Seattle City Council Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans & Education Committee 61219

I'm going to need you to.

Good morning.

Today is Wednesday, June 12, 2019. It is 9.30 a.m.

This is our regularly scheduled meeting of the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans, and Education Committee.

I'm Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez, chair of this committee, and I am assuming that I will be joined by some of my colleagues later this morning.

So if there is no objection, and I'm the only one here to object to the agenda, the agenda will be adopted.

Seeing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

There are two items on today's agenda.

First, we will hear and possibly vote on Council Bill 119539, which relates to the countywide emergency medical services EMS levy that will be up for renewal on the ballot for King County voters at the next general election, which is November 5th of 2019. This council bill would authorize the mayor to enter into an interlocal agreement with King County and would further authorize King County to place on the ballot for the general election on November 5th, 2019. Secondly, we will hear from the Seattle Department of Education and Early Learning on their RSGI change team presentation.

As usual, we always begin all of our meetings with public comment.

There is no one signed up for public comment and there are no members in the audience, so we will go ahead and close out.

the public comment period and go ahead and begin with items of business on the agenda.

So we are missing the executive in terms of the presentation for this particular issue, and it is their presentation.

So I'm going to go ahead and have Roxanna read this into the record, and then I'll hand it over to Greg for some filibustering.

Agenda Item 1, Council Bill 119539, an ordinance relating to emergency medical services, authorizing execution pursuant to the Interlocal Cooperative Act of an agreement with King County regarding the imposition and allocation of property tax revenues generated by a six-year voter-approved King County-wide tax levy for emergency medical services.

For briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you, Roxanna.

And lucky for you, Dr. Noble, we had introductory remarks to make, but let this be a lesson to you that I do start on time.

I'm very impressed and duly noted.

Yeah.

So we will go ahead and begin with introductions, and then I'll hand it over for a walkthrough of the presentation.

I believe there is a PowerPoint presentation that is not yet projecting, but Roxanna will help you with that while we are doing introductions.

Greg Doss, Council Central staff.

Ben Noble, city's budget director.

Great.

And now we have the presentation up on the screen.

So should we just hand it over to you, Ben?

Yeah.

So a relatively straightforward piece of legislation that would be the city's role in placing on the ballot for November a levy that would be a countywide levy for emergency medical services.

This would be a renewal of a levy that has been in place for I think several decades actually.

The most recent one was approved in 2014. It was a six-year levy and the proposal now would be essentially to renew that levy.

So this is a countywide property tax measure.

Unlike many of the countywide measures, this one is...

from the city's perspective, distributes the revenues entirely proportional to the assessed value, so entirely proportional to where the money is generated.

The city then receives that money, and I'll explain in a moment, to support our overall emergency medical service response, so essentially the fire department.

At this point, something like 80 plus percent of their calls are for emergency services, so that is essentially how the city provides that service.

So we take that in as general revenue for that purpose.

As described here, there's an advisory task force that helps determine the potential scope and size of the levy.

For the rest of the county, that ends up being more negotiation about the actual use of the revenues and the purposes for them.

For the city, we get our money and use it essentially as we choose.

So we're less involved.

in the discussions and negotiations about how the rest of the county money is allocated across the various fire districts and cities.

For us, it's essentially a revenue source.

So again, this gives you an idea at a summary level of what has been proposed by that group and what we are seeking your approval for in terms of placing this measure on the ballot.

So currently, we've, The six-year levy will generate, through the end of this year, $284 million over six years for the city.

As you can see here, the property tax rate has averaged about 27 cents.

The proposed levy would raise considerably more, about 20% more overall, and you can see it is slightly higher, at a slightly lower actually, property tax rate.

What's going on there is that overall property values are increasing, so in order to generate even more money, you can actually do it at a lower rate.

In terms of the average household, the property tax increase average for the renewed levy compared to the previous levy would be, again, about 20 percent higher.

I think it's important to understand what do we do with this money and how does it fit into the overall budget for Seattle's services in this space.

So what you can see here is a comparison just over the course of the previous levy, so the year before and now year current.

what has changed in terms of the revenues that we get from the EMS levy on an annual basis, and what the city's overall adopted budget is for the fire department.

So the point being here that although the levy has increased and will increase again upon renewal, assuming voter approval, the costs that we incur for emergency services actually has increased by considerably more than that.

So although voters will be asked, for additional resources and might perhaps expect some very large discrete increase in services, what's really happening is they're helping to support the ongoing increase in cost of providing those services.

That said, I would note that there have been some notable increases in the level of service that we provide, particularly in the emergency services space.

So over the past few years, we've added two aid cars, And are working now on a pilot to add a vehicle that would serve a comparable function but in a more targeted way.

So, and at the same.

That's the low acuity.

Exactly.

And at the same time, the overall costs, including labor costs of operating the fire department have increased.

And as you can see here, increased considerably over that time period.

And looking forward, we expect, again, inflationary plus increases for labor and other costs.

So.

So, for instance, in this particular case, you'll see that in 2019, I'm using the pointer here, we'll receive about 53, almost $53 million from a levy that will increase, again, if voters approve, to $68 million, so a notable increase.

But again, over this same time period, our costs have increased by yet again more than that.

So we have assumed in the endorsed budget, so when we presented the endorsed budget to you last fall and then actually more recently gave you a revenue forecast update, we have assumed the EMS levies in that base revenue forecast.

They were not adopted law, but our experience is that with a very high probability that this measure passed countywide at 60 plus percent last time.

So we have a high level of confidence that the revenues will in fact come through.

So we have been counting on these revenues.

We've been counting on these revenues to support the anticipated increases in emergency services that we've experienced and that we will experience.

Ben, what led to the reduction from the point in time that we were projecting the 27 cents to the 0.265?

What happened was that overall property value average property values in the county increased enough that in order to generate the same amount of money, you could come in with a lower rate.

And the bodies that were making this recommendation were sensitive to the property tax impacts and not wanting to generate more revenue than they had negotiated towards and otherwise intended.

So, in Council Central staff's memo, which was written by Greg, on his page 3, it notes that in the event that the renewed EMS levy is approved by county voters, City Budget Office indicates that the $2.9 million difference would be backfilled with general fund and that the difference would be addressed in the overall picture of the Mayor's 2020 proposed budget.

So, I just want to make sure that I understand that there were two things.

There was both a decision to generate a little bit less revenue and there's also this other impact.

So we had initially thought that they were going to go for a higher rate and a higher revenue, overall revenue take.

Ultimately they decided, I forget the number, previous.

So as part of the adjusted revenue forecast, we were acknowledging that this, compared to what we had done for the endorsed, slightly less revenue from this source, and we'll have to balance towards have to balance the 2020 budget from the endorsed now to the proposed with a little less revenue on this front.

So I guess I'm not, I'm not understanding if, if, is there going to be, is there going to, I guess I'm trying to understand, is it still going to be 71.2 or is in the mayor's proposed budget in 2020 going to reflect $68.3 million for this particular item?

It will be, when we propose the budget, it will be the correct number.

The 68.3?

Correct.

Okay, so we're modifying the overall endorsed budget for 2020 to reflect the actual revenue that we anticipate receiving from this levy.

Correct.

So it's not going to be a situation where we're getting these levy revenue dollars and then we're adding additional money from the general fund?

No, I mean, again, the way we think about this revenue source is that it's essentially a revenue source to the general fund.

We spend well more on the fire department than the levy generates.

So we have been- Got it.

I'm going to call it back-filling or front-filling, if you will, with the general fund on this side for a very long time.

So we have always considered part of the overall revenue forecast for the city.

So the overall revenue forecast for the general fund, based on these late decisions or later decisions, there's a little less money coming in from this levy.

There may be more or less money coming in from other sources.

So that's how.

And then in the attachment two, I think it's the fiscal note, it's the, 2020-2025 EMS strategic plan and levy financial plan.

So it's a spreadsheet for those of you who are looking for it.

So it lays out revenues and then it has expenditures.

And then there's a category that is specific to Seattle and it says projected.

There's a line there.

There's proportion, projected King County EMS levy.

And then there's the third line that says projected under collection, and that's in the negative across the board for a total of $6.5 million.

Can you just, there wasn't a lot of meat or explanation as to what that actually means, so I was hoping that you'd be able to shed some light on that.

It's revenues lost, it's essentially delinquent taxpayers at some level, right?

So it's money, so we, you know, if you take the total assessed value and you do the math, you'd get to one particular number.

But experience tells us that we won't collect, you know, we'll collect 99% of it, but not 100% of it.

So it's a recognition that, and over, those revenues are, some portion of those are paid sometimes in arrears over time, so they flow in.

But it's a recognition that we won't get, the math isn't quite as simple as the tax rate times the assessed value because you're not going to collect every penny.

So under collection is literally the inability to collect the assessed property tax value from property owners who live in King County who are assessed the the levy but aren't yet paying it.

Correct and and there may be some folks who are have reason to protest or have you know there's some I don't I have to dig deeper to know that the specifics but the underlying effect of which is real, is that we don't collect every penny that the math would suggest you can get.

Okay, great.

That's all I had, because again, so I mean, at a high level again, which in order for this measure to get to the ballot, the county requires the approval of the jurisdictions within the county, so in this case, the city.

We've worked with the county in developing the proposal.

It provides a basic revenue stream to support the fire department, and we strongly support moving forward to the ballot to provide the revenues for those essential services.

And on this, I want to go back to the spreadsheet because it lays out in very general terms what the anticipated expenditures are going to be.

And so, of course, it talks about the two lines of business that I think have ordinarily and historically been funded through this levy, the first being the advanced life support services and the second being the basic life support services, both Seattle and in King County.

Notably, under the basic life support services, there's a new line of the mobile integrated healthcare, which says it's King County as opposed to just Seattle.

So can you shed some light for me on that?

I could shed a little bit.

I may rely on others.

Okay.

Essentially, again, what I was describing is that for the Seattle portion, we get our share of revenues and we do our thing, if you will.

And as you know, one of the things we're looking at actually is a mobile integrated health approach.

So again, the low acuity.

So on the county side, so they're again providing service outside the city and they're negotiating between and among the cities and the fire districts.

They are also, so they have set aside some funding for moving into a comparable space recognizing that this is the issues that we see that they see as well in terms of some set of folks who are calling 911 are really not necessarily in an urgent care situation but need to need medical services of a form.

But in terms of the Seattle expenditures, there's nothing in the levy language that prohibits us from using those levy dollars and revenue sources for the same thing, even though it's not called out in the spreadsheet.

Absolutely not, yeah.

Okay.

I mean, again, in my mind, this is the simplest, and arguably from an equities perspective, the most successful arrangement we have on a countywide levy.

The city gets the money generated in the city to use for emergency purposes as we determine.

I don't want to overstate that as well.

I mean, the fire department is in close coordination with its regional partners, you know, mutual aid agreements and currently planning around the communication system that they all use.

So, but from a governance perspective, we're self-determining.

Okay, great.

Do you have any questions or Greg did you want to add some?

Yeah, I just wanted to add one quick thing in that there are some timelines that the committee and the Seattle City Council will have to meet in order to get the ordinance passed to King County in time to give them authorization to put it on the ballot and those are at the end of the staff report, but essentially the quick version is It would be best if the committee passed it out today.

The committee could pass it out at a special meeting.

The final sort of drop dead deadline is the 24th of June for the Seattle City Council to pass this.

Anything after that would require special authorizations.

Okay, and my understanding is that this proposal actually is generated through a task force that was previously created that had representation from the city of Seattle, but also from the other cities in King County and King County itself, and they sort of spent a year working through the process and identifying the plan that's before us.

So that leads me to the conclusion that there isn't a lot of flexibility in terms of what the city council can actually do in terms of moving levers related to the proposed levy.

So I'm just looking to you, Ben, for confirmation or rebuke of that perception.

That's correct, and again, as I've already noted, I think we've done very well.

It's the same arrangement we've had historically, so I don't want to say that we suddenly cut a new deal, and I don't have a piece of paper to wave in front of the press about this is my new deal.

But this is the deal, once again, it's a longstanding arrangement that serves the city well.

As you described, it's been worked together with our regional partners, so we are standing with them as we move to the ballot and ask the voters for a significant amount of funding to provide, again, this really critical service.

Okay.

Any questions?

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Can you remind me how the folks at the Teamsters 763 who provide the services such as basic life support and advanced life support are folded into here and whether or not we've built into the levy or the folks who did the analysis over the last year have built into the levy The possibility of a need for increasing wages is that part of this is or is there an additional general fund or?

funding from the city and county that we would pull together to address the underfunding of those contracts?

I did not partake directly in the discussions and the negotiations.

So I don't know that that issue specifically came up.

Again, what I was describing is that this money will flow to the city, to the general fund with the restriction that it has to be used for emergency services.

So ultimately, if you determine that an appropriate use of that money is to provide additional wages to the basic life support, just at a high level here for the public, Advanced life support, so if you're having a heart attack, if you're in an immediate serious medical emergency, you're transported by the Seattle Fire Department, some good call 911. If you have something less significant, I'm going to speculate here, a broken leg or something, and need transport, that's provided by a private service and that's the basic life support.

And it's the contract that the city has with AMR and the wages that it pays that you're referring to.

So currently we don't provide a direct general fund subsidy to that contract, at least in the abstract we could.

I believe these funds would be eligible for that use, although again I want to emphasize that currently we're counting on these revenues and they're in our forecast for 2020 and have been in our forecast for 2020. to support the, if you will, the advanced life support side of this, the SFD, the fire department's basic function.

So we don't have an obvious additional monies to direct towards that, but again, that's a question of overall general fund priorities and where we ultimately choose to invest those flexible dollars.

And a follow-up question to that.

So in the basic life support services, assuming that the EMTs who provide services through AMR or American Medical Response as the contractor, do we have a general sense of what the projected increase in wages or compensation is from previous years or previous levy to these proposed out years?

Well, again, this levy does not dictate that contract in any way.

So this provides resources we could use for that contract, but it's not assumed.

Exactly.

There is a separate contract that is negotiated between the fire department and AMR.

Correct.

And it contains the details that Council Member Mosqueda is asking about, correct?

Exactly.

To date and in our projections, we don't have the general fund providing subsidy into that contract.

So when you, if you break your leg and you are so transported, you get a bill for those services or your insurance company gets a bill for those services.

The city does not step in.

The reason we negotiate the contract with AMR is at least twofold, and the fire chief can give you further description about this.

One is the continuity of care, if you will, so we can do a smooth handoff.

So our firefighters and the folks at AMR work together and know how to take a patient and transfer jurisdiction if you will from one to the other.

The other is to ensure the level of service and the degree of coverage we have so that when you call 9-1-1 and it turns out you only have a broken leg that you don't have to wait too long for the AMR ambulance to arrive.

So it's not a contract where we're paying, but it is a contract where we're providing essentially a franchise agreement, exclusive right to operate within the city, again, for the reasons I just described, to ensure smooth handoffs and effective coverage across the city.

So just to clarify, to reiterate what I think I heard, so obviously we do have a contract that we have initiated with AMR for the basic services that the folks at Teamsters 763 provide as EMS providers, but, or EMTs, I'm sorry, but we don't necessarily in that contract to dictate how much of this percent of this levy would go to that.

That would be, as I think I'm hearing you say, a policy decision at a later point if we decided we wanted to do additional general fund for those workers specifically to enhance or to fund the contract that is generated on it.

Again, this particular color of money, if you will, could be used for that purpose.

Or alternatively, we could use general funding.

It wouldn't really matter because we're already spending on this service well more than is generated.

We're spending well more general funding than this levy provides.

So.

Overall.

Exactly.

Just given the fire department budget.

And the primary thing that the fire department does is provide emergency medical service at this stage.

Sure.

Yeah.

Right.

So I mean I think the big takeaway for me is that this is a mechanism, this is sort of a stable mechanism by which to continue to generate much needed revenue in order for the city and the Seattle Fire Department in particular to continue to provide emergency medical services in the city and throughout the city.

And that's what this interlocal agreement that we're going to consider today accomplishes is allowing us to enter into that region-wide, county-wide system to be able to participate in the benefits of receiving some of the revenues that are generated through this levy.

That being said, once the revenues are received by the city of Seattle, it's up to policymakers at the city to determine how to best prioritize those dollars with the overarching understanding that the dollars can only be used for emergency medical services, which is a broad category, but we've historically defined it as advanced life support and basic life support and that would include programs like the low acuity mobile integrated health unit.

Is that accurate?

That is.

Okay.

Great.

Any other questions or comments?

All right.

I think we're probably ready to vote on this, particularly given Mr. Doss's outlining of the deadlines associated with needing to take action on this.

Also, I will be out of town on June 24th, so I would really like to be able to get this over the finish line on Monday, this upcoming Monday.

So I think it would be wise if there's no objection from you, Council Member Scada, for us to take a vote on this today.

Okay, great.

Then I will organize my thoughts so that I can make this motion.

I will move that the committee recommend that the City Council pass Council Bill 119539. Okay, any other comments?

Seeing none, those in favor of the committee recommending passage of the bill, vote aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

No opposition.

So the motion carries and the committee recommends that the City Council pass Council Bill 19539 as just no amendments, just as is.

And we will go ahead and take this up at full council on Monday.

Thank you very much.

OK, great.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you to both of you.

OK, so I'm going to have Roxanna read the second agenda item, which is a presentation from DEEL.

And if you are here to participate in this presentation, I'd invite you to make your way up to the table as Roxanna reads this item into the agenda.

Agenda item two, Seattle Department of Education and Early Learning's Race and Social Justice presentation for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, Roxanna.

Hi, good morning.

Thank you for being here.

Hi.

Good morning.

Good morning.

So thank you so much for being with us.

I think all we have to do is click on a button and we'll see the presentation come up on the screen there.

There we go, perfectly.

Excellent.

Great.

So why don't we go ahead and start with introductions, and then I'll hand it over to you all to lead us through the presentation.

All right.

Thank you for this opportunity.

I'm Dwayne Chappelle, the proud Director of Education and Early Learning.

I'm Michelle Winters, Change Team Lead for Department of Education and Early Learning.

Well, thanks for being with us.

I really appreciate it.

You all are always a standout in terms of the work that you're doing in this space.

So, I'm really excited to be able to give you all an opportunity to share with us, the members of this committee and the public, what you have been up to this year.

Take it away.

Okay.

So, Michelle and I are going to, as you said, just guide us through and to share with you all with what we've been up to this year.

So, here's just a high-level agenda of what we'll be talking about.

We're going to go through the 2018 year in review.

We'll talk about our WEMBE summary.

We'll review our race and equity toolkits.

And we'll close with some acknowledgments.

Uh-oh.

Here we go.

One more.

Okay, so under our year in review, one of the first things we wanted to talk about was staff engagement.

We really felt that it was important over the past year to offer consistent staff engagement opportunities to our staff.

And so what we did was we offered Lunch and Learn semi-monthly, and we also took 30 to 45 minutes of every all-staff meeting to talk about an RSGI topic.

And so for us, this provided an opportunity for staff to engage around a particular area of interest on race and social justice to practice a little bit of their equity language and then to engage in peer learning.

So it's been a really positive experience.

Our staff have participated in topics on appropriation.

We've talked about gentrification.

We had a five-part series on white culture.

And actually, one thing that I would highlight as an accomplishment out of that is that when we did the five-part series on white culture, it really inspired some of our staff to actually lead deeper work on continuing that conversation and looking at how white culture and white privilege play out in our work.

And so they've started a racial identity caucusing group, and that's been meeting monthly.

So that's been a really positive thing that started from a, you know, kind of a light entry conversation table topic at a lunch and learn, and then became deeper work that they're carrying through this year.

We also began integrating ColorBrave Spaces into our meetings this year.

And so ColorBrave Spaces, if you haven't heard of it, is conversation norms that were developed by Equity Matters, our local anti-racist organization.

And these norms were intended to help us center equity in our conversations.

This is a pretty small piece, but very intentional piece of shifting our work culture in the upcoming journey to becoming a more equity-centered organization.

And so some of the examples of what color brave spaces are would be noticing power dynamics in the room, examining racially biased systems and processes, keeping relationships first, and making space for multiple truths.

I just wanted to comment on the color brave spaces really quickly.

I mean, this is all great work, but in addition to to being the chair of this committee, I have the opportunity to serve as a representative of council on the Families and Education Preschool and Promise Levy Oversight Committee.

Always a mouthful of a title.

But we have, DEEL has implemented the Color of Brave Spaces practice in that space.

I've had an opportunity to, throughout this year, really experience and refine my own skills in this space and really have appreciated the opportunity to be able to do that.

I think it's a wonderful gesture to how we should be doing our work throughout the city, so thanks for that.

Thank you for that feedback.

So, as you'll see, Deal and our leadership team and our change team members, we participated in a UIR training in 2018. And we know that we invested in the training and it was a huge accomplishment for us in Deal.

But to be more effective, you know, three things that we wanted to make sure, we wanted to make sure that we follow up with this training.

And then we also wanted to make sure that all DEEL staff participate in the UIR training in order for us to really create that deep culture shift.

And we know that on doing UIR principles, work must happen systemically in order for us to move forward with our work.

So we wanted to share that with you as well.

We also know that our race and social justice work throughout DEEL.

So here are some things that we've been working on as well.

So we have a culturally responsive programming work group.

We have some racial identity caucusing.

We have inclusive work groups for early learning and implementation planning.

We also have some work around the language access planning.

As you just mentioned, the Color Brave space, you'll see that throughout here.

and then but ultimately we've had a high level of participation between our change team and our deal staff that we're super excited about.

Okay, so one thing that we also want to talk about is the anti-racist continuum.

I don't know if you remember this from last year we introduced this document.

We just wanted to briefly talk about what is it and why do we use it and where does the deal rank itself.

So this was a tool that was developed by Crossroads Ministry and it's just one way that an organization can measure its anti-racism efforts.

We began using this tool when our change team was first created.

We've used it about once per year.

It's sort of an informal way for us to take the temperature on our department.

on how staff are feeling about the race and social justice efforts.

So on the next slide, we'll look at where we ranked ourselves.

So you can see we show a couple years of data there.

As I said, we've been using it for a few years.

The different bubbles are because we began disaggregating by race in 2018, understanding that people of color and people that identify as white may have different experiences.

So we started doing that.

We saw a small decrease in 2018, but then we increased again in 2019. So we've kind of been middling around this three number, which is a symbolic change or compliance organization.

So we've seen this tool as a very interesting and thought-provoking way for us to start conversations around anti-racism efforts.

A lot of our staff conversations have been around how do we How do we go deeper?

What do we do from here?

Because we've kind of been in this middle of the road, we're sort of floating in a three, and we'd like to take the conversation deeper.

So that's been something that we've been working with our change team and staff on.

And Michelle, remind me what the full, what's the highest number you can get?

Is it five?

Yeah, the highest is a six, which is, I think it's something like a transformed, Living in a liberated, transformed society where race is not an indicator of quality of life.

We're all working towards that, aren't we?

And I think that's one of the things that our staff have talked about, that it is very difficult for us to see, sometimes working in a bureaucracy in a government organization, how we reach a six.

But we don't want that to be the conversation stopper, that, okay, well, we hit 3.6, we're done.

So we're looking to take it a little bit deeper with those bullet points on that list that we can control.

So yeah, we can maybe go to Duane for next steps on that.

So what's next after the arc?

So through staff surveys, we've had feed and feedback.

It is indicated that we deal staff value, diversity, inclusion, and equity.

But we know that in order to engage in deeper work or to make systemic change, you know, we have to continue this work and improve our processes and practices.

Something that's coming up next, our change team and our E-team will be working together within this year to create one of DEEL's, collaboratively create one of DEEL's priorities, which is improving, or should I say workplace culture.

We're going to be collaboratively developing our multi-year plan to support staff like professional development and improvement of workplace culture throughout the year.

And as we mentioned earlier, you know, we know that including the color brave space just gives us an opportunity to dive deep.

So that's what's next, what's coming up after the arc.

Director Chappelle, in terms of the workplace culture issues, what other, besides the color brave spaces, what kind of other policies or practices have you supported or advanced, either because you thought of it or because it came from your staff that sort of advances this priority around workplace culture?

So what we did is to tell you where we got to the workplace culture.

So we met and came up with three priorities that we're going to focus on as a department for the year.

And the third priority we decided was workplace culture.

So that's why we want to work with the E-team to help.

um come up to figure out what it is we want to focus on um so we'll be having more of that coming up soon but what we've been doing um previously uh something that was recommended by the staff um it started off as just uh me just bringing donuts into the staff so now what we do is uh we have donuts and Duane that we throughout the department.

It just gives folks an opportunity to come together for us to break bread professionally and also engage in good discussions about, you know, spending time about with E-team or myself and just learn about what's happening throughout the department and bringing everyone else together.

So that's something that we've implemented that the staff has recommended and then something else that will actually be taking place tomorrow.

What do we do?

And I'm just trying to think off the top of my head.

We have deal day in the park tomorrow.

So just some team building for our whole staff.

We implemented this last year was our first year deal day in the park and it was recommended from our social committee.

for us to kind of get together, talk about, you know, some priorities, but also at the end of the day, do some team building work around it with the staff.

So that's something we'll be doing tomorrow, kicking off.

So those are a few things, and there's a lot more.

Yeah, and I know that...

DEEL is one of the departments that has a, the numbers aren't in here, you didn't give us the statistics, but it is an incredibly diverse department, both in gender, but also in race, and so, So I know, and I know that there's a significant part of the department's workforce are women in particular, and I know I've heard you talk in the past before about the importance of flex time and flexible schedules during the week, and I think that's also a really important component, particularly because a lot of the women that work in DEAL are women of color.

really wanted to just appreciate that practice and the thoughtfulness around making sure that we're taking folks' needs into consideration that really goes a long ways towards promoting a positive workplace culture.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So, when being consulting.

Yeah, so I'm going to talk a little bit about our women and minority business-owned enterprises purchasing and consulting over the past year.

So you can see on that table there, it just shows sort of the percentages.

So our 2018 number for consultant purchasing actually decreased by a little bit, but our purchasing went up by a significant amount.

Our understanding of why the consultant purchasing went down so much was that our Seattle Preschool Program evaluation contracts are some of our largest contracts, and that that is with a large national organization that is not a WIMBY.

And so it's something that we've been really talking about with our finance team on how we can begin to strategize around increasing our WIMBY spending.

And some of that has come out in how our purchasing has really increased.

So you see that in those numbers there.

Duane, can you go to the next slide, please?

Sure.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you.

So when I hear purchasing and consulting from a department, I usually think, who are you contracting with to provide services maybe to the department, analysis, et cetera.

But given the intense work that you all do with trying to get more people to be child care providers, is this including the child care provider population?

You know, I do not think this is including the child care population.

This is really for purchasing and our consulting.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

I think if we included the child care population, you will probably see even a higher number.

I'm not sure that we consider.

The folks that we do that are funded through the levy, I think those are categorically different than contractors and consulting firms.

Right.

Agreed.

Because when you think of contracting in the traditional sense, it would be direct services to you all versus the contracting that we engage with, with the SPP providers, et cetera.

So for delivery of services to others.

Exactly.

So this is not inclusive of those folks.

Yes.

I think these numbers would look drastically different if that was the case, because I've seen those numbers actually.

Yeah, and I think that, you know, it's important for us to still be looking at just that particular consulting number.

And we've been working with our finance and administration team to really look at how we can increase our WIMBY spending to the highest possible because we know that us being able to infuse those resources back into the community is a really important part of the equity work that we're doing.

So historic.

Just to put a pin in that, the question that you asked, Council Member Mosqueda, is an important one.

It's, and you know, sometimes forget that we don't create space in this committee to have those conversations, but the information lives in my head and your all's head and we share it with each other at the levy oversight committee meetings and in that context.

And I know that we just finished up our evaluation around the last year of levy funding under the families and education levy.

But I do think it would be helpful, particularly around our shared interest around child care providers, child care services, and that space in general.

I do think it would be helpful to perhaps find a time before we go to recess to see if we can get a quick update from the department on both a specific question asked by Council Member Mosqueda around racial and ethnic representation in terms of our childcare.

workforce providers that we're contracting with, and just sort of a general sense of the state of affairs in terms of our last year of funding for the levy.

Of course, it's the last year of the funding under that levy, so it doesn't reflect the new programming that we funded through the FEPP levy, and that information's not gonna come out until...

next year, same around this time next year.

So we can at least see what the last picture looked like under the last year of the former levy that might help us inform some of our budget conversations and other priorities as we head into monitoring of the first year of the implementation of the FEPP levy.

So I think that would be a helpful exercise and would welcome that conversation if you're agreeable to that Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I appreciate the request for the information prior to resource.

I agree that that would be helpful to see visually for us and for the community.

I'd also ask that we do a geographic overlay of where those child care providers exist.

I know that many people have So I think having people who struggle to find child care and having a general sense of where our contracted providers exist is a much more accurate tool than people going online to Google Maps and trying to plug in information to find where we can access quality child care, especially the ones that are accredited by the city.

So if we can overlay geographic representation, that would be great.

Just nothing.

It happens to be vacant.

It's just sad.

Sitting there, empty.

It's just empty, waiting for children.

Joyous sound of childcare providers.

Florida ceiling windows, waiting for those kiddos.

It's amazing.

A little harder to work.

Or easier to work, because your kiddo would be downstairs.

Oh, there you go, yeah.

And joyful, very joyful.

We can do this all morning.

Well, so just looking at the goals that we had set, the last couple years the goals were just set at 50%.

And so we wanted to have goals that were based on actual numbers and realistic measures that we thought we could achieve.

And so we maintained our consulting goal at 50% and we're going to try and work on increasing.

But then we increased our purchasing goal to 65% to say let's at least maintain that momentum.

So we're kind of trying to do a little bit more of a practical approach to our goals there.

And then in terms of an action plan around how do we get there, we're looking at doing a quarterly analysis of our WMB spending.

We're also looking through, our finance team has been great about identifying vendors who are not registered as WMB, encouraging them to register, and then offering technical assistance, and then also training on WMB for staff.

That's great.

Next slide.

So next we'll take a quick little dive, excuse me, into our race and equity toolkits.

So the first one.

is Seattle Promise.

And so what the Seattle Promise Race and Equity Toolkit, so it actually consisted of design team members, we have members of the mayor's office, DEEL, SOCR, CBO, Seattle Colleges, Seattle Public Schools, and the College Success Foundation.

And we know that after consulting with SOCR and the design team and all of our folks that were involved.

You know, we determined that we wanted to do a more thorough RET with the Seattle Promise.

So, and we, as you know, we do believe in leading our work within race and equity lens.

So, the thorough RET was going to look at multi-phases that's going to be taking place this year in 2019. And so I just want to share just a brief high level of the six phases that we're going to be looking at.

We're going to be looking at funding for phase one, phase two, looking at assembling a RET and planning team.

That's phase two.

Phase three, we're going to do some type of RET reflection.

In phase four, we're going to be looking at community engagement.

And then we're going to wrap this up with phases five and six.

This is going to be analysis and then some type of implementation based on the recommendations.

And Dr. Chappelle, did that work?

Has it started already?

We're going to be starting it sometime coming up soon this year.

Okay.

So the next- I only got two years left in my term, so.

I need this to happen before the end.

Oh, that's the goal, before the end.

But so the next RET was the RFI and RFP process.

And ultimately our goal for this was to understand and just reduce racial equity barriers to accessing our funding and deal.

And so as you'll see these three key recommendations that we have, the second recommendation is already complete.

So just so you know that this process is actually happening now and improvements to the RFP and RFI process is being seen as we are developing and coming up on these RFI and RFP releases.

And we anticipate that we're going to continue these conversations with our partners to inform this process.

Okay, so one of the things that we did want to talk about was just our approach to racial equity toolkits that we really want them to be more than a checklist.

A lot of times they can be viewed as just a simple checklist.

It's something that we go through sort of as an annual process.

City departments are asked to do four per year and, you know, you do your four RETs and then, okay, December 2018, start fresh the next year.

So we're really trying to look at, you know, really acknowledging the realities of race and social justice work and trying to be a bit more flexible with ourselves, giving ourselves room to do the RETs that we feel need to happen as the emergent issues come up.

So a couple of things that we did that have, I think, started to initiate that, what we're calling RET level thinking, is that we did a department-wide RET training.

So we actually had staff from SOCR come to our department.

and do group training with us specifically around that.

And one thing that was really great about that is that it really inspired some staff to lead their own RET efforts and take deeper training on it.

So that was something really exciting.

After those trainings, I had at least four different staff come up and say, I'm really interested in leading a RET.

What can I do?

engaged in that work before and we're looking at, I have ways that I can look at my work from a racial equity analysis.

So that was really exciting.

One of the things that we also did was that we revisited a RET that we did in 2017 on hiring practices.

So we wanted to make sure that when we do a RET, it doesn't just become a set it and forget it.

We did it and now good for us.

We really want to make sure that we implement those practices.

So we've been working with the change team and the executive team to actually implement the recommendations that came out of our hiring rep, working with our work managers and just making sure that we can actually start to implement those.

So that's been pretty exciting work.

And then even working beyond our own city department, one great example of collaboration is that our Birth to Three staff supported a King County racial equity toolkit.

So I think that's another example of how, you know, we don't necessarily do the work just within our own spaces, but that we really rely on partnerships and collaboration.

So I wanted to look at next slide for 2019 and beyond.

So we did something a little bit different rather than saying we're going to do the four RETs in one calendar year.

We wrote these five RETs into the FEPP levy implementation plan to say that these were five RETs we knew had to happen.

So you can see these are on some pretty big areas that are.

pretty critical to our community and we wanted to make sure that we took the time to do them right.

So they're not started on a calendar year.

We're acknowledging they may take one to three years to complete.

And you can see the start date is phased in a little bit.

So that was kind of after working with SSCR to come up with that plan.

And we've left ourself room to add new RETs as emergent issues come up or as staff are looking at their work and say this really needs to be analyzed deeper.

I think one of the things that is commendable for Diehl is that you all really are...

iterative in terms of the work that you do and there's enough flexibility built into this programming that'll allow, sort of fosters that additional creativity and allows us to sort of course correct when we need to and also, you know, continue to do more of the cool stuff that is emerging or a promising practice.

really appreciate the thoughtfulness around, instead of creating a checklist of we're gonna do these four in one year, really sort of taking a much more phased approach and a more realistic approach to the fact that undoing institutional racism certainly takes more than.

year.

Calendar year.

Yeah.

Thank you for that feedback.

Sure.

That's definitely something that's been important to us.

So, thank you.

Council Member Esqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So, as I think about the use of the racial equity toolkit, I know that you use it internally to evaluate your current practices and how your staff align with priorities and the vision and mission of the department.

I also understand that you use it for analyzing the services that you provide or that the contractors are to provide to our community.

One of the things I would love to hear more about is how you use the racial equity toolkit to analyze proposals that come to you.

So let's say city council, for example, sent a request to you to open up a child care facility on site.

How does the analysis of a request that's coming to you get analyzed so that potentially it gets priority if it scores high on meeting racial equity goals.

Is that something that we currently do either from external partners asking something of the department or when the city provides funding for certain programs so that it can be expedited or initiated without delay?

If not, that would be a really excellent way to use the toolkit so that we can prioritize and put to the front of the line issues that have been on the back burner.

and shelved for various reasons in the past and with the use of the toolkit could be potentially advanced.

Is that a way in which to use the RET now?

So that's a great recommendation.

We do not currently operate that way.

But that is a great recommendation.

We can take it back and look to see just if how do we embed that in our decision making processes for requests that come in.

Thank you for that.

I would say that on the future RETs for 2019-2021, several of those were generated by the City Council, which are now going to be subject to RETs, which I appreciate.

I don't think it's as intentional or as sort of systemic as your question poses.

And so I do think there's an opportunity to think a little bit more intentionally about how to do that.

This kind of came about organically as we worked through the policy issues and began to identify some potential for unintended consequences as a result of otherwise outstanding programs.

Yeah.

Thank you.

And so, in closing, we really just wanted to thank all of our staff members, our change team members, our former change team members, DEEL staff who are committed to advancing racial equity.

I want to thank OCR and our RSJI liaisons and other city department change team for this work and the support that they've been doing with DEEL.

I really want to thank the community members, activists, and organizers who's really built this foundation for this work.

and continuing to lead this work, but, you know, specifically, special thanks to, like, Michelle and going back to the DEAL staff that really lead this work day in and day out, that make the great recommendations that I get to actually come up here.

and talk about a lot of these great things that are happening.

Most of them come from our staff who are embedded in the work day to day.

And it's really, just really appreciative to have such outstanding folks around the table, committed to Seattle, committed to our kids, and seeing equity involved and braided through everything that we do.

So thank you, Michelle, and all your colleagues, but I'm sure you have something else you would like to say too.

Yeah, I would just echo that, thanking everybody that participates in this.

I think one of the things that when we're looking at engaging in anti-racism work, we're asked to be very vulnerable.

We're asked to challenge long-held institutional norms.

Sometimes we are asked to expose ourselves to new trauma without realizing that that's happening.

And so I think really understanding that nobody does this work alone.

It's a really vast network of support, both inside the city and outside the city that support it.

And we're just really grateful for everyone that participates in that.

And as you all know, this work is very, very hard and could be mentally taxing.

So, again, just thanks for everyone that's sticking through this process and those, because, you know, at times, you know, it's really mentally draining sometimes, so.

Yeah, certainly I think the work that so many of us do at an institution like the City of Seattle that is really committed to undoing institutional racism and racism, you know, is really It can be very profound.

It can be very heavy.

And I think that there are so many public servants here at the city who are really fundamentally dedicated to that goal and that mission around RSJI and really appreciate DEEL's ongoing efforts and intentionality in that space to help us serve our community in a much more just way.

Really, really important work, and I can't think of a more important space to do that work than in education.

We know that education is, you know, I don't even like saying that it creates a level playing field.

It doesn't.

It actually, you know, sort of undoes and tips the balance towards equity for many people in our community who have been intentionally, systematically since the beginning of the development of the education system in America left out.

And so it's more than just equalizing.

It is putting us on a better trajectory to break the cycles of poverty and to fulfill our full potential in society.

So really wanna appreciate all of the work that you all are doing every day in the early learning and education space.

So super important.

I'm a huge believer in you all and a big champion of this issue as you know.

and will continue to be an ally and supporter of the work that you all are doing.

And thank you so much for your ongoing partnership on all areas of work, but in particular in this space.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anything else?

Okay, great.

So you are our last agenda item.

So there is no further business before the committee.

So we are adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.