Emily Ho: Thank you, Lawrence. Good afternoon, commissioners. Good afternoon, executive director Metrick. My name is Emily Ho. I am the program manager for community engagement and training for the diversity and contracting team. I will just be providing a very high level overview of the program in 2024. The goal of the program is to establish relationships with women and minority owned business firms, help provide them with the resources and the information that they need to pursue port work, as well as to help increase their firm capacities or assist them in doing so. And so we have a number of activities that we do, most of which fall under that PortGen umbrella. That includes a lot of online webinars, in-person networking events. Next week we’ll have June 2nd, largest event of the year, aviation industry day, where we’ve got I think over 400 folks signed up to hear about our aviation projects and the opportunities there. That’s just to name a few.
But real high level, compared to last year, we were affected by the cyber incidents. Typically for WIMBY firm vendor connect registrations, that’s onto our contracting portal, we average around over a hundred, but because of the incident, we had only 60 registrations. So we have some catching up to do this year. But it’s been offset by the fact that we’ve had more one-on-one assistance, probably also related to the fact that vendor connect wasn’t available. But that’s a fantastic thing in which we actually get to have one-on-one time with these businesses to help guide them a little bit more through what can be a very complicated process. So that is some of the comparisons to last year.
Some of the new efforts or new and improved efforts that we’ve had is really working with our colleagues in aviation project management group. Shout out to Stuart Matthews and Greg Kerry. We’ve been meeting with them each month to find out what are the contracts that are coming up over the horizon so that we can actually get that information out to firms months in advance, and that’s the timeline that they need to be able to actually get on some of those teams to pursue that work. So we’ve really increased the regularity of these online webinars, which I’m thrilled about. And then we have also increased the accessibility of our resource video library. We’ve added a number of additional technical assistance videos onto our website and made them a lot more digestible and accessible, which I’m really excited about. So that wraps up training and outreach for 2024.
Me and Rice: Thank you Emily and Lawrence. Appreciate you all your efforts. And just to give you kind of a glimpse of what we did over 2024 was quite a bit, you know, just for each quarter and just kind of tease up to the next section here. But just so that you know, quarter one, that was the end of our previous five-year DC goals. And quarter one, we took a look at, we did an evaluation of our program itself. We had a commission order which extending our policy, and as part of that commission order, that’s where we increased the number of firms from 350 to 400 businesses, and that was phenomenal and we’re still continuing to grow. Quarter two, evaluation of the results. We had a disparity study that we conducted. We reviewed and refreshed the policy. We did some community engagement. Not some, we did a lot of community engagement, actually. We had community stakeholder input and policy and program goals. And now we’re coming towards the end of 2024, now into 2025, where we’re looking at what our new DC diversity and contracting policy directive and our goals will be. And that’ll happen sometime in the future, and we’re going to segue into kind of the thought process for the future of our program.
And without further ado, I did want to tap the brakes for one quick second and hand the ball over to my, thank you, I apologize, I had literally had a brain fog in my thought process, but VWin, who’s part of your commission staff, and we’ll talk a little more about the resolution and the directive.
VWin: Thank you, Director Rice. I do not blame you for your elder moment there. So VWin from the commission office. I’m just here to refresh our memory a little bit of how we got here and where we’re going. So for discussion only today, we’re just doing a review of resolution 3836, a little preview rather. So this is really building off of resolution 3737, which was adopted in January 2018. So this formally codified the program for the diversity and contracting program. It set the program at 5 years, and there are a couple elements that were critical to the standing up of the former program. So there were goals and timelines, incorporation of the WIMBY goals into the port’s long range plan, and just like any program, government program, we want to collect data and publish annual reports. There are some also like some critical elements of technical assistance, trainings, outreach that Emily detailed, conducting disparity studies, just so that we know where we’re going. We know what we’re doing and we can report back to constituents and also to the businesses and to the outside world of we set a goal. We’re saying that we want to do this and accomplish this, and this is how we’re proving that we’re doing the work and staying true to our values.
So as director Rice detailed, you know, the process of updating the directive has been very involved, and there’s been a lot of engagement from his team. But on the commission office side, we’ve also held three roundtables with most of the commissioners present at each one of the, well, two commissioners present at each one of the roundtables. And you know, we really did a lot of active listening and made sure to try our best to be responsive to what we heard. And you know, as staff sitting at each of those tables, you know, the number one thing that we heard over and over is increasing access to opportunity. And so I will hand this back over to Director Rice to share what we came up with.
Me and Rice: Oh, thank you VWin. I appreciate you. Next slide, please. Okay. On the left-hand side, I’ll start off there, some directive language updates. And at the end of the day, trying to use, and this is a stretch goals that we’re proposing here as a policy update of getting up to 16% instead of 15, up to 16%. And this is despite not originally achieving our 15% goal, but I still think the next 5 years continue to push that envelope and actually increase the number of women, minority and disadvantaged firms participating on port projects, as well as increasing the number of women, minority and disadvantaged businesses, WIMBY businesses for short, up to 500. So moving from 400 to 500, with a sub goal, which is a sub aspirational goal of 14% utilization for construction. And this is something that came out of the disparity study in terms of the availability of WIMBY firms within our construction-related activities that they felt that some of the folks will be out there. So having a sub goal for our next 5 years of trying to achieve that 14%.
Continued engagement for firms of upcoming opportunities and also include certified small businesses as defined by office of minority disadvantaged businesses through the state. Now on the right-hand side for program improvements, this falls into more the small ball. This falls into trying to get into more small works contracts, developing and formalizing a limited public works program, and also really try to continue to push on those alternative delivery methodologies, those GCCM, those design builds, and so forth. And so a lot of the community members out there that we’ve talked with, they’re like, “Hey, I love working on port projects. It’s great. I unfortunately have to work under a prime. I would love to have small something in which I can directly work with you, the port of Seattle, and finding those small projects.” And so a lot of them, a lot of the businesses out there in which we’ve talked to both internal, excuse me, externally, says, “Yeah, like to have those little something that we can work directly on.” And so again, that’s that kind of that small ball, really focus on the small works, those limited public works program, and alternative delivery methodologies. And that’s actually alternative delivery methodology is more for the larger projects, but because of the contract type, we’re able to have a little more conversations with the prime contractors in this regards, and so it gives us a lot of flexibility.
And then also to improve prompt payment and change orders. You know, these are areas in which we’ve heard over and over again throughout the past year or so. And change orders. So I know that we are in the quarter 4 of this year. We’re planning doing a lean process with CPO to get into kind of the understanding of the prompt payments, figure out some alternatives or some thought processes how we can move the needle forward to pay our contractors a little more quicker than it has been. But you know, again, that’s something that we’re highlighting. And then also as well, all business, you got to have bonding and insurance depending upon the project, and level setting a little more so about for the scopes of work matches the bondings or insurance that’s needed depending upon what the project is or that effort is. So I know that the diversity and contracting program along with risk management are working hand in hand trying to figure this thing out the best way and adding a little more flexibility to our small businesses out there that and diverse businesses that are actually working on our projects.
In this regards, I’m going to skip this next one here. I’m going to go straight to collect data on a timely dispatch on contracts and jobs with the port of Seattle. And this one falls into just tracking. There are some small businesses that sometimes that we’ve heard that said that some of the workers in which they get dispatched from the hall, sometimes they have to turn around a little sooner rather than later. And so we want to make sure that we actually capture that data and something that we are not capturing in-house that we want to make sure we keep track of.
And then going back to that second bullet in terms of inclusion of veteran-owned businesses with port-wide WIMBY plus VBE, the veteran-owned business. This is actually, it’s not part of the actual goal itself, the 16%, but it is more about tracking. It’s more about just being more deliberate about our tracking of our veteran businesses. Again, this is not part of the 16% goal. This is just more about tracking, outreach and efforts for and making sure that all parties actually are have those opportunities, but also being able to highlight those vets out there that are looking at doing work with the Port of Seattle.
Next slide, please. Okay, so we’re getting to the 2025 program goals. And I’m actually going to start off with the division goals on the right-hand side. This is dealing with, this again, our division directors set non-construction goals based off of the budgets that they perceive that they’re going to have for 2025. And as you can see, aviation has the 14%. They’re shooting for that. Economic development, 10%. Maritime, 14%. Corporate, 16%. And just I guess as a port-wide effort, trying to achieve that 16%. So these are for 2025 goals for each one of our divisions.
Now on the left-hand side for the port-wide goals, as I mentioned from the previous slide, you know, construction and construction percentage spend for WIMBY firms, we’re looking at 16%. Again, where it says plus V, this more of think of as a silo. We’re just looking at trying to make sure we track better and get a better understanding of how veterans work, get on our projects and efforts, including outreach and trainings. Number of WIMBY firms, again, 500. And then construction port up to 14%.
Next slide, please. This gets into kind of the thought process. This is for some of the folks in the listening audience as well as you commissioners. This gets into the proposed number of women WIMBY firms for utilization goal. This kind of shows in orange what the previous five years used to look like. 354, that was our goal. We achieved 392. Gap year, again, 388 to 400, and then but we’re saying that we’re going to try to push for the next five years, trying to get up to 500, utilize over 500 firms. Again, noted for the record that commissioner Caulkins has exited the meeting.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you.
Me and Rice: Oh, thank you, commissioner. Appreciate it. For this WIMBY utilization number of firms, you know, P-cards, we do a lot of P-card activities. Sometimes some of the P-cards might not capture all of our WIMBY businesses in which we leverage. That’s, you know, if you go to, especially from an ethnicity perspective, if you go to, I don’t want to stereotype names, but I’ll just say Sheniqua, how about that, and we’ll say, “Hey, we’ll go to a hairdresser, we hit the card, play with the P-card.” Supposedly it may capture as a WIMBY businesses, but it doesn’t capture the ethnicity of that said business. So that could affect some of the some of the data that we receive in the previous slides.
Next slide, please. This one is the proposed percentage for WIMBY utilization goals. Again, you heard this before. 15% was our previous years. We’re recommending going up to 16% with a sub construction WIMBY goal, 14%. And you know, from our driver perspective, construction, professional service, architectural engineering, those are our biggest drivers for the percentages in which are driving our utilization goals. However, we do have some detractors here that we’ve heard from, and again, this is a lot of data collection from the DC team, both internally wise and externally wise.
So our port capital program, you know, there’s a balance between bundling for efficiency versus unbundling projects for increased women, minority and disadvantaged business participation, and some of the drivers and some of the detractors, so to speak, depending upon that business. One of the areas that a lot of folks talk about is project labor agreements or components within it. Cash flow, you know, cash flow is king for small businesses. And as well as prime payment, got to, they got to keep the doors open and payments got to continue to move forward in their pockets as they continue to grow their business, as well as bonding and insurance. And again, I talked about that a little earlier in regards to risk management.
So next slide, please. And with this slide, I’m actually going to hand the ball over to Emily Ho and to talk a little about 2025 and training and outreach program efforts. Emily, thanks.
Emily Ho: So this slide shows all of the many training and outreach activities that will be going on in 2025. We’re going to continue building on the great work that we accomplished in 2024. I do want to highlight three new initiatives that we are, that are underway, and the common theme between the three is just increased collaboration.
So PortGen 101 orientations, these are online monthly meetings where we focus on just construction contracting. So you want to be a construction contractor at the port, what do you need to know from kind of just the basic fundamentals to this is what the process actually looks like? And I was really lucky to have Angela Peterson, CPO assistant director for contracting construction, to give, to build that presentation and give that with me in April. And so in the following months, we’re going to be focusing on goods and services and then service agreements. And this is really only made possible by partnering with our CPO colleagues.
There is also the capacity building mentorship program that we will be hoping to join. This is a mentorship program that already exists with Sound Transit and WSDOT. They’ve been doing it for many years. We, along with some other agencies, are hoping to join in on that and leverage that and build on that in either this year or upcoming year. So more to come on that. There’ll probably be an MOA that will be required, but that’s a really exciting opportunity to really work with our sister agencies towards a similar goal.
And then lastly, we’re working on vendor connect enhancements. Really hoping to make that a useful directory of choice for folks around the port as well as external stakeholders to find diverse businesses when they have a business need. As it exists right now, vendor connect is not the best tool for that. And so I’ve been working with folks on the change team to head up this effort. So really excited to have input from folks around the port to create and enhance this tool that they will actually use going forward.
Me and Rice: Appreciate it. Thank you, Emily. Next slide, please. All right, coming to the end. So next steps, other next steps that we’re really pushing on. Again, you, some of this, a lot of stuff you heard from the previous slide decks, but developing a limited public works program for small businesses. We’re really trying to push and develop an A&E or architecture engineering program for small and disadvantaged businesses, veterans and WIMBY businesses alike, and truly looking at adjusting our professional service categories to really play small ball. And then the next one is improve prompt payment procedures for construction projects in collaboration with CPO construction. And improve insurance flexibility for small businesses. Continue to push alternative delivery methodologies. Provide ongoing training for women, minority, disadvantaged businesses, veteran and small businesses. And this is particularly, particularly on project labor agreements. I, you know, we just signed the last project labor agreement last year, I believe it was last year. But regardless of that, small businesses, heck, medium and large businesses, need to really understand what’s really in the agreements moving forward as we conduct our port of Seattle business. So we want to make sure that we’re all in in alignment or in sync of understanding what’s in it. And then also, lastly, improved data collection systems on our in partnership with the CPO.
So with that, I am, next slide, please, I’m giving you a big thank you and good night. So here we go.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you very much for the presentation. All right, colleagues, at this time, alternate questions and comments that you may have.
Commissioner Felleman: Thank you so much for squeezing all that good work into this presentation. I think it’s appropriate that we include recognition of veterans on Memorial Day weekend, and so thank you for that inclusion. And I guess, giving visibility to it. I really appreciate that. And I guess, technically veterans aren’t in that categories, but the educational part, the outreach seems to be kind of uniquely different. So I’m just, and when you say education, do you have like a strategy for the outreach part of that?
Me and Rice: The short answer is yes. We do have, because, you know, coming out of, I used to work in years past for the department of defense, and there’s a different language in the military. And so coming into the public sector, sometimes that bringing and crossing over from the military language to civilian, especially when you’re trying to get the job or from a business perspective, trying to really make sure that they understand how government is working and that’s in charge of. And that’s with the partnership with Miss Emily Ho here of saying, “Hey, here’s opportunities, and I want to make sure you understand opportunities. I understand what’s what’s being said in the contracts and efforts and what you’re trying to go after.” So we do have a strategy. It’s a lot of it, there’s a lot of overlap with our current port activities, but there’s some also some additional training and things like that that some veteran folks might need to have. And I’ve got a few calls about that saying, what does this mean? And so that explanation. But other than that, there’s a lot of overlap with our current program.
Commissioner Felleman: Yeah. You have young bucks like our executive who, you know, you end up getting out of, you retire out of Coast Guard after a couple of rounds. So you have some still able-bodied people ready to enter the workforce. And I’m sure there’s, everybody’s got their own association. You know, I was just wanted to draw attention to slide 13 and 14. I think so much information is packed into that, but I wanted to pack some more into it, because I’m like that’s the glutton for punishment. So the trend data, I think is very important to, you know, get a sense of, and you can explain some of that, even though you don’t want to go beyond correlation. You know, with COVID or whatever, you know, there are certain things we could foresee. And the discussion before, I just saw some stories that, you know, construction is expected to be down because of tariffs and uncertainties. So there’s a bunch of projects, large projects across the country that have been put on hold. So, you know, when you start elevating those goals, keep that next dip in mind.
But the pie chart that you showed, you know, the changes in these hires, it varies by the different categories of minority and women-owned business. And so, and we know that minority women are the smallest piece of the pie. But I was just wondering if we had that sort of same color coding that you have in the pie chart in each one of these histograms, you could sort of see relatively proportionally within those years, you know, who’s doing better than others and why in one year were we doing better and help explain that trend. And we can go back and look at over time, you know, are they, are those categories holding steady or are they varying? And maybe we could understand a different targeting based on that. So it would become like a real zebra striped, you know, complicated slide, but it, there’s, you have the percentages, you have the hard dollars, and then you can just look at the distribution of, you’ve already collected the data. So anyway, I think you can have a two slide presentation next time, and then you, but then you have your goal, obviously, and I appreciate all that work.
Lastly, how does this compare to Sound Transit in King County? Do they have similar goals, and are they changing their goals? I mean, seems to me that that’s always the question I ask every time is like, where does this number come from? How is this aspiration decided? And I’m just wondering, our colleagues in brethren governments, are their goals similar to ours?
Me and Rice: I can’t speak on other government entities, to be honest with you, how they came up with their goals, outside of I think Sound Transit get a lot of federal dollars. So they have a DBE goals that’s set specifically on their three lines of business, if I believe. So light rail, commuter rail, and express bus service, I believe it is. And from King County, I think they have a different capital program. They do have a little small airport, but in terms of the the similarity of our actual projects are significantly larger, especially from an airport perspective. So the county has what they call the small contractor and supplier program, where it is basically, if I remember correctly, and correct me if I’m wrong, it’s half the size standards of the SBA criteria. So they created that years and years ago. But how they came up specifically for the goals per each department or division within King County, I just, that’s something I can’t answer.
Commissioner Felleman: I just, again, it would seem to be instructive to know those agencies that are doing a lot of construction work, you know, how their trends are going, you know, whether even if we have different goals, you know, are they showing similar fluctuations, or is there some other special sauce that we can look at?
Me and Rice: We’ll do, I can take a look at that, even get it even closer. I, you know, I do know is that the, lot of the, there’s some overlap with some of the firms terms that we they use versus what we use. I mean, we’ll just use painters, right? A painter can go almost anywhere. However, they don’t have elevator, escalator businesses or baggage claim businesses or things in that way where there’s a lot of work. But we do a heck of a lot of work in electrical side of the coin where all three counties and cities and us use a lot of the electrical contractors out there. And so we burned through them, no pun intended, quite a bit. There’s a lot of electrical work that we, from a contracting perspective that we, I’m sure the data would be shocking.
Commissioner Felleman: Yeah. So all right. So and I’ll be in Las Vegas next week. Let’s finish this up.
Commissioner Cho: Yeah, I just had a quick question on the numbers here. Slide eight shows that our non-construction utilization is 16.6%. But if you go down to the area where it’s broken down on slide 12, it’s as high as 27%. So I’m trying to understand what the distinction is.
Lawrence Coleman: Thank you for that question, commissioner. So slide 12 is specific to corporate. So that’s a breakout of the corporate division, whereas the previous slide is all of non-construction.
Commissioner Cho: Okay. So I see. So non-construction is a wider, bigger umbrella than just corporate.
Lawrence Coleman: Correct.
Commissioner Cho: What would the distinction, what give me an example of what’s non-conjunction but not corporate?
Lawrence Coleman: Well, no, corporate is describing the division. So the work could potentially be the same. It’s just, and so we wanted to show executive leaders and what their respective spend was for the year and the goals that we established. So we provided another slide specifically to break out, excuse me, corporate.
Commissioner Cho: So what is, so shouldn’t everything be under these executive, like what would not fall under this umbrella of corporate non-construction?
Lawrence Coleman: So what would not fall under corporate would be aviation and maritime, for example, and economic development.
Commissioner Cho: Oh, I see. Yeah. So corporate is all by itself. And again, we just really wanted to honor the folks that spending all the time, you know, getting bothered by our team to establish goals and just wanted to break that out and also, you know, try to show how it’s a shared, you know, accountability. And so, and again, non-construction would include purchase card spend, professional and personal services, goods and services.
Commissioner Cho: So why isn’t ED and why aren’t those, why is ED not part of corporate? I don’t understand.
Me and Rice: Those are the business lines, commissioner. So the corporate is the non-business lines. The cross functional efforts. And then the three business lines are the, you’re talking about the administrative side.
Commissioner Cho: This is what the, okay. So you’re when you say corporate, you’re talking about like administrative, not the overall, not the big corporate, the corporate being central services, right? Central services.
Lawrence Coleman: That is correct.
Commissioner Cho: Okay. That’s an important distinction I that I didn’t fair. You figured the overall corporate, right? Versus the operating business lines in the, and it might be just for our own kind of definition, but we tried our best to match what what the budget looks like, right? And so there’s budget orgs and codes and, you know, different naming conventions and try to be consistent with that. So yeah, but certainly always open to recommendations if there’s a better way to display that.
Commissioner Cho: Got it. Okay. So it’s more central service/admin.
Lawrence Coleman: Correct.
Commissioner Cho: Not, okay, that makes a lot more sense to me. Okay. I think that was the only major question I had on your.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you. I want to thank you for leading on that, because that was one of my questions too. We maybe we can think through that some more about the best way to convey that.
Commissioner Mohamed: Well, I don’t have any questions. I wanted to thank you all for the detailed presentation and also the presentation that you guys recently provided us in committee. And just honor the hard work that goes into this. I think the breakdown of just the amount of engagement that’s happening, especially during a cyber attack, that you all were able to still meet with folks, speaks volume to what you all, the impact and what you all are doing. And then I just also wanted to underscore and say that I appreciate that the prompt payment is going to be included in the revised version of the resolution. And so I’m looking forward to that coming forward, because I feel like whenever I am talking to a lot of our WIMBY businesses, that is what I’m consistently hearing is them wanting to see us make some changes around prompt payment and that having a great impact for them if we made sure that we paid them more on time and not just relying, paying them on time as in the subcontractors as well. And so whatever we can do in our power to make that happen, I’m looking forward to your recommendations on that and seeing how do we implement it, how do we put resources behind it as commissioners. And so, yeah, I look forward to those recommendations coming forward. Thank you again.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you, Commissioner. I wanted to commend you all for this incredible body of work that you’ve been leading and thank you for bringing it to us in such a succinct presentation. I know how proud you are of this, and I know how proud we are of this. And you know, of all the thanks and recognitions that you give, Director Rice, I do want to say leadership certainly matters for vision and the drive and the execution of the work. And so I’d just like to take a moment to also recognize you. Thank you for everything that you’re doing and the phenomenal team that you have to show for this labor of love.
I just wanted to point out overall, you know, the climate in which we’re operating, there is progress, and I will talk about the progress. But I thought that pie chart was really important also for us to set the context of this conversation and why it’s important, right? Out of, we have $88 million or 87% of the overall spend still going to white male firms. And if you include 6% going to white women, that’s 93% of all those dollars still going to white-owned firms. And so you know, we’re operating in a climate where there are threats from the federal administration on diversity and contracting. We said in our last public meeting how important it is for us to maintain our commitment to diversity and contracting. But this is what proves that it’s the absence of these efforts that leads to discrimination, not the presence of them. So thank you for the work that you’re doing in anti-discrimination and bringing that into our practices that’s institutionalizing our work to create access to opportunities for people regardless of their race, regardless of their gender or their sex.
In 2024, it’s notable we did have record spend for WIMBYs, but I also temper, you know, we should celebrate that, and I’m very proud of that. That’s not on accident. And it does show that year-over-year, percentage-wise, it came down, but by hard numbers, it still went up. But we did fall short of our goal by 12 firms. And we talk about the why. And we’re not talking about, I didn’t hear you name causation specifically, but the why is important because that’s what we need to continue to work on. And there’s been a lot of stakeholdering that’s happened for people talking about all the different reasons why. So the last part of your presentation talking about what more we can do, what more we’re willing to do, is really exciting.
I want to thank all of you, and I want to thank strategic advisor VWin for your work in managing those stakeholdering meetings. You had four out of five commissioners who showed up.
VWin: Yes.
Commission President Hasegawa: Yes, including Commissioner Mohamed, Commissioner Cho, and Commissioner Caulkins. And I know Commissioner Felleman would have, he’s always there in spirit, but it’s really just a matter of capacity and quorum, truly. You have, I’d like to think, unanimous support from the commission in going forth and doing the work that you’re doing. And I would like to think that you have us in iterative consultation, right, as we set more audacious goals year by year to be able to see that on the back end as outcomes, right? We want outcomes. So all is to say is this has been a very heavy lift and one that you’ve all carried with a lot of care. So thank you very much for this presentation. Thank you for the work that you’re doing. I hope all of you are incredibly proud, as I know that we are, and we look forward to what you’re able to bring to us at the next presentation by way of an order.
Me and Rice: Great. Thank you, commissioners.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you. I think I’ve got one more question over here from commissioner.
Commissioner Cho: Sorry. I just remembered the other question I had in the middle of your presentation is, I know that our metrics have traditionally been around percentage spend and number of WIMBYs, you know. I think, Me and, you and I have had so many conversations around how that’s a very difficult balance, right? Do we prioritize number of firms we work with, or do we prioritize the percentage of our spend that we put, you know, give out the, or you could have lopsided results, right? But one thing that occurred to me during the presentation was, you’re going from, you know, a 15% goal interim to 16%. And I think as much as I admire and appreciate your willingness to do that, I feel like that’s not a fair metric for you guys, right? Because our percentage, our dollar spend fluctuates every year, true. And we talk about $5.3 billion over the next five years, but it’s not a billion dollars every year, right? It’s could be $3 billion next year and half a billion, you know, whatever. You know, it’s lumpy, right? And so to have this benchmark of 16%, you know, you could reach 16% next year, but then miss it the year after that because the dollar spend went up so much that you just couldn’t keep up with that spend. And so my question here is, why don’t we have a metric that is just a fixed dollar amount as opposed to a, why don’t we have a metric for you all that is a fixed dollar amount?
Me and Rice: We do.
Commissioner Cho: As opposed to it’s going to, we’re going to, we want to increase it from 400 to 500.
Me and Rice: They’re, they, no, that’s the number of firms. I’m talking about how much money we’re spending, right?
Commissioner Cho: That, but that’s my point. It’s a proportion of how much we’re spending that year. So if you’re spending a billion dollars and your goal is 15%, you have to somehow get $150 million out the door to WIMBYs. Yeah. Conversely, if the next year we spend $2 billion, you have to get $300 million to WIMBYs. So the goalpost is constantly moving because the amount of money we spend year to year changes. Yeah. So my question is, why don’t we have a goal for you that is a fixed dollar amount that escalates per year, as opposed to us continuing to move the goalpost, right, year to year based on what the port chooses to spend in that one year? What do you think about that?
Me and Rice: Short answer is that I like that thought process. Remember, we were, I think I get what you’re saying. The something we’ll have to, I’ll have a conversation with some of our teammates, but it sounds kind of cool. The just remember, the, you know, the whatever the goal is for from percentage perspective, we’re talking about over five years, we’re just trying to hit. So we hit the reset button irregardless of what the goal is. It’s a percentage of the budget dollars and also main dollars that we’re trying to do. But I definitely, I something I think we could look into for sure. Commissioner, I think that sounds kind of cool because, you know, you spent $124 million, was 13.3% according to your numbers, right?
Commissioner Cho: Yep. But that’s, that could have been a higher percentage if we spent less money, right? Do you understand what I’m saying?
Me and Rice: Oh, I get what you’re saying. Oh, absolutely. Like you could have hit the 15% if we spent maybe $20 million less that year, right? So, so my point being is like, let’s, let’s, let’s provide, let’s come up with a metric that is measures progress, right? As opposed to measuring fluctuation, right? Because that’s all at this point that’s what you’re doing. You’re just measuring the fluctuations as opposed to what the absolute progress is, right? I want to see you go from $124 million to $140 million to $150 million to $170 million, right? And that is like, when I go on the road and I talk to constituents, I can say like, we went from $124 to $150 million in 2 years or something like that, right? That for me is a far more meaningful metric than to go to, to say I went from 13 to 14%, right? Let’s give ourselves a pat on the back for 1%.
Me and Rice: But we do give dollars though at…
Commissioner Cho: No, absolutely. Yeah, we do. All right. Yeah. No, I hear what you’re saying. I love it.
Commission President Hasegawa: So I’d like to turn to executive director Metrick as well.
Executive Director Metrick: Yeah, thanks. And we’ll talk with Director Rice and his team. We collect all that information, so we can show it different ways. But you want us to lead with that, and we can take that back to consider that to see what that means.
Commissioner Cho: Yeah, I just, you know, I just don’t want to set them up for failure.
Executive Director Metrick: Oh, no.
Commissioner Cho: If we’re spending X amount of dollars in the next three years that, or the next 5 years, I understand completely. That’s not going to, it’s a point well taken.
Commission President Hasegawa: Well, you know, what I recall what we articulated in the past from the dais is that anticipating an unprecedented number of spend in CIPs, we wanted to tie progress so that it was congruent with growth in spend. So, you know, there’s fluctuation, we should be flexible.
Commissioner Cho: Yep.
Commission President Hasegawa: It’s like looking at anything. If you have a large percentage of a smaller number or a smaller percentage of a larger number, I think that’s your point, commissioner.
Commissioner Cho: Yep. Yeah. Absolutely.
Commission President Hasegawa: Do I have any other questions or comments from my colleagues? Seeing none, I will thank and dismiss the panel. Thank you very much for the presentation.
Me and Rice: Thank you, commissioners. Appreciate it.
Commission President Hasegawa: Absolutely.
Closing
Commission President Hasegawa: All right. Well, folks, that’s bringing us to the end of our business meeting agenda today. I am wondering, do we have any closing comments, motions, or referrals to committee before we adjourn?
Commissioner Felleman: I just had the honor of saying a few words at Dan Thomas’s retirement party for the commission. And, you know, he’s like, we now, Stephanie Jones Stevens now will be the longest standing member. In my short tenure here, we’ve lost almost this huge brain drain of the ELT. Now we have very smart people that are coming back in, but it’s extraordinary. And each one of these times I go to these meetings, you have these incredibly dedicated people at 30 plus years. It’s quite extraordinary. And then you have a guy like Louise sitting in the room. He can’t get enough of it. I mean, I just love the fact that even our retirees are coming back for more. And I just think it’s a great reflection of the spirit of the folks that work here, and I thank you for the leadership to make that possible.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you, Commissioner. Executive Director Metrick, do you have any closing comments for us today?
Executive Director Metrick: Thanks, Commissioners. No, I don’t. Thanks for the really in-depth, a lot of presentation, a lot of information. I thank you for your attention today on this.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you all very much. Well, hearing no further comments and having no further business before us, the time is 3:23 and we are adjourned.# Port of Seattle Commission Meeting Transcript May 27, 2025
Opening and Roll Call
Commission President Hasegawa: This is Commission President Toshko Hasegawa convening the regular meeting of May 27th, 2025. The time is 10:30 a.m. We’re meeting in person today at the SEA Conference Center and virtually on Microsoft Teams. Present with me today are Commissioners Caulkins, Cho, Felleman, and Mohamed who are currently gathered in executive session awaiting the opening of the public meeting. We will now recess into executive session to discuss two items regarding litigation or potential litigation or legal risk per RCW 42.30.1101(i), with one of these items also regarding national security per RCW 42.30.1101(A)(I) for approximately 60 minutes. We’ll reconvene in a public session at 12:00 p.m. Thank you. We are in recess.
[Meeting reconvenes]
Commission President Hasegawa: This is Commission President Toshko Hasegawa reconvening the regular meeting of May 27th, 2025. The time is 12:03 p.m. and we’re meeting in person today at the SEA conference center as well as virtually on Microsoft Teams. Clerk Hart, please call the roll of all commissioners in attendance.
Clerk Hart: Thank you. Beginning with Commissioner Caulkins.
Commissioner Caulkins: Here.
Clerk Hart: Thank you. Commissioner Cho?
Commissioner Cho: Present.
Clerk Hart: Thank you. Commissioner Felleman?
Commissioner Felleman: Present.
Clerk Hart: Thank you. Commissioner Hasegawa?
Commission President Hasegawa: Present.
Clerk Hart: Thank you. And Commissioner Mohamed, I know is en route. She’s online. Commissioner Mohamed?
Commissioner Mohamed: I’m online, I’m here.
Clerk Hart: Thank you. We do have a quorum established.
Housekeeping and Procedures
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you very much, Clerk Hart. A few housekeeping items before we begin. For everyone in the meeting room, please turn your cell phones to silent. And anyone participating on Microsoft Teams, please mute your speakers when not actively speaking or presenting. Please keep your cameras off unless you’re a commissioner or a member of staff participating virtually and are actively addressing the commission. Members of the public addressing the commission during public comment may turn on their cameras when your name’s called to speak and you’ll turn them back off again at the conclusion of remarks. For anyone at the dais, please turn off computer speakers and silence your devices. Please also remember to address your request to speak through the chair and wait to speak until you’ve been recognized. You’ll turn your microphones on and off as needed. All the items noted here will ensure a smoother meeting. Thank you.
All votes today will be taken by the roll call method or by general consent so it’s clear for anyone participating virtually how votes are cast. Commissioners will say aye or nay when your name’s called.
I’d like to open with an acknowledgment that we’re meeting on the ancestral lands and waters of the Coast Salish peoples with whom we share a commitment to steward these natural resources for future generations.
This meeting is being digitally recorded and may be viewed or heard at any time on the port’s website and may be rebroadcast by King County Television.
Now please stand or join us for the pledge of allegiance.
All: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Agenda Approval
Commission President Hasegawa: The first item of business today is approval of the agenda. As a reminder, if a commissioner wishes to make a general comment for or against an item on the consent agenda, it’s not necessary to pull the item from the consent agenda. Rather, a commissioner may offer general supporting or opposing comments later in this meeting once we get to that part of the agenda. However, it is appropriate at this time if a commissioner wants to ask questions of staff or wishes to have a dialogue on a consent agenda item to request the item be pulled for a separate discussion.
With that, to my colleagues, are there any items to be pulled from the consent agenda or any motions to rearrange orders of the day?
Seeing none, commissioners, the question is now on the approval of the agenda. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented?
Commissioner Cho: So moved.
Commissioner Caulkins: Second.
Commission President Hasegawa: The motion’s been made by Commissioner Cho and seconded by Commissioner Caulkins. Is there any objection to approval of the agenda as presented? Hearing none, the agenda is approved.
Executive Director’s Report
Commission President Hasegawa: Next on our agenda is the executive director’s report. Executive Director Metrick, you have the floor.
Executive Director Metrick: Thank you President Hasegawa. Good afternoon commissioners. I’d like to begin with noting that yesterday our nation recognized Memorial Day. Memorial Day was established as a federal holiday to remember and honor the men and women who died while serving in United States Armed Services. Their sacrifice shall never be forgotten. Our organization deeply values public service at all levels. My hope is that everyone took time yesterday to pause, reflect and remember those in the armed services that made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our nation and remembered the loved ones and friends that those service members left behind. Our port employs a large number of military members and I want to express my gratitude to all of the port staff who have worn the cloth of our nation and their willingness to put themselves in harm’s way in service of our country.
Commissioners, moving on to port specific events. Commissioners, it was supposed to be the warmest day of the year so far today and that means a busy summer travel season at SEA is ramping up. Initial reports indicate this holiday weekend travel period may have been one for the record books, but just barely. Passenger volume for the period Wednesday through Sunday hit 970,000 travelers, 3% higher than the holiday period last year. I want to thank all of our employees who kept the airport operating safely and efficiently during this busy travel period. We look forward to the opening of the new checkpoint one adjacent to Gina Marie Hall next month to increase our customer screening throughput, and you can see the finishing touches going into that as we meet today.
Last Wednesday, I also want to note that SEA was thrilled to celebrate the return of its former longest serving international travel airline partner Scandinavian Airlines with the inaugural flight to Copenhagen, Denmark. For decades SAS served SEA in the Pacific Northwest starting in the 1960s. SAS will fly Airbus A350s to Copenhagen five times a week. And this is now the third Nordic capital city directly accessible from SEA. In addition, SEA joined the Sky Team Airline Alliance last year allowing easier connections on Delta airline flights. So travelers at SEA now have 57 service options to 35 international destinations on 29 different airlines.
Moving to maritime, tariffs continue to be a main cause of uncertainty for our economy. The landscape changes almost daily. On the maritime shipping side, the Northwest Seaport Alliance reports that for the week of May 5th to May 9th, international imports slowed significantly, 30% lower compared to the previous week. International imports are down almost 23% compared to our weekly average for the year. This week of May 9th also reflected the first void trip for one of the largest NWSA service calls that reduced their service from weekly to bi-weekly service. Vessels are now calling our gateway had left China or other Asian ports two to four weeks ago when tariffs were at their highest. We expect this downward trend to continue for the next few weeks as vessels that were loaded and departed after the April 9th announcements reach our gateway. So I appreciate our local leaders that they understand the impacts of the tariffs on Washington jobs and industries. Last week Governor Bob Ferguson was joined by Commissioner Caulkins and Port of Tacoma Commissioner John McCarthy in their capacity as Northwest Seaport Alliance managing members along with NWSA CEO John Wolf at Terminal 46 to highlight those impacts.
In other maritime highlights, I have a few milestones to highlight before we move to today’s commission meeting. In cruise, Royal Caribbean Anthem of the Seas made her maiden call to Seattle this month and we’re looking forward to welcoming three new vessels in the coming weeks: Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth, Oceania Riviera, and the Viking Odyssey.
In sustainable news, Fisherman’s Terminal was recertified by the Clean Marina certified operation. And I’d like to note that net recycling day at Terminal 91 is tomorrow. And this is a collective effort from the at-sea processors association that includes American Seafoods, Arctic Storm, Coastal Villages, the Glacial Fish Company, and Trident Seafoods to collect used nets and prevent that plastic from going into the oceans.
Commissioner: Did you mean to say bipartisan?
Executive Director Metrick: Did I say bipartisan? Yeah, it’s collective, right? A collective. It’s a… Well, I said at-sea processors association, so I don’t know. Anyway, so thanks Commissioner.
Moving to today’s commission meeting, I’d like to highlight a few items on our consent agenda today. We have an item for our workforce development team that was taken out of our executive directive delegations. Item 8E creates a new aviation security training pathway. This is a win-win for the port and the other employers at SEA and near-port communities interested in starting and growing their career in security as we continue to evolve our workforce development strategies. Strategies like these, we will keep an eye out for the jobs of the future and find more ways to benefit our communities while we grow the port.
Also on our consent agenda is an authorization related to our South Concourse Evolution Project which you received a briefing on at our last commission meeting. This request is to fund facilitating projects in the base building design. We anticipate an additional construction authorization request to come to commission at the end of this year. And as we mentioned at the last meeting, we are continuing our efforts to reduce the cost of the project.
For presentations and staff reports, you will receive briefings from workforce development, the SEA stakeholder advisory roundtable, and our diversity and contracting program.
Finally, I’d like to note that last week was our accounts payable appreciation week. You may have noticed that on our consent agenda today our payments for claims and obligations for the months of January, February, and March. Our talented and award-winning accounting and financial reporting team has been hard at work reconciling our books since being months behind due to impacts from our cyber incident last year. This hardworking team had to resort to manual and labor intensive methods to make sure payments went out and standards were adhered to. So we deeply appreciate their work and their commitment to excellence during this time period and every day. So I want to give a shout out to our accounts payable team.
Commissioners, this concludes my remarks.
Commission President Hasegawa: Does anybody have any questions for executive director Metrick? Seeing none, that brings us to committee reports.
Committee Reports
Strategic Advisor Francis Cho: Thank you very much. Good afternoon Madam President, commissioners, and executive director Metrick. My name is Francis Cho, commission strategic advisor, and I am providing the committee report today on behalf of my colleague Erica Chung.
There are five committee reports for today. On Friday, May 16th, commissioners Caulkins and Felleman participated in the port-wide arts and culture board committee where they discussed the vacancy of a public board member but were unable to reach a decision at this meeting. The committee also received an update from the Lumiere group regarding its strategic plan.
On May 20th, Commission President Hasegawa and Commissioner Mohamed convened the airport workforce conditions ad hoc committee where staff briefed commissioners on labor unions’ request for airport badging to access the secure area for purpose of communication and meetings. And later today an order will be introduced for committee action directing the executive director to evaluate issuing airport badges to union representatives for the purpose of supporting representative employees.
On May 20th, commissioners Cho and Felleman convened the aviation committee. Commissioners heard that the startup of the SEA moves transit management association is proceeding on track and mostly on schedule with travel demand modeling for different scenarios. Commissioners also received a preview of the port’s preparation for the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2025 Club World Cup.
On May 20th, the Equity and Workforce Development Committee met with Commissioners Hasegawa and Mohamed in attendance. There were two briefing items: the WIMBY annual report and updated diversity and contracting goals.
On May 23rd, Commissioners Cho and Caulkins convened the sustainability, environment and climate committee where commissioners received an update of the maritime climate and air action plan accomplishments and challenges in 2024 and strategies for 2025.
This concludes my report.
Public Comment
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you very much. And now we’ll continue in our agenda to the public comment portion of our meeting. The port commission welcomes public comment as an important part of the public process. Comments are received and considered by the commission in its deliberations. Before we take public comment, let’s review our rules for in-person and virtual public comment. And clerk Hart, would you please play the recorded rules?
Clerk Hart: Thank you.
[Recorded rules played – standard public comment procedures including 2-minute time limits, appropriate topics, and behavioral expectations]
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you very much. And clerk Hart, would you mind getting us through those who have signed up in advance starting with those who are in person?
Clerk Hart: Thank you Madam Commission President. Just one moment here to get our timer pulled up. Please note for the record that Commissioner Mohamed has joined us in person.
Our first speaker today, madam commission president, members of the commission, we have no signups from the room so I will go to the virtual list. Our first speaker is Hachi. Hachi, are you able to hear me and unmute your microphone? Okay, we’ll move on to Carla Butler. Carla, please go ahead and restate your name for the record and your topic related to the conduct of port business or the agenda item that you wish to speak to.
Carla Butler: Hello everyone. My name is Carla Butler and I am speaking on behalf of the Port of Seattle diversity in contracting team.
Clerk Hart: Thank you. Please begin.
Carla Butler: Okay. So I have a company, a document control company, and I went through the port of Seattle PortGen business course that helps small businesses get work with the port of Seattle and also help us grow our business. It was a wonderful experience. The Port of Seattle diversity contracting team was so supportive and I came away from that course with so many friends and contacts. It really did change my life. I really feel more empowered with my business and it also gave me some great contacts with the Port of Seattle. I’ve wanted to work with the Port of Seattle for a very long time. And I appreciate all the work they did in giving us a voice and also helping us find work and growing our businesses and I am internally very grateful to them and they do such wonderful work and wow, I finished on time.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you very much. Shall we move to our next speaker?
Clerk Hart: Thank you. Our next speaker is Veni Rama Krishnan. And Veni, go ahead and please restate your name for the record and your agenda item or topic related to the conduct of port business please.
Veni Rama Krishnan: Thank you. My name is Veni Ramakrishnan. I’ll be giving a comment about the port’s diversity in contracting. Thank you. My name is Veni Ramakrishnan. I am the director of Sigma Consultants Group, a certified minority owned business with offices in Seattle and Portland. We provide information technology consulting services to public sector agencies including state of Washington, Portland airport and city of Portland to mention a few. I came to the United States 30 years ago and worked for Fortune 500 companies like Nike and Kaiser. Inspired by the American dream, I founded my own company to train, mentor and provide opportunities to others just like the ones I have received. Our mission is not just to deliver IT solutions but to help diverse talent thrive in technology. The port’s diversity in contracting program has been instrumental in our growth. We had the privilege of participating in Port’s business accelerator program where I was matched with Matt Breit, Chief Information Officer of Port of Seattle, an extraordinary mentor who has been guiding me for the past 3 years. This is the first time I ever had a mentor and the impact has been transformative for me and my company. Thank you to me and Rice, Emily Ho and the port small business team for creating this meaningful connections. Supporting a small diverse business is not just about equity. It is a smart economic policy. I deeply appreciate the port’s continued commitment to diversity and inclusion. They are investments in capable, innovative business like mine. Thank you for believing in the potential of small diverse teams. Thank you for this opportunity.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you.
Clerk Hart: Our next speaker is David Goel. David, please go ahead and restate your name for the record and your agenda item or topic related to the conduct of port business please.
David Goel: Yeah, my name is David Goel, the president of Vashon Fair Skies, a 501c3 founded in the wake of NextGen implementation over Vashon Island. Today I’m speaking to item 11B, the CATAC stakeholder advisory roundtable annual report.
Clerk Hart: Please go ahead.
David Goel: Okay. You will receive a rosy presentation today of START. However, due to foundational and deliberate shortcomings, it is not able to even consider a large amount and I would say plurality of the expressed community environmental frustration with SEA, namely over the noise. I personally attended in the capacity allowed for the public every single START meeting from its inception in February 2018 until the start of COVID. Unfortunately we are still in COVID or so appear as the START steering committee refuses to allow either an in-person or hybrid meeting format such as you’re using today very effectively with Teams. I’ve always liked how you’ve done that post-COVID. This is especially ironic as START only allows official members from the immediate surrounding cities, they call almost in walking distance of the airport, and yet they refuse to do any in-person or hybrid options for START. To make matters worse, they changed their remote meeting technology from normal Zoom meetings to what’s called webinar panelist mode which makes members of the public invisible to each other and to the official members. It’s like you’re just watching it on TV except you have to go through all these hoops to even get the link to it through several steps. And then the meeting is not recorded. So you literally have to be there for when it’s happening and then you can only watch it live. Vashon Island’s repeated efforts to gain membership in some form to START have been repeatedly rebuffed over the years. According to a steering committee meeting report, the principal opposition was due to Vashon not being a city. We are unincorporated King County. We were able to work with our King County council member Teresa Mosqueda to try and convince START that King County could be our city effectively. This would also help other unincorporated areas impacted by the airport like White Center. However, like Lucy with the football, when we met that hurdle of having a quote unquote city or at least government representation, just more excuses were made. As an aside, commission, council member Mosqueda is often very helpful if you’re listening. Thank you very much. I would say community outrage as measured by data driven, measured by complaints really needs to be taken into account in terms of selecting who’s going to be on START. Otherwise what you’ve got is just a pumpkin roundtable that you go through all the motions but doesn’t reflect the actual data driven expressed community outrage that the port has that data and I really hope that they will consider making changes in the future. Thank you.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you David.
Clerk Hart: Our next speaker is Katie Garrow. Katie, please go ahead and repeat your name for the record and your agenda item or topic related to the conduct of port business. [No response] And we’ll go ahead and call Katie again here in a moment. Moving to Shaunie Wheeler. Shaunie, are you on the line? [No response]
Okay. And we’ll go back and move to our first speaker who was Hachi. [No response]
One moment Madam Commission President. I believe that’s all we have for our speakers today.
Commission President Hasegawa: Madam Commission President, great. Thank you very much. Is there anybody else who did not sign up in advance that is here with us either in person or virtually who would like to address the commission? Seeing none, we will move forward in our agenda.
Clerk, could you give us a synopsis of any written comments that we received?
Clerk Hart: Yes. Thank you Madam Commission President, members of the commission, executive director Metrick. We’ve received three written comments for the meeting today. The first comes from Alex Rouada, president of Rouada Architects. Alex states that they have been doing work with the Port of Seattle since 2010 and have successfully completed over 65 projects. He notes that it is in part because of their relationship with the port diversity and contracting that they have survived the downtimes of the economy and the pandemic. Alex states he has attended countless diversity and contracting sponsored workshops and networking sessions, learning about new project opportunities, meeting other small business owners and meeting representatives of large firms looking for small businesses to partner with. He notes that some of these companies are now their partners on projects with the Port of Seattle and other clients. They are continually mentoring other small A&E firms on how to work with SEA. And he believes that getting a foot in the door 25 years ago to show they can do the work would not have been possible without the support, guidance and encouragement of diversity and contracting.
Our next written comment comes from Kaylee Robertson who writes to urge the port to take immediate action to reduce the harms caused by Seattle’s cruise sector and to reduce the number of cruise sailings.
And then our final written comment comes from Marcus Colola, co-founder and CEO of Apex Electrical Group who writes to say that the port’s diversity and contracting program has provided invaluable opportunities for businesses like his. And he urges the commission to continue enhancing the diversity and contracting program with policies that ensure early payments, transparent procurement access and innovative approaches to supporting small businesses. And that concludes our written comments received today.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you very much. Seeing that there is no further testimony, we’re going to move forward. And Madam Commission President, I do believe we have someone who has joined us virtually for public comment. Do we want to go back and take that?
Clerk Hart: Oh very good. Yes. Okay. Who is it that’s joined us online?
Clerk Hart: I believe that’s Shaunie Wheeler. Welcome Shaunie. You have two minutes to provide public comment. And hold on just a moment, I’ve got to get that back up again here. And Shaunie, if you can hear me, please go ahead and repeat your name for the record and your agenda item or topic related to the conduct of port business please. Shaunie, are you available? [No response]
Okay. Just looking to tech to make sure that everything’s good on our end. Yeah, our tech is okay. Very good. Okay. So let’s move forward to the consent agenda.
Consent Agenda
Commission President Hasegawa: Items of the consent agenda are considered routine and will be adopted by one motion. Items removed from the consent agenda will be considered separately immediately after adoption of the remaining consent agenda items. Commissioners, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda covering items 8A through F?
Commissioner Mohamed: So moved.
Commissioner Felleman: Second.
Commission President Hasegawa: The motion’s been made by Commissioner Mohamed and seconded by Commissioner Felleman. Commissioners, please say aye or nay when your names called for approval of the consent agenda. For approval of consent agenda, beginning with Commissioner Caulkins.
Commissioner Caulkins: Aye.
Clerk Hart: Thank you. Commissioner Cho?
Commissioner Cho: Aye.
Clerk Hart: Thank you. Commissioner Felleman?
Commissioner Felleman: Aye.
Clerk Hart: Thank you. Commissioner Mohamed?
Commissioner Mohamed: Aye.
Clerk Hart: Thank you. And Commissioner Hasegawa?
Commission President Hasegawa: Aye.
Clerk Hart: Thank you. Five ayes, zero nays for this item.
New Business
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you very much. And that moves us to the new business section of our agenda. We have one new business item for today. Clerk Hart, please read it into the record and executive director Metrick will introduce it.
Clerk Hart: Thank you Madam Commission President. I just wanted to note for any of our public commenters that were trying to comment virtually who were not able to connect that if they wish to submit written comments to our office that we can take those and distribute them to commissioners and they will become a part of this meeting’s record. And then also commission chief of staff Pritchard will be introducing this item. So this is agenda item 10A: commission adoption of order number 2025-07, an order to direct the executive director to evaluate issuing airport SIDA badges to union representatives for the purpose of supporting represented employees.
Chief of Staff Aaron Pritchard: Good afternoon commissioners and executive director. My name is Aaron Pritchard, chief of staff for the Port of Seattle Commission. The purpose of this order and I will read this so the public is aware where we are and I’ll just move directly through the order. It’s to direct the executive director to evaluate issuing SIDA badges, which are some of our security badges we issue at the port, to union representatives for the purpose of meeting with represented employees and administering collective bargaining agreements on the sterile side of security. This order directs the executive director to conduct the necessary legal, operational and security analysis regarding port-issued SIDA badges for union representatives and to return to the commission with recommendations. There are four primary areas that the commission is directing the executive director. First is to conduct research and legal review. Second is to assess the operational needs and security requirements. Third is to engage specific stakeholders. And fourth is to report to the commission by August 30th, 2025 on their progress. That concludes my presentation on this item. Back to you Commission President.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you very much. So at this point to my colleagues, I will see if you have any questions or comments for staff.
Commissioner Mohamed: Yeah. Well first of all, I want to thank Commission President Hasegawa for bringing this order forward and I was able to review it as part of the ad hoc committee on workforce development workers conditions and I’m looking forward to supporting this order today. And for me, let me just say I think this is being done in a very thoughtful way. We’re allowing time for staff to evaluate, to provide the legal analysis necessary for the whole commission to be able to make a decision. So I’m looking forward to the report that will be coming to the commission on August 30th. And to the union members, folks who work at the airport who brought this forward to us, I just want to say thank you for doing that. I believe it is in the public interest for us to be able to make the airport available to SeaTac workers including those who represent unions. So I’m looking forward to the report and for us to be able to make decisions based off of that. Thank you for the time.
Commissioner Cho: Yeah, I want to echo those sentiments first. Obviously we’ve been having this conversation for a very long time and I know our friends in the labor community have been really waiting a long time for us to make moves on this. But as Commissioner Mohamed alluded to, we need to make sure that whatever we do is within compliance of the federal regulations and any rules that TSA or other federal agencies might have around providing badges. And so I do appreciate the leadership of both my colleagues at the dais, Commissioner Hasegawa and Commissioner Mohamed for their work. And I too am looking forward to seeing the recommendations and the results of this study come end of the summer to see what actions we can take to provide those who are seeking this benefit. Thanks.
Commissioner Felleman: I just want to lend my support to the effort and acknowledge the fact that Labor’s been asking for a direct answer on this and so we owe it to you and I appreciate we’re doing this in a methodical manner. Thank you.
Commission President Hasegawa: Just looking to Commissioner Caulkins to see if there’s anything he’d like to say or ask about the badging order. Okay. I just wanted to acknowledge the folks who have been involved in getting it to this juncture. First and foremost our stakeholders in labor who have been there to answer the questions that we may have, the folks on our aviation security team, our executive leadership team, all the members of the committee who’ve been getting this to the point where we can consider it for action today. This effectively directs the executive director to work with labor, legal and security teams to evaluate what access should look like and to bring back a draft policy recommendation to us as a commission by the end of Q2. So we look forward to taking it up in committee and seeing what happens next. And with that I can look to my colleagues for a motion.
Commissioner Mohamed: So moved.
Commissioner Felleman: Second.
Commission President Hasegawa: The motion’s been made by Commissioner Mohamed and seconded by Commissioner Felleman. Commissioners, are there any additional questions, comments or debate on this item? Seeing none, clerk Hart, you may call the roll.
Clerk Hart: Thank you. Beginning with Commissioner Mohamed.
Commissioner Mohamed: Aye.
Clerk Hart: Thank you. Commissioner Hasegawa?
Commission President Hasegawa: Aye.
Clerk Hart: Thank you. Commissioner Cho?
Commissioner Cho: Aye.
Clerk Hart: Thank you. Commissioner Caulkins?
Commissioner Caulkins: Aye.
Clerk Hart: Sorry that was a little out of order. Commissioner Felleman?
Commissioner Felleman: Aye.
Clerk Hart: Thank you commissioner. That’s five ayes, zero nays for this item and the motion carries unanimously.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you. I was trying to get sponsors first. Thank you. Thank you very much. That moves us swiftly forward to presentations and staff reports and clerk Hart, you can read the next item into the record. Executive director Metrick will introduce it.
Workforce Development Annual Report
Clerk Hart: Thank you. This is agenda item 11A: workforce development annual report.
Executive Director Metrick: Commissioners, port related industries face growing workforce challenges including staff shortages, an aging labor force, and limited awareness of career pathways. In response, our workforce development team prioritizes communities historically excluded from these opportunities and make strategic investments across maritime, construction, aviation, and green jobs. Anna Pavlik, the port’s workforce development director, recently celebrated her one-year anniversary since taking the helm of the workforce development team and will share more about our progress over the last year. Our presenters this afternoon are Anna Pavlik, director of workforce development; Germay Worku, Port of Seattle Air Force Operation Specialist; and Christina Vandermir, pile driver apprentice with Washington State United Brotherhood of Carpenters.
Anna Pavlik: Thank you esteemed commissioners and executive director Metrick. All right, so I’m going to be sharing a lot with you today about our 2024 accomplishments in workforce development and some of our plans ahead. I’m going to move quickly because I’d love for you to hear from the folks who are actually building and operating our port. So I’ll pass it to you when it’s your turn. All right. Thank you.
In workforce development, housed within the office of equity, diversity, inclusion, we have a small but mighty team focused on the three sectors you see on the slide. In maritime we have Robert Brown III who comes to us with lots of employer engagement experience from Washington Maritime Blue. Aviation, Leslie Horton, working with youth in her past and also a lot of employment services. And construction, Carl Hugley, with experience as a recruiting manager in the US Army bringing folks into non-traditional trades. So Robert and Carl are here with me today. I’d love for them to wave their hands because their work is really what’s sitting at this table and all of the accomplishments I’ll share with you today. And we also have Crystal Dome who is our fearless contract and budget specialist. And a special shout out to our senior director BK Deesar for leading us in all of this important work.
So we see green jobs as scattered throughout those three sectors, not as a particular industry itself. Most green jobs are existing occupations like the one you’ll hear about today from Christina as a pile driver apprentice. We’re also looking at jobs of the future. So as we’re doing our strategic planning for the remainder of the year, you’ll be hearing us think through and we’ll be looking for your leadership as well and how we define jobs of the future and green jobs.
We’re grounded in our commitment through the Century agenda to advance regional workforce development in port related industries by providing equitable access to quality careers. And I think it’s important to say that upfront because as we continue to live out our values as a port that remains front and center to our work and workforce development, ensuring that near port communities, those who have been excluded, gain access.
Since 2019, we’ve seen a little under $17 million in port resources invested in workforce development with over 1,200 people trained in high demand, living wage careers like the pre-apprenticeships we fund, which again you’ll hear about from Christina, and over 3,000 people trained in job readiness and career advancement opportunities, mostly here at the airport through port jobs which Germay will be speaking to, and then over 8,500 people since 2019 placed into employment, mostly here at the airport. And we could not have done this alone in the office of equity, diversity, inclusion without incredibly strong partnerships across the port departments and all the amazing folks who make it happen. And we’re going to give you a few examples of those partnerships of shared vision, shared success.
The first example is in maritime. So under your leadership and your vision, the port seeded Maritime High School right here several years ago. I know we’re all looking forward to that first graduating class here in a few weeks. But this year, Port of Seattle through our talent connections team and HR was able to hire 10 Maritime High School interns to come here and work for the port. And they took on an issue that’s been challenging for us to figure out how to solve. We want to provide career awareness opportunities for young people across our county. We’d love for them to come tour all of our facilities and marine maintenance in particular has been stretched thin. They’ve offered many tours. They’ll continue to do it but wanted to be able to do more. So they partnered with the Maritime High School interns. The interns developed videos. You may have seen some of them on LinkedIn or our websites to highlight a number of occupations in marine maintenance. And so they also developed a game and some curriculum that’s being finalized and we’re sharing it throughout the region with schools.
But in workforce development, our team was already in partnership with the Washington Alliance for Better Schools to develop curriculum for after-school programming that educators and community members could provide to elementary school and middle school students to incorporate port related occupations into that after-school programming. So we’ve shared those videos with the Washington Alliance for Better Schools. They’ll be implementing them throughout the state and also sharing them with parents and other caregivers of these young people so they can learn about port related careers as well. So there’s an example of leveraging all of our shared work to a greater impact.
So now I’m going to speak to 2024. This slide showcases that of our 2024 investments in workforce development, the majority served near-port communities. The darker the color of the zip code, the more folks served with our investments in workforce development. And you can see there the top five zip codes of folks served. 78% of those served with the investments live in low equity communities in King County.
Also in 2024, we made similar levels of investments. I do want to note that we saw a decrease in the number of job placements in ’24 and job trainings. And so why is that? I think there’s a number of factors. One being just sort of the regional shift in hiring when we came out of COVID. ’22 and you saw that big ramp up in hiring in ’23. I’m not an economist but I can say by looking at regional economic data that there has been a cooling off of hiring in 2024, especially towards the end of the year. We saw that at SEA. We’ve seen it in construction. Construction lost over 5,000 jobs in the Seattle metro area between February of ’24 to ’25. So there’s been a regional cooling and it also is in regards to when you have such a huge spike from ’22 to ’23 and hiring, eventually folks stay in their positions and you’re going to level off. That said, we have a number of plans underway for how we continue to have greater impact in our communities with these investments. I would also note that at SEA in particular, the cyber attack and a few construction closures had a small impact on hiring as well.
So what are our plans underway to have continued impact in our communities with these workforce investments? Well, we need to continue doing a lot of what we already do, which is strong partnerships internally with other public agencies, with our community partners. We’ve done so much to offer such a breadth of workforce development services from folks just learning about career occupations, port occupations, to supporting folks in advancement. And we’ve seen such a great outcome in terms of serving those who’ve been structurally excluded, not to mention all the upskilling work happening here at the airport which I’ll speak to in a minute.
But there’s lots of ways we can grow. So we’re doing some work internally to strengthen our own house in partnership with central procurement office, internal audit. I’ll speak to that in a minute. But what you’re going to hear the most about in the rest of this presentation is using our strategic investments to provide more tailored services to individuals, partnering more with employers so that they’re at the table in the planning phase to ensure we’re training folks to meet their employment demand, and then also again planning for jobs of the future. Last but definitely not least, really needing to focus even more on the commitments we’ve already made in the Duwamish Valley with priority hire with our Muckleshoot and Suquamish partners.
So to dive into a few of those strategies moving forward in more detail, we see in terms of our own investments that we can have greater community outcomes with better clarity for our partners, more technical assistance for our community partners, the nonprofits that provide most of these services, increased program oversight in a strength-based, community-informed way, and then also more efficient contract management. So we’re again working with central procurement office and internal audit on those strategies and I would just say we’re as strong in our investments as we are in our procurement team. So as you’re entering budget season thinking about resources, our friends in central procurement office I know could use some more support.
So before I go into each of the sectors that we’re making investments in, I’m going to turn it over to Germay Worku to share a little bit about his story.
Germay Worku: Thank you Anna. Thank you commissioners and my name is Germay and I’m happy to be here today to share my story with you and I’m currently working at the port of Seattle as an airfield operation specialist. But my journey started at the airport as a wheelchair attendant. For that moment I know I can be more than that, just pushing wheelchairs. But I’m grateful. Thank you for the port of Seattle for your leadership and the port jobs. The opportunity to open here at the airport with Highline Community College and Green River College to get access to learn here at airport university here. So I was one of the students over there and taking many classes. I took criminal justice classes, hospitality tourism management, customer service, computer science classes. And then last summer 2018 I graduated with Highline Community College with Airport University with criminal justice and hospitality tourism management, dual associate degrees. That was my focus. But I didn’t stop commissioners. I also continue to learn to complete four short-term certificates with introduction to homeland security and aviation private security academy and I also completed with ASA with airport certified employee with airport operation AAA. So with that being said, I’m here today. Thank you for your support, for your leadership. Thank you for your help to build up this opportunity from here. We’re working here and now we’re learning at the same time. I really appreciate it.
Anna Pavlik: So Germay has grown his career at the airport now as a port of Seattle employee. I got to meet him at the bring your kids to work day and meet his oldest daughter who’s nine, oldest of four. So many, the next generation is ready to come to work. She looked ready.
So in aviation, Germay mentioned port jobs. They’re our longest standing partner as community investment that we’ve made here at the port. And this last year they placed 1,200 people and provided so many different opportunities for these kinds of career advancement training that Germay has taken. They also served 130 asylum seekers in this last year. South Seattle College, another partner, has continued their worker upskilling training through the aviation maintenance technician program and the brand new ground support equipment mechanic training which launched in 2024 with a really great completion rate for a pilot, 83%.
So you can see on this slide, I’m not going to go through all the details, but each dollar amount is the annual 2024 investment we made in those organizations.
So what’s next in aviation? We’re getting going with port jobs on the childcare navigator scope to support existing SEA employees with finding child care and they’re ramping up on that initiative. We have launched the taxi driver employment navigator work with international rescue committee. They’re also getting geared up to get that started and offering it at the 160th street rest stop for taxi drivers and off-site as well. And then thank you for your approval today in consent of the aviation security training pathway. We’ll get a solicitation out and find a really solid training provider to support us in building out that pathway.
In construction, you also have had such great leadership around the priority hire initiative. You’ll be hearing from our engineering partners later this year as they put their annual report together. But just a note here that after you developed this policy and we implemented the project labor agreement with setting expectations around contractors hiring apprentices and those who are pre-apprenticeship graduates, our office in OEDI funds pre-apprenticeship training and has resulted in 56 individuals that the port has funded in pre-apprenticeship landing on our Port of Seattle construction projects since 2019. We’d love for those numbers to grow much larger and so that’s one reason we invited Christina to come and speak to her experience. And we’re working with engineering on those strategies.
Christina Vandermir: Hi, my name is Christina Vandermir. I’m a second period apprentice in local 196 pile drivers union. I graduated the new trades rotation program in April of 2024. Before coming to a new, I was stuck at a dead-end job and barely being able to support my three children. Coming to the program helped pave the path towards a career that I can comfortably support my family on now. And aside from getting knowledge on how to use basic hand and power tools, one of the best tools I got from the program was when we visited the Liedel yard and learned how to hustle work as a carpenter. In addition to all of this, the new program also provided me with direct entry into the carpenters union. And after graduation, I was an active member in less than two months. After this, I then took everything I learned and applied it to my first job, that being with Liedel on a Seattle public school job. Once that project was completed, I continued to hustle more work, landing a port of Seattle job with Pacific Pile and Marine on Pier 66. From October of 2024 until March of this year, I strived to do my best with the company. On this job, I had the opportunity to learn how to drive pile, how to rig and signal a crane, and how to use a wide variety of different tools efficiently. Working a job with the port was an extremely beneficial experience as it widened my scope of knowledge in the field and also helped me gain the confidence in myself with being a brand new apprentice in the trades. Thank you for your time and I hope to be on more projects with the Port of Seattle in the future.
Anna Pavlik: Great. Thank you Christina. So we’ve made a number of investments in construction and new being one of our primary partners and also with urban league, PACT, the carpenters, the iron workers pre-apprenticeship programs and are looking forward to providing more tailored services and working more closely with employers through the new leadership development program. So we’ll be looking for Christina to join that once she’s got more experience as a pile driver apprentice. And that pilot cohort is currently underway with nine journey level workers and apprentices enrolled to prepare them for leadership opportunities, supervisory positions in construction.
Maritime, we started some new partnerships with the Sea Scouts and Core Plus Maritime. Sea Scouts had youth maritime career launch interns on the boat. Core plus Maritime is career connected learning in high schools. We’re looking to expand that with a number of partnerships including the Muckleshoot and the Puget Sound Skill Center. And then we’ll be finishing out this year the youth maritime career launch pilot and we’ll be coming back to you in the fall with recommendations for how to continue to build on that pilot, hopefully opening it up to adults, offering more training supports, really embedding the maritime investments with employer-driven opportunities for folks. And then last but not least, Maritime High School saw a 10% increase in enrollment in this last school year, which is exciting.
Green Jobs. Last but not least, we’ll be continuing our partnership with King County and City of Seattle with Coalition for Climate Careers. And we came to you not too long ago to talk about our Duwamish Valley Career Navigator program. So we are in the process of hiring a community partner to provide again more tailored services to Duwamish Valley residents so that they can follow that career path that best meets their needs, their interests, and also partners with employers to make sure that they land in career paths, not just jobs.
And so with that, we just want to thank all of our partners from 2024 and thank you all for again your leadership in making this all happen.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you very much for the presentation. That was excellent. It’s our turn to ask questions, make comments, colleagues.
Commissioner Mohamed: Yeah, thank you for the presentation. That was very detailed and both of your stories are inspiring and I’m glad to hear that the port has become a place for you to find career opportunities. Airport University, that is an organization I was pretty fascinated by when I learned that that happens here at the airport and so it’s great to hear those stories and all of the information you’ve provided. I have just a couple of questions. The port hired maritime high school interns. Was that an internship program that was dedicated for Maritime High School students or was that our regular internship program that those students applied into?
Anna Pavlik: I don’t want to speak on behalf of Talent Connections, but my understanding is they’ve held 10 slots for aviation high school students and 10 slots for the maritime high school students.
Commissioner Mohamed: That’s wonderful. I love those internship programs and want to see them expand. So I was just curious. And then the other thing that I wanted to say that I noted here was curriculum development. So did we develop those curriculums and passed it along to the Washington Alliance for Better Schools?
Anna Pavlik: We hired them to draft the curriculum based on input we gave them about occupations that are in demand in each of the three sectors including green jobs. So they are going to be piloting this summer and they’re going to come back and get additional input from Port of Seattle staff across the agency this summer.
Commissioner Mohamed: That’s amazing. And so then those who are funded through like the South King County Impact Fund or the Maritime Youth Career Launch, will they have access to that curriculum as well? Like a nonprofit organization?
Anna Pavlik: Sure. It’s going to be publicly available curriculum so anyone can use it. It’s geared towards elementary and middle school students, but you know, yeah, it could have application in other settings.
Commissioner Mohamed: I see, it’s geared to younger folks.
Anna Pavlik: Yeah. For the Washington Alliance for Better Schools, that curriculum is geared towards elementary middle school. We also have core plus maritime which is building out curriculum for junior and senior level high schoolers. And I can’t remember exactly what the age range was. I think it’s under… It’s definitely not 25 for the Maritime Youth Career Launch Program. I think it’s what is it, 18 to 24?
Staff member: Correct.
Commissioner Mohamed: I would love to see something like that incorporated into the Maritime Youth Career Launch Program. I know like a lot of the nonprofit organizations, they all design their own sort of curriculum and it’s not really super streamlined and some struggle with it because it’s just a new area of information for them. And so it’s great that there’s a model now that maybe they can replicate.
Anna Pavlik: Definitely.
Commissioner Mohamed: And then the my last question, the Duwamish Valley Navigator position, is that going to be through like an RFP process? If so, where can folks in the public who are interested in that find that information?
Anna Pavlik: It has already been solicited. We got the word out through all of our community networks back in just, what, in April. And so we did post it on our website about future opportunities and we made sure we connected with a lot of different community organizations to get the word out at the time. But if there’s more that we should be doing to make sure you all are in the loop about those solicitations, I’m happy to take extra steps that we may not have thought of.
Commissioner Mohamed: Yeah, I just love to amplify it and I’m sure even maybe folks who are listening would like that information. So thank you. The work that you’re doing is very much aligned with what I believe the port’s mission is, is spreading economic opportunity into community. And so I just really appreciate all the work that you all do.
Anna Pavlik: Thank you.
Commissioner Felleman: Thanks so much for the presentation and putting real faces to the work. Really hearing from you directly is fascinating and inspiring. So really appreciate that. I was thinking about green jobs. I think about that a lot. And the idea that I totally agree with, you know, some of the basic foundations. If you don’t, if you can’t be an electrician, you can’t do your solar cells. And so they’re foundational things. But I was then thinking about what are, and then you have the direct core for the kind of things that make me real happy. And then but the thing I was thinking about was like in like the Coast Guard has like an environmental program and they deal like with oil spill where and we have like Global Diving and Salvage right there in the harbor who I’ve spoken to in the past and they’ve shown a receptivity, at least during its previous ownership. I think it might have changed hands. But that’s a sort of a field where I know our executive director is rather familiar with and you know, the captains of the port are involved with a lot of stuff that’s relevant and it’s also another career pathway in the military of sort.
The other thing I wanted to know more about is, you know, I’ve always been very much interested in seeing how much more of our tribal youth we can engage in this process and I know Roxan and you have done a lot of work to outreach and I believe so has core plus. In fact, they have very active program with Muckleshoot all the way out there and we’re still trying to get and I think Suquamish and some potential, you did mention, and I think Commissioner Cho and I had offered to be able to write a letter to tribal leadership to make sure that they know that we’re making this outreach and because I know the outreach is occurring but I want to make sure that you know, teachers are busy and if the council says please make the time, that would help a lot versus saying another thing for me to do. So I still would like very much to at least be on record so let the council know when we do our annual meetings that these programs have been underway and let’s not take credit for the hard work you’re doing. You did mention something about a muckleshoot program with in collaboration, is it with Green River High School? What was that?
Anna Pavlik: So the Puget Sound Skill Center, their marine science program, if you’re familiar with that skill center, their marine science program has had a long-standing partnership with the Muckleshoot and we are working with Core Plus Maritime. It’s just in, you know, infancy stage of building out that partnership with the Puget Sound Skill Center so that they can offer STCW training, the curriculum that I mentioned to Commissioner Mohamed, and then partner ideally with the Muckleshoot to implement it in those schools as well. But it’s in the early stages. To your earlier point about a letter, we’re doing things now that I’m still fairly new, wanting to develop those relationships directly and figure out what are the best strategies that will work for all of us. And then I’m sure we can take you up on your offer for a letter.
Commissioner Felleman: Great. And just so folks know, STCW is safety on board boats and like you can’t get on board a boat unless you have STCW certification or fish boat or otherwise. So it is a foundational educational issue. So thank you for that work.
Commissioner Caulkins: Thank you so much Anna for the great presentation and also to hear your stories is really important for us to just understand what it means on a, you know, for individuals who are actually doing these things and how successful it can be, which a lot of that is attributable to your grit. So you should take as much credit as any of us do for the success of these programs. I also, you know, I think a fundamental value for us has been the rejuvenation of programs like a new, well let me just say broadly apprenticeships and it’s an area where I think there’s a great deal of bipartisan interest. And so while I know at the port we’re struggling with some of our major differences with the current federal administration, this is an area where I think we can make real headway over the next four years. And so I really want us to lean into these examples of successes and how do we scale them and also how do we translate them into new areas of work that are becoming more and more important for us. So you know, building around existing trades but also recognizing that there are emerging areas of skilled work that we’re going to need to expand. And so I, you know, from the standpoint of like late high school and post-secondary school, I think, you know, these programs to the extent that the port can continue to support them, I think that’s important. And a key part of that will be, and I don’t know if Eric Schinfeld is still here, but is figuring out, there he is, is figuring out how, you know, if they’re going to take three billion from Harvard and give it to trade schools, how do we make sure they go to the trade schools that we’re supporting already.
The other thing I would say is, and I just really want to emphasize, Anna, the point you made earlier about how there are these kind of early awareness and exploration programs and how vital that is for so many of these folks who may not even have awareness of these careers. And it almost feels heckling to say it, but getting in front of kids and their parents when they’re in second grade and third grade so that they understand you could be a ferry captain and make lots of money and get to go home at night. But that’s not a traditional educational pathway. It’s a different approach than, you know, what in most cases you’re going to hear from your junior high or high school counselor. And then of course, you know, continuing to work to expand secondary options for kids who want to do stuff. And this has become a really key understanding for me about where we have failed young people and what we need to do to offer them that. And the more experience I have with it, the more convinced I am that experiential education, in other words not doing what I’m doing right now sitting behind a desk, but actually getting out and doing hands-on work, is not only better for your job prospects in the future, it’s better for your brain. You just learn better when you’re doing it. And I think it also reflects the nature of today’s work, which is that it is almost always collaborative. There are very few jobs left that require that you just sit quietly by yourself and do it. And those jobs are the first ones that are going to go away with AI. So whereas welding and other skilled trades, those have a long future in spite of the coming of our AI overlords.
So hugely grateful for the work that you guys are doing. I also want to say I’ve had the opportunity to accept an award on behalf of the port recently at the Washington Alliance for Better Schools. I’ve been at other events where our programs have been highlighted time and time again. What everyone says is we love working with the folks at the port who lead these missions. And Anna, your name comes up all the time. Luis, you are a godfather in this program and we are super grateful for all the work you’ve done and now on into your other endeavors. But so, you know, for me, every dollar we spend towards these efforts through the amazing work of our staff is well worth the expense.
Commissioner Cho: Yeah, thank you. You know, I don’t know what more I can say to pile on to what’s already been said by my colleagues, but you know, I think I just want to express how much I share the sentiment that this is at the core of what we do as an institution. We exist as an economic development agency, which means we exist to create jobs. And the fact that we’re putting our money where our mouth is and investing in workforce development is not just a statement of our values but also a demonstration of how effective this can be. And we have extraordinary examples of that here today testifying before us. And it is what is going to maintain our status as a healthy organization going into the future because we all know, beyond just the fact that it’s our mission, it’s mission critical to us as an organization to continue to build up those who have the skills to keep this institution running at the pace that it is. So I just want to thank you so much for all the work that you’re doing. This really is at the core of what we stand for and what we need to be doing not just for ourselves but also as part of our mission.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you. I’d also just like to thank you and commend you for this presentation. It’s not easy to fit this subject into a 15-minute presentation when it’s cornerstone to what we’re doing as a port, right? It’s in our mission that we’re doing economic development and the workforce development aspect is I think the biggest and most important charge that we face.
So Christina, you have three kids and Germay, you have four children. And I love what you said about working and learning at the same time and how critical education is on the front end to the outcomes on the other end of that. You’ve said so many positive things about your experience, but I’m actually going to invite you to give us constructive criticism. You’ve told us what’s working well and I value that. What more or what else could we do that would support you and people like you to succeed?
Germay Worku: Well, I don’t have that much, but I would say I talked with Anna the other day as well. Working at the airport is, working like airport is representative just the whole America. So a lot of people come here with a diverse environment. A lot of people come in here at the port jobs at the same time. But again, they need, if you, you know, as your leadership, they need more support that I talked to Anna the other day. Folks, they come in here, English is a second language. They need more resources to learn those English. It’s not only, you know, criminal justice or any other classes with career path with deviations, that’s wonderful. But in the other hand, more resources, more your support. I understand you guys do a lot, but again, if you can get more, more people would be happy and appreciated that.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you Germay. What do you think Christina?
Christina Vandermir: I wish I had a little bit of criticism, but this whole program has completely changed my life and it’s been all good, really. Besides I’ve been laid off for the last month. That’s only, it’s kind of hard to find work right now. But besides that, everything you guys did, it’s been amazing for me. So thank you for that.
Commission President Hasegawa: So in the presentation I heard you demonstrate the trend that regionally that hiring is actually going down now. Do we expect that or at least between the last two fiscal years? So do we anticipate that trend to continue?
Anna Pavlik: Well, it really was towards the end of 2024. That was the data I was looking at from employment security department. And so in conversations like with port jobs just last week, they’ve seen actually an upward trajectory in the first quarter of 2025. So your question is a very important one and I wish I could answer it, but the economic roller coaster that we’re on is really difficult for me to anticipate. I can say that if interest rates go down, we’ll see more construction, but you know, there really is no crystal ball.
Commission President Hasegawa: Yeah. How many different departments at the Port of Seattle are involved with workforce development?
Anna Pavlik: I mean, pretty much every department. We partner with external relations and the Duwamish. We partner, like I already mentioned, a number of departments but also maritime heavily, aviation, you know, of course all of our friends in finance. Like just literally I can’t think of a team or department that doesn’t partner with us. And I think that it’s really critical to lift up every single department has a role to play in workforce development, just not just for hiring internally but facilitating a pipeline of jobs.
Commission President Hasegawa: And I love that this presentation demonstrated the different points of entry. When we first took office years ago, we were trying to identify points where we could leak people. Like you train them up, how do you place them and then how do you retain them. And so sort of seeing the holistic picture here of what wraparound support looks like to equip and then retain talent is really I think an important view to take. So thank you for presenting it for us here.
You mentioned that we served 130 asylum seekers last year. I am wondering how do we identify those participants?
Anna Pavlik: It was a partnership with Port Jobs through the asylum seeker initiatives based at Riverton. They started by going into the Riverton community and recruiting there, but not many folks at the time had the ability to work in the United States. And so once those folks have been distributed throughout the county, port jobs has stayed in touch with them to support them when they have the ability to come work at the airport.
Commission President Hasegawa: Sure. And then slide 14 demonstrates our 2024 partners. Is this our 2024 partners in workforce development generally? Can you talk about what partnership means?
Anna Pavlik: Yes. So what I’m speaking to are the investments we make outside of the South King County Community Impact Fund. So these are the partners that we invested in either directly or as sub consultants in some cases throughout 2024 in those three sectors. And so for example, like Urban League working with them in construction and in maritime, but most of them in particular single contract.
Commission President Hasegawa: And I’m wondering because most of these partners from a glance seem like they’re actual employers with a few exceptions. There are some community-based organizations here, but what about folks like you know, RIWA or ACRS or PIA Washington who, you know, the workforce development isn’t built in necessarily to what they’re doing because in the hierarchy of needs they’re looking at housing stability and other things, but it could be a part of what they do. And they’re reaching more diverse or smaller communities. How are community based organizations worked into our workforce development projects?
Anna Pavlik: Yeah, that’s a great question. So because a number of the services we’re offering now are looking at like more tailored services to meet individual needs, we are looking at really experienced organizations who’ve done career navigation and have those employer relationships. And so we have opportunities in some upcoming solicitations, well you know, for example like I mentioned now with taxi drivers, that’s international rescue committee. We’ll be expanding partnerships with the Duwamish Valley Career Navigator. But in terms of those opportunities, they’re really specific to the need. And so if it isn’t an organization that has a lot of experience with employment services, then we’re working on models and you’ll be hearing more about it in our strategic planning of trying to marry up organizations that have more experience with those that may have less in career services. You’re going to be hearing, you heard about this as well with the South King County Community Impact Fund, right? That’s an area where organizations who may have less experience offering career services will be more successful in those competitive solicitations. But we are planning to, I, there’s a word better than forced marriages, but working, encouraging through our solicitations that the more experienced organizations really do have solid commitments in community partnerships with organizations like the ones you mentioned.
Commission President Hasegawa: Awesome. Does that make sense? Thank you very much. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for the work that you and folks port-wide are doing to support access to jobs throughout our region. Do I have any other questions or comments from my colleagues?
All right. Well seeing none, I’d like to thank and excuse the panel. Congratulations on your graduation from a new and we can move forward in the agenda. Clerk Hart, please read the next item into the record. Executive director Metrick will introduce it.
SEA Stakeholder Advisory Roundtable (START) Annual Report
Clerk Hart: Thank you. This is agenda item 11B: SEA stakeholder advisory roundtable START annual report.
Executive Director Metrick: Commissioners, I’m pleased to present to you the annual report on the SEA stakeholder advisory roundtable or START. START continues to play an essential role to enhance cooperation between the port and the highline forum member cities: SeaTac, Burien, Des Moines, Normandy Park, Tukwila, and Federal Way. Alaska and Delta Airlines also serve on the START and the Federal Aviation Administration FAA provides agency expertise. Over the last year, START has been focused on implementing tangible solutions that address aircraft noise and emissions issues as well as advocacy at the state and federal level. And just we say for this timing for this item is 30 minutes that we have scheduled for presentation and discussion. So the presenters this afternoon are Marco Melise, senior community engagement manager external relations; Eric Schinfeld, manager of federal and international government relations; and Andreas Mantia, START’s facilitator and partner at Uncommon Bridges. So I’ll turn over to Andreas. I believe you don’t look like Andreas. Is he online?
Staff member: Yeah, okay.
Executive Director Metrick: Welcome. So Andreas is virtual today.
Andreas Mantia: And confirming that you could see me okay and hear me?
Commission President Hasegawa: We have visual now. Yes.
Andreas Mantia: Great. Well thank you commissioners and executive director Metrick for the opportunity today to provide an update on START, the SEA stakeholder advisory roundtable and its progress in both 2024 and 2025. My name is Andreas Mantia. I am START’s facilitator. I am also a partner at Uncommon Bridges, a Seattle based consulting firm that helps organizations like your own facilitate through community and stakeholder conversations. START’s chair Jeff Gausvik and START’s alternate chair Sarah Cox were not available for today’s presentation and so they asked that I step in to lead off the discussion and presentation of today’s annual report. I am joined today for the annual report discussion by Eric Schinfeld, senior federal relations manager with the Port of Seattle, and Marco Melise, senior community engagement manager with the port of Seattle.
I wanted to begin today’s presentation with a quick overview of START, including its purpose and its structure, and then Marco and Eric will cover the programs and initiatives that START’s aviation noise working group and its policy working group have focused on in 2024 and for the first half of 2025, and then we’ll wrap up and be available to answer your questions.
Cognizant of SEA’s airport operations and location within a dense residential and commercial area in the Puget Sound, the Port of Seattle has built relationships with community and local cities that strive to foster trust, accountability and collaboration. An important component of that commitment was the creation of START in early 2018 under Lance Lyttle’s leadership.
Working in close coordination with leaders from the six highline forum member cities of SeaTac, Burien, Des Moines, Normandy Park, Tukwila, and Federal Way, the Port of Seattle and its partners developed START with the intention to share information, collaborate and achieve results. START provides the Port of Seattle with a dedicated forum for discussing and tackling airport related issues of most relevance to Highline forum member cities and their residents.
So the way it works is that each city designates three members to serve on START: two community representatives and a city representative who are joined by representatives from Alaska Airlines, Delta Airlines, an air cargo operator, and then port staff. The Federal Aviation Administration also attends in an ex-officio role to provide agency expertise. With Lance’s departure, Arif, the airport interim managing director, will serve as START’s new chair. Meetings are typically every other month and they’re facilitated as I mentioned by me with assistance from my colleague Cheryl Swab, again from Uncommon Bridges, the Seattle-based organizational development, engagement and policy consulting firm.
START’s steering committee provides support, guidance and strategic direction for START. The port, the six cities and two airlines are all represented on the steering committee. And then the steering committee decides and has purview over the size and extent of START’s membership, the areas of focus for what START should be discussing and specifically what to include on START meeting agendas, and any change on how START operates as an advisory roundtable.
Importantly, consensus based guidance is what shapes all decisions taken by START steering committee and by its two working groups and START itself. The port of Seattle provides START with staff support and technical analysis and expertise. However, the port is also bound by START’s consensus based approach and cannot take unilateral action on START to shape agendas or areas of focus or how to change how START operates, including membership.
START created two working groups to empower members to work on identified priorities between the bigger START meetings. The first, the aviation noise working group, and the second, the policy working group, previously known as the federal policy working group. And START’s major accomplishments are primarily the results of efforts initiated by these two working groups. And so with the next slide, I can turn it over to Marco to get into more specifics.
Marco Melise: Thank you Andreas. The name again is Marco Melise and I am the community engagement manager here at the airport. And thank you commission and thank you executive director Metrick for this opportunity.
Since its creation, START’s aviation noise working group has focused on prioritizing and exploring potential near-term actions to reduce and prevent aviation noise. In 2024 and 2025, the group continued its work on the aviation near-term noise action agenda, which includes several programs and efforts intended to provide aviation noise relief to those six Highline Forum member cities, but with more of a focus on results monitoring concerning potential refinements and promoting the agenda’s outcomes both to internal and external audiences.
Before I dive into 2024 and 2025, let me quickly recap some of the work of the aviation noise work group from previous years. Launched in 2019, the late night noise limitation program is a voluntary effort to reduce late night noise by incentivizing air carriers to fly at less noise sensitive hours or to transition to quieter aircraft. The program includes regular reporting each quarter to START, to the air carriers and other external audiences on all airline noise exceedances above an established noise threshold in the late night hours. Eva Air and FedEx Express were two carriers the port staff met with as part of the program’s outreach targeting air carriers that had the most late night exceedances. They eventually incorporated newer, quieter aircraft into their fleets. But as we know, aircraft fleets go through frequent change and so port staff continue to meet with air carriers regularly about late night noise. In 2024, port staff met with China Airlines cargo to urge their continued transition to the quieter 777 and with Eva Air to urge greater use of the quieter 787.
The informal runway use plan minimizes use of the third runway during late night hours, and late night operations on the third runway have dropped dramatically since implementation of that plan back in 2019. Prior to that runway use plan, the third runway averaged roughly 12 to 13 operations during the late night hours. Those were mostly landings. And in 2023, the average was less than two operations per late night. In 2024, the average grew primarily due to some nighttime runway construction work that was happening on the other runways that then pushed more operations to that third runway. However, through May of this year, the average number of late night operations on the third runway dropped to 2.8, representing a significant improvement over the previous year.
Upon the working group’s urging, the port provides up-to-date, accessible and detailed information on all noise complaints and comments submitted by the public. Online monthly reporting began in June of 2020, and reports are provided at all working group meetings and on the port’s website.
Reverse thrust is used by pilots to decelerate aircraft upon landing. It also is an identified source of ground noise at the airport. So in coordination with the FAA, with the air carriers, and with members of the working group, updated voluntary SEA language discouraging the use of reverse thrust beyond what is necessary was implemented in early 2023.
Continuous taxi to takeoffs, which is also known as rolling takeoffs, have less of a noise footprint than traditional takeoffs that require aircraft to power up after coming to a complete stop. Again, in coordination with the FAA, with the air carriers, and with members of the working group, voluntary SEA language promoting continuous taxi to takeoffs was enacted in mid 2023.
Turning to 2024 and 2025, the working group continues to finalize voluntary language to provide aviation noise relief to those highline forum member cities. Single engine taxiing is an established practice with many air carriers here at SEA. And though it has a modest effect on reducing noise, it does have a measurable effect on reducing aircraft emissions. And so again, in coordination with the FAA, the air carriers, and the members of the working group, voluntary SEA language promoting its use was enacted at the end of 2024.
Directed by the port commission, port staff developed and implemented a comprehensive analysis of single family homes that had previously received a port-funded noise insulation package. The working group was briefed throughout that assessment with multiple opportunities to ask questions and provide input. And in early 2025, the port’s reinstallation pilot program was announced, and the working group was one of the first external audiences to receive a preview of that new program.
Finally, in 2024, the working group began participating on the SEA Part 150 noise study’s technical review committee. A part 150 noise study is required by the FAA to update airport noise programs and establish eligibility for FAA grant funds at an airport. And airports typically stand up a technical review committee during this study and task it with providing technical input and guidance throughout the life of that study. And along with appointed land use planners, the working group members participated on that technical review committee. And two of the 2024 working group meetings included substantial agenda time dedicated to that part 150 study. Serving on that technical review committee, also known as the TRC, offers working group members a significant opportunity to influence current aviation noise reduction and prevention programs and recommend new approaches.
The working group’s next meeting is in early June and will be primarily focused on the part 150 study, and we expect a heavier focus on that study at future working group meetings into the rest of 2025 and into 2026. And I’ll turn things over to Eric Schinfeld.
Eric Schinfeld: All right commissioners, Eric Schinfeld, senior manager of federal government relations for the Port of Seattle. I’m one of the staff for the policy working group.
As you know, the policy working group focuses on changing federal policies and regulations that can provide more flexibilities, more resources, more tools to address the community concerns around aircraft noise and emissions. And we really believe that we are one of the only airports in the country that has brought together community and the airport to develop a shared federal policy agenda. In fact, we’re so proud of that work and have seen such great results from that work that we actually changed the name of this group, which used to be called the federal policy working group, to now the policy working group, because we have done a similar process over the past year with state policy as well, developing a shared cities and port state policy agenda and implementing that at the state legislative level. We’ll talk a little bit more as we go forward here.
I want to talk again just about 2024. It feels like about 1,000 years ago that President Biden in May 2024 signed the FAA Reauthorization Act. And so we’ll talk about that ancient history just for a second because it really truly was such an incredible not only achievement but specifically a demonstration of the power of collective action. In 2023, we developed our shared port cities federal policy agenda. We took the first ever port cities DC fly-in to meet with our delegation, to meet with the FAA, and the proof is in the pudding, so to speak. When that bill was finally signed, the FAA reauthorization act, four of our seven shared priorities were written into law, and that is an incredible achievement, and again, not because of the staff work but because of the symbol and the demonstration of the power that it is for the cities and the port to stand shoulder-to-shoulder saying the same things, talking about the same priorities, which allows our federal delegation to really focus on those priorities and help carry them across the finish line.
And you can see those four priorities. I’ll call out one in particular, which is instituting both a deadline and a stakeholder advisory group for FAA action on the noise policy review, which is, to remind everybody, the noise policy review is the FAA’s process to look at is the 65DNL the right noise standard, should it be replaced, should it be added to, should it be altered in some way. And so we really wanted to make sure that that wasn’t just a study that sat on a shelf but it had a specific deadline, it had input from key communities including airport communities, airports, airlines, other federal agencies, etc., and really continuing to work towards that and make sure that we get really solid recommendations that go to Congress for action on that question of the 65 DNL.
We will continue in 2025 to work on not only making sure that these things still do happen. It is a new federal administration, but these are laws that are on the books, and by law these things do need to happen. And so we’ll continue to push to make sure these things happen as well as to make sure that the three things that we did not get into the 2024 FAA reauthorization bill continue to make progress. And I want to say one of those is sustainable aviation fuel. We had a huge victory last week when the US House of Representatives in its quote unquote one big beautiful bill got rid of every single clean energy tax credit except for the tax credit for sustainable aviation fuel and in fact extended that SAF tax credit to 2031. That’s not all our work, but just, you know, something that we’ve been working with many, many others on.
Similarly, I want to give all the credit in the world to Senator Murray and Representative Smith who are continuing to carry the ball on federal funding of secondary noise insulation repair and replacement. We do have a strategy to continue to try and actually implement that policy and get it signed into law this year. Believe it or not, I know that Congress doesn’t sign a lot of bills, but we actually do think that there’s a real chance this year, especially given the incredible strength and leadership of those two members of our delegation and many others as well.
So that’s what we’ve been doing on the federal policy side. I will say that obviously there’s a lot happening in DC right now, and it is right now on the very partisan side of things. Republicans are controlling the House and the Senate and the White House. They are moving legislation right now that is purely partisan. There will be no Democratic votes for it. But we do think that there are some things we can still do even in this environment. I mentioned just trying to lone implement some of the things that are already on the books and make sure they don’t get forgotten about, make sure that we continue to make progress on some of those other things. So we are thinking about whether or not either in the end of this year or maybe in 2026 that next DC fly-in is an appropriate conversation, and so we’ll be getting back to you very quickly with what we think is probably the right timing on that. TBD right now.
Like I mentioned, we do now also have a state legislative agenda. I’m going to call up John Flanigan, our manager of state government relations. We did this year not only create that first ever state policy agenda shared between the port and the cities, but also on February 12th led the first ever START Olympia day where we brought both port and city representatives, including elected officials, to Olympia to advocate on these policies, again with the same theory that talking together with shared priorities, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, has an impact. And John is just going to give you a very brief update on some of our progress during the state legislative session that ended recently on some of these priorities.
John Flanigan: Sure, thanks Eric. First of all, that Olympia START lobby day which Eric mentioned, we’ve already been referring to as the first annual. So we’re excited to go back to Olympia next year, bring hopefully a larger coalition and do some front-loaded work this summer to make sure that our joint advocacy is successful and that we are able to have a large presence on that day.
I guess I’ll start with the bad news first. As I mentioned to you all pre-session, we headed into what was probably the toughest fiscal environment we’ve had at the state legislature in memory. $12 billion hole is a quick reminder. They passed a balanced budget technically, which is great. There were some cuts. So that said, the first priority there, effectively implementing our noise insulation repair and replace program. The million dollars that we were successful in securing last year ended up being transferred back into the state general fund. The main reason for that being, and we had a long conversation with the department of commerce about this as well, the legislative intent for that was always to spend the money on actual repairs of actual homes to fix whether it’s windows or doors or walls or whatever. And we came to a point where we were not quite ready to spend it on those kinds of repairs and we were thinking about trying to move forward with a rush job essentially on a grant from commerce to get us the money quickly, but we would have ended up spending it on surveys and all the things that we’re doing now with the port’s resources. Long story short, made more sense for that to go back to the general fund according to the Department of Commerce and the legislators that were working on this.
Everything else we made pretty substantial progress this year. So bullet number two there, that’s mainly about the commercial aviation work group which was funded to continue its work. Jeff Gausvik is our representative there. They have another meeting coming up I believe this week at some point actually. Long story short, they’re going to get another year of work done and they have some additional legislative direction as to how they are going to conduct that work, timelines, things like that. We had some good defense of things that are happening on air quality. I’ll skip over that for now. And I’ll stop here and just add that we got an additional I think 16 million overall for SAF projects. That includes mostly funding that’s going up to the production and research facility at Paine Field, but then lots of things happening in the R&D space and then a couple things happening on the capital side hopefully to push forward SAF infrastructure.
Eric Schinfeld: And just to be clear, we, the port, did not get the $16 million. We successfully lobbied for the state to appropriate that to various projects including the Paine Field project.
Andreas Mantia: So thank you commissioners and executive director Metrick for providing us with the opportunity to present today. In addition, thank you to everyone who plays a role on START and makes all of this possible. I would particularly like to call out community and city members who represent their cities and all of these meetings and conversations and their fellow residents in the region. I have witnessed firsthand that they serve on START because of their deep commitment to public service and their deep love of their communities and wanting to generally tackle the issues facing their cities. So commissioners, executive director Metrick, please let us know if you have any questions regarding anything in the presentation.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you very much. That was a very succinct presentation, you know, months and months and months of blood, sweat and tears. And I appreciate your use of the phrase long story short because there’s been so much that’s gone into this. I’m going to turn to my colleagues to ask questions.
Commissioner Mohamed: Thank you for the presentation and for all the work that goes into the START committee. In particular, I really appreciate the policy working group and what you all have done with that. Eric, you’re right. I think when the port and the near airport cities are working together and have a shared priority, it does help move the needle forward. Going to that DC fly-in first trip, I saw that with not only our members of Congress, our delegation being surprised that we were in the room together, the port and those local cities, but also even members from other states looking to our model and saying that, you know, being able to see the ports and cities work together and having a shared policy vision and mission really does help change policy. And we saw that happen with the FAA reauthorization bill and our priorities being included in that. So I appreciate that and it’s great that you all have replicated a similar version at the state level. I think that’s going to have its own impacts.
I did have a question about the $1 million that the state has essentially taken back because we weren’t prepared to do exactly what it is that they were suggesting. So do we expect to see some of the legislators make that request in future sessions? Is that the plan?
John Flanigan: Simple answer, yes.
Commissioner Mohamed: Do we have a, do we know, is it just next session?
John Flanigan: We’ve started some of those conversations, but it’s kind of up to how some of the survey results go and how the implementation of our own noise program goes. I mean, at this stage, from my understanding, we still have a number of appropriated resources that this commission has put into that project as well.
Commissioner Mohamed: Yeah, exactly. I think the work will continue with or without those state fundings, but of course any additional dollars helps. The other question that I have, and I’m sure probably all my colleagues have, is can somebody help me understand what is going on with the START meetings as far as moving from webinar to, or now it’s webinar version where folks are feeling like they cannot participate? Was that a recommendation that came from the START members?
Marco Melise: Sure. We’ve used zoom from the beginning with START and it’s just kind of when COVID first hit, zoom was just the way that we went with. Any decisions about how START manages a meeting is something that’s made by START steering committee. And so over time, we’ve asked for ways to improve or make changes to the way the meetings happen virtually and in person. And the steering committee has always been in consensus agreement on how those meetings should operate. And we’ve asked a few times if they’d be interested in returning to an in-person experience or some sort of hybrid, but the desire has always been to keep it online using that zoom seminar format process, which does keep some separation between the membership and the audience. And I think initially there was some confusion when people who weren’t members of START were showing up on screens and maybe a facilitator who was new to the process or someone else would call them out with a question or something like that. And so they wanted, the START membership wanted a clearer line between who’s a member and who’s in that virtual audience. And virtual audience members are allowed to give public comment. It just comes at the end of the meeting.
Commissioner Mohamed: Why do you guys choose to have the public comment come at the end of the meeting and not the beginning of the meeting similar to initially it was at the beginning of the meeting, but the steering committee made a decision to put it at the end very early on, and specifically people wanted to comment on what they heard during the meeting. And so you know, if when they were giving public comment at the beginning, then one of the presenters would actually say something and then the person in the audience would want to respond to that. And so when it’s at the end, it allows them to respond to what the actual content of the meeting was.
Commissioner Mohamed: And then what does the START steering committee do with those comments or what do staff do with those comments? How is that comment part of the deliberation process for the committee or for our staff?
Marco Melise: Much like the commission meetings, we also get written comment as well too. So all oral comments given at meetings and written comments given at meetings are put into the summary document that’s provided on START’s web page, which is part of the port’s website. So all those comments are always there so people can view them and read what other folks have said at those meetings.
Commissioner Mohamed: And then do you have like a number, like an amount of people who have reached out sharing that they’re having a hard time with this webinar version?
Marco Melise: We’ve received just a few comments from some residents in Vashon, but that’s as much as I know in terms of the reaction we’ve gotten from people watching.
Commissioner Mohamed: Okay. And then my last question is, has the steering committee members reviewed the Vashon community members who’ve advocated to the county council to get to try to get a seat at the table through START? Is there going to be a decision made on that? Is that being considered?
Eric Schinfeld: So we, the staff, actually made that recommendation to the steering committee. We said we believe that council member Mosqueda should be included in the working group meetings. Her staff, specifically, that she would, as the public comment said earlier, be able to provide not only speaking on behalf of Vashon but there are actually a number of unincorporated areas much closer to the airport, near Federal Way, near Burien, etc. And so we, the staff, put that to the steering committee and said we would like you to approve this addition. The steering committee did not approve that addition and they had a number of reasons for that. One being I think a sort of where does this end, you know, type of slippery slope argument of if you have one single King County council member, what happens if another King County council member comes and says they want to be part of it? You know, why not a state legislator, you know, whatever. So that was one of the things and a couple other reasons as well. So I think I will say that was not the response we were hoping for. This was the staff recommendation to make that change. We were not successful that time and so we’re still at the drawing board. Marco and I and some of the other noise program staff feeling like, okay, how can we bring this back in a way that is going to be successful? You know, there are lots of pros and cons of the consensus based steering committee model. Some good things where we’re all in agreement and we’re working together, some more challenging things where we have an idea that other people don’t agree with. So we have not given up on that. We are working very hard. We actually think there are some things we can do not only in terms of START but specifically actual substantive conversations we can have directly with Vashon to try and move the needle on some of their concerns. So I will tell you from the staff level, this is a priority. We are really trying to make a difference. We hear the concerns. We take them seriously. We want to make progress. That specific proposal was not approved and so we’re continuing at it.
Commissioner Mohamed: Thank you for that information and I’m glad to hear that it is a priority and I look forward to future updates.
Commissioner Felleman: Thank you. I really appreciate getting these updates and I think one of the things I’ve asked in the past is you have all these data, you know, you say there’s late night flights, then last year nighttime improvements and all that. Show us the data. You know, it’s like great accomplishments and I really appreciate it. And you sort of listed the night flight issue is one of those real antagonistic ones that we always hear from community about, and you sort of listed it as, I don’t know, was it accomplishments or it sounded like the box had been checked that there’s been there, done that. And sorry for this casualness, but this is an ongoing program, right? You still have China Air, right? You still have others, and I’m really glad to hear that the mix for the other cargo flights are improving, but you know, when you say a mix, it’s obviously not all there. And I’ve, you know, we’ve been talking about this a long time and I’ve always said like, let’s deploy the commission, let’s go for the domestic ones, let’s go and elevate that. And I mean, we go to China also and I just would like to make sure they understand how important it is and how, to your point, just changing the plane rather than with the international stuff trying to mess with the schedule. I just, it’s just like one of those simple things that they would be so easy for the community to notice and really appreciate that.
Marco Melise: If I could comment, your idea is something similar that we heard at our last in-person planning session for START where they’re thinking about it’d be helpful to have some sort of a data dashboard that lists the various programs and where we are with each of them. And so it’s something that we are exploring on the port’s website where that information could be just in one spot. But we also got some good news as well too about, you mentioned the air carriers. We heard recently that China Airlines cargo that does most the cherry deliveries into the summer, that they are moving almost primarily to 777s from a 747, which has a huge noise improvement. And so we were talking about maybe we can get some sort of thank you letter from commissioner and others to thank China Airlines cargo for making that type of move. But we’ll continue to be vigilant and track all the carriers to make sure that as we see improvements we thank them and when we don’t see improvements we remind them that we would like to see them.
Commissioner Felleman: But the fact that they’re carrying our cherries on top of it, that’s like a cherry on top. That sounds like a really good letter to write. It would be great fun. But you know, I came when I, the day I arrived at the port, one of my first meetings was Lance’s first day. We were at the going away for the previous airport director. And I said to Lance, I go, I’ve been around a little bit, I got earfuls like it was as if the third runway was yesterday. And I go, Lance, you know, I hope you’re prepared to address community concerns because this is part of a growing airport. And he basically immediately turned, well do you have a community committee? I mean, like, and I go, didn’t he just come from Houston, you know, and like, you know, I didn’t know they did community meetings, but this whole idea of START was like something that he had like right out of the gates and I’m forever appreciative of that effort.
Last thing though, the community really appreciates it, but we’re hearing from Vashon community every meeting and certainly don’t appreciate it. One of the things that just is surprising to me, we know, and it’s kind of interesting to me that they were having problems with the online thing. Who’s probably one of the most technically advanced person we’ve ever had testify is telling us there’s a technical problem. It seems worth looking into. But with the focus on the part 150 study coming up, that this seems much bigger than just the highline community, right? This is broadly interesting thing. And so I guess if we could find a way since this is an official process that, you know, I would like to see, I mean, I appreciate staff and your efforts that this is not, you’re not noticing this, but I would like the commission to make, be able to make sure that the Highline community, we’re chairing this body, right? We’re organizing it. We don’t count all the votes, right? But we certainly are convening it. The reason why the FAA is there, the reason why the airlines are there is because we’re there, right? And so we only have one vote, but we do have the bully pulpit. And I think there’s elected officials there that want to know how important it is to us. But I do believe that the 150 study does provide an avenue to have at least that focus. And to tell you the truth, for them not to have the benefit of David’s expertise is kind of shooting themselves in the foot.
Eric Schinfeld: Yeah, so I’ll just say we a thousand percent agree with you, Commissioner. The part 150 is an incredible opportunity to think regionally and to think really, you know, clean slate. Let’s put all the ideas on the table and figure out what’s going to work within this. So we’re in the works on that. We’re of the same mind and we’ll have more to report on that soon.
Marco Melise: And if I could add as well too, the part 150 technical review committee is made up of land use planners from out the area and we have added a land use planner from unincorporated King County to be part of that conversation and they’ll represent the White Center, Boulevard Park, Vashon areas as well too.
Commissioner Felleman: Great. So we’ll make sure David knows who that person is.
Marco Melise: Yes.
Commission President Hasegawa: All right. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for the presentation. I promise not to take too much time. Love to hear that the state advocacy is going to be an ongoing effort. How frequently are we going to receive formal recommendations for the Port of Seattle operations from START? Do they not advise on port? Can you give an example commissioner of what you’d be referring to?
Commission President Hasegawa: Actually no. Like is START going to come to us with recommendations the way they lobby the state, the way they lobby the FAA? Are they going to lobby us for anything in particular? I mean I’m, so Andreas might want to speak to this as well. We had our in-person annual planning meeting with START just last month and one of the really interesting conversations we had, some pretty structural sort of fundamental conversations about you know, what is START for and what do we do and what don’t we do. And one of the topics of conversation is what are the things that make sense for START as a collective body that work collectively to work on versus what are some things that maybe the cities outside of START want to engage directly with the commission on. And we actually started to list out, obviously not comprehensively, what some of those things might be. And so our general thinking, and again would love Andreas to comment on this, is there are things that START does together and because port is part of START, we’re not lobbying ourselves, right? We’re going to go out to external folks, whether it be cities, states, federal government, etc., that will be all externally facing. But we will, when different topics come up in START that are really more appropriate for the cities, will say that’s a great city conversation. Let’s go talk to Steve Metrick about that. Let’s go talk to the commissioners about that. So Andreas, anything more you’d want to say on that front?
Andreas Mantia: Yeah, thanks Eric. Just add on, this is one of the things that we discussed around the structure of START, which is consensus based. And so you know, where we have agreement and where we understand that all the steering committee members are kind of moving in the same direction, let’s proceed with that agreement. Or where folks are having diverse opinions so that then those individual stakeholders or our cities can go and engage the port or can go and engage an airline or another city on their own time, but it’s not necessarily a START activity. And so that’s one of the things, commissioner, that we’re still working through that was a result of that in-person meeting that we hope to have more movement on in 2025.
Commission President Hasegawa: And I think advisory committees and groups like this are so important to be able to mechanize the way that we’re receiving you know, community-based information, priorities. We receive an annual report from PCAT. It just seems like we would want to be able to maybe interact with them directly at some point. And I wonder, do they ever work collaboratively in or in consultation with the JEC or the Highline forum? And is there any overlap in the membership between those three groups?
Marco Milanese: With the Highline Forum, yeah, definite overlap. And so at every Highline Forum meeting, we do a START update so the electeds in the Highline Forum can know what START’s been doing. And if certain programs and initiatives are developed by START, we do ask to bring those to the Highline forum to get them to get their thumbs up as well too. So there is a connection with the forum. JEC, the membership is the same, but I don’t believe there are START updates at JEC meetings.
Commission President Hasegawa: Okay. And does the port commission have any authority to shape START procedures or the meeting structure?
Marco Milanese: The shaping of any procedures or meeting structures are done by the steering committee of which the port’s a member.
Commission President Hasegawa: And can you tell me, not the names of individuals, but like who are steering committee members?
Marco Milanese: It’s the airport director, right now the interim airport director, and then it’s all representation from the six cities, typically a city manager or an equivalent, then serves as well too. And then Alaska and Delta both have reps on the steering committee.
Commission President Hasegawa: And beyond the steering committee, then who are members, or is that it for the steering committee?
Marco Milanese: There’s support staff as well too. We’re there to support.
Commission President Hasegawa: You’re saying beyond the steering committee, who are START members?
Marco Milanese: Correct. So yeah, so each city has both the staff person, whether they be city manager equivalent, plus two community representatives. Those two community representatives are appointed by each city. So each city essentially has three people on START at any given time.
Commission President Hasegawa: And they decide by consensus, of a consensus-based model, decision making, whether to allow for additional people to be START members or to be steering committee members?
Marco Milanese: The actually, for the START membership, the six cities that are members of START is locked into the operating procedure. So you would have to amend the operating procedures to add a new city if they were to go in that way.
Commission President Hasegawa: You would, meaning we, the steering committee?
Marco Milanese: Steering committee by consensus would make that decision.
Commission President Hasegawa: So when they make a decision such as unanimously to exclude membership of a King County Council member, their thought process is for their structure that they have a public forum, in this case a webinar, where they could still listen to proceedings and then an opportunity at the very end to ask questions based upon what they’ve heard, or is it public comment?
Marco Milanese: Public comment.
Commission President Hasegawa: So they don’t have an opportunity to ask questions?
Marco Milanese: Not of presenters. No.
Commission President Hasegawa: And then I was going to ask, I’m, so the interim aviation director is a member of the steering committee. Have they, are they going to have an opportunity to as a body be able to meet with the permanent selection or advise on the selection process or provide input? I know we’re talking about in the hiring process maybe having some sort of mechanism for community input. Has START been considered in that?
Eric Schinfeld: Commissioner, I don’t know if we’ve established those processes yet.
Commission President Hasegawa: Okay, fair enough. And then regarding our advocacy on the federal level, so the big beautiful bill, can you reiterate what exactly the reductions are in the context of port projects?
Eric Schinfeld: The big beautiful bill, meaning the big beautiful bill that they had, and I just wanted to clarify we had nothing to do with it because your presentation, you know, you talked about we were able to secure sustainable aviation fuels. That’s a result of us advocating to make sure that it wasn’t slashed, correct?
Eric Schinfeld: That’s correct.
Commission President Hasegawa: But there were other pretty substantial, actually holistic reductions to all our clean energy initiatives. Can you talk…
Eric Schinfeld: Absolutely. So so this is, so the official name of this legislation is the one big beautiful bill. That is the name of the legislation. It is going through a very obscure process called budget reconciliation, which I won’t bore you all with. But the short version is that the house gets a majority vote and in this one case, the senate only needs 50 votes instead of the normal 60. So it’s a process by which if you have the majority in both the House and the Senate, which Republicans do, you can pass anything that is fiscally related, no policy, anything fiscally related with just a simple majority vote in the House and Senate. So that’s what’s going on right now. There are three main components of that legislation. One is a huge increase in spending on defense and immigration enforcement. One is a huge tax cut, about $4 trillion dollars worth of tax cuts. And then the other is about $1.5 trillion in spending cuts. Most of those spending cuts are coming from Medicaid, SNAP, and clean energy tax credits. So this is almost essentially $1.5 trillion in cuts from Medicaid, SNAP, which is food stamps, and clean energy tax credits. We are part of a national coalition called the SAF coalition, cleverly enough, which is a coalition around SAF. And it has been advocating to say that yes, we understand that you hate clean energy tax credits. You want to get rid of all of them. But SAF is something that has bipartisan support from airlines, airports, refiners, farmers, manufacturers. And again, as we always like to say, not only because of their carbon decarbonization impacts of SAF, but also the reduction in other air particulates that airport communities are concerned about. So a huge win-win for everyone all around. And believe it or not, that argument worked, seems to have worked so far, in being the only tax credit that’s maintained, because enough Republicans say, yeah, actually this is pretty good for the Midwest. You know, our number one champion right now is Senator Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas. And so it really is quite a statement that over the past however many years that we and many, many other people have been advocating for SAF, it has become such a bipartisan agreement consensus that it’s a good thing and we need to keep working on it. So that is a big win. But unfortunately, the port does care a lot about a lot of those other clean energy projects, hydrogen in particular. And a lot of that has just been entirely wiped off. In fact, the House bill at the very last minute not only got rid of them but got rid of them sooner. So unless your project is fully completed and up and running by 2028, you don’t get any tax credits. So not just, oh, I’ve started this project and it’ll be done in 2031, but give me the tax credits because I have a shovel in the ground. It must be fully in service now by 2028, which is almost impossible for most projects at this point.
Commission President Hasegawa: So when we’ve been advocating at the state level for investments into the window replacement program, we’ve also been talking about how the feds really should be putting into that also. What’s the prospect on that?
Eric Schinfeld: Yeah, so I mentioned Senator Murray and Representative Smith’s incredible leadership on that. They believe we can get that done this year. They do.
Commission President Hasegawa: And we have a, via what vehicle?
Eric Schinfeld: The National Defense Authorization Act, my favorite piece of legislation, Commissioner Felleman’s favorite piece of legislation as well. And so that is an annual Defense Authorization Bill that has to go through every single year. It’s gone through every single year for the past 50 years. Representative Adam Smith is the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, which gives him great impact and input into that. And so we are hoping that that can be the vehicle this year to get that policy done.
Commission President Hasegawa: Okay, no further questions. Thank you very much for the presentation. Follow-up questions from Commissioner Felleman?
Commissioner Felleman: The ongoing discussion about other regional airports, I see this is part of the lead state legislative agenda. And I’m just wondering for this ongoing effort, it’s very important to the Highline community that we’re not going to build a fourth runway. And so that progress on additional runway or airport services is related, and was wondering what’s the latest status?
John Flanigan: Well, I know our friends up in Snohomish County have been a little more public about what they’re doing. So that’s moving forward as they’ve kind of talked about and has been reported in even the Seattle Times. The work of the COG continues. There was some additional specificity attached to the funding that was passed in the state transportation budget to give them hard deadlines, additional things they had already been working on, but actually officially establishing it as part of their appropriation as well. Really the only thing that’s disqualified is studying the use of military bases of JBLM. And until the chair of the transportation committee in the House no longer is from Tacoma or something like that, I think that that will continue to be the case, regardless of whether folks think that JBLM could be a possible solution to part of that problem in the future.
Commissioner Felleman: Well, the reality is all airport experts know that JBLM will be the next regional airport because it’s the only one that makes sense. But what I was thinking that the study that needs to be done is to look at all the military bases in the country other than JBLM and to understand how they, well, the military bases that share with commercial operations, what is the special sauce that has allowed them to coexist? And I understand there’s like a half a dozen actual military ports and there’s like a dozen Air National Guards. And I’m just wondering, do you think a study like that would be off limits?
John Flanigan: Per your input, actually had a conversation with the director of Washington aviation fairly recently about whether or not that could fit into the updated scope of work for the COG, and she believes it could.
Commissioner Felleman: That would be great because there’s obviously, you know, I don’t blame the military for wanting it all to themselves, but they are public servants. And the ultimate general is the appropriator. And so the nice thing about them, they can fall in line if indeed this is in the national interest. The other thing is that our problem is not unique to the Northwest. Airport capacity is a problem nationally. And so the idea of being able to find ways to share airspace, obviously they didn’t do a very good job in DC, but where you can share airspace, it seems to be of importance to know what is the way to do that safely.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you very much. Seeing no further questions, I think that concludes this portion. Thank you very much for the presentation and we’ll move forward in the agenda. Clerk Hart, please read into the record and executive director Metrick will introduce it.
Diversity and Contracting 2024 Annual Report
Clerk Hart: Thank you. This is agenda item 11C: diversity and contracting 2024 annual report and resolution number 3836 amending the diversity and contracting directive policy to increase women and minority business opportunities briefing.
Executive Director Metrick: Commissioners, at the beginning of 2024, you passed an order directing us to update our diversity and contracting goals to have a port-wide WIMBY goal of 15% of total port spend and to have 400 firms utilized. I’m pleased to report that we are trending in the right direction and our diversity and contracting team will have more insights to share on our progress. This report would cover our road map to achieve these goals followed by a resolution with proposed updates to the program that will apply through 2030. And so we have a number of speakers here. So we have Me and Rice, director diversity and contracting; Emily Ho, program manager and contracting; and Lawrence Coleman, WIMBY manager. So and Mandela is here to see Mandela as well.
Me and Rice: Oh, well there it is. Speak to the mic. Excuse me, Commissioner, I’m losing my voice here. I apologize, but pleasure being here to you today. My name is Me and Rice, director of diversity and contracting department. I do also want to send the greetings also to executive director Steve Metrick and the listening public who’s all here today. I also, prior to getting started on this two-hour presentation, we are, I want to give a special big warm welcome and also a continued just a big thank you for our new director of economic development division. Her name is Boingnjuta. Hopefully I pronounced her name correctly. And so she’s been a fabulous supporter of the diversity and contracting department and truly hit the ground running. She is just a wonderful addition to the division and I’m so happy that diversity and contracting department is under this new leadership.
So without further ado, I also real quick wanted to acknowledge as part of a lot of the diversity and contracting efforts that don’t always really get a lot of tipping of the hat a little bit is our partners central procurement office who’s not here at the table in terms of the director. Her name is Sophia Mayo and I want to give a big thank you to her as well. And you’ll hear from some of her staff under Mandela Thomas as well, who is the director of the CPO strategic partnership and analytics department. So and then lastly, I have a lot of diversity and contracting staff here today, but also I wanted to give a special hello and shout out to Lisa Fair, who’s our DBE federal program manager. And so if you, yeah, much love to her and all of her efforts, especially during these days, so these times.
So without further ado, next slide please. Here’s the agenda, fairly straightforward. You know, we’re going to talk a little about the diversity and contracting program, give you a small video, then we’ll get into the WIMBY results and also a little discussion about the upcoming and diversity and contracting policy directive, at least some proposed efforts that we think for the next five-year DC policy directive goals can be, and these are again, as time progresses, addresses. You’ll notice that these are stretch goals.
So diversity contracting, next slide please. So diversity contracting goals, I think you’ve seen this quite a bit and also some of the listening audience. We’re pretty much here for the most part, and not even just for the most part, to actually advance equity and addressing contracting disparities by increasing the utilization of women and minority business enterprise and disadvantaged firms. 2024 is why we’re here today. This is an annual briefing to talk about our and give information about our 2024 efforts. This last year was what you would call the gap year. These are our goals, which was to increase the amount spent on contracts up to 15%. And then also a small adjustment for 2024 gap year goal to increase the number of WIMBY firms doing business with the Port of Seattle up to 400 businesses and firms. So without further ado, I did want to do a quick video and we’ll go from there. Video please.
[Video plays with testimonials from small business owners about the diversity and contracting program]
Me and Rice: Awesome. Thank you all and also thank you to the videographer who actually helped put this thing together. She did an awesome job and as well as to you commissioners for being part of this and executive director Metrick. This is awesome.
2024, getting, thank you for the next slide. For 2024 WIMBY results, wow, 2024 was a fun year and I’m using that facetiously, especially with the cyber attack. I want to also give my tip my hat off to the ICT department, all their efforts to restoring our systems has just been, they did a phenomenal job all last year. And so I want to continue to be have a big thank you to them and also AFR and also portion of CPO as well, because they were also instrumental in terms of getting us back on our feet. Now speaking of CPO, I wanted to talk, have Mandela talk about all the efforts they had to do to provide you some of the numbers that we’ll be reviewing today. And so I want to make sure I hand the ball over to Mr. Mandela Thomas to talk a little more about the CPO process and the data that you see.
Mandela Thomas: Thank you. Can we go to the next slide? Okay. So the top part is a quick overview and the second part is some of the challenges that we run into. So essentially we gather data from about five different sources and that data is populated by hundreds of different people inside and outside the port. So after we get all the data, that needs to be integrated and tied together, and then we have to check it for quality. So if you know, sometimes you don’t want something to show twice and you want to make sure that nothing disappears. So we have that quality control in there. And then afterwards, we’re able to do what everybody likes to see, which is the utilization. What’s the total dollars and how much is WIMBY? And so that’s the high level overview of what the data analytics team in CPO does. And then we share with the diversity and contracting.
So our ability to do that because of the cyber outage was impacted for about 6 months because we have five systems. So we have to wait for all of those things to come back. And once they were back, they said, okay, well, what’s the data say? Well, those hundreds of people to enter the data, it took about two months to get caught up with, you know, eight months of data entry. And so after that is all done, now we’re able to get back to the table and start sharing some updates.
So during that time, we weren’t just waiting for, you know, ICT to bring all those things back. We were doing a number of improvement efforts. So some of it’s related to the speed at which we can provide data. Some of it’s related to the quality. Some of it’s set up for customer service for the people that have to do the entry work. So we completed more than 20 different projects related to that. And then passing it back to Me and.
Me and Rice: Thank you, Mandela. All right. Next slide, please. I think, commissioners, you’ve seen this graph before and also a lot of some of the listening audience. We’ve come a long way since 2016, and I think even the 5.3 is conservative number, to be honest with you, probably was lower than 5.3%. 2019, where star is where we actually started the diversity and contracting program and all of its efforts in its entirety, fully implemented. But as you can see from percent utilization all the way to the firm counts, we have continuously improved in a short amount of time. As a government economic generator port authority, we have done yeoman’s work, and I think it’s really cool and there’s a contribution to a lot of the staff out there, our project managers, our construction managers, and all of our partners, external wise as well as internal, as well as you commissioners are laying the foundation of this whole program. So thank you and also the executive director as well and staff.
So I’m going to hand the ball over to Mr. Lawrence Coleman to get into the details of how we did in 2024. Lawrence, the floor is yours.
Lawrence Coleman: Yeah, thank you for teeing us up, Me and. Good afternoon, commissioners, executive director Metrick. If you could go ahead to the next slide for me, please. As Me and mentioned, I’ll be talking about the data specific for 2024, but also putting this in comparison to the trends for how this stacks up to previous years. And just, we like this slide because it kind of sets the tone. So from here, I have a few slides just kind of breaking this down. But as Me and mentioned, you know, 2024 was certainly an interesting year. You know, we, I would say at the beginning of the year, always think about ways to improve things, and then you know, you got cyber attack that happens, throws things off. But nevertheless, you know, work still got done. I also point out that 2024, you know, we took this year as a gap year to take a look and review processes and see where we can make some improvements. And so meanwhile, while Me and and you know, several even of you engaged with various folks in the community to try to get some information and some feedback on, you know, some areas of improvement, the work still continued. That great work at the airport still continuing all around the Port of Seattle.
But just moving us forward, in 2024, the port spent, you know, over $900 million, you know, quite a bit of money, you know, in qualified spend, of which 13.3% went to women and minority businesses, which equates to about, you know, over $124 million. So certainly making some progress. When we look at construction specifically, about $570 million or 64 million went to WIMBY businesses, which is about 11%. And then when we look at non-construction, you know, just over $300 million in total spent and about 60 million or close to 17% went to women and minority businesses. So as Me and pointed out, certainly making some progress, but, you know, still got some ways to go.
Go ahead to the next slide for me, please. This is a look specifically at just trying to put WIMBY firms in broader categories, right? We wanted to do this chart just to kind of visually show what that 13% looks like in relation to all of the money that the port spends, right? And so, you know, you’ll hear all kinds of things about, you know, women and minority businesses, you know, taking away opportunities, but I just, I think this slide is just still kind of telling that it’s like, it’s 13%, right? So I just, we talked about this and just wanted to show just kind of in relation. I won’t read all of the particular categories, but but again, just really wanted to try to show just the distribution of when we talk about just a broader category of women and minority businesses.
There is one, just in full just kind of transparency, when you talk about gender unspecified, right? So this is a result of, for whatever reason, either we didn’t capture it up front, you know, or folks chose not to identify, but it is some work that we’re trying to do with regards to better quality assistance or quality assurance and just doing a better job of just trying to identify firms when we do count. But just wanted to point that out. And then we’ve came here before and talked about minority females. You know, we’re still at, you know, 1% or $6 million. And so some work that we’re always trying to do when we talk about targeted outreach and trying to do a better job of engaging folks.
Go ahead to the next slide for me, please. This is another slide. I think this slide speaks to intentionality. You know, we talked in previous years about disparities, and you know, those disparity studies are specific to try to understand, you know, what groups aren’t getting opportunities. And so this is, you know, I would say a telling slide. I think it’s a transparent slide, and I think it’s one that we hold ourselves accountable to as well. And so I will say that we’ve seen these numbers fluctuate, you know, from year to year. You know, I think we’ve talked in years past where Native American owned firms were at the bottom with, you know, a few million dollars. You know, we’ve seen this number where African-American firms were in the bottom, you know, to this year looking at Asian-owned firms and Black American owned firms, you know, at the top, you know, when we’re talking specifically about the ethnicity. We do see that Caucasian, white female owned firms are leading the way, about $92 million, or excuse me, 92 firms and about $31 million for this particular year. But again, I just like to point this slide out and just to remind folks of the intentionality. We do our best to try to do targeted outreach, which my colleague here will talk about some of the outreach activities and engagement activities that we do. But again, you know, this is one of the ways that I feel that our team holds ourself accountable to our community by being transparent with, you know, how the particular groups are earning dollars.
Go ahead to the next slide for me, please. As a reminder, we establish goals. These next two slides really speak to leadership accountability. The policy resolution called for accountability not just from our office, right? I think at times when we run these programs, you know, it’s one office that’s responsible for it. But over the last 5 years, I feel like the port has taken an approach that we’re all responsible, right? You know, we all have some ownership where it’s not just diversity and contracting that’s owning numbers, what it’s flowed down to the various divisions and departments. And so each of the executive leadership team members establish goals. And so and that’s what you’re looking at here. Again, on non-construction, I would say we and we stay pretty constant. And so historically, I don’t think we’ve dropped below 14%. And so in this year, 16% is what we hit, just port-wide, which I’ll show in another slide. But I really just wanted to share just really specifically talking about the accountability and how it’s not just held with regards to one office, that it’s flowed down to various divisions.
Go ahead to the next slide for me, please. And this is just a continuation of, you know, those goals, right? And that accountability. This is a specific breakout for the corporate division. One of the things I like to point out here is I think sometimes folks get excited. They see high numbers, right? High utilization. But, you know, sometimes the dollars don’t necessarily reflect like, oh, a big tick or a big move in percentage, right, for the port. But what I will say is that each of these folks or each of the departments here has folks that are on the executive leadership team. They all establish goals. And I think one of the biggest contributors with regards to the corporate unit is when we talk about the number of firms. And so a WIMBY firm doesn’t care, you know, necessarily how you’re doing organizationally, like toward that, you know, folks want to see to it that, you know, money is going to their particular business. And so what I will say is that a lot of these firms, or excuse me, a lot of these departments contribute quite a bit, in particular when we talk about some of the smaller purchases, some of the dollars and some of opportunities that don’t always get advertised, where a department can pick up the phone and, you know, you know, use someone, you know, for some some trade show items, for example, right? And so so just shout out to the divisions and departments that support this effort that take it serious and establish goals on an annual basis.
Go ahead to the next slide for me, please. And so as I mentioned, you know, I shared just a little bit about just the trends. And so we decided to look at the last six years starting in 2019. And this is specific for non-construction. You know, as I mentioned, you know, I feel like we stay pretty constant, you know, and some may even say stagnant, right? You know, we had a high in 2020 of, you know, just over 20%. And we haven’t climbed back out of that 16% area. So always looking for ways to improve opportunities. So not really much to say here as opposed to, you know, I think the question is, are we stagnant on our non-construction spend? This would consist of professional personal services, P-card services, or excuse me, P-card spend. Some of them are as a result of a contract when we put a goal and we’re evaluating what a response is and such. But really here again, I think the aim is just to show progress or and potentially identify some trends, you know, some things that we could take a look at, you know, as we think about what the next iteration of the program is going to look like.
Go ahead to the next slide for me, please. Now here’s construction. So if you look at 2024, I mean, we haven’t seen, you know, spend quite as high in in in a few years. I thought it was interesting to see that, you know, unlike in other years where the spending on construction, the WIMBY utilization kept up with that. You know, if you look at 2021, for example, right, where we hit 13%. And in this particular year, not so much. You know, I try to steer clear of causation and try to say more so correlation. I was also told do not do math in public. But I will offer this: the port is not by design, I mean, we have sophisticated work. You know, we want to improve the passenger experience. So often times, you know, some of the some of the work, for example, like a baggage optimization project, right? You know, that’s $100 million that’s going to hit the bottom line where there’s not a lot of firms just in general that do that work, let alone WIMBY firms, right? So when we take a look at that for analysis, we might do a 1%, 2% goal, right? You know, to the chagrin sometimes of community, sometimes to even you all, you know, where you all are asking some questions when it comes before you for approval. So I would associate some of that with regards to, you know, the type of work that we do. I would also associate, you know, some of this to some of the issues that we have with regards to some of the barriers and and and maybe even the interest that folks have with chasing work at the port of Seattle, which, you know, when we talk about what the next iteration will look like, Me and I’ll touch on some of that. But again, just wanted to share historically what we’ve looked like over the last few years when we talk about construction spending.
Go ahead to the next slide for me, please. And so we’re in the home stretch here, at least for my piece. Me and will talk at length if you don’t stop them. So as I mentioned, 2024 was our gap year. You know, again, we took some time with you all’s support to just take a pause, worked with the CPO, we participated in some lean efforts, but all in the way to take a look at the program to see where we can make some refinements. So just a couple of things when we talk about virtues, some things I would say are strengths. You know, we had a record spend for WIMBY firms in 2024, spending $124 million. So that means that went directly to firms in our community, which is pretty cool. WIMBY utilization in non-construction, I would say it remains consistent. I don’t know if high is necessarily the fairest thing to say, but I would say it remains consistent at that mark. Construction spend and excuse me, total construction spend and WIMBY utilization, you know, I would say they’ve made some upward trajectories in the last few years.
When we talk about challenges, you know, the reality is we have not hit that 15% mark. I think we had one estimation where we would say, I think we said something like 17 or 18% needed to go to WIMBYs on the construction space to get there. So that’s something to think about. I don’t know if that is still the most accurate mark, but nevertheless, the point is that construction will need to increase as we see it’s the greatest opportunity to get to that 15%, but we still haven’t achieved that. And then lastly, the port, we fell short. You know, we established a 400 WIMBY firm count goal in 2024, and we fell short by just about 12 firms.
With that, I will pass it to my colleague Emily Ho to talk about all of the great stuff she does to support getting women and minority businesses notifications.
Emily Ho: Thank you, Lawrence. Good afternoon, commissioners. Good afternoon, executive director Metrick. My name is Emily Ho. I am the program manager for community engagement and training for the diversity and contracting team. I will just be providing a very high level overview of the program in 2024. The goal of the program is to establish relationships with women and minority owned business firms, help provide them with the resources and the information that they need to pursue port work, as well as to help increase their firm capacities or assist them in doing so. And so we have a number of activities that we do, most of which fall under that PortGen umbrella. That includes a lot of online webinars, in-person networking events. Next week we’ll have June 2nd, largest event of the year, aviation industry day, where we’ve got I think over 400 folks signed up to hear about our aviation projects and the opportunities there. That’s just to name a few.
But real high level, compared to last year, we were affected by the cyber incidents. Typically for WIMBY firm vendor connect registrations, that’s onto our contracting portal, we average around over a hundred, but because of the incident, we had only 60 registrations. So we have some catching up to do this year. But it’s been offset by the fact that we’ve had more one-on-one assistance, probably also related to the fact that vendor connect wasn’t available. But that’s a fantastic thing in which we actually get to have one-on-one time with these businesses to help guide them a little bit more through what can be a very complicated process. So that is some of the comparisons to last year.
Some of the new efforts or new and improved efforts that we’ve had is really working with our colleagues in aviation project management group. Shout out to Stuart Matthews and Greg Kerry. We’ve been meeting with them each month to find out what are the contracts that are coming up over the horizon so that we can actually get that information out to firms months in advance, and that’s the timeline that they need to be able to actually get on some of those teams to pursue that work. So we’ve really increased the regularity of these online webinars, which I’m thrilled about. And then we have also increased the accessibility of our resource video library. We’ve added a number of additional technical assistance videos onto our website and made them a lot more digestible and accessible, which I’m really excited about. So that wraps up training and outreach for 2024.
Me and Rice: Thank you, Emily and Lawrence. Appreciate you all your efforts. And just to give you kind of a glimpse of what we did over 2024 was quite a bit, you know, just for each quarter and just kind of tease up to the next section here. But just so that you know, quarter one, that was the end of our previous five-year DC goals. And quarter one, we took a look at, we did an evaluation of our program itself. We had a commission order which extending our policy, and as part of that commission order, that’s where we increased the number of firms from 350 to 400 businesses, and that was phenomenal and we’re still continuing to grow. Quarter two, evaluation of the results. We had a disparity study that we conducted. We reviewed and refreshed the policy. We did some community engagement. Not some, we did a lot of community engagement, actually. We had community stakeholder input and policy and program goals. And now we’re coming towards the end of 2024, now into 2025, where we’re looking at what our new DC diversity and contracting policy directive and our goals will be. And that’ll happen sometime in the future, and we’re going to segue into kind of the thought process for the future of our program.
And without further ado, I did want to tap the brakes for one quick second and hand the ball over to my… thank you, I apologize, I had literally had a brain fog in my thought process, but VWin, who’s part of your commission staff, and we’ll talk a little more about the resolution and the directive.
VWin: Thank you, Director Rice. I do not blame you for your elder moment there. So VWin from the commission office. I’m just here to refresh our memory a little bit of how we got here and where we’re going. So for discussion only today, we’re just doing a review of resolution 3836, a little preview rather. So this is really building off of resolution 3737, which was adopted in January 2018. So this formally codified the program for the diversity and contracting program. It set the program at 5 years, and there are a couple elements that were critical to the standing up of the former program. So there were goals and timelines, incorporation of the WIMBY goals into the port’s long range plan, and just like any program, government program, we want to collect data and publish annual reports. There are some also like some critical elements of technical assistance, trainings, outreach that Emily detailed, conducting disparity studies, just so that we know where we’re going. We know what we’re doing and we can report back to constituents and also to the businesses and to the outside world of we set a goal. We’re saying that we want to do this and accomplish this, and this is how we’re proving that we’re doing the work and staying true to our values.
So as director Rice detailed, you know, the process of updating the directive has been very involved, and there’s been a lot of engagement from his team. But on the commission office side, we’ve also held three roundtables with most of the commissioners present at each one of the, well, two commissioners present at each one of the roundtables. And you know, we really did a lot of active listening and made sure to try our best to be responsive to what we heard. And you know, as staff sitting at each of those tables, you know, the number one thing that we heard over and over is increasing access to opportunity. And so I will hand this back over to Director Rice to share what we came up with.
Me and Rice: Oh, thank you VWin. I appreciate you. Next slide, please. Okay. On the left-hand side, I’ll start off there, some directive language updates. And at the end of the day, trying to use, and this is a stretch goals that we’re proposing here as a policy update of getting up to 16% instead of 15, up to 16%. And this is despite not originally achieving our 15% goal, but I still think the next 5 years continue to push that envelope and actually increase the number of women, minority and disadvantaged firms participating on port projects, as well as increasing the number of women, minority and disadvantaged businesses, WIMBY businesses for short, up to 500. So moving from 400 to 500, with a sub goal, which is a sub aspirational goal of 14% utilization for construction. And this is something that came out of the disparity study in terms of the availability of WIMBY firms within our construction-related activities that they felt that some of the folks will be out there. So having a sub goal for our next 5 years of trying to achieve that 14%.
Continued engagement for firms of upcoming opportunities and also include certified small businesses as defined by office of minority disadvantaged businesses through the state. Now on the right-hand side for program improvements, this falls into more the small ball. This falls into trying to get into more small works contracts, developing and formalizing a limited public works program, and also really try to continue to push on those alternative delivery methodologies, those GCCM, those design builds, and so forth. And so a lot of the community members out there that we’ve talked with, they’re like, “Hey, I love working on port projects. It’s great. I unfortunately have to work under a prime. I would love to have small something in which I can directly work with you, the port of Seattle, and finding those small projects.” And so a lot of them, a lot of the businesses out there in which we’ve talked to both internal, excuse me, externally, says, “Yeah, like to have those little something that we can work directly on.” And so again, that’s that kind of that small ball, really focus on the small works, those limited public works program, and alternative delivery methodologies. And that’s actually alternative delivery methodology is more for the larger projects, but because of the contract type, we’re able to have a little more conversations with the prime contractors in this regards, and so it gives us a lot of flexibility.
And then also to improve prompt payment and change orders. You know, these are areas in which we’ve heard over and over again throughout the past year or so. And change orders. So I know that we are in the quarter 4 of this year. We’re planning doing a lean process with CPO to get into kind of the understanding of the prompt payments, figure out some alternatives or some thought processes how we can move the needle forward to pay our contractors a little more quicker than it has been. But you know, again, that’s something that we’re highlighting. And then also as well, all business, you got to have bonding and insurance depending upon the project, and level setting a little more so about for the scopes of work matches the bondings or insurance that’s needed depending upon what the project is or that effort is. So I know that the diversity and contracting program along with risk management are working hand in hand trying to figure this thing out the best way and adding a little more flexibility to our small businesses out there that and diverse businesses that are actually working on our projects.
In this regards, I’m going to skip this next one here. I’m going to go straight to collect data on a timely dispatch on contracts and jobs with the port of Seattle. And this one falls into just tracking. There are some small businesses that sometimes that we’ve heard that said that some of the workers in which they get dispatched from the hall, sometimes they have to turn around a little sooner rather than later. And so we want to make sure that we actually capture that data and something that we are not capturing in-house that we want to make sure we keep track of.
And then going back to that second bullet in terms of inclusion of veteran-owned businesses with port-wide WIMBY plus VBE, the veteran-owned business. This is actually, it’s not part of the actual goal itself, the 16%, but it is more about tracking. It’s more about just being more deliberate about our tracking of our veteran businesses. Again, this is not part of the 16% goal. This is just more about tracking, outreach and efforts for and making sure that all parties actually are have those opportunities, but also being able to highlight those vets out there that are looking at doing work with the Port of Seattle.
Next slide, please. Okay, so we’re getting to the 2025 program goals. And I’m actually going to start off with the division goals on the right-hand side. This is dealing with, this again, our division directors set non-construction goals based off of the budgets that they perceive that they’re going to have for 2025. And as you can see, aviation has the 14%. They’re shooting for that. Economic development, 10%. Maritime, 14%. Corporate, 16%. And just I guess as a port-wide effort, trying to achieve that 16%. So these are for 2025 goals for each one of our divisions.
Now on the left-hand side for the port-wide goals, as I mentioned from the previous slide, you know, construction and construction percentage spend for WIMBY firms, we’re looking at 16%. Again, where it says plus V, this more of think of as a silo. We’re just looking at trying to make sure we track better and get a better understanding of how veterans work, get on our projects and efforts, including outreach and trainings. Number of WIMBY firms, again, 500. And then construction port up to 14%.
Next slide, please. This gets into kind of the thought process. This is for some of the folks in the listening audience as well as you commissioners. This gets into the proposed number of women WIMBY firms for utilization goal. This kind of shows in orange what the previous five years used to look like. 354, that was our goal. We achieved 392. Gap year, again, 388 to 400, and then but we’re saying that we’re going to try to push for the next five years, trying to get up to 500, utilize over 500 firms. Again, noted for the record that commissioner Caulkins has exited the meeting.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you.
Me and Rice: Oh, thank you, commissioner. Appreciate it. For this WIMBY utilization number of firms, you know, P-cards, we do a lot of P-card activities. Sometimes some of the P-cards might not capture all of our WIMBY businesses in which we leverage. That’s, you know, if you go to, especially from an ethnicity perspective, if you go to, I don’t want to stereotype names, but I’ll just say Sheniqua, how about that, and we’ll say, “Hey, we’ll go to a hairdresser, we hit the card, play with the P-card.” Supposedly it may capture as a WIMBY businesses, but it doesn’t capture the ethnicity of that said business. So that could affect some of the some of the data that we receive in the previous slides.
Next slide, please. This one is the proposed percentage for WIMBY utilization goals. Again, you heard this before. 15% was our previous years. We’re recommending going up to 16% with a sub construction WIMBY goal, 14%. And you know, from our driver perspective, construction, professional service, architectural engineering, those are our biggest drivers for the percentages in which are driving our utilization goals. However, we do have some detractors here that we’ve heard from, and again, this is a lot of data collection from the DC team, both internally wise and externally wise.
So our port capital program, you know, there’s a balance between bundling for efficiency versus unbundling projects for increased women, minority and disadvantaged business participation, and some of the drivers and some of the detractors, so to speak, depending upon that business. One of the areas that a lot of folks talk about is project labor agreements or components within it. Cash flow, you know, cash flow is king for small businesses. And as well as prime payment, got to, they got to keep the doors open and payments got to continue to move forward in their pockets as they continue to grow their business, as well as bonding and insurance. And again, I talked about that a little earlier in regards to risk management.
So next slide, please. And with this slide, I’m actually going to hand the ball over to Emily Ho and to talk a little about 2025 and training and outreach program efforts. Emily, thanks.
Emily Ho: So this slide shows all of the many training and outreach activities that will be going on in 2025. We’re going to continue building on the great work that we accomplished in 2024. I do want to highlight three new initiatives that we are, that are underway, and the common theme between the three is just increased collaboration.
So PortGen 101 orientations, these are online monthly meetings where we focus on just construction contracting. So you want to be a construction contractor at the port, what do you need to know from kind of just the basic fundamentals to this is what the process actually looks like? And I was really lucky to have Angela Peterson, CPO assistant director for contracting construction, to give, to build that presentation and give that with me in April. And so in the following months, we’re going to be focusing on goods and services and then service agreements. And this is really only made possible by partnering with our CPO colleagues.
There is also the capacity building mentorship program that we will be hoping to join. This is a mentorship program that already exists with Sound Transit and WSDOT. They’ve been doing it for many years. We, along with some other agencies, are hoping to join in on that and leverage that and build on that in either this year or upcoming year. So more to come on that. There’ll probably be an MOA that will be required, but that’s a really exciting opportunity to really work with our sister agencies towards a similar goal.
And then lastly, we’re working on vendor connect enhancements. Really hoping to make that a useful directory of choice for folks around the port as well as external stakeholders to find diverse businesses when they have a business need. As it exists right now, vendor connect is not the best tool for that. And so I’ve been working with folks on the change team to head up this effort. So really excited to have input from folks around the port to create and enhance this tool that they will actually use going forward.
Me and Rice: Appreciate it. Thank you, Emily. Next slide, please. All right, coming to the end. So next steps, other next steps that we’re really pushing on. Again, you, some of this, a lot of stuff you heard from the previous slide decks, but developing a limited public works program for small businesses. We’re really trying to push and develop an A&E or architecture engineering program for small and disadvantaged businesses, veterans and WIMBY businesses alike, and truly looking at adjusting our professional service categories to really play small ball. And then the next one is improve prompt payment procedures for construction projects in collaboration with CPO construction. And improve insurance flexibility for small businesses. Continue to push alternative delivery methodologies. Provide ongoing training for women, minority, disadvantaged businesses, veteran and small businesses. And this is particularly, particularly on project labor agreements. I, you know, we just signed the last project labor agreement last year, I believe it was last year. But regardless of that, small businesses, heck, medium and large businesses, need to really understand what’s really in the agreements moving forward as we conduct our port of Seattle business. So we want to make sure that we’re all in in alignment or in sync of understanding what’s in it. And then also, lastly, improved data collection systems on our in partnership with the CPO.
So with that, I am, next slide, please, I’m giving you a big thank you and good night. So here we go.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you very much for the presentation. All right, colleagues, at this time, alternate questions and comments that you may have.
Commissioner Felleman: Thank you so much for squeezing all that good work into this presentation. I think it’s appropriate that we include recognition of veterans on Memorial Day weekend, and so thank you for that inclusion. And I guess, giving visibility to it. I really appreciate that. And I guess, technically veterans aren’t in that categories, but the educational part, the outreach seems to be kind of uniquely different. So I’m just, and when you say education, do you have like a strategy for the outreach part of that?
Me and Rice: The short answer is yes. We do have, because, you know, coming out of, I used to work in years past for the department of defense, and there’s a different language in the military. And so coming into the public sector, sometimes that bringing and crossing over from the military language to civilian, especially when you’re trying to get the job or from a business perspective, trying to really make sure that they understand how government is working and that’s in charge of. And that’s with the partnership with Miss Emily Ho here of saying, “Hey, here’s opportunities, and I want to make sure you understand opportunities. I understand what’s what’s being said in the contracts and efforts and what you’re trying to go after.” So we do have a strategy. It’s a lot of it, there’s a lot of overlap with our current port activities, but there’s some also some additional training and things like that that some veteran folks might need to have. And I’ve got a few calls about that saying, what does this mean? And so that explanation. But other than that, there’s a lot of overlap with our current program.
Commissioner Felleman: Yeah. You have young bucks like our executive who, you know, you end up getting out of, you retire out of Coast Guard after a couple of rounds. So you have some still able-bodied people ready to enter the workforce. And I’m sure there’s, everybody’s got their own association. You know, I was just wanted to draw attention to slide 13 and 14. I think so much information is packed into that, but I wanted to pack some more into it, because I’m like that’s the glutton for punishment. So the trend data, I think is very important to, you know, get a sense of, and you can explain some of that, even though you don’t want to go beyond correlation. You know, with COVID or whatever, you know, there are certain things we could foresee. And the discussion before, I just saw some stories that, you know, construction is expected to be down because of tariffs and uncertainties. So there’s a bunch of projects, large projects across the country that have been put on hold. So, you know, when you start elevating those goals, keep that next dip in mind.
But the pie chart that you showed, you know, the changes in these hires, it varies by the different categories of minority and women-owned business. And so, and we know that minority women are the smallest piece of the pie. But I was just wondering if we had that sort of same color coding that you have in the pie chart in each one of these histograms, you could sort of see relatively proportionally within those years, you know, who’s doing better than others and why in one year were we doing better and help explain that trend. And we can go back and look at over time, you know, are they, are those categories holding steady or are they varying? And maybe we could understand a different targeting based on that. So it would become like a real zebra striped, you know, complicated slide, but it, there’s, you have the percentages, you have the hard dollars, and then you can just look at the distribution of, you’ve already collected the data. So anyway, I think you can have a two slide presentation next time, and then you, but then you have your goal, obviously, and I appreciate all that work.
Lastly, how does this compare to Sound Transit in King County? Do they have similar goals, and are they changing their goals? I mean, seems to me that that’s always the question I ask every time is like, where does this number come from? How is this aspiration decided? And I’m just wondering, our colleagues in brethren governments, are their goals similar to ours?
Me and Rice: I can’t speak on other government entities, to be honest with you, how they came up with their goals, outside of I think Sound Transit get a lot of federal dollars. So they have a DBE goals that’s set specifically on their three lines of business, if I believe. So light rail, commuter rail, and express bus service, I believe it is. And from King County, I think they have a different capital program. They do have a little small airport, but in terms of the the similarity of our actual projects are significantly larger, especially from an airport perspective. So the county has what they call the small contractor and supplier program, where it is basically, if I remember correctly, and correct me if I’m wrong, it’s half the size standards of the SBA criteria. So they created that years and years ago. But how they came up specifically for the goals per each department or division within King County, I just, that’s something I can’t answer.
Commissioner Felleman: I just, again, it would seem to be instructive to know those agencies that are doing a lot of construction work, you know, how their trends are going, you know, whether even if we have different goals, you know, are they showing similar fluctuations, or is there some other special sauce that we can look at?
Me and Rice: We’ll do, I can take a look at that, even get it even closer. I, you know, I do know is that the, lot of the, there’s some overlap with some of the firms terms that we they use versus what we use. I mean, we’ll just use painters, right? A painter can go almost anywhere. However, they don’t have elevator, escalator businesses or baggage claim businesses or things in that way where there’s a lot of work. But we do a heck of a lot of work in electrical side of the coin where all three counties and cities and us use a lot of the electrical contractors out there. And so we burned through them, no pun intended, quite a bit. There’s a lot of electrical work that we, from a contracting perspective that we, I’m sure the data would be shocking.
Commissioner Felleman: Yeah. So all right. So and I’ll be in Las Vegas next week. Let’s finish this up.
Commissioner Cho: Yeah, I just had a quick question on the numbers here. Slide eight shows that our non-construction utilization is 16.6%. But if you go down to the area where it’s broken down on slide 12, it’s as high as 27%. So I’m trying to understand what the distinction is.
Lawrence Coleman: Thank you for that question, commissioner. So slide 12 is specific to corporate. So that’s a breakout of the corporate division, whereas the previous slide is all of non-construction.
Commissioner Cho: Okay. So I see. So non-construction is a wider, bigger umbrella than just corporate.
Lawrence Coleman: Correct.
Commissioner Cho: What would the distinction, what give me an example of what’s non-conjunction but not corporate?
Lawrence Coleman: Well, no, corporate is describing the division. So the work could potentially be the same. It’s just, and so we wanted to show executive leaders and what their respective spend was for the year and the goals that we established. So we provided another slide specifically to break out, excuse me, corporate.
Commissioner Cho: So what is, so shouldn’t everything be under these executive, like what would not fall under this umbrella of corporate non-construction?
Lawrence Coleman: So what would not fall under corporate would be aviation and maritime, for example, and economic development.
Commissioner Cho: Oh, I see. Yeah. So corporate is all by itself. And again, we just really wanted to honor the folks that spending all the time, you know, getting bothered by our team to establish goals and just wanted to break that out and also, you know, try to show how it’s a shared, you know, accountability. And so, and again, non-construction would include purchase card spend, professional and personal services, goods and services.
Commissioner Cho: So why isn’t ED and why aren’t those, why is ED not part of corporate? I don’t understand.
Me and Rice: Those are the business lines, commissioner. So the corporate is the non-business lines. The cross functional efforts. And then the three business lines are the, you’re talking about the administrative side.
Commissioner Cho: This is what the, okay. So you’re when you say corporate, you’re talking about like administrative, not the overall, not the big corporate, the corporate being central services, right? Central services.
Lawrence Coleman: That is correct.
Commissioner Cho: Okay. That’s an important distinction I that I didn’t fair. You figured the overall corporate, right? Versus the operating business lines in the, and it might be just for our own kind of definition, but we tried our best to match what what the budget looks like, right? And so there’s budget orgs and codes and, you know, different naming conventions and try to be consistent with that. So yeah, but certainly always open to recommendations if there’s a better way to display that.
Commissioner Cho: Got it. Okay. So it’s more central service/admin.
Lawrence Coleman: Correct.
Commissioner Cho: Not, okay, that makes a lot more sense to me. Okay. I think that was the only major question I had on your.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you. I want to thank you for leading on that, because that was one of my questions too. We maybe we can think through that some more about the best way to convey that.
Commissioner Mohamed: Well, I don’t have any questions. I wanted to thank you all for the detailed presentation and also the presentation that you guys recently provided us in committee. And just honor the hard work that goes into this. I think the breakdown of just the amount of engagement that’s happening, especially during a cyber attack, that you all were able to still meet with folks, speaks volume to what you all, the impact and what you all are doing. And then I just also wanted to underscore and say that I appreciate that the prompt payment is going to be included in the revised version of the resolution. And so I’m looking forward to that coming forward, because I feel like whenever I am talking to a lot of our WIMBY businesses, that is what I’m consistently hearing is them wanting to see us make some changes around prompt payment and that having a great impact for them if we made sure that we paid them more on time and not just relying, paying them on time as in the subcontractors as well. And so whatever we can do in our power to make that happen, I’m looking forward to your recommendations on that and seeing how do we implement it, how do we put resources behind it as commissioners. And so, yeah, I look forward to those recommendations coming forward. Thank you again.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you, Commissioner. I wanted to commend you all for this incredible body of work that you’ve been leading and thank you for bringing it to us in such a succinct presentation. I know how proud you are of this, and I know how proud we are of this. And you know, of all the thanks and recognitions that you give, Director Rice, I do want to say leadership certainly matters for vision and the drive and the execution of the work. And so I’d just like to take a moment to also recognize you. Thank you for everything that you’re doing and the phenomenal team that you have to show for this labor of love.
I just wanted to point out overall, you know, the climate in which we’re operating, there is progress, and I will talk about the progress. But I thought that pie chart was really important also for us to set the context of this conversation and why it’s important, right? Out of, we have $88 million or 87% of the overall spend still going to white male firms. And if you include 6% going to white women, that’s 93% of all those dollars still going to white-owned firms. And so you know, we’re operating in a climate where there are threats from the federal administration on diversity and contracting. We said in our last public meeting how important it is for us to maintain our commitment to diversity and contracting. But this is what proves that it’s the absence of these efforts that leads to discrimination, not the presence of them. So thank you for the work that you’re doing in anti-discrimination and bringing that into our practices that’s institutionalizing our work to create access to opportunities for people regardless of their race, regardless of their gender or their sex.
In 2024, it’s notable we did have record spend for WIMBYs, but I also temper, you know, we should celebrate that, and I’m very proud of that. That’s not on accident. And it does show that year-over-year, percentage-wise, it came down, but by hard numbers, it still went up. But we did fall short of our goal by 12 firms. And we talk about the why. And we’re not talking about, I didn’t hear you name causation specifically, but the why is important because that’s what we need to continue to work on. And there’s been a lot of stakeholdering that’s happened for people talking about all the different reasons why. So the last part of your presentation talking about what more we can do, what more we’re willing to do, is really exciting.
I want to thank all of you, and I want to thank strategic advisor VWin for your work in managing those stakeholdering meetings. You had four out of five commissioners who showed up.
VWin: Yes.
Commission President Hasegawa: Yes, including Commissioner Mohamed, Commissioner Cho, and Commissioner Caulkins. And I know Commissioner Felleman would have, he’s always there in spirit, but it’s really just a matter of capacity and quorum, truly. You have, I’d like to think, unanimous support from the commission in going forth and doing the work that you’re doing. And I would like to think that you have us in iterative consultation, right, as we set more audacious goals year by year to be able to see that on the back end as outcomes, right? We want outcomes. So all is to say is this has been a very heavy lift and one that you’ve all carried with a lot of care. So thank you very much for this presentation. Thank you for the work that you’re doing. I hope all of you are incredibly proud, as I know that we are, and we look forward to what you’re able to bring to us at the next presentation by way of an order.
Me and Rice: Great. Thank you, commissioners.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you. I think I’ve got one more question over here from commissioner.
Commissioner Cho: Sorry. I just remembered the other question I had in the middle of your presentation is, I know that our metrics have traditionally been around percentage spend and number of WIMBYs, you know. I think, Me and, you and I have had so many conversations around how that’s a very difficult balance, right? Do we prioritize number of firms we work with, or do we prioritize the percentage of our spend that we put, you know, give out the, or you could have lopsided results, right? But one thing that occurred to me during the presentation was, you’re going from, you know, a 15% goal interim to 16%. And I think as much as I admire and appreciate your willingness to do that, I feel like that’s not a fair metric for you guys, right? Because our percentage, our dollar spend fluctuates every year, true. And we talk about $5.3 billion over the next five years, but it’s not a billion dollars every year, right? It’s could be $3 billion next year and half a billion, you know, whatever. You know, it’s lumpy, right? And so to have this benchmark of 16%, you know, you could reach 16% next year, but then miss it the year after that because the dollar spend went up so much that you just couldn’t keep up with that spend. And so my question here is, why don’t we have a metric that is just a fixed dollar amount as opposed to a, why don’t we have a metric for you all that is a fixed dollar amount?
Me and Rice: We do.
Commissioner Cho: As opposed to it’s going to, we’re going to, we want to increase it from 400 to 500.
Me and Rice: They’re, they, no, that’s the number of firms. I’m talking about how much money we’re spending, right?
Commissioner Cho: That, but that’s my point. It’s a proportion of how much we’re spending that year. So if you’re spending a billion dollars and your goal is 15%, you have to somehow get $150 million out the door to WIMBYs. Yeah. Conversely, if the next year we spend $2 billion, you have to get $300 million to WIMBYs. So the goalpost is constantly moving because the amount of money we spend year to year changes. Yeah. So my question is, why don’t we have a goal for you that is a fixed dollar amount that escalates per year, as opposed to us continuing to move the goalpost, right, year to year based on what the port chooses to spend in that one year? What do you think about that?
Me and Rice: Short answer is that I like that thought process. Remember, we were, I think I get what you’re saying. The something we’ll have to, I’ll have a conversation with some of our teammates, but it sounds kind of cool. The just remember, the, you know, the whatever the goal is for from percentage perspective, we’re talking about over five years, we’re just trying to hit. So we hit the reset button irregardless of what the goal is. It’s a percentage of the budget dollars and also main dollars that we’re trying to do. But I definitely, I something I think we could look into for sure. Commissioner, I think that sounds kind of cool because, you know, you spent $124 million, was 13.3% according to your numbers, right?
Commissioner Cho: Yep. But that’s, that could have been a higher percentage if we spent less money, right? Do you understand what I’m saying?
Me and Rice: Oh, I get what you’re saying. Oh, absolutely. Like you could have hit the 15% if we spent maybe $20 million less that year, right? So, so my point being is like, let’s, let’s, let’s provide, let’s come up with a metric that is measures progress, right? As opposed to measuring fluctuation, right? Because that’s all at this point that’s what you’re doing. You’re just measuring the fluctuations as opposed to what the absolute progress is, right? I want to see you go from $124 million to $140 million to $150 million to $170 million, right? And that is like, when I go on the road and I talk to constituents, I can say like, we went from $124 to $150 million in 2 years or something like that, right? That for me is a far more meaningful metric than to go to, to say I went from 13 to 14%, right? Let’s give ourselves a pat on the back for 1%.
Me and Rice: But we do give dollars though at…
Commissioner Cho: No, absolutely. Yeah, we do. All right. Yeah. No, I hear what you’re saying. I love it.
Commission President Hasegawa: So I’d like to turn to executive director Metrick as well.
Executive Director Metrick: Yeah, thanks. And we’ll talk with Director Rice and his team. We collect all that information, so we can show it different ways. But you want us to lead with that, and we can take that back to consider that to see what that means.
Commissioner Cho: Yeah, I just, you know, I just don’t want to set them up for failure.
Executive Director Metrick: Oh, no.
Commissioner Cho: If we’re spending X amount of dollars in the next three years that, or the next 5 years, I understand completely. That’s not going to, it’s a point well taken.
Commission President Hasegawa: Well, you know, what I recall what we articulated in the past from the dais is that anticipating an unprecedented number of spend in CIPs, we wanted to tie progress so that it was congruent with growth in spend. So, you know, there’s fluctuation, we should be flexible.
Commissioner Cho: Yep.
Commission President Hasegawa: It’s like looking at anything. If you have a large percentage of a smaller number or a smaller percentage of a larger number, I think that’s your point, commissioner.
Commissioner Cho: Yep. Yeah. Absolutely.
Commission President Hasegawa: Do I have any other questions or comments from my colleagues? Seeing none, I will thank and dismiss the panel. Thank you very much for the presentation.
Me and Rice: Thank you, commissioners. Appreciate it.
Commission President Hasegawa: Absolutely.
Closing
Commission President Hasegawa: All right. Well, folks, that’s bringing us to the end of our business meeting agenda today. I am wondering, do we have any closing comments, motions, or referrals to committee before we adjourn?
Commissioner Felleman: I just had the honor of saying a few words at Dan Thomas’s retirement party for the commission. And, you know, he’s like, we now, Stephanie Jones Stevens now will be the longest standing member. In my short tenure here, we’ve lost almost this huge brain drain of the ELT. Now we have very smart people that are coming back in, but it’s extraordinary. And each one of these times I go to these meetings, you have these incredibly dedicated people at 30 plus years. It’s quite extraordinary. And then you have a guy like Louise sitting in the room. He can’t get enough of it. I mean, I just love the fact that even our retirees are coming back for more. And I just think it’s a great reflection of the spirit of the folks that work here, and I thank you for the leadership to make that possible.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you, Commissioner. Executive Director Metrick, do you have any closing comments for us today?
Executive Director Metrick: Thanks, Commissioners. No, I don’t. Thanks for the really in-depth, a lot of presentation, a lot of information. I thank you for your attention today on this.
Commission President Hasegawa: Thank you all very much. Well, hearing no further comments and having no further business before us, the time is 3:23 and we are adjourned.