The first full City Council meeting with substantive business takes place this week. Plus, a report from Sound Transit on ST3 planning.
The Council’s Monday afternoon agenda features two items held over from December: Amazon’s request for an alleyway vacation, and the update to the marijuana zoning laws. When last discussed (marijuana here and Amazon’s alley here), both had unresolved issues.
The Introduction and Referral Calendar has a few reports for Council member Gonzalez’s committee (meeting Wednesday morning), one bill for Sawant’s (meeting Tuesday afternoon), and one bill for O’Brien’s (meeting next week). Several other committees have meetings scheduled for this week, but given that there is no legislation pending for them, like last week their meetings will probably be cancelled.
Monday morning during the Council Briefing, there will be two presentations: one from the Office of Intergovernmental Relations (nothing posted on this yet), and one from Sound Transit on the planning for its Sound Transit 3 initiative moving forward this year. This presentation is likely to generate a fair amount of discussion as it’s the first opportunity for this Council to voice its priorities; look for Council members Johnson and O’Brien to be particularly involved on the conversation. O’Brien, who chairsthe Sustainability and Transportation Committee, just lost his seat on the Sound Transit Board to Johnson, who prior to joining the Council was a local advocate for further transportation development (and is now the vice-chair of O’Brien’s committee). It will be interesting to see whether O’Brien and Johnson see eye-to-eye.
