Select Committee on Homelessness & Housing Affordability 91319

Good morning.

Very good.

Thank you so much, Lena, for getting the microphones.

This is the Select Committee on Homelessness and Housing Affordability.

Today is September 13th.

Happy Friday the 13th, everybody.

It's 1037 a.m.

and thank you to my council colleagues, council members Mosqueda, Sawant, President Hero, Gonzalez, and Pacheco for joining me today.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted and we have just one item on the agenda today.

We're going to have an update on the regional homelessness governance and an introduction of the interlocal agreement by Tess Colby from the mayor's office.

And I want to acknowledge the work that has been done over the last, however, nine, 10 months now, bringing us to this point.

So I'd just like to have a few comments and then I'm going to invite Tess and Jeff, Jason, Bobby, all up to the table.

So the city and the county are working very closely together, not just ourselves, but with some of the suburban cities and with the suburban city representatives.

And we're really trying to bring together the work that our city is doing and the county has been doing to maximize the investments that we are making towards solving the problem for people who experience homelessness.

I do realize that we are much better and stronger if we're working together, and we have been talking with a number of cities, including Los Angeles, and I want to say thank you to Councilmember Mosqueda, who actually went to Los Angeles, not only visited, but had brought back their book, and the book that they had identified as the work that they were doing for their governing plan, and moving forward to ending homelessness there.

So the approach that we're making now with this proposed regional authority is we've been looking at this for, as we mentioned, months and months, working with Mark Jones, who has appeared before this committee, Debbie Teal, who we met with again yesterday, and with our council colleagues at King County, and what we know is that this is just one piece of what we're trying to accomplish.

And I want to say big thanks, Sharon Lee is here in the front for the work that you've been doing.

We've also had Dan Malone and Colleen Echo Hawk.

Gordon McKinstry, Allison Isinger, Friends of Youth, YMCA and YWCA.

Andrew Lofton from our Seattle Housing Authority.

Steven Norman from the King County Housing Authority.

Patty Hayes, who's the Director of Public Health.

Paul Lambros from Plymouth Housing.

Again, Allison Moon from Mary's Place.

Katie Miller from USICH.

All people that we have been working with over the years that have been providing us their input.

And I want to say thank you to that group, but also to the people with lived experience.

Those of you from Nicholsville, others who are part of this group that are providing us advice.

I think in the past that we have not reached out.

to you, to many people who continue and remain on the streets, people who have housing now but experienced a lot, that we're hearing you and hearing your voices in ways that in the past we haven't done.

We also, I want to acknowledge Jason Johnson and the work that you and Tess, Bobby, you have done on the frontline employees working for the city.

And I'm very thankful that their voices have been included on the front end.

It's something From lessons learned that we know the people who have the boots on the ground can offer us very important insights into this work so one of the things that we recognize is that in or and I mean it sounds ridiculous because we've been saying it for so many years and that is we're dealing with people who are homeless, but the way to really move this response forward faster is to provide more homes and We know that we have been doing this in small ways, in big ways, but we also acknowledge the fact that what we're doing with the regional governance is going to focus on the services, but we also know that working with our Office of Housing, with King County, with King County Homeless and their organization that deals with housing as well is what is going to really help us move forward as a region.

Housing is critical as all of the upstream investments that we learned about through one table.

Not that it was new news, but it just got the focus of our region, which leads us to where we are today.

We've had the Barb Poppe report, the Focus Strategies report.

We've heard from the business community through Eco Northwest, many of the other studies.

So where we are today is moving forward to have the first look at our interlocal agreement and the charter, the nuts and bolts of what is being proposed.

So with that, we know that it is just one piece in a much bigger approach that we're going to have to make.

one piece, one chapter, as Council Member Mosqueda said, from the Los Angeles report.

But this is a really important piece of the puzzle, and I'm just really grateful to the work that all of you have done.

So may I ask you to come up to the table, and Allison, did you want to read it in for us?

Thank you, and Allison McLean from my office, thank you for being here.

I'm not sure your microphone's on.

Item number one, Council Bill 119638, an ordinance relating to homelessness services, authorizing the mayor to execute an interlocal agreement for a joint establishment of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority with King County and such additional parties as are eligible pursuant to terms of the interlocal agreement.

Very good.

Thank you.

So why don't we start with you, Tracy, and just have introductions at the table.

Shirley Tracy Ratzlaff, Council Central Staff.

Jeff Sims, Council Central Staff.

Bobby Humes, Director, Seattle Department of Human Resources.

Jason Johnson with the Human Services Department.

Tess Colby, Officer of the Mayor.

Thank you very much, all of you, for being here.

Tracy, Jeff, do you have any introductory words before we turn it over to Tess?

No, I know the executive is going to be going through a lot of the pieces, so we'll allow as much time as possible for that and for questions to follow up.

Great and I think we talked yesterday about some points that I felt were really important and the focus of this and our effort is not only to be bringing in people with lived experience to be part of this solution but also a real core.

value here is undoing the institutional racism.

So maybe as you're talking about that that we recognize across the city I think your point we made yesterday is that 60 percent of the people who are homeless are actually people of color which is way outside the actual percentage of the population.

So I know that this is a focus that we've been talking about.

Maybe you can highlight some of that as you go through.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Tess.

Great.

Thank you very much, Chair Bagshaw, members of the council.

I appreciate the opportunity to be here today.

So I do have a relatively long presentation.

It is a little meaty.

I will go through it as quickly and easily as possible.

And if I'm not looking up, obviously, stop me if there are questions.

Okay.

And for those down on this end, oh, Council Member Herbold, thanks for joining us.

Down on this end of the table, would you make sure Council President, if you'll just help me if people have their hands raised.

Thank you.

Sure.

Thank you very much.

All right.

So on this first slide is the agenda for today.

You can see it's a number of topics.

The first few really are just context setting and reminding us why we're here.

And then I'm going to jump us much more deeply into the governance structure and the scope of work that the regional authority will have.

This is all based on the interlocal agreement and the charter that were transmitted last week with the ordinance to approve them both.

All right, just a little bit of context.

So we are here talking about regional governance in part because of a general understanding and agreement that our current delivery of services is fragmented.

The county and the city both fund programs to address homelessness, and while our overall objectives between the two municipalities is the same, to quickly and effectively move people into permanent housing, the way we approach it has differences.

For example, one provider may operate a program funded by both the county and the city, and that means two contracts, two reporting structures, two sets of performance standards.

And certainly this is cumbersome for the providers themselves, but more importantly, it often causes a great deal of confusion for our customers, the persons who are actually experiencing homelessness.

Because they have to then navigate a large array of programs where the services can vary, the same services can vary in implementation from agency to agency.

So the unified governance will allow for focused accountability where the authority is accountable and to customers, to the community, and to the funders.

and where the authority is also receiving input from those same stakeholders so that there is a solid feedback loop.

Tess, may I just ask the first question, which is you talk about focused accountability.

How do you think that's different from the way the city and the county are operating today?

I think from the perspective of the customer, it is much more confusing to figure out who they should go back to when there is input to provide.

Folks who are in crisis have, it's surprising the amazing array of bureaucracy that they need to work their way through to get to the services that they need.

And I think it's just really difficult for them in particular to say, oh, I need to go to the city or the county because those are amorphous concepts.

And who do you talk to in the city or the county?

So the goal really of the authority from that perspective is to make sure that there is one point of entry.

And in particular, I'll mention this a little bit later on another slide, but the authority will have an office of the ombuds, and that will actually be the clear portal for communication and feedback with between the authority and customers.

I think in terms of accountability from the funders perspective, it's a little bit the same.

We hold our providers accountable for specific outcomes through our contracted agreements with them.

The county holds their providers accountable.

That accountability definitely exists, but then for the provider, they know that they're accountable to both their funders, but that may then cause disconnect in the programs that they're trying to provide and to implement.

So again, the concept of unified governance is to create a more transparent level of accountability for those folks that are being served and also an easier sense of accountability both to the providers and from the providers back to the authority.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

You may remember way back in December that National Innovation Services, formerly known as Future Labs, presented their report with recommended actions that we should take as a community to create a single, effective, and systemic response to homelessness.

County and city and all home staff, along with stakeholders, such as housing and service providers and persons with lived experience, have been collaborating on four of those actions.

They're the ones, the gray ones on the bottom.

So they are consolidating the homelessness response system under one regional authority that centers its work on customer voice and experience, which is the cornerstone of the report's proposed theory of change.

And our partners in philanthropy have taken on the big challenge of creating a collaborative funding model that will align with the regional authority.

So as Councilmember Bagshaw and Councilmember Mosqueda know very, very well, we've been meeting with the client group since January.

I counted it up and it's a total of 12 meetings so far.

And really the client group has been extremely critical in keeping us all focused on addressing what the regional governance will look like and perhaps more importantly, what it will do and what its purpose will be.

Madam Chair, I Think that might be a little bit of an overstatement I think that what we've been trying to do in the client group is to make sure that actual clients are represented And that has been done through making sure that we're sort of truth testing who's been at the table with the conversations both with the mayor and the executive and at King County and I think that we have been in the receiving mode not necessarily the recommendation mode and I think that what's been really critical to note in terms of a distinction between the three of us on council who happen to be part of a client group that includes the mayor's office and versus what is really more important is the folks who are on the ground level, the service providers, the individuals experiencing homelessness as Council Chair Bagasaw mentioned today.

So I just don't I don't want to overstate the role that the quote client group has had which is also a misnomer and I do think that it is important for us to continue to be that truth-testing body and to make sure that our colleagues are there when you start to talk about the Regional Access Plan, the RAP, and that being sort of the backbone to what would actually be the policy change that, in theory, this regional governance body would be overseeing.

and helping to direct funding towards, that's been really driven by community stakeholders.

And part of what we've been talking about, I believe, on this entire council is making sure that when we receive something, it has been truth-tested and informed by those community organizations.

So just to clarify, I think we've been in the receiving mode, colleagues, and less of the recommendation mode.

While I appreciate getting the briefings, that's been, I think, our critical role is to make sure that those voices have been heard, that we're checking back with them, and that we see their fingerprints on the materials that we've received.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

That's actually a lovely pivot to this slide that I'm going into.

The National Innovation Services, NIS, Mark Jones and their colleagues have over the past eight months, been holding numerous meetings.

So there have been specific meetings with stakeholders that address questions about what governance should look like for the new regional authority.

And those stakeholders have included providers, they've included folks with lived experience, they've included the Undoing Institutional Racism Coalition, the Lived Experience Coalition, labor.

So we've had basically a broad, broad representation of folks who are invested in the success of the delivery of services to folks experiencing homelessness.

And Councilmember Mosqueda, I appreciate your reminding us how important that is.

And I know you know that you have a colleague in Mark Jones, and hopefully you know you have colleagues in the mayor's office who couldn't agree with you more.

So from some of those stakeholder meetings, those in particular around the question of what governance and the construction of governance and its composition will look like, there were five specific observations and recommendations that came out generally from those meetings.

They're on the slide and they are A strategic and accountable board that includes people with lived experience and with prior work in direct service.

There again, making sure that the customer voice and experience is centered within the governing board itself.

The board should avoid conflicts of interest by not including elected officials or current contract holders.

And pretty much universally, they agreed it should be small.

I think actually the average number that came out of all those workshops was 10.8, but basically around 11 members.

And that board members really should have, be selected based on skill, experience, and expertise.

So as county, city, and all home staff representing the executive offices worked together to pull together the interlocal agreement and the charter and to develop a structure for governance, we kept those tenants in mind.

Great.

And you're going to go into more deeply in your PowerPoint what the steering committee does and that is elected members plus people with lived experience and the governing board.

And what I really appreciate about the conversations we've had leading to this is that we want the governing board to be people who can be both have experience but be nimble in making decisions.

So it's not like, well, you have to wait for a full quarter in order to get all of the elected officials together.

This governing board is the one that's going to be able to receive the information from the various advisory committees and the planning committees and to be able to make real decisions in real time.

So, also great segue, thank you.

This slide shows an incredibly simple depiction of what governance of the regional authority will look like.

You can see that in fact there is a steering committee, there is a governing board, there is an advisory committee I'll talk about the Advisory Committee now because I don't go into great detail on it later on, but I will be going into fairly painstaking detail on the Steering Committee and Governing Board.

So the Advisory Committee is really intended to be the place where, again, folks with lived experience, folks who are direct service providers, contract holders, folks who are working in adjacent systems such as criminal justice, child welfare, Housing authorities, potentially elected officials from other, like some of the sound cities, will sit on this board.

And as long as we are in compliance with federal HUD rules, the goal for that advisory committee is really to become the continuum of care committee, which right now sits with all home.

And so that will, All Home as part of the unification of funding and services, All Home will sunset, but the work of All Home through the continuum of care does not sunset.

And then you'll note that there's also a box there around sub-regional planning.

I'll talk a little bit about that, but that's really intended to keep present for us all that this is a regional authority.

It is in fact serving the entirety of King County and we know that as a result we need the authority to be paying attention to the unique nature of the different regions within the county, the different cities and their their different experiences with homelessness, resources, and so a big, and I actually like the fact that both of these are under the governing board because it's, you can think about both of these as being really the foundation for success of the authority.

All right, so again, I apologize for the level of detail, but I think it's important as you are considering the documents, so I'm going to go for it.

The steering committee.

As Councilmember Bagshaw noted, the steering committee is the place where elected officials will sit.

It is contemplated to have seven members from the onset and up to eight members.

I'll explain that in a second.

The five members, one each will come from the Executive, the Mayor, King County Council, Seattle City Council.

as well as an elected official from a city other than Seattle.

And that elected official from a sound city would be either a jurisdiction that has signed on to the ILA, who's become a party to it, or if there is no city that is a party, then it would be a member of the Sound City Association's Board of Directors.

In all the cases, it'll be an elected official.

So there's five elected officials.

And then in addition to that, there will be two members with lived experience.

And these lived experience members will be appointed by a body that is connected to the continuum of care, which represents folks with lived experience.

Right now, for example, there's a Consumer Advisory Council that is a council related to the COC.

It may be that.

It may be another recognized organization.

The way that the steering committee gets to eight members is at the point where at least 20 cities other than Seattle have signed the ILA, one additional elected official from those non-Seattle cities would be made a member of the steering committee.

Take a breath.

All right.

Yes, Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you.

Oh, boy.

I've been really into spilling glasses of water around my area lately, so that was...

Nearly avoided.

On the steering committee governing structure, I think the PowerPoint presentation does a good job of outlining at a very high level the composition of the steering committee and the sort of general role that the steering committee members will play There is some additional granular detail, in spite of Tess, you saying that there's a lot of detail here.

There's even more detail in the interlocal agreement as proposed in attachment A to the documents that we have before us up here on the dais.

And one of the things that I think always comes up that is very interesting, particularly when we're dealing with these regional governance entities is how voting is going to work and what we're voting on.

And so perhaps you can talk a little bit more about sort of the details around sort of the more meaningful power structure, which is around voting and who gets to vote and whether those votes are weighted, for example, and how that is going to function and on what things the steering committee gets to vote on.

Happy to.

So the slide that's before you shows the roles of the steering committee that you were just referencing.

And I'll start with the basic roles.

The first is to confirm the board appointees.

And so in the next slides, I'll walk through how those appointment processes occur.

But that is, we think, I mean, that is one of the first and perhaps most important roles that the Steering Committee has.

In addition to confirming the board appointees, the Steering Committee will also confirm or reject with comment the annual budget that the governing board, that the authority will have created, the governing board will have approved, that will get transmitted to the respective funders, so to the county and the city.

And again, we expect that to be, we expect, I should say this just in general with the steering committee, we expect this to be a collaborative relationship.

That it is the members of the steering committee who are both working with the governing board, but also working upwards with their respective legislative bodies.

to make sure that, in fact, the authority is as successful as it possibly can be.

So, again, that confirming or rejecting with explanation of the annual budget gives sort of mandates, if you will, through the ILA the responsibility to have that dialogue.

There's also the five-year plan, which the steering committee will confirm or again reject with explanation.

And then the steering committee will get regular annual performance reports.

We have not, Council Member Gonzalez, actually had the conversation about weighted voting.

The body itself is intended to be reflective of the region as a whole.

And so the goal was, I guess maybe the aspiration is, that the steering committee being relatively small and lean will work together cooperatively to come up with basically joint recommendations.

Essentially, the steering committee as a whole needs to do these actions, confirmation and or rejection.

I appreciate that response in the context of couching it within the respective roles of the steering committee.

What I'm seeing in the ILA, however, is a little inconsistent with what you just said in terms of the mechanism by which members of the steering committee will do the things and effectuate the things on the roles slide.

So if we look at page nine, and that's under organization of authority section one, E, it talks about voting and specifically it appears to me that there was a discussion about how to vote whether it would be weighted or not because this indicates that all actions of the Steering Committee shall require an affirmative vote of a simple majority of the Steering Committee members voting on the issue.

Each individual Steering Committee member shall be a voting member and shall have one vote.

A steering committee member may not split his or her vote on an issue.

No voting by proxies or mail-in ballots is allowed.

So it seems to me that the conclusion around a weighted vote is been, that decision has been made.

Sorry, that's my mistake.

That's okay.

I'm not trying to do a got you.

It's okay.

I apologize.

And I think the reason I'm bringing this up is because in prior structures around governing, the voting issue has been really significant.

in a couple of regards.

One with regard to the issue of a weighted vote.

There are often times, particularly when money is on the table, where there is a robust conversation about the issue of needing a weighted vote based on the amount of money that a particular jurisdiction is putting into a respective budget to address specific issues, whatever the issue might be.

And this is not, it's a general concept that I have seen and that I've been able to participate in as a member of the city council on other regional governance entities.

because the regional governance construct or philosophy is not a new thing.

The second thing is that that weighted issue concept becomes a significant concern to some of the suburban cities.

who might be disincentivized to participate in this type of a regional governance structure if there is a weighted mechanism, even though they may be putting in considerably less resources into the overall effort.

And so I guess I'm really using this voting piece not just to be a complete wonk and getting into the details of the weeds of the ILA, but I do think it's important for us to get a better understanding of how that decision came to be and and I'd like to hear from you or anyone else at the table in terms of including our council central staff in terms of of my understanding that the city of Seattle will be putting in a significant amount of revenue in comparison to other members who are signing on to the ILA should they choose to do so.

And even in the instance in which we are contributing significantly more resources, meaning money, towards this regional governance structure, our vote on these issues that are really important in terms of the direction moving forward is equal to those who are not contributing as much as we are.

So do you want to answer that?

Because I can also talk about some of the discussions that we've had.

I can defer to you.

So Councilman Gonzales, we have had a number of conversations with the King County Council and with suburban cities.

And of course, the weighted voting has come up for just the reasons that you described, which is the city of Seattle will be putting in the lion's share, followed by King County.

There is real concern, and it's flip side of the same coin, that suburban cities' voices will be included because of suburban cities actually reflect 38 of the 39 cities in our county.

They wanted to make sure that their voices were heard.

At the same time, all of us are saying, well, if we're putting in the money, we want to make sure that our voices are heard and that we're being as inclusive as possible.

The final conclusion with having seven members or the final recommendation of having seven members includes King County representative that King County individual will be one vote.

The city of Seattle has a vote.

The mayor has a vote.

King County executive has a vote.

So we start off with four And then people with lived experience will hope to have somebody from the north and the south end, it won't just.

necessarily being from downtown Seattle as an example, and that the suburban cities will have a voice as well, recognizing that we hope that all of the suburban cities will sign on, and we hope and are going to be aspiring to the goal that every city will provide something.

And maybe it's land.

Maybe it's a place for us to be able to build.

But since we know that the city of Seattle needs our partners, that we can't do it all.

We're really trying to reach out to people and say, we want you to be part of the actual voting experience and to believe that for suburban cities that they have a real voice in this and that they're not just going to be left out.

So that was the objective.

I believe that because we have a mayor and a city council vote, there's two there.

Same thing with the executive and having county council, there's two more.

Maybe the city's, the individual, whether it's Joe McDermott or Jeannie Cole-Wells or Larry Gossett, there are a number of individuals that do represent and cover the city's population.

So, this is a good start.

I think if we find that we need to do something different, there's still an opportunity for us to change.

Councilmember Herbold, I saw you had your hand up too.

Thank you so much.

I think similar question.

Less about voting, more about the representation piece.

How do we end up on the adding another representative from a city other than Seattle once we get to 20 other cities?

Why not some other number?

I know we're talking 39. 20 is roughly half.

And is there a reason?

I just think of allowing for representation on this body as a great, hopefully, incentive to participate and sign the ILI.

Why not allow for an additional member for every 10 cities, for instance?

I'm just throwing out numbers.

So that's a great question, and it actually gets back to the conversation about waiting.

And again, I apologize for not remembering that portion of the charter.

It gets actually back to that question of waiting.

And the goal here is, in fact, to create an incentive for the cities, other cities to become members of the ILA and to align their own service provision and their own practices with the goals of the implementation plan and the principles of the authority.

It also recognizes that there is, in fact, a difference in terms of the amount of resources that are being put into the authority.

And this is the starting point where we thought that good faith representation that half of the remaining cities outside of Seattle are committed to a regional approach would then give them essentially the same sort of weight, if you will, on the steering committee as Seattle has and King County has.

Just as a follow-up, was there a consideration of allowing for more participation, for instance, adding one non-Seattle rep for every, just again throwing out a number, 10 cities that sign, combined with a waiting vote, a weighted vote process.

That way, using the carrot of being a member to participate, but addressing Council Member Gonzalez's concerns about who is contributing the bulk of the funding and using the voting process to kind of correct for that?

So the charter as it's written now does not contemplate any weighting other than what Council Member Gonzalez has pointed out, which is the distribution of membership across the region and the voting structure itself.

That is certainly something that we can have a conversation about.

There's no reason not to.

But as it stands now, the county in its relationships with the suburban cities and the mayor in her relationship with those other mayors concur that the inclusion of the sound city member from essentially the get-go is very important.

to be able to not only create incentive for others to come, but to help with the molding and shaping of the authority.

But again, considering the distribution of resources, we would like to see a much stronger commitment to regional governance for addition of other steering members.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So this is something I've raised in our conversations with King County and Sound City partners as well.

I think the resources is one question, especially because we're going to be contributing, I think, the lion's share.

And we also have about 70% of the homeless population in King County living within Seattle's borders.

So the conversation about the distribution of those resources is very well taken.

At the same time, I think we also recognize that we have a lot of folks who are seeking services because many of our regional cities aren't even placing shelters within their own city borders, have told folks to go to Seattle.

In some cases, I know the mayor has commented on that in the media.

in terms of people coming here.

I'm not sure if that's backed up by data or not, but if that's the perception, I think that what we know is that we want some of our partner cities to play a role and for folks to feel respected in the process.

I get that, but I do think that there is a really important question that's being raised about the location of individuals that we're trying to serve and making sure that those dollars truly do go to where we have the highest needs and that over time we have some way of checking in to make sure that the role that folks have been offered on the body isn't sort of being, that the participation is truly happening because of their seat there.

So you mentioned land, that's a really good example, or potential siting, or maybe future shelters that could potentially be opened.

greater harmony I am absolutely supportive of making sure that other folks in the region are also helping to address the crisis of homelessness and at the same time still I'm sensitive to the fact that we do have the largest needs here and we also are the largest contributor.

Could you tell us a little bit more about where Portland and Los Angeles ended up in this conversation with their regional bodies.

They both have county entities and city entities that have also combined.

Do they have a similar structure in terms of either voting or identifying resources or have they pulled all of their resources as is being proposed here?

So Los Angeles, for example, has a structure of a commission, if you will, where half of the commission members are appointed by the county executive and the other half by the Los Angeles mayor.

Those don't include elected officials.

It's a 50-50 split.

I confess I don't know what the distribution is of dollars between those two jurisdictions.

I am not sure whether that was done just to make sure that there was equal representation across the region or whether it is representative of the investments.

Can I chime in on that?

In LA, the county contributes approximately 70%.

Okay.

And their structure?

The structure is five and five, so the county representatives are directly appointed by, I believe they call them county commissioners.

I don't remember.

It seems like that's the title.

So each commissioner is appointing someone directly.

On the city side, there's nominations for all five positions by the mayor of Los Angeles, which are then confirmed by the council.

So just, Jeff, as a follow-up, as I remember, the county of Los Angeles passed Triple H, and the city of Los Angeles passed H.

And can you remind me what the, I know it's in the billions, but can you remind me what the distribution is between Triple H and H?

Because I believe it all goes into the the regional entity.

It strikes me it was like three to one, like 1.5 billion and 300 million.

Yeah, I apologize.

I don't actually know that, but we can get back to you on that.

All right.

Thank you.

Well, why don't we move on?

May I just make one last point?

Sure, please, Chair, Madam Chair.

So I think, you know, I think The reason I went down this line of questioning, again, was not for the exercise of going over the specific details of the charter, although that's important, but I am, because all of us up here as council members have had the opportunity and are required to as council members to participate in many regional governance efforts and regional structures.

You know, I sort of come to this conversation with a better understanding of the dynamics that exist amongst suburban cities and the urban core, which is the city of Seattle, and I am sensitive to that.

And I have spent quite a bit of time developing my own relationships with elected leaders outside of the city of Seattle to get a better understanding of how to frankly develop a stronger relationship and line of communication between us as elected officials representing the city of Seattle and whatever their respective jurisdictions might be.

And so the line of questioning was really designed to get a better understanding of whether or not this issue, which I know is important to many suburban cities, has been adequately addressed to create the necessary carrot, as you have described it, to create the maximum level of incentive for participation.

Because I do fundamentally believe that if this is truly going to be a regional governance effort, It cannot just be King County and the city of Seattle.

I think that's frankly what we have been doing.

And so I do think it's important to be able to make sure that the language of the charter and the steering committee structure is going to be attractive enough for our suburban partners and cities to be willing to get into the fray and participate.

And so really at the end of the day, my question was really designed to get at, is this enough?

Have we gone far enough in terms of addressing that underlying sentiment and dynamic that exists between us and some of the smaller suburban cities who don't have as many resources?

but certainly also have need in their communities, have we done enough to incentivize participation in this bigger, more collaborative, collective effort?

And I just want to feel comfortable that we have gone as far as we can to create that level of incentive.

Thank you for asking the question.

And I appreciate your real clear inquiry.

And we can follow up with that.

Council Member Herbold, sounds like you've got something else you want to add.

Super short, just additional follow-up.

As it relates to the steering committee composition, as well as the voting structure, would love to just know, because we're not, I'm not part of the conversations happening over at at King County Council, I read the coverage in the press, but to the extent that they have put on the table changes, proposed changes, I think it's really important for us to know what those are, what sort of things they'd like to see over there.

I completely agree with you.

We have not yet received any proposed changes from King County Council.

We haven't, we've been having conversations with Jeff around questions and issues related to both of the documents.

But I know that the client group is also considering potential changes as well, or recommendations as well.

And as soon as we know, we will definitely have that conversation jointly.

We have been, The city staff and county staff working on this have been attempting to model our regional relationship and collaboration with each other.

And so there should be no surprises in terms of what's being proposed on either side of the jurisdiction.

I do think it's important to add a little bit of the prior conversation that's occurred.

It is correct that we haven't received a new proposal from the county, but initially the members of our client group, council members Muscatabag, Sean O'Brien, have had a couple meetings with members of the King County Council, and one of the earliest proposals or ideas put out, which was actually presented by the King County Council, would have had three City of Seattle members on the steering committee, three King County Council members on the committee, with an eye to what Council Member Gonzalez has raised about the amounts that are being put in.

And in addition to that, that was where the inclusion of a Sound Cities Association or a Sound Cities elected official was first put forward, primarily because while King County could in many ways represent the regional approach, they were trying to be very responsive to the voice that suburban communities wanted to have a very clear and present voice on that group.

And as that proposal was discussed, You see the recommendation that emerged from that, from the two executives.

And then there was also a later change in which a second, this option to further increase the sound city's representation.

That was a further, I'd say, effort to reach out to concerns that were being heard.

Thank you, Jeff.

And I will say that the county is going through its committee and council hearings, as well as meeting with the regional policy committee.

And so when I say we haven't gotten any formal actual recommended changes, that as far as I have heard from my county counterparts, we don't have any formal recommendations for changes, as we also expect to get formally from the city council.

Great.

And what is the timeline?

Do we know yet?

I know we're trying to be working closely with the county and not one of us getting ahead of the other.

Do you have any, I know Jeannie Cole-Wells, Council Member Cole-Wells, is it, this is in her committee.

Do you have a?

timeline, can you help us with that?

So from the timeline that the county has, they'll be holding committee hearings, both county council committee hearings and meetings with the RPC through the month of October.

And then the goal is to bring back to both the city council and the county council the final ordinance and final documents for action in November.

As concurrent as possible.

Any other questions down here?

Thank you.

Please continue.

Yeah, thank you.

Sorry, just before we step away from this discussion, and thank you for raising the issue of sort of, you know, getting down to the real mechanics of how the voting will work.

You know, one of the things that I think is so exciting about this ILA and the standing up of this regional authority is it's an opportunity that we're trying to take advantage of to share power in a different way.

And we've talked a lot about regionalism and resources, but I want to just remind us all that this is also an opportunity to have two members of the steering committee with lived experience.

And as we have discussions about votes, waiting vote, whose perspective we need to pay attention to or not, I invite us to think more deeply about how to incorporate the voices of those with lived experience into this conversation.

Current structure on the steering committee, they are joining elected officials as equals.

And we wanted to really make sure to center the customer voice at the very first table in this nominating process.

So again, I think this is a really exciting opportunity.

to change power dynamics and change the way that we have traditionally done and historically done business by including people with lived experience in how we decide how to move forward and what structures, what power, what decision-making power is really going to be given to the governing board.

So I just wanted to make sure that wasn't missed.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, the next is the Governing Board.

So the Governing Board is in the charter, has 11 members.

The initial appointment process for the Governing Board would be two appointments each from the King County Executive, the Seattle Mayor, from King County Council, from the Seattle City Council.

And those appointments would be going to the Steering Committee for confirmation.

So that's eight of the 11. The remaining three appointments will come from the two lived experience members of the steering committee.

Also, all of this going back to the steering committee for confirmation.

Because we know that filling this board and meeting the general requirements of expertise and experience will take a lot of negotiation among the members of the, among the members who are making the appointments, the recommendation is that each of the appointing entities actually bring more than just two to the table for consideration.

But again, that will all go through a vetting process of the steering committee.

To ensure that there are staggered terms, the initial board will have three member classes.

The first class is three years, second is four, and the third class is for five years.

This is important because after five years, so after the completion of the third class, appointments to the governing board will actually come from the governing board itself and still go to the steering committee for confirmation.

So it is a form of self-perpetuation of the governing board.

The theory behind that is that In five years, the governing board will have a better sense of what the needs, the specific needs are within the governance of the authority and be able to recommend folks that maybe fill gaps that they feel are in existence or augment strengths that are already there.

So as noted earlier, one of the key goals of the creation of this regional authority is to address disproportionality among people experiencing homelessness.

So to that end, the charter provides that a majority of the board members will represent, whether by personal experience or professional connection, populations that are disproportionately represented.

And this, as Council Member Bagshaw noted at the beginning, is intended to get at racial marginalization and disparity.

It also acknowledges that LGBTQ youth are, for example, disproportionately represented among youth experiencing homelessness, that disabled folks tend to have a disproportionate representation as compared to their percentage in the total population.

So there are a number of populations that unfortunately due to historic marginalization are overrepresented.

Can I just stop you there for a moment Council Member Herbold?

Thank you.

As it relates to the powers of the governing board, their roles, their appointment process, I understand that The goal is to put that body in a significant decision-making role and have that body be one that is isolated from political influence, basically.

And so their powers, coupled with the fact that the steering committee their voting powers only yay or nay, no amendments, it seems to me that the only way to hold the governing board accountable in some way is to retain appointment powers over them.

So if If we completely eliminate appointment powers over them after five years, what is the mechanism for holding them accountable for the decisions that they're made when we've created this system that is understandably isolated from political influence?

Yes, excellent question.

So the primary way that both the city and the county and any other party to the ILA that is providing funding to the authority, their primary source of power and influence is through the budgeting process.

And it isn't just through the mere allocation of dollars, but the vehicle by which those dollars will actually transfer to the authority will be through a service agreement.

The county and the city both will have these service agreements.

Those agreements will not only convey the information about what the budgeting process looks like, sort of the particulars associated with each county and the city's individual methods for doing the budgeting, but it will also convey essentially the requirements that the city and the county individually and collectively have of the authority in terms of performance indicators, performance outcomes, impact.

So in essentially the same way that the city council now provides dollars, for example, around homelessness to HSD and requires HSD to provide certain outcomes for those dollars, the council will have that same requirement of the authority.

So I thought that we had, excuse me just a second, that I thought we had some conversations along the notion, and this is five years down the road, that the governing board would identify the individuals that they thought should be joining, but it still would have an opportunity.

to ask for, or make the recommendation to the steering committee.

The steering committee will still be the confirming body.

Okay.

Yeah.

I think maybe we lost that.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So it's not actually reflected on this slide, but you said it today, and I think you mentioned it yesterday when we had the chance for a briefing.

The importance of recognizing that one of the populations that is disproportionately affected by experience homelessness is the youth population, youth and young adults.

And in having conversations with folks who serve youth, one thing that struck me as a major concern with our current system is we don't have metrics that Identify how we are serving youth different from how we are serving Maybe adults chronically homeless adults and the metrics are very different or at least they should be for how we serve the youth population Ideally, this would be something that is both reflected in a governing board and appointment where we have actual youth providers or youth themselves on such a board.

So that's one thing that I would like to make sure that we call out as an important role for us to help mitigate and prevent more folks from falling into homelessness and to have that lived experience on the board.

And then number two, Given the recent announcement from HSD about hiring a, I believe it's a homeless services director position, and the response from the concerns that were raised, I think, by the press around why would we be hiring someone if we're making this transition, I think part of the response was, we don't actually plan to transition services until the year 2021 completely.

My request would be that, on a side topic, we take those considerations specific to how we serve youth and young adults, And we make some changes in this upcoming year so that we are better tracking how we're serving youth and young adults.

It doesn't make a lot of sense for us to hold these organizations accountable for transitioning folks into, let's say, transitional housing and having that be dinged against them when that's clearly potentially a more reasonable place to house youth and young adults versus the type of tracking that we're doing for true adults and adults that are chronically homeless.

So I just want to call that out because it's the second or third time I've heard it mentioned as an important element of who has specific lived experience in the area of homelessness and homeless delivery services that I don't think has been reflected on the board yet, and I'm sorry that we haven't had a chance to talk directly about it, but also maybe more immediately for where we have control in our current system how we can change those metrics and delivery systems so that those who are serving our young folks and young adults have a better chance to show that they are actually being successful instead of being penalized under our current performance metric system.

Don't you think that's a good idea?

I was going to say, did you have a question?

That's it?

OK.

OK, let me ask the question then.

So is there a specific role for youth and young adult service providers or that perspective to be on the board as proposed?

Yes.

So yes, certainly in the advisory committee there is room and need.

So one of the things that HUD does through the continuum of care is It establishes sort of minimum expectations about representation on that advisory on the Continuum of Care Board and ensuring that there's representation of youth, of people of color, of folks experiencing chronic homelessness across all the subpopulations is definitely going to appear on that committee.

I would say that the other thing that we should keep in mind is that three of the board members will be folks with lived experience, and there is no reason to believe that the nominating, the two individuals nominating those three board members would not take into consideration the need for youth, particularly because, as you point out, LGBTQ youth in particular are disproportionately represented as compared to their population in the general populace.

So we think that in fact what you're identifying is addressed both through the advisory committee and on the board.

The third thing that I would say is one of the things that's an expectation of the authority is that it be operating under best practices.

And we know from all of the research about youth experiencing homelessness that the best practices are evolving.

And what are best practices, as you point out Councilmember Mosqueda, what are best practices for single chronically homeless adults may not be the best practice for a 19 year old or a 24 year old or maybe even a 27 year old.

And so the authority part of kind of also getting back to the question of accountability back to the city and the county, we will be asking of the authority that it implement programs with best practices and that it tell us how those best practices are working in the field, that it take that analytical approach and that feedback loop not just to us but also to the customers that they're serving to make sure that there's a continuous improvement loop.

I think that is one of the key ways that we are going to be able to make sure that we have real-time influence over the programs and how the programs are performing and the tweaks or complete changes that need to be made in those programs.

And that work will be done on a population by population basis.

It will be done on a program intervention type basis.

It will be done at the contract basis.

It will be done as the system as a whole.

But one of the things, Council Member Mosqueda, you've talked a lot about data, and I want to tell you that I share your passion for data, as does the mayor's office.

One of the things that we are the most excited about is making, is now having for lack of a better way of saying this, sort of a third party entity that is gathering all of that data and will have the staff capacity to analyze it, to evaluate it, to slice and dice it in ways that work across the region.

So that not only could the city of Seattle understand better how programs are performing in and for the city, but Auburn, will have a better understanding, Shoreline will have a better understanding.

So that level of analytical expertise, we expect and will require that it exists not just in the authority, but we also are, the charter also anticipates that there'll be a member of the governing board that will also have that level of professional expertise.

All right.

Thank you.

I appreciate that answer.

So, I'm looking at the clock and, of course, we had, we're going to try to end this presentation at noon so we had time for public comment.

So, I know if you, and we definitely want to hear from others at the table.

So, if there, if we can move forward.

Great.

Thank you.

I don't want to reduce the opportunity for my colleagues to ask questions.

So, let's make sure that.

You signal me if you've got something that you want to raise, but please proceed.

And Jason is reminding me kindly that we also have another select committee next week, and so there's ample opportunity for us to have deeper conversations at that time as well.

Excellent.

So the only other thing that I want to say about the composition of the governing board is what I was just referring to, which is as the stakeholder groups requested, The membership on the board will be folks with professional experience so that they will be nimble and able to operate and oversee their fiduciary responsibility and the general operations of the authority.

I would say also that it's important because it is a regional body that there be good geographic distribution and representation and that is also called out in the charter.

We've talked already a bit about what the governing board is going to do, what its general roles are.

And as you look at this slide, you'll see that they are not distinct from any other executive board that is overseeing and assuming responsibility for the operations of a large authority.

So I won't linger on this.

So the authority itself will be the entity that essentially plans and contracts for the delivery of services.

Jason can, if needed, talk a little bit more about what that's going to look like in terms of the timing of transferring services, transferring contracts.

But as Council Member Mosqueda noted, the full transference of those contracts is not anticipated to occur until January of 2021. The authority will prepare a five-year implementation plan.

That implementation plan will detail not just sort of how it will do its work and what products it will deliver, but again, to the point of data and evaluation, it's really getting at the to what end question.

And so we expect that there be a lot of data-driven evaluation and consultation customers, providers, funders, municipalities, basically everybody in the community that is interested in that.

Great.

And just quickly, can you talk about how the five-year implementation plan will align with the regional action plan?

the wrap that we're expecting in the next few weeks?

Sure, I would love to.

So the regional action plan is being prepared by a consultant, the CSH, and they are considering it and working on it in a way that is more of a community plan than simply a plan for the regional authority.

I think there has been confusion and we're going to maybe talk about branding a little bit about the fact that we are proposing a regional authority and it is a regional action plan, they are not the same document.

However, the regional action plan will, as Councilmember Mosqueda has pointed out, provide a blueprint, if you will, for what the community as a whole needs to do in order to address homelessness, both on the services side and also on the side that is not under the purview of the regional authority on the capital side.

So the five-year implementation plan will be informed by and aligned with the regional action plan, but it will be specific to what needs to be done by the regional authority to implement its work plan.

Okay, thank you.

Sure.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you.

Well, it wouldn't be a Select Committee on Homelessness without me holding up LA's book.

And this version, again, is just from the City of Los Angeles.

And I've been using this as an example of what a regional action plan potentially is.

Again, this has 14 strategies that they've identified, policy changes, and only one chapter Is actually their governance structure.

So if I were to compare what the regional action plan is contemplating and Ideally that is as we've said before the backbone the blueprint to what is going to change how does this proposal that the county passed and the city passed compared to what is being crafted by the community for a regional action plan.

Will we be able to see this document that comes as a regional action plan to the city of Seattle, vote on it as some sort of blueprint for what we want to see changed in our region?

So, at this time, CSH and the city and the county executive staffs do not anticipate that the regional action plan will come to either of the councils for a vote.

because it is a community plan.

So again, the goal is that it has ownership not just by the city council and the county council, but that there is broad ownership across the region by all communities and by providers, by investors, by funders across the region.

So what we have suggested is that the city council the regional plan be presented to the city council and to the county council in advance of your making a decision on the regional authority.

But it is important to keep them as distinct documents because, frankly, it is the regional action plan, again, despite the name that it is regional action plan, I think we can really begin to think of it more as a community action plan.

And it belongs broadly, philosophically, to the entire community.

I'm confused by that answer.

We have a lot of stake that we've put into this regional action plan being the blueprint for what is actually going to change, what's systematically going to change, and the public policy approaches that are going to be embedded.

And I think I have put a lot of emphasis on making sure that the right folks are at the table to craft the regional action plan so that community partners are truly informing what public policy changes are going to be in place.

When I hear that it's a community plan and it's not exactly the directive to change policy at the city, county, or within our city partners regionally, And it's not the directive that would guide future actions for a governing body.

Again, recognizing this is specific to homeless services and the homeless service delivery system and not housing in general, which we should talk about at some point.

Even if we think of this as a community plan, what is the leverage, what is the opportunity or the mandate that we are giving the governing body to follow the regional action plan.

I don't want that plan sitting on a shelf and not being looked at as the guiding document.

This is, in theory, what I believe to be our public policy mandate to truly change delivery services on the ground level.

So at what point will the city or the county or Sound Cities partners be taking that regional action plan and implementing it or at least giving the directive to the governing body that this is the baseline and we want to see how they're going to implement those policies.

Does that make sense?

Sure it does.

And I think we talked about actually supporting this either through a separate resolution, but I don't know where we are today about that.

In answer to your question, where does that lie and where does that connection lie, it lies in the document.

So it lies in the charter and it lies in the interlocal agreement where it is clear that the five-year implementation plan is informed by the regional action plan.

We, in terms of the question of whether, sorry, in terms of the question of how other jurisdictions begin to take the regional action plan and begin to implement it and use it, part of the requirement, if you will, of becoming a member of the interlocal agreement is their willingness to abide by the policies and the perspective of the five-year implementation plan.

the implementation plan and the regional plan, there will not be a disconnect between them because the one is informing the other.

This is a nuanced difference, and I apologize for the confusion that exists, and it is not confusion in this room, it's confusion that I'm finding exists sort of broadly.

And again, I think some of this is probably due to nomenclature.

The way CSH crafted the process was exactly as you described it.

It is basically an information gathering as well as a data gathering as well as a best practices gathering of information, but at a community level making sure that there is broad participation in the development.

in large part because they want it to stand apart from the sole jurisdiction of one authority.

Because as you just pointed out, the regional authority will really have a jurisdiction over the crisis resolution system, the homeless crisis response system, but not, for example, over capital.

It doesn't have jurisdiction over behavioral health.

It doesn't have jurisdiction over criminal justice.

And so this plan will have recommendations that are broader than specifically the actions that the regional authority will take.

I think one could argue whether or not that bifurcation is a good thing or not.

I think one could argue that our attempt to try to create a regional body was to break down those exact silos that you're talking about.

And specifically, between the disconnect that continues to exist between housing and homelessness.

The reason that we see continued increase in homelessness is because we do not have the housing stock that we need to house folks.

And in order for us to make sure that we're preventing more folks from falling into homelessness and then we're creating an exit strategy out of shelters and out of temporary housing and into affordable homes, we must invest in the zero to 30% of the area median income for affordable homes.

We have seen that in this plan that comes from Los Angeles, where they have pulled together, obviously they had resources, but they pulled together housing and homelessness.

So I'm going to flag that I think that it is an important first step that we're taking here to harmonize our delivery system for homeless services.

It is an important thing for us to be looking at this through the emergency lens, which should have been applied three and a half years ago when we declared a state of emergency.

And I feel like this is an important element.

But unless we truly think about what a comprehensive regional plan looks like related to housing, homelessness, and health services, I worry that that bifurcation will continue.

and that we will not be successful in our efforts to both look upstream and then create the housing that we need.

That's not to say that I don't think we need to harmonize our services for homeless delivery across our region.

I'm supportive of that effort, but I had a lot of hope that the regional action plan would have created a document more like this that is going to give us the menu of items that we need to tackle, not just in homeless delivery service and coordination, but also specific to housing.

It sounds like that's going to be a product.

I have no doubt that CHS is creating that product for us.

But now where I have a little bit of doubt is how do we make that plan actionable?

And where do we as a body get the chance to say, yes, that plan looks great.

Yes, it had a dozen of the people that I know are on the ground every day and working with folks who are experiencing homelessness and seeing the crisis of the lack of affordable housing.

They have provided input to this plan, and I want to see it move forward.

So I'm sort of putting aside the governance question specific to homeless services, which I know is the crux of your presentation.

But I'm increasingly more nervous that the plan that's being developed with our partners that gets at the more broad scope issues around housing and health and homeless services potentially is not going to be actionable.

And so I'm looking forward to, maybe not now, but identifying where we can help make sure that that plan is truly given the Authority that it needs to be implemented and just saying that it will influence or what did I write down?

That'll that the five-year plan will be quote informed by the regional action plan Doesn't give me enough assurance yet that that document that people are spending a lot of time investing in will become the action plan so let's talk more about that and Think about how we can break down that silo a little bit more so that that good work doesn't sit on a shelf or That elements of it don't get incorporated into a five-year plan

Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda.

So, I think that brings us to and back to authority of the scope of work about Three bullet points down.

Yep.

And actually, right, so the rest of the authority of the scope, the rest of the scope of work for the authority really does have to do with sort of the practical application of the procurement of services, the development of their contracts, what their data collection will look like.

And again, ensuring that there is this continuous process improvement through regular updates and conversations with the funders and their customers.

I'm not going to go through this last slide in detail.

There's just way too much on it to go through because I want to make sure we've got time for Jason and Bobby.

But I will say it highlights those main portions of the charter and the ILA.

You know that the charter is the vehicle that actually creates the authority and the interlocal agreement is the agreement between the county and the city to, in fact, enact that charter.

I will say that one thing that is unique and important to highlight is that the charter itself actually requires that there be an office of the ombuds, and that office of the ombuds is the vehicle through which customers and also employees will be able to, again, hold the authority accountable for the kinds of services, the quality of services, access to services, effectiveness of services.

And this is a really unique and important, I think, advancement in the way we think of how we interact with our customers.

Great.

And if we're not going to delve into this today, we can come back at the next meeting next week and take a look at it.

And for my council colleagues, if there are issues that you see, that you want us to highlight, make sure that we know about that and we'll get that word to you.

Yeah.

And so now I'm going to hand it off to Jason.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Tess.

So Tess has mentioned a couple of these things.

Each of you have also made mention of some of what's detailed around budget.

But and I also just want to acknowledge with what I see is maybe only five minutes left in this discussion that we can dive more deeply into some of the budget assumptions as well as staffing, org structure, org design at our next meeting next week.

But I did want to highlight, you know, we've talked about a number of significant changes here.

But one thing that does not change is that councils will still retain funding authority through regular budget processes.

So that's true of the city, county, and the county council.

We are not suggesting by standing up this regional authority that we change the process by which you develop and pass budget.

The city and the county will also have separate service agreements with the regional authority.

This is our contract with the regional authority.

This is where we have an opportunity to not just move money from our jurisdiction to the regional authority, but where we set our expectations.

This is where we will say, it is our expectation that.

And that, you know, contract.

will be very detailed and will be very explicit in what the city expects to get for the revenues that are being managed by the regional authority.

This, you could consider, is very similar to how we partner with public health.

We have a public health contract, as does King County, and that partnership really sets the expectation of what we as a community want to see in regard to public health and gives Patty and her team direction as to what should occur with the public resources that they receive.

Great.

I just want to underscore what you said Jason and make sure that the community hears this as well is that this council still retains the funding authority.

So I know there was some initial concern from some of our providers to say we want to be able to come to you.

We want to be able to provide our opinion.

about what should go into the budget.

That does not change.

That is correct.

All right.

I also just, as I move into this slide, just want to state that the base budget for 2020 is really built off of what currently exists in 2019. So, these are budget assumptions based on existing 19 budget.

This is not a.

real reflection of the actual 2020 numbers.

But what you'll see is that we've broken down the budget into three groups.

First and most importantly is the program value.

So these are, again, the program and services dollars you'll see totaling roughly $117 million, $39 million of which would be a contribution program and service contribution by the city of Seattle.

We've also separated out annualized administrative value.

You'll see that that is a total of $11 million.

Administrative costs, that is the staffing for the regional authority that is paying for things.

like rents and vehicles and transportation, benefits, all of those items that go into supporting the regional authority and the people that work there.

You'll see that that's a total of $11 million, $4 million of which would be a contribution from the City of Seattle.

And then finally, we've grouped in and tried to be really clear about what the startup costs would be for opening a regional authority.

These are currently projected at $3 million, $2 million of which would be a contribution from the City of Seattle.

These startup costs are items, you know, these are one-time costs, but these are items like getting space, renovating that space, developing the IT and infrastructure.

There is a move that will need to occur.

And likewise, we are projecting that we are going to, in 2020, need to start hiring staff that will be the leadership of this new organization.

So we need to hire an executive director.

We need to hire, that executive director will likely need to bring on a chief of staff.

a HR director, so a team of people that they can rely on to start building the organization and hiring the rest of the employees.

So this is included in this assumption is the, you know, bringing on a leadership team for the new organization.

Council President.

Jason, thanks for going over this.

This is a very easy slide to remember.

I know it's high level, but it's very helpful.

The roughly $70 million that the City of Seattle contributed, is that all general sub-fund money or is that includes grants, federal money, state monies, the sources?

that is irrespective of this amount, or is it all just general sub fund money?

Or do we know yet?

No, it's not just all general fund.

It's a number of grants.

So currently we have investments out of the general fund, out of community development block grant, out of ESG, out of the housing levy.

So this is a total- I was going to think about federal funding for the most part.

So that would include- And then so my, where I'm heading with this is will the governing board or the steering committee or the regional governance group, will they be allowed to pursue federal funding on its own or will it still go through the county and the city?

and end up with the governing structure?

Have we thought through that one, that issue?

Yeah, so the relationship with HUD will still be the cities and counties to hold.

So we will still have that relationship with HUD.

We will still be the recipient, for example, of community development block grant dollars.

We would then pass through those dollars, those service dollars, to the regional authority to deploy into service contracts.

But we still will have expectations on us by the federal government.

We will still retain that relationship, that grantee, grant maker relationship with the federal government.

And we'll be responsible for annual comp plans, for annual audits, for all of those items.

And so the expectations on us as a city will have to be defined inside of the service agreement with the regional authority so that they know what is going to be expected of them as well.

Thank you.

May I add to that?

Council President Harrell, you asked about the thorough funds that we received.

In this domain, the most significant amount of that money is what is received through the Continuum of Care program from HUD.

At this time, the city receives about $18 million worth of that.

The county, the rest, I think it's $36 million in total, somewhere in those ballparks.

And then I believe the vision is that as the regional authority comes into existence and also assumes the duties of the continuum of care, the regional authority would be actually the applicant for that program.

So it would not be going through the city and the county.

And that's a very important difference.

They would be receiving that grant that's because of federal requirements on how you can apply for that.

And the charter is written so that the numbers you see there, for example, Seattle's $69 million.

I'll use 18 million.

If 18 million of that is currently from COC money, that would go down from 69 to about 41, something like that.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

And I know that you've got some sheets for us to look at that.

And one question that has come up is over time, will the administrative costs increase or will we anticipate seeing it flat or decrease over the years?

And administrative, that's total between city and county on this project.

Yeah, it's difficult to say exactly at this time.

That said, NIS has offered org design that has a number of new roles that don't exist at the city or the county.

And so, you know, there is both going to be some efficiencies that take place by consolidating city and county efforts to, say, contracting.

that might occur, and there could also be efficiencies at the leadership level, given that, again, two organizations are going to consolidate to become one.

But at the same time, there are recommendations around new staffing.

We talked about the Office of the Ombuds, but there is also deep desire to have equity built into all teams.

And there are staff positions specifically called out to ensure equity is in place across the organization.

So there's some sort of books of business that are different and new that don't occur inside the city and the county.

And there may also be some efficiencies that are found by consolidation.

Again, it's sort of a long way to say we don't know at this point.

What we're trying to do is build an organization administratively that aligns as best as possible with the good thinking of this community in partnership with NIS, but with existing resources.

Great.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Bobby, do you want to address your slides here?

Sure, just briefly, for the sake of time, the staffing of this model that's impacting our current city employees is going to take place in three phases in partnership with King County.

Those three phases we can go into more detail next week, but they are co-location, and that is basically our employees doing the work that they're doing every single day, the value that they're adding to the communities that they serve in a different location with their counterparts from all home in King County.

At some point when we have an executive director who will be the leader in crafting the organizational vision and culture for the PDA, we will go into a loaned or matrix reporting structure where the executive director of the organization gets a chance to look at the framework of knowledge, skills, and abilities and the outcomes of the organization.

and crafting a vision for how work needs to shift in order to provide long-term value to the communities that the PDA serves.

And then finally, in the regional authority, once everything is built, employees will have an opportunity in the loan period to apply for, compete for opportunities within the regional authority.

OK, very good.

Thank you.

And I know that you'll be talking more about the work that you've been doing with our labor unions, with the represented employees, so that we've been working all along up front to make sure that we don't have any labor issues.

Yeah, thank you.

That work has already begun.

So there is, you know, a deep engagement, a weekly engagement with employees.

There is a weekly meeting of HR teams jointly with labor relations.

There are regular meetings with the Human Services Department as well as with SDHR.

and labor relations with PROTEC 17. PROTEC 17 is invited to all staff convenings, be them, you know, city-specific staff convenings or joint city-county staff convenings.

So that, you know, deep and very intentional engagement has already begun and will continue as we develop this process.

Great.

Thank you for that.

Do you, does anybody have anything else that you would like because we're going to turn to public comment and I believe we've got 13, 14 people who have signed up and I'm going to pass this to Council President who has kindly agreed to take this on.

And I want to apologize to some that a number of us had some other commitments right at noon, but we will have the opportunity to review the tape on this.

So thank you for that.

Thank you very much.

Let's get going.

We want to hear from you.

So, Rudy, you are first, and then William, you are second, and then Lori is third.

Rudy, William, and Lori.

Hi, I'm Rudy Pantoja.

Hi, Councilwoman Bagshaw, thank you for your leadership here today.

And President Harrell, you're the best.

And Councilwoman Herbold, I am the new councilperson.

Never met you before.

I'm here about the misdemeanor warrants that are being served through Seattle Municipal Court, passed on to members of our community.

I have a family member that has had a misdemeanor warrant since March, who's been involved with some negative activity that has Impacted the community where other people have been hurt and Seattle police says call the council They told us that those warrants are unarrestable So I called the council and the council says call the police because those that's a police matter well in the process We've got other jurisdictions through King County Family Court and and other court jurisdictions that want this person to stay clean and Seattle Police have given the person a free pass to continue to use and not bring this person accountable.

We've got several kids in foster care who are being taken care of by other people and the person's going to end up losing their rights if things don't change.

These misdemeanor warrants have had a number of victims that have been impacted because of this person with a misdemeanor warrant.

Police officers have been injured.

Community has been put at risk.

I can go on and on, but I've reached out to your office, Councilwoman Herbold, and to Councilwoman Bagshaw, and saying the person needs to be arrested.

Take it off the streets.

Let the judge decide before something bad happens.

And that's called prevention.

I can't see a clock.

I can't see any clocks.

Anyway, my time is up.

I don't want to waste your time.

OK.

Thank you, Rudy.

I can't see any of the clocks from my angle.

So William, you're next, and then followed by Lori, and then Amy.

Thank you.

Hello there.

My name is William.

I live in Nicholsville, Northlake.

This is to the Mayor, the City Council, and any other interested party who may be listening.

Nicholsville needs and deserves its independence back.

For well over a year, we've tried to sit down and mediate a solution to conflicts with the Seattle Human Services Department and Low Income Housing Institute.

In spite of requests from the City Council, many communities, community groups, churches, leaders, and citizens, HSD and Lehigh still won't even talk to us.

They pretend Nicholsville doesn't exist and hope that if we're ignored long enough, we'll just disappear or something.

Well, no.

Thank you, William.

Lori, Amy, and then Sean Smith.

Hi, my name is Lori.

I'm with Nicholsville Tiny House Village.

Lehigh and HSD have done their best to ruin our community and blame it on us.

Now HSD has gone too far.

They've told Lehigh that if Lehigh does not get things under control, Lehigh contract to operate Nicholsville North Lake will be canceled and it will be closed.

Of course, HSD blames us because Lehigh can't do their job, which is ridiculous.

We are asking that the city of Seattle to fund the Lehigh has violated their service agreements at Northlake and Othello.

But instead of making us homeless by closing these tiny house villages down and adding to the crisis of homelessness, we are asking the city of Seattle to do something creative and grown up.

At Northlake, we are asking that the City to allow a religious institution to work with Nickelsville to keep the village open.

At Othello, we are asking that the City let a religious institution in Nickelsville use 10,000 square feet or larger piece of land for two years.

The day Othello Nickelodeon's are able to move our tiny houses to this new piece of land will end the strike at Othello.

Lehigh can keep their present side and HSD money.

They continue on their path to a low barrier camp requiring paid security guards and cameras.

Low barrier camps like what Othello occupied is developing into are needed, but it is not what we need, agreed to, or want to live in.

We want to be self-managed, stay together, and safe, and live as a sober, drug-free environment.

That's what...

You don't have to cut it off, right?

I'll ensure I can cut off.

Sometimes you give me a little time to finish.

After Amy Smith.

Hello.

I'm Amy Hagopian.

I'm on the faculty at the University of Washington School of Public Health.

I've been doing projects with SHARE since the 90s and with Nicholsville since its founding.

And I remain baffled why the city and its human services department remain so unsupportive of these important communities.

It seems as if there is almost a war against them.

And especially given this morning's headline about homeless communities in the city and difficulties and struggles, these are national models of organizations that organize homeless people to build agency, skills, competencies, power.

Why HSD and Lehigh continue to piss on these organizations is just such a mystery to me.

This city council has done nothing.

There have been requests to mediate between Nicholsville and Lehigh that have gone nowhere.

Now that Nicholsville is requesting a divorce from Lehigh and HSD, I think you should at least support the mechanisms to accomplish that.

The September 10th letter from Nicholsville offers a way forward that I think you should adopt.

Meanwhile, HSD staff should be sanctioned for the behavior they've exhibited toward these model organizations.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Following Sean will be Alvin is it Alvin Wilson and then Peggy hoats Good afternoon council my name is Sean Smith, and I'm here with my fellow Nickelodeon's from an occupied a fellow village a Village there is now ran by Lehigh poorly at seven five four four Martin Luther King way south I Residents of the former Nicholsville Village have been living on this Lehigh occupation for 24-7 for the last five months.

We have watched as our camp has gone from a village that we built to a low barrier shelter.

It is unacceptable.

HSD and Lehigh announced this week to impose a plan of a sanction change an operator upon us, a board member of Lehigh that our camp rejected due to conflict of interest.

We don't see how a board member should be receiving money for an organization that is run by the city.

Reyes and Othello have filled out meeting grievances against Lehigh staff here.

They've not been resolved.

As a matter of fact, HSZ contract specialist says Lehigh didn't even show him the grievances.

The Lehigh Board of Directors bears responsibility for us.

They've been told for years that Lehigh staff hides its grievances and has done nothing about it.

Now they want to put a Lehigh board member.

And the director of near Camp Raider, it's crazy.

We need independence from the low barrier village that Lehigh has occupied the villages turned into.

Give us a piece of land for two years.

The city has plenty of property they could share.

We'll find our own religious and camp operator, move our tiny houses there, and be done with Lehigh and HSD.

We're tired of being on strike in a village that we built up, and we have seen Lehigh ruined.

If the HSD wants to pretend it's a good way to run things with spend tax dollars, let them.

Let us move somewhere where we can live in a sober environment.

Families shouldn't have to live around people who act out.

Thank you, Sean.

Alvin?

Yeah, my name is Sean.

I'm sorry?

Yeah, my tongue is on.

So we don't yield time.

We'd love to hear from you, but we don't, that's not a practice we allow in the chambers.

Families shouldn't have to live around people who act out.

I think it's loaded on campus, and Lehigh all allows homeless people in some place, too.

We hate to see money wasted on Lehigh security guards who don't do their job around the place.

We'd rather just run things ourselves the right way.

Our fellow residents have never signed up for this Lehigh and HSE nonsense.

We signed up for a solar self-managed community, which we are now.

Give us an emergency camp, camp and operated piece of land for two years so we can get back to it.

We'll be a much better investment than this county-wide homeless.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Peggy is next.

I have signed up for Kelly McCluskey.

Good afternoon, Councilmembers.

My name is Peggy Coates, and I'm a Nicholsville volunteer and founder.

In a week and a half, Nicholsville will celebrate its 11th anniversary, most of that time without a steady source of financing or a permit.

Through the years, thousands of homeless people work together to provide safe shelter in a self-managed setting.

Despite this present period of intense struggle, Nickelodeons are committed to continuing to operate villages and encampments where sobriety and safety are paramount and everyone participates in a democratic community.

In other words, the city of Seattle is going to need to work with us.

We're not going away.

Nicholsville and hundreds of our friends have worked to promote mediation between Nicholsville, Lehigh, and HSD.

But bullies don't negotiate unless someone more powerful insists.

While those who could have helped stood by, these homeless people were subjected to aggressive and outrageous acts by Lehigh staff and HSD.

At occupied Othello Village, the Lehigh site manager abruptly tossed 99% of the large muscle toys of the 10 children living there, including tricycles, wagons, and pedal cars into a dumpster.

At Nicholsville North Lake, recently a Lehigh staff emailed a refusal to provide supplies that agreed to send 20 days previously, including women's hygiene products for only half a dozen residents.

Lehigh claims it can't afford them.

The people of Nicholsville villages have discussed their options and have arrived at a fair and reasonable solution for each village.

Nicholsville North Lake wishes to remain on the same small piece of unused city land and find a faith-based organization as a sponsor.

Occupied Othello Village asked to move to an unused piece of public land and also have a religious sponsor.

The Human Services Department has admitted that Lehigh has violated the service agreement at both these sites and said they're out of compliance.

The City Council controls the purse.

You should defund these or refuse to fund these organizations until they back the solution.

And also I'd like to say moving these public comments to the end of this meeting does not give agency to these homeless people who have shown up here.

So the very people that you're talking about are speaking to an empty room.

And that's just wrong.

I understand your point.

I'll address that.

Kelly and then Rick McClain.

This is to Adrian Lester, HSD and Citizen Services Bureau and whom we make a concern.

This is a response to your Wednesday email to us via staff.

There has never been a meeting at North Lake, Tiny House Village, or Ballard Tiny House Village with just HSD and Lehigh.

This isn't normal business operations for us.

There's valid reasons to have a meeting without so-called contractor Lehigh.

You are willfully ignoring the reasons we have given you.

North Lake Nicholsville should have a chance to be heard without interruptions.

and to have others for transparency and accuracy.

This is a request to be heard fairly without the high intimidation.

This response is also a grievance against the Seattle Human Services Department for the unprofessional and unwilling, unwillful and willful actions of HSD managers, contracts, specialists and planners.

that have damaged us individually and as a group.

Among other things, we are asking that this grievance result in your being required to work with Nickelsville-Northlake collectively as a group.

It is the only way for us to communicate effectively in the face of HSD and Lehigh's stubbornness.

We are a valid and recognized self-managed association.

In the past, the city of Seattle has not been a union buster and has respected collective bargaining.

HSD supports programs that help tenants communicate in associations.

Why is it different when it comes to us?

Thank you.

You're Rick McLean?

Okay, thank you.

So following you will be Emily Myers and then Shoshana Wineberry.

Good afternoon.

My name is Rick McLean.

I am the democratically elected bookkeeper from Nicholsville North Lake Village.

Continuing in the letter that we sent to Adrian Lester and HSD.

We are a valid and recognized self-managed association.

In the past, the City of Seattle has not been a union buster in its respected collective bargaining.

HSD supports programs that help tenants communicate as associations.

Why is it different when it comes to us?

There are many just reasons for this grievance.

HSD is aware of numerous allegations of damaging actions by Lehigh against us individually and as a group.

You and your co-workers have willfully avoided taking the slightest due diligence to investigate these allegations.

One shocking example is the statement of the HSD contract specialist that the grievance we filed with Lehigh about Northlake case management has been resolved.

That was done without talking to any of us.

Now we haven't had a Lehigh case manager for a month and a half.

That's the second time this year that Lehigh has not provided full-time case management required by the contract.

Blaming us for this without even talking to us is not due diligence.

It is also not a resolution.

We want case management.

Another example is an HSD planner telling people in the spring that Northlake wouldn't close.

Then in the summer, the same person told people that Northlake would close in September and that we should fire our staff person.

People, including CAC members and us, are very alarmed and there has been no clarification from HSD.

We are giving this grievance to the Seattle Customer Services Bureau.

That's what the HSD contract specialist said to do with grievances.

If he was wrong and there was another place to file grievances against HSD and its staff, we expect you to tell us.

Please continue to communicate with Northlake County Health Villages through our staff person.

Please schedule with him a meeting off-site for Northlake that is transparent and includes witnesses, such as the CAC, and is without Lehigh's intimidation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Richard.

Emily Myers here, and then Shoshona.

Shoshana Weinberg here, and then Teresa, I think it's Barkley, or Barkley, I think it's Barkley.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Shoshana Weinberg, and I'm here today on behalf of the King County Youth Providers Collaborative, which represents the eight primary agencies serving young people experiencing homelessness in Seattle and King County.

We recently reviewed the regional authority's proposed charter and believe it's a positive first step in improving our system response.

I'd like to share several questions that we hope you'll consider addressing.

First, we noticed that the proposed governing board does not include anyone with expertise with youth and young adults experiencing homelessness.

We know, and science confirms, that young people have unique developmental needs, and they're often interacting with different systems, such as public schools, child welfare, and juvenile justice.

We'd like to know how our homelessness system will address the unique needs of young people, and whether that expertise can be reflected on the board.

Similarly, the proposed board includes only one provider representative and precludes anyone who is a current contract holder.

We appreciate concerns regarding a conflict of interest, but we also believe that professionals in the field offer critical insight into what is and what isn't working well.

We're wondering how the governing board will be informed by on-the-ground experience when there's no one represented who's currently working on the ground.

Last, we recognize that being a member of the governing board will require lots of time and energy, especially in the beginning, and be accountable to some of our most vulnerable community members and to large amounts of public funds.

We'd like to know how issues of capacity, retention, accountability, and equity will be addressed if the positions remain voluntary and on top of members' daily jobs.

We'd like to conclude with a suggestion.

In 2015, Washington created a statewide office of homeless youth, which holistically recognizes that young people need stable housing, as well as connections to education, employment, and community support.

Currently, our system response is largely driven by HUD and not aligned to meet the developmental needs of young people.

As you move forward in this restructure, we ask you to consider mirroring our state system so that the services, strategies, and outcomes are tailored to the developmental needs of all people served, including youth and young adults.

Thank you.

Thank you, Shoshana.

Teresa, and then our last speaker is Asa Poloji.

Hello, good afternoon.

My name is Teresa Barker.

I'm a lifelong resident of Seattle here, and we have a group of neighbors surrounding Ravenna Park that for two years has been working with the city to get assistance to the homeless and to really solve the problem, to ask the city and hold the city accountable to solve the problem of homelessness.

This is an important problem for our city to solve, and we're hopeful about the shared governance step.

I'm just concerned about the scale of the problem needing even more resources.

Even though there may be cost reductions by pooling resources between the city and the county, as was mentioned today, the problem we are facing is of such a large scope that we want to stay vigilant about making sure we're doing enough to solve homelessness.

I think this is a problem our city can solve.

We're a city of vision.

And when I first started, I didn't think that was the case, which is awesome.

We're hopeful about shared governance, but our community wants to make sure that the city's response continues to address the problem and underlying issues and not just expect that the shared governance group will do it.

Please continue to focus on this issue and to make this a success.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Is Asa here?

She had to leave too.

So that would conclude our public comment.

I did want to address Peggy, if I may call you Peggy's point.

I would agree with you that it's not ideal to have just, and I want to thank Council Member Pacheco for staying here listening to public comment, just the two of us here when we have a council of nine, that is not ideal.

We do have HSD state.

And listen, thank you, Mr. Johnson and your staff, for being here.

Shoshone, I want to call you out as an example.

Your points could have, I think, well informed the discussion as well.

I think we got pieces of it, of course.

But that's not ideal.

The thought being, I think, each chair has their own style.

And I think the thought being is that we wanted you to see the kinds of things we're considering with this regional model.

We've been working on this for a while, and then maybe comment on that.

I'll take your comments back.

I hear you loudly and clearly.

Thank you for your patience, and thank you for your work, too, in this community in serving those.

So with that, we'll stand adjourned, and everyone have a great rest of the day.

Thank you, Allison.