Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee 11118 Session I

I thought it helped with headaches.

Hey, good morning, everyone.

It is November 1st.

This is a continuation of our budget committee.

I'm Sally Bagshaw, chair of this committee.

Thank you all for being with us.

Thank you to my colleagues for being here.

This is the third day, as you all well know.

of reviewing green sheets.

These are proposals that you, my colleagues, and I have proposed to amend the mayor's budget.

So, if we are crisp today and we get through the 60 plus items that we have, we will cancel tomorrow morning's Friday morning budget meeting.

So, we will see if we can do that.

So, if we get it wrapped up by this afternoon, then we will not be reviewing green sheets tomorrow morning.

So, I've got a couple of changes to the agenda.

Yesterday afternoon, we spoke about the budget for justice, various issues, and trying to bring them together in a coordinated way.

So, I'm going to move to amend the proposed agenda by adding green sheet 2-1.

9-A-1, which will come immediately after agenda item 60, which is a consideration of the budget for justice items as a package.

It also will provide you extra time over the noon hour to work on this, and I will be available to talk about it if there's any questions.

And I think Thank you.

Okay.

We'll just do this one first.

All those in favor of amending that part of the agenda?

Aye.

Okay.

So, Council Member Johnson, I understand that you have another meeting that you need to be attending on our behalf.

So, thank you for that.

And you've got another item that you would like to move this morning.

Yes, Madam Chair.

So, I am one of our regional representatives on the Puget Sound Regional Council's Growth Management Policy Board.

We're having a big discussion today about where to focus targeted growth in the region, and I would love to be able to attend that meeting on the city's behalf.

But one of the items that I care a lot about is agenda item number 23 about community health engagement locations.

So I'm asking if we could amend the agenda by moving agenda item number 23 to discuss it after agenda item number one.

Sure, absolutely.

So I will second that.

All those in favor of moving that agenda?

Okay, so now we have an amended agenda, which we will vote on again.

So all those in favor of our amended agenda, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Very good.

All right.

Thank you for that.

I appreciate it.

And the last comment I have before we get going is So, for those of us who have proposed statements of legislative intent, again, I'm asking that we submit a one-pager which describes briefly what the action is that you are requesting from the executive, the date that you want it to come back, and then what you will do with that information or which committee that you're recommending it go to.

So, please, if you have recommended a statement of legislative intent, if you will get that back to me. by tomorrow afternoon at 5 o'clock, so we can consider it over the weekend when we're doing our budget balancing package.

All right.

With that, welcome to the table, both Alan and Eric.

Allison, from my office, thank you for continuing to do such a good job of coordinating.

Amelia, thank you for being here.

We'll start with Item 1, then we're going to go to Councilmember Johnson's Item Number 2.

Alan Lee, Council Central Staff.

So I'll go ahead and start with item number one.

This is Green Sheet 15-1A-1.

Add $79,000 general fund to HSD in 2019 for homelessness mental health outreach services.

This is also co-sponsored by Council Members Mosqueda and Council Member O'Brien.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Just briefly on this topic, two of the North End business improvement areas, the Ballard BIA and the University District Partnership, are interested in continuing their work with homeless service outreach through a contract they've got with the REACH program.

These funds would provide funding to those two business improvement areas to have a part-time case manager who would be focused on case management outreach for those living unsheltered in those two neighborhoods.

Okay, very good.

Any additions to that?

I'll just say the feedback we're getting from communities where they have case managers on the street doing this type of work has been amazing.

I mean, it's not magically going to solve everything overnight, but it really has helped folks feel like they have a little more control in understanding what's going on and actually helping individuals who are struggling.

Very good.

Thank you.

Now, is this comparable to what's going on in Ballard?

Council Member O'Brien, is that correct?

Correct.

So, the intent, I think, of this one is to support both Ballard and University District.

Ballard's already doing this work, and so this would be support for them to do it ongoing, and your district's similar.

Correct.

And as partial funding, the cost of an outreach worker is about $100,000 a year, so this would be sort of one-third of the cost of that outreach worker.

One-third is expected to be raised by the BIAs themselves, and then the final third, they're trying to do outreach to philanthropy and other sources in order to get it.

Thank you for that.

I'm going to write this as a high priority for me as well.

So, thank you, Councilmember Johnson, for initiating it.

So do you want to go on to your next item, which is 23 in our book, but we're going to take as item number two.

Item number 23, Green Sheet 14-1A-1.

This adds $440,000 general fund to HSD for one-time setup costs to open a mobile fixed site shell and imposes a proviso.

Very good.

Thank you.

Council Member Johnson.

Is this on?

This is co-sponsored by Council Members Mosqueda and Council Member O'Brien.

Thank you.

Thank you for that, Alan.

We've spent a lot of time on this dais talking about safe consumption sites, aka community health engagement locations.

I don't want to belabor the topic, but we anticipate that the total costs to get up and running a safe consumption site and operate it in 2019 and in 2020 is gonna be about $3 million.

This would take an additional $440,000 and add it to the $1.3 million that we've set aside.

When added to the $1.3 million that the county has set aside in mid-funding and other county resources, we believe that that is enough funding to both set up a site and to operate it throughout 2019 and 2020. And then, of course, we would ask the executive to proviso this funding to only spend it on this particular item and hope that this gives us some certainty that we have enough resources to stand up a site next year.

And, of course, the siting and location has been a challenge, but believe that this would be the final funding hurdle that would be necessary in order to get a safe consumption site set up next year.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just want to echo my support for this.

I know that this council has been working for a very long time to make sure that these overdose prevention sites can be created in our city to stop deaths and also help people get into the services they need.

I think this is the last missing component here, and I'm looking forward to action in 2019. Also appreciate the partnership with public health and our regional partners as we try to figure out how to show that this can work in Seattle.

Councilmember Swann, did you have something you wanted to say or just add your name?

Just add my name.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Johnson, thank you for being such a stalwart advocate for this.

Councilmember Mosqueda, I know that those of us who serve on the Public Health Board are coming to this because it was a recommendation made by the Opioid Addiction Task Force from the county two years ago.

We've had a lot of strong advocacy in the community.

We also know that it's controversial and that people in neighborhoods and have been here before.

And for those who are listening, I just want to say we have heard you loud and clear.

What we are all trying to do is to solve this problem and figure out ways to do it in such a way that's compassionate and moves the needle on the problem and helping people get the treatment that they need, not simply just having a place where they can shoot up.

So later on this morning, I have a budget ask item two, but it is for increasing buprenorphine at one of our public health facilities.

So treatment on demand is still gonna be a high priority for me as well.

All right, thank you.

We'll go to the next item of business.

Item number two.

Green Sheet 15-2A-1.

This Green Sheet would add $55,000 general fund in 2019 and the same amount in 2020 to HSD to fund homelessness outreach programming such as the DSA's Metropolitan Improvement District Outreach Program.

This is President Harrell.

And President Harrell isn't here.

Maybe I could just speak to it for him.

$55,000 that will help us with the outreach program and I want to say thank you to our friend Jackie St. Louis who came from the mid.

I had the opportunity to do a walk around with them and I was very impressed by what they were able to accomplish.

I think that part of what the expansion here is to serve the International District, Capitol Hill, First Hill as well.

So I think that's all that needs to be said, but I support what Council President Harrell is doing.

Any other additions?

Council Member Johnson.

Item number three, Green Sheet 15-3A-1.

This screen sheet would impose a proviso on HSD regarding homelessness outreach in certain neighborhoods by the Metropolitan Improvement District Program.

This is Councilmember Gonzales.

Do you have anything you'd like to add?

Yeah, I was just waiting for the chair's permission.

I know the protocols and I follow them.

We were getting ready free flow yesterday.

No, this green sheet is a follow-up to the concerns that I expressed last week during our issue identification conversation.

where I signaled that I have concerns about how we are approaching and strategizing from a systems perspective, how we fund homelessness outreach services across the city and not having a good, I feel like this council doesn't have a good sense of that geographic parity issue and this proviso is designed to not necessarily encumber additional funding for the human services department to It's designed to really make sure that this council understands what the city's homelessness outreach program strategy is, whether and how geographic parity is involved with that strategy, and to provide us with data that justifies further geographically focused engagement in this proposed mid-outreach strategy.

operational areas as opposed to other areas and really giving us a sense of an assessment of area BIA concerns that may be addressed through these similar dollars.

I think that the first two budget green sheets that we just discussed, one that is specific to the University District in Ballard for, again, the same services.

And then Council President Harrell's request for an additional $55,000 for Chinatown International District.

And I think the green sheet that comes after this one also talks about sort of a type of additional outreach services on the North End.

And so I'm a little concerned that we are allocating $200,000 in 2019, $200,000 in 2020 in a very sort of focused geographic area that would go to the mid.

And I feel like this council needs to have a better understanding of the geographic parity question and how we can make sure that we are meeting the homelessness outreach services needs that exist throughout the city as well.

So let me ask a question, and Alan, this is directed to you.

Can these two items be brought together?

The idea about having provisos is that we will get a report.

What I'm wondering, and Council Member Gonzalez, if you have a thought about this, is there a way that we can coordinate these so we can get the services, keep the services, making sure Chinatown, International District are getting the services, but get a report back so we know whether or not we want it to continue, or are you asking that things not happen until, just help me out with what your vision is for this.

So I think my vision would be that we would have HSDU provide us the information that I've detailed in the proviso that is in this particular green sheet.

There are four different categories that I discussed already, so I won't say them again.

And at that point, we would be able to really decide whether and how the total amount of $400,000 over two years should be allocated to homelessness outreach across the city.

I suspect that that would also include the Chinatown International District.

And in fact, I think that if Council President Harrell's proposal advances that would provide just to Chinatown or International District an additional $55,000.

But I think, you know, for me, it's just really important to make sure that we understand how the city's homelessness outreach program is being crafted and how geographic parity is involved with those particular strategies.

Do you have a date that you want that report back?

And is this something that you would like to see coming back to your committee, to Council Member Mosqueda's committee?

It would be, I think, most appropriate to go to Council Member Mosqueda's committee since she is responsible for human services, sorry, for, Public health.

Public health.

Very good.

Thank you.

I was trying to think of whatever the thing was.

Sorry, I'm a little slow.

Would you like to have something back by the end of the first quarter?

Yes.

So if I could interject here.

So Madam Chair, so the proviso is structured in a way that the department could not spend the money until a report is submitted.

So in that sense, they wouldn't be able to spend money for this particular program until...

Correct.

And I understand that, Alan.

What my point is, is that this is important.

We want this money to be spent.

We want this outreach to happen.

So I would be very sad if $200,000 was unspent all year long because a report didn't come back until November of next year.

Yeah, so I'm just mentioning that in the sense that I believe the department would be motivated to provide that report as soon as possible so that they could spend that money.

We could, of course, We could, of course, add a due date or restructure the proviso to include other requirements such as a due date.

Do you have?

I'd be happy to amend this proviso to request that HSD provide a report back no later than the end of quarter one.

Thank you.

I'll also mention, Madam Chair, that President Harrell's ad and this proviso are not technically incompatible, that the council could choose to appropriate additional funds to the BSL and still require such a report.

Okay.

Thank you, Eric.

And just, it's not my place to make proposals, but the council.

You can make recommendations.

The council could point out an option.

Council could certainly identify a point by which you want to see the report come back and an option would be to provide, potentially to provide a portion of the funding that is to make the proviso only apply to the portion of the period.

That is to say, if you could provide three months of funding and ask for a report back.

in February, and that would allow you to decide whether to release the remainder of the funding.

I'm not sure how the contract would be structured.

I don't like that idea.

I'm sorry.

And the reason I don't like that idea is because I think it's unfair to the providers to only provide them three months of funding.

I think it just creates operational issues for our providers, so I don't think that that's necessarily Fair.

Again, whether this amount ends up being $200,000 a year or $255,000 a year as proposed by Council President Harrell, I think it's critically important for us to make sure we have a clear understanding from HSD how we are funding homelessness outreach program strategies.

What the performance metrics are for those providers that we are contracting with for the homelessness outreach that we are asking be done, and we need to make sure that these contracts are being held to the same performance standards that other I would like to make a comment on the RFP process.

provided ongoing funds through this.

And so I'm having difficulty with this one in terms of why we are effectively earmarking these dollars for an organization that was not competitive and not successful.

And in particular, where the raters in the HSD RFP process said that they have no theory of change and it's unclear how these outreach services were actually moving the needle on homelessness.

Again, I believe that we need additional dollars in this budget in order to conduct homelessness outreach.

I have significant concerns and questions about who is earmarked in the mayor's proposal for getting these dollars to do the outreach services.

I'm interested in making sure that it's service providers who have a proven track record of being effective in this space and that are also going to be consistent with our stated principles around making sure that we have performance metrics in place and accountability measures in place that are actually going to be data-driven and that we have confidence are going to actually create a difference.

So whether it's 200 or 255 makes no difference to me, but I just feel really, really strongly about the performance issues and the geographic parity issues.

Thank you for that.

Any other comments or anybody want to add on to this?

All right, let's move on to item number four.

Item number four, green sheet 15-4A-1.

This green sheet would add $80,000 and each year to the Human Services Department for information and referral services.

I'm sorry to interrupt.

Go ahead.

Oh, and I apologize.

The sponsoring members are Council Members Johnson and Council Member Mosqueda.

And Council Member Juarez, I believe you wanted to ask for 4, 5, and 6?

4, 5, 6, and 7 are mine.

And did you want Alan to read them all in at once and then you address them at once?

He could do that and then I'll talk, I'll let you do that and then I'll tell you what I would like to do, which we did discuss before.

But I think Council Member Skate had something to say before I started.

Madam Chair, I'm sorry, I missed my opportunity.

I would very much like to sign on to Council Member Gonzalez's item number 3. Thank you.

I was supposed to sign on to that too, I'm sorry.

Okay, so add those, add Councilmember Juarez and Councilmember Mesquita, if you will, for item number three.

No problem.

And Alan, would you just briefly introduce four, five, six, and seven, because I think Councilmember Juarez will have plenty to say about each.

Item number five, Green Sheet 15-5A-1.

This adds $95,000 general fund each year to HSD for homelessness services for American Indian and Native Alaskan women.

Wait, wait, wait.

I think you start on four.

Aurora Commons is first.

Oh, I apologize.

Yeah, trying to cheat me out of one.

I see how it is.

Jumping out of the queue here.

So backtracking, item number four, 15, green sheet 15, 4A1, add 80,000 general fund in 2019 and 80,000 general fund in 2020 to HSD for homelessness information and referral services.

This is co-sponsored by Council Members Johnson, Council Members Mosqueda.

Item number five, Green Sheet 15-5A-1.

This Green Sheet adds $95,000 each year to HSD for homelessness services for American Indian and Native Alaskan women.

This is co-sponsored by Council Members Johnson and Council Member Mosqueda.

Item number six, Green Sheet 15-7A-1.

This adds 400,000 general fund each, oh, excuse me, in 2019 and 415,000 general fund in 2020 to HSD for Homelessness Prevention Services.

This is co-sponsored by Council Members Bagshaw and Council Member Johnson.

And finally, item number seven, Green Sheet 15-9A-1.

Oh, excuse me, I skipped here.

So item number seven, green sheet 15, 7A1, this, oh, did I?

Wow, do you want me to do this?

I apologize, council member, I'm really.

Okay, I got it.

If you don't, I can tell you.

Four should be a Royal Commons, five should be Mother Nation, six should be God's Little Acre, and seven should be Seattle Helpline Coalition.

Why don't you just go ahead and speak to them, because we know you've spoken about it before and we're...

Exactly, and I'll just move forward.

So, first of all, thank you, Council Member Gonzalez, for continually advocating, and my other colleagues as well, that we start looking at these social service organizations through a through a geographical parity lens, at least to some extent.

I'm going to give a quick overview because these four issues are very important, but they're important for all of us.

And so this way I don't have to repeat it over and over.

And then I'll have a handout when I'm done.

So we are going to talk collectively, at least for now, about the Aurora Commons, which was established in 2010. has been operating for eight years.

Mother Nation, which was established in 2008, which has been operating for 10 years.

God's Little Acre, which was established in 2008 and has been operating for 10 years.

And of course, the Seattle Helpline Coalition, which includes the West Seattle Food Bank, 1989, Queen Anne, 1982. the Ballard Food Bank, 1982, and of course, North Seattle Helpline, 1989. So the reason why I'm saying this is I'm trying to share with you that we have a combined experience of over 90 years of on-the-ground delivery of human services.

So my advocacy in today's budget, after meetings with the Madam Chair as well, As particularly in regards to sheltering the unsheltered and preventing homelessness is this, that we leverage the community-based goodwill and capital that already exists and has been proven successful in the city of Seattle, which are situated place-based on the ground in community.

As an Indian country, we see ourselves as one and focus resources on those we know maintain, embody that humanity of one of us, of community.

My focus has been on funding existing, if you will, NGOs, CBOs that provide direct services, brick and mortar places of welcome and healing, institutional capacity, knowledge and ongoing care of a said community, neighborhood, or perennial place where we see trauma and pain and displacement.

but also hope.

So with a geographical understanding is what I call the humanity on the ground.

Aurora Commons, Mother Nation, God's Little Acre, and Seattle Helpline Coalition, like many social services and enhanced food bank centers, embody this spirit and word and deed.

So we want to move forward rewarding those organizations, those CBOs, that have already have existing institutions, that they're built on trust, they're built on professional experience, as we discussed earlier last week, what we call paraprofessionals, that we recognize and reward these amazing people who try to help our most vulnerable brother and sisters.

These human service providers are portals to best serve and connect people to the critical needs they seek.

So with that, I want to quickly hand out two things, and then I will go through items four, five, six, and seven.

So what I have here is I took the October 2018 North Seattle Service Coalition LUMA Report prepared by Dr. William Vonesky.

from the University of Washington Social Work.

And I know you've heard me speak about it, but what the blue sheet is, is my quick analysis, overview, one sheet, and then the report itself.

And I'll hand that down to Counselor Mosqueda and ask her to be my lovely assistant.

Briefly, with the report, again, as I shared, and I will not bring this up again when we start talking about the sweetened beverage tax, is the most startling issues, of course, which were, I shouldn't say startling because we know this is to be true across the city, but we're seeing it much more in the North End now than we've ever seen before.

is poverty, lack of housing or unsheltered, and food scarcity.

The main client group has been homelessness and the unsheltered, low-income people, immigrant and refugees, and, of course, our elders.

We know that we've had a major, major drastic shift in demographics in the North End.

We have increased diversity, more renters than homeowners, more homelessness and displacement, and lack of affordable housing.

And I think it's important to note other key findings.

Number one, that human service providers tend to be place-based.

That is, they are physically placed in community, brick and mortar, and have an institutional presence that has outlived decades.

that these CBOs serve multiple needs with multiple programs.

And I think that's important.

I think when people hear the word food bank, they think the only thing food banks do is hand out bags of food, when indeed we know that these are enhanced food bank service centers that do more social services than I think people really understand.

And one of those issues are, and you'll see this in the report and I'll briefly say it again, well over a dozen services besides homelessness, homeless prevention, finding affordable housing, mental health counseling and treatment, substance abuse, homeless shelter, emergency housing, helping pay rent and utilities, affordable legal services, job skills and training, public transportation, immigrant refugee and citizenship assistance, dental care.

We also see these groups who support our enhanced food bank service providers, signing people up for Medicaid, ACA enrollment, motel vouchers.

food day and weekend packs for children that go hungry over the weekend, paper products, feminine products, infant products and needs such as formula, baby food.

We even hand out dog food.

So, I'm going to leave it at that.

The other issue is that homelessness, housing assistance is the most frequently provided services along with food scarcity.

And again, I want to say that these organizations and some more that we list off are the ones that are actually providing these services to the community.

So I'll start with the Aurora Commons, and then I'll just go through the four sheets that I have so we have an understanding of what they do.

Again, these are just the highlights.

Aurora Commons provides navigation services for homeless, vulnerable populations in the Aurora corridor, including sex workers and those affected with opioid addictions and mental health disorders.

Aurora Commons programs include partnerships, intense partnerships with LEAD, REACH, the Seattle Police Department, Harborview Medical Center, Seattle King County Department of Health, Washington State Department of Health, University of Washington Gynecology, Puget Sound Christian Clinic, Pacific Hospital Planning and Development Association, and the City of Seattle Human Services Department.

Aurora Commons has minimal staff to support for serving.

a large and growing number of individuals who have urgent and acute unmet needs.

Currently, there are no full-time staff members employed at Aurora Commons.

Aurora Commons is the sole community organization in the Aurora area to provide necessary services.

The number of people Aurora Commons has served has doubled in the last three years.

Since January 2018, Aurora Commons has served 280 unduplicated victims of commercial sexual exploitation and are expecting to surpass the 300 served by the end of 2018. Eighty percent of women served at a rural commons are homeless.

So the impacts, of course, to not only District 5, because they service the whole city of Seattle and those that go up to Aurora, helps navigate homeless people living on Aurora into housing, employment, and medical care.

And they also serve as a portal to persons with the most difficult and troubled personal histories safely towards a more stable and reasonable future.

So with that, I'm going to ask my colleagues to support me.

And then I'm going to move on, if I may, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

You certainly may, and I want you to know that we're all loving you up here and hoping that we can be a little brief.

Okay, I will be brief, and I'm glad you said the word love.

Okay, quickly.

Mother Nation, again, Mother Nation works with high-risk, underserved, vulnerable, homeless Native women rejected or nonresponsive to local mainstream services in Seattle.

Funding will support two part-time staff, one of who is focused on elders, as well as supplies and rent.

This new addition, this critical component is now our elder care.

Mother Nation's goal is to work with Native American and Alaska Native women suffering from the highest rate of violence in Seattle.

So, at this point, Mother Nation has 179 participants this year through August and reports that chronic homelessness and attendees began seeking housing in July.

With that, Madam Chair, I'll move to the next item.

Thank you.

God's Little Acre is with the Seattle Mennonite Church.

They've been in operation 10 years.

God's Little Acre Day Center would operate by the Seattle, operated by the Seattle Mennonite Church right now from 9 to, we would like it to be operated from 9 to 4 p.m.

Monday to Friday.

It currently is open from 9 to noon, courtesy of donations by the church's membership.

Currently, District 5 has no year-round shelter for men.

District 5 also has no all-day year-round service center for hygiene services.

Expanding GLA's hours until 4 would fill that gap, this much-needed gap in services.

Homelessness and related public health and safety issues have become more acute in Lake City and surrounding neighborhoods.

The Seattle Mennonite Church and God's Little Acre have proven themselves able to build trust with people experiencing homelessness and therefore in a position to get people into housing and services on a neighborhood level.

Funding would include additional staffing, that would just be basically two staff, for case management, rent, utilities, and supplies.

Again, like the other issues, this organization serves as a portal for neighborhood-based services, support for homeless people.

And then I will go on to the last one, I believe, the Seattle Helpline Coalition.

And this is really key, because it's going to come up again when we talk about the sweetened beverage tax.

And again, I'll be brief.

The Seattle Helpline Coalition requests funding to support neighborhood-based homeless prevention services by providing financial assistance to prevent evictions, prevent utility shutoffs, and help with more move-in deposits.

As you know, Seattle Helpline members include Ballard, North Helpline, Queen Anne, and West Seattle.

They report that the prevention efforts are underfunded to match the scale of the affordability crisis of Seattle is facing.

Prevention of homelessness is a crucial, critical, cost-effective component of homeless services.

I would hope that my colleagues can see that these type of organizations that are place-based in the neighborhood to help not only address the unsheltered and sheltering, but also the neighborhood-based eviction prevention services to help prevent homelessness on a local neighborhood level.

And with that, I hope my colleagues would support me on all four matters.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

And you do have co-sponsors on each.

Does anyone want to add their names to any?

Council Member Swat?

Yeah, certainly on five, I guess five, six, and seven.

Thank you.

Please, Council Member Muscato.

Good.

All right, thank you very much.

And Council Member Juarez, thank you for your passion around this.

And I just want to acknowledge and appreciate how deeply you have become involved in District 5, and you're just a super advocate for the services there.

So thank you for that.

I'd like to move on to item number eight.

Now, Council Member Sawant is going to be Leaving, she's traveling this afternoon and she has asked if we could move a few of her issues forward.

Which numbers do you have council members want?

I know you've got number, you have number eight coming up.

Yeah, I'll be back with you in a second about that.

Okay, go ahead and speak to eight.

Okay.

Oh, just a moment.

I'm seeing Alan's gonna read it in.

Sorry, we're just getting on a roll here.

Item number eight, Green Sheet 15-8A-1.

Add $378,000 general fund in 2019 and $756,000 general fund in 2020 to HSD for basic shelter.

This is Council Member Sawant, co-sponsored by Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you.

Thank you.

In last year, so just to clarify, this is funding for chair and wheel shelters, and I think the representatives and also the community members who have used the services in the past and are using them in the present are also here in chambers.

In last year's budget, unfortunately, the mayor attempted to cut funding, cut off funding for hundreds of shelter beds halfway through the year.

As a result, As you might recall, in my committee in January, hundreds of people came to testify to explain to the mayor that people need a place to sleep in for more than just half a year, and to explain that when the mayor sweeps encampments, people already have nowhere to go, and to urge the city council to restore that funding so that we are not reducing shelter beds in the middle of a homelessness crisis that will hit its third year tomorrow, and it will be the third anniversary of the declaration emergency around homelessness.

It is really unfortunate that in the new proposed budget, the mayor is proposing to close over 200 shelter beds halfway through the year again.

This green sheet would restore that funding and make it ongoing.

Great, thank you.

Council Member Sawant, I support you in this and specifically we don't want 217 people back out on the street again, but the other is I have met with a number of the faith-based leaders that have said they need share wheel to help when they are opening and closing their church basements or synagogue basements, wherever it is, they don't have the capacity.

So I've been told by the various faith leaders, they don't have the capacity necessarily in their church to open and close.

And oftentimes, they're getting ready for preschool or choir practice or something else.

So what I've been told over and over again is that SHARE provides a glue in that situation And so I'm going to be supporting you in this.

And if the mayor can come up with something that works better, I'd like to know about it.

But in the meantime, we want to make sure that the shelter beds are there.

Anybody else?

Okay.

Okay.

So it looks like Council Member Herbold, Council Member Mosqueda are signing on.

And I'm sorry, Mosqueda is already on.

Council Member Gonzalez, also Council Member O'Brien.

We got everybody?

Council Member Harrell?

Looks like the whole team.

So that is going to bode well for you.

All right.

Item number nine, Statement of Legislative Intent 15-9A-1.

This slide would request that HSD submit a report on RFP design for eviction prevention rental subsidy programs.

This is Council Member Herbold, co-sponsored by Council Members Muscata and O'Brien.

Thank you.

Who's going to speak to this?

Council Member Herbold?

Sure.

One of the items that was identified in the Seattle Women's Commission's report on evictions is the difficulty that people who are in receipt of a three-day pay or vacate notice, the difficulty they have accessing rent assistance services.

And so this this budget action would require before HSD RFPs for those services in 2020, I'm sorry, yes, in 2020, that in 2019 they provide a sort of a briefing to us on the design of that RFP, specifically on how the RFP design will address some of the issues that were raised in the losing home report, including a description of the program designs, determining what the eligibility requirements are.

We find sometimes that different programs have different eligibility requirements.

Determining what payments are eligible for receiving funds.

That's another thing where there's sometimes some inconsistency.

Some programs will only pay past due rent.

and not late fees.

Some programs will pay late fees.

Answering the question of whether or not centralized eviction prevention services would be helpful in addressing some of the barriers people have, whether or not it makes sense to have a presence in the court for folks to be able to access rent assistance quickly, and an assessment on how at-risk tenants learn about these services and can access them.

The idea being that we're hoping to work with HSD to make sure that we're designing an RFP that funds programs that address the barriers that were identified in the losing home report.

Anybody else want to add on or say anything further?

OK, let's move on to the next item.

Item number 10, Green Sheet 1510A1, adding $300,000 general fund in 2019 to HSD for a temporary housing pilot.

This is Councilmember O'Brien, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Bagshaw and Johnson.

Good.

Council Member O'Brien.

Thank you.

So the intent behind this is a couple fold.

One is an opportunity to leverage other resources with city resources to add more housing units.

This is designed to support, I don't know, what I've referred to as kind of mini cottages.

These would be fully permittable.

They meet the building code, but very small housing units.

An example of this type of housing unit is the units that are being built by the Block Project.

Another example is a new outfit called Close to Home, which is building a little house on wheels called Spire.

They have plumbing.

cooking, electrical, everything, all the things that are required to be housing.

They're just small, a couple hundred square feet.

And these units can be built often with donated materials or volunteer labor for $50,000 to $70,000 and provide a permanent form of housing that can be sustained for a while.

I think one of the things that the city can do a better job at is creating more opportunities for the broader community to engage in finding solutions to this crisis we're in.

One of the things that's hard for me is when I'm out in community and I'm hearing from folks that are frustrated.

Some are frustrated, focused on garbage or criminal activity.

But a lot of people also say, look, we understand this is a challenge.

How can I help?

short of showing up and arguing for policies, oftentimes they don't have great tools for them to help.

And I think this is one area where I'm interested in piloting to see if the city put out some resources to say, hey, we're willing to match folks.

If a neighborhood group wanted to You know, host a unit of the block project and there are some additional funds to help fund it.

Could we accelerate some of those being used?

If a church or a community group came together and said, we would love to have a mobile unit on wheels parked in our lot, that would be a form of permanent housing and we can bring community together over the course of a month and assemble one of these things.

The city will pitch in some money, they would need to come up with some money on their own.

And in the process of all this, all the individuals involved at all levels start to get to meet people that are at various levels of the crisis.

And it's through some of those connections and interactions and meeting folks that move in or meeting folks that show up to work.

that we all collectively better understand some of the challenges and hopefully start to diminish the polarization that is in our country right now and frankly right here in our community too.

And so, I have some work to do on this green sheet just to be clear.

As it's written, it talks about human service department and I'm not sure the human service department is the right department to go through.

Actually, some of this stuff has more to do with with permitting and codes and so we may shift that to SDCI or another department.

But I wanted you all to understand the concept and over the next few days I'll continue to figure out a best way to do this.

Thank you.

Council Member O'Brien, I have signed on to this in no small part because you and I have been working on the detached accessory dwelling units for nine years now together, recognizing that this is something that we really want to see in our city.

I also like this notion of putting forward some grant money.

I know Portland worked with, I think it was the Fred Meyer Family Foundation, and there was a donation of, I believe, $700,000 that came from that.

that family foundation to help do something very similar.

So, let's work through this.

My reaction was that STCI or maybe even Department of Neighborhoods could be a place that could move nimbly, but let's talk about this.

But I really like the concept and I certainly support it.

Thank you.

Okay.

It doesn't look like there are any other comments.

Let's move on, Alan.

Item number 11, Green Sheet 1511A1.

This would add $4 million general fund in 2019 and $2 million general fund in 2020 to HSD for a tent shelter sponsored by Councilmember Mosqueda, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Bagshaw and O'Brien.

Great.

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This item, as you know, was brought to us as an opportunity for us to look at the continuum of housing and the various types of housing opportunities we could potentially be constructing to address the crisis of homelessness and affordability of housing.

As we began discussing this, we all know that what we wanted to create was an opportunity for folks to have a safe, supported, healthy place for people to go for those who are currently living outside.

I think we're all clear that no one here wants a FEMA tent or tents within a large tent or bunk beds.

What we really wanted was a safe place for folks to go.

We took a look at the example out of Los Angeles and what we saw there, as we've talked about before, was partitions between beds and the opportunity for pets and loved ones to come be together.

We saw that they had counseling and mental health services on site.

And because of the questions you all asked, we also learned that folks were doing more, including transportation to medical appointments, triaging medical care, and helping to connect people with employment and housing opportunities.

I offer this up as a potential opportunity for us to think about ways to expand the options that we have along that continuum of housing and wanted to provide you with some of the answers we did receive from our partners in Los Angeles.

As we explore all cost-effective opportunities, this is one component of that continuum of housing.

that was worth looking into.

We do think that it's important to make sure that we're deploying opportunities for people to live inside, have 24-hour shelter, have the services that they need so that if it is more cost effective, then we can direct other resources to building permanent affordable housing.

In response to some of the questions that we received, you will see in the responses that on the low end to set up a tent, it would be about 2.5 million About 1.5 to operate it year-round approximately 200 days to set it up and the target population was the vulnerably chronically homeless and That many of the staff were trained in crisis intervention just wanted to provide that for you so that we had additional information on some of those questions and Appreciate this entire council's interest in looking at the continuum great.

Thank you councilmember Brian I

Thank you for this.

I had a chance to go down to Tacoma two nights ago and visit the structure they put up down there.

I didn't have a chance to tour the inside, but I talked to some folks on the outside about it.

I think it's a model that should be in the mix of what we're looking at.

On the one hand, it's not terribly different than what we're doing with our various sanction encampments here.

These are managed sites.

This one was fenced off.

It has the showers and running water and electricity on site.

Folks have various levels of privacy.

The thing that it adds is this large structure essentially means that whether you're in a tent or a bunk or whatever it is inside it You're not subject to the freezing cold and the rain like you would be if you're in a traditional tent city and Again as councilmember skate as you said this is not a permanent solution by any stretch of the imagination.

It's an emergency response and We need to still remain focused on permanent housing.

But the brief experience I had with talking to folks and seeing folks coming and going there, frankly, it replicates a lot of the things we're doing here, but just takes the protection to another level.

better understanding the cost implications of what it costs to erect something like that and where you would do that I think are things that are worth pursuing but right now as this crisis continues I think the more tools we have to address folks that have different sets of needs or different sites that we come across that may better serve folks or different times a year I certainly think that that this type of solution should be in the mix of things that we can choose from as we move forward.

Thank you for that and I concur.

Councilmember Herbold?

Thank you.

I just want to make a note of how compelling I find it that the doctors on the Board of Health have identified this as something that we should be considering seriously because of the concerns about communicable disease and the ability to manage the risks associated with communicable disease better a situation that this approach would provide.

I'm not an expert in any way on the threat of communicable diseases or how to prevent them.

The doctors on the Board of Health are, and I think we should be taking their recommendations really seriously.

Sweet.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

And we have, of course, been working closely with them.

Council Member Musqueda, Council Member Juarez and I serve on that public health board.

And again, we just want to emphasize nobody thinks that this is a permanent solution, but we also know we can stop fighting about do we need temporary housing?

And do we need good solid shelter?

And do we need permanent housing?

The answer is both.

And the answer is seriously, yes.

And that's going to take significant more investments regionally than we're able to make now by ourselves.

But that said, I support the direction we're going.

Council Member Juarez and Council Member Suan, are you signing on or do you have other comments?

Okay.

I have a question.

Certainly, I 100% support all the services that have been mentioned associated with this kind of shelter, but my office has heard varying understandings among the community that serves the homeless population about the costs of setting this up versus having the same kind of services, having the same kind of preventive measures against communicable diseases with tiny house villages.

And I feel like, I mean, I would request central staff to really look more closely into it and just give us a sense of, like, compare apples to apples.

Like, if we had a community that provided all those services and had all the protections against the problems that we would have among homeless people not having shelter.

And then, given that, which is the most cost-effective?

Right.

And I think your point's well taken.

I do believe that's the direction that Council Member Mosqueda intended us to go.

It's not an either-or, it's probably an and.

And there are going to be some sites where The tiny home villages work better.

There may be a site like this.

We know in Los Angeles what they were able to do is to put a tent on in a neighborhood appropriate way that was neighborhoods.

embraced more than some of the other options.

So we don't know the answer.

We're just putting it out here as an opportunity.

Yeah, please.

I appreciate the question because I think that's part of the analysis that we were hoping to do as well.

When I say continuum of housing, We want to make sure that we're continuing to invest in the tiny homes as a supporter of the share wheel green sheet that was just put forward.

We know that we also have trusted partners who are already doing this outreach, and that's critical to continue funding.

And so as we think about ways to add to that continuum, it was just one additional option.

And I appreciate the question that's been asked, because we have to be cost efficient, unfortunately.

Just a couple of additional things that the homeless community members have urged me to bring out.

One is that there is a very strong preference for tiny homes because there are locks on the doors.

And in terms of actual security, especially for women, My understanding so far anyway, I mean, I'm open to be convinced one way or another, you know, depending on what community members report to us, and not just in Seattle, I'm open to feedback from other cities.

But so far, the balance of what I have heard is that having a tiny home with a lock on the door makes a huge difference in terms of security.

And then the other feedback we've heard, from not only homeless community members, but also advocates like Real Change, that they would prefer investments to be made either in tiny homes or in something like a Harborview Hall being turned into an enhanced shelter rather than this kind of project.

So I would like for those things to be taken into account.

Yes, Council Member, I'll just say that we do have that data available and we'll put something together.

Okay.

Council Member O'Brien.

Yeah, I think the comments that was made about where in the continuum of care this would fit is really important.

There's understanding the cost of construction and the structure, which would be unique to this and where this fits in and how competitive it is, and it may be in certain sites it makes sense and others it doesn't.

And then the level of service we provide.

I mean, there are A variety of very low barrier shelters we run, and because of the population it's serving, it requires more staffing, and that's somewhat independent of the actual structure that it's in.

And then, conversely, at the other end of the spectrum, there's programs that require very little staffing or even self-management.

So there's a spectrum on both sides of those things.

I want to just mention the little anecdote from Tacoma, because it was fascinating.

I didn't actually have the exact address of where I was going, so I was on my bike kind of cruising around the neighborhood trying to find the site.

And at one point when I couldn't find it, I stopped in at a gas station and asked the guy working behind the desk if he knew where this big tent thing was.

And he said, yeah, I think it's like six or eight blocks that way.

And then when I came out the other side, it was right across the street.

So it's been there for over a year.

And the business across the street, at least one person in that business wasn't even aware that they were a neighbor, which could say a whole host of things.

But clearly, it's not something that is really drastically changing the neighborhood from what it was before, which is what we've seen consistently at the variety of encampments we've set up here in Seattle.

Well done.

And just to put a footnote on this, we'll move on to number 11. I am so thankful to my colleagues up here and thankful to those who are here in the audience.

If you can think about the Wayback Machine nine years ago, when we first started talking about tiny homes, I was a population of one plus, I believe, we had.

Councilmember O'Brien, working along these lines, but most of the colleagues up here really didn't like the idea of tiny homes.

And now we're beginning to see, again, it's not the solution or the end-all, but it's part of the continuum and of the emergency response.

And just as Councilmember Sawant was saying, having a lock on the door, having a place where you can bring your possessions, your pets, your partner, it makes a lot of difference.

And I'm very grateful to all of you for working with me on this.

Okay, anybody else want to add their name to this one?

Okay, let's continue.

Item number 12, green sheet 1512A1, adding 44,400 general fund each year to HSD to operate outdoor hand washing stations.

This is a council member Bagshaw with a co-sponsorship with council members Juarez and Mosqueda.

Thank you.

And this really is building on what Councilmember Herbold just mentioned a moment ago, is that this is a recommendation by our public health team that is saying one of the most important things that we can do is to have handwashing stations available with soap and running water.

This is not just for people who are experiencing homelessness, but throughout the city.

So I am asking our, not just human services department, but public health to help us identify how and where we can add hand washing stations.

And frankly, I am advocating to dedicate and install hand washing stations throughout Seattle.

You know, we've got a lot of fountains around here that are just dead.

and are not operational.

If we could make them effective hand washing stations for all of us, plus, you know, some of them have nozzles on them for, to be able to help dogs and clean up and that kind of thing as well, I think it would be money well spent.

And plus, very consistent with the public health recommendations.

Okay, let's move on.

Item 13, Green Sheet 1513A1, adding $388,716 in general fund each year to HSD for communicable disease response.

This is Council Member Mosqueda with sponsorships by Council Members Baxhaw and Juarez.

Thank you.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So you remember this request that came from Public Health Seattle-King County.

Public Health Seattle-King County is helping to identify a gap in funding between the funding that they received from King County and the state.

We know that there has been an outbreak of diseases, especially around Hep A. We have flu.

We even have HIV.

outbreaks.

And what we don't have is a coordinated response to helping to make sure our population's health is taken care of, especially for our most vulnerable, who unfortunately don't have those hand-washing stations at the ready yet, who are unfortunately more susceptible to some of the outbreaks because we don't have the hygiene services throughout the city.

Actually, more importantly, because we don't have the housing across the city that folks need.

So as we try to build housing, as we try to get the hygiene centers online, This is a request to make sure that we're responding to the communicable disease response teams request and doing a investment in a director for the communicable disease response team and encampment manager to help to work with the various tiny homes and encampments out there so that there's a public health person who has that expertise to bring to the forefront.

So the first ask is for a public health nurse, epidemiologists, and administrative specialists to coordinate in a way around infectious diseases, especially to make sure that we're preventing outbreaks and disease transmission and working with our community at large, especially those who might be homeless.

The second is for making sure that we're asking for an encampment manager who will help to work with homeless encampments throughout the city and are organized to help operate to minimize environmental public health exposure and disease transmission.

Some of the questions that were asked before, how much is the cost of the communicable disease from the state funding?

About 70% of the communicable disease budget is state funded.

The remainder is a mix of county and federal funds.

So this will have a huge impact because it will help us make sure that part of the funding that's currently not there is being used to support the foundational work of public health.

Right now they've had to reallocate much of those state and federal dollars to the foundational state mandated work and the county funds are supporting additional important services.

So this work would be to help encompass some of the things that are not mandated about on public health.

And I do have a spreadsheet as well that we can provide for folks with some of the functions and duties, helping to identify environmental hazards, ensuring sites are designed and operated to promote hygiene and sanitation, hopefully working with the hygiene centers you're working on, ensuring that we're doing outreach and education as part of it.

and a program manager to help ensure coordination.

Those are some of the pieces that public health has really asked us to prioritize in this budget.

Thank you for highlighting that.

Any other sign-ons?

Okay, please, let's proceed.

Item number 14, Statement of Legislative Intent 1517A1.

This slide would request that HSD submit a report on homelessness services and the LGBT community, sponsored by Councilmember Herbold, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Bagshaw and O'Brien.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

This is the result of a request of a number of different organizations, including our own LGBTQ Commission.

I think the title of the slide might still need a little bit of work.

I think more than a report that we're asking for on homelessness services and the LGBT community, we're asking that HSD develop some policies and expectations for the providers of services as it relates to The provision of those services and the interaction specifically with the particular population, the LGBT community, because of specific concerns that have been raised from the LGBT community about their treatment, both in shelters and in accessing services, as well as barriers.

There are other cities throughout the country that have developed specific expectations and policies that they then insert in the city's contracts with those agencies as a way of holding agencies accountable to following those policies.

So we continue to work with central staff on the language, but that is the basic intent.

So if I may ask, is it your intention that HSD provide policies and come to you, or are you suggesting a interdepartmental team of which you might be serving as well?

No, I'm suggesting that they propose policies, let us know what they are, and then let us know how they intend to enforce them with the agencies that are recipients of city funds.

One way of enforcing them is to include them in the contracts with the agencies that are receiving services and monitor that.

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

And I see you've got a due date of April 30th.

Thank you for that.

Okay, are you going to?

Just one comment on this.

Okay, great.

And then I'm going to ask to amend the agenda to allow us to consider items 24 and items 35. Both are suggested and proposed by Council Member Sawant.

She has her her driving time to Portland that she needs to get on the road.

So, please go ahead.

I appreciate that.

And just to add to what Council Member Herbold just said, I mean, I agree with all that and I want to support this amendment.

Also, just to say why such a report is important is that, I mean, yes, one way of doing that is to make it part of the contract.

But the report is necessary because a lot of the barriers that the LGBTQ, especially the trans community faces, are not like, they're not seen on paper.

They have to be specifically reported and recorded because they face discrimination of various kinds.

And I think some of the revelations of the report could be that we need actual training to be provided.

And then in the future, having trained professionals being part of the service provider network so that when LGBTQ individuals actually seek these services, they're not confronted with that kind of negative experience.

And in fact, that's a barrier for them from seeking those services in the first place because it's very, it's devastating, emotionally devastating.

Okay, so if you'll add Council Member Swann on to this and then with my colleague's indulgence, I would like to change the agenda just modified slightly to here items 24 and items 35. And are these on?

Yes.

Oh, sure.

Okay, so we've got Council Member Swann, Council Member Juarez being added to this tab 1517A1.

I'm sorry?

Okay.

I'm sorry, that was.

I'm just taking a moment.

I think she's got a script for me.

So, apparently I have to move to reconsider the agenda, and I'm going to move to amend the agenda to allow items 24 and 35 to be heard now.

Second.

Okay.

Those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay.

And so, I will move to adopt the agenda as amended.

Thank you very much.

So Alan, I guess I asked the question, are you able to introduce 24 and 35 or do you need someone else?

Madam Chair, I'm able to introduce 24 and we have central staff on the way for item number 35. Okay, great, thank you, please.

So item number 24, Statement of Legislative Intent 14-2A-1.

This requests that the Office of the Mayor submit a report on a fixed mobile CHEL site selection.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

Last year, the City Council amended the budget to fund a CHEL site or a community health engagement location site, sometimes known as a safe consumption site.

And these CHELs are overwhelmingly supported by regular people in Seattle.

Even in this year's public hearing, we had several individuals testifying on that.

And what was interesting that I noted was that it wasn't just the service providers who were talking about it.

It was ordinary people who live on Capitol Hill who understand that this is a necessary service, have been advocating for it because they also understand that the data is clear that gel sites help reduce harm.

There's evidence from other cities that have done this.

There are fewer needles on the sidewalk, fewer drug-related deaths, and helpful in general for people who face drug addiction.

Unfortunately, even though the council provided funds for a CHEL site last year, or CHEL, the L is for location, to St. Chelsi.

CHEL last year, even though the majority of people in Seattle are overwhelmingly supportive, unfortunately the mayor's office has not been able to find a location for CHEL, and those funds were not made use of.

Those funds are still there, but we really don't want to see another year of that go by with the funds not being used.

So this statement of legislative intent will request the mayor to report to the council on their progress in finding a location for this purpose.

Council Member Sawant, have you and Council Member Johnson talked about his proposal about having another location funded?

Do you happen to know, would he support what you are recommending, which are these mobile

Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to look into it and if we can arrive at an agreement and provide a sort of a one proposal, I would be delighted to do that.

Just as a matter of course, I haven't actually discussed with council members each proposal because it was going to come up here anyway.

So, in the next couple of days, I'm happy to do that.

Great.

Excellent.

If you could do that, that would be helpful just to know do we have some unanimity around that.

Anybody else like to comment or?

Okay, I'm just, I'm sorry, I'm trying to catch up.

Okay, well we just did a, and while you stepped out, we moved two items forward.

This is item 24, and then we're going to go to item 35. So on item 24, this is just a sly.

Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, my reading of item 23, which was Council Member Johnson's ad of an additional $440,000 from the general fund in 2019 to fund the establishment of a CHEL, it seems to me that these two actually complement each other as opposed to compete.

And what I was hoping is that we would spend less money planning and more money doing.

And so, I just want to make sure you and Councilmember Johnson were in sync on this.

Yes, I agree with that and I also agree that, yeah, they're complementary.

Okay.

Very good.

Anybody else want to add their name to this or shall we move forward?

Okay, let's move on to item 35.

So item 35 is Green Sheet 1414A1 sponsored by Councilmember Sawant.

It's adding $249,000 in general fund in 2019 and $249,000 general fund revenue in 2020 for services to LGBTQ seniors.

I would note that this is very similar to a similar proposal, number 34, which we'll discuss later this afternoon.

This proposal focuses a little bit more on, it's actually almost exactly the same, with a little bit more of a focus on the comprehensive nature of services, whereas item number 34, that we'll talk about later, focused a little bit more on the housing-specific type of referrals, but otherwise there's a lot of overlap here.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Sawant, would you like to address this and then also talk about the overlaps?

Yes.

Basically, I think Jeff encapsulated the overlaps pretty accurately.

And in reality, they should just be combined with arriving at an agreement on the language.

But as far as the implementation is concerned, it's exactly the same, what the two green sheets 34 and 35 ask for, which is adding 249,000 And just to talk about what the substance of this is, it represents the funding that organizations like Gen Pride have been advocating for.

Council members have read the report that shows the lack of services available for LGBTQ seniors in Seattle.

And so I won't go into detail in that because we've already discussed that in the issue ID section.

And so this green sheet, just like number 34, would provide those senior services, particularly the mobile community center services that will bring LGBTQ senior services to wherever the community needs them.

you know, is located.

So we should just combine those two somehow.

Okay.

Very good.

Council Member Herbold, with your item 14, requesting HSD to submit a report, is there anything here that you want to combine with what Council Member Sawant's talking about?

Yeah.

Your 14 is separate.

No.

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you.

All right.

Any other additions?

All right, good, thank you.

Thanks for bringing them forward.

All right, well then let's return to our item, which is 15, I believe.

That is correct, Madam Chair.

Item 15, Statement of Legislative Intent 15-18-A-1.

Requesting that the Office of the Mayor create an IDT and submit reports on the implementation of city-county homelessness governance recommendations.

Great.

Thank you.

This is something that I have been working on with the mayor's office, with the various departments.

My hope is that we can work closely with King County.

They have already, they being, sorry, the mayor and the county executive, have already signed a memorandum of intent to work forward together to combine governing structures.

I'm just very interested on how this is going.

I would like personally to be involved and be able to bring this back through my finance committee as far as what the cost might be, but also working closely with council colleagues.

I mean, everybody is touching this, whether it's Councilmember Muscata in public health and Councilmember Juarez in parks, Councilmember Sawant in human services, Councilmember Herbold in all the work they're doing.

This is simply a request that we move forward.

So there's nothing in the budget at this point.

Council Member Esqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I fully support this and I'd love to add my name to this.

I think that this is a key component for us actually addressing the crisis and helping to pull together some of the good research that's been done, but taking the next step to make sure that we're streamlining our responses.

Appreciate you bringing this forward and I know you have pulled from the best to make this proposal possible, because we know other cities are doing it.

Thank you.

Right.

Thank you very much.

And I'm just, once again, very interested in moving and making decisions, making regional actions, and again, something Councilmember Muscata and I brought up multiple times, which is to look potentially for a regional finance package, not in 2019, but get the band together for something that we might look at in 2020. Very good, thank you.

All right, next item is 16. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Greg Doss here to talk about the navigation team, which is the next four items.

And I'm going to start with item 16, which is green sheet 1495A1, imposing a proviso on navigation team appropriations to HSD.

And there's a lot going on with this one.

So if the chair would allow, I'd like to take a minute to explain it.

Please.

And do you want to do the next grouping since we're dealing with nav centers?

We've got one two three, so do you want to just talk about the next three?

Yeah, I'll start with the with the proviso that is sponsored by Councilmember Herbold, O'Brien, and Miskata.

And so a little background, and then I'm going to go into process and substance, but a little background is that in 2017 the auditor conducted a study of the navigation team process and operations and recommended that the navigation team come back and report on 14 different areas that the auditor called checkpoints, and those are in the document in the proviso itself.

Let's see if I can scroll down to it here.

And the navigation team has been coming quarterly throughout 2018 to report on these checkpoints and has reported on most of them.

There's still a few outstanding, but over the four quarters they have been coming in and have knocked out quite a few.

So with that as background, I'm going to talk a little bit about this proviso, which envisions a quarterly reporting process continuing.

The proviso itself says that no more than $692,000 of the money appropriated in the 2019 budget for the Seattle Human services department may be spent for the functions and activities performed by the navigation team until authorized by future ordinance and so I'll read the next one as well.

It's the council's intent that the executive provide quarterly reports according to the schedule and subject below and the second third and fourth quarterly reports should be accompanied by a draft ordinance that each released $692,000 of appropriation authority.

Start out by saying that that should actually read the first, second, and third quarterly reports would be accompanied by ordinances that release the appropriation authority.

That's my mistake and I apologize.

I'll correct that.

The vision here is that $692,000 is one quarter's worth of funding for the HSD components of the navigation team.

So that's the outreach contract with REACH and the employees of the navigation team itself.

The proviso doesn't extend to SPD or SPU for their services.

And the, from a process standpoint, idea is that the executive would submit reports according to the schedule below.

And I'm going to start practically with the first one.

The deadline would be January 31st, 2019. They would submit with that report an ordinance that would free up the next quarter's worth of funding.

And so as long as the council acted between January 31st in the end of the first quarter, March 31st, then that would free up the next quarter's funding.

And the schedule is written to allow about 60 days for the councils to pass an ordinance to free up the next quarter.

Could I just ask a question, Jeff, on this?

This strikes me as being, obviously, all of us want to know that the system is working.

But this, just based the way you described it in Councilmember Herbold, maybe you want to weigh in on this.

This sounds like a lot of not just reporting work from the department, but a lot of committee work that we're going to be asked quarterly to go back and review all of this data.

Can you just describe to me what, maybe what's the problem you're trying to solve?

Well, the issue is that the auditor has made some recommendations and the executive isn't in compliance with incorporating those recommendations.

And so that's the, they've done, as Mr. Doss said, they've done a lot of the front end work.

And now sort of identifying what changes need to be made, you know, just like the auditor does when the auditor does its work, they identify items that need to be done in order to come into compliance with the findings of the audit.

And so that's the piece that...

And you're saying that those haven't been done yet?

They haven't been done yet, but it's a work in progress.

And like I said, much of this year has been taken up doing sort of the back-end work, figuring out what the theory of change is and what the changes are necessary to implement the theory of change.

So we've done that sort of homework, and now we're moving into the action part of it.

And the first quarter that Mr. Das mentioned, those are things that we, that sort of catch up work, we're a little bit behind in completing this year's work.

on the different checkpoints.

And so we still have outstanding work with checkpoint 1.2, which is an organizational staffing assessment, which we've talked a lot about, which is do we have the right people involved in the navigation team?

Should we look at, you know, bringing in additional perhaps should we have fewer people who have health expertise?

Should we maybe have fewer police officers?

So that's something that we've talked a lot about and I think it's really important to this council to make sure, again, the composition of the team is intrinsically connected to the success of the work and reaching all of the outcomes that we wanna reach.

Another piece that we had expected to have done This budget discussion was the report on the measures of system performance and an evaluation plan, an ongoing evaluation plan moving forward.

and a plan for unsheltered individuals to be meaningfully involved in the navigation team.

So we still need a report on those items, but then we need to implement the recommendations associated with all the rest of the checkpoints.

And so, you know, again, this is an ongoing body of work.

We, and it's intended to support, I think, the goals that We share with the executive to make sure that these resources that we're deploying and the money that we're spending, which is, you know, a lot of money that we're spending on this navigation team.

We're talking about expanding the navigation team.

And again, the work that we set up last year was intended to, we were supposed to have all of these answers so we could make a decision about continued funding of the navigation team.

So, we're a little bit behind on that.

So, I think we're acting in really good faith because, you know, I think another reasonable response might have been to not support continued funding of the navigation team because all the work that we had expected them to do by this time next year, this year was not done.

So, I think we're trying to meet the executive halfway here.

And have you met with the executive and departments to plan this out?

So, I know Greg has been working primarily on this.

I've had conversations.

The Dr. Nobarro, our budget director, has provided some of the language that is included in this version.

I know there's still anxiety about releasing the funds, but, you know, Greg, maybe you can describe that again, because I think we've anticipated the potential problems associated, and what is being proposed is, I think, something a little bit unique for provisos, but it's intended to make sure that the executive's not in a position where they don't have the funds to spend to do the work.

So, yeah, I'd like to hear that.

It just sounds to me that I think the worst outcome would be if the money is held, even we've got reports, but we're arguing over what should be in the reports and that we don't actually have the boots on the ground to care for the people we want to care for.

So.

Thanks.

So, a little bit more about substance just to add on to the council members great description of this.

The first quarter would be catch-up, as she mentioned.

And then the second quarter, third quarter, and fourth quarter would be either written or verbal presentations before the council on the auditor's recommendations.

And so this is a situation where the navigation team would come sit down and say, the auditor recommended these things.

We've looked at them.

These are some that we're implementing.

These are some we're still looking at.

It wouldn't require a written report and hopefully that would be a little easier from an administrative standpoint on the executive.

The other things that you see, the bullet points, are data that the executive has suggested that they want to send to council.

And so as the council member said, this is something that the executive is working hard on and they're going to be collecting all of this data and they want to come report it.

So this is not something that the council came up with, these were actually sent to me by the executive.

And then in terms of finally to the question of logistics, the executive has expressed some concern about how this might work.

As I've said, I'll pick another quarter the way it would work by April 30th, 2019. They would need to come before the council and give a verbal update or some sort of briefing and then provide an ordinance.

The ordinance would need to be passed by council.

As long as it was passed in the next 60 days, then the next quarter would be freed up, but it would require the council to act.

And Council Member Mosqueda, go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

You know, I just wanted to chime in and reiterate my support for this.

I appreciate that you said Mosqueda and O'Brien on here because I don't think it's on the sheet, but I'm very much supportive of this.

And I think the reason is because it helps us answer the question of whether or not this is the right balance.

We spent some time before when the executive team was here asking about the right balance of police enforcement officers, outreach individuals, back of the house data crunchers, and I think this helps us understand whether it's the right balance.

I also think that it helps us figure out if we do have additional funding where we might want to put that, especially when we know that the folks who are most vulnerable and need services need that service today to help them get into either shelter or housing.

When I heard that there was really an emphasis on making sure that the areas that had previously been cleaned are kept clean of additional tents or encampments, that causes pause for me, and it makes me wonder if we do have both the right balance in terms of personnel, but also the right focus.

It also, I think, helps me understand more about whether or not we are asking these teams to go to the right places.

If it's really driven by complaints, it causes me to wonder about a parity across our city and the appropriate response to getting folks inside.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, I also have in the next two items, items 17 and 18, it was really an inquiry and we added, proposed to add money for an individual that is trained to do behavioral and mental health to address those problems and potentially to add them to the NAV teams.

I'm wondering if our time could be well spent Not, clearly not today, but in the next couple of weeks, to really identify what is it that we're trying to accomplish here, because I would love to see more, you know, the mental health, the behavioral health, the outreach on these NAV teams, and actually having the boots on the ground and the product we're looking for.

Would you be open to having further conversations about this so we understand what the report is?

And I mean, I don't hear any disagreement.

I guess what I'm struggling over as I look at this proviso and I think, oh, my goodness, we're going to be spending so much time reading reports is contrasted to actually knowing what it is we're trying to accomplish.

Well, again, I think we spent a lot of time writing and reading reports last year.

This year is about doing the work requested in the reports.

Good.

So, let's move forward beyond this.

We can talk very briefly about 17 and 18, but I think there's more work to be done here that, and especially, it just strikes me that there's a lot of duplication, and I think we want to just get it right.

Madam Chair, 17 and 18, items 1496A1 and item 1497A1, as you mentioned, are both adding paraprofessionals to the navigation team.

One would add a mental health professional and the other would add a chemical dependency professional.

The dollar amounts are quite low.

They don't include benefits.

Those are salary only for the contract organizations with HSD.

Spoke with the executive and asked them about sort of their preference for adding paraprofessionals And their preference was, by and large, adding mental health professionals.

If they were given three ads, they would take two mental health professionals and one chemical dependency professional, just by way of illustration.

Thank you.

Well, since both of these were mine, I would just like to suggest, Council Member Herbold, perhaps, as we're looking at your proviso, that we can consider these as opportunities, but I'm not sure at this.

I certainly don't want to do them in a vacuum.

That's my concern is I want this to work.

So I'm going to receive any other comments that you have on these on 17 and 18, but I don't feel like it's ready for prime time based upon what I'm hearing from Councilmember Herbold.

Well, I would just like to add my support for the need for these types of health professionals.

And perhaps this goes to what you were just mentioning before.

If there is an evaluation of that right balance, perhaps these positions, the two mental health professionals and one chemical dependency professional, perhaps that's where we can supplant some of the other individual.

FTEs that we're currently considering, but I definitely want to support the call for more mental health professionals and chemical dependency counselors.

Very good.

Thank you.

So, I'm, if I may just ask Councilmember Muscata, we'll add your name to these and then let's let us provide, let's give ourselves a little bit more conversation time with central staff, with the executive to get this right and it looks like 19 comes right back to Greg and to Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you madam chair.

Yes number 19 is sly 1498 a1 Requesting that hsd send weekly encampment monitoring reports by councilmember herbold This is by and large a continuation of a practice that is currently done whereby the executive sends weekly reports on the encampments that will be that will be removed in the following week and There is a list of criteria in the slide.

It's the same criteria that the executive has been following.

One addition is that the executive would report when removing an encampment how much notice was given to the encampment residents.

But by and large, other than that, it's the same criteria that's been reported on now.

Do you want to add to that?

No, I think that's a good explanation, just continuing the good practices that HSD is following now.

Thank you.

Just a quick question on this that I'd be interested in either including in here or perhaps we can just get clarification beforehand.

When the team was here last week, we did ask about the additional navigation team that's being contemplated in this budget.

And the question I asked was whether or not the existing 72-hour requirement will continue to be a requirement for this new team.

The answer that I heard from the executive team was yes.

From community, I heard that they heard a different response in a meeting.

So I just want to make sure that we are fully aware of the amount of notice that would be provided to anyone and that we're not moving away from the three-day notice.

So perhaps we can get clarification there.

If we can't, maybe it's something that we could consider.

What I heard in the reporting and what I've observed as the practice is that in instances where there is an obstruction in the right of way, they often don't give, the protocols don't require them to give notice.

And sometimes they still do, but they often do not.

And is that consistent with what we're being told?

Yeah, that's correct, Council Member.

The MDAR's multi-departmental administrative rules would apply both to the existing navigation team and the larger or expanded navigation team.

And they do require 72 hours of notice unless an encampment is an obstruction or a hazard encampment.

In such case, they don't have to give 72 hours.

So those are the encampments that you would find out exactly how many hours they are giving.

And they, for the hazard encampment, that is a different category than, it is like an imminent hazard encampment, which is distinct from public health hazards that can be associated with encampments.

It's again, there's like an imminent danger because of it's either too close to the street or sort of hanging over an overpass.

That's my understanding of their efforts to limit the instances in which no notice is given.

And I know that we're all trying to balance and to address the needs to get people into a permanent safe place and to get the supportive services they need.

We also continue, and I want to acknowledge what I hear from Pioneer Square in particular, that there is a group of tents that they will move and they're on the sidewalk and they come back, like not just within the same day, like within hours as soon as people leave.

And there's a real sense of, wait a second, we can't keep chasing the same people We're trying to offer them opportunities.

They're maybe taking them or don't like them, but this whole effort has got to be one where we are not trying to criminalize homelessness.

We are really trying to solve a problem, but we need to have people who are helping and work with us too.

So I think there's more work to be done on this, but I'd like to talk to you about this in the next few days before we get to the final budget.

Good.

Okay.

Thank you, Greg.

Thanks for coming.

And the next one is sharps containers.

Yes, it is.

Thank you, Brian.

Good night council central staff.

So the next three items are related to Seattle Public Utilities.

So the first one is item green sheet 1514 a one, which would add $50,000 in general funds in both 2019 and 2020 to Seattle Public Utilities to expand the sharps collection program.

The sharps collection program provides for safe disposal of sharps by removing them from public property, installing and servicing disposal boxes, and educating community groups about safe handling and disposal procedures.

So the green sheet would allow for an expansion of the program, potentially through partnerships with businesses and communities that are heavily affected by intravenous drug use.

And this item comes from Councilmember Bagshaw and is co-sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

Good.

Thank you.

Sharps are a real problem as we all know.

These are discarded needles that are used hopefully only once but they get dumped and if we don't have places for people to put them they do get dumped in garbage cans in places or just thrown on the ground.

So I'm trying to expand the number of places.

where people can dispose of the sharps, I don't think we've got the balance right yet, because some of these locations are very expensive.

They're great big pieces of, they're great big garbage cans, but they can't be moved.

And that said, we know that, like I hear from Starbucks was saying, they're putting the sharps containers in their bathrooms so that, the restrooms, so that their employees aren't having to reach in when they're cleaning garbage, buckets and fine needles in them.

I just I really don't think we've got this quite right yet.

Our parks have asked if we could have more in parks and particularly in Cascade Park and South Lake Union has come up.

So we're adding some money to this but I think that I would like us to be continuing to explore what the options are and to hear from Seattle Public Utilities.

I haven't put a proviso or a sly on this.

But as we're talking, I just realized that it's a great need, but I'm not sure how we're making the decision.

So before we go too much further with this, I'd like to hear from SPU.

Yeah, thank you.

Council Member Mosqueda, did you wanna add something or just your name?

Council Member O'Brien, thank you.

And I just wanna give a shout out to Seattle Public Libraries for their recent decision to put sharps collection containers in all of their libraries.

Good, thank you for that.

Marcellus Turner, if you're listening, thank you.

Okay.

Yeah, please.

Just wondering, as we consider this, if there is also community centers being contemplated?

We know a lot of community center folks, fine sharps, they want to make sure they're not drug enforcement individuals, but they're then picking up items.

I wonder if community centers might be part of the municipal-type buildings that we'd like to consider.

Good.

Thank you.

So, if you'll just add that as a note that we will have the conversations with our park department as well, whether or not they want to add sharp containers within the community centers.

I suspect that we're going to have some pushback on that, but that's why we raise these publicly, so we can have the conversation.

Thank you, Council Member Muscata.

Okay, add Council Member Muscata and Council Member O'Brien to that, if you will.

All right, so item 22.

Item, it's 21, is Green Sheet 15, 15A1 would cut approximately $53,000 in 2019 and $58,000 in 2020 from SPU by reducing a proposed new leadership position for the Clean Cities Program from an executive two down to a manager three position.

A little more than $40,000 of this savings would accrue to the general fund.

And this item is sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold.

Bless you.

Apologies, I'm losing my place here.

It's item 21. Thank you.

Yeah, this is pretty self-explanatory and it's something that we've discussed with the, with SPU.

It results in some savings and it would be great if we use the savings to fund the next item that Brian's going to go over.

Please, then let's go to item 22.

Okay, item 22 is Green Sheet 1516A1, which would expand the RV remediation pilot program to serve one additional site per month, bringing the total from six sites up to seven sites per month.

To do this, the Green Sheet adds $54,000 of general funds in 2019 and approximately $56,000 of general funds in 2020 to both SPU and the department, or to SPU and the Department of Parks and Recreation, and that covers additional contractor costs as well as overtime labor for cleanup crews if necessary.

I would also add a little more than $2,000 per year to the Seattle Department of Transportation for traffic control and signage.

And this item comes from Councilmember Herbold and is co-sponsored by Council President Harrell.

Great.

Please.

Thank you.

So I have learned a lot about the RV remediation program in recent weeks and also understand that there are some limitations to the amount of work that they can do.

Currently, they have sufficient funds to do six sites a month.

And the way that SPU prioritizes locations is by numbers of vehicles, amounts of garbage in the area, and criminal activity in the area.

The remediation program requires The locations that rise to the highest, the six highest basically points out of, they typically assess about 45 different sites a month.

And the six highest sites, those locations are required to move if they're parked in an unlawfully parked area.

And then SPU goes in and cleans the area.

So this proposal would use funding identified by the reduction of the, or the changing of the position that we discussed in 21 to fund one additional remediation a month.

Okay, that's it.

Council Member Harreld, did you want to add anything?

No, I just want to thank you for doing a deep dive.

This is critical and I'm hoping that, well, We lost our left plank down there.

But hopefully we can make sure we support this.

And thank you for finding monies to make this happen.

But during our first briefing, Councilman Herbold and I and maybe many others saw sort of the deficiency in the current program.

So hopefully we'll get this passed and help everybody.

All right.

Let's keep moving.

Moving on to the Human Services Department section.

Item number 25, Green Sheet 14-3A1, adding $762,000 general fund in both years to HSD for substance use disorder treatment, sponsored by Councilmember O'Brien, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Harrell and Johnson.

Councilmember O'Brien.

Thank you.

This ad is fairly straightforward.

It's a significant amount, but it would also have significant benefit.

What this would do is increase capacity of service providers to have more on-demand treatment of substance abuse disorder.

I specifically have spoken with the folks at Evergreen treatment center that's based in, well they have sites around the city, but in specific they have a large site in the Soto neighborhood.

It operates six days a week.

It serves folks with a variety, but it focuses a lot on methadone clinic and buprenorphine.

They are open on those six days a week, I believe until one in the afternoon, at which point they shut down.

There's money elsewhere in the budget to help them get control of that site.

You know, we're investing in the site.

And when we have the capital and set up for it, what they've said is if we had additional funding, this additional funding in specific, they could extend those hours deep into the afternoon on those six days a week by hiring an additional, I believe, it's six nurses.

I'm agnostic on specifically where the investment goes.

This was the one that came forward for me.

What I am committed to is that we should have on-demand treatment available throughout the community for folks that are suffering from addiction and are ready to seek treatment.

We know that that is a complicated path to go down, and I think the minimum we should be able to do is not make it harder for folks to get into treatment when they're ready to do that.

I think this is a site that, again, is set up and ready to go and could simply, with additional resources, could expand.

But I'm certainly open to folks if there are other sites that they want to do.

And I, you know, this would be a competitive process through the department if that's my intention.

Good.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

Okay, let's move on.

Item number 26, Green Sheet 14-4A-1, adding $250,000 general fund in 2019 to HSD for capital costs for a public health clinic remodel.

This is Councilmember Bagshaw, co-sponsored by Councilmember Muscato.

Great, thank you.

This is similar to what Councilmember O'Brien was just talking about, but what's focusing on the public health clinic in Belltown.

Buprenorphine program got started a year ago.

We know that within weeks, we began to have people and more people than the public health clinic could serve.

As many of you know, I went down to San Francisco a couple of years ago to learn more about their IBIS clinic, which is their integrated buprenorphine system, and this is a model similar to what they have seen.

Our clinic last year had something like, or in the first year, had something like 2,100 visits, and it increased to over 7,500 visits the next year, and so this is what we're trying to accomplish is to expand the clinic to make it available for people.

And it seems to be treatment on demand is something that people concur that we need and that it makes a difference.

So the $250,000 will go for capital costs for this public health clinic.

Thank you.

Great.

And Council Member Muscata and Council Member O'Brien have signed on.

Thank you.

Item 27, Green Sheet 14-5A-1, adding $403,030 general fund each year to HSD for a first responder triage program.

This is Council Member Begshaw, co-sponsored by Council Member Johnson.

Great, thank you very much for this.

So yesterday you guys were telling me that you were getting spammed by that same sheet that I passed out to you, so I'm not passing it out again, but at the very bottom of that sheet in the left-hand corner showed the crisis connections program that's up and operational.

So I've been working with Ali Franklin and the opportunity to be working with an established organization to help our first responders Once that they have picked up an individual, and this goes back to our proposed low acuity program, once they have somebody in their control, that the next question is, where do they take them?

And so rather than the first responders having to figure that out, the crisis connections can have on a 24-7 basis, the people and the resources where they can direct first responders.

So whether it's a sobering center, a mental health bed, a 24-7 place that is open and available, and then they continue with what we've called the warm handoff.

Part of the problem with the process that we have right now is a firefighter or first responder picks up an individual, Wherever they end up going, perhaps it's up to Harborview.

At the end of their time at Harborview, they're back out on the street without that plan.

And without a plan, we're just continuing to chase people over and over again.

So the idea of having a single diversion portal, we're working in a coordinated way with King County that this will bring the system together and in a way that the firefighters, first responders get the support that they need and we can find a place for people and we have that warm handoff so that the plan is in play before somebody is released.

back out on the street again.

So I am very excited about this because it's following a model that's been successful in San Diego.

San Diego is willing to come up here.

I believe that we're inviting them to our special committee, is that right, Council Member Muscata, in December or early in January?

So they will come up and talk about what's been successful in San Diego and offer to us the software program that they have developed.

so that we're not recreating anything, but we're building on what is working.

So, that is, and I will tell you, I understand that the 5.5 FTE is not likely to be fully funded this year, but if we can get a pilot going, I think that that is a wonderful opportunity for us, and I recommend that we move forward with this.

Thank you.

Council Member O'Brien.

Item number 28, Green Sheet 14-6A1, adding $1 million general fund to Finance General for a Youth Opportunity Center.

This is Councilmember Bagshaw, co-sponsored by Councilmember Muscata.

Thank you.

And this is something we've been working on now for at least two years, and there was an RFP that went out a year ago.

Youth Care was selected for this.

At the site up at Broadway and Pine, there is a building that I believe is now either underway to be retrofitted, or this money will help.

But we're working with Speaker Frank Chopp, and he, as always, has longer vision, bigger vision.

So the notion is to have this youth center in coordination with Capitol Hill Housing, and then we will be working closely with Seattle Central College to make sure that the youth have opportunity to move into areas of employment or teaching, and it might be a coding effort.

But there's lots of money that's going into this, and the general fund money will be used to help not just procure the site, but do a property swap so the Central College will be able to build something that they want to build, which is a community tech center, and there will be more opportunities for employment for our youth there in that building as well.

So, it's a bigger effort, but this million dollars will go a long way to making it a reality.

Please.

Thank you so much for bringing this forward.

This is one of our big priorities as well.

And I like the approach that you've outlined here to make sure that the funding that the city has an intent to prioritize is truly the right source to make sure that the project works out.

The only question I had for you is, as the prime sponsor of this is, would it be possible to consider adding a date by which we would want to know if those CBDG funds are ineligible?

I think that we have this resolved.

Oh, well, excellent.

Yes, I'm going, it's general fund money.

They're working it out for us, know how important this is both to us and to Speaker Chop.

So, I don't think we have to delve too deeply into this.

Good.

Any?

I'm sorry, I don't quite understand the answer to the question.

The answer to the question is I believe that general fund money has been resolved and has been identified and will be used rather than CBDG money.

I think the question is when will we, so this action appropriates, puts general fund dollars in finance general in case CDBG money is not, it's determined that it's not appropriate?

So the problem with this was this community development block grant money required some additional environmental planning and studies.

That has been accomplished.

They didn't want to have to go back and redo it and so general fund money can be used right away As part of a pool of money that that speaker chop is identified to procure this other property So you having general fund money not CDBG will allow us to move forward with this more quickly so so the this sentence the green sheet would add funding and finance general as an alternative to CDBG funds and

Should the project be ineligible?

Are you saying we already know that the project is ineligible for CDBG funds?

I think the concern is that they don't know, they know it will take more time, and the goal is to have the cash ready to make an offer to Seattle Central College, and if we have The general fund money, it is more flexible so that that's the direction that we're going.

So I think Council Member Mosqueda's point is that it would be useful to know if we're not needing the, if there's going to be an extra million dollars that does not need to be spent because it is CDBG eligible.

It would be good to have a date by which we know that.

So if I could chime in here.

So there is the $1 million identified in the green sheet for CDBG funds as part of the proposed budget.

It is part of the suite of projects that were identified to be funded with the found CDBG funds.

And we should, as I understand it, we should have a resolution as to whether or not those, whether those funds are eligible or whether those funds are preferable to the alternative proposed in Council Member Bekshaw's green sheet during this budget session.

And that to me, I think, resolves any concern.

So we can say prior to the time we vote on our budget, we should have this.

So that will require this language to change if we find out the answer.

Correct.

Got it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Let's move on.

Yeah, let's do that.

The next item is item number 29, green sheet 14-8A-1, adding $1 million in SBT-backed appropriation in 2019 to HSD food banks, cutting $360,000 in SBT-backed appropriations.

I'm sorry, I should be saying sweetened beverage tax-backed appropriations for food access and imposing a proviso.

The proviso would read, Of the appropriation in the 2019 budget for the supporting affordability and livability budget summary level, $2,485,968 of sweetened beverage tax revenue is appropriated solely to fund the food banks program and may be spent for no other purpose.

This is sponsored by Council Member Juarez and Council Member Bagshaw.

Thank you.

Council Member Warren.

Thank you.

Madam Chair, I don't want to repeat what, well, let me just say this.

I'm going to ask my colleagues to be a bit patient.

I think I've been pretty judicious with my time and my words during the budget process.

And this is because this is very important.

So I want to, before I begin, I want to hand out a chart.

I want to thank my staff, Nagin, who put this together.

This is a chart of the enhanced food bank service centers in the city of Seattle.

Those that have contracts with the city, which equals 17, those total enhanced food banks are 30, which brings us to a total of 39 food banks.

Now, I'm just going to briefly say what the numbers are, then I'm going to come back and just give a little bit of analysis, if you will please indulge me.

As you can see, District 3 has 11 food banks.

District 2 has 9. District 1 has 6. District 7 has 5. Districts 4 and 6, I'm sorry.

Districts 4 and 6 have three, and of course, District 5 has two.

Now, again, the reason why I say this, because I, as you know, facts matter, data is important, but more importantly, the reason why we have a proliferation of food banks is because they're doing more than handing out food.

They are obviously providing services well beyond handing out food.

So if I can just have the patience of my colleagues, I'd like to state some facts here and then just wrap this up.

So we know that the sweetened beverage tax has generated nearly $6 million more in revenue than anticipated.

The original ordinance created the sweetened beverage tax passed by this council calls for closing the food security gap, including funding for community-based investments to expand food access, such as food banks and meal programs, quote, unquote.

The Sweetened Beverage Tax Community Advisory Board states that it is troubled by the mayor's proposal to use nearly $6 million in beverage tax revenue to supplant general funds that support existing food access and early childhood programs.

More specifically, the current budget proposal uses the sweetened beverage tax revenue to supplant $1.1 million in general fund revenue for food banks.

Simplantation maintains 2018 levels of some program funding, but does not expand community-based investments as anticipated in the original ordinance.

And then I will just suggest when you look at a law, it isn't just what's the ink on the paper, it's the spirit and the intent.

The Seattle or the Sweetened Beverage Tax Community Advisory Board, the CAB, States, supplanting general funds, however, however important and beneficial the programs they support diverts funding from supporting SBT-focused activities, politically and financially.

It also pits essential services like emergency food, homelessness services against one another.

And the CAB states that the SBT fund should be used as intended to expand, supplement, and innovate, not supplement programs and services consistent with the ordinance that addresses inequities in food.

And as shared this morning, food scarcity throughout the city.

The budget action requests $1 million in sweetened beverage tax funds to be used for food banks with the intention of expanding food access and closing the food security gap.

Moving $1 million into the direct support for local food banks by using the following fund sources.

I would look at the surplus of the $640,000 in unallocated sweetened beverage tax funds.

and $360,000 in the Opportunity Fund, leaving $140,000 in the Opportunity Fund.

That would include a proviso to ensure that the additional $1 million in the Sweetened Beverage Tax Funds are additive to the 2019 proposed budget amounts for food banks.

Now, I know in the last two meetings a lot has happened in between.

I've been in contact with Mr. Geiger and the CAB folk, and I want to talk a little bit about the Food Access Fund.

As it stands now, the Community Advisory Board decided to allocate $500,000 for themselves to determine, and has been able not to share with me, what NGOs or CBOs that they would give this money to.

I know that some of the issues that they want to address are how people can have more information about eating healthy, about fresh bucks, and while I appreciate all that, I have concerns.

I think we should note that the community advisory board is an advisory board, and we as the elect is determined as where the funds actually go and what their intent was.

However, I know that I have colleagues who are concerned about using the Food Access Opportunity Fund for our enhanced food bank service centers.

Therefore, I would like to propose that we use the $640,000 in surplus unallocated funds as planned and add $60,000 in funding from the Opportunity Fund for a total of $700,000 for food banks.

So that means instead of $1 million, it would be $700,000 for 2019 and 2020. Now, again, I probably won't say this much more until we actually get towards the end of the budget hunger games, but our food bank network includes many enhanced food bank service centers which, besides offering food, also offers eviction prevention services, access to medical and employment services.

Our enhanced food bank network is a proven neighborhood-based system of small service organizations that are accessible and reliable to low and no income residents.

Now again, this is why food banks work and why you see so many and why they have been successful.

People will go to two places for their basic needs to be met.

They will go to food banks and they will go to housing organizations.

And there is where we capture that group, that vulnerable group where we can provide services.

That is why I push so hard that it isn't just about programming, that the actual money goes to the brick-and-mortar organizations that are providing these Enhanced services that is why I handed out the luma report.

I'm sure there's a thousand other reports floating around the city Talking about how when somebody goes to a food bank, they are getting more than just food So at this point, um, I don't agree with the community advisory board and me and mr. Geiger, um exchanged emails and phone calls and they were all very civil and But I had to let him know that I have a problem with the Community Advisory Board carving out $500,000 for themselves and suggesting that some of the issues that they may want to work on are some of the same issues that food banks are already doing, and that food banks are NGOs, that was the term Mr. Geiger used, or CBOs.

And also the suggestion that if a food bank can find a sponsor, that they can apply for such funds from the Food Access Opportunity Fund.

So basically, the law that we wrote to support food banks to give them money so they can expand services and free up services to feed people and do other social services, then they would have to come back to the Community Advisory Board and find a partner that's an NGO, or they could be an NGO or CBO themselves, to apply and get in line again for money from the Food Access Opportunity Fund.

That's circular and it doesn't make sense.

So I'll leave it at that, thank you.

Okay.

Next is item number 30, green sheet 14.9A1, adding $5.87 million in general fund revenue to HSD in 2019 to increase the proposed cost of living adjustment that is contained in the 2019 proposed budget from the executive and provide it to all HSD contracts.

by Councilmember Mosqueda with Councilmembers Herbold and O'Brien as co-sponsors.

Great.

Councilmember Mosqueda and Madam Chair, this is a huge priority that I know that this council has already talked about many times and it is the fact that those who are providing the basic necessities to those who are the most vulnerable, who are trying to make sure that people have access to housing and food and health services, they themselves often qualify for those same basic services.

We have had an unfortunate last few years since the recession where our human service providers have not had their wages and inflationary adjustments that we need to make sure that we can afford to live in this city.

So I come here with, I know, a lot of shared goals around making sure that we're addressing the vacancy rates and the turnover rates for some of our most critical organizations, for some of the individuals who provide the services to our most vulnerable population.

And I come with good news.

The good news is that through ongoing conversations with central staff, with you all, we want to make this workable and we want to show action this year.

One of the suggestions that you talked about this year was actually trying to make sure that we apply a 3.5% increase to human service provider contracts and that those contracts that we really focus on are those that are up for renewal next year.

to make sure that this is workable and that we can get to a 3.5% increase for HSD provider contracts.

We, with looking at the scope that's been suggested, we think that we can come in with an estimate that is much less than the original green sheet.

possibly saving us around $3 million in this potential ask.

So I want to underscore the good news there.

I want to underscore the cost savings.

And it's not just cost savings in terms of this specific green sheet, but when we make sure that people have stable, reliable, trusted individuals that they're working with at our human service provider contracted organizations, we know that people can get into housing more quickly.

There's that trusted relationship that helps people to the medical services that they need.

that they may have a case manager who helps someone either stay on medication or find or keep their job once they are able to get into housing.

So of the $130 million that will be up for contracts next year, we are very interested in looking at those and seeing how we can apply this inflationary adjustment to those contracts.

There is a handful of contracts that are brand new that will be up next year, so we would phase in, obviously, negotiate some sort of inflationary component there.

But for the contracts that are up next year for renewal, we are really interested in having a 3.5% increase applied to these provider contracts.

And I'm very excited about the opportunity to take action here.

I know that you've all expressed interest in trying to address this gap.

I appreciate that the mayor put in a 2% inflationary adjustment as well.

I'm hoping that with this good new news, Madam Chair, of a cost-saving potential of $3 million for this potential green sheet, that this is something that both pencils out and is something that will work out for us this year.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold, did you want to add?

Sure.

I want to thank Councilmember Mosqueda for bringing this forward in her leadership and finding a way to move the dial on this and get us going in a right direction that's sustainable and ongoing.

Budget Director Noble in his opening explanation of the budget pointed out to us that the The cost to the city of the rising cost of goods and services is about 3.5%.

So I think if we're recognizing that the costs that we incur over the course of a year increases by 3.5% to provide the same amount of services, we need to also apply that same lens and recognize that the increased cost that the people that we fund to do this work, their costs, their daily cost of living are also increasing.

At a rate that's more than 2%.

I want to do both.

Are they exclusive?

I haven't said anything for an hour now.

Number one, add me to the green sheet.

Number one.

Number two, the point I made earlier is that I'm very supportive of this.

I mean, quite candidly, they're just underpaid doing some incredible work.

We understand that.

I just want to make sure that, as I said earlier, the money's going to the right people.

And we have to build in safeguards to make sure the money just isn't floated in some general fund, but it's actually getting to the employees, if you will.

And we need to build that in somehow.

Otherwise, it's just an increase in the contract, and I want to make sure it goes to the employees.

Thank you for that.

I think we spoke last time that we were actually focusing on the people who were making the least and providing the services that we need.

So I would like to come back and figure out how, if we were to increase a contract, making sure that we don't We're not running afoul of all the legal issues we discussed last week about the Article 8, Section 5 restrictions, but if we can target individuals that are providing the services that we need, that's the objective of this council.

Thank you.

Okay.

Next is item number 31, Green Sheet 1410A1, adding $163,915 general fund in 2020 to HSD for a Safe Passages Program, and offsetting those increases with a reduction to other youth violence prevention programs.

This is sponsored by Council Member Harrell, with co-sponsors, Council Members O'Brien and Mosqueda.

So, thank you for that introduction.

So, I'm gonna speak on, This one and the next one, because they're both related, is this one is for $163,000.

The next one is for $36,000.

And I've got to make this clear.

They're listed as ads, but they're actually budget neutral.

Correct?

They are budget neutral.

Yes, I would be carving out a specific portion of what is already available.

So I want to make that clear.

These are not ads, although we have to describe them as ads.

And I described this earlier during the earlier rounds, that in this youth violence prevention effort that we're doing and who are leading this are actually community organizations such as the Safe Passages and the Boys and Girls Club of King County.

they're leading the work, they're doing great work.

And we didn't want some of these organizations to fall into the trap of having to compete against each other for a set, define some sums in an RFP.

And so it's in the budget, we just sort of wanted at least my preference, my proposal with some help of my great friends here to make sure that that work continues on this youth violence.

I was on the Council of Time in 2008 where the youth violence numbers had skyrocketed and that was the, the beginning of this very aggressive investment to reduce youth violence.

And in my mind, I don't want to lose that continuity.

So this is budget neutral and just a means to keep the continuity going.

That was my key to cut it, because it's getting close to lunch.

So thank you.

And Council Member Juarez is all in, because I'm on her food bank stuff.

So put her on the green sheet.

I'm liking this.

On both of them.

Council Member Herboldt.

No, I'm sorry.

Council Member Herboldt, you have the floor.

Just a question.

So to fund this, we're decreasing the amount of funding for other SYVP programs in HSD.

So they're planning on doing an RFP next year for the Youth Violence Prevention Initiative.

And so this would reduce the funding available through that RFP by $164,000.

What's left in the RFP after that?

I don't have the total amount in front of me, actually.

It would be fairly substantial.

There is an existing program that is for $163,000 right now.

You are correct that HSD will be issuing what they will call the safety request for qualifications and proposals.

And in order to set aside these funds, we would have to decrease the amount that is available for other youth violence prevention grantees that would be coming to apply for that program.

And that would be the case both for the Safe Passages Program and the case management programs that are the topics of these two items.

So there would be less funding overall for the broader scope of agencies interested in doing youth violence work, but there would be two purposeful interventions, case management and safe passages, that would be receiving funding.

I would still like to get a sense of the whole RFP.

The larger amount?

Yeah, thank you.

And Jeff, I should have added that.

I talked to HSD at length, at least my staff did, on what we're trying to do.

They gave us some assurance that, well, let me back up.

I met with many community members on this work, the ones that are actually doing the work, and HSD pretty much gave me some assurances that my concern was I was a little anxious about this, and they felt like these are the folks, really the only ones that qualified to do the work.

And of course, we're pushing HSD more outcome-based, but this was my attempt to address the community's concerns to keep the continuity, some assurance.

And so, even had we not done this, we probably would have been okay.

And I think HSD, I don't want to over-speak for them, but they were very fine with this budget ask.

Okay, moving on.

So I'll skip the next item then, which was the 36,000 for case management, since you just covered those, or do you want me to go into that more?

This is addressed to you, Councilmember Harold.

Was that 32?

Yes.

No, I just nailed that one, I think.

And Councilmember Juarez has said she's in on that one as well.

That's great.

And the good news, folks, is that we have one, two, three, for five before lunch, so if we can hang in here for five more items.

Please.

Almost there.

33 is Green Sheet 1412A1, adding $75,000 in general fund revenue in 2019 to HSD for referral services and food bank support.

This is sponsored by Councilmember Johnson and with Councilmembers Juarez and Herbold as co-sponsors.

Anybody have anything to add to this?

Any distinguishing features between this and the other food bank items we've discussed?

I'm sorry, could you say it a little louder?

Any distinguishing features?

Is there anything in this $75,000 request that is different from what we have heard previously?

Well, we haven't previously presented this as like a form A or an initial item.

This would focus on the Greenwood area and the works that are going on there.

The recipient funds would support adding a community connector to the providers that are currently there so there would be information referral services and also an expansion of food bank activities in that area.

Okay.

Council Member O'Brien, do you want to speak to this or are you good?

Just add on?

This is consistent with what Councilmember Juarez was pushing, correct?

That's the issue.

I think there's room to negotiate on this one.

Room to negotiate in terms of inclusion or dollar amounts or...

Sorry, I probably should have used a better word.

I think we can talk more offline about like how we talked before.

I can't hear you down here.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I think that we can talk better offline about how some of these things can fold in to that additional funding that we want for the enhanced food banks from some of these other items that are coming up like we did with the other budget proposal or concerns that we're going to talk about at 4 o'clock today.

Okay.

Thank you.

We will do that.

Item 34.

Item 34 we referenced before Councilmember Sawant left.

It's adding, it's Green Sheet 1413A1, adding $249,000 in general fund in 2019, and the same amount in 2020 for services to LGBTQ seniors.

There's a substantial amount of overlap with the Green Sheet we discussed earlier, also providing services to LGBTQ seniors.

And this one, however, did have a stronger focus on housing referrals, and the sponsor here,

is me.

Okay, so let's get this one going.

So I'm gonna hand out some materials really quickly.

So what I am passing down, and I'll get you covered, Amelia, I promise.

I've been doing it all morning.

So what I'm handing out is just a little, it's a chart that lays out the estimated population of LGBTQ folks, regardless of age, in various major cities.

So we have San Francisco, Portland, Austin, New Orleans, Seattle, Boston, LA, and New York City.

You can see that here in Seattle, It's estimated that our LGBTQ population is 4.8%.

And then I went through and created a chart that really laid out some of the different services that are provided in all of these major cities, including here in Seattle, as just a comparison of the work, frankly, that we have yet to do in this space for this part of our community.

Seattle is not necessarily leading the pack, as they say, as it relates to providing critical services to the LGBTQ population.

And all of the services that are identified on the chart, community center, training, technical assistance, housing development, housing support, social programming, food access, is specific to the senior population in each one of these cities.

So that's what's represented in the chart on top.

Attached to that chart are just examples of some of the programming that is done in this space in other major cities.

There's one article here from...

the Capitol Hill blog that talks about some of the work that we are doing in Seattle, but really, really, you know, wanted to direct folks' attention to how we could be doing better in terms of serving the needs of our aging LGBTQ population.

So this, this green sheet is designed to hopefully get us to a place where we are being much more strategic and holistic in the way that we are meeting the needs of our LGBTQ seniors.

My Green Sheet, with the support of Councilmember Herbold, is much more focused on housing stability and making sure that folks have an opportunity to continue to stay in the city of Seattle as they age, but it also recognizes that there are wraparound services and needs that are currently unmet that have to be met in order to promote housing stability of aging LGBTQ members of our community, including food and nutrition access, health promotion and wellness, education, social activities, case management, and other housing supports and referral information.

And then I think the final thing that I'll say that has evolved from when we first had this conversation during issue identification is that we really do want to provide an opportunity for non-profits who are doing this work currently in Seattle to partner and do it together.

So LGBTQ allyship, for example, has been doing a lot of work around identifying needs and gaps of services for their LGBTQ aging population.

And Gen Pride has also been doing some of that work, and I know that they've both been having conversations with each other and amongst each other about what it would look like to have a partnership here when these dollars are bid out by HSD and sort of what it could look like to really partner and leverage each other's resources and each other's specific audiences to really meet.

the significant need that exists within the LGBTQ population.

Thank you.

First, thank you that you're expanding the work that we're doing on age-friendly to be very specific about LGBTQ.

I appreciate that.

And I failed to note that as Council Member Sawant was walking out, I shared this information with her and she offered the opportunity for our offices to work together to combine the efforts here so that we don't have two differing green sheets.

And so she gave me permission to signal that she would like to have her name added to this one, and then we'll work on incorporating some other components that are important to her from her green sheet.

Super.

That was my question number two.

So let's move on.

The next item is number 36, Green Sheet 1415A1, adding $150,000 general fund in 2019 to HSD to study the wage gap for human services workers.

This will be analyzing data that will come from a King County study that gets released in April of 2019. The sponsor is Council Member O'Brien with co-sponsors Busqueda and Johnson.

So Council Member O'Brien, do you want to address this?

Yep, just briefly.

So this is consistent with some of the discussions we've had here today and we had over the last couple years.

What we've been told is one of the next steps on this ongoing work, obviously we need to continue to provide funding because clearly that's a big gap, but one of the things we heard is it would be helpful to have better information on specifics around that wage gap as we both Continue to increase our investments.

I think in this as others have argued Before that's absolutely critical for us to achieve the outcomes we want But also to navigate what would likely be a multi-year process Very good Other hands race, let's keep going next is item 37 green sheet 1416 a1

adding $150,000 in general fund in 2019 and $150,000 in 2020 to HSD to provide legal services for sexual assault survivors.

This is sponsored by Councilmember Johnson with Councilmember Juarez and Ms. I'm sorry, that's the wrong page.

No, that's me.

Councilmember Gonzalez.

That's all right.

I've been confused for Councilmember Johnson before.

Before you began on that green sheet, I just wanted the earlier green sheet, I think it was 1413A1, I believe, on the LGBTQ senior housing issue.

I wanted to add on on the green sheet, please.

Sorry.

Okay.

I'm happy to make

time for you to sign up to any of my green sheets.

Okay.

So this one is pretty straightforward.

We had funded legal representation, direct legal representation for survivors of sexual assaults last year.

And it's my intent to just make this a line of business for the city of Seattle as part of our overall efforts and strategies to to fund in the space of gender-based violence prevention programs, and I see this as a critical component of that.

There aren't many legal service providers in the city that provide legal services specifically to survivors of sexual assault who may need things like protection orders, for example.

to continue to feel safe.

And a lot of folks don't know that sexual assault survivors are in criminal proceedings are actually not represented by a lawyer.

And so, you know, the state of Washington is represented by the prosecutor and the criminal, the accused is represented by a defense attorney, but the survivor of sexual assault is oftentimes not represented by by anyone.

And so this is a really significant gap in terms of our civil legal aid system.

And this is an opportunity for the city of Seattle to spend a pretty nominal amount of dollars and get a huge return on investment.

According to the service provider that we funded last year, she was able to hire one full-time attorney who was able to provide civil legal aid to over 100 sexual assault survivors.

Thank you.

And I would love to have others support if they are interested.

Others like to join on?

I'd like to join in.

OK.

Great, thank you.

And then it looks like we have our last one for this morning.

That's correct.

Item number 38, green sheet 1417A1, adding $35,921 general fund in 2019 and $37,439 in 2020 to HSD to increase food delivery capacity.

The sponsor is council member, make sure you got it right, Johnson this time and co-sponsors Mosqueda and Juarez.

So in the absence of Council Member Johnson, Council Member Juarez or Ms. Gated, would you like to speak to this?

Okay, we have no additions and we will just move on.

So this is the end of this morning's green sheet.

Our next session is at 2 p.m.

We will recess now, pick it up at 2 p.m.

and just as a reminder to all, we will have our, any public comments afterward.

So that will come somewhere between, I would imagine, for roughly 4 o'clock for public comment.

Good.

Thank you, gentlemen, very much.

Allison, thank you for participating and being such a good help.

And Amelia, thank you.

Okay, colleagues, this is recessed.