Three are 52 items on the agenda for tomorrow’s weekly Full Council meeting — the last of the calendar year, and the last for this sitting Council before the newly elected members get sworn in on January 4th. Might as well get comfy; we’re going to be here a while.The agenda can be found here. Full details of agenda items are here.
This is the Council’s attempt to wrap things up before they head out on their holiday break — or before they leave office, in the cases of Jean Godden, Nick Licata, and Tom Rasmussen.
The good news: 33 of the agenda items are appointments of individuals to various advisory boards, committee and commissions. They should get approved relatively quickly without much fuss. The only ones I could imagine seeing any significant discussion are the appointments to the Seattle Elections Ethics Commission, and even then simply because the commission is so important and not because the people being appointed are in any way controversial (they aren’t).
But then most of what’s left is meaty:
The Council will reconsider the Comcast franchise agreement renewal, which was held for a week after Comcast made additional concessions that couldn’t be incorporated into the agreement in time for last Monday’s meeting. These hasn’t been any word this past week as to whether the city staff and Comcast hammered out a new version of the agreement.
They will also consider Council member O’Brien’s proposal to allow Uber and Lyft drivers to unionize, which for the past few weeks has seen intense lobbying by Uber to try to stop it. Council member Sawant has called upon her followers to show up to the meeting in support of this ordinance, so expect a good crowd.
The council will vote on imposing new labor standards with the intent to prevent wage theft (and restructure business licenses as a necessary step to enforce those new ordinances).
They will vote on approving the Ship Canal Water Quality Project.
The Council will consider approval of a request by Amazon to vacate right-of-way for an alley so that the company can build its latest office tower in South Lake Union/Belltown. The proposal generate a fair amount of controversy in committee, particularly over whether the “privately owned public space” that is part of the plan as a public benefit will be too tightly controlled by Amazon to actually benefit the public.
In some ways, this Council meeting is shaping up to be a showdown between corporate interests (Amazon, Comcast, Uber) and citizens. It will be interesting to see which items Council member Sawant chooses to speak up about, whether Council member Licata gets any parting shots in before he heads out the door, and where Council member Gonzalez chooses to stand if things get contentious (though she voted in favor of some of these items in committee, so it would be surprising if she put up a hard line against any).
Of note: it’s also Tim Burgess’s last time sitting as Council President, as the new Council will elect a new President in January. At least he gets to go out with a bang.