and open space.

Um, as such, the funding restricts certain park uses to properties acquired with this money.

Uh no active recreation, such as offly shares and sports fields or courts and impervious surfaces limited in park development to 15% of the entire site.

Since 1989, conservation futures has leveraged our acquisition programs by over 117 million dollars, 200 plus acquisitions, which have added approximately 151 acres to the system.

And a little more background, this gets into a little more specificity.

So back in 1920, uh the council approved the latest version of the interlocal agreement.

It was signed by county and city in 19 in 2022, and uh in subsequent years for subsequent rounds of funding, an amendment is approved by council for amendments to this interlocal agreement.

So we're up to amendment six now.

That's what I figured.

I've been here too long.

Uh so in this particular amendment, as I said, uh, there's two segments, reallocation to prior acquisitions and new projects.

There are some categories I'd like to define uh site stabilization cost is a new category that the county's funding, which includes uh demolition signage and fencing.

It sort of helps the jurisdiction sort of set up the property after immediately after acquisition.

And uh the ACQ in this table just reflects uh added increased costs that went above budget that the county can actually cover.

Uh could be a higher appraisal than expected, it could be added administration costs, closing costs were higher than expected, etc.

And the county has the ability to fund those if requested.

So those are those two categories.

So in this particular case, Longfellow Creek, um, we had a couple of demolitions there.

Uh so the county helped with some funding.

Um, our newest uh neighborhood park site, North Beacon Hill, uh, Mount Baker Urban Village at 17th and Walker is getting funds both to uh complete or to be reimbursed for acquisition costs and to help with the pending demolition.

And Westwood Highland Park also is receiving $50,000 for uh unanticipated acquisition costs, and um we'll be in actually uh on that one, we'll be in a position to go in again for some site stabilization costs to help with that site.

Uh the new acquisitions or potential acquisitions in Belltown Lakeridge Park and uh Delridge Native Forest in West Seattle.

So these are kind of starter amounts for these projects.

Uh Delridge Native Forest is a little further along in acquisition, so the amount is higher.

And uh once these projects are created within the system, we'll proceed with the acquisitions, come back to you for acquisition authorization if they aren't included in our existing green space authorization, and close them out eventually, and start the whole process all over again.

Thank you.

Um, thank you for putting the council districts in there too.

Yes, because last time we were handwriting them in there, so thank you.

And this is just a visual uh so we have the council.

My favorite slide.

I had it printed in color.

I should have used yellow around the parcels.

They're a little bit hard to see in red, but uh the left-hand side of the slide shows the council districts, the blue square-like things uh represent the out where the allocations are going where we've already purchased property, and the red stars are pending acquisitions or potential acquisitions.

Uh so the top line there uh shows the areas of the 2025 reallocations.

Uh so that shows Longfellow Creek there, a couple of houses.

Uh we're working with SPU on on those acquisitions.

Uh North Beacon Hill is our most recent neighborhood park acquisition, and then Westwood Highland Park is also very recent.

The lower row shows potential acquisitions in Belltown in the area we that is being referred to as the portal, um Lakeridge Park Edition, south end of the park to create trail access and uh the Delridge Native Forest, which we'll speak about in more detail and then when we discuss the next ordinance.

Okay, so that concludes the slideshow.

Thank you, Lise.

I know you're excited.

Your questions are welcome.

There will be in a minute.

So I just want you to know that we have and everyone has received um not just your PowerPoint, but also the um the actual amendment to the conservation futures interlocal cooperation agreement between King County and the city of Seattle for open space acquisition projects.

So uh we went through that, it's like five pages long, it's pretty straightforward.

Um I know that we're really concentrating in those particular neighborhoods because they were the ones that got well they're lacking a lot of green space more than they are.

Probably up north.

Is that fair?

That's a probably fair statement, correct?

They're gap areas and they're uh, for the match waiver, so requires less city funds to a right.

We're always happy to have money from the county.

Okay.

So with that, I'm gonna open up the floor to my my colleagues, and I see that council member Kettle has his hand up.

Yes, he's right next to me.

He's on the computer too.

Yes, thank you, Chair, and thank you everyone for being here.

I just wanted to uh foot stomp the importance of the Belltown Bellwether parcel.

Uh that's key in terms of our development of what I'm where we're calling basically portal park at this moment.

Uh at some point I'm sure we'll have a a different name.

Um, but this is really important in addition to the work that we're doing with City Light and SDA to really firm up this piece because bellwether, uh bellwether, bell town uh has basically no green space uh itself, and so this is really important to the community.

Uh it's in you know, uh it's just a fantastic location.

It's really a part of the east-west connection too between the uh waterfront and then heading in towards the Mohai uh Seattle Center and the like.

So uh thank you for having it here.

Um definitely support this.

In fact, I'm encouraging it, foot stomping it, all the above uh to make the sound because it is very important to the overall project.

So thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Kettle.

Anything else for colleagues?

Okay, looks good.

And again, thank you for the colored map.

I like the stars, I like how you put the pictures up there and listed the districts.

So it's I I'm a visual leader or learner, so I kind of if I can see it, then it makes more sense to me.

And I I understand now that yeah, I remember this from 2021 and 2022, so anyway.

All right, I'm not seeing any questions or hands up from my colleagues, so I'm gonna go ahead and move that the committee recommend passage of council bill one two one two two nine.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

Any other further comments?

Not seeing any.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Strauss.

All right.

Council Member Saka.

Aye, Vice Chair Kettle.

Aye, Chair Warris.

Hi.

Chair, there are four votes in favor.

Thank you.

The motion carries.

Council Bill 12129 will be sent to the full city council meeting on July or June 23rd.

Alright.

Let's move on to item number eight.

Will the clerk please read item eight into the record?

Agenda item eight.

Council Bill 121230, an ordinance establishing blanket authority for SPR to acquire parcels of Delridge native forest, a fair market value.

There'll be briefing discussion and vote.

So this is exciting.

This is your Delridge one.

You have your light, you have your PowerPoint up.

Oh, we got a phone a friend.

Well, I print things because I believe in paper.

Council President.

Chair?

Yes.

I keep calling it Council President.

I can't keep it.

I can't get it out of my mouth.

I'll just take this moment to say for the last bill in this bill, compliments to the parks department for meeting with me last week to brief me because I had some really serious questions that I went oh yeah, I went pretty far off script.

And uh Tracy Ratzliff and the team used that time between our pre-meeting and today to answer my question.

So I have nothing further to say, and I'll be voting yes.

Thank you.

Well, I just want to say that I'm really excited about this because this is like maybe I can count on one hand where we actually have a city department.

Well, actually, shouldn't say that.

We rephrase that.

Where we had tribal consultation with the Muklechute Nation.

And that was exciting to see.

So I'm gonna let you go ahead with your presentation.

I see you got the same folks here.

Lise looks still excited to move forward at least.

Go ahead.

And I realize I didn't blow up my text.

I'm gonna use my glasses here.

So this is our second piece of legislation related to our acquisition program.

As you heard in our last presentation, the King County Conservation Conservation Futures Levy awarded the king the city a grant for the purchase of properties in the Delridge Native Forest, which is part of the Longfellow Creek watershed and has a match waiver of uh eligibility in the King County CFT uh criteria.

We are making progress and negotiating with the current owners of these parcels, but rather than bringing you legislation authorizing these specific purchases, we are asking for blanket authority to acquire up to four acres, these properties and others that may become available in this green space known as the Delridge Native Forest.

We'd also we'd like to acknowledge the contributions of our partners involved in this green space restoration, including Muckle Chute Tribe, Del Ridge Native Development Association, and the Washington Native Plant Society, as well as SDOT, who really kicked off this um restoration with a grant to the federal government, and our Green Seattle partnership has leaned in as we currently have property adjacent.

So to date the Delridge Native Forest Garden Restoration Project has resulted in approximately three and a half acres of weed control, debris removal, the planting of set 370 new trees, and 423 native shrubs.

A tree walk event was held in May to introduce the broader community to the project.

The event was organized by the Del Ridge Native Development Association, and Warren King George of the Muckle Shoot Indian Tribe was attending with also, as I mentioned, representation from our GSP partnership.

Before turning this over to Lise, I would like to note that there could be some could be some nexus between our acquisition goals here and sound transit.

We are flagging this here to be clear and transparent.

However, any such transaction would be cut would not be covered by this blanket authority.

We would return to council if we there was a proposal to use any of these properties as replacement property according to Sound Transit.

And we would show all of our work.

Yes.

So with that, thank you.

Okay, this legislation authorizes, would authorize the superintendent parks and recreation to identify and negotiate a choir row property in the Del Ridge neighborhood of West Seattle to preserve the Delridge Native Forest.

Establish blanket authority for future acquisitions in the Delridge Native Forest within a series of geographic boundaries, and authorize the execution of purchase and sale agreements, escrow instruments related documents for acquisitions.

The remainder of the slideshow will discuss purpose and goals, history and background of the green space authorization acquisition authority, Delridge Native Forest Project, and proposed uh have a map of the proposed blanket purchase authority area.

Uh, this is just this is just for the four acres, correct?

I didn't catch it.

This is just for the four acres.

This is just for the four acres.

Okay, I just want to don't want everyone thinking we have the sweeping mandate that you can go out and just four acres.

Okay.

Thank you.

The map will picture's worth a thousand words.

I don't know.

So yes, it we're seeking authority for blanket acquisition for to acquire up to four acres within the limited boundaries of the Delridge Native Forest.

Just so you know, I've spoken to all property owners involved, and they are all willing sellers, provided the price and the terms are right.

So we've we've done that.

Our goal here is to preserve and expand the existing Delridge native forest to green space in West Seattle, surrounded by increasing property development and support rough reforestation efforts initiated by Department of Transportation with its various partnerships, to both remove non-native plantings and replace with native plantings.

And our current authority for park district funds comes from 2018 ordinance 125644, which authorizes us to acquire green spaces within those identified in a 1993 resolution.

And Delridge Native Forest is not included in that 1993 ordinance, which is why we're here before you today.

Oh, that's why.

Did not know that.

So the benefits of having this green space authority, which we do not take lightly, supports filling privately owned parcels within existing green spaces, addresses development pressures of those parcels, and it allows us to manage the green space as a unit plan for restoration projects and permanently preserves the green space in perpetuity.

So this particular legislation would authorize acquisitions next to the areas that have already been restored by the Delridge Native Forest Garden Project.

I'm sorry, there's so many names floating around here.

Um this green space is included in the Longfellow Creek watershed, which happens to be across the street, across Delridge, the Longfellow Creek itself.

So it's kind of all connected, even though there's a the interruption of Del or Joy Southwest.

And it's been a we've been able to expand collaborative stewardship with the regional tribes.

There's a little footnote here.

Michelle's already talked about it, about potential nexus for Sound Transit Replacement Property, but we'll come back to you separately for that.

Just a little description of the project.

Again, this was uh initiated by SDOT to restore four acres that over which SDOT has jurisdiction in this forest in cooperation with the Green Seattle Partnership Muckle Chute Tribe and Community Groups, including Delridge Neighborhood Development Association.

I heard that one of their representatives spoke at the two-minute public comment period right before this meeting.

Uh you'll see on the map connects existing public publicly owned property by allowing us to acquire the intervening private property to protect this the entire swath of the green belt.

And if we can do that, SDOT will attempt to expand the scope and the funding for the project that it's already started so the geographic boundaries uh south of Southwest Myrtle Street I don't know if I you can see my arrow which is at the the top so the yellow represents the area that we're for which we're seeking acquisition authority so uh Southwest Myrtle Street is at the north um the east boundary here is the 19th Avenue Southwest stairs um we're approximately north of Silver and Way Southwest at the intersection of Del Ridge and we're east of Dell Ridge so those are the the boundaries of the yellow there and you can see the S dot ownership represented by the white boxes and park zones three acres at the north end and so if we can acquire these areas in yellow we'll have a it already exists there's a contiguous eleven acres of trees but we'll be able to permanently protect eleven acres of of forest here great and uh oh the areas in red um are being actively negotiated and so the funding in the previous ordinance for the CFT interlocal amendment would allow us to continue negotiations with these owners and proceed to closing.

Thank you Lise are there any questions with that I conclude I apologize are you you good?

Okay.

You done breathe now I know I could tell you so stay a breath we're we're good we're moving along it's okay do any of my colleagues have any questions before everyone's good oh god for one oh wait council member Saka sorry about that buddy thank you madam chair um so thank you to our presenters for for being here today the Dell Ridge native forest garden projects would support restoration efforts in partnership with SDOT the Green Seattle Partnership the federally recognized Mucklechute Indian tribe and local community groups together this effort helps create a native forest garden that provides easier access to green spaces improves the tree canopy and supports Longfellow Creeks health all worthy goals and great things we need in West Seattle in particular volunteers have removed unwanted plants like English ivy and Himalayan blackberry and replace them with trees and plants important to native and indigenous peoples um including the western red cedar and beaked hazelnut a new footpath would make it easier for everyone to enjoy the forest garden noted earlier was some of the verbal public comment I think we all receive letters of support as well from the DNDA and the muckle shoot tribe.

That said just curious about the broader community outreach and engagement process for this specific plan and proposal um who was consulted at what time uh for example was anyone from the Duwamas tribal services engaged on this effort and I note that Mr Ken Workman from uh that organization is is here in the audience and chamber today um so just curious to better understand the community outreach and engagement process for this this effort on the project itself or on the blanket authority.

This specific proposal that was that is before us okay so we did not do broader outreach on the blanket authority um on the project.

There was a event in May that I mentioned that was trying to get outreach to the broader community.

In addition, our Green Seattle partnership, it will be more involved if these if these properties are acquired within the parks and recreation system, as and they do a lot of outreach with the Duwamish and other community organizations to meet our restoration goals throughout the city.

So I think they're looking forward to building on that uh successful partnership enrolling these these acres if we could get them in our system.

Do you want to add anything else about the I have a couple notes?

Um, I asked the Green Seattle Partnership this morning, you know, specifically um how they interface with Duwamish tribal services.

So they support, i.e.

they fund in reason with funds and resources, community stewardship activities in the West Duwamish Green Belt, led by Duwamish tribal services, and they also uh Duwamish tribal services likewise supports Green Seattle Partnership Action Planning.

They have a working circle, and this is not my world, so I'm not sure what that is exactly, um, as a committee member.

So there is some interface there again on the specific Del Ridge Native Forest Garden project.

Um that grant was initiated by SDOT, and because it was federal money, um, the grant had a higher chance of being funded if it worked with a recognized tribe.

But I just want to add what Councilman Saka was saying that that didn't go unnoticed by us as well.

So I think just to clarify, for the federal grant, um, it was we needed to have a federally recognized tribe, which is no disrespect to the Duwamish people.

But my understanding was is that this doesn't exclude going forward any um um inclusion and discussion and consultation with every community, including the Duwamish folks.

That was my understanding, and that was what I understood from from central staff as well.

Absolutely.

Yeah, and we already have a good connection with the Duwamish tribe community organizations through the Green Seattle partnership, and I think they look forward as we get more acreage in this area to expand that partnership.

Right, and I think what we're trying to be careful here is that the city of Seattle isn't trying to bestow on anyone any recognition or non-recognition.

This is purely the four acres and getting the money to do to protect this, and we will continue to work with as we have with other groups, including the Duwamish folks on this piece of property.

Yes, yeah, and so sometimes it gets a little tricky there because tribes have different opinions about things, and I just don't want to go on the record as thinking one is more important than the other.

It was just for this federal grant purposes, the federal recognition, which would require um under federal law consultation, and that was required of us by law.

So go ahead, Casper Soccer.

Thank you, madam chair.

Well well put, well said, really appreciate uh the clarity from you, madam chair, and then the the team here.

So you know, because of the the federal the hook, the federal hook here needing at least initial consultation with the federally recognized tribe that doesn't preclude us, uh nor should it preclude us, and I would in fact I would strongly encourage you all to engage with all community, including members of the Duwamish Tribal Services.

Please see them, check in on your way out, say hello, you know, on a going forward basis as well.

So for for for those reasons, I'll I'll be supporting this today and looking forward to your strong robust engagement with all communities in the organization.

Oops, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Thank you, Councilman Osaka.

Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to uh first again thank you, everyone, for presenting.

Um, I also wanted to thank Mr.

Workman from uh Duwamish tribal services and the Duwamish tribe for being here.

It's really important uh for your representation and to come into chamber uh where you're where you're welcome.

Uh and I also welcome uh this um this effort for the Del Ridge native force um itself and the blanket authority piece here.

So thank you for coming.

Uh my only statementslash comment relates to and I I do appreciate you know Portal Park is like another example of an acquisition as we keep acquiring different lands, and I know there's a few others out there as well that are being contemplated or in various levels of development.

Uh you know, the long-term ability to uh maintain.

I think about Elliott Bay connections.

I love the fact that uh Linda French Gate, Ms.

French Gates, and um Ms.

Scott, you know, came in and did what they did.

That's absolutely unbelievable.

And there's like a you know an operating support system transition.

Not unlike, by the way, uh Memorial Stadium and uh the memorial wall in terms of uh one roof and that five-year transition too.

But at some point these come back to us for to you know uh operate, own and operate basically, and so we have to have that capacity.

That's my favorite word of today uh to take them on, and we have to plan for that.

So my question that's a bit of a statement, but a question at the end saying are we in a good position as a uh parks department metropolitan parks district to take on these in the longer term, medium and longer term to take on these acquisitions and maintain them?

Um and I say this partly because of my experience with the east and west green belts, which are very uh very much a challenge.

So Ms.

Vennigan.

I think in this particular case, because there already is a community coalition that wants to be in the spaces, dedicate their time and energy to restoring this land.

We feel strongly that this uh this is a this is a an area that we can bring under our existing systems, including the Green Seattle Partnership and make successful.

Um does that mean every day there won't be some issue that we have to deal with?

No, but we will work through that process.

I think it's a great point though, is our acquisition program overall, and as we think about um, what other places we're seeking acquisition to make sure that there's going to be active and um robust use and that we can develop the parcels and all of those things that that come with with acquisition.

So um, you know, we're just we're just moving to some development of our other land bank sites.

We talked about yesterday with AB Earnt.

So I think as we continue to do this, it is something that we're mindful of, and uh we're trying to have a systematic look at that with each cycle of the park district and what are the next um what land what sites have we brought in?

What do we need to do about them?

How do we learn from what we've what we're experiencing currently as as stewards of a park system?

So I just want to wrap us up with um I think we we can't let's not you know see the forest through the trees here.

The the goal here is for permanent preservation and expansion.

Nobody's giving away anything, no one's giving up anything, no one's saying one group is more important than the other.

It's permanent preservation and expansion of the Del Ridge Native Forest, continue to engage with community, um, be as inclusive as possible.

Um so that's what I wanted to end with, and that is the actual text of the ordinance um that's before us, which is three pages long and is pretty clear about that.

Okay, so are we ready to go?

Looks like we're good.

All right, so with that, first one thank you guys, and let's go ahead with um, let's see.

Uh no more questions.

Okay, I move that the committee recommend passage of council bill one two one, two, three, zero.

Second, can I get a second?

Second, second.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Um, it is moved and seconded to reckon recommend passage of the bill.

Are there any further comments?

Not seeing any.

All right.

Um, clerk, will you please call the roll?

Councilmember Strauss.

Councilmember Saka.

Aye, Vice Chair Kettle.

Aye, Chair Warris.

Aye.

Chair.

There are four votes in favor.

Thank you.

The motion carries in Council Bill 121230 will be sent to the June 23rd full council meeting.

All right.

That being said, let's move on to our last two items.

And clerk, will you please read items nine and ten into the record?

Thank you, Seattle.

Parks.

Agenda items 9 and 10.

Resolution 3210 and Council Bill 121231 relating to the City Light Department.

A resolution adopting a 2027 through 2020 2032 strategic plan for City Light and endorsing the associated rate path and an ordinance establishing new retail rate schedules, establishing new retail rate schedules, conditions, uh customer class and conditions of service for data centers who electricity demand constitute a new large load, modifying customer charges for service connections, modifying customer eligibility for residential rate assistance, and augmenting the rate stabilization account mechanism.

There will be briefing.

Thank you.

So let me make a few before you go back again and introduce everybody.

See there's some new folks up here.

Um you have a 23-page high-level presentation.

And after which I'm going to ask my colleagues if they can just hold their questions to let them get through this because the committee members, you're gonna be allowed to submit written questions to our office, and the deadline for that again is June 24th.

City Light will respond with a memo on June 30th, and an in-depth presentation will be on July 1st, where committee members will be able to ask follow-up questions, then we will have a third meeting about the rates ordinance on July 15th, and then we will have a vote then.

So this is three meetings to lead up to the vote on July 15th.

You'll have an opportunity, of course, to submit written questions and let Seattle City Light respond, not just to the strategic plan, but to the retail rate ordinance.

And so we are not voting on this today.

We are going to just hear your presentation.

And again, um, afterwards, I'm guessing my colleagues are gonna have a lot of questions.

So with that, I'll let you do your um introductions and walk us through your PowerPoint.

All right, thank you.

Rob Santov, internal manager and CEO of Seattle City Light.

Angela Bertrand, manager of strategic planning and organizational performance, Kirsty Granger, City Light Chief Financial Officer.

Leo Lamb City Light Review Panel Chair.

Um Eric McConaughey of the council central staff.

Okay.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for being here today, uh, Chair Warez and committee members.

Uh thank you for the opportunity to present Seattle City Light's 2027-2032 strategic plan and accompanying rate ordinance.

Today we'll provide a brief overview of the plan's goals, the investment priority it supports, and the customer electric utility rates necessary to keep the utility safe, reliable, affordable, and prepared for the future.

I also want to welcome Leo Lamb, the chair of City Light's uh review panel, who will be sharing an important perspective of the review panel who worked hand in hand with the utility over the past two years and developed a 2027 to 2032 strategic rate plan or strategic plan and rate ordinance.

The six-year plan reflects extensive outreach, operational analysis, and financial planning.

It outlines the utilities roadmap for modernizing infrastructure, strengthening system resilience, improving the customer experience, and supporting the city lights clean energy and electrification objectives.

In addition to the collaboration with the review panel, this plan reflects feedback from thousands of customers, community members, and employee stakeholders.

Their input shaped their priorities and identified where the utility can improve safety, reliability, equity, and operational transparency.

The rate ordinance supports the strategic plan by providing stable, predictable resources necessary to deliver these investments.

The proposal balances affordability with essential system upkeep and ensures the utility remains financially healthy while maintaining service expectations.

We understand the rate increases are difficult for our customers, and we remain committed to reducing cost pressures wherever possible and strengthening assistance programs for income eligible customers.

We look forward to working collaboratively with the council as you review the strategic plan and the rate ordinance.

Today's presentation is intended to support your deliberation and provide clarity to the utility on the utilities long-term direction and resource needs.

I will now hand it off to Angela Burtrand, Strategic Planning and Performance Manager, Kirsty Granger, Chief Financial Officer, and Leo Lamb, Review Panel Chair.

Thank you, Rob, and thank you, committee members.

I am excited to share our proposed 2027-2032 strategic plan, the result of more than two years of work with our leadership, teams, and community.

This is our eighth plan, with our first being in 2013.

On this slide, you can see the years where we have presented full plans on the top with the updates on the bottom.

Full plans include extensive outreach and work with leadership to develop while updates track progress and share any pivots.

Both plans, full and updates, include a retail rate path and are developed in partnership with the review panel.

This is a full plan.

Throughout development, we worked closely with the review panel.

They are made up of nine members representing City Light's customers and partners.

Their role is to guide and provide input on strategic planning, financial planning, and rate proposals.

They also assess our strategic plan and provide an opinion before it goes to the mayor and council for approval.

Each panel member has a specific audience they represent.

Today we are happy to have the current chair Leo Lamb to share the review panel support of the proposed 2027-2032 strategic plan and rate ordinance.

Leo?

Thank you for having me here.

The support comes after two years of monthly meeting, detailed analysis, and frank conversations with CD Lite leadership.

I'm here representing this group and will highlight observations that led to this endorsement.

CD Lite is facing significant issues and industry disruptions.

The new load forecast shows CD Light has a risk of being short on power supply.

The panel asks that new supply additions to be carefully planned and agrees that the financial and reliability risk of being short on power are way greater than the risk of having excess power.

Reliability is slipping in part due to direct buried underground cables and the cost of maintenance is increasing through inflation on key materials, including steel, copper, concrete, and wood poles.

Recognizing this necessary increase is a heavy lift for customers.

The panel recommended clearer communications about why rates are rising and when customers expect surface improvements.

We also support changes to the RSA structure and expansion of the utility discount program to better protect vulnerable households.

The proposed strategic plan and rate ordinance provide the necessary response to ensure reliable, affordable, and sustainable electricity now and in the future.

The utility is playing catch up on technology and distribution infrastructure.

This plan targets reliability through the replacement of failed assets and secures long-term cost stable resources that ensure we have the power to meet growing demand.

CD Lite has begun offering a time of use rate option for customers, which you know, which encourages the shifting of energy heavy tasks to off-peak hours to lower bills and prevent infrastructure straying.

We scrutinized these solutions carefully and asked very hard questions.

And while we would prefer a lower rate increase, we concluded that the proposed increases are necessary for the next two years.

It is also important to note that CD Light's rate increase is less than peer utilities.

Based on our many hours of conversation at the review panel meetings, we trust that this proposed strategic plan will ensure customers have improved reliability through fewer outages and shorts duration.

Stability in long-term power supply and technology supporting more efficient internal processes as well as streamlined customer processes, like the one that Councilman Councilmember Strauss discussed earlier about batteries.

While this increase is materially higher than prior plans, it ensures our infrastructure continues to meet the city's needs into the future, reducing the risk of sudden prize shocks.

On behalf of the review panel, I urge you to pass this strategic strategic plan and rate ordinance out of committee.

These pieces of legislation are essential to ensuring safe, reliable, affordable, and forward looking electric services.

Thank you.

Thank you, Leo.

Our proposed plan represents a shift rather than centering on individual initiatives.

We're organizing around the results we know we must deliver.

This outcome-focused approach keeps us driving towards what matters most while allowing flexibility to adapt as conditions change.

Each of these focus areas includes midterm outcomes and a 10-year roadmap that helps us anticipate challenges and opportunities.

The six focus areas are reliability, customer experience, power supply, sustainability, and then workforce and technology, which are woven throughout.

These both drive and support progress in every area.

As a part of the shift, we're strengthening the connection between strategic planning and our core business processes.

We're integrating organizational performance reporting to ensure accountability on strategic work through executive outcome reports and leadership goals.

We're building ongoing work planning cycles to enable clarity and alignment across years, and we're coordinating with the budget process to ensure we fund our priorities.

To build this plan, we engage with more than 2,650 people, representing a diverse cross-section of residential and business customers throughout our service area.

We also reviewed 10 recent engagement reports, including the Seattle Comprehensive Plan to incorporate previous customer input into our strategic planning processes.

We attended 17 community events reaching residents throughout our service area, including every council district.

We hosted 25 community and stakeholder conversations, including with the Indigenous Advisory Council, Northwest Energy Coalition, key customers, and our franchise cities.

We engaged with 20 language communities with the help of the Department of Neighborhoods community liaisons.

Through this engagement, we built a shared understanding of community priorities.

We discussed rising demand, changing weather patterns, aging infrastructures, and escalating costs while hearing directly from our customers about the challenges they are facing.

We also incorporated insights from our residential customer satisfaction survey, customer participation insight study into three-day online focus group.

Three themes were consistent across engagement.

First, electricity is essential.

Our customers count on us to run their lives.

Then, reliability, affordability, and environmental responsibility must be balanced.

Finally, solutions must be co-designed with those most impacted.

We also heard the importance of connecting our work to the values we share with community.

These include public health, safety in the environment, and support so everyone benefits from the region's energy transition.

As we do this work, community members want us to take a systemic approach and engage with them to co-design solutions.

As we implement our strategic plan, they asked us to expand education and awareness through culturally relevant community engagement, connect with the youth and promote green jobs, and partner with community-based organizations.

Achieving these outcomes requires working across silos and improving coordination throughout the utility.

With the strategic foundation in place, I'll hand it over to our CFO, Kirsty Granger, to discuss our financial path forward.

Thank you.

Alright, so the chart on this slide predic depicts City Light's rate path.

The blue bars represent historical rate changes, and the gold ones are future increases.

City Light's strategic plan recommends a rate increase of 9.5% for 2027 and another 9.5% in 2028.

It also projects increases in the 7 to 11% range for 2029 through 2032.

And we know that this is going to be a significant ask of our customers and want to assure you we do not make it lightly.

We have been working on this proposal for two years.

It is based on extensive analysis forecasting and planning.

And our goal here is full transparency.

The strategic plan includes an appendix that documents all the financial assumptions for this rate proposal.

It's a part of the legislation.

And we're going to walk you through drivers today.

And we anticipate that you will have questions, and you should.

This rate increase represents a significant investment in Seattle's energy future, and we want every ratepayer and every stakeholder to understand why now is the right and necessary time for this investment.

Next slide.

Carsten here.

Did I get that wrong?

The person that wrote the summary fiscal note.

Oh, Karsten.

He's our financial planning and rates manager.

He's offline today.

But I think we're planning to bring him for the questions one, so because he's the technical expert on our proposal.

I just want to break my own rule again because I got back just in time because it was page 11 and page 13 that I had flagged, and then also the UDP, but we'll get to that in a minute.

Got it.

When I went through the the all of our documents here in the summary and fiscal note, I figure there's going to be a lot of questions about that.

Thank you.

Okay, so thank you.

Alright, so this slide summarizes the five main driving factors for why a 9.5% rate increase is needed.

So first, the way that we use electricity is changing.

We've got more electric vehicles on the road every day.

This includes fleets, buses, and we're also seeing more heat pumps in home and businesses.

And so this shift to powering our vehicles with electricity, heating and cooling spaces with electricity, this goes far beyond organic economic growth.

This is a sea change.

And it's working to shrink our carbon footprint, but at the same time, it's also stretching our power supply and electric grid.

So as you heard from our IRP presentation, we anticipate that we will need more power, and we are anticipating higher cost for this power supply because CityLight needs new clean resources and transmission.

We'll be competing with other utilities for those resources, and the price tag will likely be higher than today's resources.

At the same time, the operating costs for our legacy hydropower resources are also going to grow.

We're projecting that the new operating license for the Skagit Dams and for a new Bonneville power contract will also add to our power supply costs.

When is the new MP Bonneyville power contract anticipated?

It goes into effect in sorry, when does it start?

Because we just signed it.

I think it's a fall of 2028.

You can just come back to us.

I want to make sure.

Oh, the power supply people all left.

Yeah, we can get that for you.

So third is a need to make investments in our grid to both increase capacity to meet demand and also catching up on deferred maintenance.

We are seeing that our outage numbers are starting to reflect the impacts of an aging grid.

And we know that, and you've probably heard from some of your constituents that customers in certain neighborhoods are starting to experience really bad power outages.

Last year, Andy Strong, who's City Light's officer in charge of engineering and capital infrastructure, he was here at council talking about the state of our grid and the critical need to start investing more in its upkeep.

That would be Pinehurst and Queen Anne.

Yes.

For sure.

And others.

Yeah, but I'm just that's who we hear a lot from.

So technology is another area where City Light needs to invest with growing demand and limited generation and transmission.

We need to invest in foundational technology so that we can prepare for a more dynamic and flexible energy future.

So this is shaving down peak use, investing in uh rooftop solar batteries.

These are all effective strategies for avoiding costly grid capacity expansions and you know peak market prices.

And so we're looking to a future where we want to have a grid where power flows two ways, and and this is going to require tools like Durham's, as we mentioned during the IRP presentation.

There's all of these time of use rates, all of these uh strategies for shaving peaks rely on technology.

We also want to use technology to deal with outages better, so this might look like having sensors and switches on our lines so that we can find and fix outages faster.

And if we do have an outage, we would love to be able to text a customer and say, hey, we know your power's out, and we know we here's an estimate for when you can expect it to come back on.

So this is technology that we want to invest in.

And then finally, fifth, and this is listed last, but it is a large factor.

We are seeing big impacts from inflation.

Costs are rising, and and frankly, our rates haven't kept pace.

Over the last five years, prices for electric parts and materials increased by nearly 40%.

And this reflects a super tight supply chain, tariffs, prices for raw materials like copper and wood are skyrocketing, and also we are looking to keep pace with wages.

This is a factor in recruitment.

We need to maintain competitive in recruiting, especially for the skilled trades and the people who are doing workout in the field every day.

Right?

Here's the fun part.

So that summarizes the resolution, and then moving on to the rate ordinance.

So the rate ordinance has four main components.

First, it implements in our rate schedules the 9.5% rate increase called for by the strategic plan.

And then there's also three important policy changes in this ordinance.

First, there's a new rate that would apply to data centers.

We're proposing to expand the rate stabilization account and also broaden utility discount program eligibility.

We want to start with talking a little bit about how a residential customer might see what a 9.5% rate increase would look like on their bills.

So this slide summarizes the rates as they would appear on a customer's bill for if you are in the city of Seattle.

And then there's a table summarizing bill impacts at the bottom.

So depending on consumption, a customer would expect to see their bill increase in 2027 between $6 and $14 per month.

And we recognize that we got very diverse use of electricity, so we have a table here that summarizes different impacts.

All right, moving on.

So taking a step back, this table summarizes the rate impact for all customer classes, including all of our commercial customer classes.

And the bottom line here is that not all customers will see their bill increase by exactly 9.5%.

The rate ordinance incorporates adjustments to cost of service and rate design, and these are all aimed at ensuring that customers are paying their fair share of costs.

So this table summarizes average increases by different size business and customer classes.

The general service are close to 9.5%.

The network are going to see lower than average increases, and this is due to flatter cost growth in the downtown network compared to the rest of our grid.

But want to note that the rates in the downtown network are still much higher than for other customers because the downtown network reflects a premium service.

And then finally, streetlights, and this is something that will impact the city's general fund.

Streetlight rates are expected to increase, are projected to need to increase significantly.

And this reflects steep costs in maintaining street lights.

This is both related to installing new lights in neighborhoods to support public safety, but also maintenance challenges related to copper theft and vandalism.

And we're happy to dive into any details on that at the next meeting if you have questions.

So this is a quick slide that summarizes some rate increases at neighboring utilities and comparing them to City Light.

Over the last four years, City Light rates have increased by 4.5% on average.

This is lower than many neighboring utilities and also lower than our operating costs have risen.

Also, at the same time, we are seeing other utilities, including PSE, who serves the East Side and some greater Seattle area, as well as a Vista that serves Spokane, have announced that they are proposing significant increases for their customers.

Okay, so in addition to implementing the rate increase, I said there are three rate related policy changes in this rate ordinance.

And the first is a policy that would create a new rate class that would apply to data centers that have new or expanded service of more than 10 MVA.

And so the reason for this is that after a decade or more of stable customer base and no new large loads, we are starting to receive inquiries for new and expanded loads.

We've had over a dozen inquiries since 2024, and some but not all of these are for data centers.

So given that Seattle City Light doesn't have surplus electricity or excess grid capacity, serving any new large load will be costly.

And so as businesses are making requests to add amounts of electricity equivalent to thousands of homes, this raises the question: can City Light and should we do what we can to protect residents and other businesses from the higher rates and financial risk from these new large loads, particularly data centers.

So the new rate class we're proposing would apply to any data center with newer expanded service greater than 10 MVA, and that's equivalent to about 2,000 homes.

And under this policy, the customer would pay up front for any needed grid investments up into and including a substation.

We would not serve them with City Lights Legacy Hydro or other resources.

Instead, we would procure different resources to serve them and transmission, and their rates would reflect that cost.

To contain the risk, we would require these customers to sign a contract up front where they would pay for a certain amount of capacity with steep penalties for overruns.

They would agree to curtail their use during extreme peaking conditions, and they'd be required to invest in conservation and efficiency measures.

So all of this to say the point of this policy is that if City Light is going to serve a new data center, and I'm aware that there's other discussion going on about that, then we would want to do this in a way where we are ensuring that all of our other customers are not having to pay for this.

And finally, we'd like to note that this policy is designed based on other policies already in place at other electric utilities.

So these new large load policies are becoming industry standard.

Angela, it's Angela, right?

Or is it Chris?

It's Angela.

I'm Christy.

It's okay.

Okay, I was trying to remember.

Just quickly, I know that we're gonna ask some more intense questions, but one of the things that I'm hoping will be on your PowerPoint if we update or we have some more questions is that we also tackle the issue of not having any NDAs.

Non-disclosure agreements.

That's been a big issue with the data centers and NDAs and private companies.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right, so that's the data center rate.

The next policy change is expanding the rate stabilization account or RSA.

The RSA has been around since 2010, and what it is is it's a restricted cash reserve that exists to absorb fluctuations in the net costs of our power supply.

The RSA has proven to be a really effective tool in managing this unavoidable financial risk and limiting its impact on our customers' bills.

We're proposing to expand the RSA to manage not just fluctuations in wholesale market costs, but also power purchase agreements.

So that would be like our Bonneville contract, as well as variation in retail load.

So the expanded RSA would buffer more risks, and we would also increase the size of the cash reserve.

It would go from $100 million to a hundred and fifty million, and then the ceiling would be $200 million.

The RSA has automatic rate surcharges that would trigger to replenish the cash reserve as it gets if it becomes depleted.

We just had a RSA surcharge roll off earlier this year, which was a net decrease to rates.

And under this new proposal, we would shift the thresholds for the surcharges to be 2% at $120 million and 5% at $80 million.

And another key change is that these surcharges going forward would be applied only to energy consumption rates, the per kilowatt rates.

And what this would do is it would shift some of the financial burden from smaller customers, or in other words, residents, to larger consumers, which would be like big businesses, because businesses are really the ones who are consuming the majority of our power supply.

So if we have additional costs for power supply, we want to assign that cost fairly to the high users.

Important thing we want everybody to know is that this RXA expansion will not require a special surcharge and it will not have an impact on rates.

This is something that we can do without doing that.

All right.

Finally, the third thing is that this ordinance changes the eligibility eligibility threshold for the utility discount program.

The utility discount program, a UDP, it provides a 60% discount on CityLight bills, and for customers who are SPU, there's also a discount 50% on those bills.

Seattle has one of the best utility discount programs in the country.

And changing the eligibility threshold from 70% of state median income to 60% of area median income, which is higher than the state.

We estimate that this will mean that 31,000 more families will be able to enroll in the UDP.

I just want to note for the record and thank Councilmember Strauss and Council President for moving this forward.

I understand that it was in our committee on June, their our committee on June 11th, and um it'll be in committee again on July 9th.

And I think we're gonna have a final vote on July 14th.

So yeah, that was in uh council president's uh committee that council member Strauss brought this.

So thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

So this took to close.

So CityLight is proposing to raise rates because we need to.

Our costs to serve are increasing, and critical investment is needed.

But we understand that everyone is experiencing rising costs and City Light.

We are a not-for-profit, publicly owned electric utility.

We exist to serve this community, and we want everyone to be able to afford the vital service we provide.

So this is going out to anyone who's listening to this on the internet or anywhere.

If you or someone you know is struggling with their electric bill, we are here to help.

You may qualify for one of our discount programs, as we just mentioned.

We are expanding our eligibility, so it is worth checking online if you qualify.

We also have programs to help you get caught up on your utility bills if you are behind, and we can help you also access state and federal funds.

And then for anyone, we also have a budget billing program that anyone can sign up for this.

It's it's not um income qualified.

And what this does is it takes some of the stress out of not knowing what your electric bill is going to be.

And we also have payment plans available for anyone who's behind on their bills.

All right, so it's just in conclusion.

There's these two pieces of legislation: the resolution that adopts the strategic plan and endorses the 9.5% rate increase, and then the ordinance, and this would implement the rate increase and set rate schedules for 2027 and 2028.

It establishes the new data center rate, which would be effective immediately.

It would expand the RSA and broaden eligibility for the utility discount program.

So we um welcome your questions and we look forward to coming back here in in two weeks and discussing this.

I bet you do, Christy.

Very excited about this.

Um Councilmember Kittle.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh, and thank you, uh, interim GM, Sanduffan team, including our our um essential staff support as well.

Yeah, the word that comes to mind first is uh affordability.

Yeah, and I think of affordability for our residents.

I also think of affordability for our businesses, the commercial piece, and you know, there is the civic, the government uh affordability aspect to this.

I mean, there's some for ourselves, but the decisions that we make and its impact on affordability, you know, one could be seen through this Seattle City Light, which is a government entity, Seattle Public Utilities on the waterfront.

I served on regional water quality uh regional water quality committee, and you know what's coming on that front, particularly with you know our consent decree on uh water, you know, clean water for the bay and so forth, um Puget Sound Energy, um property tax, sales tax, public safety sales tax.

Now we have transit related sales tax, um the combination of city, county, and state that don't, by the way, seem to be coordinating any of this, and all these actions have a huge cumulative effect, impact, on affordability for our residents, for the people who live here, but also for the businesses, which then really creates issues for us because that impact on businesses then could impact future revenues uh for the city.

I just wanted to highlight that because we we have to ownership, we meaning the city, the county, and the state, and I would add the federal government too.

I mean, between the administration's uh tariff policies, the war with Iran, the impact on inflation has been incredible.

Uh the impacts on you know, our revenue has been incredible in terms of the port and import-export and the like.

Uh so we should note that too.

Um, so we need to think about that.

We should ask ourselves why we don't have better coordination between the city and the county and the state.

I mean, the county did its pieces, and by the way, I usually find out about these things from reading articles in the Seattle Times, which is uh another issue.

Um, but we do need to have this leadership, combined leadership that is thoughtful about what each element of government is doing, um, but apparently does not really reflect in what's happening here.

But uh, you know, shifting to the strategic um plan and and more generally, I want to thank everybody for the work, and I appreciate by the way that what you're doing and what you're looking to do in terms of impacts.

I saw this on SPU's side through the uh regional uh committee, it is very difficult work.

Although on that, there wasn't that some best practices at the county level that we had with SPU locally.

That's another point, so best practices is key there.

But with in terms of city light, um, you know, the strategic enterprise here, I really appreciate it.

You know, we just earlier had the integrated resource planned, uh, you know, um now we have strategic plan not too long ago with Skaggie River um hydrologic project, that was huge.

Um, you know, we even had the Washington State Ferries piece here, which you know, when you think about these these numbers, 1515 that's 30 megawatts.

That's big.

Uh so and the issues that you're talking about, expansion.

Uh I'm just reading an article about um Harbor View and its issues related to electric power.

Talk about another major, you know, in terms of the the one slide that you had on page on slide, and by the way, on behalf of the chair, I like to say thank you for having your slide numbers.

Uh, um, on slide 12, you talk about electric vehicles and heat pumps.

Well, you can throw in Washington State ferries, harbor view.

I mean, it's huge, and we should have that kind of mindset too, because it's easy to go to EV and heat pumps, but it's really even broader than that.

Um, climate change obviously is is key.

Um, data centers, we talked about that.

Thank you for the work on direct buried cable.

This is something that should have been done 15 years ago.

But we didn't talk about again local government, you know, government impact, decisions made or not made, uh, is key.

And uh, and uh and then maintenance is key.

I'm I'm and redundancy and maintenance are two key, you know, elements in terms of how I look at issues, um, and they're so very important.

So I thank you for all the work that you've done into this this effort here.

And um, and then I'm I'm just looking to kind of capture it in the broader framework.

And then, and then but the onus on the government side, in terms of what we are responsible for.

What you know, what's our piece of this?

And again, when I say we city, county, state, we'll put the federal into a different category.

And so I just want to say thank you to um to everyone.

This these are challenging times.

This is a this is a time of great change.

These are all massive pieces, and so I I want to thank uh interim GM Santoff.

We've had multiple conversations.

I want to thank you for your work, and I I'm definitely support you and what you're doing here.

And I think uh you're doing a fantastic uh job.

But with that build up, yeah, I want to also add that was it the wisest decision to let go a national leader, Don Lindell leading our Seattle City light.

Who the labor was saying is the best leader in 40 years.

So I'll be blunt.

I'll ask the mayor to reverse her ill-advised decision, and clearly a very extremely poorly timed decision, giving all these things that we were just talking about, and I was stating about all that on the plate.

Oh, let's let's get rid of a nationally recognized top GM.

Poorly timed and poorly advised decision.

Save and grace.

This is a great work by interim GM and the entire team to include the you know the support, the advising elements that we have.

Uh so thank you because it's needed, and I really appreciate it.

No questions here.

I think I said enough.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle, and thank you for being so straightforward and candid.

I always appreciate about you.

So, any questions?

Councilmember.

Thank you, Council President.

Uh, Council President Meredith, Juarez, and just to say, I think Bob likes Rob because you're from Western New York.

I know that there's many other reasons to like you as well, and the strength of this team through this um unnecessary transition over the last six months demonstrates the strength of City Light, and I really appreciate you while we watch PSC, Portland, Tacoma, all raise their rates double digits over multiple years.

We have kept our rates in single digits and probably below what they should have been with, but it would not have been appropriate to raise them without the strategic plan.

I know that uh former CEO Don Lindell had a long PowerPoint presentation spanning, many committees that we were excited to dig into, and that unnecessary leadership transition is one of the things that that was a loss.

We didn't get to have that public conversation about the hangers on the trans.

Well, we did talk about the hangers on the transmission lines, but we didn't talk about energy production, consumption, storage, what our local distribution lines need.

We there were so many parts of the conversation that have been left out of the public because of the unnecessary leadership transition.

I am here to say just I'm grateful for you all.

I'm not gonna ask many more questions because I'm already late for my next meeting.

Um, I will bring up the the utility discount program and the I just am so grateful for everyone at City Light, for everyone at SPU working on this.

We would not be in this place today if there was not this intense partnership, and the importance of the utility discount program is more evident today than ever before with us going into a cycle of needing to increase rates.

We should also be looking to see what abilities we have for our owner-operated businesses.

These are our businesses with the smallest margins with usually less than 15 or 20 employees because they're not currently eligible, but I can tell you that they are the ones with all of these affordability issues stacking and compounding on them.

And so just so grateful for your work with the utility discount program because the families that need it most need it most now, because their rates are going up as well, even if they are eligible for the program.

So I've got a lot more questions for you.

We're gonna dig into a lot of this over the course of many other committee meetings, but as I'm late for my next one, I'm gonna sign off, Chair, and just appreciate everyone uh and all your hard work.

Thank you.

Thank you, man.

Thank you, Councilman.

Strausson.

Again, thank you for the UDP and all the work that you did on that.

That was real crucial and very kind.

And I'm glad you included all of us in the discussions.

Yep, couldn't have done it without you.

Oh, okay.

All right, Councilmember Saka.

Thank you, Madam Chair, want to thank the City Light team again for being here today.

Uh this is an important topic can't underscore enough the the impact of what we're being asked to ultimately approve here on people's everyday lives affordability.

Won't belabor the point on you know all the compounding effect of various sales taxes at the various levels of government compounding upon various levies and it all adds up and here we are yet again you know with another increase and at least so it's attributed at least in part because of we we kept the rate hikes artificially low in prior years and should have been a little more realistic in prior years about the true cost to maintain the levels of service that people expect and demand of a major public utility such as this and also plan thoughtfully ahead for the future um so this is a big deal and as we as we expand and increase the total cost to live in the city whether now in this case well I'll speak now in this through a significant nine and a half percent increase on bills we need to in parallel expand discount programs so again I'll echo thank you to our colleague council member Strauss and and others who have led the work to to do that but we need to greatly expand significantly expand eligibility for those programs and making sure that and provide relief to to our most vulnerable neighbors who who are unable to keep up with the rapid pace of uh of you know rising costs here so we know the the sort of justification or rationale generally speaking for why it's needed and I also want to thank um Mr Lamb here from the citizen led uh expert review panel the city light review panel chair your chair of the the organization as well so really appreciate your perspective uh so just one question so we know generally about why this is needed can you help us better understand the the cost and risk associated with declining to adopt these rates and this is really for anyone but curious especially curious to hear from our our chair of the City Light review panel as well what what if we don't do this what happens what's the risk the biggest risk that the review panel reviewed um was the lack of it's we we may run out of power and if we run out of power we get blackouts that's not going to help uh anybody with outages etc and also we are already lagging behind in maintenance and also uh infrastructure without that going forward the future is not going to be great for Seattle.

I'm an electrical engineer.

I was a faculty at UW in electrical engineering.

And I was, when I joined the review panel, I was actually surprised that Seattle C the light doesn't have a DERM system uh derms are absolutely required for a utility of the future.

Without doing that, we cannot have any distributed power plans.

We cannot have virtual power plans called VPPs.

We cannot have BAS, battery electric storage systems without any of those, there is no future for this utility to supply reliable affordable electricity to the customers here.

Thank you.

City Light.

Leo did a great job.

He summarized it very well.

I mean we don't want to be catastrophic, but we we are talking about keeping the lights on.

And we we need the resources of tomorrow and as Leo rightly put part of the resources are are not out there.

They're here in in Seattle this means that working with our customers to shave those peaks if they are interested in it as Councilmember Strauss said, you know, installing batteries or rooftop solar and to do all that we need the technology to manage that.

So it's a it's an investment we make now for the future.

Got it.

Thank you.

No further questions manager.

I'm gonna round us out and pull up I'm just quick just very quickly first let me do all the thank yous because if I don't do all the thank yous I'm just gonna call you thank you Rob.

I'm just gonna call you by your first names thank you Rob.

Thank you Angela thank you Christy thank you Leo and I think you even though I have a uh favor to ask of you and I thank you Eric Eric's probably tired of me at this point.

You read your letter of support um into the record and I was hoping that you could provide that letter to all the council members not just not just the committee and if there's any other supporting documents of the position from from you folks I I did not I wasn't completely aware of your background though I knew that you came highly obviously know what you're doing and the other folks on the panel is or the the group as well on the uh city light review panel and I think one of the things that I appreciate about being on this committee and now well I've shared it for many years and been on it is that we always have an incredible level of expertise of scientists and electrical engineers and all those folks that are way smarter than me that break it down for us and so when I was going through again I'll probably do it again the the 39 page ordinance you know you're talking to someone who has to go back and remember what a megawatt is an MWA is and all that stuff.

I'm a lawyer so I'm more obsessed with words and concepts but just for the record because I think it's so important even though you you did talk about this in your PowerPoint and we've heard it more than once but I I just cannot stress more that the opening paragraph of the ordinance talks about this is relating to Seattle City Light establishing and these are the words that I circled for the five purposes a new retail rate schedules establishing a new customer class and conditions of service for data centers whose electricity demand constitutes a new large load to do modify customer charges for service connections and to modifying customer eligibility for residential rate assistance that's the UDP and then augment augmenting the rate stabilization and so your PowerPoint if I can give you some notes if you want to update a little bit more when we start getting deeper into questions if we're gonna do another PowerPoint I would really focus on those five areas and what they mean for us plain spoken people that are still you know also for the viewing public because we have gotten a lot of um a lot of letters and questions from folks on on the rate hike and you're right we as Council was saying they were I guess artificially low and we enjoy a lot of water we are moving to electrification so we knew that if we pulled it here it was going to come out over here we knew this back in 2016 17 18 19 so I'm I'm not surprised that this day has come, but if that reduces our carbon footprint, that was our goal um when we passed the green, I think when they passed the Green New Deal back in Washington, DC, and then the state and then the city followed suit.

So those are the kind of issues that are going to come up and the questions that are going to be asked.

So again, I want to thank all of you and um Rob, you're doing a good job.

So if there isn't anything else, I'm gonna wrap us up with some dates that I want to make sure that we're again clear on.

So again, committee members and please send your written questions to policy Paul, Clerk Paul Menefee in our office by June 24th.

That's one week from today.

Seattle City Light will respond with a memo by June 30th.

So if you get your questions in, they will respond by June 30th.

And they will give, then it will give a more in-depth presentation based on those questions on July 1st, followed by a final briefing and discussion and a vote on July 15th.

So we have June 24th, June 30th, July 1st, and July 15th to wrap all this up.

And I will be in contact with you folks too as some of the questions come in and we get some more finer points.

And then going through the ordinance, going again through your PowerPoint, anticipating with the rate hike, what kind of questions we were going to get.

And also, of course, the last thing I was going to say is it might be helpful.

I don't know if you want to do it offline or in your next presentation, but how is Seattle City Light going to work with Council Member Lynn's committee on the one-year moratorium on data centers and putting together their work group?

Because we've been working with some other groups within locally, nationally, people that are supportive of data centers, people who are not, tribes that have passed moratoriums, some groups that have fought them, some people that have supported them, and we've been looking at that legislation in those legal cases and looking at their toolkits, and there's just so much there.

And I think my biggest fear, because I'll be gone in five months, is I don't know how Seattle City Light is going to manage this big thing called AI and data centers and not just the infrastructure, but just the policies around it.

And I mean, we maybe we need 10 more Leos.

No offense to the rest of you guys.

So that is something that's going to be on my mind before I walk out the door to make sure working with Council Member Lynn's committee on that on the moratorium.

So we kind of have a pause to look at those issues.

So we good, everybody.

Okay.

So again, sorry to soccer fans out there if I offended them about this word.

Okay.

Okay, so we've reached today's the meeting.

We've reached the end of today's meeting in the agenda.

All right.

We meet again on July 1st, correct, Paul?

July 1st is our next committee meeting.

All right.

Is there any other further business to come before council for the committee?

If not, we are adjourned.

It is 4 43.

Thank you again so much, CLC Delight.