Changes To King County's Vaccine Verification Requirement
Dear Neighbor,
With nearly 80% of all King County residents fully vaccinated and with the decrease in COVID-19 cases and related hospitalizations, the County will end the vaccine verification requirement for indoor activities and large outdoor events on March 1st.
Seattle-King County Public Health continues to monitor case counts and hospitalization numbers to ensure we can respond quickly if there is a significant increase in cases.
Although we are not completely out of the pandemic yet, the commitment of residents to keeping their community safe by getting vaccinated and masking up has been instrumental to us entering this next phase.
For more information about changes to the vaccine verification, visit Seattle-King County Public Health: https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/current-guidance/verify.aspx
Funding For Families And Youth Begins To Roll Out
With the voters overwhelming support of an expanded Best Start for Kids levy in 2021, new funding is now available for organizations working with families and youth in our community.
Best Start for Kids programming supports early development initiatives for infants and toddlers, provides out of school activities for children, and helps youth transition to post-secondary education or employment.
The new Best Start for Kids levy maintains current investments in prevention and early intervention programs while also funding new investments in childcare and community-based capital projects.
Funds from this levy have benefitted thousands of children in District 5 and I encourage interested community organizations, non-profits, schools, tribes and public agencies to visit this timeline to see when grant opportunities become available.
To learn more about the Best Start for Kids levy, you can subscribe to their blog.
The Greener Energy Code for King County
The King County Council is currently discussing the development of a stronger and greener energy code which would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve indoor air quality for all residents of unincorporated King County.
Natural gas combustion in commercial and residential buildings accounts for 24 percent of greenhouse gas emissions countywide. The proposed changes would require more efficient building construction, accelerate the adoption of solar energy, and reduce natural gas consumption in commercial buildings and multi-family construction more than four stories tall. In addition, the proposal offers other ambitious-but-necessary steps to address the climate crisis and prepare for a more renewable future:
- Improve energy efficiency to help conserve energy and maintain low utility bills for residents.
- Disallow fossil fuels in new commercial and large multi-family buildings for space and most water heating, reducing significant greenhouse gas emissions and outdoor air pollution from our building sector.
- Add renewable energy generation, to help us prepare for the future of electrification and growth of electric vehicles.
- Create more opportunities for homeowners to install solar power.
- Enable affordable housing facilities to access solar power on affordable housing, at no cost to the affordable housing developers or operators.
Theses updates to the building code were developed with input from community members, builders, labor organizations, and environmental groups and signify an important step in curbing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing health disparities countywide.
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