Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee 92619 Session I

Good morning.

Hey, good morning, everybody.

This is September 26th.

It's the Select Budget Committee.

It's day two up here.

And I'm Sally Bagshaw.

I chair this committee.

Thank you, Councilmember Gonzalez, for being here with me.

And we are moving forward today with presentations from our departments.

I want to thank everybody for participating yesterday.

We heard from Ben Noble, our city budget office discussion.

We also had Mami Hara and Deborah Smith from our Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light.

So thank you for that good first session.

We have both a morning and an afternoon session today.

At the conclusion of the morning session, we're going to recess and then come back at 2 p.m.

And public comment will be at the end of the second group this afternoon.

So I appreciate very much people coming and for the clerk's office clarifying that public comment is at the end of the day.

This morning, we're going to receive presentations from our Office of Economic Development.

I want to welcome Bobby Lee.

This is our first budget with you.

We're excited to hear from you.

We are also going to have the Department of Parks and Recreation, and I assume Jesus Aguirre.

Perhaps Christopher Williams will be here to join us, and we'll hear from the Office of Labor Standards.

This afternoon, we've got three other departments, our Human Services Department, Office of Housing, and the Department of Education and Early Learning.

So, many of you know that our Office of Human Services has been working extensively on helping people who are homeless, but I know it doesn't come as a surprise to thank you for the three people who are at the table.

You know this, but Office of Human Services, hello.

Deborah Juarez, thank you for being here.

Council Member Abel Pacheco, thank you as well.

Human services does a lot more than address the needs of people who are homeless.

And we're going to have a special session next week where we're focusing really on a deep dive on homelessness and all of the programs that our other departments are working on, whether it's parks or our fire department, first responders, and so on.

But today, when this afternoon, when we hear from human services, and I'll mention it again at the end, of this presentation is that Office of Human Services also has departments that work on promoting healthy aging, youth employment, affordability, and livability, responding to gender-based violence.

So those are the areas that we're going to focus on today.

So if you don't hear anything about human services working with our people who are homeless and the needs there, know that that is coming next week.

So, with that, I just want to remind our public that the first of two public hearings during the budget process will be October 3rd.

That's a Thursday.

And the second public hearing will be on Tuesday, October 22nd.

Both of the public hearings will be here, and we'll begin at 530. So unless anybody has any questions, we're going to dive in today.

Again, Bobby Lee, thank you for being here, and welcome to all.

And I think Yolanda, we're going to start with you, but let's have introductions so that we all know who's here.

Yolanda Ho, Council Central Staff.

Tom Mikesell, Central Staff.

It's on the stem, Bobby, and it should be a green light on?

It's on.

OK.

Bobby Lee with OED.

Amanda Allen, also with OED.

Great, excellent.

Welcome to all of you.

So Yolanda, please proceed.

I'll just make some quick overview comments.

So as we have indicated here, we'll be learning about the mayor's proposed budget for the Office of Economic Development.

And as we move through this process, central staff will be supporting council members on identifying and discussing budget issues.

that will be presented in various issue identification memos later in mid-October and also discuss possible changes to proposed budget at that same time.

And then later in October, central staff will be preparing council change requests.

for the committee's consideration.

So that's a quick reminder of the process.

And with that, I will let Office of Economic Development present their strategic priorities with their new director, which was appointed by the council in June.

And we have Ben Noble at the table, too.

Are you kicking this off, or we're going right to Mr. Lee?

Straight to Bobby.

Great.

All right.

And just for the record, I actually started in April.

Time flies, though.

But you were appointed in June.

Oh, good technicality.

That's a good one.

Well, thank you very much for this opportunity, council members.

And I just want to personally also share my gratitude and thanks to all of you who helped me transition into this position.

And especially Council Member Herbold gave me a lot of great coaching.

And so far, I've stayed out of any big trouble so far.

And so thank you all for that.

It's been a great transition.

And safe to say that I love Seattle.

It's a great place, and so thank you all.

When I started this position in April, I first conducted an extensive analysis of Seattle's economy.

I looked at the past, the present, and I think where we're headed.

And the numbers are really amazing.

especially as a professional profession in the economic development field.

In less than 10 years, Seattle job market has grown 25%.

And that is an amazing number.

It outpaces the national average.

But in terms of population growth that comes with the job growth, it has grown 19% in less than 10 years.

The medium household income has increased 50% since 2007 to 2017, amazing numbers.

And despite the incredible economic comeback since the recession, poverty and income disparity has grown.

And it's this paradox that my department is here to help solve.

And in order to address this growing paradox, economic paradox, we reshaped our mission as a department.

And our new mission is to build an inclusive economy.

And there are four core strategies that we're using to advance this new mission.

One is workforce development.

Second is small business technical assistance.

Third is industry cluster strategy.

And fourth is neighborhood business districts.

And I'll just leave it at that as an intro.

And then we'll dive into the presentation unless there's any questions.

Great.

Thank you for that, Bobby.

And I really appreciate how much and how fast you have dived in.

And I look forward to seeing your presentation.

Good deal.

In this first slide, we are reviewing significant legislative changes that affected OED's budget in 2019. There are really two main ones that I want to bring your attention to.

The first has to do with a repayment that OED had to make to HUD related to community development block grant expenditures.

In 2018, we had a HUD auditor come in and review our 2017 program activities.

particularly looking at our neighborhood business district program, the Only in Seattle program.

and their activities.

And what HUD determined was that a lot of the activities for which OED and Only in Seattle were responsible felt like they were just not a good fit for community development block grant.

Although the program has been going on with this type of investment for at least seven years, it really was determined that this is not a good funding fit for a lot of Only in Seattle neighborhood business district investments.

We repaid for the findings for 2017. This appropriation made that possible and really have to look at restructuring how we do our engagement with neighborhood business districts.

So later in the presentation, you'll see a bit of a funding swap that was made possible by an infusion of general fund into the Only in Seattle program.

The second item is a transfer between OED's budget and OPCD office of planning and community development where they had $400,000 of community development block grant from a prior, I think it was 2018 budget that was unspent.

In working with our staff, they felt like our use of it with our new tenant improvement pilot program was a good investment.

And so we're putting that money to good use this year and investing it with a project in the central area known as the Liberty Bank Project.

where we're providing some funds to help build out a tenant space, and that will be used with a small business that is owned, that Brown Girl Cooks, some of you may be familiar with that company, and they're building out a restaurant space.

Great, and is all $400,000 of that going to the Liberty Bank site?

It is, yes.

Good deal.

Well, I'll take it from here.

As I mentioned at the beginning, even with the incredible economic performance here at Seattle, and truly an amazing numbers as an economic development profession, and I just never seen numbers like this before.

This is truly unprecedented and a lot of the credit goes to all of your work.

Much of the economic performance in part is because of the policies that you have developed creating really an exciting urban environment.

And I think much of the credit goes to the council and your leadership and vision.

And it's just been extraordinary economic performance here in Seattle.

But as I mentioned, underneath the average macro numbers, if you dig in a little bit deeper, certain segments of our community are not keeping up.

And the economy is not as inclusive as it should be.

And particularly for people of color and for the immigrant population, this is truly a disturbing trend.

In fact, today, I don't know if you had a chance to see the article.

I was just going to bring that up.

Yeah.

And so it just highlights, when you have income disparity where whites are making $105,000 a year, whereas African-Americans are getting $42,000 a year, the disparity is, I mean, it's just tremendous disparity.

Right.

And based on my analysis, and I'll be happy to share my report, my analysis of the economy, we believe that this trend will only continue.

And so that's why we want to be more...

The delta continues.

I'm sorry?

She said delta continues.

That's correct.

Disparity will grow.

Good.

Would you kindly send that to all of us?

Oh, of course.

Of course.

I'll be happy to do that.

Mail that to all of you.

You bet.

And at a different point, outside of the budget process, I would love to have a work session to just dig in a little bit more, because we do find this as an alarming trend.

And on top of that, there's a report that just came out showing that 42.13% of the work will be automated.

in the near future here in King County.

And so not only are we seeing the knowledge economy not being inclusive, but the automation economy, which we call the network economy, will also bring in new technology like AI that will replace some of the jobs, especially in the service sector.

So we have reports here that I will also be happy to send out as well.

So we see these trends.

And what we want to do is, what we're offering here is four different strategies, as I mentioned.

Number one is workforce development.

And most of the workforce development dollars are really federally funded here in Seattle.

And it's through what is called the Workforce Investment Opportunity Act.

And this is through Department of Labor.

And Department of Labor has a formula based on population and poverty.

And so it's automatically distributed to different states.

But over time, in the last 15 years, the funding from federal government has eroded, usually about 5% a year.

And so we are seeing disinvestment from the federal level in workforce training.

And so we have to somehow find a way to make it up at the local level or through partnership with private sector.

Bless you.

But workforce investment that is publicly funded is the number of total dollars is shrinking and so that's also a sign that we're concerned about.

And in here, in Seattle, the local workforce dollars through general funds matches then with the federal dollars and other dollars and then in totality we try to create a unified workforce system by matching these dollars in different ways so we have a unified system.

And majority of the funding also goes to underserved population and for the immigrant population.

And when you hear the word workforce development, really you should, there should be one word that comes to your mind, and that is training.

It's really ultimately about how many people can train and skill up and help people obtain higher quality jobs, family-based jobs for underserved population.

The second strategy is around small business technical assistance.

In order to build confidence in our local economy, you need constant innovation and injection of new small business in the pipeline.

That's what drives confidence.

And all of us then will spend more money and so forth.

So encouraging new startups and new small businesses is a fundamental part of building confidence in our local economy.

And so part of our work is to help small businesses and entrepreneurs of color continue to drive innovation in our local economy.

Bobby can I can I go back to something that you were talking about just a moment ago, and that's workforce development All of us up here have been very engaged in supporting apprenticeship programs and pre-apprenticeship programs and Councilmember Juarez was doing a superb job with the North Seattle College this year I'm I'm interested in knowing whether you have connected with Dave Gehring with our manufacturing and industrial group on something that he called Core Plus.

He's been working with, I believe it's Rainier Beach High School primarily, but also with connecting with Boeing so that we've got this training you're talking about.

And I know the port is interested in creating a maritime high school comparable to what I think it's Highline School District is doing with the aviation high school.

So is that something that your office is connecting with or is that through deal or both?

Well, our office, I did meet with the port to look at co-funding the program.

And one thing that I feel strongly about in the manufacturing field in general is that generally the data shows that people of color, the manufacturing sector tends to be much more inclusive.

The barrier to entry is lower.

And so when you try to promote this vision around inclusive economy, manufacturing sector is a great sector.

And so we have earmarked some dollars already to invest in the manufacturing academy with the port.

I don't recall the exact amount from top of my head, and I can research that and follow up on that.

I'm just heartened to know that you're talking with them.

Absolutely.

Because one of the things that we know that the system improves when All of these organizations that have a piece of it are working together.

So if you're talking with the port and if you've reached out to the MEC, I think that's going to be a real advantage for everyone because then we can leverage those dollars and combine people's not only good intentions, but the smart work they're already doing.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Good.

Council Member Morris and then Council Member Mosqueda.

Just a quick question that we've been looking at.

Thank you, Chairwoman, for the Apprenticeship Building Trades Program that we've just started and completely got filled up in North Seattle that we want to continue and we'll work with the state legislature on making it more permanent.

We filled every cohort for the next year.

And a lot of those folks are coming from Ingraham High School through the Promise Program.

But you said something that has peaked me and peaked my attention because we've been working with labor and discussing it.

And I'm glad you said it because you said it much more eloquently than me, is that And I want to ask you the question, and I may know the answer, but I want to hear from you.

Why is the manufacturing sector more inclusive?

I kind of, I understand, but I just want to hear from your perspective briefly.

Well, in Seattle, if you look at the manufacturing sector, which is actually very small, if you look at the national average, and some people will argue that it's because Boeing is outside the city limits.

But from our analysis, even if you include Boeing and look at the regional average, still compared to the national average, the manufacturing industry is relatively small.

We're a knowledge-based economy here in Seattle.

But to answer your question, and by the way, in the last five years, the manufacturing industry has shrunk 4%, so the trend is going downwards.

In general, the way I would answer it is that the barrier to entry is just lower.

You can scale up on the job easier.

And if you look at the manufacturing sector in Seattle, actually about half, or maybe a little bit less than a half, is transportation manufacturing.

And the second largest is food process manufacturing.

And then the numbers get smaller in the rest of them.

The concern I have with the manufacturing sector is that there's a great imbalance in gender representation.

but in terms of number of people of color is higher than other sectors.

You bet.

Thank you.

Council Member Muscatia, then Council Member Herbold.

Thank you very much.

Director Lee, it was great to hear you also yesterday on KUOW talking about this vision for the city.

Really appreciate the work that you've brought also from Portland, and thank you for connecting us with some of the folks in Portland.

For example, at the Portland Mercado, who are doing exactly what you led down there and which you've spoken to today, which is how do we help specifically immigrant and community of color individuals get into business and be successful.

So very excited about your leadership, and you can see why we are so excited about the direction that OED is headed.

I guess my big question is, given the priorities that you just outlined, And the way in which I look at the budget, the changes from the endorsed to the proposed this year, I see a 0.5 FTE change.

I see a change of an additional million.

But there's so many important issues that you have to tackle.

And I think we have a more restrictive Constitution here in Washington state that makes your job even more challenging.

Would you comment on?

The partnership that you have with Office of Labor Standards, given this emphasis on workforce development, is there any additional opportunities that you see between OLS and your department to do exactly what you talked about in terms of workforce development on, I would say, low-carbon jobs?

Naomi Klein the other day talked about how domestic workers and janitors and service providers and long-term care providers, these folks are in the low-carbon emission industry.

very important work that they do, and also it doesn't contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, for example.

If we can use more of our public dollars to support more of these service sector jobs and to get them at a higher wage, it seems to both be fulfilling your desire to make sure that more people have stable jobs and potentially a pathway out of poverty.

generational poverty, they can get more economically stable and then maybe start their own business, for example, with some of our domestic workers.

With that sort of framework, is that the correct analysis that we're only looking at a million dollar increase in your budget?

Does that sound right?

I think at the end of the presentation, we'll get at the increment.

And I think that actually the increment is only around, I want to say 500,000 off the top of my head.

I'm just going to flag for the chair and our colleagues.

I think that there is a really important opportunity for us to leverage partnership here with OED and other departments.

And especially as we look at starting small businesses and getting folks out of this generational poverty cycle, As we create healthy and thriving local economies for low-wage workers, for communities of color, and immigrant workers to start their own business, I see this as an economic stimulus.

So I might be interested in working with the chair as we think about how we enhance some of these partnerships that have just been outlined.

Good.

Thanks for the early alert.

Go ahead.

It's always nice to know coming in that the council is supporting your work.

Yeah.

I'm just having a great time here.

Yeah, can I do you mind if I just add one more aspect?

Oh, please go ahead We're in good shape one of the challenge that we'll be facing is also recession Yeah, and not only automation and the changing of our economy because of AI and the network economy and the modernization of the telecommunication system But recession coupled with automation is a big concern that I have.

And we don't have time to get into that today.

But in other cities, in Portland for example, we set aside I think around 3.5 million for recession planning.

Because many people that get displaced, which will be predominantly people of color and immigrant population.

is to help them start businesses during the recession or help them with dislocated worker programs to get retrained when the economy is bad.

And at a different point, not today, we do need to think proactively about the recession.

And so we'll talk more about that down the road coupled with the strategies that you pointed out.

Council Member.

That is absolutely right.

And a couple of other departments have spoken to me about how do we combine those efforts.

Right.

Because as our buddy Ben Noble, Dr. Doom over here tells us that we know that the recession is coming eventually.

So to the extent that we can get out in front of that both with job training Housing, all the work that we've been talking about and recognizing the impact of gentrification on many of the people who have lived here.

I think it's a great opportunity for us going forward putting you in charge of the lead of this.

Of course, that's just a recommendation.

It's the mayor's decision regarding departments.

But I think you're right on and obviously you've got support up here for that.

Thank you.

I'll just continue the slides here.

Sorry, Council Member Herbold had a question.

Along the train of thought that we're pursuing here as it relates to changing circumstances, whether or not that's a recession or automation, I think another set of changing circumstances that we are not just anticipating, but we're working on trying to lead, is moving away from trying to create the markets and the policies that will result in us moving away from reliance on fossil fuels.

And that will change the face of employment for many people in the energy sector.

And so one of the things that we have talked about committing to as part of moving several policy objectives that we've identified in Seattle's Green New Deal is a commitment to a just transition for the workforce of those industries that we're trying to move away from.

And I see that we need to have some department in the city at the lead for developing a just transition strategy and then the programs to be put in place to implement that strategy, because essentially we're talking about retraining programs for workers who are currently in these jobs that we're trying to move away from.

What do you see as your role in in that endeavor and is that something that we should consider a strategic priority for 2020?

You bet.

Thank you Council Member Herbold.

Today at three o'clock I'm flying to San Francisco with the mayor to actually learn about the EV bus manufacturing sector.

Because as you know better than I do, the metro, they're doing RFP process to replace many of their vehicles to be electric, battery-driven buses.

And what we want to do is continue to grow what we called the, it's a cluster strategy for the clean energy industry.

And so we actually have a staff that leads that effort.

And it is majority of the businesses in Seattle in that sector tends to be small.

And so what we did, which we'd love to show you because we have a visual of this, and it's dynamic visual, we actually can explain all the connected different technology connections between those companies in that sector.

But what we need to do is continue to grow that sector, but also be cautious that there's a chance that some of those technologies will be automated.

And so research and development that's coupled with manufacturing, that having that whole vertical is what I think will provide the middle wage jobs in Seattle.

But we'll be happy to lead on that effort.

We have a lot of good work that we've already done.

So we'd be happy to share that.

And we're excited about it.

Good.

Thank you so much.

I know we've been working with OSC as well.

And the two of you, the work that Jessica Finkhoven is doing, would be a wonderful matchup.

So, thank you for, again, that system work.

Thank you.

So, I think that's all the questions here.

So, please proceed.

Okay.

How much time do I?

We're okay?

Yeah, we wanted to hear from you.

The third part of the four strategies that I talked about to advance inclusive economy agenda is really around how do we get industries, and we just actually talked about this, is the industry cluster strategy.

And some may ask, well, why is it that you're focused on medium-sized and larger businesses?

And the way I would answer that is that in order to create an inclusive economy, government can't do it alone.

we have to get medium size and larger businesses to use their procurement power and hiring capacity to hire from underserved population and also to procure their investments to local small business owned by people of color.

So really it's an alignment of their investments that is the big part of that function.

The last part is neighborhood business district strategy.

And I find this one to be extremely exciting.

When you have vibrant commercial corridors in neighborhoods, that's what builds resiliency in those neighborhoods.

And what studies have shown is that when you have a vibrant commercial corridors, crime goes down, people take pride in their own neighborhood, they get more engaged in civic activities, they vote more.

And so it's not just an economic gardening strategy, if you will, but it is truly a community development and community building platform for neighborhoods.

And so that is one dimension that we have as part of our four core services at OED.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So we are part of the Small Business Advisory Committee, and I think they probably couldn't agree more with you about the need to invest in those small business corridors, especially as we move forward with our efforts to upzone the urban villages across the city.

It's really important that we do that with housing and child care and health services and small businesses, which you saw as a priority of ours in last year's MHA or earlier this year's MHA discussion.

How have the OED priorities around these urban corridors been informed by the Small Business Advisory Committee?

And do you see that as a representative body?

Is it diverse enough in line with your vision of the folks that we really want to help support during a potential downturn coming up?

That's a really good question.

I think I need a little bit more time to work with the advisory committee, but they've been truly committed and the energy level extremely high.

And overall, they bring pretty diverse perspectives.

And many of their issues are right on.

And for example, permitting process, regulatory compliance issues.

Also, how do we earmark portions of our urban environment for local businesses?

And in other cities, by law, you only are allowed the local businesses.

So in fact, the neighborhood that I lived in, Portland, by law, has to be locally owned businesses in that neighborhood.

So they wanted us to explore those type of tools.

So I think many of the issues that they're talking about is consistent with some of the ideas that I bring to the table.

But I think it's still in the early stage.

We still need to grow that committee and make them feel more comfortable about city policies and so forth.

It takes time to learn how the city works.

So we're still in the growing phase, I think.

Yeah.

Please, go ahead.

Thank you.

So you spoke exactly to the issue that's a big priority for me, and that's permitting.

And I think that there's a lot of common ground in our desire to see these businesses get up and start up and be successful.

And the concerns that we're hearing from non-profit developers, from communities of color, organizations who want to support small businesses.

Is there specific money earmarked in your budget to expedite or enhance the permitting process so that it's much more streamlined in the future?

That's a really good question.

In other cities, my department would actually fund some FTEs in the permitting department so that when we refer clients, small business owners from immigrant population or owners who are people of color and they're having challenges, then we have a case manager within the permitting department.

that would help case manage, if you will, the permitting process.

But what I've also found was that majority of the issues around permitting is actually the application process where the applicant just didn't understand the application process.

And it's just going back and forth trying to get complete information.

That's what stalls majority of the application process.

So, in my opinion, although we would have to do a little bit of a study on this, is that what we need is capacity to educate the applicants before they submit their applications.

I think that will actually help accelerate it.

The other issue that you will hear from permitting departments, not just here in Seattle, but throughout many cities, is that how do you justify one group being accelerated versus another person not?

And so within the system, it does create a paradox within their permitting process that we also need to help define what we mean by acceleration so that there's clear direction for permitting departments to understand what that actually means.

For example, larger businesses can actually afford to purchase navigators, third-party consultants who understand the process.

And this was brought up by SBAC, actually.

But even SBAC members who can afford to do that said, what about the small businesses?

that can't afford that, so they feel conflicted by it as well.

So there are some issues to be worked out there, but I think if we can start with a pilot, have some capacity to do some research and really dig into this, but also have capacity for proactive education, I think that would be a good start going into this.

Great.

Thank you.

You know, our own Calvin Goings of FAS fame used to be the director of the Small Business Administration for Region 10. And it's always been a mystery to me about what and how SBA works with our departments.

Do you have any, can you shed any light on that?

Or can we use them as a resource?

Yeah, SBA is a federally designated program.

They do have access to capital programs, which means loans and revolving loans and small grants.

But admittedly, if you look at the national trends, number of applicants for those loans has declined because the process is so stringent.

And what we'll hear from small businesses is that if the process, and we talked about this through CDBG money actually, the amount of paperwork actually is a hinder to serving underserved population.

But on the other hand, we're using public dollars and we have to be transparent and hold ourselves accountable.

But somewhere in there we have to find the right balance, but SBA does provide access to capital and technical assistance programs.

Thanks.

Any other questions?

Council Member Herbold.

The line of questioning that Council Member Mosqueda was pursuing reminded me of the Mayor's Executive Order from earlier this year.

I thought I recalled that that Executive Order created a navigator for this purpose.

As well as the small business citywide advisory group.

There's like an interdepartmental team as well to help with issues that are sort of cross-departmental.

That's right.

I think it's called CBAC.

I think that's the acronym.

That's right.

The executive order that was signed on November 30th, I believe.

That sounds about right, of last year, was for interdepartmental solutions committee, if you will, looking at cutting red tape and streamlining processes for small businesses.

I have a report that's coming in next Tuesday from my team around that.

I know there's been some struggle collecting good information from different departments around this.

But I'll be happy to share with you my report once I get it on Tuesday.

But I think generally though, I think it's a great approach.

Ultimately, it is a multi-departmental, it has to be a multi-departmental strategy to cut red tapes.

And so I'll be happy to share that report on Tuesday.

And one other question, if I may?

So we've talked about how important it is for this office to have a laser focus on stabilization, especially for small businesses owned by people of color and historically underrepresented groups.

I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit how the Legacy Business Program that I've been working on with your department fits into your 2020 strategic priorities as it relates to that shared objective.

Coincidentally, yesterday I met with the President of the City Council of San Francisco last night, and we had dinner together, and we actually ended up talking about it.

Very robust legacy business program there.

Yeah, which is interesting because they also had concerns about the program, but in general, San Francisco Their program is pretty advanced, and I know that my staff, before I got here, used San Francisco model as a benchmark to develop some of the proposals that is being proposed here in Seattle.

And it was an interesting exchange that I had with the counselor from San Francisco.

But overall, I believe that legacy business is fundamental part of economic development.

And that is consistent with small business technical assistance program that we have.

Studies have shown, if you look at hospitality industry, for example, most visitors now are wanting to visit legacy businesses, as an example.

If you go to the website on hospitality industry, like Visit Seattle and other cities, They're not advertising these four-star hotels.

They're advertising neighborhood businesses.

That's what the trend towards visitors is, is to visit these legacy businesses.

And so it is a fundamental part of economic development, and I believe that nurturing and supporting legacy businesses is something that we have to do to preserve the magic of Seattle.

And so I'll just leave it at that for now.

Okay, please, go ahead.

And we've got a few more slides.

Oh, yeah, sorry.

The third slide is related to the four-year budget summary for OED.

And on this slide, you'll notice that there's an increment in OED's budget of a 5% increase.

The most significant changes that are incorporated in that have to do actually with pretty mundane, the annual wage increase for staff of 3.6%.

and some increase in citywide overhead allocation related to increase in rates in our HR, human resources overhead rate, and Seattle IT overhead rate.

As well, there were included about $80,000 in additional budget related to support the reclassification of staff that were staff initiated reclassifications.

Included in OED's budget there is a proposal to reallocate existing resources to increase our capacity around Just our general administrative work and particularly our finance staff.

We're requesting an increase of one of our halftime accounting staff to go up to full-time and And that's a direct result into just the fact that OED hasn't seen an increase in our overhead staff for many years, actually, and have seen a pretty dramatic increase in our workload as it relates to the number of contracts that we're processing.

And also, the city's new financial system, the 9.2 financial system is Unfortunately creating more workload for accounting staff, so we're just that that group is just being taxed so

I'm sorry.

You know, I didn't quite understand what you're saying.

What is causing the increased workload?

Just the new accounting system?

That's right.

Of course, that was supposed to go the other way.

Just to be clear, it wasn't just the new accounting system.

It's also that OED's overall portfolio of work has increased over the past few years, and we have not kept pace in terms of the overall support staff.

So it's a combination of those two things.

I'm not denying the first, but I think it's important to recognize the second as well.

OK.

Thank you.

But I noticed that you're only asking for 0.5, you're on the bottom column, a 0.5 increase.

So, will that 0.5 address the concerns that you have?

No.

So, but this is.

We can.

All right, so.

Well, we'll talk a little bit more offline.

I actually think that that's highly inappropriate, Director Noble.

I think we are here to ask questions.

about the appropriateness of the funding, and given the level of investments that we know we need to see.

This was a very serious question that I asked earlier, though, because a .5 FTE, to me, does not signal that there's sufficient resources for the very important work that we just highlighted.

So I don't wanna, I don't wanna, yeah, you were joking, it's fine, I get it that you were joking.

But it's a very serious question.

No, no, no, I wanted to make, it's actually an opportunity to make a broader point that we agree with you, right?

If we had the resources to expand the functions of OED, we would.

The discussion I provided you yesterday was the fact that we are really up against the wall on these resources and in fact sustainability beyond into 2021 is a real challenge.

That was why I was making it as a joke in that context, but again.

I that is a serious.

It is a constraint I mean there is more work that I'm not sure you the mayor would like to be investing more work excuse me more resources in the work of OED and the issues that Bobby's identified are very very serious ones, so I just that was Make that make that clear and my apologies for taking that too light-hearted

Sure, and I appreciate the clarification.

And I also appreciate your work.

I'm not trying to create an awkward dynamic here, but this is really the heart of what we're at.

With 0.5 FTE, what I just heard was that this work is really to help address some of the concerns that are coming up because of this accounting system, which I need to learn more about, because it does sound like this is a problem that has been potentially unaddressed.

is causing a workload crunch at OED.

I'm also asking, with all the work that we have to do, it does sound like you've been asked to do more with less over the last few years.

And can you help me understand, because when I looked at the initial budget numbers, I thought we were looking at a $10.2 million budget moving to an $11.2 million budget.

Am I looking at numbers from a proposed budget versus the adopted budget for 2020, or is there just only about a .5, as you say, $543,000 increase here?

What is the increase in the overall budget?

The increase to the overall budget is the $543,000.

This slide only shows you the increments, so it will only show you where there's So it's not necessarily some kind of an overall increase, but it does also included in OAD's budget is the addition of a new FTE that is in support of our creative industry work that we're doing, a strategic advisor positioned to help policy development around that creative cluster.

So that won't show up because there was also a reduction in The net of that would be zero.

You don't see that change.

Also, there was one significant issue that I don't think we've talked enough about, and that is some of the small business support work that had been funded by the department previously had been relied upon community development block grant dollars.

And we got, if you will, an unfavorable ruling from the federal government about the use of those dollars and that we had, if you will, misinterpreted the eligibility of that program.

So we are faced with a difficult question about whether to restructure the program to fall into compliance, which would have really restricted our ability to provide important assistance, or to find, if you will, a different color of money.

So there is a $300,000 increment.

of general fund to the budget that is designed to preserve that program and actually in the end to grow it because what we've done is to keep the community development block grant dollars that were going to be in the program.

Bobby and his team are going to direct those in a way that will maintain their eligibility with the federal requirements.

But given that those are going to impose constraints, we added $300,000 of general fund to be sure that the original intent of the program could be maintained.

So the net effect is an increase in overall funding and a preservation of the flexible dollars that are really essential to make the program work.

So that was a key component of the decision making here in addition to the increment in staff to support the overall functions of the department.

Thank you for that.

Can you tell me where I see that $300,000, either on this chart or elsewhere?

Next page, I'm there.

Oh, I've got it.

The OIS funding restructuring.

Thank you.

OIS being only in Seattle.

So this last slide calls out some of these incremental changes from our 2019 budget, where we're Reorganizing staff and within the creative cluster.

work, we're looking at a change there related to this new staff member.

Part of OED's budget has been the Office of Film and Music.

Part of the Office of Film and Music's work has been in support of the Seattle Music Commission.

The budget, the mayor's proposed budget includes a proposal to move that work over into the Office of Arts and Culture.

The Office of Arts and Culture has been funding through admissions tax that work within OED, and the thinking is that there'd be better alignment to keep that work within arts, keep it with its funding source, and be able to leverage collaboration with art staff while at the same time continuing to engage with OED.

However, that shift shows a decrement to OED's overall budget.

And then as Ben mentioned, we have the Only in Seattle neighborhood business district funding restructuring, where you'll see a reduction in CDBG funding that's going to the Only in Seattle program.

an infusion in general fund as a way to offset that.

And I guess the decrement of $480,000 It's not exactly a full decrease to the Only in Seattle program.

What we're planning to do is to take that $480,000 and reinvest it in our small business team program work, working on business stabilization and tenant improvement opportunities for small businesses.

The Only in Seattle program applicants will have access into that money and will earmark 180,000 of those funds specifically for the Only in Seattle program applicants' use.

And in that way, the Only in Seattle program will remain whole and at the same time have this additional flexibility of a better alignment of the funding sources.

Just make a minor, just clarification.

Whether music commission is within arts or OED is still up in the air.

What we want to do is give the music commission an opportunity to make that decision ultimately.

And so we're just, we're having to deliberate with them on that issue.

Great.

It certainly makes sense.

I mean, either department, it can thrive.

I'm sorry, Ben, go ahead.

I just want to further clarify, although there are negatives shown here, so parentheticals, none of them represent an actual loss of resource.

The Music Commission issue would be a transfer to another department, so the underlying resources are there, and the $480,000 of Community Development Block Grant is shifting from one program to another within OED, so there's a net addition of resources.

I think that's clear, but I wanted to make sure it was.

Oh, thank you.

It is clear now.

Thanks.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I just want to give my colleagues the benefit of the discussions that I and Director Lee have had about the proposed reorg here, just to be very clear and transparent.

What this proposes is a reorg that will embrace a creative economy cluster strategy, but it will mean the removal of the Office of Film and Music from OED.

And so if you could talk a little bit about that process around the developing the creative industry cluster program and the decision that you have come to to no longer have an office of film and music as part of that process.

I'll just make thank you for the question.

I think there's been a little bit of confusion on that.

So by city ordinance, The Office of Economic Development was created through ordinance.

But there is no ordinance for Office of Film and Music.

That's a function.

And so it's not a separate department.

And OFM has always been part of OED's portfolio.

And the legal authority for permitting and budgeting falls under OED.

OFM name might change because the term OFM is outdated.

It doesn't recognize special events and other functions.

So the staff feels that the brand is outdated.

That's something we'll revisit down the road.

But the staff there will continue the work of permitting that exists currently.

we're simply adding more capacity to pivot our economic development strategy towards creative economy to address the future automation issue that we briefly talked about earlier.

Our studies have shown that AI cannot replace creative minds.

And so that industry If we can scale as many Seattleites to get into the industry, then we believe there's a better chance for Seattleites to navigate the new economy, especially if we can position underserved population from service sector and propel them into the network economy, we have to have a strategy in place for that.

And we'll talk more about automation and AI and so forth a little bit down the road.

So that's why creative industry cluster has been proposed.

But the office, you will not see, OFM will still exist.

And the branding issue on the long term will have to be addressed with the stakeholders.

I just spoke with the film industry last night and several other occasions as well.

So they're aware that the branding is a little outdated.

But the staff will still be there providing permitting, special events permitting, all those functions will still be in place.

Just for clarification.

But the clarification is, I think, still muddy, but that's because I understand these are ongoing conversations.

There is no legislatively defined Office of Film and Music, but there has been a division of OED that we've all referred to as the Office of Film and Music.

They've had their own director.

that organization of staff will no longer, as I understand it, be referred to as the Office of Film and Music.

And I think that's important for folks to understand because even if its creation was perhaps clunky and not recognized by ordinance, and perhaps it's been awkward to have an office of economic development with another director, another division with its own director within it.

The creation of the Office of Film and Music was done for a reason.

It was done because of a desire to focus on the economic activities, particularly around the regulatory needs of the film and music industry.

And that focus on film and music is now going to be in a broader, a grouping that we're referring to as the Creative Industry Cluster.

So I just, and it may be a different name, but I think I just want to be really transparent with my colleagues on the council that this is a change, and I want to give you the opportunity to talk a little bit about how you worked with the community and you worked with the arts office to come to this point that we're at right now.

Thank you so much.

As I initially talked about the research that we've done in terms of economic trends, we looked into how the knowledge-based economy is going to evolve into the future, especially with 5G technology serving as the backbone to the next economy called the network economy.

And 5G is just around the corner.

And the modernization of telecommunication system will change the way we do work.

And smart cities, autonomous vehicle, these type of new instruments will be the mainstream instrument moving forward in the next economy.

And the Governor Locke actually did a speech just a couple days ago that 15% of Seattle's jobs are predicted to go away in the next 10 years because of AI.

So based on that, we decided to do a study on which industries will be able to survive in the next work economy and not be replaced with robotics.

And so the creative industry is a place that we determined as a good place to be.

The Office of Film and Music's mission is to scale the creative industry.

So actually, it's been adopted, it was adopted three years ago.

So it's not a change to the mission at all.

In fact, it's an alignment of the mission that currently exists.

The term OFM, we believe we should continue to remain that term because it's causing confusion.

But their work will not only include permitting and technical systems, but now their work will include economic development, advancement in the creative industry.

And so I'm sorry that it's causing confusion to some degree.

I did meet with the labor union groups, as well as the film, we had three events.

We invited all the stakeholders.

The industry has been suffering because the film industry has evolved.

The independent film production sector has really declined because everyone wants to do The Avengers or these big ones.

And Netflix also has a big role in the decline of that industry.

On the other hand, we have local procurement, like Visit Seattle that we just met yesterday.

We asked them, for future investments on your video production for your websites, please, let's work together to invest in our local companies for that work.

So what we need to do is provide more contract opportunities for that industry.

And our staff, through the cluster initiative, will advance that work.

is encouraging larger business and medium-sized established businesses to invest in local companies in that industry to help them grow and to hire people in the creative economy to get ready for the network economy.

And so that's part of cluster strategy.

Great.

Thank you for clarifying that.

I will also say I'm confused because OFM is also Office of Financial Management in Olympia.

And that's, I think, the acronym with which we are usually favored when we talk about OFM.

So as you're going forward renaming, you might think about that.

Also, just one last thing for me.

We've worked with the film and music industry across Seattle trying to encourage Olympia.

to realize the value of film and investing in that.

We are way below Vancouver, B.C.

in terms of state investments, significantly below California and Oregon.

We are an orphan here.

And I would just like to, as you're going through this work, just to be able to get the facts and figures behind why it's important and why the value comes back to the state.

I understand Spokane's killing us right now with its film industry and so many films going there and using the facilities they've already developed.

OK, thank you.

Anything else that you would like to raise?

We're at 1030 mark right now.

All right, thank you.

Any further questions?

Thank you for your leadership on this, Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Mosqueda, last question, please.

Oh, it's not a question.

Well, yeah, it is a question, just very specific on the film issue.

Is the city working in conjunction with King County and the executive's recent announcement that he would like to do what the state has not been able to do and encourage good living wage jobs in the film industry?

I know he just made a recent announcement.

I'm not familiar with the details, but are we working in collaboration with the executive in King County?

Right, their announcement and our announcement came at the same time and we are excited because this is economic development is really a regional It's just much more than one city strategy.

At the same time, the state is also promoting new initiative around this.

And so we're really excited about the alignment and the timing.

And we met with the director of the film department yesterday, last night, to talk about alignment.

So, we're really excited about it and we'll be happy to come back at some point to give you a little bit more details on our investment strategies.

Well, I want to encourage you and thank you for that work because the regional approach in all of these things is what's going to move us forward.

So, thank you for that.

Okay.

Well, Bobby, Amanda, thank you for being at the table and we will move on to our next item and invite our friends from Parks and Recreation.

Jesus, I see you out there.

Excellent.

So, as you all get settled in, Tracy, let's see, Councilmember Juarez, do you want to introduce this for us?

I do, and I'll be very brief because I know that Superintendent Aguirre has a lot to add.

I just want to, you know, and we've had talks offline with, now I understand it's Dr. Noble, and the superintendent and Tracy.

I will let Jesus does what he does well, but I do want to make this commentary, which I don't want to have to repeat it all through the budget process, but this is my main concern about sharing parks.

First of all, it's been an absolute pleasure.

I've really enjoyed working with you.

Tracy's been phenomenal.

We've done a lot of great things.

But I'm going to continue to push on community centers, because community centers like libraries and food banks have evolved and adapted to the most emergent needs in our society.

What we have in community centers, libraries, food banks, are basically enhanced service centers.

They're doing more than just providing a place to go swim, checking out a book, or getting food.

We know that they're providing social services for housing, for medical eviction prevention, social services, our NAV teams.

So I'm gonna continue to push that community centers be that community space and have the resources, not just to have the programming to address issues for our elders and our children, our disabled community, but also have the capital to start looking at an expansion of where we need community centers where we have none.

Now, Mr. Noble and I had an interesting exchange.

I was more hot than he was, but, because I called BS, but that's another issue.

I don't like it when I get the, well, if we do this for you, we have to do it for everyone.

That's what you say to a sixth grader, not to an elected official.

When community in the city is saying, Thank you for the programming.

Thank you for some expansion.

But there is brick and mortar needed throughout the city and more than just maintenance.

So I will leave it at that because we've had long conversations and we'll have some more down the road.

But I just wanted to add it.

It has been a real pleasure working with you, Superintendent.

Thank you, and I've enjoyed my initial tenure, and I'm really enjoying the second time around here.

Thank you for your support.

Can we start with introductions of the table, and then I'm going to let Tracy do a quick intro.

So Tracy, do you want to start?

Shirley, Tracy Rastliff, Council of Central Staff.

And Tom, I'm sorry, Tom, Ben.

Hello.

Go ahead.

Hitzuzak Yudran, Seattle Parks and Recreation.

I'm Donnie Grabowski, Parks and Recreation Finance.

Nice to see you.

Very good.

Okay, Tracy, please.

Council Members, you have in front of you obviously the Parks and Department who's going to go over the changes from the endorsed budget to the proposed 2020. In my three and a half days of review of their budget, I have found mostly that they have complied with the changes in particular that the council made to the budget last year.

There were a number of changes.

There is one slight change that they are going to discuss today having to do with funding that was allocated for waiting pools, but I will let them go ahead and talk with you as they go through their presentation.

Very good, thank you.

Okay, Jesus, you're on.

Thank you, and thank you for the opportunity.

And so, we'll walk through the slides, but as we jump in, just want to, again, appreciate all of you for your support, particularly the folks on the Parks Committee, and also the residents.

It's been really exciting to hear feedback directly, and Council Member Juarez, your point about the community centers and the need to really understand the needs of our communities is really important to me.

And as we jump into the first slide, this really talks about our overall policy framework.

And, you know, all of this for us is anchored in sort of the broader mission of, you know, we work on supporting, you know, Our residents, helping them be healthy, we really focus on helping the environment stay healthy and then building strong communities.

So all of the work we do there, that drives our mission and our values and all of that is anchored in access and inclusiveness and of course in equity.

And so the two major legislative pieces here for 2019 that are going to impact our work.

are really hitting at those values.

And the first one is truly about just fundamental basic access.

I think as council might know, back in 2011, the Department of Justice did an audit, a sort of sampling of many of our facilities in Parks and Recreation and found over 4,000 citations in terms of our inability to comply with the ADA.

And so the department and the city obviously have been focusing on that and FAS as a new mandate here.

And for us, in addition to the work that was highlighted during the DOJ audit, we sort of did our own third party assessment and as we can imagine, found even more barriers, more citations, over 7,700.

And so we've been working diligently on getting those rectified and will continue to do so.

And so our response to the FAS mandate will be to continue to focus on, in a very strategic way, looking at how we can move those barriers.

And our budget for 2019-2020 actually includes $3.7 million to continue to address those.

If I can just quickly interrupt here.

Again, we're talking about a system where I think we can work with our human services department as well around all ages and abilities.

And I know it's a horse that I've been riding for a long time, but making sure that things like park benches are built in such a way that individuals who have difficulties getting up, for example, have what they need in order to to have the arm rests and I know it's been an issue.

I'm working with Eston on that too to begin to have walking benches.

So if you'll continue just to work closely with our human services department on this, I think our funding can be leveraged.

So thank you for that.

Yeah, thank you.

And certainly working with all of our partners.

And you mentioned transportation, and I think a lot of the access.

We have over 460 parks, and really looking at how we create true access to these parks is going to take a real collaborative approach, because there's a lot of investment that needs to be made.

But yeah.

And then I guess moving on to the second one here with regards to the Green New Deal and the council's resolution there.

In response to the mayor's mandate to the agencies in 2018 to sort of double down on implementing the city's climate action plan.

We focused on a couple of different areas, both with our buildings and our facilities, our own operations.

With our buildings looking to both try to reduce the emissions of those buildings and try to move some of our buildings away from sort of the natural gas boilers to some of the electric heat pumps.

But those are going to be some long term discussions that we have, Looking at helping our community to respond, I think the council, as council knows, I think last year we've piloted a couple of initiatives in four of our facilities to try to deal with increased air filtration for those buildings.

So that we could help our residents have respite from some of the heat emergencies, smoke emergencies that luckily we didn't have this summer, but we did the prior summer.

So as we're doing that, we're learning quite a bit.

I think our challenge, though, is that many of our facilities don't even have HVAC systems here.

So we have to think about how we're going to address that.

And then even on the operational side, we had lots of internal work and discussions on what do we do in case of those heat emergencies or smoke emergencies in our buildings that don't have HVAC systems.

How do we tailor our programmatic operations?

And so how do we talk to families?

How do we deal with young people and older folks in our buildings and making sure that we keep them safe?

So we've been doing a lot of work there and thinking about how to do that.

But long term as we do maintenance and improvement to our buildings, that'll be part of what we continue to work on.

And I'll talk more about this as we get into the strategy piece, but a significant part of our planning for, we're in the middle of a strategic plan and of course we're gonna be next year Coming back with a proposal for the second six-year cycle of the park district, a big aspect of that is going to be sort of how we're responding to climate, how we're making sure that we're both supporting communities, but also in our own operations, helping.

And a small thing I'll say about Nutzball, but it's an important piece.

Also on our fleet, we have a significant fleet.

We have over 600 vehicles.

We've been working over the last few years both to continue to electrify our fleet, so we've got some fully electric vehicles now and lots of hybrids.

But also reducing the mileage, for example, by looking at our maintenance routes and looking at where our maintenance facilities are just to reduce the number of miles that these vehicles have to be on the road.

And then, of course, as part of the mayor's vehicle reduction mandate this year.

We're committed to reducing our fleet in 2020 by, I think, 26 vehicles, so we'll continue to work on that.

Great.

Council Member Mosqueda has a question.

I don't know if it has anything to do with child care at community centers, but

No, I will let you ask that.

I actually was going to ask the Seattle City Light question.

Earlier this week, we approved the Seattle City Light pilot project on electric charging for fleets, and they talked a little bit about partnership with private business.

Our question was, what are we doing to actually make this approach apply within the City of Seattle Department?

So is Parks working with City Light on this pilot for electric vehicle?

We are.

We are.

We had actually identified two sites that we were going to work with them on installing charging facilities.

At the end, one of them decided not to do it because there were some other private facilities there, but we're continuing to look for places.

And we actually installed, for example, at our own headquarters, we installed a couple of charging stations.

OK.

And I think the big message that we've been saying is we understand the importance of launching these pilots in anticipation of a 2021 rate change but any feedback that you all can give us early about how we can take this to scale especially in-house So we can get our vehicles charging Faster would be great.

So I'm glad that you guys are working in partnership.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you councilmember O'Brien

Thanks, I appreciate the Green New Deal Seattle on this slide, and especially since it just passed a month ago, and so I imagine that there's thinking on that.

But I'd love just a little more detail about, conceptually, where you think parks fits into the Green New Deal, or what the thinking's been like.

So I think generally for us is again, as I mentioned, it's twofold.

So one is how do we continue to support and educate our community?

So there's a support part in terms of how we make sure that our neediest communities get the things like the respite from these events.

And I think the other aspect is just our own operations.

So looking at all of the impact that we have on the environment, how we could produce our own emissions, produce that impact.

And I think that the third piece also is our continued work on the the restoration of our forest, right?

Half of our 6,200 acres is undeveloped parkland.

And through the Green Seattle Partnership, I think we've done a lot of tremendous work that we need to continue to build on and continue to both plant, sort of find the right balance between planting native species, but also hardier species because the climate is changing.

So for us, 2020 really is going to be a big year of just evaluating sort of where are the places that we can continue to support that.

I appreciate the mention of Green Seattle Partnership and Councilmember Pacheco's committee earlier this week had a great presentation on that and it's really a really great program.

The other thing I just want to flag, because I think parks could play a role in this.

One of the concepts embedded in the Green New Deal for Seattle is this concept community members are calling green zones.

And the idea is identifying geographic areas within the city.

And it's a concept that comes out of the state of California, but identifying geographic areas in the city.

that the people there have largely been adversely impacted by both environmental and economic injustice.

And so the first part is identifying those areas.

We actually talk a lot about certain neighborhoods in Seattle and how they perform differently than others.

How we would actually measure that and get to it is a little bit of work, but it's not too much of a stretch to figure out where that would be.

And then figuring out what are the deep investments we do in those communities to essentially reverse those trends.

And again, that's not a concept that's frankly new to the city.

We've been doing a lot of those types of things, but I do think there's an effort to really focus it and take some of the existing things we've done.

And parks obviously, park facilities plays a role.

Parks can play a great role in the outreach to communities to try and identify green zones and what are the types of investments.

And so those are things that I've just flagged for potential opportunities as we think about Green New Deal next year.

Yeah, thank you.

That's great.

And just to pile on a little bit, but also to acknowledge the good work that your office department has done in the last 10 years.

I know you did quite an analysis on making sure that every neighborhood is within, what, a quarter mile of some either green space or park, either whether it is- For the 10 minute walk concept, yeah.

And can you either right now or before we end up on our budget conversations.

Tell me, how are we doing on that?

We're actually doing pretty well.

We're, you know, depending on sort of the metrics that you look at, we're, I think we're at 94% of our residents are within a 10 minute walk to a parking space.

But I think that the challenge is going to continue to increase both from the basic sort of availability of land to acquire, as well as when we look at where the gaps are and sort of, if we go just straight by the numbers, And then we outline an acquisition plan that just looks at creating that access.

We sort of undermine some of our own equity goals, for example.

So there are some areas in the city that when you look at the metric, don't meet that criteria for a ten minute walk access.

But these are communities that have large yards, single family housing.

They have open space already there, and some of our communities that don't have that.

they already have parks in that neighborhood, but there aren't enough of them.

And so when we think about it, I'm excited to continue to push to get that criteria, but I think we also need to rethink how we're doing that and talk about quality for one and sort of the kind of activation that's happening.

And then also, and Council Member, I think you and I have talked about this as well, is thinking about non-parks and recreation land as well as part of how we create the access.

So whether it's the rights of way, whether it's the publicly owned private spaces that create this access for our neighbors.

So I guess my point is we have to really think about that criteria in new ways and not just focus on buying another park in every community, because that's going to be increasingly more difficult.

Thank you.

Good.

Okay, so going on to the next slide, and I alluded to this a little bit, but for 2020, one of the key areas that we're gonna focus on is we're gonna make a recommendation to the mayor and to you all about the next second six-year cycle of the Park District.

But a lot of the work that we're doing in 2019 is actually helping drive that, and so currently, as Council might know, we're in the middle of an engagement process for a strategic plan that will help us guide create priorities for the next six to 12 years.

And not just for park district investments, but for everything we do.

So the idea there is we look at where Seattle is now and we see new numbers like what Director Lee brought up earlier today that just continue to reinforce this idea that we live in a different Seattle than we've lived in the past.

And so how do we make sure that the work of Parks and Recreation keeps up with that and continues to meet the needs of our residents?

So the strategic plan will create the roadmap of priorities that will then inform the next level of engagement on the Park District financial plan.

And I did want to sort of share a little bit about the sort of what's driving these priorities because it will absolutely inform the 2021 through 2026 Park District and beyond.

And this set of values that are really driving our planning and we're looking at this idea that Alluding to some of the things you brought up, Council Member McEvoy, already is this idea that we fundamentally serve people and people of all ages.

And so it isn't just about building more stuff or buying more land.

It's how do we make sure that we're doing it based on their needs and the things that they're telling us that are important to them.

It's really making sure that these strategies are really people-focused and program-focused.

And as we're doing that, understanding that there are some communities, as you said, Council Member O'Brien, that have been just disparately impacted by some of the challenges here.

double down on this equity conversation and racial equity conversation.

So when we have conversations about investments, they have to be driven by an equity framework.

And some of the other pieces that are important to us is this idea that because our city's changing and the needs of our residents are changing, we can't rely on the same strategies we've relied on in the past to do the work that we do, both internally in terms of how we operate, but also sort of the expectations of our communities.

So one small example that would be, we continue to get new requests for different types of uses.

So this idea that we no longer can afford to build, for example, a single use space.

So if we're going to build a new court, it's got to be a court that works for tennis, and for pickleball, and for futsal, and you name it.

So this idea that shifting the conversation around an athletic field that serves one particular use just isn't really responsible anymore.

And a couple of things I'll say is because we serve people and we're focusing on the neediest folks, our engagement has to continue to evolve and ensure that we're actually hearing from and talking to everyone.

I'm actually really proud and happy to announce that the engagement process that's ongoing now with the strategic plan, we've actually achieved over 10,000 people who have given us feedback on the work that we do.

And we've done it in a variety of ways.

So we've gone out to events and talked to folks at community groups.

We've met with a lot of our partners.

But we've also had a lot of social media campaigning, both in English as well as in seven other languages.

We've done a statistically valid survey that really builds on one we did three years ago.

And we actually even hired some community engagement ambassadors that go door to door and survey the residents in various languages, just again, to try to get at the folks that don't always come to these meetings.

So all of that engagement is really informing the strategies that will then guide some of the planning for the next cycle of the park district.

That's great and I'm sure Councilmember Gonzalez is teaching us to make sure that we're asking for that people who are in the middle of the neighborhood and that they know the language and they know the culture and that we are working with them and asking them to help reach the neighbors and it's not just us internally doing that work so thank you.

Thank you for highlighting that.

And I will say that in addition to making sure we're doing it the right way is making sure that we're doing it often and deliberately so there isn't a one-time conversation.

Right, exactly.

Good for you.

Please, Council Member Muscata, I think that's you down there.

I'm sorry, I didn't want to interrupt you.

Are you still, do you have more to cover on slide two here?

Okay.

No, thank you.

In the proposed budget, is it appropriate to ask questions right here about the impact on the golf courses?

Our analysis was that there was $12.3 million to manage the city's four golf courses, Jackson, Jefferson, West Seattle, and Interbay.

And I am concerned based on some of the initial data and I would defer to central staff or others to talk about what the statement of legislative intent report said back to us.

I'm still not seeing the equity analysis and why we would be putting over $12 million into golf courses.

especially when we have a need for those park services to be retrofitted across the city.

You have extremely high needs in our community centers.

I guess my big question is, what are these dollars going towards?

Do we have a sense of equity?

In terms of who we're serving and are we trying to encourage more people to attend or are we going to?

Maybe scope the way in which we use that land to maybe nine holes or something like that so we can do more affordable housing and childcare and things like that on the land if it's not fully being utilized.

So that exact question is what the mayor has asked, charged us to sort of figure out.

So certainly we've done studies on the different fiscal models and we can tell you where people are coming from and we can do some of that analysis.

But really, she's asked us to take a closer look to see what's the appropriate use of this land.

And so not just the $12.5 million, but the hundreds of acres that we're investing in this activity.

So we're working with our colleagues at other agencies to try to identify all of those issues.

You know, what are the equity implications, what are the land use implications, et cetera, so that we will identify all of the considerations that we have to look at to figure out what the best use of this land is.

Certainly whether whether there's other appropriate uses Different kinds of recreational activities that are that are more that are more inclusive As well as other things like housing and things like that given given the challenges we run into an i-42 problem with that with a golf course the our initiative 42 that if we decide that we're going to Repurpose even and using councilmember misguided suggestion that we have nine holes rather than 18 holes or at the big four Do we run into the I-42 issue where we would have to provide other parcels of park somewhere in the area?

Yeah, no, and that is, again, that is why we have to look very closely and deliberately, because there's lots of issues like that, whether it's I-42 or other land use issues.

There's environmental considerations, for example, in some of the golf courses, where particularly Jackson Golf Course has some real environmentally critical areas that if we think about doing other things, we have to keep those in consideration.

But yes, there's lots of challenges.

to shifting the use.

Just real quick, Madam Chair.

Yeah, go ahead.

Remind me when the report will come back to us.

The analysis.

Oh, we're actually sending up an interdepartmental team that we're going to launch this fall.

So we're anticipating probably by the end of the first quarter next year we'll have some information.

Okay, this fall being right now 2019. Okay, and then I don't know where this fits in but I've had the chance to talk to a number of families across the city who would love to have access to more water parks and the kiddie pools.

I understand that not all of them are open.

five or even seven days a week.

For example, the one around the corner from my house is open three days a week.

I think it's a Sunday or maybe a Monday, Tuesday, and then a Thursday between limited hours.

So is there a call from community?

Have you heard more folks asking for additional kiddie pools to stay open?

I know that we've opened a handful of water parks, which is really exciting.

People love those.

But anything else that we can do to help address the growing number of children at record numbers in the city so that families have a place to go at our city parks?

Yeah, and there's a budget item that we could talk about, or you want to wait till we get through the slide?

I'm happy to kind of talk through it a little bit now, or whatever your preference is.

But do you want to go through it?

Sure.

Or why don't we wait till the fourth slide?

Sure.

OK.

OK, anything else?

Okay, so the next slide shows a four-year budget summary for parks.

It's an overview showing the 2017 and the 18 actuals of 2019 adopted in the 2020 proposed budget.

In the subsequent slide, we're gonna get into some more details about our budget.

But this slide shows that our total budget for 2020 is approximately 262 million, which is about 24 million more than the 19 adopted.

And a large portion of this is due to wage inflation, which we'll talk about in the subsequent slide.

The first three rows of this table show general fund appropriation changes by year.

The 2020 proposed general fund budget is close to $105 million.

It reflects a $5.7 million increase over 2019, or 6%, and that's primarily due to wage inflation.

The next two sections show dollar and percent changes to all other operating funds, which include the Park Fund, which is where our earned revenues are received, as well as the Park District funds, and all capital funds such as REIT and King County Levy.

The 8% increase in 2020 accounts for wage inflation in the park fund and park district and the 17% capital appropriation increase primarily reflects the start of the aquarium expansion project.

The last three rows highlight our FTE changes year after year from 2017 through 2020. As you can see, it's about a 1% increase per year.

In 2018, we received additional encampment resources, which explains that increase.

In 2019, we added five positions in various program areas, accounting for that increase over 2018. And then in the 2020 proposed budget, this includes FTE changes that were included in the 19 adopted budget, as well as the 2020 endorsed.

We added maintenance staff in the 2020 endorsed budget to support maintenance of newly opened land bank sites that were funded by the park district.

And in 2020, we also have some budget neutral ads, which we'll be discussing in the subsequent slide.

Great.

Quick question on this.

When we passed the Metropolitan Park District in 2014, we had promised the voters that we would have a certain percentage of the park's budget always maintained through the general fund.

Can you reassure us on these numbers that we are consistent with that?

And I think it was, what, 70 some percentage of the total budget?

We can, and if I recall, it's actually a dollar amount that's indexed to inflation rather than a percentage of the overall budget.

And we have been over that figure, and we'll be again.

So this next slide highlights major proposed 2020 budget changes.

We have four sections to walk through.

The first clarification, though, I want to make is that these dollars are not in thousands, even though it says it on the slide.

So please disregard the title thousands at the top.

OK.

Yeah.

$150 million.

That was one, anyway.

So the first- We've become the Federal Department of Parks and Recreation.

So the first section is about efficiencies to improve customer service and to get to the first item on aquatic equity initiatives.

We, just a general quick statement about this is that we're repurposing funding to equalize our service levels at 22 waiting pools and then we're allowing ourselves to invest in other aquatic equity initiatives like eliminating the low-income swimming fee.

So just to give a little bit more background on this, in 2018 City Council increased SPR's wading pool budget to increase service levels at our wading pools, and that was an increase from 15 to 22. The 19 budget did not include that service level, but we were able to identify one-time resources to sustain that for that year.

And then in 2020, we received an additional $150,000 via a green sheet, and that included $70,000 to maintain those service levels at the 22 waiting pools.

We received $150,000 to increase the waiting pool And what we are proposing in this proposed budget is to maintain the 22 waiting pool service level and rededicate the $80,000 to cover drop-in swim fees for low-income youth and also expand our lifeguard program.

to youth, and we would be recruiting diverse youth into the program.

And the reason that we believe that this is important is that it'll help us support the youth who are receiving scholarships for swimming lessons and allow them to have more access to indoor pools so that they can practice their swims.

Do we still have the Women of the World schedule for some of our swimming pools?

We do.

Yeah, we do.

Yeah, we do.

Okay.

We're doing some work with Office of Civil Rights and just making sure that we're complying with everything we do comply with, but yeah.

Councilmember Muscata, did you have a question?

Just briefly, I understand from my colleague we have a lot of appreciation for Councilmember Johnson, Rob Johnson, who advocated for this in his tenure here.

Do we have any feedback from community about ways in which we could better monitor access and utilization.

My understanding is that the wade pools or the kiddie pools are being monitored, and each of the staff there need to check off how many people attend each day.

And that attendance or the presence of families will or will not determine future funding for those wade pools.

So it feels like a performance-based contract in some ways with the community.

And if people don't know about the weight pulls, or if people are getting displaced, or if there's new people moving in and they're not aware, how do we do a better job of doing outreach and education when sometimes those weight pulls don't have regular hours, if they're off hours or if they're alternating days, families might not be aware and they see it one day with no water in it.

And then they just decide not to go back.

So what are we doing for outreach and education to the neighborhood so that if we're measuring success of those weight pulls, it's not just based on word of mouth?

Yeah, I think partially what we're trying to do, to your point about the consistency and the messaging, is just having better signage so people understand that.

But you're right, the decisions about which pools will be open what days is really based on the use data, like our guards go around and they count.

figure out how much money we have to invest and we sort of create that.

And I think the operating the 22 pools is, I think it's worked.

To give you an example of the total available hours and days, because of weather and the tenants and all that, we think that's the right number.

And that's why we're proposing to continue that, because it is an increase, but then also to continue to try to further some of our other equity goals to ensure.

Because broadly I think one of our one of our Concerns given that we've in the city surrounded by water and given some of the disparities for example in drop drowning rates with people of color to some much much higher This is one.

We're trying to address that as well maintain the levels, but also add some additional equity focus Thank you.

Do you want to continue Donnie?

I have a question.

Oh, do you okay?

Sorry councilmember Gonzalez.

Thank you chair Bagshaw.

I just wanted to Dig in a little bit on a couple of Excuse me, a couple of areas that, one area that's highlighted on the presentation and one area that is not.

I'm happy to cover both of those now or?

Okay, so in the actual budget book on page 104, oh, no wait, I'm sorry, page 108, it spends a little bit of time talking about the Seattle Conservation Corps and in particular it looks like there's a modest increase to the Seattle Conservation Corps program for the proposed budget in 2020. The budgeting for Seattle Conservation Corps has remained relatively flat over the last several years and of course I know that personally I'm a big fan of the program and for folks who are on the dais or in community and are unfamiliar with the program, this has been a program that's been around the city since 1986 and provides employment for people.

It's a city run employment program effectively for people experiencing homelessness, primarily adults.

Very popular program that really teaches folks job skills and preparation.

I sort of see this aligned with the conversation we just had with the Office of Economic Development around around getting prepared for what might be coming in the recession.

And also what we saw from the city budget office presentation yesterday, which really highlighted that we can anticipate a reduction in job growth over the coming few years.

So that's just my perspective.

introduction remarks to really wanting to hear a little bit more from you superintendent around how we are connecting the dots for folks who are participating in the conservation core program with meaningful employment afterwards.

I know that there is some anecdotal evidence of folks who participate in that program being permanently hired or otherwise gainfully employed with the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department.

But I'd like to get a better sense from you about how we're actually tracking some of that information so that it's less anecdotal and more evidence-based.

And then secondly, we heard from the Office of Economic Development about some of the workforce development investments that they're going to be making.

Would like to get a sense from you about how you envision an opportunity to collaborate and coordinate with OED.

And then, of course, we have our Seattle Promise program through the Department of Education and Early Learning and funded through our FEPP levy.

And again, just really want to get a sense from you about how you are seeing an opportunity to connect the dots for folks who are participating in the program, getting these important skill sets, but need that extra assistance in being able to achieve gainful employment and job placement as a critical part of, I think, our overall economic development strategy.

And our overall strategy to address the needs of people experiencing homelessness Yes, so I think so certainly that the conservation core is is an incredibly valuable Program that we operate and as you said councilmember, it's a very specific program that's designed to both Lead to employment, but also we do a lot of case management.

For example, we really work with these individuals and who are experiencing homelessness as well as, in many cases, issues with drug abuse and things like that.

And so it's a program that we've really focused on developing the life skills and the job skills and connecting them to housing, connecting them to other services, and then also connecting them to jobs.

And I don't have the data in front of me in terms of how many people we hire.

We can get you that.

But the idea is we need to be doing more on how we connect them to other opportunities for employment.

And all of the things that you mentioned are exactly the places we should look at it.

And not just, frankly, with the Conservation Corps, but with a lot of our youth programming, for example.

You mentioned the Seattle Promise.

I think we're working to think about how do we create pipelines for the young folks who participate in our programs to continue to get engaged, whether they're in green jobs or other things like that.

It's an area that we need to do more work on and sort of really improve the programs that we're offering now.

We do a lot of summer programs where we provide jobs for kids and give them stipends.

I think we need to do a better job of connecting that to the next step.

And particularly with the promise, I think there's conversations at the city how we do that.

I do think, though, with the Conservation Corps, You know, there's been a lot of discussion about whether we expand it and what do we do with it.

And I think, you know, part of my interest right now is continue to improve it and begin to do a better job of collecting that data so it's not anecdotal.

One shift that we did this year just organizationally is move that the oversight of that group to a different division that's really more focused on partnerships than it's actually located there at Magnuson Park with the Conservation Corps so that that team could get more support so we can begin to do a better job of articulating sort of the value of that program and then tracking those participants.

Great, I really appreciate that.

I know that our city resources and dollars are very limited, so as much as I'd like to be able to pitch an opportunity to create a financial expansion opportunity for the program, I also recognize that we have a little ways to go, perhaps, before we have that type of a conversation, because I think we really need tighten up our understanding of the effectiveness and the outcomes that were seen as part of the $4 million investment.

Más o menos.

Más o menos.

$4 million investment per year that we're seeing in this program.

I mean, it's not an insignificant investment, but I do think it would be helpful to get a clearer sense of exactly what this investment is producing in terms of positive outcomes and results for the people who are participating in it.

I've had an opportunity to meet with a lot of the folks in the past who are participating in the Conservation Corps program and have been both inspired and overwhelmed by the complexity of the issues that many of the Corps participants face and have been, you know, really impressed with the amount of the amount of care that Seattle Parks and Recreation staff and employees have invested in that program, both in the youth and the adult programming context.

That's all my questions on the Conservation Corps area, but I did have some questions around the proposed expansion using sugary, excuse me, sweetened beverage tax funds for recreation programming.

I'm happy to hold on that if others have questions.

I think Council President Harrell had a question he wanted to dive into.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm not sure.

Sorry, it is weird.

At least I'm going to bounce around a little bit.

I just had one question on the RV remediation efforts.

But had you even gotten to that yet, or should have?

On the what?

On the RV remediation efforts, it's $100,000.

I'll just ask the question, because we're short of ad libbing here a little bit.

I understand that we're going to do, I think, the council a deeper dive in other developments, but I was just trying to figure out your piece of our efforts.

Is that an FTE or this park property that may cost you for lack of use?

What is that piece of the RV remediation that we're increasing by 100 percent?

Yeah, Donnie's telling me that it's labor and supplies.

You know, as you know, we already participate in the navigation team and both in right-of-way and non-right-of-way cleanups.

So these additional funds would be additional costs associated with addressing that.

So for the supplies?

Labor and supplies, yeah, for us.

So so more so some FTEs devoting more time grant some supply, so that's probably okay Yeah, thank you Great councilmember Muscata, and then just the back to councilmember Gonzales.

Thank you.

Just to follow up on that so in the hundred thousand dollars that's being proposed to expand the RV remediation program, additional sites that are not currently covered by the city's RV remediation program.

If this is an expansion of our efforts around the navigation team, what types of activities are we talking about?

What additional locations are we planning to go to?

And my final question might be related to the one I asked yesterday.

Is this part of the $7 million that we are not transitioning over to the regional governance effort if it's tied into the navigation team?

I think the answer on the second is yes, but I think, both because I don't have the information and I don't think Jesus does either, better to bring you a kind of comprehensive presentation about, excuse me, presentation about the navigation teamwork and the RV remediation work as part of the homelessness briefing on Wednesday.

I'm not trying to dodge it, I just think we'll all get a better perspective on the proposed additions and the functions that they're funding.

Great.

Thank you for bringing that up.

And just as a reminder to my colleagues, we will be diving into the investments around homelessness next Tuesday.

We're going to spend the whole day on that.

So any questions?

It's great to raise them now because we can give an alert to the department that we're going to be asking them again.

But I don't think we're sliding as we're going to have a whole day devoted to it.

Good.

Did you have another question?

I do.

But I think Council Member Herbold has something related to hygiene that might be a little bit more provide continuity here, and then if I can have an opportunity to ask some questions about the proposed expansion of recreation programming, I'd appreciate that.

Sure, appreciate it.

So the Seattle Parks and Recreation budget has a $99,000 line item for the Portland Loo, and this is a really important investment to create a restroom that is accessible for all visitors to the park that it's located in, regardless of their housing status.

We worked with the city auditor to audit the city's activities.

around the navigation team, and one of its recommendations was focused on opportunities that, specifically, the Parks Department has to fund available bathroom and hygiene facilities that SParks already has in its portfolio.

And there's, of course, an understandably concern about the capacity to staff those kinds of facilities.

And so, specifically, the city auditor was interested in looking at an expansion to include hygiene facilities in several community centers that have access to showers.

Currently, Delridge, Green Lake, Miller, and Rainier all provide showers to non-program participants.

equal access to all, but there are about six other community centers that have showers that don't provide this level of service to non-program participants.

So as I've had discussions With you, Director, I've expressed a strong interest in looking at whether or not we could either expand the hours at the four locations that currently provide this service or include it in additional community centers.

And then the other piece that they've pegged is, they being the auditor, is the opportunities that may be provided in the city's, the Parks Department's comfort stations.

And whether or not we could pursue a staffed, some staffing of those comfort stations.

They don't have showers, but they certainly have restrooms.

And I think folks have come to the conclusion that staffing these facilities is really the key to addressing the challenges that are presented in providing this essential need.

So I'm just really interested in how we could move this conversation as recommended by the city auditor and go beyond just investing in a single bathroom facility in one part of the city versus others throughout the city.

Sure.

I think you did a great job of highlighting all of the challenges for sure.

And I think certainly I agree with you that providing access to restroom facilities for extended periods of time during the day Fundamentally, it's going to be really difficult to do that in a way that's safe and actually truly makes these accessible unless we staff them.

And I think that's the fundamental challenge.

And then it's who's going to staff them and sort of what does that mean when we're staffing them.

And I think that the pilot that we're doing, for example, with the Portland Loo, is one attempt to sort of get halfway there in terms of the design of this bathroom is specifically intended to help create access without necessarily having staffing.

But at the end of the day, I think that it's going to be hard to get away from sort of the need to have a person there keeping an eye on things.

Which is a significant shift in the way we've been doing things with our restroom facility.

So I'm happy to talk more, and in terms of the showering, Our staff really, really appreciates being able to provide that service at those four facilities.

And the use varies.

I think Delridge and Green Lake are the ones that get tremendous amount of use on a weekly basis.

The others are not as much.

So we can be happy to talk about more facilities that have that available.

But at the same time, our swimming pools and other areas that have showers, we do.

And maybe we should clarify even more and do a better job of talking to our staff about this.

But anyone who comes into that building, you don't have to be signing up for a swim lesson to use the shower facility.

I think that they're still accessible.

Maybe we don't advertise them as such and we can sort of work with the staff to do that.

But yeah, I mean, I think that the fundamental sort of answer to your question is, yes, I mean, we're happy to engage in more of those discussions.

And for all of our residents, I think the single largest complaint, although maybe one of the top two, is the condition of our restroom facilities and the accessibility of our restroom facilities in all of our parks and all of our community centers.

So just as a follow up, it would be helpful to understand why it is, and if it's just a matter of it being made known to the public, but the city auditor identified six community centers as being community centers with showers restricted to program participants.

And so if there's some essential difference between those, what's happening at those six centers versus the other four, I really would like to understand that more.

I think the essential difference is those four were identified and sort of identified and advertised sort of through our partnerships, but also is the staff there is charged with and prepared to provide resources, the towels and things like that, which also become a challenge.

I think the other sites just were not selected as sites to provide the services.

So there is capacity there if we choose to do that, and part of it is sort of staff education.

The other part is really understanding kind of what we need to provide that staff in that facility to make sure that they're open.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

I would just like to underscore what Councilmember Herbold just raised.

This is something that we've discussed, I think, every single year that I've been on this council.

And the more we can just open up these public facilities, because we spend a lot of money in things like our urban rest stop.

And if we already have something built and available, it makes a lot more sense to me to be able to open them up to people who need the showers.

I mean, it all comes right back to a public health issue.

And with regard to funding somebody that is monitoring, I know that we've discussed the San Francisco model.

I think they've got, what, 14 or 15 of their places.

And they're working through their water department.

It's our equivalent of SPU.

And I'm not suggesting that we go scrap money from SPU at this point.

But I do want to say, we've got to look at this as a system again, that it ties in for your facilities.

But also, SPU has to clean up if things are a mess.

Business owners, they write to us every day saying, the first thing we do in the morning is get the hose out.

Because if people don't have a place to go, they're going to go where they can.

And it strikes me that we've already got these facilities built, and there's six more that we can open up.

I'd really encourage us to take a look at that seriously and get them open up in 2020. Yeah, thank you.

And I will add one other piece, because I think it's important.

And that is, But we want to make sure that as we open up, whether it's these six or some portion of those six, that we do provide the staff with that resource.

I think when you think about the other facilities that are having high use, our staff sometimes struggles with making sure that they're prepared for the types of interactions that they're going to encounter as folks come into those buildings.

So we want to make sure we do that.

I mean, you mentioned the San Francisco model.

I think part of our work is also to learn and sort of collaborate with others.

We actually just hosted the entire executive team of the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department to come down and do some of this conversation.

We had lots of conversations about restroom facilities and staffing and encampments and all of that.

So we're continuing to learn from their model, and we're hopefully going to go visit them.

Thank you.

And just a thank you to you and your staff, again, for the amazing work that you did during our February snow.

And I know your staff were, in many cases, staying overnight there, keeping things open.

And one of the exchanges that we had afterwards is a sense of, well, we need a little more training in that arena and provide support to you and your staff.

But I do want to say thank you.

That was a yeoman's effort on a rugged time for a lot of people.

Thanks.

To quote the Human Services Department, together we saved lives during that winter storm.

And a number of our local companies, too.

I know that Starbucks and Vulcan and others dived right in bringing food, but it was a thank you.

This is a thank you opportunity, Jesus.

Chair Bagshaw, may I ask my question now?

Sure.

Thank you.

I really appreciate the conversation around the additional ways for us to meet the hygiene needs, which is really a public health need of individuals who don't have ready access to to toileting.

So on that note, before I ask my question, I did wanna express a note of gratitude to the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department around the Ballard Commons Park investment that I championed last year during our budget cycle.

So I'm really excited to see the rollout of that programming and opportunity within Ballard Commons Park to provide those hygiene services coupled with staff and programming.

So looking forward to getting a report back on hopefully what will be a story of successes by Seattle Parks and Recreation in terms of the launching of that particular program and partnership.

with the Ballard Alliance, so thank you so much for that.

And then in terms of the recreation programming, which shows up as being funded through the Sweetened Beverage Tax Funds, that's an additional $150,000 a year.

I believe it's ongoing, if I recall correctly.

Setting us, yesterday I asked questions around wanting to have a citation to the specific portion of the Sweetened Beverage Tax Ordinance that supports the utilization of these funds for this kind of programming.

Setting that question aside, because I trust that our Council Central staff has flagged that as an issue and we'll do some analysis there.

I'm actually prepared to answer it now if it's helpful.

Okay.

Can I ask a few questions first and then we can get that answer from you?

So the budget book on page 103 talks about what the intended programs will be funded through this program, and there's two of them.

One is destination summer camps, and the second is summer of safety.

And so there's a little bit more granular detail on the destination summer camps, which are described as being highly subsidized low-fee activity camps sited in low-income neighborhoods.

And then it highlights to a piloted program at Garfield Community Center that had about 580 program registrations associated with it.

There's a little less detail about the Summer of Safety program other than saying that it's a free structured recreation for youth that aren't otherwise engaged in formal programming.

And it talks about how currently the program, the Summer of Safety program offers services three to four days a week at four locations.

I was hoping, Superintendent, that you can provide a little bit more detail about the underlying types of programming and activities that are undertaken through both the destination summer camp and the summer of safety program and then and what this what you anticipate this expansion of $150,000 a year will actually provide in terms of

Kids or families or youth who will be able to access the services true Gonzalez to go back just to add one more thing to councilmember Gonzalez's line of questioning if I'm not of all these questions coming your way Go ahead the last thing I was going to add because I had a very similar question was the location citywide where do we see these?

Locations that are not already specified in those two programs the destination summer camp and the summer of safety.

Thank you

So so going back to the the destination summer camps as you said councilman without is it this the stem from a pilot that we looked at Where where so I think it's council knows we have we do a lot of summer camps across the city during the summer and and these these are what you imagine recreation summer camps to be for children, whether they're athletic camps and just the various bringing the kids in during the summer and going on trips and doing sort of acting, activating, keeping them active, etc.

But we found that there's a significant discrepancy, frankly, in the enrollment numbers at some of our communities, the higher income communities versus other communities.

And so Garfield was one where we had very low enrollment, And this is even for families that have access to our scholarships.

They're still not enrolling.

So we piloted this, essentially running the same kind of camps that we do in other places, but with no fee, and sort of not even the need necessarily to register, but just so the kids can show up and it would be structured.

And that's when, you know, we would enroll them as they would come in.

So it was a lot easier for them to come in.

And we found that we had, you know, a huge spike in the enrollment.

And so clearly there was a need for these types of programs.

And so what we hope to do in 2020 is to continue to build on that increase.

And those are, as I said, those are sort of our standard summer camp activities that we do across the city.

I think that the summer safety camps are also, you know, sort of traditional things that we and other parts of immigration departments across the country do is just to provide activities for youth who won't sign up for camps and are just out there looking for things to do.

And we look for ways to bring them indoors and connect them to some positive activities.

And maybe they're not as structured, so we don't have a schedule for the week and kind of go here's what we're doing.

And just getting them engaged in physical activities, working field trips and things like that.

And that one's also important because we also provide meals for the kids in the summer safety camps for the kids that don't have meals at home.

And as you said, it is extending it to a five day.

I don't have the sites in front of me, but these are in sort of the southeastern part of the city, but I can get you the site specifically where they are.

Great, thank you, I appreciate that.

Thank you, Chair.

All right, please, let's continue with your last slide, because we do have Marty sitting out there waiting for us to get going with OLS.

If I might, I could also take the opportunity to cite the relevant language, or not.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

I totally forgot that you were going to put a pin in that.

Happy to hear your response.

Yeah, so I think two pieces.

The most significant one, and I'm quoting from the amended ordinance, ellipses, if you will, funding eligible, evidence-based programs that improve the social, emotional, education, physical, and mental health of children, especially those services that seek to reduce the disparities in outcomes for children and families based on race, gender, and other socioeconomic factors, and to prepare our children For kindergarten that would be more on the education side, but the physical piece I think is the relevant one here also Given that there's food provided the food access piece as well, but we'll provide you more a more formal response I just wanted you to know that and I'd also I don't want to quote the cab the Citizens Advisory Board But my general understanding is that they are supportive of these and see them as consistent as well But it was a very good question and then drove me back to the ordinance.

Thank you.

Appreciate it Right?

Very good.

I'll just jump back up to what we haven't covered so far.

Under efficiencies, formalize the commitment to teen performing arts.

This formalizes a commitment to the teen summer musical and other teen performing arts programming by creating a permanent funding source for this work through the reallocation of existing budget and recognition of $8,000 in unbudgeted revenues.

I'm seeing 0% on this chart.

These are all budget neutral changes.

Gotcha.

Right.

So then the next section is expanding and enhancing operations.

We just talked about the SBT, so I think we can move on.

Leverage AHRQ funds to add assistant coordinators.

So this one is, let's see if I can find my notes.

This adds 3.5 assistant coordinator positions to support growing recreation programming needs at community centers, funded in part by an annual contribution by the Associated Recreation Council, which is $150,000, and by reducing our budget for temporary staffing.

Partial funding for these positions was approved in the second quarter supplemental ordinance.

And it provides ongoing budget and FTE authority to hire permanent positions that will serve Miller in the Northeast, Van Asselt, ID, Chinatown, Community Center in the Southeast, High Point, and South Park in the Southwest.

And they will plan and coordinate programming and facility safety at these sites.

The next one I think we covered, so we can move on to updating the CIP.

Adding CDBG funding for ADA compliance.

Okay, so this one is that our baseline budget included $880,000 of community development block grant funding to support the Conservation Corps.

The proposed CIP will provide additional $700,000 of one-time CDBG funds for ADA compliance.

And this will supplement existing funding for this work in 2020 and further advance our efforts to make parks and recreation facilities more accessible for all.

One thing to note is on the slide, it shows a decrease.

And that is because the 2020 proposed amount actually represents an increase over the 2020 endorsed budget of $1 million, but the 2020 endorsed is not showing on the slide.

We also added $2 million of REIT beginning in 2021 to the capital improvement program to continue this work.

Okay.

Good.

Any questions?

Okay.

The next item is add REIT funding for Outdoors for All.

So in 2019, Outdoors for All was awarded an RFP to renovate building 18 at Magnuson Park to serve as the organization's future headquarters.

This organization enriches the quality of life for children and adults with disabilities through outdoor recreation.

And the mayor's proposed budget, 2020 proposed budget, includes $1 million of one-time funding in our capital improvement program to assist Outdoors for All with capital renovations at this facility.

That's great.

I think many of us saw the video.

Was that in your parks committee, Council Member Waters?

And if you haven't seen it, that short video on the value of Outdoors for All is really inspiring.

It's just, do you know on their capital campaign, how much they've raised?

Will this million dollars close that gap?

I don't think it closes it completely.

They still have a little work to do, but they've raised most of what they need.

Thank you.

And I know having spoken, they're seeking and may have secured both state funding and perhaps county funding as well.

And I know this is another example of really productive partnerships we formed.

to seek the redevelopment of Magnuson Park.

We have now a soccer facility, a tennis facility soon, a climbing facility.

Again, and these have all been partnerships of one form or another, and really turning what was a tremendous asset into a ever more tremendous asset.

And just to pile on it once again, building 11, of course, that's something that we worked on for the last 10 years where we've got Cascade Bicycle Club.

I think we've got a high school there, Waldorf High School, the sailing, Sail Sandpoint.

It's really been impressive work.

So again, thank you.

OK, under other changes, Elliott Bay Office Park lease costs.

This November, we will have about 120 staff moving from the RDA building, which is in South International District area, up to the Elliott Bay Office Park on 300 Elliott.

The lease that was approved by the City Council in April of 2019 anticipated a $1.1 million lease, which is approximately $350,000 more than what our existing lease is at the RDA, and that building lease is expiring at the end of this year.

Okay, and that, of course, went through Councilmember Juarez's committee, and we grilled you at length about that, so thank you.

Okay.

2020 annual wage increase, state paid FMLA.

This centrally administered change adjusts appropriations to reflect the annual wage increase as outlined in the tentative agreement between the City and the Coalition of Unions for personnel costs included in this department's baseline budget.

And this includes salary, increases to salary, FICA, Medicare, retirement, overtime and temporary temporary labor in the city's portion of the 2020 state paid medical leave.

And the reason that this looks high with a 6% increase is because it includes two years of wage increases because when we adopted the 2019 budget at the end of 2018, we didn't have the COLA included.

So this includes two years of wage increases.

And Ben, this is largely covered in something, things that have been set aside in previous budgets, just showing up as a specific line item here, but it's coming out of finance general or something.

We had the reserves stored up, if you will, as part of the endorsed budget, and then now for 2020, they're now being distributed to the departments based on the the tentative agreement.

The 2019 dollars, we will have to add to the 2019 budget retroactively, and we're exploring now whether that will happen late fourth quarter or early first, having to do with the timeline for negotiating the I, dotting the I's and crossing the T's on the various labor agreements.

So yeah, so not a surprise was anticipated and resources exist.

I think they have over 900 employees, so you can imagine that this number is going to be larger than some of the other departments you will also see it in.

Thank you.

All right, I think we're on to the last one.

Last one, funding for increased utility rates.

This item appropriates $1 million of one-time funding from the Park and Recreation Fund to cover utility rate increases.

The utilities include sewer, drainage, water, electricity, gas, and recycling.

This is in response to SPU increasing utility rates annually, and we haven't been adequately budgeted to pay for those, especially the drainage costs.

So our total budget for utilities right now is about $14 million.

And utility costs in 18 already exceeded that amount by about 400,000.

So we're going to evaluate actual operating expenses in 2020 and then propose a longer term solution that would be part of the development of the next park district funding plan.

Very good.

Thank you.

Council Member Juarez, did you have something?

Oh, you're just cheering them on.

Okay.

Thank you.

Council Member O'Brien.

So you mentioned this is a one time funding source, but it's an ongoing expense that we'll need to figure out.

We just don't have that solution yet.

Yep, exactly.

All right, before we let you go, I would love to talk to you a little bit more about the progress we're making on the Belltown Potential Park.

And also, seven years later on Smith Cove Park, I understand you got an RFP coming for me.

So it's all Smith Cove quickly as you know customer we're working on that with you and others for a while There's two phases of that project the first phase has been designed and we'll be going out for bid to begin the construction The second phase will be one of the challenges which you can look at for the second version of the park district, but yeah, the Smith Cove is moving forward.

It's exciting project.

Thank you in terms of the potential new park downtown you know we've We're in sort of the initial discussions, or we've talked to the Office of the Waterfront on sort of how do we take a look at what is it going to look like.

And so we've committed to working with them on some preliminary engineering and design studies.

Not sure yet how much it's going to cost, because as you can imagine, this park is a little different.

There might be some engineering challenges just given how it's being created.

So we're going to continue to work with them on that to understand, but we've committed and are excited to work with them.

Thank you.

And I think that's a great team, Waterfront and you.

So I appreciate that very much.

OK, colleagues, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Not a great place for this question to fit, so I'm not going to try to fit it anywhere.

But so I've been working over the last couple of budget cycles on issues related to animal control, specifically animal control in the parks.

And this year our office observed that we weren't able to increase the animal control capacity, specifically focused on monitoring leashed and unleashed areas in the parks.

We funded 14 animal control officers, but since 2017 these positions haven't been filled completely because of turnover and promotions.

And of those 14 positions, Only four, two pairs are assigned, and the pairs are one parks employee, one FAS employee, are assigned to focus on parks among the other responsibilities assigned to the role.

So again, only two pairs for focus in the parks, two pairs meaning four officers.

So in 2019, we added another FTE position, but it seems that this position is being deployed instead as call volume allows and emphasis patrols, again, instead of focusing on the parks work that I think was the intention.

So we're just, I'm just wondering how we can work to find a better approach to allow for consistent coverage of the off-leash laws in the parks.

Happy to work with FAS on that.

I think that the one FD that you mentioned was actually in their budget.

I mean, we've got our two FDs there.

But it's an important issue for us in the parks.

I mentioned the most complaints we get.

The second most complaints we get is about off-leash dogs in our parks.

Me too.

Excellent.

All right.

Any other questions, colleagues?

All right.

Thank you very much, Don.

Thank you.

Jesus, as always, it's a pleasure working with you.

Thank you.

So our third item and the last one for this morning is our Office of Labor Standards.

And I think Karina Bull is going to join us at the table.

Thank you so much for everything that this team has done.

So, Karina, if you'll just come up to the table.

Marty, we're going to ask you to start introductions here as soon as everybody sits down.

And then I'm going to give Karina a moment.

And anybody else?

up here on the panel want to introduce it?

All right.

Council Member Mosqueda, and then we're going to turn it over to Karina.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

So, I'm really excited to have the presentation from the Office of Labor Standards under the direction of Marty Garfinkel.

We're really excited about the work that has happened in just your short tenure here.

But I just wanted to take a quick moment to celebrate all that OLS has been able to accomplish since April 1st, 2015. Karina Bull was a big part of that.

And as we've worked to both stand up the Office of Labor Standards, this council has also asked you to take on more.

As you've built the plane, you have been flying it, and we have been very honored to be able to work with you to craft new labor standards, to work on rulemaking, and then to go out and do the important education and outreach that's necessary, and also enforcement.

But your office has been really great about recognizing the need to really lead with education, given some of these new labor standards that we have had the privilege of working on with you, and quite frankly, the honor of championing here in Seattle as we've shown to the rest of the country what it looks like to be a model for promoting labor standards for all and doing this collaborative outreach to small businesses and to really create partnerships with community as we've done that outreach and education.

So some of the things that we're really excited about that are in this budget include outreach and education and enforcement on eight labor standards, staffing two boards and commissions, working with the community outreach and education funds and business outreach and business funds, and working to harmonize our efforts here at the city with state laws with a lens towards how do we support growing sustainable businesses and lifting up low-wage workers.

and making sure that everybody knows their rights as workers and responsibilities as employers.

That's a lot to do in a four-year period.

So kudos to you and all of your work.

As we look at this budget in front of us, the things that I'm going to be looking forward to hearing more about is how have we put into place our ongoing commitment to make sure that there's sustainable funding to prioritize both the internal and external support that we need for workers.

So internal to your department, how are we supporting your team?

Do you feel like you have sufficient resources?

And externally, given that we have two audiences, businesses and workers, how have we sustained our commitment to doing that outreach and education work?

given the potential downturn on the horizon, and concern and frustration, I think, both from workers and small businesses about the unknown in our economy.

While unemployment is low, we know that there's a lot of folks who are working in low-wage jobs still.

How are we, in this budget, reflecting our priorities to lift up those low-wage workers, do the outreach, and support small businesses?

So thank you for all the work that you've done in a very short period of time.

And again, I'll note that we have city after city that reaches out to us to look at the Office of Labor Standards model and our outreach and collaborative effort with small businesses and with workers and their advocacy organizations to stand up their own Office of Labor Standards in their cities.

So we should be proud of the ongoing conversations that other cities are having based on the work that we're doing here.

And with that, I'll turn it back over to the incredible team here, Madam Chair.

Well, I'll tell Council Member Bagshaw, since this is the Office of Labor Standards, I do want to remind everyone it's quarter to 12 and most people take lunch around noon, so maybe we get through this with short questions and short answers.

We're violating the rules, but maybe we have introductions at the table with Marty and Duane, and then turn it over to Karina.

My name is Duane McLean.

I am the Finance and Operations Manager at OLS.

Marty Garfinkel, Director, OLS.

Kareena Bull, Council Central staff, assigned to assist Council members in considering OLS's budget this year.

And to build on Council Member Mosqueda's words, the work of OLS continues to grow.

In 2020, they will be implementing five new labor standards, a Commuter Benefits Ordinance, and the four recently passed laws aiming to improve the working conditions of hotel workers.

and also a moment to center everyone in a unique budget process that exists for Office of Labor Standards.

In 2017, legislation created an Office of Labor Standards fund, and this fund was intended to guarantee funding for the office and also establish a particular budget process.

The fund is supported by business license tax, and if that money is not sufficient, then the general fund will make up the difference and the particular budget process is that the mayor's proposed budget reflects the what's called annual minimum contribution that the executive believes is necessary to sustain the core components of Office of Labor Standards work for enforcement and outreach.

In 2019, the office added five positions through a combination of budget adds in the 2018 quarter two supplemental and also the 2019 budget.

For 2020, the proposed budget does not request additional funding beyond standard cost changes, such as those that are necessary for annual wage increases.

And we'll learn more about that from Marty and Duane.

Thank you.

Welcome to the table.

I'll talk fast.

I'm from New York.

Welcome to the table.

What's that?

I'll talk fast.

The first slide gives some highlights on some of the policy issues that we're dealing with.

First, I'd like to spend a moment talking about the Domestic Workers Ordinance, which, as all of you know, went into effect in July and really represents a sea change in the law where the only jurisdiction in the country that applies these protections to domestic workers regardless of employment status And outreach is particularly important in this area because the law applies to thousands of households who may not know about the law and may not even consider themselves employers.

So it is a subject of intense outreach work as we speak.

The council supported a request for a dedicated outreach person on domestic workers.

And that person is hard at work putting flyers in community centers, libraries, doing brochures and trainings, getting on listservs.

And starting next week, we're going to have a bus ad campaign that'll go on for three months.

It'll be up on 200 or so buses and sound transit vehicles to put the word out, increase awareness, put out our phone numbers so that we can get the information out to people.

There's also a Domestic Worker Standards Board, also a trend-setting institution that has had five meetings, one retreat.

They've appointed the ninth member and are on track to get out the work plan that's due in early 2020. And there are rules that are going to need to fill in the gaps of the law.

Those rules, the proposed rules, have been published.

They're out for comment.

Final rules will be in effect by the end of October, early November.

So we're on track.

It's a very challenging area, but we're confident we're going to get the information out to people so that this new group of employers, so to speak, are aware of their obligations and that workers know their rights.

Moving to the commuter I think councilmember has a quick question.

Thank you Marty and again Thank you for all the work that you and the domestic workers standards board are compiling while rulemaking is ongoing I just wanted to check in is there a template that is already available for potential employers and potent or hiring entities and domestic workers that we should all be aware of You know, for example, I'm very interested in the conversations we've been having around nannies and house cleaners and a lot of folks don't consider themselves employers, but I would love to see a template of those documents if available and we can help.

Well, we, yes, yes, we have some, we have flyers, we have a Q&A on our website.

I think the brochure that's about to be published has gone through a robust process of review is going to address some of those questions.

So, yes, it's a multifaceted outreach approach that we're going to have to take.

Commuter benefits, that goes into effect, as you know, in January 20, this coming January.

Enforcement is not going to happen until the following year.

We are underway with development of rules.

They're not going to be very extensive, but they're going to be some rules.

We had our first stakeholder meeting, and we expect to have the rules in final by Thanksgiving.

And there'll be questions about that.

But we have a good long time before there's any enforcement at all.

And the enforcement that we do have is quite soft.

There's a right to cure.

if businesses are delayed in instituting the requirements.

Hotel workers, as all of you know, this council and the mayor's office worked really hard on the four new laws, which bring our total stable of laws to 11 ordinances.

Our office worked very intensively on the rules for I-124, and therefore worked with your staff very intensively on the development of these laws.

Because we had rules under I-124, that's going to help us in our development of the new rules, but there are going to be some differences.

So we are now in the process of planning a rollout for stakeholder involvement to get input on what those new rules can and should be.

Most of the laws, most aspects of most of the laws, as you know, go into effect next July.

and those rules will be in effect before then so people have the guidance they need.

Turning to the misclassification resolution, this council in February passed a resolution asking OLS to focus on the very important issue of misclassification of workers as independent contractors and to work with LSAC.

It also requires a twice-a-year report.

We're in the process of preparing that first report, but let me give you some quick highlights.

We've worked with LSAC to develop a subcommittee on misclassification representing business and worker advocacy organizations, and they are in the process of coming up with some proposals that they're going to present.

Because we believe the ideal and best result is to have a statewide solution to this problem, we've been in close communication with OIR on state legislative strategies.

We're also reviewing a very recently released report of the State Department of Commerce on independent contractors that was funded I believe in the last legislative session or the one before it.

And we're reviewing that and going to be able to be in a position to comment on it soon.

Our enforcement team on occasion reviews cases that have misclassification issues.

We've taken pains to make sure that our team are trained up on the current, very complex, very hard to apply economic realities test.

We have a informational document that's on our website that educates the public, also educates our enforcement team.

work with that test on a somewhat frequent basis.

There's a very significant change that's happening at the state law level with regard to overtime.

Why am I talking about a state law issue on overtime?

We enforce overtime issues through the wage theft ordinance.

And in this proposal, there's going to be a significant change in what's called the salary basis test, which is the threshold under which workers become eligible for overtime.

Currently, it's $23,000 a year.

That's going to be raised to $80,000 a year under the proposed rule over seven years, which will mean many more salaried employees will become eligible for overtime.

That has an impact on our office in two important ways.

One is we are going to need to get the word out to employers to make sure to the extent that LNI's outreach isn't sufficient that they know that this is going to have an impact on their operations and it's going to have an impact on our enforcement no doubt so Look for that.

We we don't I think the final rule is coming out at the end of the year And I've heard just rumor wise that it'll go into effect sometime mid next year if we turn to the next slide quickly going to strategic priorities.

I've already spoken about domestic workers and commuter benefits.

I want to talk about outreach.

I think our office, we're still coming out of our startup phase, is now moving into the next era of outreach.

And we have a, and that is going to be reflected in two major changes.

One is we're reorganizing our outreach team.

It's small, but it has been a part of communications.

And as we grow, we realize we really need a separate team that focuses on outreach planning, outreach development, getting the big picture and applying it to the small picture.

And a big focus of that is going to be outreach to businesses.

We currently do outreach to businesses in a variety of ways.

We create written materials.

We have Q&As.

We respond to technical questions by businesses and their attorneys.

We have social media, newsletters, trainings, webinars, a very robust language access program.

Marty, can I interrupt here for a moment?

Thank you for speeding along, but I know Council President Herold has a question.

Sure.

So, Marty, on the outreach piece, I haven't seen the next slide, but outreach, do you know, and if you don't, that's fine, the percentage of your budget that is dedicated to outreach?

Is it broken down by a percentage?

Well, I can't give you the percentage, but I could tell you that we get a Well, I'm told it's about 40%.

And a significant part of that outreach, and the 40% that Mr. McClain is referring to is the funds.

This Community Outreach and Education Fund and the Business Outreach and Education Fund comprises 40% of our budget.

But our staff, which is covered by payroll, does outreach on top of that.

So a lot of the outreach you do, it's my understanding, you use outside agencies to do the outreach for you.

So some of it's in-house, some of it's out-house.

And all of that is within the 40%.

And is there a rough breakdown on how much is outsourced versus insourced?

40% is outsourced.

Oh, it's all outsourced.

I see.

But what I'm saying is it's 40% plus because our staff is doing that.

We're doing trainings.

We're doing webinars.

Is that a sort of an RFP process where you're looking at certain agencies and you award them?

In fact, this is a great opportunity for me to give a plug to the COEF partners, the 18 community organizations, many of them you know of.

They're great groups.

They're going to be doing a showcase of their activities tomorrow in the Bertha Knight Landis room from 11 to 3. All of them will be there.

They'll be talking about their innovative outreach and educational activities that they that they've been doing for the last two or three years.

And so really would love it if you all and your staff would be willing to attend.

The BOEF focuses on, is comprised of 15 partners, which are primarily chambers of commerce owned and operated and representing people of color and immigrants.

And they do targeted outreach into those communities, into the most marginalized businesses.

What I would like to point out is we recognize that there's a segment of the small business community that is not targeted by the BOEF, because they're not the most marginalized small businesses, but they represent a lot of businesses with a lot of workers who don't have their own HR department and so forth.

I mean, there's a challenge here.

There are 54,000 businesses in Seattle with employees.

Many of them are small businesses in that category.

We can't be the HR department.

for everyone, but we recognize we need to do more in that section of small and small mid-sized businesses.

And, you know, we've got four outreach people.

Two of them are contract managers of the funds.

One is dedicated to the domestic work ordinance, and we have one generalist.

So it's a small staff, but we know we need to do more, and I want to point out a couple things that we're already doing.

One is...

Before you go on?

You invited us to come to your event tomorrow in Bertha night Landis very kind of you, but we're all gonna be up here So we've got a full day tomorrow both morning and afternoon So okay staff maybe but don't be offended if we're not there.

We won't be thank you.

We we Are I wanted to point out that we are meeting with and working with SBAC the Small Business Advisory Council They have some concerns about businesses not being fully educated on all the different very complex areas that we implement, and we are working with them and trying to get their input on how we can do better.

Like I said, we have a we're going to develop a subcommittee of LSAC just dedicated to outreach on businesses.

We work with FAS all the time.

In fact, as we speak, we've created an insert.

We've done this before.

We're doing it again.

In the business registration packets that go out to thousands of businesses every year, we have an insert giving a review, a reminder, the new minimum wage, our contact information, and so forth.

We mail out workplace posters to every business in the city.

We are developing coordinating approaches with OED because we recognize that a lot of these businesses don't just want a Q&A.

They actually want tools that they can use, an Excel spreadsheet, a legal advisor.

And so we are working with, Bobby and I have met several times, we are working to try to give the actual tools that the businesses need because just talking at people just sometimes doesn't work for folks, particularly, you know, who don't have a legal background.

Well done.

Thank you.

And Council Member Herbold.

Just a quick note that I really appreciate this emphasis as well as the emphasis that you referenced earlier as it relates to the obligation of OLS to do enhanced education, outreach to businesses, specifically in those cases that OLS is enforcing state law.

I appreciate that's called out as a priority.

Earlier this year, OLS began enforcing state law, specifically as it relates to the disclosure requirements around service charges.

Some of our high road employers in the city were fined under that law.

And some of these folks are people who are on the front lines fighting for minimum wage and paid sick and safe leave.

And they're folks who want to go above and beyond in following the law.

And this was an example where As I understood it, it was an issue of not knowing what the law is.

And I think I appreciate OLS's recognition that when we're enforcing the state's law, we have an extra obligation to not just assume that the state is doing a good job of getting the word out, but that we ought to play a role in it as well.

So, thanks.

Thank you.

The other thing I'll point out on the outreach is we are redesigning our website, which has not really been redesigned since we started, and it needs to be, and we did an RET on it, and we are hoping to get the new website up and running by early in the year.

Unless there are more questions, there's a lot more to say, but unless there are more questions, I'll go to the next slide.

I want to touch on enforcement effectiveness and efficiencies.

When I came on We had a big backlog, and I talked about that last year.

And because of recognizing that, this council agreed with the mayor's budget to give us additional positions in the enforcement area.

We have, and at the beginning of 2018, we had lots of investigations languishing from dating back to 2015 and 2016. And by now, we have cleaned up all, but there's one that's about to be resolved from 2016. All the 2015 cases have been resolved.

And we did that by a number of steps.

We focused on the problem.

We train people on how to resolve cases, and we also did some common sense approaches on scope of investigations.

I think all of you know we do typically company-wide investigations, which exponentially increases the complexity of cases when one person comes to you.

On the other hand, that gives a big impact and will, down the road, pay dividends in compliance.

But sometimes we got too big and cases would just languish.

And so we brought some common sense approaches to narrowing some of those cases and getting them resolved.

And I think we've been successful.

I'm particularly proud that we have moved to a place where we're approaching the benchmark that this council set of 180 days for resolving cases.

We're not there yet, but we're moving in that direction.

And we've done all of that, I'm happy to say, without sacrificing effectiveness.

And in our certification to this council that we presented and in our answers to the council's questions, We gave you a little chart that showed in 2017, there were total assessments of something over $527,000.

In 2018, that went to over $2 million.

And this year, we're on track to have, and almost all of that comes through settlements, we're on track to top $3 million.

And many of those cases, most of those dollars come from big cases involving large employers.

We recently resolved the minimum wage case against an Arizona based staffing company that was paying the wrong minimum wage for close to $700,000 and you know that I think speaks volumes about the effectiveness of our enforcement team.

President Harrell has a question followed by Councilmember Mosqueda.

So Marty, and I'm going to try to use this hearing just on the budget issues.

I know you and I have been somewhat concerned the last year on some of the operational policy issues.

So I don't want to get in that in this forum.

I think that would be inappropriate.

But the question I have is somewhat policy related because it relates to budget.

And in all of this, and congratulations recently too, I read about the Jack in the Box settlement that I think affected almost 600 workers for a pretty large 700 and 72,000.

So that was secure scheduling.

The question I have is, as I understand the process that you're describing and how disputes and resolutions are settled, it's my understanding on the procedures that there's really not a mandatory mediation process that typically your department are mediating directly or trying to settle directly with the employer.

And that process, and then if it's not reached there, it goes to the hearing examiner.

That's my understanding.

And my question is, if there were a formal mediation process using an impartial mediator on these disputes, Perhaps one such that, particularly for the smaller businesses in particular, not the big ones, but the smaller ones, do you think that would result in some administrative savings in the process, staff time, resource utilization, if a formal mediation process were put in place?

I don't know.

I'd have to think about it.

I haven't considered that.

I've been involved in my previous life in many mediations, and I know they can be very effective in certain cases.

There is a cost involved.

There is the potential in some cases for delay in scheduling them and and so forth Certainly and it's a it's a topic that I'm happy to Think about more and give you a more considered appreciate that I'm getting a lot of one of your and I one of your strategic priorities that I deeply appreciate is enhanced support of the business community and I'm hearing that from them I actually in all fairness.

I asked a hearing examiner the same question that the hearing examiner does not have the authority under existing city law to mandate mediation.

And I asked the hearing examiner, would that make sense?

Would that be a tool that he would be interested in?

And he's doing similar research at all.

I thought, much like the court system that can mandate mediation, the rules require mediation under certain Threshold why wouldn't the city both in the department level and the hearing exam and have that same process?

So that's something I'm exploring and so I'd be curious to talk to you off-record about that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you

Thank you so much.

I just wanted to call out for our colleagues' awareness as well.

When the director talks about doing the industry investigations or strategic enforcement that allow us to do an in-depth analysis of whether or not, for example, wage theft has occurred or people aren't getting access to secure scheduling, that's also a cost savings measure.

And I think It's important for us to know that we are doing some innovative work that the state of Washington, Labor and Industries, only wishes they had the capacity to do.

In Labor and Industries' directive, it says that they must investigate every single case, and it does give a director's charge to be able to do these company-wide investigations, but because of a lack of resources, they haven't been able to do that to the extent they want to.

So I think this is another good example of where the type of investments that we're making in Strategic enforcement through a director's charge really do allow for us to be more efficient, and I appreciate that under the direction of Director Garfinkel we have been more efficient.

He said we have to be more apply a more common-sense approach so that we weren't totally using up staff time and but we're thinking about how we use that tool.

So to me, it means more individuals are getting the wages that they're owed in their pocket and also to the extent that there's any revenue impact on the city, which is the same argument we made to the state, we're losing tax dollars when people aren't being paid appropriately.

So I think it does help us as a city as well, ensure greater efficiency and equity among businesses so that the guy down the street isn't undercutting the business of the high road employer, as we talk about.

By not paying taxes or not paying the wages owed so it's an efficiency measure And I just wanted to lift that element up because it's it is an innovative policy approach.

Great.

Thank you I'm glad you mentioned strategic enforcement.

I mean it people use that term in a lot of different ways the way I think of it is how do we have impact on high priority industries industries where we know there are low-income workers who are subject to workplace abuses, and particularly in both in areas where we're not getting complaints.

The one fact you may or may not be aware of is, unlike some other cities we hear from national experts, we get a lot of complaints, including complaints from high-priority industries.

So if we have a complaint from a high-priority industry, the question is not so much do we need a director's charge, because we have a complaint from a business in that industry, but how do we amplify and help educate that business sector?

And we do that in a number of ways.

We try to reach out and work with community partners who have trusted relationships with the workers.

We also have a media strategy to highlight that information.

You notice the press releases we put out?

That's for the purpose of amplifying the message, because it is commonly understood by the best experts in this area that deterrence is an important part of that process.

But we're also created, and it's on the slide, the Strategic Enforcement Coordinating Committee, which is to have kind of an overall look at the office and our enforcement work to see if there are gaps in what we're doing, and we are doing this very intentionally, and I think thoughtfully, because if there's going to be director's charges, the business who's the subject of that is going to want to know, why did you pick us?

And we need to do our homework before we do that.

And we are doing that homework.

We are actually in the early stages of a strategic campaign involving community partners.

I'm not going to mention the sector right now, but we're going to do this in a thoughtful way.

It's going to be a two- or three-year campaign, and it's going to have an impact on an industry where we find we're not getting complaints and where we know from available data there are workplace violations.

The last thing I'll say very quickly is, and I appreciate Councilmember Mosqueda mentioning it at the beginning, We are, and we can all take credit for this, seen as a national leader.

We are viewed across the country as the place to call to find out, how do you do this?

And we get these calls from cities that are thinking of doing it, and from cities who have just started doing it.

We're not the only ones.

I mean, San Francisco's out there, and New York is out there, too.

But we're right there.

And it's one of the reasons the Center for Law and Social Policy, CLASP, is asking us to host, and we will be hosting in the fall, a national conference bringing together many of these wage enforcement agencies.

And one of the things I look forward to the OLS doing is working more and collaborating more with some of these leaders around the country to grow together and to develop the best practices together because many of the companies that may be at issue here are national companies and so sometimes you really need to think on a national level.

Unless there are any other questions, I would like to turn this over to our finance manager, Dwayne McLean.

Thank you.

Oh, looks like Council Member Gonzalez.

Just one question.

It's not highlighted in your presentation or the numbers before you got there.

I'd take an opportunity to ask the question.

This is in response to some of the questions that Council Central staff asked, sort of as pre-budget questions, and it's around language access.

So, of course, this is something that I continue to talk about and highlight as a need for the city to grow and expand in this space.

And I know that the Office of Labor Standards really does approach the issues of language access with intentionality and for that I'm grateful.

I'm looking at how much money was spent in 2018 and 2019. as it relates to translation and interpretation services.

It looks like over the last 20 months, there's been a little over $48,000 spent on language access related to each one of these labor standards that exists.

And the 2020 budget includes $25,000 for language access work.

So I'm just hoping you can Talk to me a little bit about the adequacy of the $25,000 for language access work and how you expect to meet the multilingual needs of the individuals that you interact with, frankly, both on the business side and on the worker side.

Well, we plan to work within our means.

But it is, I will say that it's a continuing challenge.

And I appreciate you highlighting it because we, in our ordinances, and I appreciate this, it is mandated that we do this.

And we take that seriously.

But what it means in operations is if we have, say, an investigation that's completed and a notice has to go up to inform the workers.

And it's in a language that we don't typically translate into.

We will translate into it.

And when we do it, we just don't rely on the professional translator.

We have community reviewers that we hire to make sure that they're culturally sensitive translations.

So it is a robust project.

And it is a citywide issue.

We're not the only ones dealing with this.

And there's staff that work on this, too, that's not reflected by the out-of-pocket.

So it is a continuing issue.

We work within our means.

We make it happen.

We do what needs to be done.

Let me put it that way.

But I invite all partners, all policymakers, to get together to figure this out in the long term, because I hear this from other departments as well.

It is an issue that the city as a whole needs to deal with.

And I've been talking about it ever since I got here.

Yeah, I think I've also been harping on this since I've got here.

So I think we are on the same page here.

You know, this language access issue continues to come up.

I think that it presents itself in the context of labor standards.

And this is also probably true for other enforcement type agencies in a very different way where I think the risk associated with not fully funding language access for enforcement specific agencies is pretty significant in terms of in terms of a policy position that effectively we're okay being okay in that space as it relates to people who might not have English language proficiency.

I'm just a little concerned that the $25,000 isn't enough in terms of the scale of labor standards work that we're doing and would really appreciate the opportunity to identify this as an issue of concern for me as the council continues to work through our budget process here.

Perhaps getting a little bit more granular detail from you, Marty, in terms of what $25,000 actually buys us as it relates to each one of these things, interpretation versus translation.

And then I know that we have been in conversations around language premiums for staff who are current city staff that are effectively being required to do interpretation and translation services because that's the only infrastructure we have, I think we should take into consideration what that cost is as well to OLS in this context.

But again, I think this is a really important thing for us to prioritize in this agency.

We just finished passing the hotel worker bills, a significant portion of those workers are non-English speakers.

So I don't expect that the need for translation, interpretation, and language access as a whole is going to go away.

And I want to make sure that we are giving it a fair shot, just like we give English a fair shot.

I will say, we'll take another look at that budget line.

and see what we can do about that.

I do appreciate that you all are doing what you can within the means that you have.

I recognize that we have limited resources, but there's an inherent inequity there that I know I'm preaching to the choir here.

We don't have to pay for English services, which means that people who speak English are inherently, structurally able to access these services in a more equitable, free way.

And that's just not the population that we're primarily serving when we're talking about labor standards.

It is part of the population, but it isn't a whole picture.

So I appreciate the ongoing conversation and an opportunity to highlight that.

Thank you, Chair.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. McClain.

All right, I'll be real quick.

Thank you, Marty.

As Karina mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, the mayor's budget does not call for any more money to be appropriated to OLS in 2020, with the exception of the 4% increase due to citywide allocation costs.

2019 was a big growth year for us due to the five positions Karina again mentioned.

Three came from the Q2 supplemental in 2018 and two at the beginning of 2019. And then in 2018, that's when we became kind of fully staffed, no less, and we used majority of the funds that were appropriated to us.

And in 2017, those are just our expenditures as we were ramping up the office.

So that's all I have as far as our budget.

Marty.

No, thank you.

And that's all we have.

Any questions?

Well done, Mr. McClain.

Well done.

I think Council President Harrell would say that's leadership.

Just a quick thank you to all of you, and I also want to acknowledge my council colleagues, Juarez, Mosqueda, O'Brien, Council President Harrell, Gonzales, Herbold, and Pacheco for being here for almost three hours, and appreciate everybody's attention, asking good questions, and all of you at the table, thanks for your help.

Karina, it's great to have you.

I bet, Marty, you still rue the day that we stole her, but we're happy to have her.

So, thank you, Council Central staff, Allison from my office for organizing this, Tom, and Duane, very much, Marty, for being here, and Ben.

Thank you, and we'll see you at 2 o'clock this afternoon.

We will have public comment after it, and we will hear from Human Services Department, Office of Housing, and Diehl.

Thanks, everybody.

So, this we're now recessed until 2 p.m.

Thanks, Josh, for being here the whole time.

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