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A punch list is what a builder works through before a job is accepted: the specific, checkable items still outstanding. This is one for the governance of the Seattle Convention Center campus — two buildings, the Arch and the Summit, owned and run by the Washington State Convention Center Public Facilities District ("the district" below), a public corporation with a nine-member appointed board.
Nothing on it is a demand. Each item is a proposition with the record it came from and the test that would settle it, posted where it can be argued with.
Every item is numbered and states what would count as done. That is the point of the format. Publishing the finish line before anyone crosses it means it cannot be moved later, and it means anyone can check whether credit given here is real.
Status is one of three words. Open — nothing has happened. Moving — something real has started. Done — done. Status changes are dated and carry their source. Nothing is changed silently.
Where each item should be set is part of the item. A rule that binds a board should not be written by that board, so several of these name a level above the one that could technically enact them. The reasoning is in where the rules would hold, and the underlying instrument-by-instrument analysis is published alongside.
Who maintains this, and their interest: this page is kept by the Convention City Dispatch. The author worked at the convention center in guest services in 2023 and owns property near the campus; that interest is set out in the series closer.
Governance
1. Adopt a written sanctuary policy. Open — Asked plainly and answered plainly. On May 19, 2026 this desk asked the district in writing whether it prohibits civil immigration enforcement on the property it controls. Eight days later its communications office answered: "The convention center is part of a Public Facilities District – a municipal corporation – its role is narrowly defined. Its responsibilities are limited to managing an event facility. As an event venue, it isn't a full-service city government and doesn't carry the broader policy or regulatory functions that sanctuary orders apply to and no such policy has been adopted by the PFD Board." Credit for answering, and for giving a reason rather than a shrug.
The nearest comparable body has already tested that reason. The Port of Seattle is also a special-purpose municipal corporation. It runs an airport and a seaport — facilities. It is not a full-service city government either. In February 2026 it adopted Order No. 2026-03, providing that nonpublic Port property will not be used for civil immigration detention or enforcement support except as required by law. The Port had the same answer available and reached the other one. What such a policy takes is not regulatory authority over a population; it takes control of property and a decision about what that property may be used for.
And this is the district's own call to make, on King County's account rather than ours. Asked about the same gap, the Executive's press secretary wrote that the decision-making power "rests in the respective governance structures of the independent agencies and authorities and not with the County Executive."
Done when: the board adopts a written policy by resolution and posts it — or states on the record that it has decided not to, so the position is at least the board's rather than the communications office's.
2. Rotate the chair. Open — The same person has chaired the board since 2003. In November 2023 the board elected a new chair and vice chair, then rescinded that vote a month later on counsel's advice. The governing provision is bylaws section 3.3, which reads: "There shall be no restriction on Board members serving successive terms as Chair or Vice Chair." Under the same section, officer terms "routinely expire on December 31 of the second year," and the board "shall elect a Board Officer from among its members at its regular meeting closest to January 1 in any year following the year in which the term of a Board Officer has expired." The current vice chair was elected in December 2024. So the chairmanship comes up at the board's first regular meeting of 2027 — and the members seated between now and then are the ones who will decide it. Done when: a term limit on the chairmanship exists in the bylaws or above them.
3. Put a clock on holdover. Open — Five of nine seats reached the end of their terms on July 30, 2026. Terms expire; incumbents hold over; appointers act on their own clock. The members still serving are not at fault, and a board that emptied itself on schedule would be worse. No outside limit exists, so an appointing office pays nothing for inaction. The state statute contains no holdover provision; the open-ended version is bylaws section 2.3: "Any Board member whose term has expired continues to serve until such director has been reappointed or upon the appointment of his or her successor." Done when: a fixed outside limit sits in the county ordinance or state law, after which the seat is vacant.
4. Livestream the meetings, publish recordings, post packets in advance. Open — Among an eight-board national peer set, this is the only one with no remote option for the public, while the board itself meets by video. A weekday-afternoon, in-person-only meeting is easy to attend if being there is part of your job, and hard if you have a different one. The Open Public Meetings Act is a floor, not a ceiling; none of this requires an amendment to anything, and it is hard to see why it isn't already in place. Closer to home, the Spokane and Lynnwood public facilities districts and Bellevue's convention center authority all meet by Zoom as well as in person, Lynnwood with the link printed on the agenda; Spokane posts its board packet with the agenda — 61 pages in July, profit-and-loss statement and fund-balance report included — and Bellevue posts its minutes back to 2016, before the next meeting approves them. Done when: meetings stream live, recordings stay posted, and agenda, minutes and board packet go up before the meeting.
5. Accept written comment in advance, put it in the record, and allow comment when an item is reached. Open — Comment is already on every regular agenda, at item 1, three minutes a speaker. The gap is format. Attendance is in person on a weekday at 12:30 p.m.; there is one turn, at the top, before anything has been heard; and the agenda gives only a resolution number and a one-line title, with no contract, dollar figure, term or staff memo attached — so comment is possible on the existence of a contract but not its terms. The Seattle City Council and the King County Council, which between them confirm six of these nine appointees, both take written comment by email and enter it in the record; the County Council also accepts remote comment with no advance sign-up. So do the region's other large public boards: the Sound Transit Board takes in-person, virtual, and written comment on agenda items and posts its video afterward; the Port of Seattle Commission takes written comment from three days before a meeting through the day after and enters it in the record. Recent agendas carried two resolutions each, so the volume is small. Done when: written comment is accepted against a published deadline and entered in the record, remote comment is available, the packet is posted with the agenda, and comment can be taken on an item when it is reached.
6. Publish the terms on which the board's counsel is engaged. Open — This item is a question before it is a demand, because the answer is not public. The bylaws say nothing about general counsel; the only references to attorneys concern indemnification. So how counsel is engaged, who signs the engagement, to whom counsel reports, and whether an individual director can obtain a written legal opinion without going through the chair are all unknown outside the building. What is on the record is a single episode: in December 2023, counsel advised the board that a motion was needed to rescind its own unanimous election of new officers a month earlier and to continue the incumbents through their existing terms — advice that may well have been correct, and that is not offered here as evidence of anything more than the question. A board carrying $1.8 billion of debt should be able to say, publicly, to whom its counsel reports. Done when: the engagement terms are published, and the answer to whether an individual director can obtain independent legal advice is on the record either way.
7. Oversight, not management. Open — The board settles individual artworks, namings and signage by board vote, while carrying no dedicated finance officer among its members, against roughly $85–90 million a year in debt service rising toward $156 million by 2030. Done when: at least one seat is held by someone with public-finance credentials, and the standing agenda leads with finance.
8. No plaques, named rooms or ballrooms for sitting board members or paid contractors, unless the governing authorities award and fund them. Open — In November 2019 the board voted to name the Summit ballroom for its own sitting chairman, who handed off the gavel and abstained. In November 2024 it voted to name the Garden Terrace for the principal of the paid development-management firm on the project, four to one, with the dissent unnamed in the minutes. Done when: a naming policy bars honoring sitting members and current contractors.
9. Make the conflict-of-interest rule you already have do something. Open — The rule is not missing, and it is not weak. Board Policy 8, revised April 22, 2025, says that any perceived or potential conflict "will be disclosed, and the member will not participate in the decision-making process, where personal or business gain is a possibility," and that members "will disclose the nature and extent of an actual or potential conflict of interest when it occurs and will avoid evaluating or voting on the matter involved. This includes the award of contracts, the purchase of goods and services and the allocation of District resources." It names, among the relationships where conflicts arise, "persons and firms supplying goods and services to the District" and "competing or affinity organizations."
Against that rule: three recorded recusals in a decade of minutes — one on a banking contract, one on a co-development deal, one on a naming — and none on the marketing contract that goes to an organization whose board seats overlap with this one.
There is a defensible explanation, and it is in the policy's own definitions. An "interest" does not count if it is remote, and a remote interest expressly includes "that of a non-salaried Board member of a nonprofit corporation contracting with the District." An unpaid director of a nonprofit that holds a contract here is, by definition, not conflicted. That language tracks state law, which uses nearly the same words for every municipal officer in Washington.
But the same state law attaches conditions to the exemption. A remote interest must be disclosed to the governing body, noted in the official minutes before the contract is formed, and the contract approved by a vote that does not count the interested member's. Those are the questions this item asks: whether such disclosures were made, whether they were noted, and whether the votes were counted that way. There is a second place the answers may already sit. King County requires members of its boards and commissions to file a Statement of Financial and Other Interests, within two weeks of appointment and annually after; whether the directors of this district file one is not something the public record answers, and the County's "Independent" classification for this board exempts it only from a section of the County's annual report, not from the form. If they file, the statements are public records and answer most of this item directly. If they do not, the County's disclosure regime does not reach the board that spends the County's lodging tax. Done when: remote and actual interests are disclosed on the record and noted in the minutes before the relevant vote, and the minutes show the vote counted accordingly — and the County says on the record whether these directors file its financial-interest statement, publishing any that exist.
10. Officers of the district should not sit on the boards of its counterparties — or the district should say in writing how that is managed. Open — The district's own biography for its President and CEO, prepared for a May 2026 roundtable, lists her as a sitting board member of Visit Seattle — the marketing contractor the district paid $11.5 million in 2025 and has budgeted $12 million this year — and of the Freeway Park Association, a co-signatory of the 2018 agreement under which the district funded $10 million of park work, and an organization the district pays a membership to. Board Policy 8 governs directors. Whether it, or anything, governs the officer who administers those contracts is not something the district's published policies answer. Done when: officers' outside board seats are posted on the district's site, and for any organization that holds a district contract, the officer either steps off that board or a written recusal from administering the contract is on file.
Who sits on the board
11. Appointments should originate at the appointing offices. Moving — The Governor, the King County Executive and the Mayor fill these nine seats, and the names have tended to travel the other way — King County's own office described its process as board-led recruitment before committing to change it, and the one handover the minutes describe was arranged inside the board. In July 2026 King County's Executive office said on the record it is "in the process of making this happen for every board and commission," modeled on the Governor's monthly postings. Done when: all three post vacancies publicly with a way to apply, and a candidate the board did not nominate is seated.
12. A residency requirement for the appointed seats — Seattle's and King County's alike. Open — Appointees should live in the district they govern and tax. The Mayor appoints three of nine; the City's own roster sheet for this board records a mayoral appointee whose residential council district is listed "NA," the residence being outside Seattle. The County appoints three more, and the same logic reaches them: the district's taxing area is King County, so its County-appointed directors should live in it. Across downtown, Seattle Center's advisory commission members "must reside in Seattle." Neither the statute nor the bylaws imposes any residency requirement, which means each appointing office can adopt one today without amending anything. (The Governor's three are a statewide appointment and sit on different footing.) Done when: the Mayor and the County Executive each adopt residency as a standing condition, durable through the county ordinance.
13. Rotate the labor seat through unions whose members work on this campus. Open — One seat is reserved for organized labor — by state statute and county ordinance, and restated in the board's own bylaws. Labor backed the 2010 transfer of the center to a county-created district, and the ordinance that created the district wrote the seat in. The labor member cast one of only three recusals in a decade of minutes. The structural issue is that the seat has been held continuously by the chief officer of the same county labor council across successive holders — and when the handover was arranged in 2021, the departing member, who was leaving because her term as the labor council's executive secretary-treasurer was expiring, gave the chairman the name of her suggested successor. That successor had also succeeded her at the labor council. The seat tracks an office at one organization.
The obvious defense is breadth: a county labor council federates unions across the county, so a federation officer speaks for more workers than any single local could. But those 150 unions do not stand in the same relation to this campus. A handful have continuous, daily relationships with it — the concessionaire's food-service workers, the stagehands and audiovisual crews, the people who clean and set the rooms. A middle ring, the building trades, has a real but periodic relationship, concentrated in construction years. The rest — the large majority of the federation — has no relationship to this building at all.
Breadth in that shape is not neutral. It means the workers with a continuous stake have to filter through a federation whose membership is overwhelmingly composed of people with no stake, in order to be heard on a board that votes on their own contract. The ordinance and the bylaws require that the seat represent organized labor; neither names an organization. Done when: the seat is held by someone from a union with members working on this campus, and the appointing office states a rotation practice.
14. A citizen advisory committee, on the model the City already runs for thirteen other campuses. Open — Under Land Use Code section 23.69.032, an institution writing a master plan that affects its surrounding neighborhood convenes a development advisory committee of six to twelve voting members, drawn from the community and the institution, to "advise both the institution and City about the potential impacts of the development proposed by the major institution on the surrounding neighborhoods." Applicants are jointly interviewed by institution and City planning staff. After adoption, an implementation advisory committee monitors compliance. Thirteen institutions have them, four of them on the hill directly above this campus. The convention center is not among them, because "major institution" in the code means universities, colleges and hospitals — a definitional gap, fixable by whoever wrote the definition. It is the second City review framework the campus falls outside; the Design Commission, which reaches civic projects on city land, is the other. Done when: a committee of neighbors with a defined role in the campus master plan exists, whether by code or by agreement.
What should be public
15. Publish executive compensation. Open — On October 28, 2025, in open session, the board approved a salary increase and the full fiscal-2025 incentive payment on two recorded motions. The minutes carry no dollar figures, and the amounts are not published anywhere. Done when: executive compensation is published annually, in dollars.
16. Record how each member votes. Open — The November 2024 naming vote carried four to one and the dissent is unnamed. Done when: minutes record each member's vote by name on any divided question.
17. Issue financial statements on a schedule, to everyone at once. Open — The district posts audited financial reports, so the question is timing and sequence. As it stands the public's view of a year closes late and arrives second.
On March 26, 2026, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported the district's full-year 2025 results — $1.4 million in net operating income, the first positive year since 2019; revenue ahead of target by about $2.8 million; net position down to $316 million; cash reserves near $25 million — with the chief executive commenting on them directly. The audited statements for that same year were not due to be public until roughly October, when the prior year's audit lands. A reader who wanted to check any of those figures against the audited record in March had to wait about seven months.
Nothing about that is improper, and a public agency talking to a business reporter is a good thing rather than a problem. But a figure given to one outlet is a figure the public could have had. And the two records do not always agree: the district's annual report showed a $16.4 million operating loss for a year the audited statements put at $69.4 million, the difference being depreciation disclosed in a footnote — which is precisely why both documents need to be public and labeled.
And there is a second half to this, which is comparability. A number is only meaningful against the same number from last year, computed the same way. The audited 2024 statements carry "Visit Seattle marketing" at $10.6 million, sitting inside operating expenses; the 2025 payment to Visit Seattle was about $11.5 million. If a line of that size were moved out of operating expenses — treated as a pass-through or a transfer rather than a cost of operating — it would by itself convert an operating loss into something close to the positive figure that was reported, with nothing about the operation having changed.
This desk does not know that any such change was made. The unaudited figures given to the Business Journal in March cannot be checked against anything until the audited statements for that year are published. The fix is ordinary accounting practice — when a line moves between categories, say so, and restate the prior year on the new basis so the two can be compared. A first positive year since 2019 is a real achievement if it is an operating result. If it is a classification, that is a different sentence.
Done when: the financial reports the board receives are published when the board receives them, clearly marked unaudited; the annual report and the audited statements are both posted with their differences reconciled; any change in how a line is classified is disclosed with the prior year restated on the same basis; and no figure reaches a reporter before it is available to everyone.
18. Publish the methodology behind the impact figures, and a jobs number. Open — This campus publishes a great deal: audited event counts, attendance and room nights, and large aggregate "economic impact" figures — hundreds of millions of dollars attached to business it lost, and larger ones attached to business it hoped to win. What does not accompany them is a published methodology, so the multiplier turning room nights into economic impact is not something an outsider can check or reproduce. There is no public jobs figure. And the counts do not always agree with each other: for the same year, the audited statements report 200 events and 425,663 attendees while the annual report reports 171 events and 444,202, on a different classification that is not explained. Boston's authority publishes attendance, room nights, jobs and a total impact figure through a state oversight office; someone outside the institution reviews the arithmetic. Done when: an annual public report carries event days, attendees, room nights and jobs on a stated methodology, reconciles its own counts, and is reviewed by a body that is not the district.
19. Publish the lost-business reports. Open — The district and its marketing contractor cite lost and waived room nights as the case for capacity and spending — 1,364,309 for 2017 alone. The reports the figures come from are not posted by the district or its contractor. Portland's marketing contractor reports a lost-business line — groups, room nights, attendees, dollars — every quarter to the commission that oversees the Oregon Convention Center, and the packet is public. Done when: the reports behind the figures are published, or the figures stop being cited.
20. Publish an annual delivery report on the 2018 community-benefits package. Open — The last item-by-item public accounting of the roughly $93 million came in December 2024 from a blogger who had been part of the coalition that negotiated the package, and it showed the package substantially delivered or under construction. The district reports on the vacation conditions to the City's transportation department quarterly; those reports are not posted. The district committed the money and should not need a volunteer to report on it. Done when: the district publishes a yearly status on each committed line.
Management
21. Prioritize utilization. Open — The district counts hotel room nights. The targets it publishes are room nights and events booked; there is no target for event days, hall occupancy, or how often the street doors are open — and those are different measures. Use is the one that reaches the people closest to the campus: an event day is a shift for the people who set, serve and clean the rooms, and a day the street doors are open is a day the block has foot traffic. The campus doubled its capacity in 2023 and, on a rough comparison with Boston's authority, draws fewer attendees per resident. Done when: the board sets published annual targets for event days, hall occupancy and street-level open days, and reports against them.
22. Take the marketing contract off the categorical exemption list. Open — The eight-figure marketing contract is not sole-sourced by a case-by-case justification. It is exempt by category, in the board's own procurement policy, by name. Board Policy 7 lists what "cannot be secured through an open competitive process," and the list reads: public utilities; union-related benefits and pension costs; City of Seattle taxes; state transportation maintenance fees; "Seattle's Convention and Visitors Bureau marketing services"; postage; King County property taxes; employee transit vouchers; employee health premiums.
Every other named item on that list is something with one possible provider; the list closes with a catch-all for other expenses the board approves. You cannot competitively bid King County property taxes, or shop around for postage. Destination marketing is the only discretionary commercial service on it — and other cities buy it competitively.
The policy has been adopted four times, in 2010, 2013, 2015 and most recently by Resolution 2025-3 on April 22, 2025. The exemption still names the organization by a brand it stopped using more than a decade ago.
Food and beverage is the separate case: a single exclusive provider whose 2024 revenue set a record, on a contract that began January 1, 2025 and runs a five-year base term with two two-year extensions, to about 2033. Neither ask is that an incumbent lose. Done when: the marketing exemption is struck from Board Policy 7, and each contract goes to a competitive process with the comparison public before the signature.
23. Engage the community before selecting architects or builders. Open — By the development manager's own later account, "the original plan was for us to hire LMN under our contract (no public process)"; the district's general counsel determined the design work had to be publicly procured. So the campus master plan went to a request for qualifications in June 2025 — one that published no evaluation criteria, weights or scoring method, saying only that a review team "will determine the ranking of the Submittals." Three firms submitted by the final July 25 deadline, finalists were interviewed August 11 to 19, and the notice of award went to the incumbent architect on August 29. The board voted to approve the contract on December 9 — more than three months after the firm had been chosen. The public's turn comes later still, on a near-final report. A board that approves a procurement its staff has run is doing the ordinary thing. By the time any of it was public, the choice was made. Done when: a public step lands upstream of the request for qualifications, while the scope is still open.
24. Restore the anti-splitting clause and publish the chief executive's signing authority. Open — In October 2025 the board reset how much the chief executive can sign without a board vote: leases and lease amendments up to $250,000 a year in rent, lease extensions of up to fifteen years, and emergency contracts to the same cap, reported to the board once a year instead of twice. The draft the board was working from a week earlier also carried a standard safeguard — that a contract may not be broken into pieces to stay under the cap. That sentence is not in the resolution the board adopted, six to nothing. Nothing about the authority is secret; it is in the resolution. The missing safeguard is visible only by laying the draft beside the adopted text. Done when: the anti-splitting clause is back in the resolution, and the chief executive's contract, lease and emergency authority — thresholds and reporting cadence — is posted where the public can find it.
The campus
25. Publish the alternatives before choosing among them. Open — A master plan decides what gets built, for whom, and at what scale, long before anything resembling a decision reaches a public agenda. Six weeks before this one was kicked off, the district's own consultant told the board that public participation in a new convention hotel was an option, and named "existing District land or air rights" as a site; the study was presented in open session, but the slides were not posted and the minutes say only that an overview was given; the content surfaced through a records request by this desk eleven months later. Done when: the options under consideration are published while more than one is live.
26. Treat the street level as part of the deal. Open — 800 Pike — the street-facing space on the Arch's northeast corner at Eighth, not the main entrance at 705 Pike — was built to draw the public in. It was designed for a museum that bought space there and never moved in, and served as the temporary Central Library from 2001 to 2004; today it is conference rooms. In 2025 that street entrance opened on 22 days, for 7 events, against 123 event days across the wing, mostly upstairs. Done when: 800 Pike keeps posted public hours.
27. Keep the public realm public. Open — Freeway Park, the lid, the sidewalks and the block between Pike and Pine are the connective tissue between everything else downtown, and no single owner controls the whole walk. Done when: a written public-access policy covers the campus's public spaces and survives the next master plan.
28. Coordinate with the Lid I-5 planning. Open — According to the Lid I-5 group, the City's planning office secured $2.2 million in January 2025 for the next phase of lid planning, running into 2027, on the same timeline as a campus master plan contemplating lidding or decking the same freeway. The original 2020 feasibility study was funded out of the convention center's own public-benefit package. Two public planning efforts on adjacent land, with no formal connection between them. Done when: a standing joint working session exists between the district and the City's planning office.
Public programming
29. Provide low-cost, self-service options at scale. Open — It is a public building, on public land, financed by a public tax, and on most days most of it is closed to the public that owns it. Room rentals and catering are priced for conventions; nothing inside the buildings is priced or scheduled for the people who live around it. Done when: a resident can walk in on an ordinary day and find something on — and can book a room for something of their own, at the cost and on the terms a community center offers.
What the City, the County and the Legislature can do
Some of this is not the district's to grant.
Seattle
30. Confirm with examination. Open — Appointments arrive at the Council and pass, unanimously, often on consent. A confirmation is the one moment a public body can ask a nominee on the record what they think the job is. Done when: a nominee to this board answers questions in public committee before the confirming vote.
31. State the conditions that would attach to a future street vacation, before the plan is finished. Open — The City's genuine lever is the street vacation — the City handing over a public right-of-way, as it did for the Summit in 2018 — and it engages at construction, years after a master plan has decided what gets built. Saying now what the City would want costs nothing and changes what gets drawn. Done when: the City publishes the public-benefit conditions it would expect.
32. Charter the advisory committee, or extend the code that already covers thirteen institutions. Open — The neighbors' committee asked for in item 14 is the City's to create: either by agreement with the district, or by amending the definition of "major institution" in the Land Use Code so the framework that already reaches thirteen campuses reaches this one. Done when: the committee exists by charter or by code.
King County
33. Amend the county ordinance. Open — This district exists because King County created it by ordinance on July 30, 2010 — which is also why the terms of five seats expired on a July 30. The County's own annual report names the enabling legislation as King County Code section 2.300, and that is the chapter an amendment would reach. Most of what the board has not set for itself can be required in the instrument that constitutes it. Asking a board to limit itself is a favor; writing it into the charter is governance. Done when: the County opens the ordinance and puts at least the meeting-access and conflict provisions into it.
The Legislature
34. Amend RCW 36.100. Open — In roughly forty years the statute creating public facilities districts has never been amended for term limits, public engagement, meeting access or conflict standards. A floor for districts above a size threshold would reach this campus and every one like it. Done when: a bill is introduced.
35. Condition any state assistance on governance reform. Open — The state backstop expires in 2029 and the repayment profile steepens in 2030, so someone will be asking Olympia for something. That is when the public's leverage is highest. The ask is to attach conditions to whatever is granted. Done when: any state assistance carries governance conditions in the bill text.
Where the rules would hold
The board can amend its own bylaws and policies, which is where most of these items technically sit. Whether a rule set there holds is a different question, and the record bears on it.
Twice in two years this board opened the exact documents at issue and adopted the less restrictive text. The bylaws the board adopted in 2024 carry an open-ended holdover in section 2.3, where the state statute says nothing at all, and wrote "no restriction on Board members serving successive terms as Chair or Vice Chair" into section 3.3. The 2025 revision of Board Policies 6, 7 and 14 re-adopted the marketing exemption by name, and the ethics policy revised the same day defines an unpaid director of a contracting nonprofit as not conflicted. In 2019 the board named a ballroom for its sitting chairman; in 2024, a terrace for its paid development manager.
That record is stated here without characterization. What follows from it structurally is only this:
Set a rule at the lowest level that will actually enact it — and never at the level it constrains. A disclosure duty its subject can cancel is not a duty.
The ladder runs: the board's own documents, the appointing offices' practice, the confirming councils' procedure, the county ordinance, state law. Each rung is harder to climb and harder to reverse. Read across the items above and the county ordinance is the workhorse — it reaches most of what the board has not set for itself, without waiting on a legislative session. Two items belong in Olympia for durability and reach. Several genuinely belong with the board, where the first move is to ask.
Sources and exhibits
Claims on this page trace to primary documents: the district's board minutes and resolutions, its bylaws and board policies obtained by public-records request, City and County appointment records, the Seattle Municipal Code, and the published pages of the institutions compared. Each is listed with a page image and a retrieval date in the exhibit register, published with Findings.
Where a claim rests on a secondary source, it says so.
Correction, August 20, 2026. Item 4 said Bellevue's convention center authority "lists an in-person room and nothing else." Its meetings page does; its agendas and minutes read "Room 303 and Online via Zoom." The item now says so, and adds that Spokane's district posts its board packet with the agenda.
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