With the Council in partial shutdown while the coronavirus continues to spread, it’s going to be another quiet week in Council Chambers.
The weekly Council Briefing and regularly scheduled committee meetings are all cancelled.
Monday afternoon’s full City Council meeting will be held electronically again. There are two bills on the agenda:
- an ordinance closing a loophole in the city’s Paid Sick and Safe Time ordinance;
- a resolution approving Seattle City Light’s biennial conservation target.
The Council will also hold an executive session with its attorneys.
In addition, it’s possible that the Council will take up the Mayor’s emergency order banning residential evictions. It may approve, modify, or reject the order, or it may decide not to take it up at all and let it go into effect on its own.
This week’s Introduction and Referral Calendar has two new pieces of legislation:
- an emergency ordinance temporarily removing the charge of interest on delinquent utility accounts for residential customers and business customers with less than $5 million in gross taxable receipts (the same threshold as B&O tax) until August 1 or until the Mayor lifts the COVID-19 emergency declaration, whichever comes first;
- an ordinance reallocating $1.4 million from the Human Services Department’s budget to increase the Office of Economic Development’s budget for assistance to small businesses during the coronavirus outbreak. The money is available because of underspend of Community Development Block Grant funds in 2019, and because of a deferred HSD project that according to the city does not affect service levels.