Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee 102418 Session 2

Somebody else is in line.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome back to our October 24, 2018 Budget Committee meeting.

This morning we went through issues regarding parks and halfway through transportation and we're now going to pick up from where we left off which was on the issues that have been identified and potential expenditures by council members relating to transportation.

I want to say thanks to Calvin Chow for the good work this morning.

Eric Sun, thank you.

Welcome back to the table.

And I suspect that we will have it for the council central staff.

My best guess is this will be 20 minutes to a half an hour more.

If you've got other things you would like to do and just keep your ear on when we move on to the crosscut.

issues.

Okay, please go ahead.

Thank you Council Member.

Calvin Chow with Council Central staff.

One item before I get into the budget actions I just wanted to follow up on the question about congestion pricing.

There was a question about sort of what our authority lies and my understanding is that if we do go forward with congestion pricing on the roads that would require a local vote.

So I think that's probably an important thing to stress.

That would require a what?

A local vote.

So are we talking Seattle or King County or both?

Seattle.

Okay.

So there have been 12 items that have been identified by council members as potential budget actions.

The first item is potentially the provising the arterial asphalt and concrete program phase two project related to the 55th Avenue Southwest project.

We're having a debate on what the phrase local vote means.

Does that mean a vote by the people?

My understanding is that to impose congestion pricing on the roads, we would have to be using the authority given to us through the Seattle Transportation Benefit District, which would mean the voters of that district, which are the same voters of the City of Seattle, would have to vote on the proposal.

Perfect.

Majority vote?

I believe so, but I don't know the specifics.

Probably so.

And so this is, I've talked about congestion pricing a few times, and it gets a lot of attention, as you can imagine.

And often the first question from the media is like, so you can implement this tomorrow?

And it's like, look, we have to create a plan that has popular support that we feel we're comfortable going to a vote of the public before this happens.

So we're talking a lot about congestion pricing, and obviously people, have a lot of interest in it, but the ability to actually implement something is totally driven by a plan that a majority of voters of Seattle decide they want to support, which is a little ways away.

From what I'm hearing, and the way that we work things like this is that we spend a good year reaching out to the community, looking at pros and cons.

and how much it would cost, how much of a benefit it would receive, particularly during this time of maximum constraints, then is this the best time to do that?

But it may be the best time for people to feel what is actually the impacts downtown.

But then if we're going to a vote of the people, that would be another year out.

So it strikes me that we're at least two years away of actually even seeing something, assuming the best of all intentions and the best of all communication.

So any further discussion on this at this point?

Okay, now you want to go back to the arterial asphalt and concrete program in district one.

Budget action number one is to proviso the arterial asphalt and concrete program phase two project as it relates to the 35th Avenue Southwest project and that's a request from Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you.

So I would just like to share something that I think is a little bit illustrative of the capital projects.

compared year-to-year, not year-to-year, district-to-district.

Each page is a snapshot from the SDOT dashboard, Capital Projects dashboard.

Thank you, Councilmember Gonzalez.

Thank you for a reason to say that.

And you can see that the projects in District 1 that are so small that you can't even see them.

And if you turn the pages and you see what's happening in all of the other districts, there's quite a bit more going on in the other districts.

And so I'm just generally concerned about the capital needs not being addressed.

in District 1. This is obviously a really challenging item because the Asphalt and Concrete Program is listed in the CIP for over $200 million, but there's not a specific project breakout included.

We have a draft project list for 2016-2024, and most of the funding is from the MOVE levy.

General that my concerns relate to graphic equity Geographic equity and and specifically the approach in district one You take a look at the The report back, the move-levy report back that was received as requested in Resolution 31830 of 11 completed projects, 10 in 2018, of the total 21 projects, absolutely none are in District 1. 18 projects on the revised 2019 to 2024 tentative project list.

Two of the 18 are in District 1. Of the list of deferred projects, there's a draft list of deferred projects.

Two of the nine total deferred projects are in District 1. The revised plan specifically removes two projects that they had already committed to from District 1. One is repaving of Roxbury from 35th to 15th.

This is four lane miles.

It's a $17 million project.

Priority project is 35th from Roxbury to Morgan.

This is eight lane miles.

It's a $34 million project.

This is a project that a couple of years ago, it was on the list to be done in 2023, and SDOT had committed to me that they would look at doing it earlier than 2023. Now they're taking it off the six-year list altogether.

35th Southwest is the street I hear the most complaints about.

The bus lines 21 and 21 Express provide frequent service on 35th, and those buses are just doing a lot of damage to the roads.

The most recent SDOT management report Included a paving assessment and showed that particular part of 35th and really bad condition in the most recent assessment Report I think they actually identified it as a fail that segment is failed so I'm just trying to figure out how we could get this back on the list and Prioritize it within the 200 million dollar arterial asphalt and concrete program levy item all right

Item number two is to add funny for I think follow-up question there councilmember herbal Do you make a really compelling case and I appreciate you're digging into this and I appreciate you reaching out to me earlier, too Calvin I I am I'm curious to understand the why behind this I Why behind why sorry why it's not on the list And if you know the answer to that and want to share it, that's great I I'm very sympathetic to the case and I just and I'm inclined to support councilmember.

I can answer why they are Placing as a higher priority The Delridge quarter for the rapid ride and I think given the fact that there's nothing happening in district one I think they should do both

Got it.

They reprioritized the spending that was to go to those 35th projects to Delridge, to Delridge Way combined with the H line, is that what it's called?

Yes, yes.

And so there are two projects they're taking off.

That's the Roxbury project and the 35th.

They're putting on Delridge.

And I'm asking to put the 35th segment back on because it's identified as a failed segment.

And I assume that would that mean an ad, budget ad, or just take another project off somewhere else?

I think the latter, but I leave it to the genius of Calvin to figure out how we might effectuate that.

It's tricky, given the way these funds are structured.

Item number two is to add funding for landslide mitigation.

This is also for Council Member Herbold.

So this is something that I've raised a couple times in the past.

And one year, the council addressed it.

Another year, the budget office recommended increased funding in the mayor's proposed budget.

In essence, the issue is that last year, we added $1 million for landslide mitigation.

This was above what was previously a $500,000 baseline for landslide mitigation.

And the reason for this added investment is because in 2000 SDOT performed a risk assessment for slope hazards, specifically for possible landslides that would impact arterial streets.

The evaluation was based on scoring that SDOT used to prioritize what they had identified as a proactive landslide mitigation program, like pay attention to these potential landslide areas so that there isn't a landslide and our arterial streets aren't impacted.

The assessment identified 23 known potential slide locations along arterial streets.

Of the 73 locations, 24 were rated a high priority.

And since 2000, SDOT has budgeted approximately $500 per year for mitigation.

In the 18 years since, There's been no proactive landslide mitigation work, and half of the 24 high-priority locations have received reactive mitigation work.

So again, most of the work was reactive.

Even though we're still calling this a proactive landslide mitigation program, it just has not been able to function that way.

Item number three is to add the Highland Park roundabout as a separate project in the CIP.

This is Council Member Herbold.

This is a budget neutral budget request.

There are a number of funds that SDOT has committed to the design of the project and this is simply creating an SDOT project for this, an SDOT CIP project for this specific project to lock the dollars in that have already been committed.

Item number four is to add funding for phase three of the Rainier Safety Corridor project.

It's Councilmember Harrells.

I think many of you are following the different phases of the Rainier Safety Corridor project.

We made tremendous progress and right now I'm still working on the scope of the funding in this proposal, but I certainly wanted to get it in front of you.

We've had some significant accidents still in Rainier Valley and District 2 that we're addressing.

Listening to the community and the safety advocates this becomes critical funding as we're finishing the phases of the safety corridor project So I think this is gonna be critical a little more information.

We'll be following Item number five is to add funding for a suicide prevention hotline signs to be installed on the 20th of Northeast Bridge This is councilmember Johnson's requests, and I think it's pretty self-explanatory.

I Item number six is to add funding for the Third Avenue corridor evaluation.

This is Councilmember Johnson and Councilmember O'Brien.

If I can speak to it.

There's ongoing work to figure out how kind of the vision for a third Avenue The things that are contemplated in here are possibly reducing the width of the roadway to allow more space for pedestrians that would require slightly different bus operations, but there's conceptually there's some ideas there the but the Funding to continue the evaluation is important.

Let me call Calvin.

Do you know the about the dollar amount?

I I think that's still in discussion.

Item number seven is requesting a slide on emerging mobility technologies.

This is Council Member Brines.

All right, this is where I get in my soapbox, folks.

How much time do I have?

Wait, wait, Lisa, are you going to pass it down to him?

I wouldn't want that because it may stop at Council President Harrell and not make it all the way through.

So what I'm interested in is trying to figure out how to bring folks together to create a vision for mobility that's coming to us in Seattle.

The example that I'll use is one that we can all see, which is these electric scooter shares, which are popping up around the country, and occasionally one will pop up in the city of Seattle.

But I know they have not been permitted here yet, and people use them privately.

But what that's done is start to, and same with the bike share system too, and the significant uptake we've got of this model.

The reality is that there are all sorts of new modes of transportation that I think are going to be coming, that are evolving, and I can't I didn't know what an electric scooter was six months ago, and yet I know we're going to spend a lot of time talking about it.

And there's probably other technologies that are in the works that I'm not aware of, and there's technologies that aren't even in the works yet.

They all have the potential to do some really amazing things for us collectively.

One, they can really make it easier for all of us to get around in different ways.

And they won't each one work for all of us in the same way, but they have the potential to just give us so many more mobility options.

The technologies that are being developed for the most part are carbon neutral.

They're often electric in our city.

If they're fueled from our Seattle City Light, we know that's a carbon neutral electric source.

They will reduce congestion.

They will reduce air pollution.

The challenge is they don't fit within our modal system right now.

We have a place for cars.

We have a place for pedestrians.

We're struggling with creating a safe place for bikes.

We don't really know what to do with scooters next or any of the things that we can't even predict yet.

And I think if we want to be a place that is ready to embrace this evolution of technology that's coming, we should do some thoughtful thinking about how we allocate our right of way.

Simple things like, I'm not sure they should even be called bike lanes anymore.

They might need another name for those things.

And what all could go in those lanes?

And how would we design them differently if we're not talking about them as bike lanes, but other types of lanes?

What are the widths of these things?

I am good at some things and not so good at other things.

Naming things is not my strong suit.

So, yeah, I mean, some of these things are motorized, some aren't, some mobility, I don't know.

But I think that's the point of this would be to have a process and to say, instead of reacting to, oh, someone just showed up and has 300 scooters that are electric, what do we do with this?

And then the next technology, the next technology, to try and actually lay out a vision for how we're gonna allow people to get around and then let it be kind of technology agnostic.

So again, this is really a statement of intent, as it is, and to talk about how we can work together.

Well, if I can borrow your soapbox for just a second.

Yes, I am done.

I am a huge fan, as you well know, on having the bike network downtown.

And if we want to extend that so that other modes have it, it's just that people know that if you're on an electric scooter or you're on one of these wheels that you see, I'm all in favor of sharing it.

I think I'd like to put a speed limit on it, you know, like we keep it 15 miles an hour or whatever we deem to be.

So I would like to say the focus ought to be on connecting the silly bike network downtown so people can go and not get squished when it just ends.

But I would welcome electric scooters in the bike lanes as long as we all know what the rules are.

I have a question, not a soapbox, a question.

How does this proposal relate to the requirement that we included in the bike share permit legislation that basically says don't bring us any more devices to permit until you've done what I thought this sounded a little bit like?

So there's a couple different things.

One, we need to have a very specific conversation about safety in the pedestrian zone, the sidewalks.

what you can use there, what you can park there, how that works.

Some of it's about behavior, some of it's about structure.

And so that's a conversation.

It overlaps with this a bit.

This is a little more like, you know, Uber and Lyft showed up.

We weren't prepared for that.

I'm not going to pretend that we can prepare for the unknown.

And so we reacted to that in some ways that were good, some ways not so good, and here we are.

But I think we're in a, the pace of change is happening so fast that if we're simply stuck in the paradigm of, well, to go out there and look at what we have, because this is what we've built for the last 50 years, and instead start thinking about, what do we want to build forward?

So Council Member Begichoff, you talked about connecting the downtown bike network.

I'm obviously a big fan of that.

I think there's a question again is, are they bike?

And what else could they be?

And are the widths that we're currently designing for the appropriate widths?

And what are the speeds that we want to accommodate?

I don't know if 15 or 18 or 21 miles an hour is the right design, but these are the kind of thinking, these are the kind of conversations that should happen.

I think an overlap about how we want to make sure that the pedestrian zone or the sidewalks is safe for all users.

And I think they overlap, but they may be similar or different conversations.

I don't have clarity on that, Council Member Herbold.

Yeah.

Just if I could just add, what I'm hearing from Council Member O'Brien is way beyond simple scooters.

I was recently in Portland a few weeks ago and It just amazed me the number of scooters going around.

And quite frankly, it raised a lot of safety issues.

They were just darting through cars and the whole bit.

And I hear you saying that today it could be scooters, tomorrow it could be roller skates or something.

Who knows what technology is coming out?

But electric roller skates.

I'm being facetious to make the point that I think you're talking about the vision of all these emerging technologies and what's the next segue.

It's just they're all out there and we need to plan for it and think about it.

So I really like where you're heading with the technology developments that we're going to be faced with the next 10 years.

Thank you so much Madam Chair and thank you for bringing this forward Council Member O'Brien.

I clearly shared the same level of enthusiasm that you do about looking at all of these options and planning for the next wave of technology.

Earlier today I also mentioned my interest in making sure that we have corrals that can provide safe places to park these technologies, whether it's the bike share or scooter share or the next wave of electric roller skates, figuring out how we're creating safe places for these to be put not in harm's way for walkers and also not left on our streets, which is something that we see in other cities.

What I just saw in DC as well is that the technology is adapting the Lime scooters you have to take a picture of where you've parked the lime scooter show that it's stood up correctly and show that it's out of the right-of-way and not in the street and then it unlock and then it locks for you, so Would you be is that part of something that you would be considering as well when looking at this slide the way to appropriately park these

Yeah, I think, and I'll add that I believe the new generation of scooters also have tip over sensors so that if someone knocks them over, they tip over.

The provider knows that and it shows up and they can go, right, and now I don't want to pretend that they will show up in one moment's notice and pick it up.

And that's, I think, one of the challenges.

So I think there's an immediate conversation that needs to happen.

And I've actually reached out to some of the pedestrian advocates and some of the other providers.

to try to convene something that I'm not proposing to do a sly on and just talking about the the pedestrian space and how we Move forward because things like electric scooters are imminent whether it's bikes whether it's a scooter share or not They're already on out there and where do they go?

And then I think a longer term visioning and I think there may be some of the same players in those But how we how we park and manage those I think that's probably part of the the nearer term conversation because I think it's it's kind of imminent that something's happening and

Okay, item eight is to add funding for the Ballard Bridge safety improvements.

This again is Council Member O'Brien.

Folks who haven't had a chance to walk or bike across the Ballard Bridge lately, it's a scary experience.

It's also one of the few crossings of the Ship Canal, so it's used by a number of folks and trying to retrofit an old piece of infrastructure that isn't designed to today's standards and today's needs is a challenge.

SDOT has done a great job of finding some small fixes to do to make that experience a little better.

couple remaining fixes one is a that is generally included in the scope of the budget of the move Seattle levy which is at the intersection of Emerson and said Emerson Nixon Emerson and 15th just on the southwest side of the bridge finding a better crossing for bikes and pedestrians who are going north south and I are going south in that quarter on that side so this would this would I believe that is in the plan, and I think they have funding to do it.

We just want to make sure that plan gets done.

And then there's also talk about putting up additional railings along the bridge to really separate the bike pedestrians from the roadway.

That is likely a multi-million dollar investment, which is not included.

And we're interested in, I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to put forward here, but it may be more of a sly flavor than added funding.

There's a bridge safety study that's going to be kind of an engineering safety study, seismic safety study, I should say, for the Ballard Bridge that we're not expecting to get until about a year from now.

And I think as we learn from that, depending on how long this version of the Ballard Bridge would be with us, will dictate how much we want to make kind of investments inside the pedestrian safety environment.

So we're doing a lot of the small ones.

I think there's another kind of medium-sized one that I hope to do.

And then we're going to want to make sure we're ready to think about the bigger ones, depending on how long it's going to be around.

Anything else on that?

Item number nine would request a sly on rapid ride implementation.

And it's also from Council Member O'Brien.

So you all may have regretted holding this over till the afternoon now that I'm here.

Well, I thank you.

This is tied to the work with Move Seattle.

So as you all recall, a big chunk of the Move Seattle investments was about rapid ride corridors.

hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent and the anticipation was that that would be matched with federal grant money.

There's a couple of things that have happened since that vote.

We've talked about this before, but I'll just reiterate.

One is, as we know, construction costs are going up and so our budget's not stretching quite as far as we thought.

Two, the, well, we were probably, when this was put together, over ambitious at how many federal grants we thought we were going to get.

And of course, the tone in Washington towards transit and the city of Seattle has shifted a bit.

And so we don't anticipate getting the same level of federal dollars matching these.

And then we also recently learned that Metro is delaying their plans to bring rapid ride level service to the city of Seattle for a few years.

At the same time, the corridors where we're talking about, we were talking about upgrading to rapid ride service, are corridors where existing bus lines are running on high frequencies in congestion spaces.

So the lines we're talking about, the 40, the 44, the 7, I think.

Delridge we're already working on, so that's a little bit different.

Roosevelt and Madison have their own things going.

I think I might be missing one there.

But the idea here is to say, instead of waiting until Metro's ready and the federal government's ready to go ahead and do this one comprehensive investment, we can make some spot improvements along these corridors, many of which have already been identified with our Move Seattle levy, and get the existing routes that are running on there moving more swiftly.

I believe that on December 1st, when we hear the proposal for what to move forward on Move Seattle, we're going to hear some version of something like this, which is going to be, let's spend the money in the smartest ways possible to get the most speed and reliability improvements on existing corridors.

And when King County and the federal government are ready to upgrade to RapidRide, those investments will have already been done, or a lot of them will be done.

So this slide is really asking specifically, it's a little bit anticipating what we're going to hear, of show us a list of the speed and reliability improvements you'd like to make.

Again, we're not going to be able to kind of do this how we anticipated, but we can still make significant investments and get significant improvements in transit times with the move Seattle levy dollars.

Next item is item number 10 and it would request a slide on coordinating transportation investments in Interbay.

Thank you very much.

So many of you know that there was a kerfuffle last spring around Magnolia Bridge and whether and how we were going to replace that bridge.

And that resulted in my reaching out to 36 district legislators, to the port, to everybody who had any interest in this.

And we've put together a working group, s.wash.has been very helpful, and as I said, including Sound transit and the port as well.

So we want to continue this identifying the list of transportation projects With the idea that well, we will over time starting this year be going to the legislature to ask for help one thing we know or has been brought to our attention is that as people want to replace Magnolia Bridge The number of cars and trucks on that bridge do not reach the level that federal funds would probably be available to us, which means we have to cobble together what we can.

And right now, the Magnolia Bridge replacement is somewhere between 4 and 500 million.

of which the City of Seattle has not considered replacing that on its own.

So the goal is to consider this corridor which would include 15th Avenue West or maybe it's Northwest and the Ballard Bridge in conjunction with Aurora.

And I-5, those are our only north-south thoroughfare corridors for freight and buses, too.

So we're going to begin to really delve into that.

So that's what that slide's about.

Next item is item number 11. This item would add funding to reduce alleyway congestion and it's also Councilmember Baxter.

Great.

Thank you.

So over the last number of years, we've been working with the University of Washington.

We had a freight mobility strategy group and Over the time we know that there are some things that we can some investments that we can make that will move freight faster through downtown one is the last the last 50 feet where I let's just take take a UPS truck for example or FedEx or Other carriers are trying to find a place downtown where they can actually park then get out and get the packages inside.

So we want to continue that.

And at the same time, the alleyway congestion is a big part of this because we have rules that I don't think are enforced.

An example is right behind Walgreens.

of a third and between third and second that I was walking with a group of residents and noticed that the truck was there for the better part of 45 minutes to an hour and it's supposed to be there no more than 10 to 20 minutes to deliver.

But that just goes to show that the whole area has got to be addressed and thoughtfully so.

And I want to just continue making sure that we have the staff time and the consulting time, whatever we need with the UW to help us.

The last item, item number 12, requests a slide on Battery Street green space.

Great.

And this is something that our Belltown neighbors have requested.

You remember earlier in the year we were talking about trying to retain the Battery Street tunnel, keeping it open.

There was an effort that was called Recharge the Battery.

after a great long time with our friends in SDOT and WSDOT, and I want to say special thanks to John Laser who was very patient about this, that ultimately decided that wasn't going to happen, but now Belltown is looking at, well, what can they do on Battery Street above?

So they're looking for more green space and trying to get water to trees, recognizing that it's going to be problematic, but also, There is a I think is a one and a half acre plot that is not used now that after staging by WSDOT could be available to Belltown for what they're looking at as a potential orchard pea patch green space.

We just want to make sure that this is this continues to be on the front burner and are asking for some additional help there.

That's the last item on the SDOT paper.

Very good.

Any questions for Calvin before we move on into cross-cutting efforts?

Okay.

Thank you very much, Calvin, for your help.

And Eric, thank you for continuing here with us.

The next, we have a bunch of issues and we've got Patricia and Lisa, are you going to be leading all of the cross-cut?

I think you're going to hear from every central staffer this afternoon.

Excellent.

Well, luck yes.

So Eric, do you want to kick this one off?

It looks like Patricia, you're reaching for the microphone first.

The first issue we have is kind of a summary of what are the position changes in the proposed 2019-20 budget.

So at a very high level, I would like to start with some position changes that include both abrogations and new positions.

Before I start, though, I want to note that the numbers I'm giving you are citywide.

Whether or not the appropriate FTEs are in a department and available to do the type of work that we are requesting in this budget is really a department level question.

That said, as of September, the city had approximately 12,000 budgeted positions.

10,000 of which were filled.

Approximately 75% of those positions are represented by labor unions.

I should also note that there are about 664 positions at the Seattle Public Library.

They manage their own personnel system.

There are 160 positions that are being proposed to be abrogated in this budget.

120 of those are vacant positions.

Of those 120 vacant positions, 76 are represented and 44 are not.

40 of those positions are filled, 12 represented and 28 of those 40, and there will be actually eight actual layoffs.

The other 32 positions that are being abrogated, 22 of them are sunsetted or term limited, which are positions that were intended to go away at the end of 2018. One person is retiring, and there are several strategies that departments are looking at to mitigate or move people into other positions.

Attachment one to there to the...

Apparently not.

Okay.

Okay.

Council Member Muscatia.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I understand layoffs similar to this happen every year.

Can you talk about how this compares to previous years?

I do not have trend data, but I'm happy to get that for you.

I know that my recollection is we have had very few layoffs since 2008, where we have actually had people laid off.

Since the recession?

Since the recession.

Okay, Greta, yeah, if you can provide that with the represented and non-represented, that'd be helpful.

Thank you.

I'd be happy to.

Attachment one in your packet shows the actual job titles, positions, and departments, and whether they're vacant or filled.

As for new positions, there are 189 positions in this new budget, and 95 of which are represented and 94 non-represented.

And again, those specific titles and departments are listed in attachment two.

Thank you.

That's it.

Well done.

Okay.

Asha, you next?

Yes.

Are you doing the criminal legal system policy?

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

Asha Venkatraman, Council Central staff.

So I'll be speaking to an issue around alignment of criminal legal system policy and investments.

So in recent years, the Council and the Executive have asked for analysis and implementation of multiple initiatives and policies that span the range of the criminal legal system.

and that system's impact on communities.

And this includes both youth violence prevention and diversion efforts.

The problem is that the city does not coordinate across departments or direct any coordinating body to vet these initiatives.

The city hasn't set any values to drive policy, nor has it aligned policy investments or outcomes.

In addition, there's no coordinated approach that gives a voice to, but doesn't overburden communities that are impacted by the criminal legal system.

As you're all aware, the system is run at a minimum by the police department, the city attorney's office, and Seattle Municipal Court with a variety of associated endees.

In the recently released report from the Reentry Work Group, which was formed in response to one of the council's initiatives to look at the criminal legal system, they recommended increased coordination by all independently elected branches of government to build a coherent strategy coordinated and aligned with the values, objectives, values and objectives developed in partnership with communities most impacted.

I'll speak to one recent example of coordination.

In 2016, the Seattle Municipal Court convened the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council as a forum for elected officials and director-level positions to share information, collaborate, and work across silos.

Involvement happened citywide, including the entities I just mentioned, as well as the mayor's office, King County, the Office for Civil Rights, Human Services Department.

However, that organization is no longer meeting, and nothing has taken its place.

In addition, there was no staff level coordination to provide support to that body or ensure that all initiatives that were related to the criminal legal system or impacting communities were being vetted by that body.

On page four of your cross-cutting memo, you'll see a list of select initiatives, work groups, and policies that are spread throughout the city departments over the past few years, and they demonstrate the breadth of the effort that the city is making.

This isn't a complete inventory of these initiatives.

It doesn't include things like the drivers, or the, excuse me, the interactions between homelessness and the criminal legal system, state lobbying, state-level legislation, or efforts that are not led by the city, nor all the funding that HSD and other departments provide to community-based organizations doing violence prevention work.

As you've already heard in some of these briefings, as well as at public hearings, there are additional requests this year around youth violence prevention and certain parts of the criminal legal system, including the requests around probation that I'll discuss later today when we discuss the Seattle Municipal Court.

A lack of alignment has led to duplicative work using limited resources and also multiple asks to communities most impacted.

For example, the work groups that address bail reform, reentries, or use detention, they have multiple departmental staff members that are participating in all of those work groups when a single group that covers the whole system could streamline staff efforts.

In addition, engagement efforts around public safety through the Departments of Neighborhoods, the Community Safety RFQ through the Human Services Department, the Bail Reform Work Group, Planned Racial Equity Toolkits, and the City Attorney's Office Pre-Filing Diversion Program all reach out to the same impacted communities at multiple times and venues when those efforts could be aligned to more efficiently use community members' time.

A response to this issue, as indicated by the reentry work group, and in line with the city's RSJI principles, would be to convene groups that coordinate these efforts, that would center race, value and partner with communities that are disproportionately represented throughout the legal system, build accountability with communities most impacted, assess institutions and how they interact with and affect communities most impacted, and examine models regarding how to allocate funding equitably.

In that spirit, there are a few options identified on page six of your memo.

These are not necessarily mutually exclusive, nor are they the only options that we can pursue.

that you all can pursue, rather.

The first one, option A, would be to fund staff to create an anti-racist plan that determines how to align strategy and guide current and future policy and investments around public safety in the criminal legal system.

Some suggested staffing for this would be to make permanent the existing position in the Office for Civil Rights around equitable funding, to create a criminal justice strategic advisor that is specifically tasked with doing this broader criminal justice work, and to fund community engagement and facilitation.

And alternatives to that, option B would be creating a new criminal legal advisory board, which is what the reentry work group has recommended, which would be comprised of individuals that have lived experience of the criminal legal system and who can develop a strategic plan to create this kind of coordination work.

Suggested staffing for that might be adding a strategic advisor position for somebody with direct knowledge and experience of the system, of the criminal legal system, as well as some policy administrative support, as well as the community engagement facilitation funds.

Lastly, and this is in combination with one of options, either option A or B would be to restart convening the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council.

But in addition, making sure that they're working with the staff level body that has been discussed in options A and B and making sure they're partnered with communities that are most impacted.

The one additional item to that is that it would probably require some support from the executive, from somebody with a very strong racial equity analysis and somebody with a very strong analysis of the criminal legal system.

And then the last option D would be to take no action.

Councilmember Gonzales, I know you're interested in this as am I.

Thank you.

So I think when we look at page 4, which shows the non-exhaustive list of specific initiatives, work groups, and policies or funding that spread throughout the city as it relates to efforts in the space of criminal justice reform, I think it's a pretty good example of both why I think so many of us up here on the dais are proud to work in this role and support these types of policies, but on the flip side, it is also a good example of what a mess this really is in terms of not having the alignment that is really necessary to create the transformative, systemic, institutional change that we need to make in this space.

So I really think it's important for us to have some sort of strategic alignment that is led by one person who is going to really shepherd through a strategic plan on how to best align all of these investments and policies.

And I appreciate all of the options that you've laid out for us, Asha, and I I like pieces of some of them and would really appreciate seeing, I guess, a different option D, I guess in this case it would be an option E, that looks at some blend of reconvening a criminal justice coordinating council, but it would be a reinvented criminal justice coordinating council that would need to include high-level decision makers from the council, from the mayor's office, from the city attorney's office, and from folks who are engaged on both sides of the criminal justice world.

And I also think that instead of putting a position of somebody who can design a strategic plan in OCR or the mayor's office, my preference would actually see somebody playing that role in city council.

And perhaps that is a position that we can have within central staff, either through consultant dollars or through an actual FTE, where we have an individual whose full-time job would be to really begin the process of formulating a strategic plan and implementing some alignment recommendations.

I don't think we need to study this thing to death.

I think we've been doing that for a really long time.

And what impacted communities really want to see is the city making a difference in this space and actually advancing, you know, just hundreds of recommendations that have been made about how to restructure our institutions to be supportive of harm reduction approaches.

And I think that we as the policymaking body in sort of the local government framework, I think we have a responsibility to make sure that we're leading that work through the end.

And if you look at the list of all of many of these policy things that have been recommended on page four, I would venture to say, if I could, that a vast majority of those have been generated by the city council as opposed to from the mayor's office.

So that would be my preference in this area and my hope is that we would be able to see that type of an alternative and that that would be something that the chair and my colleagues would support.

Well, I'll certainly support it, and I'd like to actually extend it to include the prosecuting attorney's office as well.

I'm sorry.

I should have said that, and I did not.

I apologize.

Yeah, well, no need to apologize.

You've just been in this space and doing some really good work, and I really like the idea, and perhaps I could propose we discuss this further as something that might be a work item that you might lead.

with your knowledge and background in this criminal area, but I do like an approach that isn't an either-or.

It's not a council versus the mayor.

It is a group that would come together, and again, I keep referring to the arena model just because it worked so well, but we had some deadlines, and that's what we need, and we don't need to study or plan this to death.

I'd like to, as you suggested, find some things that we can pilot and get going on it because it's gonna make a difference when people see it.

Thank you.

I'd be happy to follow up with an option.

Okay, good.

And I think Council Member Herbold might have an option F.

No, not at all.

I just have a clarifying question.

And I really appreciate the interest in my clarifying question is related to a piecemeal effort.

And I appreciate that the direction here is not to piecemeal the work, but I just for clarification, is option A1 the same as the proposal that I've put forward?

just that position?

Or is that a different position?

Yes, A1 is the same position that we discussed yesterday.

Thank you.

Council Member O'Brien.

Yeah, I, one, I support A1 and I appreciate that that's part of the comprehensive picture.

I think could help with some of the how we make our investments too in the community.

Councilmember Gonzales, I would love to work with you on some version of E also.

I think that what you laid out there sounds really enticing.

You know, Asha, I think the options you teed up here too.

Frankly, everything I look at, it looks great.

And so, I think it's going to be a question of how we move forward.

I think that one thing I'll throw into the mix is as we're working through the budget process in the next few weeks, Figuring out funding that we're going to need available to do something I think is going to be really important.

I don't know that at least I'm going to have the capacity to do the really deep policy analysis about what actually happens.

And so one of the things we thought about in our office was maybe doing a resolution sometime in the next month or two to kind of lay out a time frame with some deadlines and who's included.

But if we can get that work done sooner, I would love to jump on that too.

Yeah, I mean it might be that we have OSHA working on an option E and that through the budget process there could be an accompanying piece of legislation.

a resolution, for example, that sort of sets up clear expectations around when the work can be completed.

I think that would be the more appropriate mechanism.

Since my proposal is really rooted in having council lead this work, since a lot of these policies and proposals have been council generated, it seems to make sense to do that.

So I guess we're going to resolve to order ourselves.

I think that a couple of things that I want to just highlight is kind of values as we think through this.

One, and this shows up in your proposal here, and you mentioned Council Member Gonzalez too, just making sure that we have voices of folks that are most impacted by the criminal justice system in negative ways at the table, both helping designing and participating in this.

making sure that we lead with race when we look at the numbers and the disproportionality within that system.

We're going to have to explicitly address that.

I think that I want to acknowledge, we're going to talk a little about Seattle Municipal Court a little later, but I want to acknowledge partners from Seattle Municipal Court are here, including folks that work in the probation folks or their representation is here.

And last night in public comment we heard a commitment or an invitation to do some more research work and really understand specifically how the probation system works, how that compares to other systems, what are the outcomes we're getting.

And I think there's actually a lot of data we could get.

I don't want to study anything to death, but I do think there might be a gap in the data that we really want to understand to move forward.

And so how we I don't know when we get to talk about the probation system, if that can be folded into some of this work.

I think it's possible that that can happen, but we'll talk about that more in a little bit.

But I do think there might be places where we do need more data, where we can't tell.

And at the same time, there's a lot of urgency about figuring out how to start or continue fixing this system and so how we can move forward swiftly on things we know about and get data as soon as we can.

And I think, you know, my perspective, my point is that, you know, obviously we can all agree that there is a sense of urgency around addressing the realities of the negative impacts that our criminal justice system has on black and brown communities and immigrant communities.

But I think what my concern is is that I have continued to see this council act in a very reactive way to those calls for urgency.

And what I'd like to have is a process by which we can have real meaningful alignment of all of the work that we have been doing in this space to come up with a clear strategic plan to implement this.

I appreciate your perspective around wanting to keep impacted communities at the table, but I also want to acknowledge that in a vast majority of these efforts, that's exactly what happened, and what hasn't happened is implementation of many of the recommendations that have been championed and advocated for by impacted communities.

And so we can continue to collect those recommendations, but I mean, I'm getting kind of tired of just collecting them in a report and then feeling like I'm not doing anything with them.

And I'm not seeing real change in our community in terms of the negative impacts of the criminal justice system.

And so that's why I think we need a person who's going to lead on this work like a dog with a bone and just implement things and really align things so that HSD isn't doing something over here.

Arts isn't doing something over here.

Parks is doing something over here.

OCR is doing something over here.

We need to have real alignment to get a clear understanding of what our theory of change is collectively as a city in this space.

And we need somebody to pull together that strategic plan from all of this work that has been happening for years at the city and just get it done.

Madam Chair?

Good.

Who's talking down there?

Council Member Worth.

Thank you.

I want to just do a little historical look back here.

I want to echo Council Member Gonzalez's words and wisdom and I do agree with you Council Member Ryan.

I guess I've been a lawyer for many, many years and started off as a public defender and a judge.

And a lot of what you said, Councilwoman Gonzalez, about us continually being reactive.

And a lot of the issues that we see today were not any different when I started as a public defender in 1986. Back then, it was we were concerned about gang units.

We were concerned about crack cocaine.

I was one of the first judges to do drug court.

There never used to be a DV unit.

Domestic violence was never ever considered a felony.

We've come a long way.

And so I would like to see something analogous to when we look at like on page six, when there's the criminal justice strategic advisor, a criminal legal advisory board, or the criminal justice coordinating council, a lot of these issues that we're dealing with, there's societal and the human condition, have been around everywhere, and particularly, obviously, in the city as well.

I started the Minority and Justice when it used to be the committee with Justice Smith, and it ended up being the Minority and Justice Commission.

And that was a group of public defenders and prosecutors who understood that people of color and people who didn't own homes were not being PR'd, released on their own personal recognance.

And we said it was disproportionate that it was people of color that were being held and were not being allowed to be released.

And again, harking back to what Councilmember Gonzalez was saying, we had a concerted effort of prosecutors, judges, and lawyers talking about not only the systematic racism in the institution, but how important it was to hire experts from the University of Washington to give us the data.

that actually had numbers that helped us form policy where the committee became a commission, and that commission is still in effect today and is a very powerful commission.

So I'm a bit skeptical about all these options and all these different machinations and boards and committees and all this, I really want to err on the side of what Council Member Gonzales is saying, that we are not reactive, that we're realistic, that we have a person whose job it is to work with city council and maybe that particular group.

I mean, we ourselves had two issues that we still couldn't get off the ground because there's no coordination between the city attorney's office the defense and the prosecutor's office just on private property on Aurora regarding also victims of crime sex trading and the men and women or particularly the men that were being arrested and the difference between a John being arrested by Seattle City as opposed to King County, the sentences and going to John's school and the cost were completely different.

In order to change that policy, I would have had to have met with presiding at King County, presiding at District Court, and presiding at Muni Court.

and then work with their staff, and it just got to be ridiculous.

So I understand that there is a need, but again, I want to hark back to what Councilor Gonzalez is saying, is I want it to be, I don't want it to be reactive.

I want it to be fact-based and historical-based, and more importantly, I want it to be inclusive, not just of, of course, people who are impacted by this community.

And again, I'm going to take a little personal, how do you say that?

A little personal privilege that some of us have been born and raised as people of color and have lived through this stuff and get it, not just at an elective level, but at a molecular level.

and have lived it, have watched it, have been traumatized by it, and continue to deal with issues of race.

So it's not that I'm suggesting that I, you know, I'm some conservative or I don't understand.

I do.

But I also understand at 59 that whatever, just because you want something doesn't mean you get it now.

It means it's incremental, and you take time, and you take time to do it right.

And so I will leave it at that.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member, President Harrell, did you have something you wanted to add?

Just real quick.

Amelia, can you get the two-minute clock working?

Just so I'm hearing, I think I like where we're heading, but I just want to make sure I'm Tracking it correctly.

I think if councilmember Gonzalez's Points are well received by me is that we're looking at us that strategic advisor position and the equitable funding position the actual two positions correct and We're sort of saying we want it housed Close to us like central staff or something along those lines as opposed to an outside department correct That's what I am suggesting And we're also, I guess a question I do have is when the criminal justice coordinating council stopped meeting, it was just lack of resources.

I can probably talk about that.

Well, I didn't want a long one, but just go ahead.

Because I want to make sure that it makes sense to reconvene it if there are other issues I didn't know about.

Go ahead.

I was trying to be very delicate by saying that I think a version 2.0 of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council could work.

Version 1.0 was not effective.

Got you.

And the legal advisory board that's advised, that's recommended by the Reentry Work Group, and their report just came out, it's like 80 pages, just got us started reading it last night.

They are very insistent, I think smartly so, to have re-entrants, ex-offenders, if you will, on the group.

But there weren't any on the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council?

No.

Okay.

So, okay, got it.

So, and so part of, and I think you said these aren't exclusive, so part of what we're also talking about is reconvening that 2.0 version to make sure that we're coordinating it.

Okay.

I'm all in on it.

This just makes great sense to me. and look forward to it.

I really want to thank the folks doing the re-entry work, too, that I just think there's a lot of good folks doing a lot of good work, and I really look forward to seeing it implemented.

So if I can, let me see if I can wrap this up.

So I think, first of all, I just want to say thank you to Council President Harrell for, in 2015, advancing his resolution that essentially pull together this reentry work group, it is now 2018, but the work is done and I'm glad that we finally have the work and I hope that whatever comes out of this process doesn't result in getting something off the ground in three years from now.

But one of the things that this resolution required was bringing people together to create recommendations both from systems people and from impacted people for the city council to consider so that we could make decisions about how to better align our criminal justice system as a whole, not just to serve people who are seeking to reenter, but you know, people who would potentially be impacted by the criminal justice system.

And one of the things that they stated in their report, and I understand that not everybody has a copy of the report yet, and Asha, I'm going to ask that you circulate that report sometime.

later this week when you have some time.

But one of the things that I think is really important that they say is the following.

In the report they stated, Seattle's criminal legal system processed 9,734 misdemeanor case filings in 2017, resulting in approximately 63,000 nights in jail.

This has an enormous impact on the city.

It is felt by every community and constitutes a significant portion of the city's budget.

Because Seattle's criminal legal system requires involvement, of Seattle Municipal Court, the City Attorney's Office, the Legislative Department, and the Executive Department, all four independently elected branches should work closely to build a coherent strategy, one that is coordinated and aligned with identifiable values and objectives developed in partnership with communities that have been most impacted by the criminal legal system.

So the option that I would like to see would effectively hold us accountable to that portion of the report.

And that means probably that we're going to have to, in order to develop the strategic plan, we need to hire somebody who's actually going to take the lead on developing that.

My preference would be that that person answer directly to the city council.

And they will lead the work of developing the strategic plan by assembling a work group of both system players and impacted communities to be able to effectively formulate a clear strategic plan that meets the stated goals of that paragraph.

And at the end of that process, I think that the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council plays the role of approving that strategic plan and making sure that it is executed and implemented with the force of the City Council and with the force that the Mayor's Office brings to compelling its agencies to act and the City Attorney's Office and the Muni Court.

It is, for a lack of a better analogy, very similar to the work that some of us up here are doing in the Sound Transit 3 elected leadership group role, right?

There's a stakeholder group that comes together across the city to provide us with their opinions on what their preferred alignment is, and then we as elected leaders in that group come together in a multi-jurisdictional way and make you know, recommendations with the weight of our titles to those people who can really make decisions.

And so it's not the perfect analogy, because it's obviously a very different issue, but structurally, sort of governance-wise, I think that's what we need to strive for.

And my hope is that doing all of this will actually get us as a city on the right track to just begin the process of implementing all of these valuable recommendations and to really align how we fund these programs and what our collective expectations are in terms of transformational institutional change for our communities.

I'm off the soapbox now.

All right.

Madam Chair, just one second if I might.

Sure.

I think that that was an excellent way to summarize some of the questions that I had and the vision.

So a 2.0 version would not necessarily have to be housed within the municipal court.

It would not be.

Yeah.

It could be wherever we would like to house it, right?

What are you talking about?

The Criminal Justice Coordinating Council?

Is that what you're talking about?

Yeah.

No, I think the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council would be staffed and coordinated by the individual that we would be asking to pull together the strategic plan in conjunction and collaboration with the workgroup that would include representatives from the institutions and the systems, but also impacted communities.

Great.

That was the one question I had.

And then I think that that speaks to the need for this.

If you look at Asha's list of bullets on page four, you mentioned the number of agencies and personnel within the city that are involved in these various initiatives.

I think that's also true for the community partners that we ask to volunteer their times in many cases.

So as you said, as we think about a system-wide approach, as we think about an intersectional change that's needed to make sure that we're looking at how each one of the injustices that our communities face, whether it's housing instability, lack of access to jobs, higher rates of incarceration because of limited opportunities that we've provided.

We're looking at intersectional approaches to make sure that the system truly changes.

And I think as we do that, we're going to center those decisions based on those who are most impacted, like we've done in the past, but make sure that we're actually driving forward and fulfilling our promises.

So I look forward to working with you on a potential option E.

Oh, no, there will be an option E.

Those are some of the things I'll be looking at to work with you on.

All right, are we ready?

Okay, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Everything I'm hearing about the structure sounds consistent with the reentry work group's recommendations.

I do want to sort of underscore what I think is a really important sentence.

It says, though coordination is often considered an indicator of an effective criminal legal system, Seattle's reentry workgroup supports increased coordination only if this system is driven by a set of values that promote trust and partnership with communities disproportionately represented throughout the legal system.

They go on to identify Two ways to do that.

One is in developing goals.

The first step in achieving better coordination should include an opportunity to allow those most impacted by racism and incarceration to share their own definition of safety and accountability.

And while the city of Seattle must develop formalized communication pathways between departments and across jurisdiction, the first priority must be to develop paths and partnerships with communities most impacted by racism and incarceration.

And to that second point, I had been working with the Reentry Work Group and SOCR to have a Lunch and Learn in December to talk about these recommendations and to work on the priority of developing paths and partnerships with communities impacted by racism.

So we can talk a lot more about this.

Yeah, I mean, I think all that work is really great.

My point is, is that if nobody's in charge to actually do it, it's just not going to get done.

And so I think there are ways to integrate all of those important key points that you just read from the report into the structure.

But, you know, none of that is going to occur or come to fruition unless we create that coordinated structure to allow for those conversations to occur and for those values to be imparted in the work that we are trying to do here.

All right, well, I think I've exhausted.

Well, I just want to say, I appreciate this conversation and amen.

Okay, anybody else?

All right, please, let's move on to the next.

Asha, you've got your work cut out for you in this, but you can see that there's a lot of positive energy around here and around on the dais, so.

Yes, I will circulate a new option as soon as possible.

Good, thank you.

All right, well, you've still got me on the Office of Arts and Culture.

The Office of Arts and Culture has about a $14.7 million budget in 2019. It is a 6.7% increase over 2018's budget.

I just note that all of the funding for the Office of Arts and Culture is not general fund.

primarily admissions tax funding, as well as 1% for arts funds.

So as you know, the Office of Arts and Culture supports and engages the city in diverse arts and cultural experiences.

They have added in the 2019 2019 budget, half an FTE for a facilities manager to support the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute, and then two term limited temp positions for administrative support at King Street Station as they're moving into that space later this year and will be opening up some gallery space.

It adds $110,000 to continue an arts permit liaison at the Department of Construction and Inspections, and then for ongoing support for new and existing cultural districts.

Lastly, the funding of $460,000 for a festal has been moved from general fund support into admissions tax support.

So the Office of Arts and Culture will now be funding that work.

There are no identified issues for this office.

So if there are no questions, I can move into council member proposals.

Okay.

The first Councilmember proposal is to fund film arts educational programs.

It would add $50,000 in 2019 and the same in 2020 for video educational programs developed by nonprofits such as Scarecrow Video.

And it is a proposal from Councilmember Johnson.

And Councilmember Johnson's not here, so can somebody speak to it on his behalf?

I have a question about it.

What's that?

I have a question.

Okay.

The source of funding for this proposal, has that been identified?

It is not, but it's likely to be admissions tax and not general fund.

And has anybody talked to the Arts Office about the stress on the admissions tax because they can't collect revenue from Key Arena for the next two years and they're having to dip into their reserves?

Yes, so they adjusted their projections around what will come in through admissions tax and they've also put together a reserve to cushion the lack of funds that'll come in from Key Arena.

But the other piece that they mentioned when talking about this proposal is that these are also organizations that are eligible for applying to some of their annual programs.

So these organizations can apply for funds through multiple different funds that they operate separate from doing this through a general fund ask.

But my question, I understand that they are planning to dip into their reserve to cover their costs associated with the programs that they run now over the next two years.

Those reserves, I assume, are going to be sufficient to cover their costs for the next two years.

How would this proposal impact the availability of those reserves?

So the reserves are currently at about $1.3 million, which would be the amount that they'd lose per year for the key arena.

So this would take funding from those reserves to fund these particular asks.

which conceivably would mean less funds for the existing projects that they're planning to use the reserves for.

So far they haven't allocated what the reserve might be used for in the next couple years.

That may happen as they see what kinds of projected, or excuse me, what kind of actual collected funds are realized from their projections.

But if it is tighter than expected, then yes, these would take from that, the reserve plans for programs.

Thanks.

I'm gonna invoke my vice chair duties, powers and authorities and just jump in and ask a question on this one too.

The description here is pretty brief and so I'm just trying to get a better understanding of what the programmatic purpose of this appropriation would be.

So can you just talk a little bit more about what educational programs mean and When it says here that it would be designed to increase education programming for educator and student access, what kind of educators, what type of students, sort of who are we seeking to serve through this funding and what type of education are we talking about?

So I think it's primarily to provide funding for students in the arts, but also generally throughout the city who don't necessarily have access to or are not familiar with the kind of work that Scarecrow Video does.

I believe they just became a nonprofit recently.

And so they want to increase, or organizations like Scarecrow Video, want to increase exposure to film students, to students across the board, as well as arts educators to be able to access their collections.

and to provide that kind of access along with education to those students.

Mr. Goodnight, based on our work that we did together on the Families in Education Preschool and Promise levy and sort of historical investments through the Families in Education levy, is this the type of educational program that would qualify for funding under the education levy?

Well, this is the first time I've heard about this proposal, so I don't want to speak authoritatively.

But it doesn't appear to be something that would fit into the kind of historical structure of the families in Ed Levy.

It does not appear to be something.

Okay.

Can you confirm that?

Sure.

Yes.

The next proposal is about racial equity and arts alignment.

It would add $75,000 in 2019 and the same in 2020 to work with an organization supporting artists of color.

This is a proposal from Councilmember Harrell.

Note to self, be here to defend your proposals.

Okay So it's sort of self-explanatory, but there are several as we talk about physical displacement of certain demographics particularly black and brown communities I you've heard me say in other parts of the budget process that I'm equally concerned about cultural displacement.

And this racial equity and arts sort of alignment ad that's $75,000 for each year will give us an opportunity to work with artists of color in several commemorations and events throughout the year.

And what we've been doing In the last year or two, we've been piecemealing this together.

And the dividends have paid off very, very highly.

And so what I'm hoping to do is, from this particular department, work with many communities on having this more sustainable, and again, I think the dividends will pay.

An example would be in the Martin Luther King Civil Rights Park, and it's been renamed to, based on the community demand, the Civil Rights Park.

They have an annual artist kind of festival, and that's the kind of event that we're talking about as we continue to try to make our city more affordable.

We could still work on and invest in what I call cultural integrity in the city to keep it, so I hope you all support it.

Okay, the third and last proposal is for programming for an African-American focused museum.

It would add $75,000 in 2019 and the same in 2020 for public museum programming.

This is also Council Member Harrell.

Did you want to answer that?

Yes, so.

He's here to defend his proposal.

I'm here to defend my proposal.

So if you don't know that our local African-American museum is one of I think seven or eight, it might be in the right up received a designation from Washington, D.C., if you will, as being one of the recognized museums in terms of the preservation of African American history.

So this museum is sort of going through a grew a positive change and a positive leadership.

And I think, again, in the name of what I'm calling cultural displacement and combating it, I think we have an opportunity to partner with this museum, as we have with others, under new leadership and a new designation.

Again, I think it's in the write-up somewhere, and I don't want to slaughter the very recent designation that it did get.

I just wasn't quite prepared for that when I was reading something else.

But again, this museum, they're doing some incredible cutting-edge things to preserve the story in Seattle of the African-American experience.

And I think we need to double down and align ourselves with them.

That's what this one's about.

Good.

I actually would like to bring something up which I haven't brought up to this point because it just came up this last weekend.

And I was over in City Hall Park over the weekend and noticed that there was a rock, a big rock that's been there since 1916 with a commemorative bronze plaque commemorating the Battle of Seattle.

And, you know, it essentially says, you know, here's where we fought for this land.

And it struck me as being really inappropriate, akin to Confederate statues in the South.

And Council Member Juarez and I have been working on the possibility of removing the non-salish totem poles at Victor Steinbrook Park as we're going through and redoing that particular park, because we're going to be taking it all down to the nubbins and doing a new waterproof Whatever, waterproof, what is the word I'm looking for?

Decolonizing.

And so we brought this up and there was of course some pushback, but our Mohai Museum has agreed to take the totem poles.

But I think we should have a thoughtful approach asking our Office of Art and Culture and perhaps our Park Department to take a look at and review, you know, whether it's a statue, a memorial, a plaque, a totem pole that are in our parks, and whether there's some principles as we're looking at what is really changed in 100 years or the last 50 years that may not feel the same way that it did at the time.

So I will, I've asked Allison in my office to draft up a short slide, but I didn't want it to be the first time that all of you heard about it next week.

So that's what I'm doing.

And I don't know whether there is money that needs to be attached to it because I don't know if the workload is, you know, if it's huge or if it's small.

But I appreciate the fact that Council Member Juarez first brought this to my attention.

About six months ago, we are working with the Pike Place Market.

works I'm very interested in supporting you on that and the one point in my sidebar customer because I was sort of reminded me so Our local african-american museum is designated by the smithsonian is one of I think seven museums in the country with this certain designation where they're actually giving resources and actual resources to convert our local museum into one of the national Smithsonian types of designations.

And so that was a huge designation that occurred about six, seven weeks ago.

And again, they're under new leadership, and I just think we have a great opportunity.

I didn't mean to take away from the point you made, but that was a good fill-in while I was trying to get my notes together.

Good.

Yeah, thank you very much.

I did it for you All right.

Thank you.

We'll be moving on but thank you very much for taking your time and your thorough analysis on that Okay Next up.

It looks like Brian you're grabbing the microphone.

Yep.

So Brian goodnight council central staff and the next department is the Seattle Center and Seattle Center maintains a 74-acre campus in the Uptown neighborhood that's home to over 30 arts, culture, and science organizations.

Examples include KEXP, the Pacific Science Center, Seattle Children's Museum, Seattle Opera.

It's funded by a combination of general funds and also revenue earned from commercial operations.

So that includes things like facility rentals and leases, parking rent fees, and sponsorships.

The 2019-2020 proposed budgets for Seattle Center primarily reflect impacts from the upcoming redevelopment of Key Arena.

The proposed budgets remove all revenue and operating expenses associated with KeyArena and also incorporate the department's plan to transition many staff members from full or part-time KeyArena work to work in other departmental units.

As part of this transition and in an effort to reduce overall expenditures, the proposed budgets abrogate 13 vacant positions and one filled position in 2019 and one filled position in 2020. And both of the filled positions are ending consistent with sunset dates that were established for those positions when they were created.

In terms of the larger picture for Seattle Center, KeyArena has operated profitably for eight consecutive years, and that profit has helped to fund other maintenance and programming costs across the campus.

Therefore, during the two-year redevelopment period, the department expects to accumulate an operating deficit.

And this brings us to the first piece of budget legislation for Seattle Center, if there are no questions at this time.

I think we've spent a lot of time with Seattle Center over the last year.

I don't know if Council Member Juarez wants to weigh in at this point.

Okay, so legislation item number one would authorize an interfund loan of up to five million dollars to Seattle Center to support operations during KeyArena's redevelopment.

The loan would be required to be repaid no later than December 31st of 2026 with interest and would be repaid at least in part with the annual rent payments that will be coming from Oakview Group upon the reopening of the arena.

And Seattle Center expects to first draw on the Interfund loan in 2020, and the total interest expenses are estimated to be approximately $622,000.

The second piece of legislation for Seattle Center would adjust the fee ranges for hosting events on the Seattle Center campus.

The fees are established in ranges to allow the Seattle Center director the ability to raise or lower fees depending upon the current event market.

In addition, the revised schedule would remove those facilities that are impacted by Key Arena's redevelopment.

And the third and final piece of legislation for Seattle Center relates to parking charge adjustments.

The bill would increase the daily and monthly parking charge ranges, adjust the service charge amounts for the premium parking program, and would remove outdated code language relating to parking programs that are no longer active.

And with the adjustments, the department expects that annual parking revenue would increase by approximately $268,000.

Great.

Good.

Do you want me just to dive into the next one?

Okay, so Council Member Proposals, there's only one for the Seattle Center, and that's by Council Member Bagshaw.

Good, and this has to do, as we are relocating the skate park, and we already have $1.7 million identified for this move, you'll all know there was a 10,000 square foot skate park that was in the southwest corner.

That will be, in fact, I believe it has been closed now.

as construction begins, and we, after a couple of years of working with the skate community, have agreed on a site that's over on the west side of, I'm sorry, the east side of Seattle Center, and it's where the Ride the Ducks are right now.

But there are several issues that have not yet been resolved.

One is that there's an alleyway that runs right through it, and I believe that that is used for Seattle City Light transportation and big trucks to get into the station that they have there.

But the other, and I have worked with Skate Like a Girl.

I've got to tell you, I'm so impressed with that organization and the group that is supporting them.

They've just brought a new culture to that whole skate community.

And I promised them I would continue to work with them.

see what we could do then as there's some other property that's potentially up for sale, potentially some condos in the immediate area, so that we would help them raise additional money for things like the sidewalks, the lighting, and they want to have a roofed which I think makes a ton of sense so that it can be an all-weather kind of skate park.

But that is probably a phase two.

It's more money than the 1.7 is probably going to provide.

So the slide really is just a statement of we're going to continue to work with the skate community, see what we can do to help them in supporting a philanthropy and all.

So I just say kudos to that community because they've really come along and will be supportive.

Chair, can I ask a quick question?

Yeah, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you so much.

And the crew from Skate Like a Girl was incredible last night.

That was a very nice way to almost wrap up our hearing, five hour hearing, which thank you again for your work on that.

On Skate Like a Girl, was there ever a commitment from the Seattle Center to fund this relocation dollars?

Is there any scaling back on what was originally offered or is this something that we said we would try to find funds if possible?

Right.

They actually asked if I would go after another million dollars.

You know, we're putting in 1.2 from Seattle Center, $500,000 from Oak View Group.

I wish I had another million dollars in my pocket, but right now we're looking at priorities and, you know, our homelessness effort is really going to take priority.

So I couldn't commit to another million dollars for them, but we'll see where we can get this year.

And it's not going to be constructed in year one, so we've got some time.

And this isn't something that the convention or that the key arena ever committed to.

They committed to 1.2 plus 500,000 from the Oak View group.

So 1.7 is committed and we're there with that.

It's just that if we had and they're going to have to raise additional funds and it's tough.

It's tough for a small nonprofit to raise the kind of money.

it'll take but this is where I think we can get some public benefit if another condo or development happens nearby and keeping it quieter and frankly more just a creative kind of roof style can really make a difference for them and what the look and feel will be there.

Just one small clarification the total project in the CIP is 2.2 million dollars So it's 1.7 million from REIT one the five plus the five.

Okay.

Well, that's even better than I thought so Thank you for that.

I was backing out the five rather than adding it so I think we can get a long ways with 2.2 million dollars and I talked with Leslie Bain, who has her own architect and design firm, about how far can we get with that money.

And we probably can't get as far as all of us would think that we could, but I'm very anxious to see what we can do, and I really want to support that community moving forward.

Thank you, Brian.

Thanks, Mr. Goodnight.

Okay, please.

With your permission, thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm Lisa Kay, central staff.

Just to clarify, the table, the way we've got this presentation organized today follows the budget categories that are in the budget book from the mayor's proposal.

So if you're wondering why you're seeing things in the order they are, that's the rationale.

Sorry, my boss wants to...

He wants to do what?

Help.

Oh, good.

Thanks, Eric.

Thanks, Eric.

So I'm speaking about the Office of the City Auditor's budget today.

Under direction of the City Council, the Office of the City Auditor conducts audits of city departments, programs, grantees, and contracts, as well as some non-audit projects.

Appropriation levels in the proposed budget remain at about $2.6 million for the next two years and keep the staffing level at 10 FTEs.

The mayor's proposed budget removes one-time funding for work related to three of the auditor's projects, the surveillance usage reviews, evaluation of the sweetened beverage tax, and evaluation of the secure scheduling ordinance.

With respect to the surveillance usage review, the mayor's proposed budget would remove $100,000 for potential consultant assistance.

The ordinance requires the auditor to conduct annual surveillance usage reviews, the first of which is due in September of next year, to cover activities to the end of this year.

According to the auditor, their office doesn't yet know if they'll need funds to hire the consultant or a consultant to supplement their work.

The second one-time reduction in the mayor's proposal could be considered a technical adjustment to the evaluation of the sweetened beverage tax.

The evaluation is required by council ordinance.

The proposed budget removes just $20,000 in funding that had been provided to supplement an interfund loan in 2017. Funding would remain at the $500,000 per year through 2021 that's required by the beverage tax ordinance.

What basically happened is that in 2017, the city funded the evaluation through an interfund loan at $480,000 and then appropriated an extra $20,000 to make up that balance in 2018. So what this action does is it smooths it all back down to $500,000 a year.

Sorry if that was a little bit technical.

The third one-time adjustment would remove $173,000 for evaluation of the Secure Scheduling Ordinance.

The Ordinance 125135 was adopted in September of 2016, and it called for the auditor to contract with academic researchers to complete evaluation of the impacts of the regulations for a baseline period and then for two one-year periods following implementation.

The 2017 and 18 adopted budgets provided funding for the baseline and for the year one evaluation period, but the mayor's proposed budget doesn't include funding for the year two evaluation period.

As noted, given council's direction in the ordinance to fund evaluation of both year one and year two impacts, this has been flagged as an issue in my staff report.

The auditor has received a proposal from the evaluation team to complete the year two work for about $278,000, as detailed in my issue paper.

If the council wishes to continue with year two evaluation, evaluation, you could fund either the full amount or choose to focus on just a subset of the impacted groups.

For example, either look at the workers or the employers if you were looking for something other than the full funding amount.

Council Member Gonzalez has submitted a proposal to complete the year two evaluation.

Go ahead.

Okay.

So I think it's really important that we not back away from what has been a historical practice by the city as it relates to virtually all of our labor standards at the City of Seattle.

So we have a strong history of evaluating potential impacts and in fact in a secure scheduling legislative process, that I had a pleasure to work with on that particular bill with Councilmember Herbold.

One of the things that we heard loud and clear from both employers and workers, but in particular from employers, was they wanted to get a clear commitment from us that we were going to continue to evaluate potential impacts of the labor standards to to the workforce market.

And so I think it's really important for us to not back away from that at this point.

And if memory serves me correctly, and I know Ms. Lee is sitting in the audience here, that I think we actually legislated a requirement for the study to occur.

And so this budget change would require us to amend the secure scheduling ordinance in order to not complete the study.

And I think, if memory serves me, right, I think we also included language in the ordinance that prohibited us from amending the ordinance within the first two years of its implementation.

So I just, I feel really strongly that we need to hold the line on this one.

You know find that find the pennies in the in the couch cushions to try to figure out how we can make sure that the city auditor continues to fulfill our commitment as a City Council to both employers and employees to Continue the study and the last thing I'll say on that is that we did spend money on doing a baseline study and And I think that it basically renders the baseline study irrelevant.

And that was an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars if we don't follow through on a second year evaluation of the security scheduling, which is really where where we are going to learn the exact benefits.

I think there's gonna be a lot of benefits, the exact benefits, but also potential concerns of the implementation of that law that would allow us an opportunity to reopen the ordinance in a year from now to see if there are amendments that need to occur to make it more beneficial to both workers and employers.

Okay.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you so much.

And I want to applaud the good work of this council, specifically Council Member Gonzales and Herbold who led on this effort.

I also agree that we don't want to back away.

We know that words are only as good as the piece of paper that they're written on if they're not enforced and if employers don't know how to apply the law or if employees don't know how to take advantage of their new benefits then it was Not worth our time.

So I agree.

We don't want to back away Councilmember Gonzalez asked one of the questions that I was going to ask which is what is our legal obligation to move forward?

I remember that the legislation contemplates two studies as well and wondering what the legal obligations are of that second year, and the only reason that I ask is because we do want to make sure that this law is fully evaluated.

I think some of the concerns that came up when we saw the first report were that many of the workers who had the analysis completed on them were recruited by Facebook, and there was a lot of questions about accessibility to the audit.

There were concerns about mirroring the demographics of workers in low-wage industries in the actual study that came forward.

Many of the business entities wrote that they hadn't participated or wouldn't participate in the study.

So I just raised these questions because we want to, yes, evaluate how effective we are at meeting our goals in the legislation.

I also have a question just about whether or not we want to do with auditor suggesting and Backfill this or if there's work that needs to be done prior to a second analysis that would require us to go out and do a little bit more education perhaps through Office of Labor Standards to make sure that workers actually understand their benefits and that a study gives us a really good baseline Or sorry comparison to that baseline because I had some questions there And do you know did the auditor make the request of the mayor to include this in her budget?

I Not to my knowledge.

OK.

Those are just some of the questions I'd be interested in getting a better sense of.

So I would say that I would prefer to keep the question of community outreach and education separate from whether or not we need to fulfill our obligation to study impacts of the bill.

I think those are two different issues and two different questions.

Not to say that they don't inform each other, but I think part of the reason why both I and Council Member Herbold felt very strongly about having a study be part of this council bill was for the specific purpose of getting more of a systemic view and analysis of what those impacts are, and then being able to utilize some of the information that OLS is getting as a result of outreach to be able to understand how we might consider addressing some of those impacts through future legislative action.

And so in the ordinance that we passed, it talked about how the areas of evaluation from the study shall include but not be limited to the impacts to businesses, including costs and the impacts on employees as a result of the requirements of this particular ordinance.

And it also asked for an evaluation and study of differences and challenges between limited and full-service restaurants in implementing the ordinance.

and the interplay of diversity programs and access to hours list.

So I want to be really clear that the baseline report that we got back from the city auditor's office was just that.

It was a baseline report of what people knew in that moment prior to having more intensive outreach and engagement being completed by the Office of Labor Standards to do the work that they need to do to actually educate the first year evaluation is designed to evaluate whether or not the And I think that the evaluation will also provide us a little bit more information about whether there were differences and challenges between limited and full service restaurants in terms of implementing the ordinance.

And again, that was a big issue that both Council Member Herbold and I were willing to let that one go by not including all full service restaurants in this version, in the original version of the secure scheduling.

And so for us, it was really important to get and understanding of what those differences and challenges were ultimately going to be after the law was in place for two years.

And then the last thing was is that one of the things that we heard as an objection to the Secure Scheduling Ordinance from corporate employers was that they claimed that it would create a negative impact on their diversity programs.

And there were also concerns about the access to hours list.

And so again, I think these are all things that we felt were really important to evaluate over a period of two years, first year being the year that we would evaluate where people were starting at, and then the second year would be really where we get the meat of understanding the true impacts of this law on both businesses and workers.

I don't know if Council Member Herbold has anything else to add.

More just a structural thing as it relates to the council's expectations that studies that are required by law that Our expectations are that there should be funding in the mayor's proposed budget for those items.

This is a bill that we worked with the executive on.

It's a prior executive, but nevertheless, we worked with the executive on it.

The bill was, it went into law with the mayor's signature.

And I think it's reasonable to expect that to, in order to comply with the law, that the mayor would propose a budget that includes the funding that is required by the law.

So I think structurally, we might want to think about ways that we identify the legally required costs associated with legislation that we pass and notify the mayor when he or she is putting together her budget in the future so we can make sure that the budget comes to us with these legally required studies funded.

That's super helpful.

Thank you guys.

Are we good?

All right.

Anything else, Lisa?

No, ma'am.

Okay.

Very good.

Well, thank you for that discussion on this.

So, do you want to proceed?

Looks like you're up, Dan.

I am, Dan Eder, Deputy Director for Council Central Staff.

I'm gonna be addressing item D on page 12 of the memo, it's Capital Projects Oversight.

Council Member Herbold is working on proposed legislation to provide the council with more tools to do its Capital Project Oversight work.

I'm gonna spend a minute providing a little bit of background information and then we can discuss what's in the proposed legislation itself.

As you know, council annually updates and adopts a six-year capital improvement program known as the CIP that includes hundreds of capital projects.

In May of this year, council members discussed a proposed format and structure for the executive to provide enhanced quarterly reports for a select group of capital projects, allowing the council to better track progress, identify risks, and learn about proposed mitigation strategies.

In September of this year, the executive used that format for the first time, submitting a quarterly capital projects report that included enhanced reporting for 13 large, complex, or politically sensitive capital projects that had been selected by the executive, and accompanied that with summary information about all the other projects in the CIP.

The last bit of additional background I'll provide is that the council implemented stage-based appropriations as a pilot in the 2018 adopted budget and CIP.

Stage-based appropriations are restrictions or provisos that allow spending on a given project for some activities, but stop other activities until the council removes or lifts the proviso.

Two projects with such provisos in the 2018 budget and CIP were the Ship Canal Water Quality Project and the Delridge Multimodal Corridor Project.

With that, I can turn it over to Council Member Herbold, if she'd like to speak to the resolution.

Sure.

Because I was passing things out, I hope I'm not going to repeat things that you already said.

But the council, the mayor, and the budget office have been paying more attention to an appropriate role for the council to do increased oversight on capital projects.

It began with a resolution the council adopted in 2016 to institute new rigor in capital project oversight that will increase appropriate and timely oversight and provide more transparency to the public.

And so that resolution was largely aspirational, whereas this resolution, I think, delves more into establishing a sort of financial policy for the city.

It is drafted to both provide flexibility about how projects are chosen for what we're defining as enhanced review.

It allows the mayor to propose projects, as well as the council to propose projects.

It allows council committees with subject matter oversight to be the ones who receive the quarterly reports.

And it also, in addition to the sort of what we're calling the watch list, where there'd be enhanced quarterly reporting with a report that has been created together with a report format, a template.

that has been created together with the budget office.

It also gives the council some guidance on how we can choose projects that are appropriate not only for quarterly enhanced reporting but also for the stage gating process.

I think that covers it.

I want to thank Dan Eder as well as Amy Tsai for the work that she did earlier on this issue and Dan Eder for the work he's been doing now working with CBO to get this together.

Anything else?

That's it.

Well, that was an easy one for us.

Wait a second.

Council Member Musquit, are you?

No.

Oh, sorry.

I just saw your hand.

I'm sorry.

That's it for Dan?

That's it for me.

The beard.

Okay.

Lisa, are you back on?

I'm back here with you today on the City Budget Office's proposal.

It's on page 13 of your packet.

The Mayor's proposed appropriation for the City Budget Office provides about a 4% increase of about $243,000.

which brings it to about $6.8 million for 2019, and that stays at about flat for 2020. The proposed budget would cut four and a half FTEs, which were always intended to sunset at this time, when coincident with the ending of the Bloomberg Foundation grant.

This resets CBO staffing back to 36 FTEs.

Council Mosqueda has submitted a proposal to analyze the city's use of contracts for services.

I'll turn this over to you.

Member Muscata, did you want to address this?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So we really appreciate that the Mayor's Office has gone through the tough analysis of looking at how we can do our contracting differently.

If it's more effective to do work in-house, then she's taken some steps to do that.

She's also asked the departments to be more efficient and selective in what types of work gets contracted out.

So I just want to acknowledge that that initial step has already been taken.

This would be an opportunity for us to have a statement of legislative intent to look back 10 years since the beginning of the recession to see how our contracting process has worked.

I want to be really clear.

Seattle contracts out for a number of reasons.

Many of them are good.

For example, we just talked about Office of Labor Standards, our work with Office of Civil Rights.

We know that we need to contract with trusted community partners, and it is important for our community organizations, as Councilmember O'Brien spoke about yesterday or earlier today.

I don't know, it's been a long week already.

We want to make sure that our trusted community partners also have the resources necessary when we're asking them to do work.

So contracting out is often good, but sometimes we end up with layers of contracting, and we've heard about this a few times earlier this year.

This would be basically a statement of legislative intent for us to look back at the process to get a better baseline understanding of the type of work the city contracts out and what are some of the reasons behind those contracting out.

At the current level that you see in this Statement of Legislative Intent, we're looking for services that have been contracted out above the $10,000 threshold in conversation with central staff and others within the city.

We will be moving that threshold up to over $100,000, so it will be a more selective analysis.

And the scope of work, as we put in our Statement of Legislative Intent, would include looking at the duration of the contract, the contract price, the criteria used in determining what work should be contracted out, and who in the department is making these decisions to contract out, the number of employees that we might need to hire if we were to do the work in-house, and we have some more examples here.

I'll also note this is similar to what we've done at the state level before.

It must have been six six or seven years ago when we asked the state departments to do a similar analysis to see if it was actually more cost efficient to contract in.

I think sometimes there's an assumption that if you contract out, it's somehow relatively cheaper, people make the labor and benefit cost arguments.

But then the actual analysis that came back in some cases was that it was much more efficient to contract in.

And as we think about building in-house capacity, as we think about streamlining our efforts and in trying to adhere to some of the leadership that we saw in terms of scaling back on contracting out from the mayor's proposed budget, we thought that this would be an important next step slide to look at the history of contracts in our city.

Any other comments on that?

Recommendations, Lisa?

I have no, I didn't identify any issues with this budget.

All right.

Okay, so it looks like there's no other questions.

Proceed with the next issue.

I'm sorry, I can't hear you.

Oh, I just said if there's no other questions, let's proceed with the next issue.

Oh, okay.

Next up is the Department of Finance and Administrative Services.

In the 2019 proposed budget, the approximately $300 million is provided for this department.

It's a slight reduction from the 2018 adopted budget.

As you all know, the Department of Finance and FAS provides a lot of internal services and that's why We also noted some important capital improvement projects that reflect in FAS's budget.

In this case, the replacement of the chiller plant for the Seattle Municipal Tower, which would total and cost approximately $19 million.

The FAS budget submission also has two accompanying pieces of budget legislation.

The first actually arises from a slide that was part of the 2018 budget related to regulatory and business and license fees.

It would raise the fees for Trying to find my notes here.

For the operators of public garages and parking lots, dealers have used goods, adult entertainment, and marijuana dispensaries and related groups to increase those fees to obtain full cost recovery for the majority of those.

However, it would increase the cost for regulatory fees related to marijuana, but would not achieve full cost recovery at this point.

And then the second piece of budget legislation that is proposed relates to fees at the Seattle Animal Shelter.

Currently, the procedures associated with complicated spay and neuter procedures are not billed for.

We essentially provide 100% subsidy for those.

And so the proposed budget submits legislation that would allow the charging of fees just to, again, recoup the costs of those additional procedures.

Thank you.

I have a question about the regulatory business and license fees.

One of the questions I asked when I learned about this, and I apologize if I received a response and I don't remember receiving it, was that the holders of marijuana licenses argue that Many of the regulatory activities that the city conducts are duplicative of the regulatory activities that are conducted by state agencies.

And so I'd look for a detail or breakdown of what individual activities the city inspectors undertake.

And to compare them against the regulatory activities that the state inspectors take with the idea that we would maybe look at trying to reduce the duplication.

And then the other question, because these These recommendations actually came to us from the executive because of a council slide report that we had requested.

And in the slide report itself, across the regulatory fees in the slide report, the percentage of cost recovery and subsidy varies greatly.

The subsidy for adult entertainment is about 11%.

It's 64% for marijuana.

43 percent for parking lots and 44 percent for used goods.

I think that's pawn shops.

I understand the bill does not raise the fees across those areas to accomplish full cost recovery, but I'm interested to know if these fees were implemented as proposed, what percentage subsidy would remain for each of these license fees.

Also I think, so those are the two outstanding, or outstanding to me because I haven't seen the answers, questions I have that I'm still interested in knowing and I want my colleagues to know that I've asked them.

The other piece of the SLI report asks the council for some guidance on what the next set of fees we would like to see them or have them take a look at to answer the same question.

There are other fees that ideally we would be receiving cost recovery to some extent for some of those activities and they have invited us to propose to them the next set of fees for them to explore the same question.

In regards to your first question, we've gotten a fair amount of information back.

It would be too lengthy to discuss here, but I even have, for example, some of the forms that are used during our regulatory activities, and then a chart that compares what City of Seattle inspectors would be doing compared to state inspectors.

There's overlap in approximately 50% of the activities, something like that.

A lot of the activities do seem to focus on, is your license displayed in this way?

Do you have the license for this?

Are you complying with this agreement?

Something along those lines.

But we can go through some in more detail later.

And then to your second question.

Generally, the budget legislation would increase the fees so that there would be full cost recovery or anticipated full cost recovery.

There's a lot of estimating going on here.

For all of the activities that we've covered, with the exception of marijuana, where you would have a 22% general fund subsidy, I would note though that, and I think I mentioned this earlier, that the regulatory fee proposed in the budget legislation would double the current regulatory fees related to marijuana.

So there is a substantial increase, just not achieving full recovery at this point.

And so the, can you say it again for me, the regulatory fees accomplish a subsidy of?

22% only for marijuana and all the remaining industries have full cost recovery.

Oh, interesting.

Okay.

So I would love to take a look at potentially Still still going for the the percentage of cost recovery that we're aiming for as it relates to the marijuana industry But maybe taking a look at reducing some of the city activities that are also done by the state So as you pointed out there are I forget the number now I want to say it's around 22 or 23

Sorry, I should be catching better now.

There's approximately 22 or 23 different fees that FAS administers, and this only covered the initial six or seven.

And so we are looking, the analysis is ongoing on other areas.

So when I say that we are achieving full cost recovery, I'm just talking about the ones covered in the budget legislation.

Thank you.

So the first council member proposal that has been submitted is to add funding and an FTE for contract compliance in the priority hire program.

It's been proposed by Council Member O'Brien.

I'm a big fan of priority hire.

I'm still considering where this fits in the prioritization schedule.

Obviously, this program has been working great and making sure we have enough staff for compliance is critically important.

So I'll just keep considering that.

I'm sorry, I'm the second piece of budget legislation.

So as I mentioned earlier, the second piece of budget legislation is fees associated with the Seattle Animal Shelter.

This is the procedures that associate with the span neuter fees.

I'm sorry, I missed the question that was asked.

Were there questions related to priority hire?

No, I think that he's, Council Member O'Brien was just saying that he's a big fan and we're on to number two.

Okay, great.

I'm a big fan too.

Okay.

Raise your hand if you're a fan.

The next ad is $100,000 for a study of child care in City Hall.

It was proposed by Council Members Mosqueda and Johnson.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thanks to Councilmember Johnson for his support on this too.

I will say that this probably feels like deja vu all over again to many of you because I know that the analysis of how do we place a child care facility in this new city hall is not something new.

In fact, I have the memos that have been provided.

from 2016 and prior, including a memo that summarized the various analyses by Tony Kilduff, who's no longer with us, but I appreciate his work on a central staff to show us the various iterations of looking at placing a childcare facility here in City Hall.

What is different now is we have new zoning opportunities.

I think what is different now is we have shown that we're willing to use this building in new and innovative ways.

We've opened up the first floor to use it for shelter for those who are homeless in the evenings and we continue to explore ways to do more with our public space that we have here.

We still have a large room on the first floor that is sitting vacant.

We have a very large plaza outside and we have opportunities to have youth and kiddos potentially coming to City Hall and having access to a child care facility here.

What we are looking at is not repeating the same type of research that you have already done in this council, but in fact we've re-tailored our work to make sure that we're looking at next steps.

We're building off of the analysis that's already been complete to ask what is needed to address the concerns that have already been raised.

One of the concerns was how would a child care facility fit into an outdoor plaza that we have.

I can think of some ways that we could put a slide in some playground areas there.

But I think that we need to have some motivation, some impetus to help us take that next step, given that the previous study identified the barriers.

Now I want to know what opportunities we have to overcome those barriers.

One of the takeaways from the previous study was that there is, and I quote, a high need for child care in the downtown area and yet still one of the conclusions was that it wasn't feasible.

When we have the opportunity, as the previous analysis said, to potentially support a child care facility between 90 and 120 children, I think it is definitely worth looking at how we create access to a publicly accessible child care facility.

Again, just want to note that this is an opportunity for us to Put a placeholder there $100,000 might be on the high end and I'm looking at central staff to see if you have any updates on that We wanted to get this information in early put a placeholder in at a hundred thousand We think that's a very high estimate and we can scale that amount down, but we know that we have new zoning we have work that we can build on to make sure that we can be both fiscally viable and also create an opportunity for not just those who work at City Hall, but really the surrounding areas, not just for city employees, but the public to have opportunity to at least one more center for us to have access to childcare.

And I would also reiterate part of the slide would look at infant care as well.

This is one of the most expensive cities in the country to have specifically infant care.

And we're asking mothers and fathers new parents who've adopted kiddos as well to go back to work very early and the cost of Infant care is extremely high so I won't get into all the details because you've heard us all talk about that before I know it's a shared priority that we address this this is one way I think we can Take the next step on this analysis lead by example, and we know that there's other cities Let's pick on D.C.

again, where their federal buildings have childcare in it.

And actually, their city buildings in the District of Columbia also have many childcare facilities.

I'm hoping that this will be the impetus for us to look at how we create more childcare opportunities in other city buildings as well, and want to show that it can happen here.

Thank you.

Thank you for taking the lead on that.

Well, thank you for your past work on that.

Okay.

May I ask a question?

I think so.

I'll take that as a yes.

So, I mean, there's obviously like zero disagreement on the fact that we need additional child care, particularly in that zero to three space.

And there's a lot of complex reasons that we're all familiar with, or most of us are familiar with, in terms of why it's very difficult to establish infant care.

And so I think my question around this is more so around what the council member's intent is. in terms of which families would be served.

Would it be for our employees or would it be for the general public?

And in either event or instance, are we thinking that the providers would be chosen through our SPP program?

Good questions.

I think if we were to focus on opportunities from zero to three, we might be somewhat limited in the types of financial assistance programs that folks could qualify for.

But I'm really interested in first looking at can we make this available to the full public?

And then second, is there an opportunity for us to prioritize creating opportunities for those who do work for our city?

I had a number of new moms and expecting moms come in who are members of our PTE workforce at the city who explain that they feel like on a day-to-day basis.

Let me read the quote.

They articulated that they give so much to the city and then they're left with scraps because they can barely afford child care.

So it might be an opportunity for us to look through that equity lens and prioritize some of our city workers who are the lowest wage workers among us.

But I'm very open to feedback.

I think the more access we create, the more opportunities that will be affordable across the city.

But I know that one center is not going to make that huge dent.

Yeah, no, I mean, I think, again, I don't think anybody has questions about the needs here, and I will say that when we were working on our workforce equity report, and Ms. Lee can remind me or correct me if I misspeak here, but we did do a survey of our workforce to identify in the space of gender equity, which included access to childcare, what their priorities were and what their interests were in city council and the mayor advancing particular strategies and proposals that were made there.

Childcare, having an onsite childcare facility at either Seattle Municipal Tower or here at City Hall was on the list.

And if I recall correctly, it ranked the lowest.

I couldn't tell you the ranking.

I know that it included strategies as well as flex time and working at home as well as accessible child care.

But I couldn't tell you the ranking of them.

It doesn't mean that I'm not citing that as a reason to not do it.

I just want to be very cognizant of the fact that in terms of the demographics of our workforce, We tend to skew a little bit on the older scale and non childbearing age side of the equation And you know again that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have something like this as sort of a recruitment strategy for example and being more of a competitive employer in this space you know just down just what a block away or two blocks away the King County administration building has a child care facility in their in their bottom floor so I think I think it's important for us to know that we all agree on the fact that this is a need and I'm just sort of trying to grapple with how we're going to make this blend in with our Seattle preschool program that currently exists and sort of how we deal with potential expectations amongst our workforce that they're gonna get a first-come first-serve at the child care facility versus the general public who might have less access or sort of be experiencing deeper inequities in terms of accessing childcare.

All things that I think are probably going to be included in this study, but I just want to signal that those are some of the things that I think about as we have this conversation.

I agree and just to wrap up I will make sure that the next iteration of this we get a chance to touch base with you and councilmember Johnson I know you guys have been strong advocates of early learning especially Champions of zero to three as we've been working on the education levy so would love to incorporate these components into a possible sly and And I think that part of the analysis that we would also like to see is if something like this were offered, would we be more competitive?

I'm guessing yes, because we do want to address the aging workforce, so.

if we're gonna provide people first cut at subsidized childcare as an employer that is inherently gonna make us more competitive.

The last thing that I'll just say on this is that I think because the ad here specifically identifies vacant space on the first floor of City Hall, I'm assuming that you're talking about that space over by City Grind.

My understanding is that the executive might have different ideas for that space Very quick short term, and I would just appreciate it if central staff could see if we could learn anything more about that Sure number three is increasing pet license fees to support an animal control officer.

This was sponsored by councilmember herbal I

Thank you.

So currently, there are 14 animal control officers.

Two of those positions, or 12 of the positions are filled.

Two of them are unfilled.

Only the last of the two that are unfilled, only one of them has funding.

Animal control officers operate in pairs, so in order to bring on the 13th, we're going to want to bring on the 14th too.

So I really would like to get some funding for that position and we're looking for information from FAS to determine what the increase of the fee would be that would sufficiently fund the final position.

Okay.

Number four is requesting a report on transit benefits for all city contractors.

Thank you very much Madam Chair.

So the transportation passes for city contractors really builds on our commitment as a city to make sure that we're increasing the use of transit for all of those who live in this city.

We have done that for city employees and I will be the first to admit I became a proud ORCA caring member.

In full force when I started working here.

I had it before and have to constantly recharge it I am now very excited about the opportunities to use multimodal transportation to get in but it was an incentive It was a motivation by making sure that we had an orca pass in hand It made it more possible for me to see myself taking the bus and I think we could do that already We've done taken incredible steps already with our high school students and now with many of our Seattle schools we have committed to give them more ORCA passes.

So I applaud the mayor for that initiative.

I applaud this council for the past support and really the community that led on it.

But we also know that we need to look at a number of different ways in which our city is contracting with both those who are building the buildings in the city, providing the services, whether it's cleaning the floors or providing childcare one day.

I want to make sure that all of the folks who touch the city in terms of the work through contracts Have the opportunity for a possible orca pass as well.

Now.

I know putting forward a green sheet on that would probably be An eye popper.

I'm looking at councilmember o'brien to see if you've considered something like that before But what we'd like to do is think about how we would do this through a statement of legislative intent and since we know that vehicle emissions are the number one contributor to greenhouse I think it's good for our environment.

We can take a look at what the bottom line will be with that statement of legislative intent.

I think it would also be really good for our communities who are at the highest risk of exposure to asthma and other pollutants in the air.

So part of the questions that I would be interested in looking at with a statement of legislative intent are whether or not other cities or local governments have this similar type of requirement.

What was the benefit to them?

How much did it cost?

Do they subsidize at 100%, 80%, 50%?

Would we be able to fund this with Seattle Transportation Benefit District dollars.

Is there any other data on the usage of transit passes that could inform this type of next step if we were to apply, making sure that all of those who contract with the city also had the ability to have a ORCA pass?

And really, I just want to thank the individuals from the Building and Construction Trades who raised this for us, as well as the union service providers who talk a lot about how when they go to work, They have to pay for parking, and they end up paying for, you know, an hour or two of wages.

And we should be figuring out a way to incentivize them to be able to get to work.

Now, getting to work with a toolbox is relatively hard, I assume.

So we've got to figure out who this would be best for and if we want to pilot it or scale it in.

And those are some of the things that I'd be interested in looking at with a statement of legislative intent.

All right.

Anything else to add to that?

The last from FAS is requesting a business plan for a municipal public bank proposed by Council Member Swann.

Council Member Swann.

Yes.

So, I mean, it's basically self-explanatory.

I don't have much to add to what Jeff said, which wasn't that much either because there's not much to put into it, except to say that there's two things.

One is, We saw what happened when we didn't actually have a proper analysis of what the city needs to do in order to go towards, to take the steps towards the public bank with being forced to renew the contract with Wells Fargo.

So clearly we were an impasse there and it meant we had to look more clearly into it and now we do have a study and this is my second and last point, we do have a study that gives us much more insight.

We will be unveiling that study next week and I have no doubt in my mind that it does give a While it is not a straight path towards a public bank, it does give us some very concrete ideas of how to move forward, but that will require FAS to do some work around concretely putting the steps together.

I think the study is quite excellent and it's encouraging on the whole, although as I said, it's not a straightforward path.

Just one thing I'll add is that it's not a unique thing that Seattle has not had.

The study does not say that Seattle has a straightforward path because other cities have also come up against some issues that they have to deal with given their normal practices, but it is also not something that can't be overcome.

So it can completely be overcome.

So it just needs to be done.

Okay, yeah councilmember herbal, please.

Thank you.

Um, you're referencing Um a study.

Is that the study that was funded out of last year's budget?

Um, and it sounds like um, you've already seen it, but we have to wait for a week to see it I haven't I haven't seen the whole thing.

I haven't seen the whole thing.

What what has happened is I have had a preliminary conversation with the authors of the study Uh in their preparation to bring it forward and they have talked to the the whole coalition that was advocating around it including economic option institute And it will be released very early next week.

OK.

Thanks.

Thank you.

All right, please continue.

Thank you.

I'll do the next three for you today.

The first one that I'll cover is the budget for indigent defense services, which is on page 15 of your report of the paper.

The city of Seattle, as you know, contracts with King County for defense services provided by King County's Department of Public Defense for indigent people facing misdemeanor charges in Seattle Municipal Court.

The mayor's proposal would increase this budget by $1.2 million to about $9.4 million to cover increased DPD costs.

Basically, retirement and central services costs have increased.

The budget narrative in the mayor's proposal links this funding to $1.2 million in savings from the King County Jail Services contract.

But as you're aware, it is all general fund money and there are no strings attached.

The proposed budget also eliminates one-time funding provided by Council in 2017 for a civil legal aid program for collateral consequence attorneys.

Those attorneys focus on the impact of arrests, charges, and convictions on housing, employment, and family issues and public benefits associated with having been arrested.

Councilmember Herbold has proposed to continue this funding.

I will turn to her.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold.

I appreciate it.

So, as we have learned, there are a large number of unintended, what we're calling collateral consequences that result from a criminal charge, often within the time frame that a defendant is defending themselves against that charge.

Sometimes those collateral consequences can be evictions, it could mean losing a job, It could mean losing public benefits.

So the initial phase of this pilot focused on allowing our public defenders, who by contract at that time was only permitted to represent the client as it related to the criminal charge, that the city was contracting with public defense to defend.

In the initial phase of the pilot, we focused on the provision of legal advice, not legal representation, regarding civil legal consequences of specific plea offers.

The King County DPD attorneys have a lot of expertise in identifying and litigating criminal legal issues.

The attorneys themselves recognize that they have limited training in identifying and mitigating the civil collateral consequences of convictions.

And that's why by design, we had this pilot have a second phase.

where we allowed for funding for civil legal services, the actual provision of those services, and we amended our contract with King County Public Defense to allow for that.

In 2017, the council allocated $440,000 of funding for a two-year pilot for civil legal service attorneys.

what we call, again, the collateral consequence attorneys to provide these services in coordination with the criminal representation provided to Seattle Municipal Court indigent defendants by the King County Department of Public Defense.

This budget action would add $440,000 of continued funding to the criminal justice contracted services to allow for continued coordination.

This is really something that other jurisdictions that are more advanced in this area, they refer to as holistic legal services.

And just a quick sort of preview of what these services have allowed to happen.

We've been able to meet clients' needs by taking into account the collateral impacts, not only housing impacts, but a variety of other types of impacts, as mentioned before, helping people retain their employment during a legal case, helping people make sure that they don't lose their public benefits.

and a whole other set of really important civil impacts that can really have a big effect on somebody's life, often, again, when they have not even been found guilty of the thing that they're charged.

The different types of cases that were taken, there were 605 clients helped for misdemeanor charges, 140 that were helped for felony charges, and 56 that were helped for family defense.

There were 10 juveniles and 10 people helped through the therapeutic courts.

The interesting thing is even though the proposed budget does not have continued funding to represent our clients, our cases in court that we contract with King County Public Defense to represent, interestingly, King County in their budget this year, is replicating the collateral consequences program and providing funding for the folks that are charged through King County and represented through King County.

So King County recognizes it's a good program.

They're using it for their defendants and their defendants typically are accused of more serious crimes than our defendants.

And so I think it's really important particularly considering that many of our defendants are accused of minor crimes and have these collateral consequences that completely destabilize their lives that we continue funding for this program.

Thanks.

All right, thank you.

I really, I liked it when we supported it, the pilot.

I like everything I heard you say.

Just a couple of questions on clarifying.

That is, I assume they, we pretty much exhausted the 220 we didn't have based on those numbers of clients that you described.

It sounds like there's only so far that two, so we exhausted that.

So that's the first thing.

And then the second one is, it sounds like we're also helping with felony the impacts of felony convictions.

So maybe with the council's budget addition, they could give us a little relief there, but it sounded like it was a successful pilot from what you're telling us.

Yeah, I'm a little, I have to say I'm a little confused with the reference to felony cases, because those wouldn't be our cases.

So I think this is a reporting back to us about the program in general.

So our cases would not be felonies.

because our contract with King County for public defense is for misdemeanor cases.

So I have a feeling that this might be a report back on the entire program, both our funding for the program as well as King County's.

Are there prohibitions on how we structure this funding, assuming that it passes prohibitions that it sounds like the money I hate to say it this way, but it just has to go to the attorneys for giving advice it cannot go to the charged for costs that they impose.

When one is charged of a crime, whether it's a misdemeanor felony, they get nickel and dimed to death for other things in addition to them paying their rent and their bills, and they are detained.

I'm curious as to whether a portion of the funds could be used to actually offset some of the legitimate costs for particularly indigent or lower income people charged.

And a lot of them are falsely charged, by the way.

So I'm just sort of curious if it has to just go to the attorneys.

So no, there are some flexible funds involved in actually addressing some of the issues that arise through the addressing of the collateral consequences.

I'm not quite sure to the extent that they've been used or whether or not they're They're the city dollars or there are other dollars that are part of this program But just to you know, give an example, so we are we're funding King County Public Defense Related to somebody who's been accused of shoplifting while they're on bail waiting And they get a notice because they haven't paid their rent these funds would allow the King County public defenders to work with the eviction attorneys that focus on those civil eviction charges to deal with representing the client in that area.

So that's how the bulk of the funds are used, but I do think that there are some flexible funds related, not to our funding, but to the program in general to addressing some of those other financial consequences.

All right.

Okay.

Just a quick question.

Sure.

Council Member Juarez.

So with Seattle Municipal Court, they're misdemeanors.

That's correct.

However, my understanding is that that is what Northwest Justice Project and Columbia Legal Services do.

They are the attorneys, because I was both, so I know I'm on both sides, handling misdemeanors in Seattle Municipal Court and then working with it, well at the time it was Evergreen Legal Services and then they broke up into two different, but their job, Northwest Justice Project and Columbia Legal Services, to do these exact things that you're talking about.

Not only providing civil legal representation on housing matters like eviction and housing impacts, but also people who have their social services taken away, their children taken away.

I mean, that's what they do.

So I don't understand.

This funds them to do that.

Some, a couple attorneys are actually embedded in the Office of Public Defense to do, from, I'm not quite sure if it's, which of the two, I think it's the Northwest Justice Project, but I'm not 100% sure.

But they actually have attorneys embedded to do that work.

Because, I mean, the reality is if you're in jail because of a misdemeanor charge, you can't very well contact the Northwest Justice Project to get an attorney.

And so the public defender coordinates with the civil legal aid to do that, and our funding of that work goes through that contract.

Okay.

All right.

Let's keep going.

Thank you.

The next item is jail services, which is on page 16. The city contracts with King County and Snohomish County to provide jail services for individuals arrested, prosecuted, or convicted of misdemeanor crimes in Seattle.

The city is not actively sending inmates to Snohomish County due to lower than anticipated bed usage in King County's jail, but the city does pay a proportional bed rate for inmates with outstanding Seattle warrants who are held at Snohomish County's jail.

The city budget office estimates the 2019 cost for the Snohomish County contract at about $60,000, and the King County jail cost in 29 is estimated at about $18.5 million.

The proposed budget shows reduced funding for jail services down $1.2 million, reflecting the recently renegotiated minimum usage of the King County Jail.

As previously noted, the proposed budget claims that these savings were directed to indigent defense services, but the general fund money is fungible.

The city's council members Mosqueda and O'Brien have submitted a proposal that would request information about the jail services contract with King County and terminate the Snohomish County contract and redirect those funds to the Office of Civil Rights for work with youth development services.

I'd like to speak on that.

You go ahead, I'll follow up.

I think the requests here are attempting to be responsive to some of the budget for justice requests we've received and some of the ongoing work.

What we found in some of the research is some complexities around these contracts.

So the first request is an attempt to better understand some of the details about the contracts and how it works and what our options are.

The second would be more specific.

We use the, my understanding is the Stohomish County Jail is essentially overflow when we can no longer use it, the King County Jail.

I think there have been some success in reducing the population and so trying to explore if there are opportunities for some cost savings.

I think, remind folks again that our, consistent with our commitment to have zero youth detention.

Figuring out ways that we can make investments in people's lives other than incarcerating them is something that I think is an ongoing interest and these both these are looking at if there's opportunities here to make kind of small steps in that direction.

Mr. Chair.

Council Member Esqueda.

Thank you very much.

I'll just add a little bit Additional context as well, and I think councilmember O'Brien and his team for working with our team on this As the city knows we entered into a contract with the King County partners in 2012 really to help circumvent our own having to construct a new facility, and that's a really good thing.

So I appreciate the partnership that we have, and anybody who was here before who worked on that, I appreciate your efforts.

And we've also passed a zero youth detention resolution to aim at looking upstream so we can prevent kiddos and individuals from going into the legal system.

And it's working.

What we see so far is that the city's jail population has declined by nearly 40% from 2015 through the second quarter of earlier this year.

And we also know that we have requirements that are currently in our contract that don't totally reflect the declining number of individuals that are going into incarceration.

The average daily population assumption is at or below about 200 individuals for 2019. That's down from about 15 last year, and it's projected in 2020 to go down to 187. So that's important because our current contract has a requirement, a floor, whereby Seattle pays a fixed amount for the floor, and the floor is at 187. I guess the question that we're interested in is, given our commitment to continually looking at upstream ways to invest in getting folks to not go into jail, and our success rate so far, I'm really interested in just exploring questions at this point.

What are the rates per bed that other cities of comparable size and economic stability have?

Can we do a comparison of what reopener clauses we have in our contract versus other cities of comparable size and economic stability?

Also, given some of the studies and anecdotes that have come out of the system recently, I'm very interested in adding into this slide how we look at health standards and make sure that the status of the individual's health is being carefully evaluated when they are incarcerated.

So really, given our declining population that's going into jail, the current contract that has the floor, and looking at how we compare to other relative cities, that's the first element.

And the second element is looking at our partnership with Snohomish County.

This is a relatively small amount of money.

We're talking about $58,000 that the city of Seattle currently pays to the Snohomish County Jail to help book and hold defendants.

It is worth, I think, evaluating whether or not that is any money that can be recuperated.

I know that it's relatively small, but given our overall approach to reducing the number of folks that are going into incarceration, I am very interested in seeing how we can maybe recapture that 58,000.

Very good.

Let's move on.

Thank you.

I'll next be talking to you about the Judgment and Claims Fund, which is written up on page 18 of your packet.

This fund provides for payment of legal actions brought against the city government.

The City Council requested through a sly that the City Budget Office review the current policies governing the fund together with the Department of Finance and Administrative Services, the Law Department, and the City Council Central Staff.

Staff from CBO, FAS, and the City's Attorney's Office presented recommendations in response to the sly request to the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee in July of 2018 and have submitted budget legislation with this proposal described below to revise the current policies.

The mayor's proposed budget would add $500,000 to the fund in 2019 for a total of about $21.6 million, and that add would be consistent with the new policy recommendations.

Table one on page 20 of your packet compares the new recommendations to the existing policies.

I can just highlight the major changes or I can walk through the table with you at your preference, Mr. Chair.

I'll just do the highlights at this point.

Major changes in the policies are to budget the fund to a higher anticipated claim exposure, what they're calling a 90% confidence level by 2023. which is basically providing sufficient funds to pay claims for nine out of ten years without requiring supplemental appropriation.

It also would double the threshold for reporting claims to counsel to $200,000, and it does create a new judgment and claims finance committee that would monitor and report on expenditures, review current cases and reserves, advise on the sufficiency of the fund, and consider risk mitigation strategies.

Can you say that one statement about the amount that they report to the council?

I didn't see that in writing and I didn't understand what you said.

The current threshold for reporting on claims is $100,000.

Right.

And they would double that to $200,000.

What's the reason for that?

Why wouldn't we still want to know?

I think it's efficiency savings, time efficient, using your time.

Okay, well.

I don't.

I think that's too high.

Yes, I do.

I mean, I don't want that without an explanation.

Okay, I just want to know.

I thought you said that and I didn't see that anywhere.

So right.

Thank you.

Their rationale is that it would just rationales.

They don't want to bring it to the council.

I mean, I understand that.

simple as that.

So one of the issues that I did flag is that with the creation of this new Judgment and Claims Finance Committee, they have this basically with executive side staff, CBO, Finance and Administrative Services Department, and the City's Attorney's Office.

And given the committee's your council's interest in risk mitigation strategies and the fact that they are proposing to raise this threshold of what they'll take back to council.

You may wish to include designating either the central staff director or her designee to sit on that committee as well to make sure that the council's interests are sustained.

Yeah, I agree with that and I would also like to ask, council president doesn't have to answer right now whether You would like to see a council member participating on that.

Yeah, I would I would just I'll reserve comment I might have shown my hand a little early on that one.

So let me just I'll revisit it.

Oh, so think about it possibly Okay, please continue that completes my report on this Okay, thank you Eric

Eric Sund, now I'll talk a little.

The Life Sciences Research Tax Deduction, this item could have perhaps been placed in the section on the Department of Finance and Administrative Services as they do collect the taxes and handle the administration of the city's tax laws and policies, but because it is a general fund revenue, has general fund revenue implications, have identified this as a standalone item.

As part of the proposed budget package, the mayor's transmitted proposed ordinance that would establish a deduction for income received by life science research organizations, whether for-profit or non-profit, from grants, contracts, and subawards from government sources.

Similar provision was offered for five years beginning in June of 2012, so that expired mid last year under Ordinance 123-877.

The estimated revenue impact of establishing or reestablishing this deduction is something in the neighborhood of a half million dollars a year in general sub fund.

I would note that under pre-existing law before the ordinance mentioned here that non-profit life science organizations were already able to deduct income from federal grants, but not contracts for services or subawards.

Okay.

Questions, Council Member Herbold?

Just for clarification, so this is an exemption that existed in the past, it's been lapsed, and this ordinance would put it back in place?

Yes, so while you could perhaps pursue some variation on the proposed legislation, the options I've identified here are to approve the ordinance and provide that tax benefit to the organizations or to not take action in which case there would be again about $500,000 of additional general sub fund revenue available to be programmed.

And is the exemption size the same as it was before when this was in place?

Yes, so it's for the, I'm sorry, I should have mentioned, this is for the business and occupation tax or business license tax.

And so these institutions are taxed in the other category.

So it's a little over four-tenths of a percent of gross receipts.

And so this allows the value of revenues from those identified government sources to be exempt from that taxation.

Okay.

Patricia Leon, Council Staff.

I'm going to address the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

This office assists the approximately 18% of Seattle's population who are immigrants and refugees to understand and access city services.

Pariah has four main areas of focus.

To protect residents and workers, citizenship and civic engagement, English as a second language, and language access.

Their table on the budget shows a significant increase from 3.2 million to 5 million from 28 to 2019. As will be discussed in the issue, that is an increase mainly in appropriation authority, not in actual funding that goes to OIRA.

The staffing remains pretty much the same at about nine FTEs.

There's one council member proposal from Council Member Lorena Gonzalez on the Legal Defense Fund.

And the proposal would be to add the funding to the level that was in the 2018 budget, which was a $1 million general fund contribution by the city.

The appropriation shows it as a 1.5 million appropriation with the anticipation that King County will contribute half of the 1.5 million.

So the actual amount of general fund that has been put in the OIRA budget is $795,000.

This proposal will increase the general fund contribution from the city by $200,000 to bring it to the 2018 level of $1 million.

Yeah, I think Ms. Lee did a great job of describing what I'm seeking to accomplish here and I think it will come as no surprise to you all colleagues that this is the one that I am gonna go to the mat on in terms of fighting for holding the Legal Defense Fund harmless.

And, you know, this is just not a period of time in our history and in our immigration enforcement world to be pulling back on providing legal defense.

funding for those who are facing removal defense.

I'm working closely with advocates, both who are receiving services, who are receiving money through these contracts.

and their clients to make sure that the council members who have concerns about this particular ad have a full understanding of the tremendous amount of impact that we are creating in our immigrant communities as a result of this investment.

So my hope is that the county will come through on a commitment to continue to be a partner in this space.

I've had some great conversations with Council Member Joe McDermott, in terms of his ongoing commitment to continue to work with the city of Seattle in this regard and I just really feel incredibly strongly about the fact that we need to make sure that we hold this defense fund harmless.

Okay, next up is the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

OIR is at a funding level of about $2.8 million in 2019. It's a 5.5% decrease from the 2018 budget of almost $3 million.

The budget reflects reductions of about $222,000.

$72,000 supported a temporary session aid in Olympia during the legislative session.

They've also reduced the state lobbying contracts budget from $500,000 to $400,000.

And they reduced the budget for dues to the Association of Washington Cities from $100,000 to $50,000.

There are two council member proposals.

The first is to restore $50,000 in 2019 and the same in 2020 to restore the funding for the dues to the Association of Washington Cities and it's proposed by council member Bagshaw.

I'm not sure that I've got much else to add and considering what we've talked about this a little bit, I frankly don't think that this should our AWC membership should lapse.

And there are a couple of things that have happened just in the last month or so which I have signaled back to the executive is that we may not agree with all the AWC cities but having the relationships and staying closely connected with them I think is important.

So I don't think this should be something that's on the council's back.

I think that we should just recognize as a city that relationships with other cities across the state are critical and we should be in there with both feet.

The mayor's budget proposal, what are the dues relative to the $50,000?

Well, the dues have gone up for the city of Seattle and for a couple of the other larger cities.

And I believe that the dues have gone up or will go up to $125,000.

They wanted to argue that we restore 50,000, which is a percentage of the total dues.

I don't mind arguing if they want to have the dues reduced, but I think the signal we're sending is that we're too cool for school, and I just don't think that's right.

So I'm really arguing that, come on, let's just get involved, stay involved, be part of this.

I thank you, Council Member Bageshot.

I think it's, I agree with you that Association of Washington Cities is an important organization and we have a role to play there.

Part of the role will be, you know, making sure that we're charged fairly amongst our peers, but maintaining our membership and an active role in that is important.

Thanks.

And, you know, I suggested to the mayor's office that if they don't want to take advantage of some of the services that AWC offers, which we don't, really it's, as I said, it's all about the relationships that we are building and have built with the smaller cities.

And just a couple of things, most recently that AWC agreed to sign on to our amicus for the city of Olympia.

The only reason they did that is because we were asking for support, and the smaller cities said, we see what you're doing.

They wanted to sign on for home rule, not because they thought our income tax was great.

But still, having those relationships meant that we were able to say, the other 280 cities in association of Washington City said, we'll sign on with you.

I happen to think that that's value.

Chair Baxter.

Sure, Council Member Ellis.

I don't want to be a contrarian, but maybe I will come off as one right now.

I agree that the relationships with the suburban cities and other cities that are part of the AWC association is critically important.

I have concerns that the price tag of $130,000 for 2019 is the right price tag for that relationship.

But more importantly, I have seen from AWC in several prior legislative sessions, them taking positions in direct opposition to city priorities.

And I hope that the expectation of good relations and communication is a two-way street.

And I have not necessarily seen that it's always been a two-way street.

And so my expectation, with the assumption that you as the chair of the Budget Committee are going to restore the full dues, is that we have an opportunity as a city council, not just through our two representatives who sit on the AWC, or maybe it's three, but as a full council that we have a clear set of expectations about how those communications are going to unfold in the future.

Because I've been, frankly, extremely disappointed with some of the positions they have taken on things around police reform, on issues related to equal pay.

They almost took an oppositional position on the Voting Rights Act that I have personally been fighting for with advocates in the community for over five legislative sessions.

And those are things that are deeply important to me personally, but also to constituents who we represent here in the city of Seattle.

And so I think we just have to be honest about those particular areas of divergence.

And we should, as a large city member of AWC that pays a significant amount of money in dues, we should have some level of mutual respect and a lot of transparency in terms of how we are going to continue to navigate around this relationship.

Yeah, I appreciate that and I'm highly well aware that AWC has taken positions that we don't necessarily think that certainly they don't align with some of our values but by and large they do and it's the smaller cities that I've seen come and stand up with us on some issues when I was back in Washington DC as an example.

that it was really because of the relationships that have been developed that they would go and say to some of their congressmen that they would support us in doing things.

I can't control everything, but I just know that it's been very valuable having a place where we can get together and to be able to talk about these issues.

So I would say, maybe we want to say to them in the coming year, show us what you're going to do and how are you going to support us.

But I just wouldn't pull ourselves out of this.

May I make a?

Sure, of course.

Asha, I really like Councilman Gonzalez's points.

Is it possible?

What about my points?

I like yours too.

I like everybody.

Thank you.

Everybody's great, phenomenal points here.

Asha, is it possible for you and I to contact our OIR to just get a sort of a, before we pass judgment on this issue, sure to get a feel for the last two years on AWC's

Yes.

And I'm not, and I know Council Member Gonzalez is not suggesting that we expect them to agree with every point we make because we are members, but it has to do with sometimes the relationship and what we expect as a high dues paying member.

So it'd be nice to have a little date around that before we make some budgetary decisions.

And I appreciate that request as well.

Um, and I think, you know, my larger concern is, is, uh, Because we we do pay a significant amount of dues to AWC The information that I have seen that I've received as a result of what our dues are paying for and what they're not is I mean in some instances they're effectively paying for staff time and lobbying services that are in direct contradiction and opposition to the thing that we are advocating for and paying OIR staff to do.

And so I just think the reality is, is that we need to have some level of baseline understanding and common agreement as to how we are gonna deal with that situation.

I'll be happy to get back to you on those.

Okay, what's next?

The second proposal is to restore $85,000 in 2019 and the same in 2020 for contracts with community organizations with expertise in addressing poverty.

And this is proposed by Council Member O'Brien.

I believe this is the ninth year in a row I've done this ad, but I may be off for that.

But folks, Poverty Action Network, for whatever reason, regardless of the mayor, it never comes through in the budget, but I think they do amazing work and we've always restored it.

I'm happy to answer questions if folks have any more specifics they want to ask, but I won't waste time on it if not.

Well, I appreciate it.

Gloria McHenry and the crew coming out last night, other than that.

Anything else?

All right.

Thanks, Sasha.

Good.

Yolanda, thank you for coming.

Yolanda Ho, Council Central staff, here to discuss Office of Sustainability and Environment.

The Office of Sustainability and Environment collaborates with a wide range of stakeholders to develop innovative environmental solutions that foster equity, vibrant communities, and shared prosperity.

OSC develops policies and promotes green initiatives in three main areas, climate change, environmental equity, and creating sustainable communities.

In the proposed 2019-2020 budget, the OSCE is appropriated 7.5 million in 2019 and about 7.6 million in 2020. The increase from 2018 to 2019 is about 8.2% entirely due to the sweetened beverage tax, which we discussed earlier this week.

And that money funds food access related programs such as Fresh Bucks and implementation of the Food Action Plan.

In response to the mayor's directive to reduce costs and improve efficiencies, the proposed budget would cut $50,000 from the Equity and Environment Initiative, also known as EEI.

This amount would have funded the EEI's program coordinator, which is a term limited temporary assignment through 2019. So while the FTE cut does not show up in the table, it's because it was a temporary assignment.

And so the EEI staff have been working with community-based organizations to develop and have been implementing actions from the equity and environment agenda, a blueprint to advance racial equity in Seattle's environmental work.

So this effectively would reduce the EEI staff down to one, a program manager, limiting the program's ability to coordinate the environmental justice.

fund environmental justice fund pilot project and support the work of the environmental justice committee.

And would be further diminished capacity of the department to advance other aspects of the equity environment agenda.

Other cuts, I apologize there's a error in the memo, but it should be $28,000 in discretionary program costs, specifically funding for consultant services that would verify city analysis of greenhouse gas and energy, benchmarking and sponsorship of community engagement events related to urban forestry and some Duwamish Valley Action Plan implementation activities.

So there were several council member proposals, first of which would be to add one FTE to the equity environment initiative from Council Member O'Brien.

Go ahead and talk about thank you.

Yeah, so I'm essentially asking to restore this position for 2019 and then make it permanent in 2020 I think you're all familiar with equity environment initiative So I won't go into too much depth on it other than to say that I'm a huge supporter of it I think they're doing amazing work this year we're rolling out a grant fund around that program, and I think this person or this position will play a critical role in supporting the delivery of that grant, which I hope will be an ongoing issue, an ongoing grant for this fund.

And so I think this position is pretty important to maintain that work going on in our commitment.

So that's it for me.

And the next council member proposal is to add $164,000 in 2019 and 2020 to fund a fellowship program for community-based organizations in the environmental fields.

Can I go?

Who wants to do that?

I am really excited about this one, but I can go second or third.

I don't mind if you go.

Council Member Herbold, why don't you?

I'm fine for you to lead, but I can speak a little bit about this.

This is one of the recommendations coming out of the Green Pathways Strategy, and it sort of replicates a similar fellowship program that is expiring, but this one's really focused on creating pathways to green jobs.

Have I missed something?

I'll give a little details about the vision from how they plan to make this work and what the city's role in this is.

And so for folks that aren't familiar with the Rainier Valley Corps, it's a similar model to that.

This will be working with young leaders, leaders from the community in South Seattle to get them the training and positions within environmental organizations.

They would place them in two-year internships.

Those internships would be funded by the organizations at which they're going to be housed.

Excuse me, can I just interrupt?

Judge, if you two would like to stay, when we are done with this, we're going to take a quick break and have public comment.

So if you want to hold on for just another couple of minutes.

We love you.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

I didn't want to interrupt.

Sorry.

I've already interrupted you but but we've just made a quick executive decision here that we're going to take a break and allow the nine people who have signed up to give us public testimony and then we'll come back.

I'm sorry, you were on a roll.

So similar to Rainier Valley Corps, they would place these young leaders who are interested in getting into green careers with organizations.

The organizations would be the ones that would pay their salary.

The funding we're doing is for the support for these folks.

So to make sure that they have the training, there's a cohort they'll be meeting.

There's also ongoing training.

for the organizations that are hosting the interns to make sure that they have the, let's say, the cultural competency to work with this community.

The goal being long-term career opportunities, hopefully for these youth, and a huge benefit to the society as a whole for having these young leaders be developed and contributing to the work.

The cost of the program, the proposal here would be to fund about half of it.

The organizations Got Green and Rainier Valley Corps will also be making grant applications to other funders out there.

And so this would be set up as a matching fund of sorts so that They would then hopefully be able, if they're successful with other grants, can match it with the city's grant funding to fully fund this program.

And I think they could have up to 20 interns starting next August or September.

Thank you, Chair Baxter.

Just very quickly, just one thing to add is what's particularly impressive about the group of young people who are working on this is not only just their diversity in general, but just, I guess, you know, there's diversity in this diversity.

Just really impressive in terms of how many particularly ethnic backgrounds these young people come from, many of them have faced.

low-income barriers in their own lives, but they, you know, come from African-American communities, from East African communities, from East Asian and South Asian communities.

It's really exciting to see young people from communities that, you know, have been historically marginalized and they're coming sort of into the political forefront.

Good.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, did you have anything you wanted to add?

I do not.

Okay, are you concluded on this one?

All right, so Council Central staff, are you okay if we just take a break here at this moment?

There was one more Council Member proposal for the department, so we thought we could just wrap, would that be okay to wrap that up?

How much more did we have here?

It's just one more, the add.

Sure, no, that's great.

Air and noise pollution.

Please, go ahead.

Okay, so this would add $158,611 for air and noise pollution study in Beacon Hills.

This is council members Muscata and Harrell.

Okay.

Council President Harreld?

I lead with my best foot.

That's my strength.

I'm glad that's in the public record.

Thank you very much, President Harreld and Madam Chair.

I'm passing out a visual.

It's double-sided, same image on both sides, double the fun.

This is to provide an illustration of the noise and air pollution proposal that I'm putting forward with Councilmember Harreld, with Council President Harreld.

You may know that El Centro de la Raza obtained an EPA environmental justice two-year grant to engage community and neighbors in developing an action plan.

Over the last few months slash years, they've been engaged in 24 meetings in six languages.

They've had conversations with 467 community members.

The top priority that came out from these conversations is that noise reduction and air pollution along with noises that are hurting our community members' ability to learn and live is the top recommendation that they got from the community directly.

And it's critical, I think, that we take an opportunity to partner with the community who's already identified that this is a top priority for them prior to SeaTac engaging in a sustainable airport master plan draft EIS in the summer of 2019. They're going to be potentially expanding their facilities and what our partners in Beacon Hill would like to do is make sure that they have the ability to engage with the community and do a scientific study on air and noise pollution.

So the reason this is important, as we all know, Beacon Hill is 80% people of color, 44% immigrants and refugees.

And Beacon Hill has the highest asthma hospitalization rates for children, low birth rates, and shorter lifespans.

And we also want to be good partners.

The El Centro has done is reached out to research firms including at the University of Washington to see if they could do an analysis.

There's two components of what this green sheet would do.

One is we would be able to partner for a quantitative air noise study to the tune of $139,000 and partnering with El Centro potentially or a similar organization.

We could do translation and interpretation services in five languages for $19,000.

So the total ask is $158,000 and This again would be in partnership with Part with matching funds.

They have received funding from King County almost $50,000.

They've also received funding from Beacon Hill community health indicators review for over $15,000.

So I think it's a nice show of support and partnership as we try to reduce air and noise

pollution Councilmember Harold did I know just you supposed to drop the mic after that Oh drop the mic Excellent Excellent.

Thank you.

Okay All right.

Anything else on that last one Yolanda?

Nope, that was it.

Okay, any other comments about FAA and airport flights?

Okay All right, we're going to take a short break from this work and invite those who have come for public testimony to join us.

And we've got nine people who are signed up.

We will ask that you take two minutes, no more than two minutes apiece.

And judges, did you sign up or are you here to speak?

Do you want to do that?

Because I want to honor your Okay, please, why don't you go ahead, Judge McKenna, and then we'll get into the list with Dave, then Mari, and Sarah in that order.

Please, go ahead.

Thank you for your time.

I'm Judge Ed McKenna.

I'm the presiding judge of Seattle Municipal Court.

Surprisingly, you're probably thinking I'm going to discuss something else, but I just wanted to mention the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council.

From my understanding, that was a very effective coordinating council before, but for reasons that were preceded me, apparently it got a little unwieldy because of the number of participants in the program.

And surprisingly, I was actually intending to restart that, or at least I had invitations already prepared depending on who the new head of the Public Defense Agency was.

So, but by some other initiative, if someone else is going to be overseeing that, that might make it, and put some format and structure to that, that might actually work out pretty well.

Thank you for coming in.

I don't know if you heard our rather lengthy conversation earlier today about that, but would really invite you to contact Councilmember Gonzales, Councilmember Herbold and I who are all interested.

And I suspect everybody else down, but if I could just ask Councilmember Gonzales to take the lead on this and just have a conversation with you about what's next.

I think it's important we're all on the same page.

Yeah, absolutely.

I could not agree more.

Okay, thank you for coming.

Dave, is it Gamra?

Dave here?

Sadly.

Number one?

We don't have our little orange cards.

Mari Sugiyama?

No?

Okay, so I'm 0 for 2. Sarah?

Oh, for heaven's sake.

So, number five?

Who all is here?

Have you all signed up?

Okay.

So, halfway through.

Farrah?

Do we even have the right sheet?

Okay.

Shea Brown.

Clara Cantor.

I know Diane Kincaid is here, and I know Gordon Padelford.

Are you the next two?

Sorry it's not Mega Millions, but it's year one something.

There's a whole bunch of people in front of me.

Hi, so I'm Clara Cantor, and I'm a new organizer for Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, and I'm also here representing the new Mass Transportation Alliance, which is a group of transportation and climate action groups here in Seattle that's come together to ask city council and the mayor to prioritize walking, biking, and transit improvements urgently, particularly with some asks for the next budget, but also with leadership over the course of the next year.

I think that all of you probably received our letter, and I hope that you've read it.

If you haven't, please do so.

In particular, I just want to highlight a couple of our budget asks.

One is to place a proviso on the budget for adaptive signals that actually Gordon will speak a little bit more about later, and also funding for a home zone project, which I've spoken with a couple of you about.

We also want to add funding to get people to the new arena on foot and by bike and complete the basic bike network in Uptown and South Lake Union, most notably with the Thomas Street neighborhood greenway.

Some of these projects are partially funded from the transportation mitigation funding from Oakview Group through the arena, but not completely funded.

And those projects that receive extra funding from other sources are much more likely to actually be constructed in time for the arena to open.

and also to restore funding for the Pavement to Parks program.

This was an experimental program and some of the projects were less successful than others, but some of them have been really successful in drawing communities out and helping people to think differently about our streets and public spaces.

And we're asking for some of that funding to be restored to formalize those parks that have been successful, largely through an equity lens, in neighborhoods that don't have a whole lot of other open space, such as the parks down near Vista and South Park.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, Claret, I just want to say thank you.

And the fact that pedestrian groups have come together with Cascade Bicycle Club, with Neighborhood Greenways, I think that you're going to be very effective by coordinating your efforts.

So thank you for doing that.

Good.

Hey, Gordon.

Good afternoon, Council.

My name's Gordon Padelford.

I'm with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, and I'm going to talk about two of the points Claire mentioned.

One is adaptive signals, which are being used to basically reprogram our urban streets in sort of a futile attempt to flush people out to our already clogged highways.

So it is a challenging technology, and it's really coming at the expense of people walking and biking and taking transit, the way it's currently set up.

So if we can place a proviso on the funding for this technology, we can help the city align this new technology with our city's stated values and all of the plans that we've adopted to date.

It's not that the technology It's theoretically bad, it's just as it's being implemented and as it's currently designed, it is having some pretty adverse impacts.

So I'm hopeful that we can place provisos that way council can provide some oversight and make sure that as this is being implemented, it can really bolster what we want to do as a city.

Secondly, home zones.

So I think you all know it's going to take 300 years at the current rate of funding to build out our sidewalk network.

And that is a very long time.

So we need to figure out not only how can we increase funding for that, the mayor's budget does a really fantastic job of adding some one-time funding this year to the sidewalk funding, to the sidewalk construction budget, but also how can we do things much more efficiently.

So home zones is a concept that basically protects the inside of a neighborhood and keeps people sort of trying to drive through the neighborhood on the main arterial streets.

And so that way, inside the neighborhood, it's safe enough to walk and bike on the streets, even though we're still waiting for sidewalks.

So it's basically just a systematic way of doing traffic calming in a way that doesn't have adverse impacts and doesn't just push that sort of cut through traffic that maybe ways is directing down your neighborhood street onto the next neighborhood street.

It really is keeping that through traffic on their arterials.

So we think it's an exciting pilot project, and we hope you can fund it.

Can I ask a quick question since you're all here?

Have you been working with Estoc on this as well?

Are you coming to us as a first cut?

Which which which?

On the home zones.

I've talked with Estoc's pedestrian program about it, and they're interested.

Okay, great.

Have you gotten on my calendar in my office to come talk about this?

Do you know?

We talked to Dan, but I don't think we're on the calendar yet.

Okay, good.

Well, I'd really like to see you and talk to you more about this.

Love to.

Good.

Thank you.

And I think there's a pilot that's happening on a small scale in District 5, if I'm correct, that could be bolstered with some investment here.

Is that right?

Yeah, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways is running sort of a community-led pilot already, and we've been doing a whole ton of community outreach just south of North Seattle College.

But I wouldn't want to say that that necessarily has to be where this pilot would go, but we have done a bunch of community engagement in that area.

Thank you.

I did notice that Gordon looked straight at Councilmember Juarez when he was talking about sidewalks.

It's like we're talking on Friday.

Diana Kincaid, nice to see you.

Come on up.

Thank you.

My name is Diana Kincaid and I am currently the president of the Magnuson Community Center Advisory Council and former park board chair.

So I'm here to talk about the funding for the Magnuson Community Center with the hours that were not added again this year.

And we really need the full 57 hours provided for the community center for the kids at the park, particularly because in 2019, Mercy Housing will be full and we will have an additional 300 to 400 people residing in the park.

and we will have likely up to a total of 450 children residing in the park and they need the hours.

It was a huge mistake when the city cut the community center hours down to 25 hours a week years ago.

We really need the time for the children there and also to start incorporating programs for adults as well.

So please provide the $140,000 per year requested by Councilmember Johnson for the three halftime positions that we need.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And then also, we need better lighting in the historic district.

That is where the housing is.

And it is so dark that women who live there are afraid to walk on their street.

A woman said, you know, I can see the bright, shiny lights provided for the Children's Hospital parking lot, but I cannot see well enough on my own street.

It's so dark for me to feel safe walking.

So we really need to solve that problem.

We're solving problems of Vision Zero with Sandpoint Way.

We have increased transit services there.

This is another big piece that we need for basic infrastructure.

It's really an equity and social justice issue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Diana.

That's the last.

I have in the sign-up sheet, and I see Allison Eisenker back there and Tara.

Did you want to sign up?

Or are you just here just because you love being here in council chambers with us?

Yeah, we thought so.

I know.

Exactly.

I know it.

Okay.

So are you not interested in?

Said again?

Written comments?

Okay, great.

All right.

Anybody else who's in the audience that wants to speak?

Okay.

All right.

Moving right on back to Council Central staff.

Great.

The Seattle Department of Human Resources.

is the next department we're going to talk about.

The department sets a strategic direction for human resource services for city employees in all areas of city hiring, employment, benefits, and compensation, and they provide human resource services to 17 city departments and coordinate with other city departments in the administration of their services.

The proposed budget abrogates four positions and reduces one.

This is in part-time.

This is in recognition that The current efforts on HR consolidation are on hold, although they are moving forward with other strategies.

The budget adds two positions, a city investigator, which we talked about yesterday, to implement a central hub to coordinate the citywide response to anti-harassment complaints, and it makes permanent a training and development position.

that will work on the city's performance evaluation program so that performance evaluations can be a 360 including feedback on supervisors.

There is one council member proposal from council member Herbold that would add $150,000 in both years to restore funding for the career quest scholarship program.

Nothing to add.

Do you want to talk about it?

No.

Okay.

Please.

Thank you.

I just had a question, Patricia.

I'm sorry.

That investigator, the investigator position, maybe I, it's getting late.

I thought that resided in OCR, not HR.

So we said that's going to reside in HR?

The investigator position will be in SDHR, not OCR.

Okay.

Okay.

Got it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Seattle Information Technology Department is next.

As you'll see from the budget, there is approximately $278 million in the 2019 proposed budget.

As you all know, Seattle IT is largely an internal services provider, so their budget will go up and down based on largely the types of projects that they're working on for other city departments, which is why you see a lot of variance there.

The only notable or the only change that I've noted here, at least, is they have a large number of temporary and contracted positions, more than 60. And they propose some of their FTE changes are consolidating some of those into some permanent FTE with funding that they already have, and that hopefully will result in some efficiencies.

They're anticipating that because they won't have to retrain staff.

There's one council member proposal.

It's requesting a report analyzing free public broadband from council member Sawant.

Thank you.

Some of you might recall that in 2015, the then department of information technology had done a study in which they found on the viability of municipal broadband and they found, I mean it was a mixed study, they found some viable options, some were not.

I believe that the, I mean at least it's my opinion, that the mayor at that time, Mayor Murray's office, I think chose to take a very pessimistic view of it.

I thought that there were viable options in that study as well.

My idea would be that we would base the study on that, not to repeat it, but to take some new technological factors into account.

I'll say one thing in favor of pursuing this, that's a very strong one, is that at that time, the Chattanooga public municipal broadband system was fairly new, but three years on, we're seeing it really flourishing.

metropolitan area of the size of Seattle really should not be behind.

In that study in 2015, they also had presented ideas for a pilot project, you know, starting with a neighborhood for municipal broadband.

Around you know worth around five million dollars at that time.

I mean that will have to be re-evaluated now But in 2016 and 2017 through the people's budget movement my office had proposed That pilot project to be funded to the tune of five million dollars, you know, neither of the years comes the council members supported it, but I hope that we can do this updated study now to see if this can be, a pilot project can be funded.

And I know it can be funded, but you know, the study needs to be updated.

For one thing, I think it is important to investigate 5G, which you know, it's not a technology that's fully rolled out.

It's still underway.

It uses wireless technology instead of fiber optics.

But there's another thing that organizations like Upgrade Seattle, who have done a lot of research on this, have mentioned to us, you know, something like an adhesive technology to stick fiber on the roads rather than having to hang it from the poles, which presumably, from what I know, makes it much cheaper than laying regular fiber optic cable.

Not to say that that is the whole picture of their technology, but to give examples of why, given the innovations that are happening around us, it would be remiss not to have an updated report on this and what will be required to actually do a pilot project in a neighborhood.

Okay.

Doesn't look like there's any comments or questions.

The next department is the Department of Education and Early Learning, or DEEL, and it's responsible for developing and managing the city's education policies and programs, serving as the liaison between the city and educational institutions.

The department also administers the Families and Education Levy and the Seattle Preschool Program Levy, both of which will be expiring at the end of 2018. As you can see in the table, the 2019 proposed budget is approximately $103.6 million, which is an increase of about 29% relative to the 2018 adopted budget.

This increase is due to the proposed budget, assuming passage of the proposed seven-year families, education, preschool, and promise levy.

The executive is also proposing to increase staffing within DEEL from 75 to 98 FTE.

And of those new positions, about 14 of them, or exactly 14 of them, are to support expanded number of SPP classrooms, and four are to support a new accounting unit, which was a service that was previously provided by the Department of Neighborhoods.

And in addition to the levy related changes, the proposed budgets also include a number of funding changes related to the sweetened beverage tax, but those changes were already discussed at Monday's budget committee meeting.

And there are two council member proposals related to DEEL, the first of which comes from council members Mosqueda and Johnson.

And this item would add $100,000 to DEEL in 2019 to fund a study examining the barriers preventing an increase in the supply of available childcare in Seattle and the programs or policies that could overcome those barriers.

Good.

Council Member Muscata, do you want to speak to this?

Thank you very much.

I hope that I do this justice in Council Member Johnson's absence as well.

I'm very excited to again be bringing this forward for the Council's consideration and recognize that we've done a lot to try to address child care costs in this city and hopefully we will be able to do more in the future.

But what we know is that the child care costs in the city continue to grow.

There are roughly around 20 child care facilities in the downtown corridor alone.

and child care facilities, as I explained before in the earlier discussion, are still not enough to meet our current needs.

We also know that, especially for the 0 to 5 population, we have serious unmet needs for our population that works in the city and hopefully will come and live here in our downtown core as well.

We also have Seattle as the fastest growing and the biggest factor influencing wait times is that there's simply not enough spots open for all the children who need it because it's very difficult to open a child care center.

Crosscut covered this in 2014. The amount of space that you need for a home-based child care facility, the regulations required for a center-based facility have changed slightly.

But what we would like to do an analysis of is how we can do a better job of actually opening more facilities throughout Seattle, especially in our downtown core.

One of the things that I'm very interested in looking at is how to address the long wait times.

We heard testimony yesterday from Aaron Hite, who works with child care providers across Seattle, from SEIU 925, that many of the individuals who want child care are told to begin looking and putting their names on waitlist before parents even begin thinking about having a baby before conception begins.

And even then, I've heard stories of individuals who have put their names on waitlist before conception and have been on the waitlist 12 months, eight months afterwards, still without childcare options.

In 2014, the average cost of infant care in this county was $17,300.

Last month, I heard from a friend when they went to look at the downtown facility at Pipe place that infant care was ranging around $2,300 a month without any subsidies So the barriers are very real in terms of being able to open up your own facility if you want to create your own child care either in home or at center base and The barriers are real for workers who want to be able to have affordable child care and even for those who are able to pay full costs at this high rate.

The ability to find a spot to put your child in child care, especially between zero and three, is extremely challenging right here in Seattle.

So what we would do with this green sheet is, and again, this is an estimate, and if you have any additional information that you'd like to provide on our placeholder, we put an estimate placeholder forward of $100,000 so that Department of Early Learning could examine the barriers to increasing the supply of child care centers for family care in the city.

Looking at everything from the fact that we have some of the lowest wages for providers, we pay more to those who watch our We are looking at what we could potentially change here at the city versus what needs to change at the state level.

Some of the training and outreach hopefully will be addressed in the education levy coming up, but there's a lot more that we could potentially do to make sure that we're addressing both the supply side, making it easier for people to open childcare facilities, and the access and affordability side.

I want to thank all of the folks who have worked on this issue over the years and especially Hope that we can move forward in addressing this because this would not just be as we discussed before just for city employees But for the city at large Good Thank you.

Uh, and I want to just not go too deeply in this but I am really pleased that you are focusing on some of the child care issues and whether it's here for access and affordability or whether it's here in city hall, I know that I'm an entire generation past looking for childcare, but it was hard 40 years ago, and I'm very happy to support you in this work now.

Please.

Okay, the second item, Councilmember proposal for deal comes from Councilmember Herbold, and this would provide funding to Concord International Elementary School in South Park to sustain the Community Learning Center program for the 2018-19 school year.

The Community Learning Center program was previously operated by the YMCA and provided academic and physical education programs before and after school.

Does anybody want to speak to this?

You?

I do.

OK.

Thank you.

So the YMCA discontinued their school-based programming earlier this year.

At Concord, the CLC provided academic and physical education to both before and after school programs, specifically working with at-risk youth.

The YMCA left the Concord PTA $20,000 to help support programming in the transition period.

The idea is this would be one-time funding to support this program in the academic school year.

And we're working with Seattle Public Schools, James Bush, Director of Office and Family Community Partnerships to identify what the exact costs are for programming as well as a new provider.

There are several providers of this particular program.

The YMCA is not the only one, so we're trying to identify other potential partners and find out exactly what the fund gap is to pay for these services.

Okay.

Good.

Please proceed.

Good evening council members, Allie Panucci, Council Central staff.

I'm going to do a brief overview on the Office of Economic Development's budget and then discuss specific council member proposals.

The Office of Economic Development's work is focused in four primary program areas, supporting entrepreneurs, building healthy and vibrant neighborhood business districts, developing the talent of youth and adults, and investing in key industry sectors, including both international investment in the work of the Office of Film and Music.

OED's 2019 proposed budget is $10.8 million.

It's just a minor decrease from the 2018 adopted budget of 0.1% or $7,742.

Unless council members have questions about the budget overall, I'll move on to describing the council member proposals.

The first one is a proposal from Councilmember Herbold to add resources to implement a legacy business designation program.

This will build on the work that has been supported by the council over the last two years to look into and do some work with the community on what this program might look like.

Do you want to speak to it, please?

Sure, thank you.

So this proposal would provide some resources for OED to implement this legacy business designation and recognition program.

The council has provided resources towards the development of such a program both in the 2017 and 2018 budget.

And at the last sort of iteration of the two consultant reports that this council helped pay for, they identify some recommendations for next steps.

And so program elements could include both developing and launching a nomination and selection process.

developing a marketing and branding plan for the legacy business program, including public relations materials, and a potential marketing plan to promote legacy businesses, and the design of a legacy business program website.

In addition, we want to look at what technical assistance tools that OED has currently, that legacy businesses that are in targeted communities, particularly communities that are facing cultural displacement, which of the tools that they currently have could potentially benefit legacy businesses.

But we're also really interested in seeing if we can design some new tools.

to support legacy businesses.

We've been talking to some of the folks in town who have community development funds to talk about whether or not we can fashion some MOUs, Memoranda's Understanding, to identify, to allow Seattle to identify legacy businesses that then they would agree to take a look at for potential funding, assuming that those projects met their eligibility guidelines as well.

And again, we're not just looking specific, just generally at legacy businesses.

We're looking at legacy businesses that are culturally significant, small businesses in Seattle.

And again, businesses that are significant enough to a particular neighborhood that it sort of provides a bridge to that neighborhood's history and that neighborhood's culture.

And part of the, next steps would be actually creating the designation program and working with communities to identify what qualifications should be required in order to be considered and nominated as a legacy business.

And I think in this first iteration, Office of Economic Development has agreed that a pilot where we could identify one legacy business in each district would be a good place to start.

Okay.

The second proposal is also from Council Member Herbold.

This proposal would add $185,000 to support a non-profit organization that works with transgender and gender non-conforming residents to receive health care, legal, and employment assistance, such as the existing Seattle Transgender Economic Empowerment Program run by the Ingersoll Gender Center.

This program had one-time funding added in the 2018 budget, but there is no funding continued in the proposed 2019 or 2020 budget.

Thank you.

As we heard yesterday, the transgender community faces extremely high rates of violence and discrimination and are currently being explicitly targeted by the federal administration.

The 2015 U.S.

Transgender Survey, the largest survey examined examining the experiences of transgender people in the United States, identify that transgender people in Washington state face very high barriers to economic empowerment.

14% of transgender respondents in Washington were unemployed.

28% were living in poverty.

Respondents reported significant barriers to employment.

28% who held or applied for a job that year reported being fired, being denied a promotion, or not being hired for a job that they applied for.

The Seattle Transgender Economic Empowerment Program is the continuation of a pilot that started last year, run by the nonprofit the Ingersoll Gender Center.

And the pilot has really helped transgender and gender non-conforming residents to receive health care.

legal and employment assistance.

The contracted services of the program include legal clinics serving community members in both civil and criminal issues, one-on-one support and coaching meetings with community members focused on soft job skills, building out a set of resources to provide individual community members looking for support and finding a job and navigating resources, hosting focus groups, workshops, and supportive job fairs for employers, and providing access for gender-affirming clothing, and finally working with OED to incorporate the city of Seattle's racial equity toolkit in the formation of the pilot itself.

From April to August, the pilot provided direct one-on-one support to 117 people, provided civil legal service support to 45 people, financial assistance to 45 people, and in some of that service included amending identity documents and providing training and technical assistance to several housing providers and employers.

So this funding, as proposed, is intended to help mitigate some of the disparate impacts that this community has identified by funding direct services within transgender and gender non-conforming communities.

So may I ask a quick question?

Of course I support what we heard last night and Ingersoll seems to be doing a super job.

Is there a plan to coordinate this work with what we heard about the need for a focus community center or a center for transgender and the idea of having a senior senior living that we're supporting.

Is there a way of...

The other proposal is really focused a lot on housing services, specifically for seniors.

This is focused more on employment services, where we've worked with both communities asking for funding to make sure that there's not a duplication of services.

And, you know, really, there's a provider associated with the transgender economic employment program, whereas for the senior housing services, there's an interest in doing an RFP for those services, and an invitation for agencies to collaborate in responding to the RFP.

So, Ingersoll could be part of that collaboration in responding.

Good.

Well, I just I want to say thanks for your leadership on this to Councilmember Herbold.

I thought it was touching last night, the number of people who came and testified and just talked about their personal stories.

And so good job.

The final item for OED is a proposal from Council President Harrell.

This proposal would add $150,000 to OED to contract with an outside organization who provides services to support greater economic stability, security, and growth for small businesses, such as the Equity Empowerment Center at Tabor 100. The funding will provide resources for local community members who have historically been disadvantaged in accessing employment and educational opportunities.

Yeah, just in short, it's disadvantaged businesses that, according to our own study by the city of Seattle, they found that a technical center, and I'll call it an equity empowerment center because that's a term that the community had sort of come up with, a technical assistance center where plans can be drawn, where bids can be developed.

Industry players, local industry players can have offices and can have meeting spaces, etc.

Strong networking possibilities that this again could be a gem in the community to make sure that many of these businesses can take advantage of the opportunities of having larger robust businesses here in Seattle.

And there's really nothing like that right now taking place.

And again, it's I think it would be a smart investment and the OED has sort of talked about this idea for many years and now maybe time to bring it to fruition.

Please continue.

Tracy Ratzliff, Council of Central Staff, moving to the Office of Housing.

The Office of Housing has an appropriation in 2019 of $69 million, and in 2020, $69 million.

This is an indication that there were not a lot of significant changes or minor, there were only minor changes to the Office of Housing budget.

And I documented in the memo there a couple of those changes, $25,000 general fund reduction for a position that they just essentially are shifting funding to some of the existing levy and other administrative funds that can cover the position cost.

And then some use of fund balance from admin cost to do to fund some legal services that they need for a number of their loan closings, as well as some outreach and engagement efforts to the community about some of the city's existing housing programs and potential new programs, and then some additional staff training activities.

Moving to the Councilmember proposals.

The first is $250,000 in 2019 and in 2020 for capacity building for development of community-owned housing.

This is Councilmember O'Brien's proposal.

And I think Councilmember Musqueda has a question.

It's a very quick question.

Embedded in the overall budget for the Office of Housing, is it safe to check my memory that there was not any money included from a possible sale of the Mercer Mega Block?

There's no dollars assumed in there.

No, because that sale is not anticipated to happen until 2019 and we don't know what

Is going to be generated so that'll show up in a supplemental likely or even the possibility of a master lease So it's it the budget does not make that assumption.

I think that's an important thing to note.

Thank you Thank you, please continue now back to councilman proposal number one

So this builds on, so this would appropriate a quarter million dollars in 2019, 2020 for capacity building for community ownership projects.

This builds on 150,000 that we appropriated last year.

We wanna make sure that communities have the support to create community-led housing, so this can be a variety of home ownership options including limited equity co-ops or other ownership opportunities.

The thing I want to remind folks here is there's a fair amount of sophistication that's often required to put together a project from the community perspective here.

And partnering with folks like Homestead Community Land Trust, who then go out and partner with local communities, I believe in the Duwamish in the central area last year, Africatown.

to help build the capacity in the community so that the individuals are ready for opportunities that come along for ownership.

And I think this, the investments we made last year, we have really good feedback on how, or this year, how those went and would love to keep that going in future years.

Next.

Item number two is $80,000 in one-time funds for outreach activities for the Office of Housing Programs.

Council Member O'Brien.

Thank you.

This and the next one are both proposals that came out from the recommendations from the Racial Equity Toolkit.

we did on ADUs.

First of all, thanks for all of you who came to that presentation.

Part of the Racial Equity Toolkit was, as we typically do, we sit down with community members who are impacted by our policy decisions and have conversations with them.

The next one we're gonna talk about here is an idea that was brought up about using an existing program or weatherization program for low-income households.

to expand that to help with housing.

And one of the feedback we got from a number of organizations and individuals was you have a weatherization program for low-income households.

And so what we heard kind of across the board was there are a lot of folks that are interested in that program but didn't know about it before.

So the idea was why don't we add a little bit of outreach money to the Office of Housing to promote this amazing program that already exists so that more folks who are eligible to take advantage of it can do that.

Please keep going.

Moving to the next item is a statement of legislative intent that would look at the possibility of expanding the home repair loan program to include a new pilot program regarding adding habitable space in the houses of low-income individuals to help them stay in their homes.

Council Member O'Brien.

Council Member O'Brien, just before you go on to that one, on the home, on the preceding proposal, I thought most of the weatherization money and those kinds of things that were from the utility, not from housing though.

Like the City Light has their weatherization program that subsidizes them.

So the Office of Housing has a weatherization program that's funded not only by the city, but also by the state and the federal government.

And it's for single family home.

I don't know what City Light operates, but this is a program that has been operated by the Office of Housing for many, many years.

So I do know that for years City Light did have a program, so maybe it got phased out.

So I was just sort of curious as to if City Light had a similar program and if we're reinvesting.

So I know I'm positive on that, but now I'm going back, to be honest with you, about 20 years ago.

So, okay, I didn't realize this from Office of Housing.

I thought it was from the City Light side.

But to be clear, City Light provides funds for that program at Office of Housing.

I think it might be that Office of Housing might be the one administering the city life funding.

So the third one here, the expansion of the home repair loan program.

The idea behind this slide would be to set up a pilot program to use essentially the same infrastructure we have with the home repair program.

to go a little further.

So this would be for folks that wanted to convert something to perhaps a mother-in-law unit or even just a bedroom to create more housing opportunities.

And the Office of Housing believes with the existing resources, they could do a pilot that would cover, I think, five to 10 homes next year.

And so this slide would essentially ask them to explore that pilot that I think they're prepared to do.

Okay, moving on to item number five, there would be a $48 million, oh, I'm sorry, item number four, yes.

This would be a $250,000 general fund appropriation in 2019 and 2020 for the Home and Hope Project support.

This is Council Member Gonzalez and Mosqueda.

Okay, which one of you wants to take this on?

Councilmember Gonzales This is just I think we've talked about this a lot this is continuation of funding that we had done in I think the 2016 and 17 budget and there were carryover dollars that were finished up this year so this is just as Tracy described an opportunity for us to continue to fund a reputable qualified organization that is a non-profit organization to continue to work hand-in-hand with regional partners and with non-profit housing developers to continue the design, scoping, and prep work that is necessary in order to be considered for office of housing funding.

Now moving to number five.

Item number five would include a $48 million general fund appropriation in 2019 and in 2020 for affordable housing development.

This is Council Member Sawant's proposal.

I'll let you know.

And actually, if you don't mind, can we, can you also introduce item number six because I have handouts that include both.

So item number six would actually be an appropriation of $460 million for affordable housing to the Office of Housing that would be funded by a bond and it would also include a general fund appropriation of about $36 million in 2019, 2020 and beyond to support the debt service on that $280 million bond.

Thank you.

So this morning,

The People's Budget Movement had a press conference on this issue, and I was joined by members from the Tenants Union of Washington State, The Real Change, another organization called Zero Hour Seattle, which is a youth climate movement, Socialist Alternative, Democratic Socialists of America, and the May 1st Action Committee for El Comite, and Nicholsville, who were all there to support this memo that I've just handed out to you all, which highlights obviously things that you all know because everybody on this dais talks about it all the time about the housing crisis and The point that was made by all the speakers and the point that is made in this memo is that after the majority of this council repealed the Amazon tax, and while the repeal was taking place, everybody on this dais said, well, we know we're going to have a plan B, we're going to have a regional solution.

I mean, there were various promises that were made.

But now, four months later, we don't have a solution.

We don't have an alternative.

One table, the so-called regional solution, regional initiative hasn't resulted in any real avenues.

And also, it's important to recognize what we're talking about.

We're not talking about making marginal shifts in the problem of affordable housing.

We're talking about making a major shift in affordable housing, which is what even the reduced $48 million legislation that did get voted on for about a month before it was repealed, even at that reduced level, it would have been something that the city needed desperately.

Let's also keep in mind that this is sort of a problem that encapsulates virtually every working and middle class family in this city.

The Seattle Times reported that among very poor working families, nearly 23,000 households are extremely rent burdened, meaning they pay more than half their income in rent.

So these are families that are one rent increased or one small financial crisis away from losing their housing, not to mention all the community members who are already facing the brunt of homelessness.

So given all of this, it is important that the city really fulfill its leadership because that's what we've been elected for, to lead.

on providing a major solution on the affordable housing crisis.

And unfortunately, even though in the state of the city address back in February, the new mayor Jenny Durkin said, quote, first we must address the crisis of affordability, the growing economic disparities and homelessness.

This is a crisis that threatens the soul of our city, unquote.

Well, this was a statement made by a mayor who has now released a budget in which only 8% of the $5.9 billion budget is allocated for essentials such as health, homelessness, and human services, and affordable housing.

In the middle of an unprecedented crisis, the mayor's proposal budgets $50 million to build affordable housing, not a penny more than the previous year.

And if you look at the graph that I've handed out, it shows you how in the whole budget, if you look at the money for affordable housing, it is 0.8%.

And those are no discretionary dollars.

These are dollars that were already allocated.

If you look at the flip side from the graphs, there's a table that is reproduced from the mayor's proposed budget in which you can see that as far as the Office of Housing is concerned and the multifamily lending program, the table at the bottom, it shows how the 2018 adopted and 2019 proposed dollars have a zero change for affordable housing.

This is absolutely not acceptable to the large numbers of people who are facing this crisis.

That is why the People's Budget Movement is saying it's not just my office, it's a number of organizations and individuals and activists who are saying that we need to do far better than this.

And if you repeal the tax, then you have to come up with something else or else put the tax back in place.

I wanted to make A couple of points in addition to all of this.

The right wing and big business, when they were fighting against the Amazon tax, they persistently repeated a lie, which we all know was a lie, which is that we don't know what this money is going to be allocated to.

While they were completely false about that, I wanted to reiterate that here it's in black and white.

We want 100% of this to be used in building new units of publicly owned, permanently affordable housing.

If council members have other ideas to raise roughly this much money every year or more to fund affordable housing, I am perfectly happy to sign on to that.

But inaction or doing very little and then politicians patting themselves on the back is not acceptable.

So we do, we do, I take this extremely seriously.

And I hope that other council members take it extremely seriously, and taking it seriously doesn't mean talking endlessly about it, but actually showing in dollars what we're going to do.

And that's, I wanted to clarify, it is not about how many minutes you use up talking about affordable housing, but what actual dollars you're willing to allocate through a progressive option.

In the memo, you can see that option number two is obviously the Amazon tax.

In my view, that is the best thing because we have the most regressive tax system in the nation.

Mathematically speaking, building affordable housing is not possible without taxing big business.

However, because that tax was repealed, my staff has analyzed some numbers to create another option.

It's not my preferred option, but we want to be operating in good faith and producing different options.

And option number one in the memo.

highlights how the council can make affordable housing a priority by eliminating certain items that are either less urgent than housing or in some cases actually harmful.

So if you look at the table in the memo, it talks about how in ending the sweeps of homeless people, can generate a significant amount of funds.

Cutting the new computers that have been allocated for cop cars, that can be removed.

The study on tolls on city streets needs to be used for something better because tolls are regressive taxes, and so on and so forth.

And I know that there are items there that you will personally dislike, which is capping executive salaries and capping mayor and council member salaries.

If you dislike that, then let's fight for a big business tax.

But I just wanted to clarify that the calculations we used to come up with these numbers are cutting mayor and council member salaries to the area median income, $70,200.

Our constituents live on far, far less than that.

As you all know, I already take the average worker's wage, which is much less than $70,000.

But these are options.

The third option obviously is, as you have seen, I'm sure is, For the city to take out a bond, if the city took a 480 million bond, the city could up front build 3 to 5,000 homes.

And regardless of which option you use, it will create jobs as well, unionized construction jobs.

Many of these numbers are estimates, and if council members are interested in pursuing these more seriously, then I'm totally happy to work further on this.

You know, we may see the numbers change a little bit here and there.

based on how deeper we go into this, but this is an initial analysis that we are providing, and I have Ted Verdone from my staff policy analyst and my staff here to help us with it because he is the one who worked the most on analyzing the numbers than central staff, so I just wanted to make sure that I don't put all the burden on central staff who may not be very familiar with this.

The last thing I'll say is that after Many of you repealed the Amazon tax.

After that happened, despite that, the movement's message from Seattle was so strong that two cities in California are going ahead with voter initiatives on similar taxes, taxing employee hours.

of big business only, not small businesses.

So there's a voter initiative called Prop C in San Francisco that is in effect now for the November ballot.

San Francisco has the seventh largest homeless population in the country.

This measure, if passed, would raise $300 million a year.

and it would fund short-term shelter, permanent affordable housing, mental health services.

Interestingly, even though the vast majority of big business is predictably completely opposed to it and, you know, spending money to try and defeat it, Mark Benioff, who's the CEO of Salesforce, which is the online software company, which is San Francisco's largest private employer, has broken from the PAC and is now strongly supporting this Prop C. And he's a billionaire.

He has committed $2 million to help Prop C. I am all for billionaires helping taxing big business, and this is something that has happened in San Francisco.

Mountain View, California has a measure P on the November ballot.

It is dubbed the Google tax like we call this the Amazon tax.

The City Council in Mountain View voted unanimously in June to place the measure P on the November ballot.

It is a similar tax except it will be mostly used for transportation infrastructure.

I mention all this to say that Other cities are moving forward based on the inspiration from the movement here.

However, here, most of the politicians at the hall have stalled the movement, unfortunately.

And so here is another chance we have.

These are all valid options.

We can pick any of these options.

And I really urge council members to support one of these so that we can make a real headway on affordable housing.

Madam Chair.

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So let's talk about some things that we've already discussed this year.

What we've already discussed is that everybody here has underscored the importance of getting additional dollars for housing.

As the Housing Chair, I did not have the chance to engage in a conversation with you or anyone from your staff.

I didn't have a chance to see the press release until 6 a.m.

this morning.

I didn't have a chance to see this proposal until it was sent out 15 minutes to 11 a.m.

Let's talk about details because details matter.

We had a detailed spending plan that would have been funded, you are correct, had we been able to keep the EHT in place.

But details matter here as well, because the proposal that I see in front of us does not have the type of details that would allow for us to actually get the dollars in hand to fulfill our commitment to build the housing we need.

There is no one who wants to build housing more than the people who have come before us time and time again and have asked us to pass a comprehensive resolution that gets us dollars in hand.

What I want to have is an actual package that results in money so that we can build the housing, not something that doesn't pencil out.

And so without the benefit of having had the chance to meet with you or your staff or central staff or perhaps anybody who's been working on this to make sure that it pencils out, I'm not sure that the dollars here make sense.

There is not a specific dedicated revenue source allocated that appears to me from the documents provided that would allow us to securely bond here.

What I and council member Herbold presented on Monday was the ability to bond against a very small revenue source, granted a small revenue source that doesn't get us the dollars that we need, but actually could begin building that drumbeat so that we could get the dollars in hand.

My staff has looked at the details to see what it would take to potentially allow us to roll out something that was EHT-like to the scale of EHT that would get us not just 48, not just 150, but more, like you're seeing in San Francisco and other places, something more along the lines of what LA has done to the tune of $1.2 billion, issues that were put on the ballot that have required people to come together, have hard conversations, build a coalition, and pass something.

Now, we did that.

Yes, we did that.

And we've all expressed our frustration that we don't have those dollars in hand.

I think what we need to do is allow for people to be at the table, have conversations, and identify what policy solutions exist in this year and also in the next few years.

My staff as well has put together a comprehensive memo.

We've been looking to try to find comprehensive solutions, because I won't lie, a bond against $5 million that gets us $40 to $65 million, even if I looked at two revenue sources, even if I was able to pull in $130 million, that would be a drop in the bucket in terms of what we need.

So there is no one who has repeated that more, but what I'm trying to suggest is that we need a longer term solution that allows us to build that coalition and to actually create the type of initiative that we see in San Francisco and in other cities.

I'm proud that Seattle has continued to lead the way in terms of $15 an hour, secure scheduling, wage theft protections, making sure that workers are on the front line pushing for more.

And this is absolutely an issue that I think has continued to ripple through our country.

And people are standing up and asking for greater shared responsibility so we can have greater shared prosperity.

But unless we actually talk to each other and figure out what that table looks like, then we don't have a proposal that actually pencils out.

So I have a few questions.

And these are not directed necessarily at you, Mr.

You can, you can.

It's totally fair to have questions.

You can call him Ted.

Just to respond to you though.

I just have a general bonding question.

You can have all questions.

That is why Ted is here because we are happy to answer questions and the questions that don't have answers can be answered.

I don't think this is an issue of anybody hiding anything.

We have laid out the initial analysis for this.

If there is interest from the council, I'm absolutely happy to work further on it.

I'm not exactly sure what it is you're complaining about, Council Member Musqueda.

In reality, we brought this forward because we want to be able to work together on this, but we need to move it forward in a big way.

And as far as bringing people together, we have brought a lot of community members together, which is why this memo has seen life.

It wouldn't have seen life if it hadn't had a lot of support from a wide range of housing advocates and homeless advocates.

So let's put that aside and let's actually get the questions answered.

And I think that the broad support is shared.

The broad support is real.

When we ask people, do you want additional revenue?

Should the largest corporations be paying their fair share?

It is absolutely going to elicit support.

But when I ask folks who have been involved in some initial conversations about this, what the details were, they were not in depth.

I want to make sure that the- We can do in depth.

I'm just going to ask a few questions here to see if we can get there.

Have have you had the chance central staff to take a look at the possibility of bonding as suggested in option number Number three Do you mean take out a bond to fund social housing like has been done for other major projects a 480 million dollar bond That could be paid off over time.

I think until we get some opportunity to have you take a look at this and for us to figure out if it's a secure funding stream, I'm going to need to.

We are looking at the proposal as we received it as well the day before yesterday or maybe actually this morning, I'm not sure.

But we are looking at the proposed funding sources to see whether they are things that could be used for a bond issuance.

In my conversations with you, as we've been working on the two bonding proposals that we have been evaluating and discussing openly here with other council members, the concern that came up from the bonding conversations that we initially had is that there does need to be a secure revenue source.

We need to make sure that that bond is something that can be bonded against and will yield the dollars over time and that we have the funds to pay back interest.

Correct?

Correct.

Okay.

And sorry, on your question, unless you want to...

All I'm signaling is that this is not any concerns that I have about the need, because I, like you, and many of the other council members have expressed the deep need for these dollars.

The $50 million that we could have raised would have been a drop in the bucket.

I'm expressing frustration that I'm not sure that when we put something out that doesn't pencil out we have an actual plan.

I don't know that it doesn't pencil out.

This is just an initial suggestion and so if you would let Ted respond to some of those concerns maybe we can start getting that ball rolling.

I'm gonna object to that and I think you know the reality is is that we are here to hear from central staff which are independent analysts that serve all of the council members.

I don't think it's appropriate to bring.

I don't agree.

I don't think it's appropriate for us to bring out our staff who work directly for us To answer questions that all council members have but I appreciate that you can make them available afterwards But I I don't I don't I think it's completely unorthodox and I would ask the chair to it is unorthodox Yes, but it is these are just technical questions that is not going to advocate for anything He's just going to answer he is your staff member and he is he is loyal to your office And I appreciate that and that is appropriate

But here is the contradiction, right?

You all say, and Council Member Skira said this again and again just now, that you all support affordable housing.

So why would it bother you that he is my staff member?

If we all share that goal, then in that sense he's responding to all our questions from all of us and he's just going to respond on the bonding question and maybe other technical aspects.

I'm not sure why you would restrict yourself from knowing that.

And the only reason I asked him to come here is because he is the one who has worked most closely.

You know, we're not hiding anything from Central Staff.

Central Staff Director is here as well.

And we will be working together.

This is not the end product.

This is the beginning discussion.

Why wouldn't we, if your staff member wanted to clarify something, I wouldn't have any problem with that at all.

Council Member Sawant, the concern that I have is that it is the last day of Issue Brief.

and tomorrow we turn in green sheets.

If this were a beginning conversation that allowed for us to ask these questions and really identify the two bonding revenue ideas that I had, the other possibilities of this three-year plan that we've been working on for us to come up with a combined idea, that would feel different.

What this feels like is when comments are made about let's not just Talk and let's let's have some action we in order for us to have action that we can all move forward and no Pencils out we do need to talk to each other and we do need to figure out that right path We are talking right now, and I do not agree with you that this is some sort of last stage We don't vote on the budget until the Thursday before Thanksgiving We have a lot of time

And with all due respect to you all council members, you are not the only people who need to know about affordable housing.

There's a whole community out there that we are working with on affordable housing.

This is the initial analysis that we have come up with.

On the face of it, I'm a little puzzled as to why you would not want to hear more about it because if you do actually want to do something, then why wouldn't you at least be intellectually curious?

Why don't you have intellectual curiosity about it?

And I feel like these are all just reasons for you to not take these options seriously.

We have ideas that we can work on.

Why don't we just discuss it?

I'm happy to be proven wrong on this or that and have another option.

But we are talking about doing a major shift.

So let's talk about it.

Fine.

Let's actually do it.

I have no objections to that.

I'm going to say thank you.

I'm going to call the question here on this.

And Council Member Sawant, I will have to say that I responded and reacted to this much like what Council Member Mosqueda was describing.

We seriously have been trying for a year to talk about alternatives, but I don't think it is right to say that we're going to go to one group of people and say, how are you going to raise that tax when the people who are going to be paying it aren't really included in the conversation?

Do you mean Amazon?