Seattle City Council Governance, Accountability and Economic Development Committee 7/10/2025

Good afternoon, everyone.

Today is Thursday, July 10th, and the Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development Committee will come to order.

It is 2.01 p.m.

I'm Sarah Nelson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council member Rivera.

Present.

Council member Solomon.

Here.

Council member Hollingsworth.

Here.

Council member Kettle.

Here.

Chair Nelson.

Present.

Five present.

Thank you very much.

Let's see, and I want to acknowledge for the record that Councilmember Rivera is joining us remotely.

Yes, thank you very much.

Okay, we've got three items on our agenda today.

The first is a discussion of Resolution 3216. Basically it's a resolution calling for a suite of investments in broadly speaking treatment services.

Next we have a report from the Office of the City Auditor on the the status of the recommendations that they have put forward across a number of years in their various audit reports.

And then finally we will have a discussion of the, I don't know, it's biannual?

Every two years we update our council rules and we'll be discussing proposed amendments to our council rules and we'll have the proposed vote on that at our next meeting.

All right.

With that, if there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Seeing none, the agenda is adopted.

All right.

We'll move into our public comment period.

Clerk, how many people have signed up to speak today?

We have three in person and four remote.

All right, let's go with the in-person commenters first and everybody could have two minutes.

Thank you.

I'll call on speakers in the order in which they signed up to speak, starting with in-person commenters.

Speakers will have two minutes.

When you hear the chime, you'll have 10 seconds left.

If you exceed that time, your microphone may be cut off so that we can move on to the next speaker.

If you're offering remote comment, please make sure to press star six when you hear the chime to unmute yourself.

Our first in-person speaker is Alex Zimmerman.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Zeheil, my dirty damn Nazi Gestapo, fascist pig, Amap and Bandita.

My name Alex Zimmerman.

I don't want to speak today about statement what is damn Nazi pig cut for my 25th election.

Yeah, I want to speak about number three, rules.

Ten years ago, you changed rules, bring Nazi Gestapo rules to Seattle.

This is only about one man, basic Alex Zimmerman.

So, you give me 18 trespasses for 1500 days.

For five years, I cannot come and speak only because I have different opinions.

It's critical, absolutely.

And who did this?

It's very interesting, guys.

Because fascism, as we have right now, go in progress.

Consul Harrell, mayor right now, 10 years ago, approved this and bring this to life.

I remember this very well.

So, 10 years later, we have mayor Harrell right now, so for four years, never have one Q&A and close seventh floor.

So in my statement, what is ACAT and what is Harrell doing for last four years is only show fascism go bigger and bigger.

It's not only fascism.

This fascism with Gestapo rule, you're more dangerous than Nazi or Comey.

You know what this means.

How is this possible?

You exist for 30 years.

Is this 750,000 slave?

scared to stand up and clean this chamber totally, like a post to be.

When you don't doing this, it will be for another Tory year.

No one fascism in Europe, in South America, exists for many this Tory year.

And your fascism, Nazi Gestapo rules, what is very aggressive, exists for Tory year.

It will exist for another Tory year.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Esther Lucero.

Hi, can you hear me?

Okay, okay great.

Wow, I feel like I have to smudge after that one, sorry about that.

Yep, hey everybody, my name is Esther Lucero and I am the President and CEO for the Seattle Indian Health Board.

Danae on my mom's side, Latina on my dad's side.

And I am here to provide public comment in support of Council Member Sarah Nelson's resolution.

Pathway to Recovery is key to getting upstream to the challenges that we're experiencing related to homelessness.

substance use and mental health.

It's about time that we actually deconstruct the intersection of those three components.

The Seattle Indian Health Board, we operated a 65-bed residential treatment facility on Rainier Beach.

We had to close that facility due to a terrible building, and we're actually reopening Thunderbird Treatment Center early next year, and it'll be a 92-bed facility with 15 beds dedicated to serving pregnant and parenting people.

We've recently decided to add a clinic to that facility so that we can provide medically-assisted treatment and also wraparound services for mental health and intensive outpatient.

For that reason, I think that this resolution is on the right track and I just want you to know that the Seattle Indian Health Board is already here, ready to increase our capacity to serve the needs of Seattle citizens and to make sure that we work in partnership with the Seattle City Council to solve some of these challenges.

So I guess the final thing I'll say is I implore you when this resolution passes to make sure that you invest in capacity that already exists so that we can increase capacity and not new infrastructure.

Because if you work with us as community members, we're going to get you where you want to be.

Thank you very much.

Before the next speaker, I do want to say for the record that I do support that investment.

In fact, I tried to get that into our 2025 budget.

It was not included in the chair's package.

But I think that the information that I read was that you have been providing 25% or 80% of the capacity, the residential capacity.

80%.

Our next in-person speaker is Andrea Suarez.

Hello, Andrea Suarez from We Heart Seattle.

I'm here to support you, President Nelson, on your resolution for Pathways to Recovery.

This is a historical moment to be here as a new provider private funded with Old Guard and my colleagues here to my right.

that we need a focus in this area and how we get there I think is open for discussion and debate and I would love to be at that table with this group on how we actually distribute that money.

In San Francisco, they just adopted a policy where safer smoking supplies, for example, are no longer allowed to be distributed in public spaces like schools or parks or sidewalks.

So I'm up here to ask incrementally right now what we can do to change the culture in Seattle from a drug-friendly culture where we invite people to come here and use drugs in our open-air drug markets fueled by a lot of the corruption related to things like food stamp cards and, you know, this, bottomless pit we have.

There is no rock bottom in Seattle because we make it really friendly to get high here.

And I'm holding here methamphetamine pipes and foil that are handed out together at the King County Behavioral Health on 4th and Blanchard.

We're handing it out street sides, other providers, mutual aid, People's Harm Reduction Alliance are handing these.

tools out to smoke lethal drugs.

And fentanyl has changed the game.

I think this is part of the conversation that we have to stop handing out tourniquets and pipes and foil in cookers.

And I ask my colleagues to stop doing that within your low barrier housing.

It's not working.

I don't hate the player, I hate the game, I hate that you have a fentanyl smoking shack in the back of your hotel, Lisa.

I respect you, the person, the colleague, but I can't get behind that.

I toured the Kennedy House at the DESC, the carpets are pitch black, rats, rodents, bugs.

We need to fix what we have and stop the endless...

Thank you.

That is our last in-person speaker.

We'll now move to remote comment.

If you're referring remote comment, please make sure to press star six to unmute yourself.

Our first remote commenter is Andrew Constantino.

Andrew, please press star six.

Thank you.

You may begin.

Hi, I am Andrew Constantino.

I'm an outreach worker downtown.

I'm calling to support Council President Nelson's proposal for expanded treatment services of all kinds using the sales tax.

All day at work, I'm on the street having intense, heartbreaking conversations with people trapped in addiction on our city streets.

I see the effects up close that it has on their bodies, their minds, and even their sense of identity.

Most addicts I connect with hate fentanyl.

They realize that it's poisoning their bodies and they're desperate to stop, but the addiction has them paralyzed.

When they use, they can barely stand or speak, and when they're in withdrawal, it's so intense that they'll do anything to make it stop.

As a former opiate addict myself, I just have to say, people do recover, and the biggest regret that I have is that I didn't seek treatment sooner.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next remote speaker is Joe Knusler.

Hi, Joe Knusler here.

Thank you for taking my call today.

I was happily able to jump off the sound transit call to call up here.

I understand you're working under council rules.

I want you to look at Redmond's city council rules.

They have a hate free zone.

They have a president with integrity and Vanessa Kritzer.

Go Jews.

They have banned Zimmerman for six months at a time.

What are you guys doing?

You don't deserve to be spoken to the way Zimmerman speaks to you.

The people of Seattle are wasting their tax money funding Zimmerman's campaign of hate against Bellevue, Jews, Muslims, and disabled people, for starters.

The people in this region should really question whether to come to Seattle or maybe it's time that San Francisco headquarters was moved to Redmond.

because I'm getting really sick and tired of every time I turn on the CLT channel, in public comment, there's this creep with the Nazi salutes, the hateful language, and the rest of it.

And I really think it's beneath this Council President Nelson.

I think it's beneath her colleagues.

I think it's beneath this mayor to allow this to continue for one more day.

Oh, and by the way, every time he's in campaigns, you're supposed to kick him out.

That's RCW.

In fact, let me call up the RCW because I'm writing a complaint about Bellefue's RCW 42.17a.555 You need to stop Zimmerman.

Please.

Ban him like the great President M. Marina Gonzalez did for a year at a time.

Twice.

Please.

I'm asking nicely.

Now I'm going to hang up and go turn on the YouTube of Seattle channel.

So thank you for all you do.

Please ban Zimmerman.

Please ban hate speech.

Please ban this kind of filthy campaigning garbage that we don't deserve.

Thank you.

Our next remote speaker is Alberto Alvarez.

Thank you.

Recovery is a journey, not a light switch.

It can take people months or years.

to reach a healthy level of stability.

Even then, relapse can and does occur.

What is needed is long-term shelter combined with crisis support.

Programs that detox for a short time only to kick patients out at the first sign of relapse put people on a dangerous path.

Relapse with no help is often more destructive and sadly also deadly.

Funding programs who say they only want a piece of the pie and to cherry-pick patients to help are not the programs we need to give money to.

Sarah Nelson's sales tax is a terrible idea at a terrible time.

Middle class and working class families already bear the price of public safety.

High expulsion recovery programs also set people up for dangerous relapse.

Tariffs are gutting the American worker.

People are losing food stamps, healthcare, and a slew of safety net services.

Nelson thinks it's a smart choice to tax people who are making sacrifices to feed themselves and to keep their home.

Millionaires, like Sarah Nelson, are getting the largest wealth increase in living memory and asking the rest of us to foot the bill.

A terrible idea at a terrible time.

Have a good day.

Thank you.

Our final remote speaker is David Haynes.

Hi, thank you, David Haines.

It's disappointing that Council won't step up and chair the Committee for the Human and Housing Services because we have a homeless crisis.

And the thing is, if you want to address with innovative and comprehensive approaches to public safety, you must incorporate the regional response from the state and federal level to build and pay for the capacity needed and the qualified service providers with the court ordered low security conscription to fight the addiction without these drug addicts roaming around after they get released from the clinic, still dehydrated, still brain and body damaged, dying of starvation with barely any food.

It seems that there would be somebody to pick them up and take them to an authorized encampment that could be built by the National Guard in like 72 hours.

with some security to keep them protected from the drug pushers that you all are not addressing when it comes to public safety so much, where we've had evil drug pushers that have been exempted from jail for up until just recently, if you had less than 3.5 grams and the police chief and others have trained to accommodate that reality that everybody has to be considered a personal user.

and it has resulted in failed crime-fighting responses.

But it has proven that the police chief's agenda is to get rich on overtime propagandizing in law-abiding community and law-abiding events how safe we are because they're around.

But yet they're always quick with a political excuse or a budgetary excuse or citing manipulated data that perceives a success in safety.

Every single day, nobody can go from point A to point B within the transit-oriented business community without being subjected to evil, predatory, sketchy lowlifes that have not been dealt with proper.

That is our final commenter.

Thank you very much.

We've reached the end of our public comment list, so public comment is now closed.

I do want to note my appreciation to Mr. Kunzler for indicating that perhaps Bellevue conducts public comment in a in a better way and discourages abusive behavior.

So I will definitely tune into those meetings to get some tips.

There are many steps we have to go through to ensure that people's First Amendment rights are met while it's at the same time abiding by our own rules.

All right.

Will the clerk please read item one into the agenda, into the record.

Agenda item one, a resolution setting out public safety related funding priorities in anticipation of a proposal to the city impose the additional 1 10th of 1% local option public safety sales tax authorized by the 2025 state legislature for briefing and discussion.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, you all can come on up at the same time.

We'll start with the presentation, but you're welcome to all be up there at the table together.

Okay, so this legislation is the product of months of stakeholding with three of the city's largest homelessness services providers, Purpose Dignity Action, otherwise known as PDA, Downtown Emergency Services Center, which is DESC, and Evergreen Treatment Services, what I call ETS.

and they are all with us today at the table.

Together we've developed what I am calling a progressive public safety initiative, also known as Pathways to Recovery, that would stabilize existing services and expand treatment options.

And the legislation identifies a whole long list of specific investments and some of which we'll hear about today.

I will note that at the press conference announcing this legislation last Tuesday, a week ago, a dozen or so people representing small businesses and homelessness services providers joined the people here presenting today and that group included some of the commenters we heard from today.

This presentation is not intended to be exclusive of the broad spectrum of approaches to dealing with substance use disorder and associated behavioral health issues.

I just want to make it clear that I acknowledge that there's a diversity of approaches that can be taken to the very vexing and perennial and very complicated issue of substance use disorder.

And what we're going to be hearing about today is a list of investments that we've hammered out together.

But I recognize that there are many ways to approach this very difficult issue.

All right.

Let's see, the funding for what you'll be hearing about today comes from a new one-tenth of one percent public safety sales tax that was authorized by the Washington State Legislature this year.

Note that I am not calling for an increase in sales tax, but Mayor Harrell has expressed interest in implementing it because it would generate about $35 million a year and could fund not just police services but also a broader range of behavioral health investments.

and I also want to recognize that now is not the right time or the appropriate or opportune time as we're facing potentially a $240 million operating deficit next year and that number of changes every so often.

and that is also before the federal cuts that we are anticipating could be coming down the pike.

My point is that now is not what you would consider to be an obvious time to be proposing new investments, but I will submit that it is an important time because for far too long we have watched people suffering on our streets from untreated addiction and mental illness deteriorate before us.

when we invest in people getting off the street and into treatment, we prevent crime, reduce emergency responses, and make every neighborhood safer.

That's not just fiscally responsible, I would say that it is the right, in fact, for not a very religious person, I'll go so far as to say it's the moral thing to do.

And that is why we're hearing this suite of investments today.

So with that, first we'll have a presentation.

Well, first I'll ask people to introduce themselves at the table and then we'll begin with Central Staff Director Noble's presentation.

Ben Nobles, City Council Central Staff Director.

Brandy Flett, Director of Community Justice, Evergreen Treatment Services, REACH.

Brandy McNeil, Deputy Director with Purpose Dignity Action.

Lisa Dugard, Co-Executive Director at Purpose Dignity Action.

Daniel Malone, executive director of DESC.

Thank you all for being here with us today.

All right, go ahead, Ben.

Thank you.

So I'm going to walk you through the resolution and what it says, if you will, and then the rest of the briefing can be more about what the intended uses for the resources would be and how they might be implemented.

So with that, let me get started here in just one second.

I figure out how to...

Oh, I think I...

Okay, so in terms of an outline, I'm gonna provide you some background both about where the authority from the tax comes from and some other dynamics around excuse me, around sales taxes, then a summary of the proposed resolution, and then I'm happy to take questions after that.

One thing I was going to put here on the very front page, just to reiterate a point that the Council President has made, that this resolution is written to have a set of recommended use of the dollars that could come from such a tax, but the resolution itself does not take a position on whether the tax should be adopted or not.

In anticipation that the executive may propose such, I believe it's the Council President's view that that should probably be viewed in the context of the overall budget and overall financial situations, But having said that, if it is to be moved forward, this resolution does identify some potential priorities for the use of those resources.

So let me dig in and give you more detail on that.

So again, as background and as was mentioned in introductory comments, the authority for this potential revenue comes from the state legislature.

It was just adopted this past session.

So it adds, for both cities and counties, the authority to impose a 0.1% sales tax for criminal justice purposes.

And I'll come back to criminal justice purposes in just a little bit.

It's an authority that's granted to cities and to counties, but not in a competing way.

So that is that the county can impose this tax and the city could impose this tax.

Obviously, the net impact would be a 0.2% increase in the overall sales tax rate.

And I say that because we do know that the county is considering the very same proposal.

And then just, again, as further background, separately the city has had some longstanding authority to ask the voters to approve such a sales tax as well.

In terms of the potential revenues, currently the city, from the sales tax that we directly impose, we get about 315 million.

The total city, when you look in the city budget book, you will see the revenue line for sales tax is 350 or a little bit more.

That's because that includes our share of the county's public safety EMS levy sales tax.

that emergency services sales tax that we get a portion of, and that's where our total comes from.

Bottom line is really the next bullet, which is that the 0.1% would get us between 37 and $40 million per year.

That's quoted here as a range.

It's always a range because one never really knows.

but there's a little bit more uncertainty than usual because another thing that the legislature did this past session was to add some services to the list of things that are subject to the sales tax.

So the sales tax base is going to increase, so our revenues will increase somewhat and could affect this.

But ballpark, 35 to 40 million.

So, what are the authorized uses?

So, criminal justice purposes is defined in the bill quite broadly.

So, and there is a list here.

and a typo as well, which I cannot fix because it's not that version, so I apologize for the typo there.

But the list includes, obviously it's meant to be direct public safety services, so it could fund a police department, for instance, but it can also include domestic violence services, public defenders, diversions, re-entries, re-entry for inmates, And then this broad category number five, local government programs that have a reasonable relationship to reducing the numbers of people interacting with the criminal justice system, including but not limited to reducing homelessness or improving behavioral health, which seems particularly on point to what you'll hear more about today.

as does number seven, community outreach and assistance programs, alternative programs, and mental health crisis programs.

And I'd also note, and it's important, that the authority granted the city includes no prohibition on supplantation.

So in other words, you could impose a tax and use the revenue stream to pay for services that are being provided now.

I think, speculatively, part of the state legislators' motivation was to ensure that local governments who might be facing losses in revenues would have sufficient resources to maintain some of their existing public safety efforts as well as potentially expand them.

So again, which is why there's no barrier to supplantation.

And then in terms of timing, this one's a little bit interesting.

The way that the sales tax works is that the state collects all of the money and then distributes it to the relevant governments, either state or the county or the local cities or other jurisdictions that might have sales tax authority.

And in terms of administering it, they update the sales tax every quarter, so essentially informing retailers of what the new sales tax rate is that they are obligated to collect.

And they require a 60-day notice to make that change.

So the bottom line is if the city wants to take advantage of the full year's worth of this increment, you'd have to pass this bill before you dealt with the overall budget.

It can wait until you see the budget proposal that will arrive in September because it would need to get approved in early to mid-October, but that doesn't mean that's the way it could be.

It could also be proposed to be implemented one quarter into the year.

Obviously, you'll get a little bit less revenue, not necessarily proportionally a quarter having to do with the pattern of sales tax activity over the course of the year, but you get the idea.

So we're not sure exactly when, we don't know whether a proposal will be made or when.

And then in terms of the resolution itself, as I described here, it makes two basic policy statements.

One is, again, in anticipation of a potential executive proposal, it says that the council should at least consider imposing this tax as part of its overall approach to the budget and longer-term financial strategy for the city.

you would be committing to considering a proposal if one were to come forward.

And this is, I think, really the broader point is if the city were to implement the tax, it establishes that up to 25% of the resulting revenue should be, and I'm now quoting, invested in addiction treatment recovery services and the facilities needed to provide such services.

And then the resolution further states that those services should be targeted to those experiencing chronic homelessness or being diverted from the criminal legal system.

It then highlights, as I described here by example, the types of services that might be funded.

I think I'm not going to read the list and let you read it, and I think it will be the subject of the discussion that proceeds from here.

But again, a variety of treatment and recovery services in particular.

So that's what the resolution does, and I'm happy to take questions about that if you have any.

Do my colleagues have any questions?

I'm not seeing any hands up.

Okay.

Back to, I wanted to note that the HB 2015, which was the enabling legislation of the Public Safety Sales Tax, was sponsored by Representative Intamin and advocated, advanced by the Legislative Black Caucus.

and Representative Entenmann said about the bill, what we really want to do is make sure that the programs we have in our committees around public safety include a larger definition of public safety.

So that is sort of the flashing green light that signaled to me that this would be an appropriate use for public safety.

For these investments, although I think that everybody in this room would probably say on the record that they are not in support of regressive taxes, sales tax being perhaps the most regressive on our books.

However, it's a tool that we are being presented with by the legislature and it's clear that the intention of the sponsors is that it doesn't just go to your traditional form of public safety.

All right, let's see, are there any other comments before we move on to our panelists?

Okay, so with that, why don't we proceed in the order that the panelists are listed as presenters.

So Daniel Malone, Downtown Emergency Services Center CEO and boss.

So why don't you go ahead and take the floor, thank you.

Thank you very much, council president and members of the committee.

I share the view that representative Intamin and the legislature as a whole was wise to include in their definition of public safety addressing issues like substance addiction.

And I think it would be wise for the city of Seattle if it proceeds with implementing the tax authority that the legislature provided to do the same and enhance our ability and availability of tools to help people suffering with serious substance use disorder on our streets.

I want to focus in on a couple of things specifically that I think our community would greatly benefit from having.

So at the organization where I work, we are attempting to assist people with really profound and complicated disabling conditions, including serious and persistent mental illness and chronic substance use disorder.

We find that providing people with a stable place to live is the single most important thing that we can do, but it's not the only thing that we must do.

We need to provide people with an array of services, including treatment services that will assist them on this pathway to recovery.

DESE is licensed to provide both mental health and substance use disorder treatment services.

The two things that I want to focus on are enhancements in treatment for people with opioid use disorder and innovations in approaches and treatment for people with stimulant use disorder.

These are two major components of the crisis that we're dealing with today.

On the opioid side, over the past year, we've seen markedly improved success in assisting people to start and stay on medications for opioid use disorder.

Specifically, these advances are improving our ability to be successful with people who are using fentanyl very chaotically.

Essentially, the changes have involved advances in the protocol for administering buprenorphine, so it's much more comfortable for people to take, and they're less often going into extreme and debilitating withdrawal that makes them not want to be involved in treatment anymore.

Hundreds of people are benefiting from this approach, but the need is so much greater.

Programs are at capacity.

We have some bright spots on the horizon in that a new opioid overdose recovery center, the Orca Center, is about to open later this summer, and that's going to enhance capacity.

There remains a great need for field-based services along these lines that bring that kind of treatment to where people are when you have some folks who aren't at a ready to come into a clinic setting for that, and so the city investing in that would be a great benefit to the community overall.

On the stimulant use disorder side of things, the array of treatments that we have available are quite paltry, and there's a significant need for more innovation in this space, and the city could be a real leader in helping to create some movement in that direction.

What we would recommend is some kind of pilot funding for also field-based services for people who are heavily using methamphetamine and struggling with overcoming that, and the components of this kind of treatment ought to include an array of things that are currently used to at least some minimal effect, such as contingency management and counseling services and supporting people to be more resilient in navigating spaces and communities where use is prevalent, but also to expand the use of the Ozempic class GLP-1 drugs that show some promise for potentially reducing craving and making some people who have these kinds of serious addiction issues able to make improvements on their lives when they haven't thus far with the other treatments that are available.

So I support very strongly the proposal to set aside some of the money if this tax is to be enacted to make sure that our community can lead on creating the tools for people struggling with addiction on our streets.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Let's hold questions and comments until everybody's been able to speak.

Just note them down as we're going along.

Go ahead, please.

So I want to begin by expressing deep appreciation for Council President Nelson's consistent leadership on developing recovery pathways and support for strategies that can be shown to actually improve the circumstances of people dealing with addiction.

And we're also extremely grateful that Mayor Harrell and many on the Council sitting here today and other members of the Council have also shown a strong commitment to addressing these issues.

This collective leadership and support are what enable us to discuss not only the challenges we face, but also the progress we've made.

Any serious public safety strategy must prioritize how we respond to individuals with complex behavioral health needs, especially when those needs are causing harm or distress in our neighborhoods.

Ignoring that reality only prolongs the cycle.

Confronting it is how we build safer, healthier communities.

Over the past few years, we've seen measurable success from efforts that take this approach seriously.

One example is LEAD's partnership with SPD on drug possession and public use diversions.

Instead of jail or prosecution, individuals contacted by SPD have access to a 24-7 warm handoff to a response team staffed by ETS REACH, that can connect them to services.

We're also integrating with SPD systems, so officers can make diversions directly within their information system, have greater visibility into who's already in the program, and directly contact case managers instead of cycling people through jail or emergency room.

Other efforts have had similar success.

Just Care evolved into a robust statewide model that informed the state transportation right-of-way encampment resolution program.

Co-lead continues to show remarkable outcomes.

Over 95% of participants accept services, more than 70% transition to permanent housing, and 100% are enrolled in Medicaid.

And we've had zero Co-lead participant overdose deaths in Co-lead lodging.

Zero.

Because of these interventions and other efforts by others at this table and many others, we're seeing tangible results, declining crime rates, a growing sense amongst residents and businesses that disorders decreasing and reduced overdose deaths.

The funding that this resolution identifies could be used to allow us to stabilize what's already working, like lead and co-lead, and add new pieces to address the gaps that remain.

And this funding should be used to stabilize what's already working across the continuum of care and across a variety of approaches.

One example of addressing such a gap is the low friction referral pathway to Lakeside Milam, a pilot program championed by Council President Nelson, which increased the continuum of care available to people.

This created a mechanism for immediate access to private inpatient treatment for individuals, including those in low barrier programs like CoLead.

CoLead has nominated the largest group to use this option so far, and nearly all of them completed treatment and are still doing well.

That success didn't happen by chance, it happened because of intensive case management.

Co-lead staff, build trust, and get to know participants well enough to identify who is interested and ready for treatment, and support them before, during, and after placement.

Treatment is most likely to be effective when people have support throughout their recovery journey, and that's precisely what intensive case management provides.

But none of this can continue without funding.

Lakeside Milam is a pilot whose initial funding allocation will soon be depleted.

It should be made permanent and it should be open to referrals from multiple city contractors who provide ongoing case management and can identify people for whom this is a good resource and provide support for them after they finish inpatient treatment.

LEAD and co-LEAD have lost millions of dollars in funding over the past two years.

We risk losing what's working unless we act now.

We strongly support the full range of investments called for in the resolution under discussion today.

This work belongs at the center of our public safety strategy, not on the margins, and must be funded accordingly.

And just adding a couple of quick notes to Brandi's comments.

First, I too want to thank Council President Nelson, the other members of this council who have always articulated this recognition that addressing people's needs is at the core of a public safety strategy that works for the city and is aligned with the city's values.

and also expressing appreciation for the mayor who has done the same.

This is one of maybe the city in the country that has the least question about whether that is true, but like many, we are challenged with operationalizing that understanding given real constraints and resources that cities currently face.

What I particularly wanted to call out about this resolution that I think gets it just right, and this did come after some stakeholder struggle, as Council President Nelson mentioned, is the balance between stabilization and innovation.

When people say stabilization, I'm not sure that it's clear what that means.

We have really slid back from some high points of innovation and achievement during the period of COVID relief funding.

Some steps forward were made.

It wasn't actually.

It was also the state's encampment right-of-way resolution program funding that has also ended.

So large tranches of funding that allowed sort of rapid reconfiguration of how it was possible to respond to large groups of people on the street dealing with substance use issues and other mental health conditions.

These approaches worked, and then the funding went away.

And while the model remains, the scope is greatly constrained.

So really, we're about to see an end of chapter of progress that was seen over the last several years without stabilization.

At the same time, as many of us who have contributed to that work, which is all multi-agency partnerships, as we've walked alongside individual participants, we've seen gaps that need to be bridged.

The Lakeside Milam pilot has been one great example of problem solving.

It didn't take a lot of money, and it made a tremendous amount of difference.

So that bridging enhances the efficacy of the efforts that have already been tried and need to be stabilized.

The other thing that I really appreciate about the framework of the resolution is that it at least implicitly reconciles the tensions that have been alluded to in some of the public comment between philosophies of recovery.

And it centers on the SAMHSA framework for recovery, which is integrated.

It recognizes that low barrier engagement is a part of the recovery journey and that ultimately people, all people, need access to and deserve access to all of the treatment modalities when they are the right solution for them.

So I think there is much less disagreement about where is the destination and what is the objective than one would think from reading national culture war fights about this.

The low barrier engagement strategies that are reflected in a portion of the high level list are complemented by access to traditional recovery strategies and make sure that once people have made major changes in their substance use, they do not have to return to shelter and housing in an environment where other people are still in active use.

Super important.

We use that road, support that, and I think that this is a well-balanced framework showing that this is a unity and a continuum.

My only request is that I see that the current version says up to 25%.

And I just have this caution that it would be a real shame if in the end, based on where you all end up and where the mayor ends up, you want to make investments that go above 25% of this fund.

And somehow this resolution, which is meant to support this work, acts as an accidental cap.

on investment.

So at least 25% would not make it a cap.

Up to 25%, it might sort of inadvertently end up limiting what the city can do in this realm, which I know is not the intention.

Thank you so much for having us.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you, Councilmember Nelson.

I'm here on behalf of my organization, Evergreen Treatment Services.

and so I just want to thank you for this resolution first and foremost, especially our local government filling in for the abandonment of our federal government on the most sick and vulnerable people in our city.

As my CEO Steve would say, every little bit is going to help in an investment in recovery-oriented services.

is the way to go for our city, especially considering our fentanyl crisis.

And this resolution offers multiple core pathways to get people in treatment, especially programs such as lead and co-lead that are on the street, work with law enforcement, doing street and community outreach, and the long-term case management to actually connect people to services when they're ready.

When we look at our data for LEAD and COLE, it shows that for less than 5% of our REACH LEAD clients are housed during program enrollment.

So that means they're homeless during program enrollment.

Today, right now, 40% of our LEAD participants are housed.

And so you need these alternative services to connect people to treatments and to get healed.

It's very, very, very difficult to heal outside.

Also, I'm attached to Evergreen Treatment Services.

And so this resolution would help support methadone opioid use disorder models, especially our mobile medical van work, where, you know, especially in this crisis, you need to meet people when they're at.

So if you have that window of opportunity where somebody wants to get treatment.

You need to be in the places where they're struggling with it the most, which is in our neighborhoods.

And this is especially important as, I believe, Lee and Chloe, all the alternative for law enforcement, we're filling in the gaps that law enforcement is just not designed to do based on their authority, especially during this crisis.

So you need someone who is gonna be out there working with some of our most complex individuals, struggling with behavioral health and substance use, in our neighborhoods.

And if it's not funded at the levels that it needs to be, it's gonna be harder to do that with those folks.

It's not a situation where you could kind of band-aid it.

So I appreciate this effort to fill in the gap, to do that work.

So we have multiple core pathways through treatment with alternative programming such as lead, co-lead, mobile medical vans that are supporting MOUD services and supportive housing for the folks that are struggling with substance use.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Nelson.

Thank you very much, all of you.

I am going to do the honorable thing and open up the floor for comments from my colleagues here before making some comments on my own.

Council member Kettle.

And vice chair.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you everyone for coming.

I really appreciate it.

And then I extend it also to the public commenters as well to include We Heart Seattle.

I think it's important to have everyone present and all voices heard.

There's a few pieces here as I look at this.

One is starting off with Director Noble's briefing is the and I've been talking about this related to the B&O tax.

I think everything that we're looking at should be in the construct of a comprehensive plan approach of how we're doing taxes, whether it's B&O, payroll and spring stacks.

We need a housing plan, which makes us smarter on the budget pieces that relate to that.

And then, of course, this .1 public safety sales tax proposal that we have.

And it's important, and I hear the points made, but it should also be noted that you know, this also opens up the opportunity related to the 100 million piece that's at the state level as well.

And that's not been talked about, but that's also a piece.

And separately, I've had discussions with my counterpart, both in terms of his committee assignment, plus his area of coverage in District 7, his District 4, King County, Councilmember Barron, and clearly the county is moving forward.

And I think that It's really important for us, and I don't really know exactly what King County Council's gonna be doing.

Generally, I just have the general pieces that they do, but I don't know the details.

But whatever they do with their point one, public safety sales tax, and public safety being redefined here, we should be in sync.

And I think it's really important for DESC, PDA lead, every group here to be, to Evergreen, to be represented at the county level too.

And it's really incumbent on us, this goes to, I know I'm the vice chair of this committee, but I'm the chair of my public safety committee, pillar six of our strategic framework plan is working in one Seattle way with the county and the state.

And this is clearly an area where we need to be working with the county, because I think As my father used to say, many hands make light work.

If the county and the city are working together in this area, and particularly in this topic that we're talking about today, we could be more effective and less duplicative, more efficient, whatever, all the above.

And I think we can do that.

And I think that should be important.

I also think, and we need to be thinking budget in terms of federal impacts.

direct budget federal impacts, but then indirect federal impacts.

I am scared, and I use that word purposely, I'm worried, I use that word purposely, what the Medicaid pieces of the big, what I would call very ugly bill, the impacts.

Okay, for those people that, you know, who can't work, of which we all know, everybody in this room is working with people on the street, trust me, I can take you throughout my entire district, I can talk about names, I can talk about names of drug dealers, I can talk about people who are on the street, it's incredible.

But I know you're doing similar stuff.

I also know that a big chunk of those people really not fit the work.

But that may not be the defining how the federal government says.

So we need to be understanding that Medicaid piece, and we need to be thinking now in terms of strategies of how do we get there, their status be confirmed as unable to work in this situation.

And again, I'm not the smart person here.

I recognize that I work with these issues, but we need to be leveraging, potentially this, leveraging, and it's like, how can we do that extra piece?

Could this money help to do that extra piece to ensure that we're getting the greatest amount of Medicaid coverage we can get?

Because if the Medicaid piece fails, Again, I used the word scared, worried very deliberately.

I mean, it could be catastrophic for us on our streets.

And I already talked about King County synchronization.

If you have any responses to this, as I was advised to write down things, this was part of my general budget pieces.

First, what Director Noble was saying, but then the federal impacts, synchronization with the county, I'd love to hear any reaction to that part.

I was just gonna speak to services but I'm glad you're using the term scared since you're using it I could use it as well because we're definitely scared as providers and especially for the folks that are engaged in treatment now and doing better because of it that are on Medicaid those are the people that we would lose like you said it would be detrimental to our streets it would flood our streets with people with more issues that are struggling with substance use and so I don't have an answer to that but but the Medicaid cuts will be catastrophic to the services that we provide.

And we're not really set up structurally, not our organizations, but our city to deal with that by using law enforcement and just prosecutors.

That won't be the answer to deal with that issue that will persist if Medicaid cuts happen.

And so for me, just to echo what Lisa said, to fund things at a level where you can have effective services is gonna be important.

So I do appreciate Councilmember Kettle's approach of how do we partner with King County and make sure we're patchworking this quilt together in a way that's gonna cover the most vulnerable people in our city.

I like that patchwork of a quilt.

I might have to use that if I do, I'll give credit.

I'm so glad that you raised the Medicaid point and sort of put on the table the possibility of a direct strategy to maintain Medicaid enrollment for otherwise eligible people as a core thing that the city should be looking to do as part of the public safety work.

The avenue to achieve that is long-term case management relationships.

And so there is so much confusion about this.

I'm hearing it from media.

I'm constantly texting reporters to describe the problem differently, because it is not that there is a work requirement for Medicaid recipients.

It's that people who are able to work would lose eligibility if they do not work.

Most people on Medicaid are not able to work.

we can insulate individuals and our community from the projected impact of the work certification requirement by timely and effectively filing verification that people are unable to work, people who are genuinely disabled and working on recovery.

and not to say that everybody working on recovery is unable to work, but for those who are not able, certifying it will maintain Medicaid eligibility.

The projected reductions of the roles are just essentially projected churn.

So it is expected that people who are eligible will lose coverage because they don't file the certification.

We can prevent that outcome.

And who is able to do that is people with long-term case management relationships with hard-to-reach participants.

So you know where the person is.

The person knows why you're coming and asking for information or getting their signature on a form.

I think we can change that impact level for Seattle quite significantly if we maintain and stabilize the long-term case management programs.

So Brandy, I think, mentioned that everybody in CoLEAD, 100% of CoLEAD participants are enrolled in Medicaid.

That's just an example of what you can accomplish when you can find people and people trust you.

I also wanted to just flag the Criminal Justice Training Commission $100 million grant program, which Councilmember Kettle referenced, which does seem like an important piece of the puzzle, but it is one-time funding.

And if I can just plead, when Brandy said we lead and co-lead has lost millions of dollars, not because of a cut exactly, it's because it was funded by one-time dollars that went away.

And so this work is extremely difficult to maintain with one-time funding.

If it is a core piece of the picture, then core matches to base budget, and I think that's why we're we so appreciate the resolution centering work in this realm as part of what needs to be backed by the base budget.

That doesn't mean that the grant program won't have an important role to play on our local landscape, but funding this kind of work with one-time funding kicks the can down the road to the next year in a way that you're already seeing with our current predicament.

I've seen $3 million in reduction in city funding for LEED over the last couple of years because it was based on one-time funding, a pet borrow allocation, just as an example.

I understand your one-time funding point.

I think I've heard it before.

The other thing, Chair, just quickly, the other main section I wanted to talk about is the public safety piece and the overlap with the human services piece and the public safety approach and so forth.

And as I said many times, public safety, public health and homelessness, they don't stack on top of each other but there is the overlap and they influence each other and if we don't succeed in public health we're not gonna succeed in public safety and that's just not a tagline, this is just basic facts.

And, you know, part of this too is kind of, and since we're talking in a budget kind of format in a way, you know, the good governance pieces and the metrics pieces, and this is what we're doing with community safety, which is in the human services world.

And I'm not even on that committee, but, you know, we're, public safety is engaging in the human services world much more now, and one area is community safety.

And so like the RFP that just went out, I'm not exactly sure where we are right now, will have those kind of pieces in terms of metrics.

And I think that's really important to do.

And clearly, as ma'am, as you were talking about the evergreen, there's definitely metrics out there.

And so we just need to make sure, it's kind of like my point about having a housing plan, putting it out there and collating it in a way that's digestible and then can explain and show and demonstrate, bless you, that that we're making smart decisions.

And if we make decisions where there's trade-offs, then people can see the trade-offs and say, okay, there's a logic there in terms of why we went there.

And I think that's really important.

Speaking of good governance, I just want to plug in, because I'm dealing with a lot of challenges, good neighbor agreements.

And this is about working with service providers to highlight to their clients, like, hey, this is the impact you're having on your neighborhood.

And oh, by the way, if you want these to be able to support you in the future, be mindful of what's happening in the neighborhood in terms of businesses and the like.

And that's really important.

There's so many places across D7 in our city where we're dealing with this.

And I even got the state.

I had an assistant secretary from DSHS, Social and Human Services, in Belltown at their community service office there.

because I was highlighting to her, I go, hey, what can you do differently?

Because when you hand out the EBT cards, they get sold 50 cents on the dollar, and then Giovanni across the street, the drug dealers, then this is the dynamic that we have.

And how can we change things up?

How can we put pressure on the system?

And we're looking to put pressure on the system related to the people who are praying on the vulnerable that you help support.

So it's like, how do we attack those that are preying on those that are vulnerable?

The people that you're trying to help, how do we protect them from those that are preying on them?

And I think good neighbors agreements are good because that creates that conversation.

And we noted the criminal justice systems, like how can we improve our criminal justice system?

This is something that I'm looking to do in my committee.

and then here is like, how do we get better treatment options in the criminal justice system?

If you go to KCJ, what happens to you?

Are you getting that level of care?

And then we talk about warm handoffs, like with Lee on the back end.

Ma'am, you talked about this a bit, the warm handoff on the back end.

A, are they getting treatment at KCJ in this case?

And is there a process to ensure there's no backsliding?

which goes with recidivism and the whole like.

And the last point I do want to say too, and I recognize there's challenges here, but we do need an all hands on deck effort and different approaches.

I'm not your typical Seattleite person.

I'm definitely nuts and bolts and all that.

And it's like, hey, we need to have an all hands on deck.

And so there's different approaches.

I recognize we have, we heart Seattle here.

and I will say on this front in terms of like reaching out is Mr. Tim Emerson is like the best person I've ever seen on the streets doing the outreach.

I love Tim and that's just an example where we need everybody to include Tim in this effort and I think that's important and with that, council president, I'm done.

If you have any remarks regarding that, I welcome them, but I'm finished.

Thank you.

I only have one remark, Council Member Kettle, and like you said, like you talked about the place on 4th and Blanchard, we're right there on 3rd and Blanchard, so we're in the heart of it.

And like you said, what do you do?

And it is all hands on deck.

REACH has been around for about 30 years, and although I care about everybody who's on the street, in terms of public safety and what we do with LEAD and REACH and our street outreach programs and treatment, you have to be intentional about who you're serving.

And we are serving the people who are being preyed upon.

We are not serving the people who are doing the, I don't like the word predator, but that are hurting people.

And this direct crisis has changed the game on that where there are dealers hurting people and things of that nature.

This is the first time in our history of the organization that we will be partnering with our local condominiums and things in that neighborhood to help pay for security and things of that nature.

And it is gonna look different for those people we serve.

But I do believe that not just the people have money in the community, the people who are the most vulnerable in the community do help set those boundaries.

So we're gonna be partnering with security, partnering with the people that live outside in the neighborhood to set some better boundaries in those neighborhoods around what we want and don't want in our neighborhoods and what is safe.

to do in our neighborhoods.

And so, although I know they will be critics on how that is served or how we do that, but being intentional about who we serve, what we're doing, what we're doing with long-term case management is the way to do that.

And it does mean that it'd be a fine line between the general social services or abolition work versus public safety.

So at the end of the day, we wanna be safe in our communities.

We want people to access the things they need to heal.

And we wanna work with all partners to do that and have all hands on deck if we're gonna have a better Seattle.

I agree.

And by the way, I should visit and I should meet with you.

I can meet there at Blanchard and I'd be welcome to do that.

And Mr. Malone as well.

I'd be more than happy to do that.

And so it's like, how can we work together to target those that are preying on?

Because it's important.

And things like the soda bill too is impacting Blanchard because it's changing the dynamic.

And so this is where we work in this case with the West Precinct to take advantage of the shift to to address.

And this is where the back cops come in right now.

And so we have these dynamics working.

So we have to have this discussion.

I love what you just said, because that goes exactly to what I was talking about.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Hugginsworth.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you for bringing this resolution and thank you all for your hard work.

I know this is extremely tough when I listen to these meetings.

Obviously, we see what's going on on the streets and know that you all are doing your hardest work at this.

to get people health they need for treatment.

One of the questions that I have and I know on a lot of people's mind is investments over outcomes and how we can get better at that and having honest conversations about where we are currently and the transparency of the process.

At any point in time, I can go on the Washington Board of Education and I can look at how much we're spending per kid, child investment in their education, demographics per school, per lunch, per everything.

what would be really helpful, and I know we can go and look at all the overdoses, but on King County they have a dashboard you all know.

Sorry, I don't wanna tell you something you all know, but what would be really helpful for people is like easily digestible information to know what we're spending, what are the outcomes, because what different providers have of their story of success is different all across.

and if we had uniformity and like, hey, this is what success looks like to us.

Like I can hear a provider say, hey, 60% of our clients are A, B, C, D. Well, I don't know how many clients that is or what that even looks like.

And I think what would be helpful to digest like the thousands of reports that I read constantly, the stuff I see online, the stuff that I get from you all or hear or all this information, is to literally have one thing where we can go to to understand the impact that we're having in the investment.

And one of the models that I love to see is the Houston model of the homelessness piece where they brought everyone together and they have the same metrics It's a city-funded dashboard that shows how many people are on the streets, what they've done, and demographics and breakdown, and they just brought every provider under one umbrella to understand the metrics so we can understand, hey, is this working?

Okay, maybe we need to switch it.

Because Seattle is such a giving city.

Every time I talk to someone, they're like, hey, what can I do to help?

How much more money?

What do we need to do?

and I hear people talk about the funding and the money piece, but I also want to know what progressive outcomes are we also going to expect and have to make sure that people that are on the street are getting the services they need?

I was just at a walk around a week ago with the proposed crisis care clinic on Capitol Hill doing a walk around with the neighbors.

I walk around the corner.

This girl shouts out my name.

What's up, Joy?

And I looked, and I said, what's up, T?

Sorry I said her name, but I just said her first initial.

And this was a girl I played basketball with, and she was on the street off fentanyl.

Hadn't talked to her mom in weeks.

And I...

and it really put a face to, because we've been, you know, we see it every day.

But we don't put faces to some of the people and I think that moment for me, and I knew that moment for me really put things into a deep perspective for me. to figure out, okay, what kind of outcomes are we having?

I hear all these people talk about all this money that's coming in, these investments, and I'm like, okay, well then, where are we at right now?

and what can we do better?

And it's okay to say, you know what?

We messed up.

This is where we're at.

This is not working.

We need to change.

We can't run the same play because we're not scoring a touchdown, so we're gonna go to this piece over here.

And that's okay.

And I need to hear more of that from providers and from people.

So I know, like, hey, we need to invest in this, or this is going to be a new expectation, the outcome, so we know that it's working.

Because I believe in the work that you all are doing.

I want to continue to invest in that.

And I know that everyone does in Seattle.

But I also know that people are looking at us across the country and being like, hey, can they get it right?

and so I just wanted to throw that, I don't really have a question, but I'm super happy to vote on this and I think this is much needed when you're talking about, and I'll take some of the talk that my colleague does when he talks about public safety and public health, the same, you call it the same two-sided coin?

Two sides of the same coin, got it.

I don't wanna steal words out of your mouth.

Two sides, thank you.

Okay, I got you.

Two sides of the same coin, okay?

And so I know that they have to equally be invested, but I think what would be so helpful is just to have some sense of baseline to say, hey, Joy, this is where we're at, and this is where we need to go, and these are the outcomes that we need to have because...

So that would just be super helpful as well for the public and for us to know that we are making progress.

And if we're not, then we need to kind of shift, still make the same investments, but, you know, the strategy can be a little different.

So thank you.

Councilmember Rivera.

I'm sorry, did anybody want to respond to Councilmember Hollingsworth?

I'm just very much agreeing that we do not have any extra money.

We don't have enough money probably at this moment in history to do all the things that should be done.

So not a single dollar should be spent without a strong understanding of why it's a good bet, if you will.

I think that the approach the resolution takes is to say that the investment should be in evidence-based approaches that reliably generate outcomes, strongly positive outcomes.

There's a real difference between strategy or model versus organization, right?

Models are general approaches.

They work in Houston.

They work in Boston.

They work in Seattle.

And then there's sort of fidelity and implementation of that model, which is what the local funder can test.

Like, are you doing the model right?

Those are two different questions.

If you don't have the right model, you could have a wonderful organization, but the methodology is never going to get us where we need to get, because it's just the wrong approach.

So that's an important question.

And then a second question is, are the selected organizations doing the model well?

And both of those are super important.

Of course, we would love to come and show you, A, the evidence of efficacy for the models that many of us practice, but also the evidence of high-quality implementation.

And if we can't pass, if anybody can't pass both of those questions, then the city should be making different investments.

So entirely agree.

And I think that that spirit is reflected in the resolution, which feels like a step forward, like a values agreement, to your point.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Councilman Rivera.

Thank you, Council President, and thank you, PESC and the PDA and Evergreen for being here, and to Art Ben Noble for presenting the resolution.

Lisa, I agree with you, and also, you know, I agree with my colleague, Councilmember Hollingsworth, in terms of, you know, the public doesn't know what they're getting And to say getting for their investment doesn't sound like the right thing, because we all want to help people.

But it's more like, are we helping people?

They need to know that those outcomes are there, that we really are helping the folks that we are setting out to help.

And I think there is a lack of information by which to, you know, demonstrable information by which, you know, we are being accountable to to the folks that we serve and the folks that are helping us make these investments by way of their tax dollars.

So I think that's really important and I, like Councilmember Hollingsworth, would love to see more information about that.

I will say that, and I've said this since I got here, folks need services and we cannot expect people to be successful.

Folks that have who are suffering from addiction or mental health issues, they're not going to be successful without treatment and with the services, including in housing.

And so we really need to be pairing services with the housing so that folks are successful and have greater outcomes on the back end.

I think that I do not dispute that we need more services for folks.

That is true.

And we also need to have the information by which we know that what we are providing is working for people.

So Lisa, I'm glad to hear, and I know you've been doing this for a really long time, as have the other folks on this panel.

and I have to say, I don't always get the information by which I can really talk to constituents about what the city is doing and what outcomes that we're having.

And I think that's important because when we're either asking people or letting them know we're doing more, we need to be able to show them why.

So that piece is really important to me along with the fact that I appreciate Councilmember Nelson you bringing this and again I support more services for folks it is clearly needed and the other thing I want to say Lisa I appreciate you what you're saying about the Medicaid piece because you know the city's not going to be able to backfill for the Medicare needs of folks you know that the health care folks are losing their health care and cities not just Seattle, in general, the ability to backfill for that is, it's just an astronomical need.

And I really appreciate that what we can do, we should be doing, is making sure that we're providing that, as you said, case management to folks so that folks don't lose the Medicaid that they have and they're able to get the services that they need.

So that piece, I was, I'm really happy to hear you say, because we, I had not heard very much about that and it's something that I'm really interested in making sure that we are providing for people, is making sure that we're helping them keep their Medicaid benefits as much as possible, you know, given all that is going on.

So I really appreciate your comments there.

and in general, I really appreciate all the work that you all do every day on behalf of our residents who have big challenges and that we want to help.

So Council Member Nelson, I appreciate you bringing this resolution.

There's a lot that we can talk about in terms of the needs and community as regards behavioral and mental health.

and I look forward to continuing this conversation and figuring out ways that we can all partner together because as Councilmember Kettle said, we really right hand, left hand, we need to make sure that we're working with the county and the state to make sure that our investments have the greatest impact.

And if we're not all coordinated and everyone's doing their own thing, we are not going to have the best outcomes, I believe.

So making sure that as we're having these conversations, we are working with our county and state partners and the investments that they're making, making sure that we are getting the best results and the best that we can do for our residents.

So I don't have a question more, that was more a comment, but thank you all for being here and engaging in this really important conversation and for the work that you do every day.

Council member.

Council member Rivera, I know you didn't, it wasn't a question, it was a comment, but just why we're talking about what's in jeopardy since Council member Kettle has given me the permission of you scared.

Another thing that is, you talked about housing and the Third Avenue project that LEAD did and then work with reached the LEAD funding.

funds a lot of our REACH housing work.

And so with that partnership that we've done with TAP and PDA and WDC, we housed a lot of people through our scattered sites vouchers and our site-based vouchers.

They're going to be in jeopardy as well due to the federal cuts that will happen.

And so in 2026, we could see a lot of people, and I don't have the numbers in front of me, Council Member Hollingsworth, but I could get them.

But the number of people that we housed through those vouchers through our Third Avenue project would lead are in jeopardy.

and so just putting that out there and thinking about what worked, like it worked, all those things worked, how do we keep them funded to work, as Lisa said, and so that's gonna be a hard one when you talk about the faces of people that you know, Council Member Hollingsworth.

I'm born and raised in Rainier Beach.

And so when I'm walking on Third Avenue, I'm seeing people I went to high school with.

I'm seeing people who grew up with my mom and all those people.

And those are people that we were able to house through these vouchers and to have them house for maybe a year and a half just to lose it based on the federal government abandoning us is gonna be detrimental to all that hard work that we have an evidence-based bottle that worked and now it's gonna fail because of that.

has me scared as Council Member Kettle said I could use that word.

And just to the point about transparency and people feeling as though the money that is being spent is well spent, I think an opportunity that's potentially available with this resolution is the ability to have those sorts of conversations to strategize around Council Member Hollingsworth to your idea about a set language that people are using and sort of a standardized understanding of what outcomes are.

That's something we'd love to work on.

And that's a potential door that could be opened through this resolution to work on it collectively.

And council president, if I may say, I agree.

And also I don't wanna say whether the money's well spent because humans are, money is well spent if you're trying to help folks.

It's more, are we getting that outcome?

Are we really helping that person?

So making sure that we are consistently checking back is that model that we're using working, right?

Because if that person is not being helped, then we need to pivot.

So less about, you know, is that money well spent and more about are we helping that person, right?

So I think that distinction is really important because we're talking about people here.

So thank you.

I see council member Solomon has his hand up.

There is language in this resolution that does call for reporting and evaluation of the programs going forward.

So never forgetting the oversight role that we play.

Councilmember Sullivan.

Thank you very much, Council President.

I don't have questions for you because I know you.

I've worked with each one of you in previous roles.

And I do want to acknowledge that there is undeniably a link between folks who are suffering on the street and our public safety response.

Not just our police response, but our medical response as well.

And if we want to get a handle on our public safety responses, we need to address the public health issue that's going on here.

So I'm looking forward to being able to support this because they are linked.

And you ask any cop on the street, why do we have the crime rights to do?

Drugs.

And again, I'm not just thinking about cops.

I'm thinking about Health 1, Health 99, our medics, firefighters.

I'm thinking about the folks in the Estelle, and hops in place and what you all are dealing with there with folks in some sort of behavioral crisis or the folks who are outside those buildings who are in the chemically induced crisis that are causing issues for the people who live in those buildings.

I'm thinking about the safety of the folks that REACH is working with, the lead, co-lead, you are dealing with.

So again, this just makes sense to me.

And it gets to a point that you and I have talked about, Lisa.

The peanut butter is too thin.

It's spread too thin.

And then with the cuts coming from the feds, that's even worse.

The cuts are coming.

The needs have not gone away.

What do we do to help our folks here concerning what's happening on the national level that's going to have an adverse impact here?

That is not lost on me.

So again, it makes sense to do this in so many different ways on so many different levels.

and to echo my colleague, Councilmember Hollingsworth and others that I've talked to about it, it is responsible of us to say or to ask, what are we spending?

What are we spending it on?

And what are the measurable results?

Because if what we're spending is not giving us the results that we want, maybe we need to put those dollars elsewhere.

So having some kind of accountability, some transparency, that we can track and go, yeah, these are good investments, or maybe we need to pivot.

I think it's something that's also needed because People are asking us, why are we spending X amount on this?

Because it doesn't seem to be making a difference.

We need to be able to show them that it is.

So with that, thank you very much, Council President, and thank you all for being here.

Thank you for the work that you do.

Like I told you last time we were here, you're saving lives with the stuff that you're doing.

And I definitely appreciate it.

So thank you.

Okay, so I will say, let me just jump in, looking at the time.

I will say that what I've always said, that addiction and the fentanyl crisis, especially having brought addiction issues much more acute, is inextricably linked to our public safety and our chronic homelessness problems.

And that is why I am fighting to put treatment at the center of the city's agenda.

Because up until now, we have services that you provide, a little bit that's coming from the county, mostly primarily harm reduction, which is why I put forward the the direct and on-demand access to inpatient and intensive outpatient treatment because we needed something else for people who wanted something that medication for opioid use disorder would not address.

And so the whole point of this exercise is not that we're going to solve all our problems because $10 million isn't going to go anywhere really.

I mean it will go places but we have some choices to make with the list of things that we want to fund.

I will read some other quotes however from some of the sponsors of the bill.

Let's see.

This bill makes clear that public safety is not about more policing but about creating strong living communities and about strong, smart investments, bold policies, and assuring that every community, especially those most impacted by systemic injustice, has the resources and support they deserve.

That was published in the Seattle Medium.

And then somebody else said that, let's see, we really want to make, what we really want is to make sure that the programs we have in our communities around public safety include a larger definition of public safety.

The Legislative Black Caucus has long advocated for a public safety system that prioritizes community resilience, local authority, and sustainable resources, and HB 2015 is a step toward achieving that vision.

My point is, we are broadening the definition of what public safety means, and if you listen to the most recent edition of Sandeep Kashuk and Erica Barnett's Seattle Nice, they talk about the press conference that we were all at and I was surprised to learn that they both suggested that maybe we should spend 100% of the money that is allowed in this public safety sales tax for So one of the things that we're discussing today, and I'll remind all of us here at the dais that we appropriate the money.

So this will be an ongoing discussion.

Here's my bigger point.

That the policies that need sustaining, all right?

We have passed policies and budgets that have provided for diversion programs, co-lead, and expansion of the care department.

where are you sending people that you encounter as you are performing the work that is mandated by these programs?

And so this is a missing piece to make your existing programs more effective, and that is why this is very important.

A lot of people complain that, okay, when you are called by an officer who is making an arrest for public use of fentanyl, what do you do?

and it's a lot easier if you have a place you can immediately refer someone.

And that $300,000 is diminishing very quickly, so we need to expand that.

I will say that one of the reasons why I put forward this program to allow for inpatient treatment is because up until maybe right now, there is not a lot we can do about stimulant addiction, and that is why I'm really excited about what Daniel was talking about, a potential to address that through medication.

I've always said, you know, I'm not necessarily a...

I'm agnostic in how we help people with stimulating addiction.

It's just the fact that we haven't had that yet.

So I am really excited about that and the success that you're getting, getting people on long-acting Suboxone because that stabilizes people faster.

And so there is a lot that was presented here.

Just a couple more notes that I would like to make.

Thank you very much, Lisa, for recognizing that the definition of, SOMSA's definition of recovery Very, very broad.

I'm not talking about abstinence only.

I've kind of been pigeon-told by people that think that that's the only thing that I am referring to.

Recovery to me means people getting their lives back together, reunifying with their loved ones and being able to stand on their feet, hopefully at some point.

And that is what all of these programs talk about, but we have to create We have to form a coherent and a comprehensive way of talking about everything that is already being done and how it makes sense to add additional services, which is why we're talking about additional investments.

and just a couple other things.

It is possible that federal support for recovery will come with more and more strings that will require, who knows what the Trump administration's going to say addiction services have to, they might lean toward more abstinence-based services and that is why I call out contingency management in permanent supportive housing.

That was a successful program in Plymouth Housing.

And so I call that out as a success that requires some, perhaps another go round.

And I will finally, my last point will be that we spend, well, we've got a housing levy that is gonna be $970 million over the course of 10 years or eight years.

We've got, you know, Jumpstart funds, etc.

There is no designated funding for recovery housing.

and so that's a huge gap because if we're going to support people going into recovery they have to have some place to go if that is the path they have chosen.

Anyway, I've got a lot more that I can say but I just have to recognize that I think that this is a historic moment when we do have people representing different approaches to recovery and I think there's a lot of support going forward along these lines and I look forward to our continued conversations and to our to our vote at the next committee meeting, our next possible vote.

So thank you so much for coming and working with me and I recognize that our first responsibility is to ensure that what you're doing can continue.

Thank you very much.

Okay, bye-bye.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record.

Agenda item number two, audit recommendation updates for briefing and discussion.

All right, as people are gathering here, I'll just introduce this and say that I'm so happy to have Auditor Jones and his team from the Office of the City Auditor, thank you, to present their annual implementation report.

I do not take this as a mere formality because our job as council is to oversee the performance of executive departments and audits aren't just busy work.

They offer windows into the extent to which City policy is being performed and implemented and whether or not that policy is executive or council generated and so it's really important that we keep track of the of the recommendations and whether or not they are being implemented so It's your opportunity to speak truth to power.

However, I will also remind everybody that the City Auditor's Office is under our purview as we are the oversight body.

So thank you very much for coming and presenting what's been going on with the implementation of your recommendations.

Thank you, Council President Nelson.

We are a proud member of the legislative branch of Seattle City Government.

We're going to be quick today.

We know you have a lot to go on, and you're chomping at the bit to get at council rules.

So we'll be brief.

Give us about 15 minutes.

We'll go through.

Happy to answer any questions you may have if you want to interrupt us or after the meeting.

We released a report on May 19th that basically summarizes the status of all the recommendations that were open at the end of last year.

and we've been doing these reports since 2009 and the reason why we do them is we don't want them to just gather dust.

We want to follow up on them.

We want to be like a dog with a bone and make sure that they get done or we get a good explanation, circumstances have changed, you know, something like that.

and so we believe these are really useful reminder and an incentive to city departments to you know take these things seriously because we put a lot of thought into making these recommendations if anyone in the audience is interested in seeing the report it's on our website which is seattle.gov slash city auditor that's one word slash reports next slide please we're already there so what does This slide shows you something we're very proud of.

Since we've been following recommendations that our office made since 2007, it's 928 recommendations.

We're proud that 72% of those have been implemented.

We think that's a really good metric for assessing the value of our office and a testament to the City of Seattle's support of performance auditing in Seattle.

And special thanks to the voters of Seattle who created our office through a change to the city charter in 1991. So we think this is the best measure of our success.

And I just want to say, I think the high implementation rate is a testament to all the folks who work in our office.

I mean, literally everyone in our office worked on this report, this particular piece.

And I also want to thank the members of departments of the City of Seattle for their willingness to entertain suggestions for how to improve their operations.

We're very fortunate to be in an environment where city departments are responsive by and large.

I'd like to turn it over to the auditor in charge of this project, Sarah Bland, who will take you through the next part of our presentation.

Great.

Thanks so much, Dave.

I appreciate that.

Pull this close.

And so I just want to go over the agenda briefly.

We're going to look at progress that was made in 2024. We'll take a look at fully implemented reports and really appreciate that.

And then do some high level overview of the pending recommendations and report updates that were still remaining.

And then we'll do a demo of our city auditor dashboard very briefly.

And please feel free to go ahead and you can use that QR code to get to our report and look at the dashboard.

And so in 2004, we tracked the progress of 123 recommendations.

21 of those were implemented in 2024. So some of the fully implemented reports, we can say we put those to bed.

We have the Seattle Information Technology Department Loss Report that has been fully implemented.

The Seattle Municipal Court Probation Audit from 2021 was also fully implemented.

And the Mayor's Homelessness Encampments Dashboard from 2022 is also fully implemented and online.

And I wanna turn it over now to my colleague, Andrew, to talk about construction permitting.

Thank you, Sarah.

Good afternoon.

My name is Andrew Scoggin.

I was part of the team that audited the city's construction permitting process.

We published that audit in October of 2023. This graphic on the slide here shows which parts of the process that we specifically audited, which essentially amounts to the city's process of reviewing permit applications.

we made 11 recommendations intended to increase focus on customer needs and to ensure consistency of the process.

So at a high level, all 11 recommendations remain pending, The city did report making some progress on our recommendations.

For example, we made a recommendation that SDCI, the Department of Construction and Inspections, should develop metrics based on total permit review time in a process for meeting those metrics.

So SDCI implemented part of this recommendation by publishing metrics on their website, but we're going to keep following up on that recommendation to see when they have internal processes to ensure meeting metrics.

We also found in our audit that the city did not routinely collect customer feedback, so we made a related recommendation.

SDCI told us that they are working on implementing software that would do that, which they also plan to use to implement some other recommendations as well.

and I'll go through just a couple more recommendations here.

On this slide, it shows a recommendation that we made to address potential barriers and equity concerns in the review process.

SDCI reported that they are working on a racial equity toolkit and will work to implement the results.

Next slide, please.

On this slide here, we made a recommendation related to governance and funding structures for the permit review process.

The city budget office pointed to the new permitting and customer trust team that was recently established by the mayor's executive order in June.

It appears related to other recommendations as well, and so we'll be following up to see what progress is being made related to those recommendations.

Now I'll turn it over to my colleague Claudia.

Thank you, good afternoon.

I'm Claudia Gross-Shader.

I'm the Director of Research and Evaluation for the Office of City Auditor.

And I think that Daniel Malone from DESC stole the thunder for this slide when he talked earlier about the current paltry options for stimulant use disorder.

and the need for more field-based treatment, bringing treatment directly to clients where they are.

And as you know, Seattle has experienced a sustained post-pandemic increase in fatal overdoses.

And in our 2022 audit on methamphetamine use disorder, we reported that in 2022, methamphetamine contributed to 74% of the fatal overdoses among people experiencing homelessness in King County, including Seattle.

And as Daniel mentioned, although there are medical trials currently underway, there's no medication that's yet proven effective for treating methamphetamine use disorder.

The evidence-based treatment at this point for methamphetamine use disorder is a behavioral intervention called contingency management.

Our 2022 audit found that there is an unmet and urgent need in Seattle for methamphetamine treatment, and Daniel Malone from DESC confirmed that today.

Our audit had one recommendation, and it's this one here.

We recommended that the city explore ways to scale up evidence-based treatment for methamphetamine use disorder and explore reducing barriers to participation in evidence-based treatment.

And the next slide, please, Sarah.

I have some good news to report.

As Council President Nelson mentioned, subsequent to our audit, the Washington State Health Care Authority funded a small pilot in five permanent supportive housing buildings that are operated by Plymouth Housing.

And Washington State University's College of Medicine is evaluating this pilot.

The pilot uses two certified peer navigators who implement contingency management with the residents, and they implement contingency management directly where the people live.

This is a national innovation, bringing it directly to people's homes in permanent supportive housing.

and this reduces barriers because the residents do not have to make a trip to the clinic to receive the intervention.

And there's also plenty of research evidence that peer navigators themselves can contribute to effective recovery from substance use disorder.

To date, the pilot has served 40 residents, 29 have graduated successfully, and there are seven clients currently receiving the intervention.

And as I mentioned, the research team from Washington State University College of Medicine, they're actively capturing the lessons learned from this pilot.

There are some challenges with client engagement, but they've also found higher completion rates and higher participation rates than in clinical settings, and will continue to track this recommendation through the pilot phase and until an implementation plan has been developed.

I'm going to very briefly mention our 2023 audit on organized retail crime and our 2024 audit on places in Seattle where overdoses and crimes are concentrated.

And for these two audits, Council President Nelson has asked that we come back for a special update presentation later this summer.

We'll bring the mayor's office and the other stakeholder agencies, so look for that meeting coming up.

In the meantime, I'm going to offer two very quick updates.

First, in our organized retail crime audit, one of our recommendations, and it's currently considered pending, and that recommendation stated that the city should use a place-based approach for addressing the illegal street markets where stolen goods are fenced.

Lisa Dugard talked about the peanut butter being spread really thin, and that's absolutely true.

When we spread resources all over the city, that gets very thin, but if we focus on the very specific small areas where overdoses and crimes are concentrated, is more effective use of that resource.

In our audit, we specifically mentioned the intersection of 12th and Jackson.

And subsequent to our audits, with seed funding from the Seattle Police Foundation and the Care Department, the Friends of Little Saigon launched a place-based problem-solving process using the very exact research-based framework that we recommended in our audit.

And that's also from SAMHSA that Lisa Dugard mentioned, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The Friends of Little Saigon completed their planning process in February of this year, and they kicked off the implementation of the evidence-based crime prevention strategies.

And just last week, they hosted a celebration of the first 100 days of their implementation work.

It was the 100-day challenge celebration, and here are some photos from that celebration.

I would like to say that the slide on the left shows Quinn Pham, the Executive Director of the Friends of Little Saigon, and she's with Cindy Wong from the Mayor's Office.

and many of the evidence-based strategies, oh and I was mentioning this to Council Member Solomon before the meeting, many of the evidence-based strategies involve working with city departments like the care department or SPU on litter collection or with the parks department.

and Cindy Wong from the mayor's office has been coordinating all of these items so that nothing falls through the cracks.

She has massive spreadsheets that are tracking these items.

And this is exactly the type of high-level interdepartmental coordination that we recommended was needed in both our audit of organized retail crime and our audit of overdoses and crime.

and it's gratifying to see that the mayor's office is doing this coordination in Little Saigon and we hope that this coordination will become part of the city's muscle memory and that it will be used in other locations around the city where crimes are concentrated.

So next slide, Sarah, thank you.

We'll go into more detail at our follow-up meeting later this summer regarding the recommendations from our audit on places in Seattle where overdoses and crimes are concentrated, but I will give one update today.

In this audit, we found that the Seattle Police Department does not currently investigate fatal overdoses.

We reported that other jurisdictions, including Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, and Washington DC, to name a few, do indeed investigate fatal overdoses, and they do that with assistance from federal partners, including the Drug Enforcement Agency, or DEA.

These investigations focus on the drug distribution networks and organizations that are contributing to the overdoses.

And at the time of our audit, the Seattle DEA office said that they would be willing to help the city investigate fatal overdoses.

And their offer still stands.

In fact, Council President Nelson will be meeting later this month with the DEA to learn more.

That's it from me.

I'm turning it over to David Jones.

Thank you.

What I'm going to do is talk about, as the slide shows here, three reports that we did on the Seattle Police Department.

Now, you may be wondering, why is a city auditor doing the audits of the Seattle Police Department?

Isn't that the Office of Inspector General?

Well, before the Office of Inspector General, headed by Lisa Judge, was created, we were responsible for looking at everything in the city, including the Seattle Police Department.

So we did a couple of audits back in, these cover 2015, 16, and 17. and we've been following up on these recommendations.

They contain a lot of recommendations.

The first one I'm going to draw to your attention is we were asked by the City Council to look at the Seattle Police Department's, I'm going to call them SBD from here on in, their process for handling public disclosure requests.

and we did this report in 2015. Of the 13 recommendations, all but one have been implemented.

The one that still remains is we recommended that the SBD do a thorough staffing analysis to determine exactly how many folks they need to handle the volume of public disclosure requests.

This is a complicated topic because the volume of stuff that SBD could possibly release has just gone up exponentially, particularly with body-worn cameras worn by officers.

which brings a whole lot of complications because there's stuff that has to be redacted before SPD responds to a public disclosure request.

Certain things that can't be shown that may be shown in an officer's video like certain domestic violence, there are laws that preclude SPD from turning that over in a public disclosure request.

At any rate, we have this one recommendation.

SBD says they're trying to work on it.

What they're doing is, so far, they're working with the Department of Human Resources really to come up with a good definition of what a public records officer, the persons who handle public records requests in SBD, what they should do and what their workload should be.

What's a reasonable thing to expect per individual who holds this position?

and that would be helpful in their ability to conduct this staffing model analysis.

Just two other things just for your interest that they shared with us when we were following up on this.

They're trying to get a handle on their public disclosure requests, you know, ever-increasing workload.

They're doing things like streamlining their processes.

They're also exploring the use of AI, artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate some of these labor-intensive tasks like redacting things, you know, going through a video and redacting things.

and also using technologies that can look across multiple systems to do keyword searches.

So they're working on that.

We're going to keep following up on it until we see some sort of resolution.

I'm gonna move on to the next report.

There's another report we did on SBD in 2016. It was then the incoming police chief, Kathleen O'Toole.

She had some concerns about SBD's management of its overtime, the cost, and the staffing that would result, as a matter, from having to do a lot of overtime.

We did a report issued in 2016 in April and the City Council, by the way, is also very supportive of this body of work.

Seven of the, we made 30 recommendations, a lot of recommendations.

Seven of them still remain pending and basically most of these seven are due to SBD needing to procure a new software solution in order to do the monitoring that we're recommending.

in the report.

It's been a long chase for them, I think, but now they're hopeful.

They're working on procuring software that's specifically designed for first responder agencies that they tell us they think will provide the control and oversight, the automated control and oversight.

that they currently don't have, and they're hoping to implement the system in 2025. So we'll go back to check to see if that's the case.

Last report I'm going to be talking about, and this kind of spawned out of our work on overtime, and this was an ordinance was passed asking us to do this work, and it was looking at SPD's staffing and cost recovery efforts when they staff special events, you know, things like parades in Seattle, where the permit requires that there be some sort of police presence and we looked at that.

The report had 19 recommendations, 10 of them are still open, and they're basically open for two reasons.

We still have open recommendations from that report.

One, it's because there's a software solution that both the police department and the Office of Special Events that provides the permits for special events, they're implementing that will hopefully address some of our recommendations.

The other group is basically policy decisions that need to be made by the city council and or the mayor's office about cost recovery for events.

You know, how you define events and the amount of money you should charge them for charge, the city should charge for providing police services at those events.

So that's those three reports.

Now what I want to do is turn over to Sarah who will conclude our, wrap up our presentation.

Thank you, Dave.

Okay, so just to give you an idea of the remaining 74 recommendations that were still pending at the end of 2024, this spread shows you that we have all the way from 2015, as Dave was just discussing with Seattle Police Department Public Records report, all the way here to 2024, where now you can see we have 74 recommendations left over from that year.

But I do want to take you now to our public dashboard.

And this should be loaded.

Here we go.

All right.

And I want to make sure we can switch the screen.

Is it showing that?

Thank you.

Thank you, Eric.

Wonderful, thank you so much.

And let me just do a little bit of a zoom.

Okay, so I just want to orient you to this dashboard.

This is our recommendation follow-up dashboard, and as you can see at the top here, there's a small drop-down menu, and when you click on that, it will show you that you can look at some different pieces of data here.

So I just want to show you that, but not quite click on that quite yet.

So up here at the top, you see we have some tabs, summary, that's what you're seeing below, summary by year, and then we can click on department to see summaries by department, or if you want to look at a specific audit, you can click on the audit button and those will show below.

Again, this is only showing the current open pending recommendations.

As you can see here, if you click on this first column here, 2015, if I click on that and scroll down to the bottom, the table below is dynamic.

And so that will show you whatever data you clicked on in the chart above will display below in the table.

And you can always click reset if you'd like to reset that table.

But let me come over here to, I want to just draw your attention that this is a up-to-date dashboard.

So this doesn't just end at 2024. This has our current 2025 reports as well.

If I click on this 2025 column, you can scroll down and see the new recommendations that we've issued in 2025. And so you can check those out at your convenience.

And then just to show you again, if you go back to the top and click on all open and closed recommendations, you can see and kind of go back into the history of our audit reports and look at what was done, when those reports were issued, and what the last resolution was.

And then there are some little donuts here in the middle that you can also click on if you'd like to click on a topic, efficiency and effectiveness, for example.

then that'll show you all the recommendations in that category.

And so that is a overview of our dashboard and I'd like to open it up to any questions you might have about our presentation.

I'm looking for questions but while they're mulling whether or not they have questions.

I do want to note that investigating overdoses as a homicide, I have been saying for a long time that I fully support that.

In fact, I did talk to the chiefs or the brass at a couple of King County cities that do do this.

I think it was Bellevue and Kirkland.

I can't remember which ones, but they do employ they do the same thing.

And the conditions have to be right.

There has to be a cell phone with traceable, you know, with information there, but there's no reason we can't do that.

And I think that your more recent recommendation was that we focus on, that we limit it to perhaps, you know, permanent supportive housing or other areas that have city funding.

So in progress is what I want to say.

All right, Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, everyone from the Otters team for being here today.

I appreciate it.

I find this very helpful and I do want to work on the issues, particularly those within public safety.

We've met generally annually and I do want to basically get you on my calendar towards the end of the year.

When I build out my year approach to the committee, you know, that we can ensure that we get the different pieces from the auditor's work and particularly if there's outstanding issues and get it into the committee schedule because that would be a way to, you know, to follow up and with the committee process to highlight, you know, A, the good and the bad and or the maybe not too bad but, you know, still not done and to show that accountability and also show the link back from what your work is and to what we're doing.

I have my three main priorities for the committee this year and we're pressing on those, but having that discussion could be very informative.

And it could also help in terms of like organized retail crime, you know, because that's something that, you know, that came to this committee, but, you know, we can also look at that in my committee, for example, and we've not really had anything specific.

Obviously, this is something that we can coordinate between the two committees, but, you know, doing it deliberately is the bottom line because what happens is you get into the rhythm of the year and you're pressing on the different pieces, and I think it's, this briefing is good to sit back and reflect and say, okay, So then it's like, how can we operationalize these pieces?

And I think using the committee to do that would be helpful.

And then so, again, maybe have you in the committee in January at the start of the year and say, okay, this is where we are.

And kind of put the different pieces on notice, whether it's whatever department it is.

And I think that could be helpful.

So again, that's just a way of saying that how can I like your briefing and it's like, how can we leverage it moving forward?

I guess that's the bottom line.

So thank you for coming out today.

We'd be happy to work with you, council member, of course, and the committee to do anything we can to provide you with the information you need.

Excellent, thank you.

Okay, looking for other hands up.

I am not seeing any other people raising their hands.

I have to say that I took on permitting.

I had a round table discussion with architects in here.

This was in this past February, so a while after you had presented the first round of construction permitting audit.

The panel recommended a whole bunch of things that we're putting a package of legislation together to address, but my first line to Director Torgelson at that point and CEO Lowe was, first of all, no need to reinvent the wheel to address our permitting problems, just implement the recommendations in the auditor's report.

You get a lot of secondhand play from my praising of your work, and I will have to also note that since the concentration of overlapping of crime and fatal overdoses, place-based policing has become a common expression in our local lexicon.

So I think I credit your work on that and the interest that it generated.

Are there any other questions?

The final thing that I will say is that I am looking forward to a deeper dive with, I believe, Director of Public Safety, Natalie Walton Anderson, later on this year, and the other person that we're thinking about having.

We'll have a host of stakeholders, as we did previously, from the Organized Retail Crime and the Overdoses and Crime Audits.

Yes, to give an update on those implementation recommendations.

Thank you so much.

I value your work.

And I've sort of been putting you through the ringer this year, but take it as simply a sign of appreciation for the crucial role you play.

Thank you very much.

And for your council support, we really appreciate it.

Oh, wait a minute.

Don't look.

Council Member Rivera, please.

I didn't see your hand.

Thank you.

That's okay.

I got kicked out of my device, my laptop, so I had to join with my phone.

But I really just wanted to thank the Auditor's Office for all the important work and great work that they do.

It really helps Council to do its job when we have this information.

It goes to the accountability piece and the ability to look at how we are implementing services and our work and it goes to show where we can do better and then it gives us recognitions for how what we can do things better and this is really an important piece of good governance and I just want and it is something that the reports that the auditor has done are reports that I've come to in the time that I've been here over and over again and I just really wanted to underscore their work in terms of the accountability piece that we have to do as council members.

So thank you for all the work that you do.

I know there is an outstanding audit that you're working with me on and I look forward to continuing to work with you on that related to housing vacancies in our housing providers, for our housing providers.

But more to come on that, I'm sure.

Yes, thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

Just to say that we're excited that Councilmember Rivera has requested an audit by our office that Council President Nelson has also supported, looking at safety and services and permanent supportive housing that is supported by the City of Seattle.

And Dr. Claudia Grosseder will be leading our effort on that audit.

So we look forward to engaging with you further.

So thank you very much for the request.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Until later.

Thank you.

And for the listening public out there, the status report on implementation of Office of City Auditor recommendations is linked to the agenda as well.

Will the clerk please read item three into the record?

Item agenda number three, a resolution adopting general rules and procedures of the Seattle City Council superseding resolution 32096 for briefing and discussion.

Okay, so as noted earlier, we have the option of revising the rules every two years.

And without further ado, I will simply pass this over to, this has been obviously a collective effort that's been going on for months and months and months.

and so the package that we have together will get an overview and for any other council members that are listening out there, you're welcome to participate in the next discussion as well.

So why don't you introduce yourselves and begin your presentation.

Amelia Sanchez, Chief Deputy City Clerk.

Lauren Henry, Legislative Legal Counsel.

Ben Noble, Central Staff Director.

and Shireen Dedman, city clerk.

Thank you.

And I'm gonna kick it off just by introducing everything and then hand it over to the experts.

Good afternoon, committee members.

Today I'm joined by member representatives of the Council Rules Review Working Group, as introduced, so I won't go over the names again.

The working group also included council president Sarah Nelson, her chief of staff Jeremy Moen, deputy city clerks Phil Wood Smith and Jody Schwinn, assistant city attorneys Gary Smith and code revisor Brandon Islip.

The working group convened to collaborate and discuss potential amendments to the council rules and to prepare recommendations for consideration by the city council.

The working group developed a final amended version of the rules which was introduced as resolution 32173 on July 1st.

These amendments were sent to council members on June 2nd for feedback along with the memo providing the 2025 council rules and procedures update schedule.

The team will provide a summary of the review process and highlight proposed changes and review the process for any amendments that may be requested by the City Council members moving forward.

Notice that Council is considering amendments to the rules.

The public comment period and the review schedule was published in the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce on June 26th.

Notices and a copy of the proposed amendments were sent to the council members, the Seattle Office of Civil Rights, the League of Women Voters of Seattle, King County, the Municipal League of King County, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Seattle the same day.

The public comment period began on June 26 and will continue to run until the date City Council adopts the rules, either August 5th or 12th.

So far, we have not received any comments.

Comments received by our office will be sent to council members.

On July 6th, Central Staff Director Ben Noble sent a memo regarding Resolution 32173 having to do with the proposed changes to council rules, which included background information and a summary of the proposed changes, other policy issues for consideration, and proposals that the working group declined to recommend.

He will provide more information in his presentation shortly.

Final review and recommendation of the amendments is expected at the July 24th committee meeting.

The resolution will be presented to City Council for consideration and possible adoption on either August 5th or 12th.

For now, we encourage your full engagement and we ask that you provide direct feedback.

Please feel free to ask any questions or seek clarifications during this presentation.

And thank you for the working group for your work on this incredibly important topic and your feedback.

So now I will hand it over to Central Staff Director Ben Noble.

And actually, I'm going to hand it over to the rest of the team myself.

Others have been more engaged in some of the details.

All right, good afternoon council members.

As you'll note in resolution 32173, there are 15 proposed amendments to the council rules.

I'm gonna go through them briefly.

You have in your attachments in the packet a handy spreadsheet.

that goes through and itemizes these.

I'm just gonna take the list via the spreadsheet because they walk through in order of the rule number each of the 15 amendments.

So we'll hit them as we go.

Please stop me if you'd like to ask a question about a particular amendment.

Thank you.

All right, Amendment 1 is in Rule 3A, and this is what I would call a technical change.

It adds a footnote to SMC 3.140.070, just memorializing that back in December of 2023, the council passed an ordinance that required that all bills and resolutions include a summary and fiscal note.

So this little footnote is here to tell you that this is not a waivable rule anymore because it has been codified in the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you.

Moving on to the second proposed amendment.

This is out of Rule 4B.

It is a rule notation change to the parliamentary procedures table.

This is more acting as guidance to the council members.

It answers the question of, what does it take for a motion to pass?

When your table says some motion needs a majority, what is that majority of?

Is it of the full council?

Is it of those present and voting?

That little asterisk and the note and amended language is answering that question by saying that anytime it says a majority in that table, it means a majority of council members present and voting.

So just kind of helpful language to guide your questions if you're looking at a parliamentary motion and you just wanna know what is it going to take for this motion to pass.

All right, moving on to proposed change number three.

This is a change that reorganizes the rules a bit rather than having a substantive change, so I put this in the technical category as well.

It's amending rule four and rule five just to move up in the parliamentary procedure text the proxy votes, tie vote, and motion to reconsider section.

They'd previously been in Rule 5. This is just moving them up into Rule 4 with other like motions and parliamentary procedures.

So again, nothing substantive for you to worry about here.

This is a restructure.

Move on to item number four.

Item number four clarifies that those who have abstained or otherwise been disqualified, think recusal situations there, that they aren't voting when they're asked to, when it's their turn in terms of the roll call, that they are instead just saying abstain or present rather than voting by saying abstain or present.

There's no actual vote mechanism happening.

That's particularly important in situations of recusal, where someone is not allowed to participate.

And so we just wanted to clarify that language that they're not actually voting when they say abstain or present.

They're merely acknowledging that presence in the roll call.

Number five, the fifth proposed change, comes in at Rule 6 and Rule 7. This is what I would call a clarifying edit rather than a substantive edit.

When legislation is at committee, this clarifies which full council the piece of legislation will be referred to if it's the first the full council following that committee meeting or the second full council following.

Before, the language gave, I think, at some points a false inference that we may even be talking about a third future council meeting, but in circumstances in which you have a unanimous vote, the piece of business, the piece of legislation is going to go to the first full council meeting following.

And in instances in which it was either a non-unanimous vote, I think a split vote, or in instances in which the committee was meeting after and the vote was taken after Thursday at 1 p.m., the piece of business is going to go to the second meeting.

But in each instance, we're either in a world where it's the first full council meeting following the committee or the second.

We're never in a world in which a piece of business, unless otherwise elected by the body, would go towards a third full council meeting following.

So this is, I think, a technical change clarifying the council's intent.

All right, moving on to the sixth proposed amendment.

This is memorializing current practice and creating a default that the video images of council chamber during public comment are going to be broadcast on the Seattle Channel.

It's currently something that all the committees and full councils do.

And so rather than have our rules allow for some discretion there, it's just creating a default in which the video images will be broadcast.

So that's the only change that's happening within that sixth amendment.

All right, in the seventh proposed amendment, this is coming in for Rule 6F and Rule 7E relating to the duties of the chair for standing committees and select committees.

This concerns the timing for public comment.

Right now, for written public comment, the timing of when someone can actually submit it is announced in the meeting agenda and available online.

And so this proposed change to the rules would memorialize that current practice and remove language here that allows the chair during the meeting to allow for additional time for the submission of written comment from the public.

Since that's already taken care of in our published meeting notices that happened prior, this individual discretion to the chair is not part of current practice.

So it's updating our rules to reflect the current practice.

All right, moving on to the eighth proposed change.

This is a change to Rule 7, Part H, relating to the Select Budget Committee.

This would update the quorum for the Select Budget Committee from three members to five members.

Given that it is a committee of the whole, that's more in keeping with our practice across other select committees that are comprised of of the entire body.

Now proposed amendment nine also relates to the select budget committee and specifically the adoption of a balanced budget package.

This set of amendments would memorialize the current practice that a balancing package is a singular publication rather than an initial and then later revised publication.

So it updates the language in the rules to our current practice.

I would note that within Amendment 9 there is also an update to memorialize the fact that amendments to the balancing package must be self-balancing.

That means that a proposed increase would be offset by a reduction or some proposed increase in revenue or otherwise a change in policy relating to our resources that would result in a balanced package.

This is already language that appears in the year two biennial rules, but it would be placed also within year one to clarify that regardless of if we're in a first year or second year of the biennial budget, that the balancing package amendments need to be self-balancing.

All right, moving on to the 10th proposed amendment.

This is to Council Rule 9A, and similar to one that we discussed earlier, this would increase the quorum for council briefings from 3 to 5. I think it's a matter of course, given that it is also a meeting of the council as a whole, we would standardize with this proposed amendment the quorum to also be five instead of three.

All right, for proposed amendment number 11, this also concerns rule 11, subpart C relating to public participation and public comment.

The amendment here would change the default rule that public comment at committee concern an item on the agenda or within the purview of the committee.

So instead, the default would be that public comment may be about items on the agenda and that the committee chair has the discretion to accept comment on matters within the purview and that that would be noticed on the committee's agenda.

So again, a shift in the default provision from allowing the committee meeting public comment to be both matters on the agenda and within the purview.

Instead, the default would be public comment on matters of the agenda with discretion to the chair to expand to authorize public comment on matters within the jurisdiction of the committee.

All right, for item number 12, sticking with the same rule 11 subpart C relating to public comment, it would adjust who may extend the public comment period that's set at a default 20 minutes.

Right now under our existing rules it is the presiding officer that may elect to extend public comment and this would change the default to allow for a majority of those present and voting to extend public comment.

So just a change in who has the authority to create that extension.

All right, in proposed amendment number 13, we're again staying in rule 11, subpart C relating to public comment.

and this removes the present discretion of the council president to authorize someone when they make a request out of their own personal safety.

They make a request during public comment not to share their name.

This changes the default to automatically grant that individual the right to have their name withheld so that they can provide public comment while preserving their own safety.

Proposed change number 14 is still in Rule 11, but this part subsection D, generally regarding the disruptions of city council meetings or committee meetings.

This is a clarifying edit, and I'll speak to this and our final proposed amendment at the same time.

These two are both clarifying edits that clarify which entity is responsible for issuing the notification that someone has been excluded from a council meeting and that they would have a right to an appeal.

In practice, it is the Office of the City Clerk that provides that notice to an individual that's been excluded at meetings, affording them notice of their rights to an appeal and providing a timeframe for that.

So this clarifying edit just provides more notice to the public on which entity it is that's going to be involved in that matter.

And then very similarly, our very last proposed council rule change is to note and clarify in the rules that the appeal that someone who's been excluded from a meeting might submit is going to be an appeal submitted to the city clerk, rather than maybe confusingly them trying to provide an appeal to an individual council member or to the body, that it's the clerk's office, the same office that provided the notice that will receive a notice of appeal from an individual.

And those are the 15 proposed edits to the council rules.

I'm looking to my colleagues to see if there are any questions or comments.

Council Member Hollingsworth and then Council Member Kepp.

I'll be super quick.

Thank you all because I know we're getting into the late afternoon.

Thank you all for bringing these amendments.

They're pretty straightforward and it seems like it just creates a more of a operational just enhances our operations as a council and you all obviously have been here for a long time so you see how the council operates and it just makes sense and very grateful for your work for proposing these or walking us through these amendments because I know it was a lot.

So thank you.

Councilman McKettle.

Thank you, Council President, Chair.

Yes, I too appreciate it, and I appreciate walking through this because it jogs the mind of the various pieces that are out there and how we do different things differently, so I see the logic.

like I always have and the purview of the committee.

I don't restrict it to the day's agenda.

It's that plus the purview and that will remain for the public safety.

But it's interesting to see and to see the dynamics and the times and the pieces.

So thank you and anything that can assist in a smoother operating environment here at City Council is always welcome, so thank you.

Oh, actually, did our assistant clerk have anything to say?

She's been quiet at the end.

I don't.

I think Lauren captured everything that we are proposing and that we are looking forward to implementing in 2026.

Okay, thank you.

I'm just glad I got her voice officially into the meeting.

Thank you.

Sorry, Council Members, I do want to step in just at that moment because even though it seems to come from the Office of the City Clerk, this project was very much carried on the shoulders of our Chief Deputy Clerk, Amelia.

So thank you for having her speak up and giving me the opportunity to give her the many kudos she deserves.

Councilmember Salomon.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Just a couple of clarifying points for me.

Amendment 6 regarding broadcast, so the default is that during committee meetings, council meetings, council meetings, whatever, the default is to display the chamber.

Okay.

Does the chair of the committee at that point have the discretion to ask that it be otherwise?

So currently under the rules, that is the dynamic.

Each committee chair had the authority and individual discretion to elect how their committee was going to operate and whether the visual images during public comment inside the chamber were going to be displayed on the Seattle Channel.

This would change that default so that each committee meeting would have its visual images displayed.

This is a waivable or suspendable rule, so there are still mechanics by motion for a committee to operate differently, but it's just that the default would be adjusted.

All right, understood.

I'm just thinking about certain instances where things have gotten unruly to the point where it seems that the point is to get on camera and make a spectacle.

So taking that away as a way to diffuse some of that fuel is what I was thinking when I'm asking that question.

Understood.

Okay.

Another clarifying question.

We're actually kind of coming because, again, we always say that, you know, public comment should be related to items on the agenda or within the purview of the committee.

We get much more than that.

So we, at this point, it's like, yeah, okay, we'll just roll with it.

Is that pretty much how we're gonna continue to operate?

Well, within the council rules, specifically rule 11D around disruption, one of the elements for finding a disruption is if a matter, if individual providing public comment has not kept to the authorized areas, the items on the agenda or within the purview of the committee, but again it's at the presiding officer's discretion how closely they would like to regulate those matters and different committee chairs can come to different perspectives but this is a policy choice here as to how your default council rules are set up whether you allow only items on the agenda or the more expansive items on the agenda and within the purview of the committee.

Okay and the final one is If the decision is made to go into do the meeting remotely, and does that automatically mean everybody needs to go remote?

Because we've seen in the past where some stay in chambers, some go to their offices.

Is there a default for that?

The council rules are silent as to that matter.

It is an area that could be regulated under the council rules, but it's not currently.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Council President.

I'd like to note that the The decision that I have made in the past to continue our meetings on Zoom had to do with the fact that it did not appear that we would be able to continue with the disruption in the chambers.

And council members have been asked, requested or instructed by our city clerk to please vacate the council chambers because if there are people that remain at the dais, that leads to people remaining and oftentimes continuing disruption in chambers, which puts the city clerk who is by themselves usually right here, and it is a safety issue, which is why I believe Clerk Dudman, you went door to door and did make the case that it is a safety issue, not a sort of an arbitrary use of power issue.

Yes.

That helps clarify.

I want to address the amendment that I requested having to do with what public comment can be about.

In my first two years, the rule was that a city, a chair could decide whether or not public comment would be allowed only on the agenda items or on agenda items and the purview of the committee, the work program of the committee, which pretty much means anything because people figure out how to make it linked to something having to do with a committee.

But it was recommended that whatever the clerk, the presiding officer decides, be consistent so that the public knows what to expect from your committee.

And so I chose the more limited public comment and here's why.

Committee meetings are the opportunity for council members to get into the minutia to the weeds of the legislation before us or the policy issues before us.

The public has the right to speak to anything within the council work program or under our purview at the full council meetings and so I chose to limit it to the items on the agenda just because those can be pretty complex and at that point I was dealing with very complex legislation.

That rule was changed right before the past couple of years.

It was changed midstream in my term so far and it has now been expanded to we have to accept comment on everything under the committee work purview or work program.

And so I believe that it was still a clear designation of what folks can comment on and it allowed us to use our time more predictably to get through the items on our agenda and without wondering how much time would be devoted to public comment that might not be directly germane to our legislation before us.

Anyway, it's kind of going back to the way it was for the first two years that I was in office.

Are there any other questions or comments?

I'll have you know, so if I didn't mention it before, the vast majority of these rules were put forward by by the folks at the table who are expert in knowing what is not working really well and have solutions for changes.

You put forward a lot more, several other rule changes.

Some of them would have been really meaningful, like when amendments can be submitted and heard at the table and what do we do with walk-ons, et cetera.

So I do recognize that there is still interest by some council members to tighten that up a little bit but I chose not to put it on here just because it seemed to be very complex and would require a lot of discussion back and forth but it's not that I'm not open to that being put forward by somebody else.

With that, I say thank you very, very much.

This seems really, well, it is really detail-oriented, but these are the rules that define our conduct at the dais and it's what the public sees of our performance in representing them.

And so it's extremely important.

So thank you.

Oh, wait, Council Member Rivera, did you have a question?

Okay.

Got it.

All right.

Bye.

Thank you very much and thank you all for staying a bit later today.

I appreciate it.

If there's no more business to come before the council, it is 436 and we are adjourned.

Thank you.