One of the more important points in the agreement is the significant commitment by the University to use its influence to encourage the development of housing and to assist the City and the merchants in the area in developing and implementing a revitalization program. The Council and the City are committed to seeing the University District neighborhood revitalized. In addition to lifting the lease lid, the Council passed two additional resolutions that the Mayor is committed to following: the first will deal specifically with housing development in the U-District and the second will lay the groundwork for revitalization efforts.

This Resolution on housing directs the Executive to look at some very specific types of strategies that could be used in the University District to spur the development of market rate rental and homeownership housing. Some of the strategies to be looked at include: modifying parking requirements for residential developments, looking at height increases for mixed use projects that include a residential component, and improving the permit review process to minimize the uncertainty and time developers spend preparing projects for development.

The Executive will work with community groups and the Council in developing specific strategies. The Executive will submit these proposals no later than Sept. 1, 2004. I am hopeful that a number of these strategies will be forthcoming, well before that deadline.

This agreement represents a fair balance and allows the University of Washington, the City of Seattle's largest employer, to remain competitive and to provide a catalyst for revitalization efforts in the community.

The dramatic slowdown in the local economy continues to have a significant impact on City revenues. After implementing more than $50 million in budget cuts last year, the City faces additional cuts for both this year and next. In particular, the most recent estimates for the City indicate that General Fund revenues will fall short of forecasts by roughly $5 million in 2003 and $10 million in 2004.

The regional recession has hit two of the City's most important revenues sources - sales tax and business and occupation (B&O) tax - quite hard. Healthy growth rates of 5% to 7% have been replaced by forecasts of barely 1% to 2% growth. But some of the most surprising revenue shortfalls have come in the area of utility taxes, and most specifically in telecommunications. During the late 1990's, the rapid growth in cell-phone use had helped provide a strong new source of revenue for the City. But with competition lowering monthly charges and many individuals switching their long distance calling to cheaper cell phone calls, the City's tax revenues have suffered.

Looking forward, local economists are not predicting a rapid recovery from the current regional recession. It appears that the Puget Sound regional economy has stabilized, but there are only limited signs of a turn around. In fact, current projections suggest that the region will not recover the jobs lost over the past two years until well into 2005 or 2006. Thus, we expect that the City's revenue picture will stabilize in the near term, but significant improvement is not likely for some time.

Three years ago, the City made changes in the Animal Control Code, mandated by the WA State Supreme Court. A new RCW code definition of "potentially dangerous animal," meant to serve as a warning notice to a dog owner that his or her dog's behavior might be considered dangerous if it were repeated, was written into our code. The code changes seemed innocuous enough, but their implementation by Animal Control raised a firestorm of protests. A group that called itself the "Dangerous Ordinance Group" organized and complained to my office, asking that we hold a meeting to hear people's complaints, which we did in March 2001.

In Sept. 2001, I convened a stakeholders' panel of people in the dog "industry" to review the code and make recommendations. We invited representatives from DOG, COLA, PAWS, the Seattle Kennel Club, animal behaviorists specializing in dog behaviors, veterinarians and citizens to be on this panel.

In late February of this year, the group submitted to me a final report and a list of recommendations of proposed code changes. I carefully considered the recommendations of this group, sending it to all Councilmembers, the Law Department, Council Central Staff, Seattle Police Department, Department of Executive Administration (home of Animal Control), Parks Department, the Mayor's Office, the King County Health Department, and the Animal Control Commission for their review, assessment, and feedback to me.

In deciding which of the recommendations to submit for actual legislation, I considered two primary factors: protecting the public safety and providing due process for Seattle dog owners. The legislation that passed the Seattle City Council on June 9, 2003 on a unanimous 9-0-vote is a fair compromise balancing these needs. The highlights of the legislation include the following:

• Establishing the right of due process for dog owners whose dogs are considered potentially dangerous. A new civil citation replaces the current notice of potentially dangerous animal. If a dog bites a person or domestic animal with a less than severe injury, if it chases a person in a menacing fashion or apparent attitude of attack, the owner can be cited. Anonymous complaints will not be allowed.
• Issuing a "general amnesty" for all notices of potential dangerousness issued the law went into effect in August 2000. If you received one or more of these notices, be aware that they are now null and void.
• Strengthening the definition of dangerous animals. This action was made in response to recent incidents of pit bull attacks in West Seattle, Golden Gardens Off-Leash Area, Beacon Hill and other parts of Seattle in which both people and pets have been severely injured and one pet killed.
• Including the word "tormented" in defining a provoked attack. If someone torments a dog, which then inflicts injury on that person, the tormenter will have provoked the attack and no action will be taken against the dog. Children under the age of six are exempted from the provocation definition.
• Providing more options for disposition of dangerous dogs. Owners of dogs determined to be dangerous now have two options other than automatic euthanasia: the dog may be sent to a secure facility for life or it may be sent to a jurisdiction in Washington that allows the keeping of dangerous dogs, provided that all state and local regulations regarding such dogs are met.
• Insuring that the breed of a dog will NOT be used in making any determination of potentially dangerous or dangerous.

Since this legislation passed, I have begun working with the Seattle Police Department and Animal Control to help these two agencies find ways of better working together to enforce animal control laws, to rein in the few truly dangerous dogs in Seattle, and to prosecute those dog owners who deliberately inflict cruelty to create vicious dogs which they then use as weapons against other people and police officers.

On May 12th the Mayor sent to Council his proposal for a fire facilities emergency response program - a Fire Facilities Levy. The Mayor's proposal is for $229 million over 9 years that would cost the median household approximately $100 a year.

The Council does agree with the Mayor that there are many improvements and upgrades that need to be made. However, while I believe we need to do something, in light of the current economic situation I question the size of the Mayor's levy proposal. Over the next three weeks the Council will be discussing these issues in Committee of the Whole meetings, looking at many different options for a possible ballot measure, either a levy or bond. We will decide by mid-July whether or not to send a proposal to the ballot this fall.

More than a dozen local food assistance programs next month will split a half million dollars the Seattle City Council set aside during last fall's budget process to expand food delivery to Seattle's hungry. The money will help upgrade facilities, expand food storage capacity and buy more food for distribution.

After announcing the grants process earlier this year, the City received requests from 33 programs totaling $1,128,689. The proposals were ranked by a review group composed of City Council staff, Seattle Community Services Division staff, and community members with experience in food bank, meal program and food distribution systems. Six awards were given for food acquisition, totaling $198,843, and 12 awards were given for capital investment/ facilities improvement projects totaling $301,157. Because of the limited funds available, most requests were not fully funded.

The organizations that successfully competed for these awards were those that demonstrated best how they would turn this money into a long-term benefit. Many agencies told us that with some seed money they could leverage other funding dollars to make the City's investment go further, and we liked that approach.

While Seattle spends a total of $2.29 million for food banks, emergency meals, home grocery and other food programs in 2003, this $500,000 is a one-time, non-renewable expenditure the City Council pulled from the City's general reserve to expand food assistance capacities this year.

The past couple of months have been very busy for the City Council and the immediate future shows no signs of slowing down. I look forward to hearing from you on the many things that are happening in the City.