Category: Development

Development, housing

Seattle Nice: Is Design Review Dying In Seattle?
Look at all those CGI people enjoying their beautiful outdoor space!

By Erica C. Barnett

This week’s Seattle Nice takes on one of the wonkiest, yet most contentious, issues facing Seattle: Design review!

Specifically: Should the city exempt housing, hotels, and life sciences buildings in the downtown core from design review, a protracted process in which panels of architects and activists (yes, activists) get to raise objections, and force changes, to new buildings. Historically, design review has been weaponized to delay the development of new housing.

In neighborhoods across the city, design review has forced housing developers to change details as picayune as the color of exterior brick and the orientation of exterior landscaping. It has also been used to reduce the number of housing units available to renters (requiring additional setbacks from the street, for instance, or forcing “wedding cake”-style tiered buildings) as well as dictate what kind of amenities a building must have.

In one example I covered several years ago, the Northwest Design Review Board delayed a 57-unit, four-story apartment building on Greenwood Ave., an arterial street, because neighbors insisted that each of the 57 studio apartments should have its own washer and dryer and central air conditioning; they were also furious that the building would have a common space on the roof, because you know how THOSE kind of people get with their wild parties. (Seriously: They wanted to kill the outdoor space because people would, quote, “party.”)

 

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Design review can add hundreds of thousands of dollars and months, sometimes years, of delay to a project—costs that get passed on directly to the renters who will ultimately live in the building. Still, advocates (including our own devil’s advocate on the podcast, David) argue that if we didn’t have it, Seattle would be chock full of ugly buildings.

Um… Have they looked around Seattle lately? I would argue that design review, which focuses intensely on “neighborhood character,” has contributed greatly to the homogenization of the city, shaving off any and all unique design elements in pursuit of the sameness we see in new developments all around us. After agonizing for months over whether a building’s brick cladding should be dark brown or brown, or whether some apartment should be removed to achieve a curvilinear exterior wall that gestures toward the riparian history of blah blah blah, design review still spits out ugly buildings—at significant cost to the people who will ultimately have to foot the bill.

Listen to Seattle Nice on Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

 

City Council, Development, Equity, housing

Maritza Rivera Said She Never Intended to Gut the Equitable Development Initiative. Records Tell a Different Story.

 

Records also show that Rivera, who blamed the city’s planning director for delaying a meeting “for months,” was chiefly responsible for the delays.

By Erica C. Barnett

In late May, City Councilmember Maritza Rivera proposed freezing 2024 funds intended for the Office of Planning and Community Development’s Equitable Development Initiative, the city’s largest anti-displacement program, prompting outrage from community-based organizations and residents across the city.

She backed down after thousands of people flooded council members’ inboxes with objections to her proposal, which would have frozen about $24 million in 2024 funding for EDI projects unless OPCD spent all the funds that were currently available for the program, around $53.5 million, by September. Because it can take many years to spend capital funds, the measure would have effectively halted all projects planned for 2024 as well as future projects, putting a halt to the program.

EDI provides partial funding, such as startup capital costs, to community groups and nonprofits doing projects that benefit low-income people and communities of color, largely in Southeast Seattle. Freezing the 2024 funds would have opened up a path for the council to spend these targeted dollars closing the general-fund budget, at the expense of dozens of projects lined up to get EDI funds this year.

Rivera insisted at the time that she wasn’t trying to kill the initiative, and said she never intended to vote against the budget “carryforward” ordinance that would have preserved funding for projects that are already under contract.

But documents obtained through a records request show that Rivera was scoffing at EDI well before she began raising questions publicly, and that as late as May 15, she was suggesting that she might vote to kill the $53.5 million in projects as well, telling OPCD director Rico Quirindongo in an email, “At $50.5 million dollars and given the $250 million budget deficit, I need to have information that will give me confidence in voting for the proposed carryforward and in general, by which to show my constituents the accountability we are giving to OPCD’s programs.”

Even earlier, in March—shortly after OPCD did a lengthy presentation on EDI— Rivera texted Councilmember Cathy Moore, saying, “I could not disagree more that EDI has addressed housing displacement across the city and for low income families.”

In May, Rivera defended her proposal after three hours of public comment against it, accusing her colleague Tammy Morales of spreading “disinformation” and confusing people into believing that her bill would cut funding for projects that were already funded.

A review of thousands of emails that poured in opposing Rivera’s proposal, however, suggests the opposite—community groups, including many that have received EDI funds, understood exactly what her bill would do.

For instance, Wa Na Wari, the Black arts and culture organization, noted in their email that their plans to purchase a permanent home include future EDI funding that would be at risk under Rivera’s proposal. The director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle wrote, “It is imperative to the flourishing of our city that you do not pass any amendment which would freeze funding for the Equitable Development Initiative.” And even a mass email, which referred to the more than 50 organizations whose EDI funding was secured prior to 2024, noted that the proposal would harm ongoing and upcoming projects by halting the program.

Rivera also mischaracterized her attempts to get information from OPCD about the program. During a May council meeting,  for example, Rivera complained that she had repeatedly sought meetings with OPCD, but the department had “consistently rescheduled and delayed.”

But emails and scheduling records only show one instance in which OPCD rescheduled a meeting, moving a one-hour sit-down with Rivera from Friday, May 17 to Monday, May 20 so that Mayor Bruce Harrell’s chief operating officer, Marco Lowe, could be there. (OPCD met with Rivera a second time later that week.) “As a consequence” of this schedule change, Rivera told a council central staffer on May 15, she was pulling EDI program out of “carryforward” legislation for a separate vote, setting up her proposal to freeze funding for the program.

Ironically, the May meeting would have happened a month earlier if Rivera herself had not rescheduled it, after Quirindongo said he had COVID and would need to meet virtually instead of at Rivera’s office.  “I think we should reschedule and give you time to recover,” Rivera wrote. “Feel better soon.”

Quirindongo did meet briefly with Rivera on May 8, but only after Rivera moved the meeting at least twice, according to scheduling records, prompting his assistant to ask Rivera’s legislative aide, “Are you able to clarify about the delay in this meeting getting scheduled? You had said she would be available today, then Monday morning, but now not until midday Wednesday, and I’d like to better understand if there are special steps we need to take in the future to get on her calendar if we have time-sensitive requests.”

Despite being chiefly responsible for putting off the meeting with OPCD, Rivera sent multiple emails to Quirindongo excoriating him for delaying their meeting “for over two months.” Quirindongo responded that, in the case of the May meeting that OPCD bumped from Friday to the following Monday, Lowe was invited to help answer some of Rivera’s questions—including a list she sent Thursday night, just hours before the meeting was scheduled.

Rivera responded, “I have always been clear on the request. Not sure where the disconnect is on OPCD’s end. Looking forward to the set of briefings occurring before next Tuesday,” which was the deadline for council members to amend the budget legislation. Rivera didn’t introduce her amendment to freeze EDI funding until three days after the deadline, filing it late in the afternoon on May 24, the Friday before the long Memorial Day weekend.

City Council, Development, housing

Back from Recess, Council Takes Up Design Review Downtown, Continues Delay on Social Housing Measure

By Erica C. Barnett

In a surprise cameo, former city councilmember Kshama Sawant showed up at the council’s first post-recess meeting Tuesday to denounce the “council Democrats” for a shelved proposal—which was not on the agenda—to adopt a sub-minimum wage for tipped workers. The plan, proposed by Sawant’s District 3 council replacement Joy Hollingsworth, would allow restaurant and bar owners out of an agreement they made a decade ago to start paying the full minimum wage by next year.

In response to pushback, Hollingsworth pulled her legislation and announced that she’s working on a “balanced solution.” The last time that happened, Council President Sara Nelson quietly dropped her proposal to reduce the mimimum wage for “gig” delivery drivers.

The meeting also included a perfunctory, unilluminating discussion of Initiative 137, which would fund the city’s social housing developer by increasing business taxes on employee compensation above $1 million a year. Before going on break, the council delayed a vote to put the initiative on the November ballot, ensuring that it will appear in a low-turnout February special election rather than the general election in a Presidential election year; they’re required to discuss the measure at the beginning of every council meeting until they take action.

The delay is already lengthy by recent historical standards. In 2014, the city council delayed a vote on the preschool levy on the ballot by one week; in that case, the city proposed a tax increase to pay for affordable preschool, but also placed a competing a union-backed measure that require a higher minimum wage for preschool workers, without new funding, on the ballot alongside it.

During the meeting, Morales tried to ask whether the council was working on an alternative ballot measure, but was shot down by Councilmember Dan Strauss, who said he could respond to that question privately or in a closed executive session.

“The point of having this as an information item is so that we can share with the public what we’re contemplating, and if we’re contemplating
an alternative, I think the public deserves to know that we’re contemplating an alternative,” Morales responded, then Nelson cut off the discussion, ordering the audience, “Do not speak!” when they shouted their opposition to the opaque process. (It’s becoming a familiar move.)

Earlier this month, the Seattle Chamber was polling on an alternative to I-137 that would siphon money away from the housing levy to pay for social housing, rather than raising taxes. One possibility is that the city attorney’s office is still wordsmithing the council’s alternative, which has to be on the same topic as the original initiative.

On Wednesday, the council’s land use committee held an initial public hearing on a proposal that would temporarily exempt residential, hotel, and life sciences buildings in the downtown area from design review—a lengthy process in which volunteer review board members look at the aesthetic aspects of a development and, more often than not, require developers to change their buildings.

Design review has been used to require changes to materials and brick colors, reduce the number of apartment in multifamily developments, and mandate specific retail footprints, often in the interest of making new buildings conform to the existing scale and “character” of nearby single-family areas. According to a Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections memo on the proposal, which would last three years, design review for residential projects currently takes between 10 and 25 months.

The proposal, billed as part of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan would also give the OPCD director more authority to approve some specific variances from the land use code for developments that are exempt from design review downtown—like setbacks, the location of mandatory open space and landscaping, and the type of street-level uses that are allowed.

Somewhat unusually, several councilmembers took issue with the conclusions of a memo from the council’s central staff that seemed to argue against the temporary exemptions.

“It is unclear what problem [the bill] seeks to solve,” the memo says. “Greater downtown, the general planning geography subject to the proposal, is not capacity constrained. The City’s development capacity dashboard, which was last updated in 2022, indicates that greater downtown has zoned capacity for approximately 110,000 additional jobs and 41,000 additional housing units.”

Ketil Freeman, the staffer who wrote the memo, added Wednesday that the city could make other decisions to encourage a more residential vibe for downtown, such as creating more “green streets” like Bell Street in Belltown.

Nelson—not always a supporter of new development—pushed back on the “zoned capacity” argument, citing data that shows a decline in the number of units permitted and under construction the downtown area. (The “plenty of zoned capacity” argument is more commonly used by anti-growth activists pointing out that the city has sufficient zoning to build more than enough housing already—always failing to note that most of this “capacity” isn’t accessible, because it’s under people’s current homes).

Bringing more receipts, Nelson noted that while there may be capacity to build 41,000 more housing units downtown, that isn’t translating into actual housing: According to current data, development permits and construction starts downtown declined over the last year. Finally, she said the green street in Belltown “does have a lot of complaints surrounding it around public safety, and it’s clear that that eyes on the street, more people circulating downtown, is a better way of of ensuring more public safety.”

Several public commenters argued that the legislation would give too much authority to unelected experts, rather than the city council, to—as one speaker put it—”zone the city.” What the legislation would actually do is take away some authority from the unelected design review boards, and the city’s unelected hearing examiner, to delay projects because board members don’t like the brick color, think the exterior walls aren’t “curvy” enough, or decide a new building looks “too historic”—all real examples we covered last year.

The land use committee didn’t vote on the proposal on Wednesday, but could do so at its next meeting on September 18.

Density, Development, Guest Contributor, housing, King County

Local Control Can Work to Solve Our Housing Crisis: Here’s How

By King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci

If we’ve learned nothing else from the last couple decades of explosive growth in King County, it’s that that past attempts to provide housing that’s affordable to everyone in our county have come up short. Really short. So short, in fact, that we need to create an additional 200,000 affordable homes by 2044 to ensure that low-income individuals, people on fixed incomes, and families throughout King County can afford a place to call home.

The results of our failure to provide adequate housing are visible everywhere: An ever-increasing number of people across King County are homeless. Young people leave the region because they don’t see a future they can afford. Racial disparities in our communities persist and grow, with Black, Indigenous and other people of color continuing to be disproportionately harmed by high housing prices.

If we don’t act now to build more housing of all types, including much-needed affordable housing, these gaps will just grow bigger. And while building the housing we need has for years felt like an intractable problem, there is hope on the horizon.

That hope comes in the form of a new and unique collaboration between King County and all 39 of our cities. As all of our cities and the county are making once-in-a-decade major updates to their comprehensive plans – which form the DNA of how a local government plans for growth – we can begin to turn the tide in a way that fits our communities while making them more inclusive and affordable.

In planning for future growth, city leaders have long pointed out the benefits of “local control” over land use planning and zoning, based on the principle that local government is closest to the people we serve, and thus is the right level of government to enact residents’ vision for the place they live. However, the concept of local control has some historical downsides – it has been used as an argument to block new housing, and thus has been a way to disenfranchise people and families of lower means, people of color and other marginalized groups.

So, what has changed? Taking the cue from House Bill 1220, a 2021 state law directing all jurisdictions to “plan for and accommodate” affordable housing at every level, representatives from cities and the county started collaborating on the issue. Together, they crafted and all jurisdictions unanimously agreed with recommendations from King County’s Affordable Housing Committee to amend county Comprehensive Planning Policies and set individualized housing affordability targets for each jurisdiction and hold each other accountable to meeting these local goals.

These targets are ambitious and bold. For example, my home city of Bellevue will need to plan for 35,000 net new housing units, 30,349 of which must be affordable to people making less than the area median income. Every city and the county have agreed to similar ambitious commitments.

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This means that cities will plan for new forms of housing that will incorporate the so-called “missing middle” of townhouses and other affordable housing types. It means cities will plan to take steps to intentionally address and undo the harms of racially restrictive housing policies of the past that continue to show up in segregated patterns of housing in the present. It means cities will plan to address displacement of existing communities and provide more places to live throughout their communities, not just in industrial areas or along highways. But the solutions in each city will be tailored to the conditions and vision of that city and its local representatives.

Recognizing we are all in this together, we also agreed to hold each other accountable. The Affordable Housing Committee will review the proposed housing-related parts of every comprehensive plan and provide feedback and recommendations for how each jurisdiction can better meet our ambitious and specific housing goals. Following adoption, the Affordable Housing Committee will monitor and track how well cities are implementing the plans on a regular basis.

Getting to this point was difficult work, and took a strong partnership of local government, private and nonprofit partners, and a dedicated group of representatives from key communities impacted by high housing costs. But we all came together because the data was so compelling, and we all know that behind the data are human beings who all need and deserve a safe, healthy place to live. They are nurses, teachers, and firefighters, our family, friends, and coworkers. They are seniors hoping to age in place and young families with dreams to raise their kids in safe communities where they have access to opportunity. They are why we are here, and our work is ultimately for them.

With this countywide housing agreement, we are empowering each city to do that in the way that works best for their residents while recognizing that every jurisdiction needs to step up to address our shared regional housing crisis. And I’m hopeful that with this effort, we can close the gap and make King County – and our whole region – a place where people can find housing and build a life filled with opportunity.

Claudia Balducci represents District 6 on the Metropolitan King County Council, which includes parts or all of Bellevue, Kirkland, Mercer Island, the Points Communities, and Redmond. She serves as chair of the King County Affordable Housing Committee and previously co-chaired the Regional Affordable Housing Taskforce (2017-18).

City Council, Development, Equity

Council Imposes New Reporting Requirements on Community-Led Development Projects

“Please don’t characterize us as misinformed. We are very informed about the work that needs to happen with our projects.”

By Erica C. Barnett

Supporters of the city’s Equitable Development Initiative, which helps fund organizations by and for communities of color, held a press conference at City Hall on Tuesday morning to oppose a budget amendment from Councilmember Maritza Rivera that will require the city’s Office of Planning and Development to create a detailed report on all EDI-funded projects by September 24.  This report, according to the new amendment, must include a “status update” on all EDI projects, and include, “where knowable, potential future funding requests for the identified projects.”

The council passed the amendment 8-1 this afternoon, with Councilmember Tammy Morales voting no.

At the press conference before the vote, Morales said the council was subjecting the EDI program to a greater level of scrutiny than other city-funded projects, and requiring first-time developers and small community nonprofits to complete large capital projects faster than private-market developers.

“We are staring down the barrel of an austerity budget,” Morales added. “And what we learned this past week is that when budget cuts are discussed, programs that support Black and brown communities are always first on the chopping block, and that’s not going to stand.”

As we’ve reported, the amendment the council adopted Tuesday was a significant downgrade from a proposal that could have yanked funding for existing and new EDI projects, from Interim Community Development’s ongoing renovation of Chinatown/International District community hub Bush Gardens to a child care center at El Centro de la Raza’s Four Amigos affordable housing development in Columbia City.

Originally, Rivera proposed placing a freeze on all of this year’s EDI funding—around $25 million—unless the city spent all of the funds previously allocated to projects funded by EDI, but still unspent, by September 24—more than $53 million. As the leaders of many organizations that are currently building EDI-funded projects have pointed out, this would have been an essentially impossible feat, given that the initiative funds dozens of multi-year projects that are in various stages of development.

If the programs failed to meet this goal, according to the text of Rivera’s original amendment, “the $25.3 million appropriation will lapse at year-end and become part of the 2025 beginning fund balance” and “could be reallocated in the 2025 budget.”

Explaining the need for a new reporting requirement, Rivera said she was concerned that the Office of Planning and Community Development, where EDI is housed, “has not shown an appropriate level of accountability or transparency regarding the EDI program and its ability to track and complete these important projects in community.”

In addition, Rivera suggested, the city is sitting on funding it needs to get out the door right away. “OPCD has spent, on average, only 25 percent of EDI’s total budget every year for the last five years,” Rivera said, holding up a chart suggesting that if this trend continues, the program will have $90 million in unspent funds by 2026.

Development projects have been delayed across the board since the beginning of 2020 due to supply-chain issues, higher construction, materials, and labor costs, and other factors that are not limited to community-based developers.

Community groups, including some who helped develop the EDI program, have spent the week and a half since Rivera put her original amendment online trying to explain to her how it would impact them. Rivera has responded by accusing unnamed forces of running a “disinformation” campaign that had “misinformed” community groups into thinking their funding was at risk.

Rivera’s colleague Bob Kettle backed her up on Tuesday. “At no time were the carryforward dollars or this year’s budget at risk, but the emails and the communication [council members received] had that point front and center,” Kettle said. “So where does this miscommunication or disinformation originate from or how does it get pushed? I don’t know. Some may say this is politics, but I think it contributes to the lack of civility and the ability to have a full public discourse.”

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Karen Toering, representing the EDI-funded Black and Tan Hall in Hillman City, said the council members were incorrect when they said community groups didn’t understand Rivera’s original legislation. “Please don’t characterize us as misinformed, because we are very informed about the work that needs to happen with our projects,” Toering said. Instead of imposing additional reporting requirements, she added, “What you could do is build more capacity for EDI to do the work that you’re asking them to do.”

Representatives from groups that have completed, or are in the process of developing, capital projects that received funding from the eight-year-old program said EDI is being subject to far more scrutiny than other items that carry forward in the city’s budget from year to year, such as funding for police positions that SPD acknowledges it can’t fill but for which funding carries over into the following year’s budget every year.

“The city continues to allocate $41.3 million to the Seattle Police Department for police positions that have not and cannot be filled,” Puget Sound SAGE director Aretha Basu said at Tuesday’s press conference. “And this money is allowed to carry over year after year after year. So explain to me how our communities and our programs are getting nickeled and dimed while the police department’s budget grows in the midst of such a massive budget deficit. How is that equity?”

Historically, funding for SPD’s “ghost” positions has been used to pay for other SPD priorities, such as a (recently scuttled) acoustic gunshot surveillance system and overtime for officers to provide traffic control at events. In 2022, the council eliminated 80 of these vacant positions (out of 240 at the time), a move now-Council President Sara Nelson claimed would discourage people from applying for jobs as police.

As community advocates, including Toering, pointed out on Tuesday, the city has already effectively frozen EDI funding this year. When Mayor Bruce Harrell imposed a partial hiring freeze in January, he also directed city departments to hold off on issuing requests for proposals (part of the application process for city funds) for projects above $1 million, including those funded through EDI.

At the time, mayoral spokesman Jamie Housen told PubliCola the mayor’s office was “seeking to review these in context of all projects and programs and to provide a complete understanding of upcoming financial commitments – this does not mean these dollars will not go out the door.”

Nearly five months later, the city’s planning department has not received the go-ahead to spend the money. We have asked the mayor’s office for more information about the status of this year’s $24 million in EDI funding and will update this post when we hear back.

City Council, Development, Equity

Blaming Blowback on “Disinformation,” Rivera Postpones Vote on Future of Equitable Development Initiative for One Week
Dian Ferguson, director of the Central Area Senior Center, was one of more than 150 people who testified on Tuesday.

By Erica C. Barnett

On Tuesday, the Seattle City Council voted to postpone a vote on Councilmember Maritza Rivera’s last-minute amendment to freeze 2024 funding for the city’s largest anti-displacement program, the seven-year-old Equitable Development Initiative, until next week, ostensibly so that Rivera can “correct disinformation that was irresponsibly given to community about the proposed amendment.”

“I am deeply disappointed that the objective of this amendment has been grossly mischaracterized,” Rivera said, describing her proposal as a mere request for a “status report” from the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development on projects funded by the initiative, which helps pay (among other things) for early-stage development costs and technical assistance for projects proposed by community groups that have limited development experience.

Although Rivera claimed her proviso—a freeze on funding until a later council vote—wouldn’t defund any current EDI projects, she failed to acknowledge the most impactful element of the legislation: In addition to requesting a report on current projects, Rivera’s amendment would require OPCD to spend all the money allocated to the program in previous years, a total of $53.5 million, by September 24.

If that doesn’t happen, according to the text of Rivera’s amendment (below) and the staff analysis attached to the proposal, the council could not hold a vote to lift the proviso and the money for the EDI projects would go back into the general fund, where it could be used to close an estimated $250 million budget deficit.

Because capital projects take years, not months, the effect of the amendment would be to cripple projects that are already underway. “Development projects take time, and if you’re not an experienced developer, it takes longer,” Councilmember Tammy Morales, a longtime EDI supporter, said. “But that doesn’t mean that we withhold funding from your program, so that you can’t continue to execute on your program. It means that we make sure you get what you need to do it right.”

Rivera’s proposal went up online the Friday afternoon before the long Memorial Day weekend, giving representatives from the dozens of community groups that would be impacted by the loss of funding just three days to mobilize against the proposal. On Tuesday, they turned out in numbers, spilling out of council chambers and into the Bertha Knight Landes room on the first floor of City Hall while they waited to speak.

Supporters of EDI, many of them from organizations that participate in the program, made up a large majority of those who testified (the remainder were mostly gig workers who came to ask the council not to cut their wages, a decision the council also decided to punt to a later date.) Speakers described how the program had enabled their organizations to buy property for a future mixed-use development (Quynh Pham, Friends of Little Saigon), make progress toward reopening a legendary International District institution (Karen Akada Sakata, Bush Garden), and renovate a building that serves as an important community gathering space in the Central District (Dian Ferguson, Central Area Senior Center.)

“I actually see the amendment close to being redlining, and we don’t need to go back to times when things were redlined,” Ferguson said. With the help of an EDI grant, she said, her organization “has helped African American communities, BIPOC communities, young people. What we are trying to avoid is displacement.”

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During public comment, Rivera rarely looked up from her computer, even when local elected officials—four members of the Duwamish Tribal Council, including Chairwoman Cecile Hanson—spoke against the proposal.

In a statement after the meeting, Rivera claimed the hundreds of people who wrote emails and testified simply didn’t understand her legislation.  proposal “The amendment does not cut the Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) program.does not cut the Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) program,” Rivera said. “I am deeply disappointed that the objective of this amendment has been grossly mischaracterized.”

Morales, whose Southeast Seattle district includes the majority of the projects that receive EDI funding, tried to shoot down the delay. “Frankly, if you want to propose legislation that rolls back commitments made to black and brown communities, at least have the courage to stand by your legislation and vote on it, or acknowledge that you made a mistake and withdraw it,” Morales said.

Noting that it can take six or more years for even experienced developers to put together funding to buy a site and build a project, Morales added that she was not surprised that many EDI projects take years. ” Development projects take time, and if you’re not an experienced developer, it takes longer. But that doesn’t mean that we withhold funding from your program so that you can’t continue to execute on your program. It means that we make sure you get what you need to do it right.

Rivera said she plans to reintroduce her amendment at next Monday’s full city council meeting.