Opening and executive session
Commission President Ryan Calkins: This is Commission President Ryan Calkins convening the regular meeting of March 24th, 2026. The time is 10:33 a.m. We’re meeting in person today at the SEA Conference Center and virtually on Microsoft Teams. All commissioners are present and they are currently gathered in the executive session room awaiting the opening of the public meeting.
We’ll now recess into executive session to discuss three items regarding litigation, potential litigation, legal risk per RCW 42.31.101(i), with one of those items also regarding national security per RCW 42.31.101(a)(i) for approximately 60 minutes. We will reconvene into public session at 12:00 p.m. There is one additional item for the performance of a public employee per RCW (40)(1)(g).
Reconvening
Commission President Ryan Calkins: This is Commission President Ryan Calkins reconvening the regular meeting of March 24th, 2026. The time is 12:05 p.m. We’re meeting in person today at the SEA Conference Center and virtually on Microsoft Teams. Clerk Hart, can you please call the role of all commissioners in attendance?
Clerk Hart: Yes, thank you. Beginning with Commissioner Calkins, here. Thank you. Commissioner Cho, present. Thank you. Commissioner Felleman, present. Thank you. Commissioner Hasegawa, present. Thank you. Commissioner Mohamed, present. Thank you. We do have a full commission in attendance today.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: For everyone in the meeting room, please turn your cell phones to silent. For anyone participating on Microsoft Teams, please mute your speakers when not actively speaking or presenting. Please keep your cameras off unless you are 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 their name is called to speak and will turn them back off again at the conclusion of their 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 have been recognized. You’ll turn your microphones on and off as needed. All votes today will be taken by the roll call method or by general consent. So it is clear for anyone participating virtually how votes are cast. Commissioners will say aye or nay when their name is called. We are meeting on the ancestral lands and waters of the Coast Salish people 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. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance.
Approval of the agenda
Commission President Ryan Calkins: 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 is not necessary to pull the item from the consent agenda. Rather, a commissioner may offer general supporting or opposing comments later in the meeting once we get to the consent agenda items. 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 separate discussion. Are there any items to be pulled from the consent agenda or any motions to rearrange the orders of the day?
Commissioners, the question is now on approval of the agenda. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented? So moved. I’ll second. The motion has been made and seconded. Is there any objection to approval of the agenda as presented? Hearing none, the agenda is approved as presented.
Executive director’s report
Commission President Ryan Calkins: Next on our agenda is the executive director’s report. Deputy Executive Director Goon, you have the floor.
Deputy Executive Director Lance Goon: Thank you, Commission President Calkins. Good afternoon, commissioners. I am covering for Executive Director Metruck while he attends the Port of the Future conference in Houston. I would like to begin my remarks by addressing some broader context shaping our work.
We are now several weeks into continued conflict in the Middle East, including escalating tensions involving Iran. While direct operational impacts remain limited today, we are seeing second order effects. Fuel prices are rising, which is already influencing airline pricing and traveler behavior. At the same time, there is broader economic uncertainty that’s beginning to temper growth across both aviation and some maritime activity. We are monitoring this closely because our lines of business tend to feel these shifts early.
There are also human impacts. This period has been difficult for members of our Iranian-American community and at the same time marked important observances like Ramadan and Eid. I also want to acknowledge the daily stress for military families and there are many here at the port in our community who have children, spouses, and loved ones and friends in harm’s way. We are leaning into support and inclusion for all who are affected.
Even closer to home, we continue working proactively to address impacts from the ongoing partial federal shutdown, which has especially severe impacts on the Transportation Security Administration workers that we rely on at SEA. This Friday, our TSA workers at SEA will miss their second full paycheck. They missed a half paycheck at the end of last month and then a full paycheck on March 13th. Despite this, TSA workers continue to demonstrate their professionalism and maintain their duties at SEA. We are deeply grateful for their dedication under such duress.
One reason why our TSA partners have continued to show up at SEA is the incredible support that we have received from the community. Individuals and organizations have donated almost $65,000 in non-perishable foods, household items, and gift cards. Not to mention the hosted meals from some of our airline partners and airport vendors. And some of our ADR tenants are offering extremely generous discounts for meals at their restaurants. I want to specifically call out Food Lifeline who did a curbside distribution on March 13th of meat, dairy, and produce for 462 airport workers and the Emergency Response Network who coordinated the delivery of 11 pallets of food. Most recently, one of the region’s largest employers donated $7,500 worth of gas cards to help our TSA workers afford to get to the airport. We are grateful to those partners and to the hundreds of individuals showing their support and generosity over the past months. Our GoFundMe has raised $25,000 in the last 18 hours alone. You can find the campaign by searching “Support SEA TSA Workers GoFundMe.” Travelers to the airport will also see new digital signs created by the airport to show our appreciation for TSA workers. We will continue to find ways to show our gratitude.
Staying with airport updates, last Saturday we began tracking reports that the federal government planned to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement and National Guard employees to airports around the nation, reportedly to assist TSA with certain functions. These changes began showing up at approximately a dozen airports across the country on Monday. At SEA, duties such as exit lane monitoring, divestiture assistance, and ticket document checking have been long handled by trained non-TSA staff, and our current staffing model continued to support efficient passenger flow without operational disruption. We will keep the commission informed if federal direction changes, but at present, we believe the airport remains well positioned to maintain operations by the people who know it best.
Finally, I want to acknowledge the tragic accident that occurred at LaGuardia airport late on Sunday night. Any loss of life is felt keenly in the aviation family and our thoughts are with the team at Air Canada and LaGuardia. Chief Krauss has been in touch with the FAA and has offered his operations chief should any assistance be needed in the after-action analysis. We will also of course be following information from the investigation through our many industry groups.
Switching to the maritime side, we have successfully completed the closure of the covered docks at Salmon Bay Marina. This was a significant safety issue. Over the past six months, nearly 100 vessels, including floating homes, were relocated through a coordinated cross-port effort. The immediate life safety risk is now resolved and we’re beginning to plan for the long-term future of that asset.
These efforts occurred during a period of significant port-led engagement. We hosted our State of the Port event last week with strong attendance from community and industry partners. The message focused on our 2025 accomplishments and priorities ahead and it sets a foundation for upcoming budget discussions. That same day, we held our first commission budget retreat of the year where we shared details on our executive focus efforts to become a more resource-conscious organization. We also convened our first Sustainable Maritime Fuel Summit bringing together over 100 leaders across maritime and energy sectors. Feedback from across the West Coast has been positive so far and reinforces our leadership role in this effort.
Looking ahead, we are entering early stages of 2027 budget development. In the next few days, Executive Director Metruck will issue 2026 unbudgeted guidance and 2027 principles to moderate the rate of expense growth and better align it with revenue trends. We will reiterate this guidance at the upcoming executive director town hall as well.
And finally, we are following reports that the NBA board of governors is set to vote this week on the potential addition of expansion teams in Las Vegas and Seattle. If this is the direction the NBA goes, the Port of Seattle will support the city of Seattle and Climate Pledge Arena to show that Seattle is ready for the NBA again. We are staying tuned.
Moving to today’s commission meeting, I would like to highlight a few items on today’s consent agenda. We have a request for additional contracting capacity to support our Sustainable Airport Master Plan near-term projects environmental review. This request will fund the additional analysis and outreach needed for the SEPA process. We also have several briefings planned for today. We’ll hear from our Talent Connections team on our internship program, present our local and regional government relations priorities, and provide an update on our language access efforts.
Recognition of George Blumberg
Deputy Executive Director Lance Goon: Before I close my remarks, if I could take a point of privilege and rearrange the order of presentation. I could do that because the boss is out of town, so I won’t get into too much trouble. I would like to kick off the recognition of George Blumberg who has been with us for 40 years. If George could come to the front table. Why don’t we have George and Sandy and John all come up.
We know how much you love this.
Today we recognize the well-earned retirement of Senior Environmental Program Manager George Blumberg. Through his 40 years of public service at the port, George has played a crucial role in developing legacy projects and programs which have shaped our region’s economy and environment. A product of the first graduating class of the University of Washington School of Marine Affairs, George can be proud of the mark he’s left on the Green Duwamish watershed, Elliott Bay, and Puget Sound and the city of Seattle. He has been instrumental in moving the maritime industry from its polluting past to its sustainable future. George is recognized as one of the region’s leading experts in cleanup and restoration of urban waterways, having pioneered innovative techniques that reversed decades of environmental damage from industrial pollution. He has also served informally as our port historian, was our main attraction on port tours, and has bridged our relationship with the community’s tribes and other government agencies. We are honored to recognize George Blumberg today and thank him for his 40 years of service. Sandy Kilroy and John Sloan will read a statement in his honor. Thank you.
John Sloan: Again, thank you commissioners, Deputy Executive Director Goon. George Blumberg has served over 40 years of public service to the port and to our community. The 40 years represent contributions that have changed how we conduct our work, how we interact with our community, and how we are seen by the public. First, George is recognized as an expert in habitat restoration of urban waterways and has deployed innovative techniques that reverse decades of environmental damage from industrial pollution. These techniques include bio-engineered bankline stabilization structures, floating wetland islands, and other nature-based solutions. Such techniques were lacking until he began designing and testing them along the Duwamish River at the start of his career at the port. Today, his techniques are used throughout the Salish Sea by ports, cities, counties, and others who need to balance water-dependent industrial uses with the ecological needs of fish and wildlife. His many projects, large and small, have demonstrated effectiveness and scalability.
George is technically proficient while also understanding the port is an important neighbor to our community. To George, the marine environment and community stewardship go hand in hand. Throughout the years, he’s mentored hundreds of young people, possibly thousands, and changed countless lives. To many, he’s the face of the port, having built a reputation as a caring, soft-spoken man that people will always lean in to hear. He’s most comfortable when he’s half submerged in a wetland working with and teaching young people together in mud-covered boots, laughing and learning. In a student survey, one respondent simply said, “I love George.”
His work with Dirt Corps and the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps moved the needle on impactful projects and green jobs training when most of us were still trying to figure out what green jobs meant. Many young professionals now credit George with inspiring them to pursue green careers. Others credit him with their passion for the maritime industry or their love of community service.
Among his most remarkable achievements are his contributions to the Muckleshoot and Suquamish Indian tribes on matters related to treaty fishing, cultural resource protection, and environmental education. George brought treaty rights into the port’s lexicon, building a healthy relationship between the tribes and the port, which promises to endure long into the future. And just yesterday, George was honored by the Muckleshoot tribe in a blanketing ceremony where they bestowed a traditional blanket upon him. The first time the Muckleshoot has ever done that for somebody outside of their tribe and staff. And I’ll hand it over to Sandy.
Sandra Kilroy: George has served as the resident historian for the port for many years, contributing his knowledge of maritime history to his fellow staff as well as academics, community members, and the media. Many of us know that George knows the history of the waterfront from well before the port was formed up to today. George is often the voice of the port, speaking at countless community events, working waterfront tours, and public lectures. Throughout Seattle’s harbor, you will see evidence of the many ways George has captured history by using historically significant salvaged items in parks and restoration projects, which also minimizes environmental impact and creates unique and cost-effective design solutions. George not only improved the ecological condition of our waterways, he improved the health of the residents that live beside them, many of whom have been historically underserved or disproportionately impacted. Through it all, though, he never underestimated the importance of profitability and good financial stewardship.
George’s fingerprints are on many critical port projects. The Duwamish River People’s Park and Shoreline Habitat, the largest restoration project on the Duwamish in a generation, will stand as one of George’s proudest achievements. His design for the project reflects countless hours of collaboration with port staff, community members, tribes, agencies, and artists, culminating in a placemaking masterpiece.
George’s dedication to his work exemplifies the power of individual action to create lasting positive change. George gave selflessly to this organization. He’s built his legacy on full-time lifelong passion, contributing to the port’s mission and supporting our community in a way that leaves his mark for generations to come. Thank you, George.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: And George, you’re not done yet. You’re going to have to put up with more praise. This time from the commission. I’m going to kick it off and then I’m going to ask my fellow commissioners to chime in as well.
You have enriched the environment and the lives of those around you through a long and successful career, embodying a spirit of collaboration, humility, and intellectual curiosity. Your impact will be long lasting, having changed the face of our port and our city by working tirelessly with industry, community, agency, and tribes. And you built a lasting legacy of sustainability and conservation for our port and for us. The Port of Seattle is extremely proud of you and the work you have done on behalf of the maritime sector, the environment, and everyone in King County.
And personally, although we will deeply miss you here, our solace is, as John mentioned, you trained generations of replacements to come along after you. As you know, we have a huge heart for kids entering into the maritime sector and you were the model mentor to them, showing them kindness and grace and love and most just a passion for the environment that was infectious. I think one of the mottos I’m going to carry forward when we’re faced with tough decisions is WWGD. What would George do? I sincerely hope— The other little anecdote is I think at some point in my head I believe that you lived in an apartment at Pier 69 because it seemed like every time I was down there, there’s George. Saturday afternoon. Hey, George is at the pier. What’s he doing there? But I hope you’re not a stranger. I hope you know you’re basically Port Emeritus anytime, anywhere. You’re always welcome. We’d love to see you and we will likely actively reach out to you to get help on big hard questions. Sincerely, George, we all love you and we’re going to miss you and we wish you the very best in retirement. And with that, I’m going to turn it over to Commissioner Cho.
Commissioner Cho: Thank you. What can I say that hasn’t already been said by my colleagues, George? I recall joining the port in 2020, seeing your presence. I too am going to miss seeing you at all hours at the port. Sometimes I go to the port at odd hours and sure enough, I can count on seeing George and running into him in the office. But I’m especially going to miss seeing you in a port vehicle. Every time I’m on the road and I see a port vehicle, it’s George. And I don’t know if you own that vehicle or maybe it should be part of a retirement gift, but I feel like I identify that vehicle with you and you with that vehicle. And anyone who spent a substantial amount of time at the Port of Seattle would think the same. That is just a testament to the dedication that you have demonstrated throughout your career, George, which far precedes my tenure here at the Port of Seattle. And as my colleague Commissioner Calkins said, you’re leaving behind a legacy that will last for generations. It cannot be understated the impact that you’ve had. You’ve been here for 40 years. You’ve seen it all. You know where all the bodies are buried, so to speak. I really hope that as you conclude your time here at the Port of Seattle, that you walk away proud of the positive impact this organization has made, the change that we’ve seen culturally but also in the values that we uphold and obviously your contribution to that. I echo the sentiments of my colleague that we have an open door policy here at the Port of Seattle despite your retirement. I fully expect to see you along the waterfront in the Duwamish with your boots checking up on your work to make sure that we’re doing it right. I hope you know that the door is always open for you to come back to your old stomping grounds. Thank you so much for your service and good luck to you in your next chapter.
Commissioner Felleman: I think I’ll spare you a lot more detail, George, so don’t worry about that. The welcoming you back is not going to be the problem. Beating you off with a stick, making sure you don’t retire in the mud, that’s more of our concern. I’m glad that you have a chance to move on and enjoy some life outside of the port. I do have concern that as the historian I want to make sure that we retain your history and that all the contacts that you’ve made in this community, we need to not lose that and make sure that we can carry that legacy. For me, my whopping decade here, I showed up with the first cruise ship and a lot of people were not fond of the port, but folks who knew you were. And so when I was flirting with the idea of spending time not just being a critic, knowing that there are folks like you inside the organization opened the door for me to look at it in a much more open mind. I had a hard time convincing people that it really does some cool things here. Instead of questioning my moral integrity, they actually allowed me to talk about all the good stuff that goes on. And you have this exalted title, which is the Senior Environmental Program Manager of Marine Habitat Initiatives. That’s at least what it says on the phone book. I always knew that if I needed to get some straight up information about what it means about the resource and not concerned about turf, I could always count on you to give me the straight up because the resource is what gets you up in the morning. Thank you very much for that. I have a token of my appreciation here. But I realized I actually had a print of my whale and the ship and I go, “Oh, no. I already gave you one, right? Didn’t I at the luncheon?” You still have it, right? You haven’t sold it. It’s on the wall up there. All right. So good. But you almost got two today by accident. And so instead, I have this thing you could use as a dart board. It’s a picture of us standing out there. We were doing the American Gothic picture with your pitchfork. So anyway, it’s for you to abuse as you see fit. But thank you so much and we all totally appreciate all you’ve done. Thank you.
Commissioner Hasegawa: George, if I wasn’t still contagious, I would be there in person. I can’t see you, but I want you to know how much your presence and your impact at the port has meant to me since the day that I joined. I’ll never forget that you brought me in immediately and just gave me the rundown not just about everything that was underway, but everything that could be. And the opening of the Duwamish River People’s Park was incredible. But the fact that just three years after that, the salmon returned, there were offspring, osprey, there were herring, blue heron that returned as well. And the vision that you gave me for what could be at other parks along the Duwamish Valley. And you talked us through Ha’aposto and just gave us permission to really have big audacious lofty goals for this area so that it wouldn’t just be for industry, that the legacy would always be the people and the planet. And you’re the type of man, George, that I think could never retire, like to Commissioner Felleman’s point, there’s always more work to be done. But thank you. Thank you for the legacy of what you’ve done and what you’re handing forward for us to carry on and it’s beautiful and you are inspiring and I am so happy for you in this next chapter. Thank you for everything.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: I think Commissioner Mohamed had to step away, but I want to give her a moment in case she was able to come back. Does not look like she’s made it back yet, but I know that she passes along her well wishes as well. And we have the room till 5, so you’re welcome to share as much or as little as you want. You deserve it all. If you’d like to share some comments, we’d love to hear them.
George Blumberg: Your comments are utterly generous, all of you. I apologize. I’m recovering from some respiratory problems. So I’ll be hacking and coughing. I’m not contagious. It strikes me that my good luck is extraordinary to join an organization like this, to have the privilege to work with folks like you, staff, managers at all portions of our organization, to work with willing experts, people that have extraordinary intellectual capacity. It’s my good luck to be able to join this organization and clap onto that line and pull in the same direction. I’m sincerely grateful.
Moreover, when we think about the intellectual capacity we have at the port and the way it’s used constantly and renewed constantly and sharpened day to day, year to year, decade over decade, it’s extraordinary. The Port of Seattle is a world-class organization and its longevity is amazing. Yet as we move ahead, one of the aphorisms people use is these are old school principles or human resources but we’re using new school skills and those skills are constantly being improved. To work at an organization that employs those skills is a privilege and an honor.
To see how the port has evolved in terms of certainly environmental decision-making but also throughout our organization. How nimble the port is, how our intellectual capacity is applied to solve problems in innovative ways and to move ahead to generate new sources of prosperity is also an extraordinary opportunity to have participated in and I’m utterly grateful for that. One thing that I’ve had the pleasure of observing and participating in is the port builds world-class infrastructure, cargo and passenger infrastructure. It’s unsurpassed. The port is recognized as a world-class expert at that. We do it better than anyone else.
The port now understands that the balance, as a public agency, the balance of jobs and economic activities, cargo and passengers with community assets and environmental attributes. If those things are in balance, then what a wonderful place to work and to contribute to. What good luck to have stumbled into this. I apologize. You didn’t realize you were getting a lifer. But you got one. And it is something that it’s exciting every day to see, to work with people that have that common interest and interested in balancing and delivering mutually beneficial coincident outcomes with everything we do. We can say that as the port improves our infrastructure, we leave every site in better shape than we found it and that’s a remarkable thing. Jobs, environment, and community. What an extraordinary pleasure to work with you all. Thanks very much, you’re very generous and I’m grateful for your comments. Thank you.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: Let’s get one picture before you go, George.
Commissioner Hasegawa: Can you guys pin me in the background, please?
Clerk Hart: You are pinned, Commissioner.
Commissioner Mohamed: I just wanted to add to those applause. I just wanted to say I joined in on those applause and even your words today, George, are inspiring and educational. When you speak, we learn and when you act, you lead by example. And so, just wanted to add on and say thank you for your commitment to environmental stewardship, especially at a time when advancing this work was not always easy. And lastly, I will just say I remember when I first joined the Port of Seattle, one of my first tours that I did was with you alongside you at Terminal 117 and witnessed firsthand the impact of your vision and your work. I appreciate you. You inspire us and wish you a meaningful and well-deserved retirement. And I wish I could have joined you in that picture, but I’m there in spirit.
George Blumberg: I think I hear you say you remember that day. But yes, we walked along through the stepping stones at the Terminal 117 public access site. It was wonderful.
Commissioner Mohamed: That’s right. I have the pictures and I will frame them.
Deputy Executive Director Lance Goon: Thank you, George. And thank you Sandy and John for disregarding George’s desires to go out quietly. Commissioner, that concludes my remarks. Thank you.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: And for the record, Michelle, I think he looked directly at me when he said extraordinary intellectual capacity. At least that’s what I’m going to pretend.
Deputy Executive Director Lance Goon: I’ll note that for the record, like, in need of extraordinary intellectual capacity or something.
Committee reports
Commission President Ryan Calkins: We are now at committee reports. Erica Chung, commission strategic advisor, will provide the report.
Erica Chung: Good afternoon, President Calkins, Commissioners, Deputy Executive Director Goon. I have two short committee reports for you today. On March 17, Commissioners Cho and Mohamed convened the aviation committee meeting where they received a high-level update on ongoing FIFA planning with a focus on public safety and regional collaboration. Staff also shared that a FIFA briefing is scheduled for the April 28th commission meeting and will be hosting a SEA Soccer Prep Rally at Central Terminal on June 3rd. Also on March 17, Commissioners Hasegawa and Mohamed convened the first Equity, Workforce Development and Conditions committee meeting for the year where commissioners received an update on the following items: SeaTac career and child care navigation efforts at SEA airport, anti-human trafficking efforts, union access badging, and health care for SEA workers. Commissioners also discussed community benefits agreement and deliverables. This concludes my report. Thank you.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: Thank you, Erica. Are there any follow-up questions regarding the reports?
Commissioner Mohamed: Erica, can you please clarify what the outcome of the conversation was regarding healthcare?
Erica Chung: I will defer to Erin Percher, our chief of staff.
Erin Percher: Thank you, Commissioner. The recommendation from the committee has been for the port to develop a policy for healthcare under the port umbrella. As we move forward and discussing with the interested stakeholders in this, we will determine how we move that forward. But for now that recommendation from the commission committee has been to develop a policy for port-sponsored healthcare.
Public comment
Commission President Ryan Calkins: We’ll now continue on our agenda, 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, Clerk Hart, can you please display the QR code to our public comment rules procedure? For members of the public providing public testimony, it is essential that these rules are followed. Copies of these rules are also available at the door. Can you please call our first speaker?
Clerk Hart: We have no virtual signups today, so everybody is in room. And we’ll begin with David Stalker.
David Stalker: My name is David Stalker and I’m here to advocate on behalf of the Seattle Seafarers Center. I’ll start off with a question here. What do you call a bear that has no teeth? That would be a gummy bear. Always start with humor.
The Seattle Seafarers Center is a faith-based service organization. I know it’s confusing that Steve Metruck thinks of us as a nonprofit and you can’t support nonprofits, but we’re faith-based service. We go on board all the cargo ships, all the bulk ships that come into the Seattle port and we help the crew. We don’t care what nationality, what religion, where they’re from. We help them. Sometimes we take them to the hospital. Sometimes we’re there to listen to their stories. But we care for all of them.
One of the things is the Port Commission. This is an email I got from you guys. It said the Port Commission reaffirms commitment to immigration communities and international visitors. You couldn’t be any more international. Those crew come from all over the world and we go on board and we do help them. What we need from the port is we have a facility down by the lower West Seattle bridge and we’re paying about $20,000 a year in rent and I don’t know if you’re aware that 90% of the ports in the US give space to the mission for a dollar a year. So our budgets are tight. We could use reduced rent or if you could help us with a grant that would be wonderful. Nonprofits are stretched and I think we’re performing a valuable service for the port.
The other area we do, and I talked to Fred about this, was the cruise ships. Last year we took over 9,000 crew that work on the cruise ships from Pier 91 to downtown for the day. They all like to shop at Ross. Ross is closed. That’s going to hurt. But we do support that with vans. We take them downtown, we bring them back.
I could go on with the stories of what we do, but the last one would be ditty bags. We have a lot of volunteers that sew cloth bags and we have a stuffing every year and we put in toothpaste, we put in treats, we put in little personal notes from people that say we care about you. You’re working on these ships. You’re bringing us 90% of the goods that come in here. We care about you. And we pass those out and we go on board. This last during Christmas season, we took our 25 ditty bags. There’s about 25 crew on those ships. And the captain grabbed them and he threw them in the closet and locked them up. And we said, “What? What are you doing? You’re supposed to give these to the crew.” He says, “When Christmas day comes, I’m going to put these ditty bags in front of each cabin so when they get up and go to work, there’ll be a Christmas gift for them.” I thought, wow, that’s the kind of thing and the response we get from mariners and the cruise ship crew is wonderful, but we do need your support any way you can give it. Thank you.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: And David, what do you call a deer with no eyes?
David Stalker: I have no idea.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: I’m a bad joke king. You can’t get me. You got me. Love it.
Clerk Hart: Our next speaker is Alex Van Gelder.
Alex Van Gelder: My name is Alex Van Gelder. I’m here to talk about providing a healthcare standard for airport workers.
Good afternoon, commissioners. I’ve been a cabin cleaner at SeaTac for about six months. I work for Swissport. I consider myself a pretty active person, but even for me, it’s a pretty demanding, high energy, and constant job. We feel the pressure of quick turnarounds every shift. And we haven’t even gotten to peak travel season yet. And this summer with the World Cup, it’s supposed to be more busy than ever.
I bought into Swissport’s healthcare plan for about $100 a month. As a person with no kids, I can afford it, but many of my co-workers have families and they’ve asked me to come here today because many are struggling. Many of my co-workers are immigrants working tirelessly to achieve the American dream. But it’s hard to build a better life when you can’t afford healthcare for your children.
We work as one team to make this airport function, but we aren’t treated as one. Why do some of us deserve healthcare and others don’t even though all of us are essential for the smooth operation of this airport? You have the authority to fix this and I’m asking you to do what’s right, to provide a real healthcare standard for SeaTac workers that covers every worker and every family. And I appreciate the efforts that you guys have gone through to support our TSA workers and so I know your hearts are in the right place and you’ll do the right thing. Thank you.
Clerk Hart: Our next speaker is Evelyn Makokha.
Evelyn Makokha: My name is Evelyn Makokha and I’m here to speak about healthcare for airport workers.
I’m a passenger service agent at the SeaTac airport and this is third time I’m sitting here to speak about healthcare. To be honest, I’ve been asking myself, is there even a point? After the last time I sat here, it feels to me and my co-workers that you simply do not care. We take immense pride in our work. We are the backbone of the airport. Yet, we are treated as if we are invisible, as if our lives and our struggles are an inconvenience to be ignored. I have sat here and told you about my deteriorating health. I’ve told you about the unbearable stress of just trying to survive. Because of federal Medicaid cuts, I can no longer even afford to see a doctor. My medication is no longer covered and I’m still managing to go for my dialysis. But every day is a struggle.
I am sharing this because it is time for you to act. This is a reality that you have the power to change. You say you want to protect the workers here at the airport while ignoring that many of us don’t have healthcare. If SeaTac is a first class airport, it is time for you to make every employee first class. We deserve more than just being told we are essential. We deserve health care that allows us to actually live. I’m here to ask for your action and no more excuses. Treat us with the dignity that our work deserves, please. Thank you.
Clerk Hart: Our final signup today is Carol Warman.
Carol Warman: Healthcare. Again, they pretty well stated most of it, but again, healthcare is expensive and Menzies just took us over and they don’t have very good health care again. So, we need some system that’s going to cover everybody at a reasonable price where we don’t have to fight between paying food and paying medical and getting our kids taken care of. I know a lot of people are in that situation, but like they said, this is the world. I’ve enjoyed this for 15 years that I’ve been here. I love working with the people. I love working here, but it’s just this one sticking point that all the employees are having problem with. And that’s basically it in a nutshell. I’m doing okay because I’m on Medicare and Medicaid, but there are a lot that aren’t as old as I am that can do that. So, we need to work together to get this figured out. Thank you.
Clerk Hart: That concludes our signups. Is there anyone else present either on the Teams call or in the room who wishes to address the commission?
Barbara McMichael: Good afternoon. My name is Barbara McMichael. I’m a resident of Des Moines and one of the many co-founders of Defenders of Highland Forest and I am all for celebration. I enjoyed the Port of Seattle breakfast a couple of weeks ago and there are lots of reasons to celebrate the environmental improvements that are going on. And yet, there are those of us who live in the airport-adjacent communities who are not seeing the benefits of some of the environmental— we just need so much more help environmentally and I hate to be a wet blanket on this day when you’re celebrating such a wonderful fellow but I’m asking you as commissioners to do more. I’m especially interested in the consent agenda item giving a million dollars more to SAMP. Perhaps that’s wonderful. But as a longtime resident, I’ve spent a lot of time going to— and this is for outreach. What does outreach mean? I’ve spent a lot of time going to port events where they put up placards and we wander from placard to placard and it’s explained to us why it’s a great idea that the port is expanding but the trees are still coming down. The warehouses are still going up. We’re still trying to recover from cancer. The kids are still having asthma. So, as our elected officials, I know your ethics are right. I’m asking you to put more pressure on the very hardworking employees of the port who are doing important work, but it’s not taking into account enough our environmental concerns, particularly airport-adjacent communities. And while I’ve seen more funding going out for environmental stuff, it’s great, but you’ve also expanded the area to include Kent and so on. And so those of us who are immediately impacted by airport adverse impacts really aren’t seeing what we need. I’m out of time. Thank you very much for your consideration.
Clerk Hart: We did not receive any written comments specifically requesting written public comment today, but I do want to note that we did receive 50 emails or so that came in through general correspondence requesting a healthcare mandate for airport workers.
Consent agenda
Commission President Ryan Calkins: Hearing no further testimony, we’re going to move on in the agenda to the consent agenda. Items on 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. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda covering items 8A through 8J?
So moved. I’ll second. The motion was made and seconded. Commissioners, please say aye or nay when your name is called for approval of the consent agenda.
Clerk Hart: Beginning with Commissioner Cho. Aye. Thank you. Commissioner Felleman, aye. Thank you. Commissioner Hasegawa, aye. Thank you. Commissioner Mohamed, aye. Thank you. And Commissioner Calkins, aye. Thank you. Five ayes, zero nays for this item.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: The consent agenda passes.
New business: Introduction of resolutions 3845, 3846, and 3847
Clerk Hart: This is agenda item 10A. It’s the introduction of resolution numbers 3845, 3846, and 3847. Resolution number 3845, a resolution authorizing revenue bonds to be issued in series to finance any legal purpose of the port, providing a subordinate lien upon revenues for the payment of such bonds and making covenants and agreements in connection with the foregoing. Resolution number 3846, a resolution amending resolution number 3456 as previously amended by resolution number 3777 authorizing the issuance and sale of subordinate lien revenue notes commercial paper. And then resolution number 3847, a resolution amending resolution number 3598 authorizing the issuance and sale of subordinate lien revenue refunding bonds series 2008. And again, I’ll note that these resolutions are all for introduction today.
Deputy Executive Director Lance Goon: Thank you, commissioners. Today’s introduction of three resolutions aimed to update the way we manage the port’s debt to better align with today’s financial standards and provide more flexibility moving forward. The port currently uses a mix of long-term debt, some with fixed rates, and some with rates that change over time, and is now looking to use a bit more of the variable rate debt because it can be cheaper in today’s market and help offset the interest rate fluctuations of the port’s investment pool. The proposed change creates a single clear set of rules for this type of debt and incorporates updated standards. This makes the system easier to manage and more consistent for investors. Overall, this is about modernizing the port’s financial structure to reduce costs, stay competitive in the market, and maintain strong financial flexibility for future projects. Joining us today is Elizabeth Morrison, director of corporate finance, finance and budget, and Scott Bertram, corporate finance manager, finance and budget.
Elizabeth Morrison: Good afternoon. I’m going to begin with a brief introduction and then turn it over to Scott Bertram to provide more details of this request today. The port has over $5 billion of debt. Most of that is in the form of revenue debt backed by the port’s operating revenues and the revenue debt has three separate liens. Most of our debt is on the intermediate lien which incorporates a number of features specifically to aid the airport with its debt. The subordinate lien was first introduced in 1992 and lacks a number of those features. So it is not as usable for the port, and we would like to update that lien so that it is more usable going forward. We actually began this effort back in early 2020 and then set it aside during the pandemic and then the cyber attack. So we’d like to move that forward now so that we could begin using the lien more actively.
To that effect we have three resolutions today. They’re all bond resolutions, but none of them actually authorize the issuance of any new debt. The first resolution creates a master resolution that governs all of the existing and future subordinate lien debt. And then the two other resolutions are amendments to current bond resolutions to bring them into line with the changes that we are proposing today. With that, I will turn it over to Scott.
Scott Bertram: Thanks, Elizabeth, and good afternoon. Just a little background. This slide provides some general background on the subordinate lien. Elizabeth covered much of it, so I’ll hit this pretty light. Subordinate lien debt service is paid after payment of first lien and intermediate lien obligations. This lien has historically been used by the port for issuance of variable rate debt which has been in its current form backed by bank letters of credit. Currently the port has two series of outstanding bonds supported on the subordinate lien. This includes some variable rate demand bonds issued in 2008 as well as the port’s commercial paper notes. Both carry variable rates of interest. As noted, less than 5% of the port’s total outstanding debt resides on the subordinate lien, which also means that the port has less than 5% variable rate exposure in its debt portfolio. So, one of the primers for this is to potentially increase that exposure.
Looking at some of the main drivers behind this refresh effort. Again this is all about updating the foundational framework underlying the port’s subordinate lien revenue bond structure. We are not seeking authorization for any new debt. And as Elizabeth noted, these updates will really make the subordinate lien more user-friendly and easier to manage. It will provide the port with some additional flexibility which we value. Certain security provisions that exist within the subordinate lien now are outdated. And the current legal structure, the bond authorizing resolutions on the subordinate lien, is a little inconsistent with how we’re doing our existing structure on the other liens. We do expect these updates to really help pave the way for future issuance of subordinate lien debt. We are interested in issuing more debt on the subordinate lien, particularly variable rate debt. Variable rate debt can provide certain benefits to the port. We discussed this briefly at the budget retreat last week and we have provided some additional details specifically on variable rate debt in the appendix but again we’re not seeking authorization for that today. Port staff is currently updating our this year’s funding plan and while it’s likely that we will need new bonds this year, those details are still being ironed out. If and when we move forward with plans for any new bond issuance obviously we’ll need to come back to you for that authorization and that could happen as early as this spring or summer.
This slide provides a summary of the key updates associated with this refresh effort. We talked about the legal structure in creating a master resolution on the subordinate lien which will include all the security provisions applicable to all current and future subordinate lien debt. This change will make the subordinate lien consistent with how we do things on the intermediate and first lien.
Second on debt service coverage. Obviously this is a key financial metric for bond holders, credit providers, rating agencies. The port debt service coverage is computed annually based on actual results and is included in our year-end annual comprehensive financial report. Currently the port subordinate lien debt service coverage requirement is one times. The proposed update here really is centered around making the calculation a little bit more transparent and in line with industry standards. And we’re moving to an aggregate calculation that takes into account debt service on all liens. This is actually how investors and rating agencies calculate coverage on the subordinate lien. And it really gives a better overall view of the port’s financial health.
Moving on to debt service offsets. Really what we’re talking about here is passenger facility charge and customer facility charge revenues that help pay revenue bond debt service. So for example in 2025 we used over about $125 million of those resources to pay revenue bond debt service which we call offsets. These offsets are an extremely valuable tool in managing our debt and the use of these offsets can really improve our debt service coverage metrics. When the sublien was created in the early 90s PFCs and CFCs were not a consideration and as such the existing subordinate lien framework doesn’t provide any benefits for those offsets. The proposed changes will now provide the port with the added flexibility in using these offsets toward revenue bond subordinate lien revenue bond debt service which will add to our calculated debt service coverage on this lien.
And the last one is the additional bonds test. This is another debt service coverage test and it’s a forecast test that needs to be passed before we issue any new bonds. We have additional bonds test requirements for each lien already. And as I discussed a few moments ago, because we’re moving our actual coverage calculation on the sublien to an aggregate test, it’s appropriate to move the additional bonds test calculation under a similar methodology. This will provide the port with some added flexibility in managing future subordinate lien debt issuances.
This slide just outlines the general process we’ve undertaken to get this sublien modernization effort through. As Elizabeth noted we kickstarted this five or six years ago, was on hold and just late in 2025 we decided to move forward. We solicited input from our investment banking team, our financial advisor, legal counsel on the recommended changes. So aligning our goals with industry standards and making sure that we were considerate of other perspectives because we do have two series of outstanding bonds on this lien already. Those bonds are backed by bank letters of credit. We needed to get their consent before making such changes which we have done. The commission authorization process you’re familiar with. We are scheduled to come forward for final adoption at the next commission meeting on April 14th. We are working with the rating agencies to get their confirmations as we speak and should have some hopefully updates here in the next week or so. We do have one extension of a letter of credit that is on May 1st. So working towards that as well.
This is just a reiteration of the slide that Elizabeth covered, the actual commission actions here today. There are three separate actions required. And again the final adoption is scheduled for April 14th. So that concludes our presentation but happy to take any questions you may have.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: Commissioners, any questions? Commissioner Felleman, Commissioner Mohamed, or Commissioner Hasegawa, any questions?
Commission President Ryan Calkins: When we first received this proposal, the thought that ran through my mind is let’s ask what is the worst case scenario? It’s always a little scary to move to this approach. Imagine market tanks after we do this, or China refuses to buy more debt from the United States. What happens?
Elizabeth Morrison: So, we’ve actually lived through a variation of that during the financial crisis. As Scott noted, our existing variable rate debt is all backed by direct pay letters of credit by banks. So during the financial crisis those banks became under pressure, their credit quality declined as their balance sheets became troubled and so investors didn’t want to hold those bonds. In that case the port works directly with the bank. So instead of paying the bond holders, we’re paying the bank. The bank holds those bonds rather than the investors and under the worst case scenario we then have to repay the debt over a term-out period that’s typically five years.
When we are negotiating our agreements with banks one thing that we have been assiduously careful about is making sure that we have adequate time to cure problems. I always say time and liquidity are our friends when we have problems. And so we make sure that we have long lead times before onerous rates kick in because once the bank holds the bonds, the interest rates click to a fixed amount or fixed rate that’s higher than the market typically would be. So we want a long lead time before we get into anything that’s usurious and we want a long time before we have to start making principal payments. Now during the financial crisis, the banks would get into trouble. They would take the bonds, the federal government came in and fixed some problems and then we were able to remarket them to investors before anything terrible happened. Then they’d go through another wave of problems and the same thing would happen. So that having that time before anything terrible happens is really important to us in how we approach our legal agreements with the banks. That said, if terrible things happen and we weren’t able to cure them, we do have a methodical period of making do on our obligations.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: Appreciate it. That’s helpful.
Scott Bertram: Just want to add one thing. So that was a great response in terms of especially in terms of the variable rate debt which we’re not— in terms of just updating the framework, the original question was what’s the worst case scenario? It’s pretty low risk. This is just foundational, we’re looking at adding flexibility to how we manage debt. We’re not actually adding debt at this point. So a little bit different depending on where your original question was oriented.
Elizabeth Morrison: And there’s nothing in these changes that adds to the risk that we would already carry on any variable rate on the subordinate lien.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: Appreciate it. At this time, is there a motion and a second to introduce resolution numbers 3845, 3846, and 3847?
So moved. Second. The motion was made and seconded.
Commissioner Felleman: Not to debate. I just wanted to thank Elizabeth for that last answer. That was really excellent. Thank you.
Clerk Hart: Commissioners, a reminder to please say aye or nay when your name is called. Beginning with Commissioner Cho. Aye. Thank you. Commissioner Felleman. Aye. Thank you. Commissioner Hasegawa. Aye. Thank you. Commissioner Mohamed. Aye. Thank you. And Commissioner Calkins. Aye. Thank you. Five ayes, zero nays for this item.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: The motion passes. The resolutions will be back before the commission for consideration of adoption on April 14th, 2026.
Presentation: Talent Connections Program update
Clerk Hart: This is agenda item 11A, Port of Seattle Talent Connections Program Update.
Deputy Executive Director Lance Goon: Commissioners, the internship and career pathway program work you are about to be briefed on demonstrates the port’s continued leadership in building an inclusive and future-ready workforce. In 2025, the port expanded its reach and impact, delivering over 120 internship opportunities and strengthening a talent pipeline that supports both community access and long-term organizational needs. This work is grounded in strong community partnerships and a clear commitment to reaching those farthest from opportunity. Joining us today is Derek Bender, Talent Connections Manager.
Derek Bender: Thank you, Deputy Executive Director Goon. Good afternoon, commissioners. Today I’m delighted to provide you with a briefing around our Talent Connections programs, updates from 2025 and a look ahead here into 2026 including some overviews, community impact, and a new initiative that we’re looking forward to launch this year.
Our Talent Connections programming offers multiple entry points into port careers as you can see listed here. We have our high school program focused on age 16 and older youth affiliated with high schools in King County and beyond. Our post-secondary program associated with higher education students. Our veterans fellowship program for transitioning service members. And as I mentioned, the launch of a new program this year, which I’ll go into in more detail in a bit, designed to create equitable access for individuals at different stages of their educational and career journeys. Most of my discussion today with you all will focus on our two internship programs and the launch of our new pathway program.
Our timeline for our programs is broken out into four quarters throughout the year with our winter focused on our direct partnership with Maritime High School and Raisbeck Aviation High School students. Our spring and fall cohorts for our veterans fellowship programs. And then our summer remains our largest season with nearly 100 internship opportunities that are across our high school and post-secondary programs and a carve-out for 2026 for our new Port Pathway program. We do offer a small number of post-secondary opportunities in the fall. These are generally year-long opportunities that begin in the fall and spread into the following summer. So across all four seasons of programming, our team offers up to 134 paid internship and fellowship opportunities.
For our winter program focused on high school students, again as I mentioned, this is a close partnership with Maritime High School and Raisbeck Aviation High School. These students are broken into those two cohorts affiliated with the schools that they’re attending and they work in project-based cohorts that are in conjunction with project sponsors that we identify within the organization. These students typically work about six to eight hours per week given that they are obviously in their school year. This year I wanted to highlight a couple of the projects that our current cohorts are working on starting with our aviation cohort. They’re partnering with our aviation innovation team here at the airport, starting with a project on escalator safety improvements for passengers here at SEA. Our interns are down collecting data, analyzing that data, and making recommendations to our innovation team on improvements to safety with passenger travel through the airport. They also are working on a sustainability project to acquire consistent acquisition of books to provide to the little free book library as well that passengers have access to as they come through our airport. On the maritime side, they’re partnering with our friends in external relations on developing and designing experiential learning activities and field trips for Duwamish Valley youth, identifying potential partner businesses and opportunities to host career exposure activities, additional learning opportunities to increase interest in maritime career pathways. That presentation for our Maritime High School students is actually coming up this Thursday morning for those who are interested in attending.
Now, our high school program is a little bit different structure during the summer. This is focused on students working approximately 25 hours during the week and is open to all high school students in the region. Although our targeted outreach is certainly focused on our near-port communities. Recruitment’s done through not only local high schools but also community-based organizations that support marginalized students and those furthest from opportunity. The majority of the work that is performed during our summer sessions are co-designed with departments throughout the port and so they have opportunities to work on projects and tasks that expose them to various port functions in four distinct cohorts: green jobs cohorts, a maritime cohort, an aviation cohort, and then lastly our civic engagement cohort. In addition to that, these students will also complete a culminating project and presentation at the end of their internship experience with us in the summer that allows them to showcase a creatively designed initiative of their choice along with their peers that is related to the port in some way. So, there’s a lot of choice and creativity that goes into that.
Interns in both our summer and winter programs participate in comprehensive professional development. Not going to read through all of these, but these workshops seen here cover a wide array of topics that are led by various port staff throughout their experience with us, including folks on my Talent Connections team, our talent development and diversity team out of human resources, OEDI, and other staff. These workshops equip our participants and our interns with critical career readiness skills that translate across numerous career pathways and prepare them for success beyond their internships.
Our partnerships with our community organizations are critical to our success and the success of youth in the region for sure. These community partnerships support youth who are traditionally in low or very low equity-indexed areas of King County and support the port with recruitment as well as providing guidance to these youth in navigating their way through the application process. So, we engage with these partners multiple times throughout the year to gain valuable feedback about supporting each other’s work as well as making adjustments to our process to remove barriers to accessing our applications and program opportunities. Through these engagements, the port has served as a catalyst to not only share information about the programs that exist here at the Port of Seattle, but create a space for our partners to highlight the great work that each other are doing, and further building engagement amongst all of those partners together.
Specifically to last year in 2025 and into the first quarter of 2026, our outreach efforts included engagement with 101 community contacts. In addition to that, we participated in 66 youth-focused events last year and the beginning of this year and 23 tours and information sessions specifically focused on youth. The map you see out to the right is a heat map that represents where these youth events have occurred highlighting our commitment to South King County and near-port communities. And then the outlying areas you see kind of in the upper left and bottom right are indicative of our ongoing support and efforts working with our tribal partners as well.
Last year specific to our high school internship program, 80% of our high school program participants lived in low or very low equity zip codes as represented by the green and light blue portions of our chart here with a much smaller percentage of students making up high, very high, moderate, and other areas outside of King County. Again, that combined is the remaining 20%. This aligns with our priority of serving communities with the most barriers to economic mobility and opportunity. And as we move into this year’s recruitment cycle for our high school program, we continue to strengthen our focus on an equity-centered recruitment model.
Here we highlight the outcomes of our high school programming. I won’t go through each individual category here, but this is how we measure our skill development and exposure to port careers with our high school program. All participants are surveyed at the beginning of their experience with us and then again at the conclusion of their experience with the internship program. In summary here, each measurable category that you can see is strong growth in both intern knowledge, confidence, skill development, creating increased awareness to be able to leverage these professional skills learned during their internship to advance their careers and enter the marketplace.
Shifting briefly to our post-secondary internship program. This upcoming year we are offering 64 post-secondary opportunities. As you can see 38 of those are shorter duration full-time summer positions and 26 of those are year-long combination of full-time and part-time PERS-eligible internships for higher ed students. Throughout the port we have 31 participating departments in our post-secondary internship program really showing a broad engagement across the organization, and the value that both our student interns bring to these departments and the gains that they receive through these shared experiences. Below that represents a graphic of the opportunities that our team designs to create community connections as well as shared learning and cohort-wide engagements throughout our program each year.
Just like our high school programming, we do survey and obtain feedback from folks who are our post-secondary participants around their learnings and outcomes and evaluate their feedback throughout the course of their experience that helps inform changes that we make to our program year-over-year. I will note that this survey results from last year 2025 has a few more mixed results here. And that really represents the challenge we have in surveying those who were departing their internships at various stages throughout the year. And so our team is revisiting this in 2026 to employ some new solutions to update communication methods and improve how we increase survey participation for those who are ending at various dates throughout the year at our post-secondary level.
In terms of successes since 2020, so about a five-plus year look back, we’ve seen strong conversion rates from previous interns that have moved into various roles beyond their internship here at the port. At our post-secondary level, previous interns have gone to move into 27 full-time positions and 28 shorter term temporary positions within the organization. At the high school level, that number is five over the last five years into those full-time positions and one temporary opportunity for that program. These conversions reflect our long-term talent development strategy and the strength of our internship to career pathways that are being created with many talented early career professionals continuing to contribute in many ways to their own professional growth as well as advancement here at the port and the port’s mission and goals.
Launching this year, we are moving forward with a new pathway program that will expand access to individuals facing barriers to higher education and employment. This program will focus on creating developmental work experiences and career mobility for those who not only face barriers to higher education but also face barriers to traditional internship models that again are typically focused on those affiliated with academia. Priority communities are identified out here to the right hand side of your slide deck. This will allow the port to unlock previously untapped talent as well as continue our alignment with our workforce equity goals.
Participants coming through this program will receive market-aligned pay. They will gain hands-on experience in a career area of interest to them. They’ll have access to all the same port workshops, career development programs that is being offered to our post-secondary and high school, certainly tailored specifically to participants that are coming into this program. And additionally, on top of that, our team in Talent Connections will be providing some personalized career planning support and development engagement throughout the course of launching this new program in 2026.
As we move to launch into quarter two of this year, we’re beginning with these four opportunities that you see listed on the screen: aviation customer service, human resources, Salmon Bay Marina, and waterfront project management. The program is going to offer these participants with a roughly 6 to 12 month paid placement opportunity that has alignment to port early career positions that require less than two years of experience. These pathways were specifically identified because they offer experiences where traditional bachelor’s degrees are either not directly offered or are not required for someone’s success. We also evaluated data around roles that have a higher potential of turnover in those early career positions, offering increased opportunities for this to become a pipeline into those career pathways as well.
Lastly, we’re excited to open the new doors for individuals with this new program for those that have been historically excluded from those traditional internship models. And before I conclude, I just want to take a moment to appreciate the hard work of my team, including Shannon Voss, who leads our high school programming efforts, and Jessica Pate, who oversees our post-secondary programs. They’re both incredibly talented individuals. We’re so lucky to have them here at the port. They lead great programming, incredible experiences, and have built some incredible talent pipelines into the organization. And before your questions and comments, commissioners, I wanted to invite up our current Talent Connections intern to share a few comments about her experience both as a high school intern a few years back and now as a returning college intern that’s been supporting our programs over the last year. Please welcome Asatu Diallo.
Asatu Diallo: Hello everyone. My name is Asatu. I’m a first generation college student studying economics at UW as well as an intern on the Talent Connections team. My first introduction to the port was as a high school intern where I learned about the port’s environmental efforts. And as we’re honoring George, I did get a chance to work with him doing habitat restoration and kelp restoration as well as planting trees at the Duwamish People’s Park when it was first opening up. And then through professional development workshops and just engaging in networking opportunities, it gave me the opportunity to explore port-related careers which was very valuable as I knew I wanted to work in government early on. And then given this positive experience I had as a high school intern, I was super excited to return back to the port as a college intern. And through the internship, I have gained skills in using survey data to evaluate programming for both the high school and post-secondary internship, facilitating workshops, and engaging with the community through outreach events. This work has given me a behind-the-scenes look at the programming and the tremendous efforts done by this team in making sure that these programs best support their students. This experience has given me firsthand insight into the various parts that play in government work, built my skill sets, and strengthened my confidence in my own abilities and public speaking, a goal that I set at the start of this internship. And as an economics student, it has broadened my understanding of the regional economic impact the port continues to foster. This internship program provides students like myself with work experience in our early careers and a place to apply what we’ve learned in the classroom, contributing greatly to our professional development and creating broader impacts within our communities. I can confidently say that this internship has shaped my future career goals and has been a full circle moment starting as a high school intern to now being in college. And lastly, I just want to express my gratitude to the port, my manager Derek, Shannon, and Jessica, and the many people I’ve met during my time here for this amazing experience and for the mentorship and the support that they’ve given me throughout. Thank you.
Derek Bender: Thank you, Asatu. So, thank you commissioners for your continued support of our programming. With that, I welcome your questions and comments.
Commissioner Cho: I don’t have any questions. I just want to commend you for the tremendous work you’re doing here. This is really one of our core pillars when it comes to workforce development and really creating a pipeline for the next generation of not just workers for the Port of Seattle ourselves, but also the entire ecosystem both in the maritime and aviation space. You brought here a tremendous testimonial of someone who’s been through both the high school and is now going through the college program and hopefully in a couple years maybe will be a full-time employee for us once you graduate. But as we all know, we are going to be facing a huge wave of retirements. We already are. We just celebrated a retirement today with George. But the reality is that we continue to have needs within the Port of Seattle and our port ecosystem. And this really does get that early exposure for the students. I actually have many parents and high school college students who reach out to me asking about these internships and opportunities. And so I’ll be forwarding them to you from now on. But all is to say that the program is being noticed and recognized and that there are a lot of students out there who are very much interested in working here at the Port of Seattle in some capacity. So, major kudos and props to you and your team for all you’re doing. And we are and I am happy to support everything you guys are doing with this program. Thank you.
Commissioner Hasegawa: I wanted to thank you for this presentation and for this body of work. In fact, it’s inspiring because there’s a lot of doom and gloom in the access to opportunities for youth spaces. The state legislation— well, the legislative session just concluded and it cut one of the primary funding sources, the Education Legacy Trust Account that supports disadvantaged youth specifically in connecting to college. And so, not only is this good for the port and not only is this good for the industry, but there’s going to be growing demand for opportunities for youth from areas that score low in equity on our own equity index. I just think this is really well timed. I’m so pleased to see the port rolling this out. My question is around where exactly, how are we targeting that outreach and engagement? Are we going through CBOs? Are we going through the high school specifically? Are we going through the YMCA, Boys and Girls Club? What’s our strategy for outreach, engagement, and enrollment?
Derek Bender: Great question, Commissioner. It’s actually part of the work that Asatu has supported over the last year. We’ve identified a little over 70 community-based organizations primarily that we will be rolling this program out to here in the coming month. We’re kind of sequentially working our way through launch protocols for this new program. Starting with our landing website, we’ll be having an information session available, and some communication that’ll be broadcast out to those community partners that are affiliated with those identified areas that we want to focus on supporting. Again, addressing that gap that exists for those who are furthest from traditional internship models. That will be our initial target. We are piloting it this year, so there’ll be a lot of learning opportunities and lessons. I don’t think we’ll have any shortage of interest in the roles with the 70 individuals and community organizations that we are going to launch with. But certainly we’ll be re-evaluating that over the course of the year.
Commissioner Hasegawa: And this will be accessible to students countywide?
Derek Bender: Yes, both students and non-students. Folks who have moved beyond their academia.
Commissioner Mohamed: Well, first of all, thank you for the presentation. This is really, really helpful. I remember last year I spoke with HR leadership and our executive director about internship programs and gaps and what future opportunities could look like and how to strengthen those pathways. And so I do really appreciate the expanded access that your team is thinking about and what you all have planned moving forward. At least for me, and I think this is probably true for all the commissioners, one of the top issues we consistently hear from parents and constituents across the county is the role that the commission office, the Port of Seattle can play in supporting internship opportunities for young people and creating better pipelines. And so one of my questions is what is a role that the commission office can play in supporting this? Is there a formal process for engagement, coordination, and alignment that can be more ongoing? I know you said you’re creating a web page and so forth, but I’m trying to better understand how can we more thoughtfully engage around this and if that is part of your work plan and strategy.
And in addition to that also, what role does the Office of Equity also engage in this work? Are there equitable access and outreach to certain communities that they’re engaging with? Has there been a coordination there? Because I do know that there was a number of organizations that reached out last year that shared their concerns and the gaps that they were seeing around our internship program. So, has that been addressed as well? Is that part of the strategy here?
Derek Bender: Yeah, thank you for those questions, Commissioner. I’ll start with the coordination amongst multiple teams. You mentioned OEDI. Our team along with OEDI, workforce development, external relations historically has met once a month to coordinate efforts around programming and communication to our individual partners around what’s being offered both directly within the organization in the case of our Talent Connection pathway programs and the workforce development programs and other initiatives that are going on adjacent to the port. So there’s coordinated efforts there. I think there’s absolutely an opportunity for us to better understand additional partnerships that might exist out there where we can promote this opportunity. Like I said, we’re starting by getting things available for folks to access information and then creating mechanisms in which the public and interested community-based organizations can attend information regarding the program and what those opportunities will look like. And then again kind of checking with other internal partners beyond that where there’s opportunities to further communicate and market the program to the communities in which we’re trying to reach. A lot of that work we have done in that 70 community-based organizations that we’ve identified that are supporting the individuals that we look to address that gap with. I think they are fairly wide ranging, but it doesn’t mean that that list is not ever evolving. So, I certainly would welcome commissioners’ inputs on organizations that have directly reached out to you, folks that you’ve created partnerships with or communication with. And we would love to engage those individuals to talk more about this opportunity. That’s really exciting. That’s starting small this year, but I certainly see this as something that will continue to expand in the years ahead.
Commissioner Mohamed: My last quick question. I know that you’re engaging with other workforce organizations and different institutions that are doing similar work that we are. Is there a strategy or a system in place for recommending interns to other opportunities when we don’t have something available for them? For instance, my understanding is that the IT department has one internship position that becomes available. 200 people apply, 200 young people apply, take their time applying for that and then one person is selected. So then what do you do with the 199 other applications? Are they given a list of other opportunities they can connect to? I think it’s so disheartening for young people when they go through that and it’s not a Port of Seattle problem, right? It’s a regional problem. It’s a problem probably across the country. But how are we thinking about that and how are we bringing that challenge forward and trying to address it?
Derek Bender: That’s a really good point, Commissioner, and I’ll bring that back to our team. I think currently, you’re right, we often have several hundred interested applicants for a singular role. And for every one exciting opportunity that we could provide here at the port, there’s 199, like to your point, that are looking for an opportunity elsewhere. I think I’ll bring that back to the team and see if we can bring together some resources to potentially provide to folks. It’s difficult for us to communicate directly with all of those applicants other than just some basic information regarding their application, but we could certainly add some resources available in the region to those folks who could look elsewhere if they’re unsuccessful in landing one of our opportunities.
Commissioner Felleman: Thanks so much for the presentation. And if your goal was to improve public speaking, you nailed that. So it’s a great indication that progress is occurring here. Although I didn’t know how you started. However, what I am interested in is the metrics that you’re using, the career connected learning thing. So you showed the number of interns that turned into FTE roles or temporary short-term temporary roles. What it doesn’t show is how many you started with. So what is the rate, how many say— like, so how many folks went through the program that resulted in those placements. So your percent of fledging into the program.
And it strikes me that one of the ways you can look to those impediments, where was it more successful than other places, right? So in terms of tracking success and having continuous improvement, that evolution of the program seems to me that you have a feedback loop. For a long time we weren’t even tracking that right, so you got the data, so let’s use it, and that would be I think very helpful for programming going forward.
Certainly. And as far as the port office, the commission office goes, it’s always been a mystery to me. We get these interns show up and it’s great. And it’s like I have no idea how they applied or— I think early on there was— I remember we had this woman who was into kelp. I loved her. But it was just like, I kind of thought that as the commission office, we’d be asked like, we have a laundry list of folks who want to come. What kind of stuff would you want to see supplemented? So this is something I’ve raised with Erin a while but it would be kind of interesting to know if folks are applying to be in the commission office versus interns at the port and do you get that distinction coming through your gate?
Derek Bender: Yeah, we do have metrics on each individual unique opportunity that folks express interest in. We certainly can follow their career trajectory within the organization if they’re successful in landing another opportunity after their internship experience. We do have an alumni network that we built. We try to follow some of our previous interns to see where they’re progressing in their careers. That obviously is optional and a little bit harder to track once folks leave the organization. But I know certainly that the impact that these programs have had on folks who’ve talked about how it led to another opportunity. In fact, we were just having a conversation this week with the recruitment that we’re going through right now in our Facilities and Infrastructure group. And that particular group has not been able to hire all of their interns year-over-year, but they are able to see the progression through the networking and the engagement that they’re creating with consultants and contractors that are opening up doors for those interns who are directly gaining access to opportunities with those partners as well. So even if it’s not directly here at the port, these opportunities are making a significant impact and we’re able to see that.
Commissioner Felleman: Absolutely. Just creating the opportunities. It’s hard to track all of it. But the employers would be helpful to get their feedback, especially if you’re giving them paid interns, it might behoove them to give you something in return other than this opportunity. And obviously, even one of the great things about internships, you can know what you don’t want to do, right? But in the course of doing it, you get some experience that enriches you in some other way. But in terms of the recruitment, and then I’ll shut up. Nothing speaks louder than the person that’s in the program. I mean, you don’t want me talking to your colleagues, right? But you are going to be the best advocate for your own folks to come and join. Look, as a student, I got to do this and went on to do that. So, how much are we deploying these ambassadors?
Derek Bender: It’s interesting you say that. When we conduct outreach throughout the year, particularly at the post-secondary and the high school level, and we’re on campus, we see our previous interns. You show up and they’re bringing groups of their peers with them to talk about our opportunities that are upcoming. In an official capacity, they’re no longer employees of the port. So we obviously encourage them to talk about their experiences, to promote them on campus. When they are again coming to our outreach events and they’re walking up and telling us about how the last year went, again, they’re often bringing folks with them as well that become new recruits. But that’s not a formal mechanism, Commissioner. It’s a lot of word of mouth.
Commissioner Hasegawa: Have you considered or has the port ever partnered with an organization that focuses on people who have been impacted or made contact with the legal system and are looking to re-enter into society like Civil Survival, for example, or formerly incarcerated youth?
Derek Bender: Commissioner, not to my knowledge. I moved back into this role a couple years ago. I’m not aware of a direct partnership there off the top of my head, but I will say that is in particular a set of community groups that we have targeted as part of this launch of this new pathway program. Retrospectively and historically, I do not have an answer for sure. Moving forward, that is a group that we plan to partner with.
Commissioner Hasegawa: And how are you doing that through like DCYF or like what— can you just tell me a little bit about what that would look like? It’s not a re-entry program but it is a whole group that could plug into the workforce in a really meaningful way.
Derek Bender: Yeah. At this point, Commissioner, we’re looking at creating a community of organizations that are supporting these targeted communities, not for a direct one-on-one partnership and direct placement model, but rather to at this point help to market the program to the communities in which they are serving. And again given the breadth and depth of organizations that we’re looking to promote these opportunities to, significant numbers of folks that are left out of these traditional models, it will include that particular group in this particular case.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: Well, thank you both so much for the presentation. It’s inspiring. It’s a great program for us. And what an incredible way to replenish talent at the port directly, to meet folks like Asatu and know that we are getting an opportunity to show what you can do in maritime and aviation and construction and green jobs and hopefully we can entice some amazing people like you to come work at the port too. Thank you both.
Presentation: Language access order implementation
Clerk Hart: This is agenda item 11B, implementation of language access order 2023-05.
Deputy Executive Director Lance Goon: Commissioners, this briefing provides an update on the port’s implementation of its language access order and reinforces our commitment to equitable access across all services and facilities. Since adoption in 2023, the port has made substantial progress completing the majority of required actions and embedding language access as an ongoing organization-wide responsibility. Over the past two years, efforts have focused on advancing the remaining elements including the development of a comprehensive guidance manual, a multilingual compensation framework for key public-facing roles, and the introduction of department-level planning and accountability. Joining us today is Bookda Gheisar, Jay Doran, and Leanne Blanco from OEDI.
Bookda Gheisar: Thank you, Deputy Director. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Bookda Gheisar, Senior Director of Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. I’m here with my colleagues Jay Doran and Leanne Blanco to talk about the final deliverables of the language access order and to offer some updates on the implementation of our program. But before I get into our presentation, I don’t know if you’ve met Leanne. Leanne joined us just about five months ago as Civil Rights Program Manager, the newest member of the Office of Equity with extensive experience and background in civil rights issues. And her portfolio will include anti-trafficking work, language access, and a range of civil rights programs for the next two years. It’s a two-year term-limited position. And we’re really lucky to have Leanne with us who’s been supporting this process of finalizing the language access manual. And as we present today, there’s an element about multilingual employee comp that we will cover and colleagues from HR, Katie Gerard and her team are here in case we have questions about that element that they can address.
Language access is rooted in our own organizational values, but also a promise rooted in civil rights, equity, and service to the public. Today, we’re here to deliver on these promises and to talk about how this program will be systematically institutionalized throughout the organization.
Through the commission order in 2023 that was championed by Commissioner Mohamed and adopted with full commission support, we made clear commitments to language access for our organization. This slide shows how those promises have been delivered through an organization-wide assessment of all of our departments, a survey of many community partners, and system-wide implementation. These milestones reflect that we’re delivering on all of the elements of the language access order.
This is the last three years timeline of the order that highlights the progress that we’ve made. Each milestone reflects how the port has moved through the process. In 2023, we identified some of the highest usage departments that have been working. There are 18 departments that now are doing annual language access plans and based on that developing the budget, identifying what materials need to be translated, when they need interpreters, and becoming well-versed at institutionalizing language access in the organization. And since last year, we’ve now been working on a language access manual that is now implemented. I’m going to turn it over to Leanne who can share some of the details of the manual.
Leanne Blanco: Thank you, Bookda. I’m happy to be here and I just want to say that me being here for five months and being able to implement this really is due to the great work that the team has done prior to me onboarding.
We have a language access guidance manual. It was finalized in early 2026. Again couldn’t have happened if the work and strategy hadn’t already begun prior to my onboarding in October of 2025. The language access guidance manual operationalizes the port’s commitment by providing clear tools, standards, and accountability for staff. It ensures our promises translate into consistent practice across the organization. It is designed to support and equip the port teams and staff in providing timely and meaningful access to our facilities and services for our communities who identify as limited English proficient as well as those who are deaf and speak American Sign Language. The guidance manual, you can see the contents on the left hand side, also provides resources and instructions on everything from requesting interpretation services, translation services, to developing annual language access plans, to guidance outlining the port’s Title VI complaint and feedback process as well. Additionally, these are completed translation examples that you see on the right hand side of those commitments in action.
As a part of the roll out for the language access guidance manual, Jay and I worked on implementing a SharePoint site that creates centralized access and equips the staff with a single access point for the language access guidance manual, as well as we’ve already launched a quick reference video for them to really walk through the manual and equip them with those resources and tools and learning how to use those. Additionally, language access dashboards are something that we’re currently working on with our vendors in order to really strengthen transparency, monitoring, and continuous improvement for our language accessibility across the port. This will equip us with long-term data-driven approaches to really expand the language access commitments and initiatives that we have. And below you see a timeline of some of the work that will be happening throughout 2026 as we continue to implement the language access guidance manual. And a part of that is rolling out our multilingual compensation plan.
We’ve also had the amazing opportunity to work in partnership with human resources to design a multilingual compensation model and implementation plan grounded in the commission order 2023-05. This model defines a phase one approach for eligible roles, qualification criteria, and a consistent framework for multilingual pay. The criteria falls into three categories, really outlined by the language access assessment that was done in 2024. Those criteria are utilization of the port’s top nine languages which are listed there. The second part of the criteria is identifying roles. And we used for phase one roll out the 18 high-usage departments that were identified as a part of the language access assessment. And additionally, using these definitions, our hope is to expand this to our represented roles as phase one is currently for our non-represented roles. These positions are defined as public-facing frontline staff. Using this definition, a handful of those positions in both aviation and maritime divisions were identified and again we hope to expand that as we move forward. The third criteria is employees must demonstrate language proficiency through an approved verification process with one of the port’s language access contractors which is already in motion. And I think it’s important to note that applying for the multilingual pay is voluntary and this policy will not displace any employees already in a role identified as eligible for multilingual pay.
Jay Doran: Good afternoon, commissioners. Jay Doran. I am in a policy and communications role with OEDI. I am just going to talk for a few minutes about the process we’ve gone through, the work we’ve done to implement this work at a department level. This has gone through iterations for sure. The first iteration began in 2024 with the 18 departments that are a part of the language access cohort and we worked with those departments to develop a process for those groups to create an annual language access plan with associated goals for that plan and KPIs or metrics to measure those goals by. And then in 2025 those 18 departments implemented their individualized department plans.
Then in mid 2025 the language access cohort and OEDI worked closely to roll this process out to all departments within the organization. What you see on the slide is just a really high level simplified overview of the tool and process we created to implement this across the organization. We set up a tool for departments to assess their needs, the needs of their partners, the needs of their customers, and estimate budget costs associated with their needs and associated goals and create SMART goals, create key performance indicators for measuring those goals. Departments then submitted that to us as part of the annual business planning process and the language access cohort and OEDI audited those plans and then went back and provided additional support for any departments that needed some help with refining and fine-tuning their plans for 2026. So as we speak departments are now working to implement their 2026 language access plans and this will become an ongoing process. When we do our annual business planning each year, those plans will be updated, refined, and improved on by departments.
I just want to take a moment to give a few examples at a fairly high level of what some of those plans look like. These are three different departments and you can see elements of each of these departments’ plans and then associated budget impact to implement those plans. I do want to take a moment to call out and highlight the work of the Central Procurement Office or CPO. In particular, something that they are investing in and doing this year is working with a WMBE consultant to assess their publicly available communication materials and public-facing platforms that they use for contracting and partnership opportunities. This assessment is going to give them some really clear goals and instructions about what languages and communities to target going forward, what media outlets to target for the most impact. And they will then work beginning probably mid 2026 to implement the work that comes out of this assessment. The reason I want to highlight that is this is a great example of a department that’s really leaning into this work of advancing language access and thinking about this in a way that is both long-term and sustainable. Making this investment upfront will I think ideally set them up to be successful for years to come.
Leanne Blanco: This really just highlights language access in action. As Jay mentioned with CPO, my focus over the next year really is on preparation for FIFA World Cup, general wayfinding. We’re already doing translation improvements there. Anti-human trafficking, increasing our language accessibility within our signage, and then updating Title VI signage to ensure that language accessibility is a priority in all four of these areas. I am grateful for this opportunity to be here doing this work to contribute my experience and my expertise in this area. The staff has been absolutely amazing. OEDI has been absolutely amazing, Bookda and Jay. And so this work is deeply personal to me. And so I am just grateful to be here and to be translating these commitments into action for the communities that we serve. And with that, I think we’ll take questions.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: Translating. I see what you did there. That was excellent.
Commissioner Hasegawa: Thank you so much for that presentation. Just briefly, I am wondering, can you remind me of what our new Title VI term-limited staff’s name is?
Bookda Gheisar: Leanne.
Commissioner Hasegawa: Leanne. I am so pleased to meet you and to hear your presentation and hear about your body of work, what your focus is going to be. And when we imagined this position, it’s all the things that you just described. I don’t think I realized it was going to be term limited and I wonder if we should have an offline conversation about long-term needs just as long as things— we can anticipate a state of chaos and ongoing attacks on civil rights coming down from the federal administration. But I think the one thing that I would add to your watch list is communications around emergency issues when there are either confirmed or alleged ICE sightings. We just updated our protocol with the Port of Seattle police about how we would communicate around things like that. It’s important to me that OEDI and you specifically have input on those processes. And it’s not just around that. Around any sort— we don’t really have critical incidents involving our police officers at the Port of Seattle. They go to great lengths to making sure that they avoid things like that, right? They de-escalate and we have alternative responses. But nonetheless, I think that that’s the space where you should also lean in and be engaged just as we’re trying to understand what our best practices and protocols are for communicating out emergencies or confusions or things that need clarity to a lot of different groups who are experiencing concerns. We have found that misinformation, in addition to getting out opportunities and postings and newsletters, we also need to make sure that we have an active role in clearing up misinformation and providing timely accurate information to the public. So please do include that in your body of work as well.
Leanne Blanco: Absolutely. Thank you for bringing that up.
Commissioner Cho: I also want to say welcome to the port. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Look, I think this is one of the more subtle but most important things that we do here at the Port of Seattle. Not just because we pride ourselves in being a welcoming gateway, but also I think it’s just an inequity issue. As many of you know, my parents immigrated here in the 80s. And back in the 80s, there wasn’t as much signage or translation at this airport. In fact, I think it was last year, two years ago, we did a little fun tour of the airport behind the scenes with my mom. And if you watch the footage, you can see her look up and the first thing that strikes her is all the signage we have. Not just the signage but also the intercom messages that we have on the trams that have Japanese, Korean, etc. That was not the case when she immigrated here in the 80s. And so all this to say that sometimes having proper signage in different languages is not always appreciated, but it’s certainly noticed when it’s not there, right? It’s one of those things that is passed upon or seen as unnoticeable when it’s there. But people certainly suffer and have trouble when they have trouble getting around the airport. And so I want to thank you for all the work you’re doing not just on the signage side but also the human trafficking, the FIFA World Cup, and all across the organization. And I know there are a lot of folks out there who don’t realize it, but are also benefiting tremendously from this effort. So, thank you for that. And very, very supportive of everything you’re doing for us.
Commissioner Mohamed: I also want to thank you all for the presentation. Both Jay and Leanne, welcome to the Port of Seattle. It’s amazing how much work has already gone into this and how you all are tackling really critical topics right now from human trafficking to all the prep work that’s going into FIFA preparedness. Language access is critical for ports and airport environments where we are serving a global traveling public and also I often think about the diverse workforce at our airport that don’t directly report to us but are part of our ecosystem. And so, accessible communication is obviously directly tied to safety, customer experience, and just navigating complex systems that we work in. My question is around FIFA. You talked about it a little bit. Season of preparation. I know that you all are doing human trafficking awareness. I wanted to know what some of the plans are in engaging our key stakeholders and coordinating with them to make sure that they also know about this important work that is happening. Maybe you could speak to that a little bit.
Leanne Blanco: I’d be happy to share. Currently, and Jay, keep me honest here, I along with a couple others serve and am attending the regional— it’s called the Regional Men’s World Cup Passenger Experience Work Group. That is a collection of our transit across the region and we are working on language accessibility through that work group and making sure that we as the port are not just increasing our language accessibility but that we are doing it across all of our transit systems. That’s one opportunity. I also have the opportunity to serve on the Terminal Efficiencies Work Group here at the port which we also have conversations around language accessibility and ensuring that we’re doing everything that we can within our abilities to make sure that we have language access across the port for our incoming travelers for FIFA.
Jay Doran: The only thing I’d add to that, and it’s related to preparations for the World Cup but we’re thinking beyond the World Cup as well, is we are working closely with Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking or BEST and hosting a series of workshops over the next at this point eight weeks to engage more of our partners and tenants both at the airport and our maritime locations in joining our anti-trafficking efforts. These sessions include trainings for supervisors but also longer strategy sessions to help these businesses and organizations develop their own plans for their companies about how to build in policies and programs and training that help combat trafficking.
Leanne Blanco: And Bookda just reminded me, Jay and I will have the opportunity April 7th to go present as panelists to the King County Council Law and Justice Committee and they’re actually partnering and looking for partnership in finding not just remedies for anti-human trafficking currently but strategy for long-term work that they will be budgeting for later this year for 2027. So, we’ll also be networking with them as well around this work. Super excited about that.
Commissioner Mohamed: Those are really helpful updates and background information. My last question is around— are departments tracking their spending on translation and interpretation services? Is that part of the strategy?
Bookda Gheisar: Yes. We are doing several things. Through the language line contract that we have, we are finding ways with budget coding to be able to track the department’s usage of the language line and to be able to report back on that. But also each of the 18 highest usage departments now have their own budget for translation and interpretation annually.
Commissioner Mohamed: That’s really helpful, Director. And I was thinking about the SmartCat system and I’m sure you may be familiar with this but if there is large spending at the port there are tools out there that can help streamline that, that can bring some of those costs down for an organization. And so it would be helpful to know what those numbers look like to begin with to decide if that is something that is worth looking into purchasing. Thank you for your time and the presentation.
Commissioner Felleman: Just when you thought it was safe to go home. Welcome aboard. It’s not really translation, but it is part of the welcoming of the World Cup in particular. It’s a great place for the gateway to welcome the world. Being that the Puyallup are the platinum sponsor of the World Cup, I believe there’s going to be, although I have very little visibility on it, some native emphasis in all that. And I was just wondering, you’re doing signage with language and we’re not translating, we’re not making wayfinding, but I’m just wondering in the allocation of space, I don’t know if it’s in your portfolio, but having some welcome in— I don’t know whether it would be Chinook or something that would be universal for tribes. Is that kind of in your area or should we just talk to somebody else about signage?
Leanne Blanco: I mean I would be happy to figure out who to connect with to propose that. I think that’s a great idea, especially given the nature of and line of work that I’m doing right now and having such an expansive network. I think that that would be something we could definitely figure out who could do it, if we could do it, and what that would look like.
Commissioner Felleman: And the staff that worked on the renaming of the parks, the Duwamish parks, they seem to have managed to pull off the stunt of getting Muckleshoot and Duwamish and Suquamish happy with the language. I would draw from that talent. But I just think it’s really important and I want to make sure that we have some voiceover welcoming to the great Northwest as part of this opportunity. And the language looks so alien with upside down question marks and all that sort of thing. I think it’s sort of just the visual welcome would be also great.
Leanne Blanco: I will add one last thing now that you mentioned that. We are in the process of translating one of our first videos which is our international arrival video. And so that will go live once we get that back, probably before FIFA towards mid-April is what we’re expecting right now. And we believe we will also try to pilot for ASL within that video as well.
Deputy Executive Director Lance Goon: Commissioner Felleman, I’ll follow up with Roxanne who is presenting next and with Nate Caminos to make sure because I know you’ve mentioned this a few times and we did the voiceover message with Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, remember? I just don’t know that—
Commissioner Felleman: Yes, I haven’t heard it yet, but thank you for bringing that up. We’ll check in with Roxanne. Thank you.
Commissioner Mohamed: This presentation was really helpful and it makes me also think about our other hat, our alliance hat. We hear directly from our trucker community at the Seaport and there are a lot of gaps in language access and I think this presentation reminds me that that support is needed there as well. And so we should think about how the alliance can incorporate these strategies especially across our terminals where clear communication at times is missing and it’s obviously critical for safety, efficiency, and access. I had that thought and wanted to share that with you all and say that these strategies, we need to figure out how to bring it to the alliance as well.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: Great point. Leanne, if you need a primer on the Seaport Alliance, it’s a whole different kettle of fish. We’ll get that to you.
Presentation: 2026 local and regional GR priorities
Clerk Hart: This is agenda item 11C, the 2026 local and regional GR priorities briefing.
Deputy Executive Director Lance Goon: Commissioners, under your leadership, the port has ambitious policy and government relations goals and priorities. During a time of substantial change and uncertainty at the federal level, our local and regional partnerships are especially critical for maintaining momentum on our shared vision. Giving the presentation today is Samantha St. John, East King County Community and Government Relations Manager; Sabrina Bellieu, Regional Government Relations Manager, in person; Dave Kaplan, Local Government Relations Manager; and Roxanne Murphy, Tribal Relations Senior Program Manager.
Samantha St. John: Good afternoon, commissioners. Thank you so much for your time today. I’m Samantha St. John, East King County Community and Government Relations Manager and I am joined here by my local government relations colleagues. So overview of today, we are going to condense down a very large body of work into a shorter presentation so that everyone is not here all day. We will start out with our 2025 priorities advancement and talk about some of the progress that we’ve made on advancing port priorities in 2025. Then we will move into each of us will discuss the priorities aligning with the Century Agenda goals and objectives by body of work that we have. Just as a reminder this is not all-encompassing. We also have a memo that is submitted to you which is a bit more comprehensive as to the large body of work that we do. Our next steps will be to incorporate your feedback and seek adoption at the April 14th meeting.
Sabrina Bellieu: Hi commissioners. For the record, Sabrina Bellieu, Regional Government Affairs Manager for the Port of Seattle. I’ll get into a little bit more of my remarks here in just a minute, but just to quickly highlight some key advancements for us in 2025. I think we can all take a victory lap on the Growth Management Hearings Board ruling that invalidated the ordinance to build housing in the SODO area. Our work here is not done. There’s still a separate lawsuit as you are all aware. We’ll see how this unfolds in the coming months, but this is a great victory for us. The second item I want to highlight as a key achievement in 2025 was the building of the Sound Industrial Alliance that came out of a deep need for greater grasstops organizing. Frankly, many of the folks in our industries in maritime manufacturing are busy in their jobs day to day and lack some of those soft lobbying skills and ability to pay close attention to local politics. This is a brand new organization that was set up and the port was instrumental in helping to do so. We have Eric Fitch and Lindsay Walpa to thank to be some of the brainchild behind that. I’m very pleased that this grassroots organization has been stood up and then I’ll pass it to Roxanne.
Roxanne Murphy: Hi, Roxanne Murphy, Tribal Relations, Port of Seattle. Happy to be here and I’m really grateful to say that in 2025, we got to help the tribes with economic and workforce opportunities, also expansive support for the fishing season and really helping out our treaty fishermen while also good outreach to the industrial partners about such activities.
Dave Kaplan: Dave Kaplan, local government relations for South King County. The two most prominent things that have stood out this last year has been advancing protection of North SeaTac Park in our more structured engagement with the city of SeaTac and the conversations we’ve been holding there. And then our conversations with the city of Burien regarding potential development of the NERA 1 property. That’s the last of the three NERA Northeast Redevelopment Area properties that we own in Burien and the last one that has yet to be redeveloped.
Samantha St. John: And then for me on the east side, two key things from 2025 are deepening the relationship with Bellevue city leadership, particularly something that is moving into this year which is the connecting downtown via the East Rail with the Grand Connection project that you are going to start hearing a lot more about. As well as the east side leadership and elected officials. I think every single one of my 23 cities came for an airport tour. At least one person from each of those cities. So they are more well-versed in SAMP.
Let’s jump into essentially my portfolio which focuses on the city of Seattle and parts of King County. And I also want to recognize that there are four of us and I think we have 20 minutes for this briefing. So, I’m going to be as brief as I can. But there’s a whole lot I wrote and want to share with you guys because I just love this body of work. And if you can believe it, it’s been five years since I’ve been at the Port of Seattle, which time has really flown by. But in this role as your key liaison to the city of Seattle and King County, I’ve really come to see my role as continuing our incremental progress to protect industrial lands and freight mobility and our trade competitiveness. As you know, part of my role is funded by the Northwest Seaport Alliance. But then I see you commissioners as advancing cutting edge policies that need to be responded to and dealt with quickly like child care and ICE at the airport or prevention of ICE detention centers from expanding, ship building, ecotourism, all those things. But as you’ll see if you look at this list, my portfolio is heavily focused on incremental success and it all centers around no net loss of industrial lands.
I also want to say I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I am taking some strange joy to say that Commissioner Cho and Commissioner Mohamed are not recused from my portfolio of work right now and at least for now. And I haven’t had the chance to work with both of you as— careful what you ask for— in the past year. So, Commissioners Calkins, Felleman, and Hasegawa are very intimately familiar with my portfolio, but I look forward to deepening my working relationship with Commissioners Cho and Mohamed.
One of the key things I’ll be watching is the Seattle Comprehensive Plan. Phase one was completed before Mayor Katie Wilson took office. Phase two is now before us and 2026 is focused on sub-area plans. Staff is hard at work on technical review of those. They’re not public yet. And it’s likely that the city council will incorporate the final comprehensive plan, likely early 2027. And I want to note that’s two years late and they have received special approval from PSRC to submit a late comprehensive plan. That is the nature of Seattle, I will tell you. But all that to say is it’s really exciting work and it’s important. It’s job security in the sense that there will most likely be a number of surprises and adjustments to the mix coming up in the next year, especially as it relates to the development of Sound Transit and the alignment, the future alignments, and the changing dynamics with a new county executive and the King County Civic Campus that looks to be built there.
Also, and you’ll notice how most of these projects all kind of interweave together, which is why that leads me to the Port of Seattle, Office of Economic Development MOU that’s been in the works for quite some time. We have a new mayor. We have a new director of the Office of Economic Development at the city of Seattle. But all of that seeks to focus our interagency effort to focus on clean green energy and SODO. And I’m really excited to see this body of work move forward. And of course that leads us to thinking about Terminal 46 and you all as alliance members might have a better understanding of the future of what could occur there. But it’s really exciting. Hopefully we’ll see some progressive development there in the coming year or years. And this all folds into how we talk about the Teal New Deal and the Port of the Future.
Moving on, Holgate and Reconnect South Park, those are just continuous incremental projects that we need to watch because it does impact our ability to move freight from our terminals to the highways. Amtrak is generally a partner to us. They are seeking a permanent street vacation of Holgate, which is one of the few east-west connections to move our cargo from the terminals to the highways. And so we are continuously working with Amtrak to see if there are other solutions that can meet their needs. And then of course Reconnect South Park, this spurred when Buttigieg was in the Biden administration to seek to reconnect communities that were divided by redlining. This work is very important, but we also do have concerns about how this could impact 509 and our ability to again move freight to the highways. So, these are both long-term incremental projects. I don’t know if we’ll see much progress on them this year, but the goal is that we can find some possible solutions.
Next up is green corridor for cruise. I want to make sure to mention cruise in some way. You’ve probably been hearing it on the radio constantly. The economic benefit for cruise is something that’s widely appreciated and lauded by the city of Seattle in its entirety, mostly in its entirety. But I do want to pivot to say the maritime fuel summit that you were most of you were a part of last week was incredible and as we think about green corridor for cruise, I want to make sure that’s a central part of my portfolio, thinking about maritime fuels and how we can bring the city of Seattle in closer to that body of work.
And then lastly is the South Seattle Roundtable and this was spurred by Commissioner Hasegawa’s leadership as a longtime Beacon Hill resident and this is focused on meeting the needs of Beacon Hill residents as they continue to have concerns about aircraft noise and pollution. And this has been a long-term effort and we are continuing to ramp up conversations with the King County International Airport, the Beacon Hill Community Council, SODO BIA, and others. So the work doesn’t end, but it’s always helpful for us to continue to bring folks around the table.
Dave Kaplan: In South King County, our book of business, like in Seattle, remains the same. A lot of it is based upon the relationships we have and the work that is ongoing. First and foremost, of course, is the Sustainable Airport Master Plan near-term projects. Having completed NEPA in 2024, SEPA work has continued into 2025 and in just a few months, we’re going to have the opportunity to be able to engage on SEPA. Thank you again for approving the additional contract authorization earlier this meeting to allow for completion of the analysis and for the expanded engagement that we’re going to have during the CPIS process.
Permanent protection of North SeaTac Park, you should be well briefed on relative to our conversations with the city of SeaTac. Those are ongoing and we hope to see the fruits of that sometime in the near future. Future development of the NERA 1 property, as I mentioned before, we’ve been working collaboratively with the city of Burien. Burien’s expressed interest in having a maintenance facility on the property previously, but they may have alternatives in which case some of the options available to the port may expand beyond what we had envisioned might be possible.
One of the important things that the commissioners have expressed over the last several years has been partnering or finding ways to connect on non-motorized transportation, connectivity, bike, and pedestrian improvements that would meet up with improvements in the cities of SeaTac, Burien, and Des Moines leading to the airport. We’re constantly looking for those things and as part of our Ground Transportation Access Plan, we have the active transportation plan and so we’re constantly looking at the proposed or the discussed potential projects there that might match up with what’s happening in the cities.
Child care of course has been an important issue. We’ve been looking for ways to partner with both SeaTac and with Burien in terms of helping to further the efforts, the grant money that they’ve used to help foster the growing of child care providers in their jurisdictions and to the degree that the port is able to take advantage of it or port employees, airport employees have been able to take advantage of it, helping to foster that.
South King County international market. We completed a study with King County a few years ago regarding potential for an international market. There’s a number of cities in South King County that have an interest in hosting a market. The most furthest along is likely Burien who received a federal earmark toward a facility. And in fact, we sent another letter of support this year for follow-on money to help complete that.
And then anti-human trafficking efforts. As commissioners have noted and as the port has noted for a number of years we’ve actually had a very good partnership with the local jurisdictions who have been supportive of recognizing human trafficking awareness and in terms of promoting efforts to try and stop and identify human trafficking. In fact, the city of SeaTac reached out to us after the breakfast we had recently and is looking forward to being able to take advantage of the toolkit which the port is developing and we’re going to be able to share with the local jurisdictions.
Samantha St. John: For East King County, there’s quite a few cities in East King County. So we’re drilling this down to just some of the highlights. The first thing that I want to note is that in 2025 we had a large number of electeds come to our airfield tours and engage in what we are doing with the SAMP process. For 2026 continuing to engage with these organizations and city officials on the next phase of our SAMP process, they really understand how the east side is connected to the port. I have really watched that light bulb go on in this past year and so I think there’s a real opportunity to engage more with East King County elected officials.
Also advancing connectivity to SEA via the East Side Airport Shuttle and the new light rail cross-lake connection which is coming this Saturday. We’re going to cut the ribbon and we are finally, first time in history, going to bring light rail across the lake and have a way for eastsiders to get down to the airport. So that is something of great excitement to all of my cities across the lake.
Partnering with Bellevue on the East Trail Corridor and the Grand Connection project. This is really a multimodal corridor that the port has made a big investment in long ago and you’ll be hearing quite a bit about their plans to finish this Grand Connection in Bellevue. So that is a big focus for this year.
Also coordinating with North Bend on truck parking and freight mobility needs in East King County. This is something that is going to be more with the Northwest Seaport Alliance moving into the next phase of how we make sure that this essential facility stays in King County and has the needs met for our trucking partners. As it is the only facility in King County for this.
And then finally, strengthening regional collaboration on responsible tourism and economic development. This is something that comes up in every meeting with all of my cities around economic development especially with FIFA and how to ensure that there’s a responsible tourism element especially in my valley cities.
Roxanne Murphy: For 2026, I’m really happy to report that we’ll be developing a work plan. So we have our MOAs and now we need to put that into action and collaborate with both of the tribes to develop this work plan to really put in stone all the ways that we’ll support the tribes in an ongoing way. We’re also taking on the huge task of creating the five-year vessel coordination plan and we’re finally getting to the finish line with that which I’m very excited about and putting it before the managing members for consideration and hopeful approval.
There’s workforce development, ongoing partnerships, still continuing to support the treaty fishing and economic development support that is going to help out the tribes for their mutual interests with having a presence in our port areas and maybe non-port areas. Additionally, we have the sustainable aviation and maritime fuels partnerships. We’re going to be developing tribal 101s so people can understand from the tribes what their opportunities may be regarding this and so we can learn and grow together regarding these topics.
Obviously we want to prioritize government-to-government meetings with both of our tribes especially to go over the work plan interests and any other needs of the tribes in an ongoing way. And then lastly, I love helping with Port of Seattle understanding about what tribal relations are and really what tribal interests and tribal needs are.
Samantha St. John: So next steps. Now through April 14th, we will incorporate your feedback. At the April 14th commission meeting, we will seek adoption of the priorities. And between now and then we will continue to have meetings with other jurisdictions and key stakeholders to share our top priorities and regional focus for this year. Thank you. And we’ll open up for questions.
Commissioner Cho: No questions. I have the opportunity to work with each and every one of you based on your portfolio of work. I agree with Samantha that the visibility and understanding of the port has dramatically increased as a result of the work that you all are doing. There’s far more people within our constituency who understand the port. When I first joined the port, people didn’t know exactly what the port entailed and then COVID-19 hit and then people suddenly cared again or just cared. And I think that as we have built up this team over the last few years to really engage with leaders, but also have functions that invite community, it’s made a tremendous difference. And so I just wanted to thank you all for the work you do. Thank you for continuing to bring us opportunities to engage with our constituents whether it’s Port Unplugged or going to various meetings with the city and supporting us on things like the Highline Forum or JAC or meeting with our local tribal leaders. It’s been tremendously important. As we know there’s no shortage of issues. Sabrina, you got your hands full going forward when it comes to what our partners or friends at city hall might have in mind for industrial lands, but like you said, I’m no longer conflicted out and I’ve been itching for this fight. I stand at the ready and you just let me know when you need me to go yell at somebody.
Commissioner Hasegawa: I also don’t have a question. I just wanted to remark that your body of work is so vast and it’s so important and I am so deeply grateful to all of you in your respective capacities for bringing us along as a commission. There are no surprises in what you shared with us. And I can think of so many different times where you’ve thought of opportunities for us to be able to meaningfully plug in to advocate, to connect, to amplify whether it’s interjurisdictionally, intergovernmentally, or with our beloved members of the public. You all are really doing intentional work of turning the dial for the port and I’m just so grateful to you and thank you so much for this wonderful presentation today.
Commissioner Felleman: Thanks much. It’s great to see this whole palette of talent being able to reflect on us out in the big world. King County is hard to say. You represent it all. And so, thank you for giving us that outreach. With Sabrina, I’ve talked to you about my love of Ballard and the Binmic being something that I kind of feel sometimes is lost in the SODO discussions. And at the same time, I’m seeing my little Ballard getting consumed up with major real estate consumptions of the waterfront. And so part of the comp plan I assume will be able to embrace the greater industrial land discussion. But I’m just wondering in terms of, the Sound Industrial Alliance, who are the Ballardians in that group? Is there, or do we have good North End Binmic representation in that group?
Sabrina Bellieu: We do from both.
Commissioner Felleman: I don’t know who I should bug in the Ballard area. Why don’t we offline after this? I’ll show you the list. So anyway, I know SODO has a big sucking sound, but I think the other one has got even significant real estate expensive pressures on it. And we have things like Foss Shipyard sitting there.
Anyway, enough said. Then there’s this other property which, I think it’s interesting in that your work has a lot to do with real estate and so the collaboration with Kira and stuff like that is obviously key, but there’s this property you might have heard of, Warsol, that keeps on coming up in my head and I know that Kira has been very engaged with this conversation as well. And so it’s a key period of time while Mr. Leas is still in office. And so I just really see that there’s a moment here and so you didn’t mention Warsol or Binmic so I just had to put a pin in it. I know these are things that are on your radar but I had to put a little exclamation point on it.
The other thing is with Samantha, I’ve heard a lot about the North Bend truck parking issue and it’s a traffic thing. I’m amazed at how little I really know about what the challenges are other than traffic. But if there’s things that— and I probably should know it in my capacity as a Seaport Alliance person— but I’m just wondering if there’s more visibility things that you need help with. It’s actually very foundational to our overall success. I heard talk about trying to do two round trips and to the degree that these guys can descend into the city off hours, I’ve heard all sorts of discussion but I don’t really have any idea where the current bottlenecks are. To the degree you can share that with us that would be great.
And I think of course Roxanne, I’ll be looking forward to working with you and Sam on the MOA work plans and I know we have some schematic subject area things that I really look forward to getting into greater detail. And I don’t know, did you go to Alaska?
Roxanne Murphy: I know that we brought a couple tribal representatives to Alaska to meet with folks on the cruise side, which was a huge advancement to that workforce conversation that you mentioned. I didn’t get to go, but I’m so glad we got to send representatives from both Muckleshoot and Suquamish. And also, we’re doing great follow-up with continual partnerships. We’re going to get them on cruise ships. We’re going to get them incorporated with further understanding because they really enjoyed the opportunity.
Commissioner Mohamed: Thank you all for the presentation. I too get to enjoy the labors that you all put in. I spent an inordinate amount of time with Sabrina over the last couple of years as one of only three who was not conflicted out on city of Seattle issues and it feels like every time we tamp down one issue, another one pops up. And I know Dave, you’ve been doing a lot of heavy lifting in the areas around here. And so, I just sincerely appreciate all that you all do to keep us informed, give us a really authentic understanding of what the various communities experience as a result of port and its industries. And so, the work that you do to transmit back to us the concerns of communities and interests in engagement and opportunities to win together, that’s been I think a really important development for the board over the last 10 years. Anytime we can help, please let us know, whether it’s attending events or tuning in for a meeting or whatever we might do to advance the great work that you guys do. We really appreciate being a part of that.
Commissioner Felleman: I was concerned that Dave was feeling neglected in my acknowledgement of each of your work. It’s funny because Dave and I, we probably have more interaction than— having the years of the Highline Forum and now the JAC and we’ve had so much fun together that I really just want to express my appreciation for this challenging work we’re doing right now. And you’ve been a steady soul throughout that whole process and a salve on a lot of heated discussions. So, thank you for your work and because I’m aware of what you’re doing, I didn’t acknowledge it, but it shouldn’t go unacknowledged.
Motion to rescind Cesar Chavez Day proclamation
Commission President Ryan Calkins: We have concluded our business meeting agenda for the day. But there’s one other item for consideration. At this time, I’d like to bring forward a motion to rescind something previously adopted. This motion pertains to the proclamation adopted by the port commission on March 23rd, 2021 regarding the designation of March 31st as Cesar Chavez Day at the Port of Seattle. The commission has received previous notice of my intention to move this motion today. As such, I move to rescind the motion to adopt the March 23rd, 2021 proclamation recognizing March 31st as Cesar Chavez Day and Dolores Huerta Day at the Port of Seattle. Is there a second to the motion? Second.
The motion to rescind something previously adopted has been made and seconded and I would like to speak to the motion here. I think the most important thing for us to understand is that we needed to act quickly on this because of the March 31st deadline and our interest in recognizing, in light of recent revelations, that it’s no longer appropriate for us to celebrate that day. I also want to recognize the incredible work of Dolores Huerta and our intent to continue to honor her work. And so we are working with Latinos Unidos right now on appropriate recognition and how we bring that forward again. But for now, because of the urgency of this, I wanted to make sure we got it on today’s meeting. Are there any additional commissioner comments at this time?
Commissioner Hasegawa: I want to voice my support and that we need to make sure that what we are doing is going to be always consistent and aligned with our values. I also would just like to recognize this rescinds the name of two names and I would just like to acknowledge that Dolores Huerta is an American hero and she has tremendous accomplishments and I look forward to what next steps could be in order to properly lift up and celebrate our agricultural community and our farm workers and our Chicano and Chicana and Latina community members who have been part of the workers rights and labor rights movement for so long. Thank you.
Commissioner Mohamed: Thank you, President, for bringing this item forward. And I echo the comments and sentiments from Commissioner Hasegawa. And in addition to what she said, I just want to say to survivors and victims of sexual assault that we see you and it takes strength and courage to voice those matters and you’re not alone and support is available and folks deserve to be safe, heard, and cared for. And there is no right or wrong way to feel and you can seek help at your own pace and seek those services out as well. And so just wanted to add that as well. And again appreciate those who are working on bringing a new proclamation and new order forward. Thanks for the time.
Clerk Hart: On the motion to rescind this proclamation, beginning with Commissioner Cho. Aye. Thank you. Commissioner Felleman. Aye. Thank you. Commissioner Hasegawa. Aye. Thank you. Commissioner Mohamed. Aye. Thank you. Commissioner Calkins. Aye. Thank you. Five ayes, zero nays for this item.
Commission President Ryan Calkins: The motion to rescind the March 23rd, 2021 proclamation passes unanimously. The clerk will prepare an order for the record memorializing this action.
Closing comments
Commission President Ryan Calkins: Are there any other closing comments at this time or motions relating to committee referrals from commissioners?
Commissioner Cho: I’d like to take this opportunity to address something that is happening at our airport as well as airports across America and that’s obviously this partial government shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security. Over the weekend, we obviously saw the headlines that this administration has made the decision to deploy ICE agents to TSA checkpoints in order to augment TSA checkpoints. Fortunately, we have not been in a situation where that has been necessary and therefore we have not seen ICE agents deployed at TSA checkpoints.
First and foremost, I just want to thank the TSA officers who continue to show up every day despite not getting paid for their work. I also want to thank our Port of Seattle staff who continue to work around the clock to support these officers with their daily needs in terms of food and household items and also the Port of Seattle staff and workers who continue to supplement TSA checkpoints in order to make sure that our wait times are not above normal times.
Over the weekend I posted what I would consider a public service announcement on various social media platforms, really just providing an update on the situation, knowing full well that our constituents would be concerned around the potential deployment of ICE. And I gotta say, I was taken aback by the overwhelming response we got as far as the support that our constituents have for everything that we’re doing here at the Port of Seattle in order to support TSA, but also the willingness for our constituents in our community to support TSA directly.
As a result of that, not only did we obviously have our food pantry set up here at the airport for physical and in-person donations, but I asked our utility staffer, as I call him, Eric Schinfeld, to set up a GoFundMe page where folks who may not be able to physically come to the airport during their working hours of 8 to 4, enable them to donate online. I posted that link on social media at around 10:00 p.m. last night. Within the first two hours, we raised over $10,000. I had to call Eric multiple times in order to get him to raise the threshold on that GoFundMe page, but as of now, we are currently at $48,000 in donations from the community. It’s been less than 24 hours since we posted this. And so the response has been overwhelming and we will continue to use these funds to help TSA officers.
I want to thank the community for stepping up. But in all fairness, I’ve also seen a good share of criticism. A lot of folks have called this ridiculous, that we shouldn’t have to do this. And I completely agree. This is ridiculous. This is why we pay our taxes. But let’s not forget that these TSA officers are being used as pawns in this game of political gamesmanship. That they are victims of gross incompetence at the highest level of our government. And when our leaders, whether it’s federal or local, fail to lead, I think it’s incumbent upon the community to lift each other up. And I remind folks that while these TSA officers are federal employees, they are members of our community. They live in our neighborhoods. They’re our friends. They live among us. Their children go to our schools. And so, now is the time for us as a community to step up and really support our neighbors. This is what I believe the Port of Seattle is about. I believe that’s the spirit of this region, the greater Seattle region. And what we’ve seen in the last 18 hours is a testament to that. So, in advance of those who are going to donate and to those who have already donated, thank you. We will continue to support— we think that hopefully this thing will end soon. But if it doesn’t, we’re going to do everything we can. I want to give a shout out to our airport managing director, Wendy Ryder, as well as Eric Schinfeld and everyone else who have contributed to this effort. And to our TSA agents, hang in there. We’ll see you on the other side.
Commissioner Felleman: I’d like to echo Commissioner Cho’s comments. Right now we’re not having the big lines that a lot of other places have. And just to hopefully for folks who might experience it in the future, to show some grace with the folks that are still working there and doing this stuff that we all take for granted.
But the reason why I’d like to say something is a complete non sequitur. My life took a major change 37 years ago. This is the anniversary of the Exxon Valdez. And much of my career since has been to make sure it doesn’t happen here. And I feel pretty good at this point. It hasn’t. But we continue to commit to continuous improvement. And today and tomorrow there’s the National Harbor Safety Committee meeting in Seattle which is the first time Seattle has hosted this, which is a really great maritime collective of all the different food groups in the maritime industry that gets together, heavily Coast Guard focused, but talking about how we can make this system better in a really collective fashion. Unfortunately, we finally get to host this thing and half the audience can’t make it because they’re Coast Guard. And so it’s really an incredibly missed opportunity. But our folks at the Marine Exchange are doing the best they can with the situation. I’m going to be running there right after this.
But I think it’s really not by accident that we have such a good oil spill record here and we continue to make this progress. At the same time, our neighbors to the north have a very big exploration and exploitation agenda. And we’ve seen a sevenfold increase in oil tanker traffic in just the past year with the connection of the Trans Mountain Pipeline from Alberta to the twinning of the line to the Port of Vancouver, which now travels through Haro Strait crossing both our waters. So that’s one of many projects that are changing the risk profile of our waterway and we continue to change the safety net as that occurs. Continuous improvement.
Commissioner Mohamed: I also just wanted to add to what Commissioner Cho was sharing and just also want to thank all the commissioners for your leadership around responding to the government shutdown and our incredible Port of Seattle staff who have been coordinating with TSA. I also had an opportunity to visit the pantry yesterday and saw the firsthand impacts of the shutdown and also the incredible work of just—