Seattle City Council Finance & Neighborhoods Committee 22719

Good afternoon, everyone.

I'm Sally Bagshaw, Chair of the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee.

Welcome to this committee meeting.

It is 2 o'clock, February 27, 2019. I want to welcome you all.

We've got three items on our agenda today.

The first is we're going to hear from our Department of Neighborhoods.

There's a landmark commission designation regarding the Broad Street substation landmarking.

Second, we will have David Jones, our city auditor, that's going to meet with our public health and University of Washington researchers Thank you all again for being here.

To report on the access to healthy food and the Food Bank Network in Seattle, I can tell you that you can almost expect most of the council members to join us for that item.

And then we will conclude with a discussion and possible vote on a resolution.

that is sponsored by Council Member Herbold that established a CIP that's a construction project watch list of our large complex projects.

We talked about this during our budget last year and agreed that having an enhanced quarterly monitoring report for 2019 was in everybody's best interest.

We're focused on some of the major projects including the Center City Streetcar, our waterfront project and more and you'll hear about that as the third item of business.

OK, well, we will kick off.

I understand there's three people that have signed up for public comment.

I'm going to ask that we invite Alex Zimmerman up first, and then we have two others.

Great.

Alex, please approach the microphone.

And Allison, thank you for organizing this.

Great.

Thank you.

OK, you've got two minutes.

Your two minutes are counting down now.

You are being recorded, Alex.

Good.

Darn it.

You're being recorded.

It's green.

Just speak up, Alex.

We can hear you.

She's talking.

Microphone not working.

Camera not working.

Something happened.

Tell us what you have to say today.

That is not the point.

It's not working, nothing.

How I can speak?

Nothing.

Microphone not working.

Camera not working.

How I can speak?

You've got 33 more seconds, please.

What are you talking about, 33 seconds?

What are you talking about?

It's everything broke.

I don't speak.

I cannot speak.

There's no camera, nothing.

What are you talking about, guys?

Is this a joke?

What are you talking about?

That's very stupid.

Look, there's nothing working.

Just speak to us, Alex.

We know what you're going to say anyway.

There's nothing working.

All right, thank you.

We're going to invite Jeannie Falls and Miguel Jimenez up, and I know that you will be able to speak loudly, and we will hear you.

Yes, I'm happy to speak loudly.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I actually was here about part three, the food access, the food bank things, because I was surprised to get a letter in the mail today that said, I'm Jeannie Falls, the director of the Pike Market Senior Center and Food Bank.

And it says that this letter is to inform you that sweetened beverage tax revenue replaced general fund dollars as the funding source for some of the youth family empowerment programs, food and nutrition investments, including our contract.

And then it goes on to say that the intention of the sugary beverage tax is to expand access to healthy and affordable food, close the security gap, promote healthy nutrition choices, et cetera.

And I don't understand how replacing general fund dollars that already existed with the sugary beverage tax dollars is going to expand access.

It keeps its status quo unless the general fund dollars are doing that job.

So my question is, what are the general fund dollars then being allocated for that is meeting what the sugary beverage tax was supposed to do?

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Jeannie.

Miguel?

I think you're going to have to speak up loudly.

Thank you.

I'm also here to mostly listen to the report from Public Health today, but I thought I'd take this opportunity to speak to the Council.

I've been working at the Rainier Valley Food Bank for four years, and first and foremost, I wanted to thank Councilmember Juarez's office for the leadership they provided over the last year.

in helping us increase our revenue.

I know some of that has come from the sugar beverage tax resources, and that has been a tremendous support to our organization, as well as the food banks that have City contracts.

So I really appreciate that for your office.

Thank you very much.

I also wanted to say that, you know, we should call a spade a spade in here.

Food banks are a Band-Aid approach.

to addressing poverty alleviation in our community.

So we are really just dealing with the symptom of poverty and increasing funding simply for food banks is not going to support the communities that we work in in moving past this situation.

So I hope that the council will continue to listen to the recommendations of the working groups in our community that are advocating for the additional sugar beverage tax resources to go to additional community programs and not simply food banks.

And so I hope that as a food bank employee advocating for other organizations makes an impact on the council, specifically the council members who will be here again next year.

Thank you.

You're looking at me.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you very much, Miguel.

Thank you.

Jeannie, also, thank you for the work that you do.

We appreciate it.

You'll hear a little bit more about where the sugary beverage tax resources have gone.

We'll hear more today about the expectation about what is formerly known as food deserts, but now as food availability.

So thank you really for what you're doing, and thank you, Councilmember Gonzalez and Council President Harreld, for being here.

Okay, so we're ready to proceed.

Shall I read this one to you?

Please.

Okay.

Item number one, Council Bill 119467, an ordinance relating to historic preservation, imposing controls upon the Broad Street substation.

Great.

And I think we've got Erin coming up from Department of Neighborhoods, and Greg, thank you very much, from Seattle City Light.

Thank you.

You bet.

Also, I apologize for the technical error.

We fixed the public comment situation.

If you want to turn on the TVs again, feel free to.

Thank you.

Would you like to start with introductions, Greg?

Yeah, I am Greg Sanswich, the real estate services manager for Seattle City Light.

Great, Erin.

Erin Doherty, Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, Landmarks Preservation Board.

Thank you.

Please, Erin, are you going to kick this off?

Thank you so much.

So today, this ordinance is to codify the Controls and Incentives Agreement that was signed by the City Historic Preservation Officer and the property owner, Greg here from Seattle City Light.

We've brought with us the designation standards that the board considers, and we can use these for reference, but they have six.

Erin, we're going to need to have you speak up a little bit.

These are the six designation standards that the board utilizes in addition to determining if a property has integrity or the ability to convey its significance.

So we'll come back to these if there are any specific questions about them.

But this is the subject property.

This is the Broad Street substation at 319 6th Avenue North.

It was designated by the Landmarks Board on November 1st, 2017, and the board selected standards C and D, so essentially it's cultural and economic heritage and it's architecture.

So the controlled features include the exteriors of the control and crane buildings, which you see here in the photos.

and the switchyard dead-end tower and armature that is west of the crane building.

And that's just a remnant of early component that's no longer functioning.

This was built in 1949 to 1951 by architect Ivan Palmol.

So I'll just share a few little bits of history.

The subject property is in the Cascade neighborhood.

It's just a couple blocks east of Seattle Center.

These art moderne buildings were designed by architects, Mr. Palmell, who I previously noted.

He emigrated to the United States from Russia during the revolution in 1926. He earned an architectural degree at the University of Washington in 1929 and continued to work in the region for the next 40 years.

In addition to other projects for Seattle City Light, he designed residential and commercial buildings, and some of his notable projects include the St. Spyridon Orthodox Cathedral and St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral that are both Seattle landmarks, and the Art Moderne Renton Fire Station, which is now a history museum.

The Broad Street substation came online during a period of rapid growth for the utility in the early 1950s following plans that emerged post-World War II.

It coincided with the voter-approved proposition that ended private power assets in Seattle and the municipal acquisition of Puget Sound Power and Light's urban franchise.

Broad Street was linked to the old North Substation and another new facility in Bothell that were receiving the electricity from the Skagit River Dam and the Ross Dam that was currently under construction.

So Broad Street is a fully operational facility and the language of the agreement that was negotiated for the landmark avoids any impacts to Seattle City's light ability to generate electricity.

Great, thank you.

Greg, do you want to add?

No, not at this time.

Okay, so you're happy with this.

We're moving forward.

Council colleagues, do you have any additions or questions on this?

Straightforward.

The interesting history going back in the 50s, I'm sorry, the interesting history, I didn't realize the rich history back in the 50s when it started and its history, so I thought that was a really solid write-up, so.

So Seattle City Light compiled a lot of that themselves, and Rebecca Osa from City Light is in the audience.

She's the historic resource specialist.

Well done, Rebecca, thank you.

And they had a consultant to assist her in producing that, but a lot of the documentation and writing She's responsible for that.

Thank you.

Well, just quickly, it's going to continue to be a functioning substation.

And what do we anticipate doing with these landmarks?

This particular landmark will continue in operation as a substation.

So the buildings will be continued to use for their use.

What about the exteriors?

Were you planning anything for them?

They're no planned.

OK.

I'm going to support the designation, but I read somewhere that there continues to be a fence around it, and I didn't know if there was a fence because of the Alaska way of construction, or is that just a security fence that stays around?

Let me go back.

forward, I should say.

So that red boundary that you see is actually at the top, the northwest corner, the top left of that, that's now being expanded out because the right-of-way has been abandoned there and is being captured to be part of the switch yard for the station.

So the whole property, like all the substations, are walled in or fenced for security and or safety reasons because you have generating, you know, equipment in there that's high voltage.

So you may be hearing about that corner where there's work that's being done.

Well, they're not all fenced in, I don't think.

I think some substations don't have fences around them, right?

Like the one off of 23rd Avenue, there's no fence around that.

It's just a big brick wall.

They have perimeter structure around them.

This one particularly has it for security and continuing operations.

The reason I brought that up is just It's really not a big deal.

I was more curious because it seemed like there was a, I thought like a, I envisioned just temporary metal fence around this beautiful structure and I just thought it seemed a little incongruent with us, this designation.

I was thinking.

We've done something better than that, but it sounds like this fence has been up there for a while.

It's a wall and there's actually a number of art elements that were introduced to the wall over time that were not original but part of larger improvement projects that came later.

But the enclosure that's probably being talked about is how they're going to capture and reconfigure that northwest corner.

But those walls and that area, other than the one freestanding tower, no part of that area is included in the landmark.

Any other questions?

Okay, I'd like to move adoption then of Ordinance Council Bill 119467. Second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

Nobody abstained.

So this will go forward to our full council on Monday.

Okay, thank you for your time.

Greg, thanks for coming.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for all your help for those of you that pulled together the historical information.

Okay, next we're going to move on to our report on healthy food availability and the Food Bank Network in Seattle and welcome All of our good friends, David Jones, Nadine Chan, thanks for being here, Kaylin Bolt, I think Jesse Jones-Smith from UW, and Jeff Sims from our Council Central staff.

Okay, well now that I've introduced you all, why don't you just start again, David, and we'll just move down the row.

David Jones, City Auditor.

Kaylin Bolt, Public Health, Seattle, King County.

Nadine Chan, Public Health, Seattle, King County.

Jesse Jones-Smith, University of Washington.

Jeff Sims, Seattle City Council Central Staff.

Very nice.

Okay, who's kicking this off?

All right, David, please.

Very quick kickoff, just to give some context for the viewing audience.

In June of 2017, the Seattle City Council passed an ordinance referred to as a sweetened beverage tax that authorized the taxing of sugar-sweetened beverages distributed in Seattle.

And the ordinance specified that my office, the Office of City Auditor, on behalf of the City of Seattle, should contract with academic researchers who had a track record of conducting rigorous policy evaluations to conduct annual evaluations of the various effects of the sweetened beverage tax.

So we decided to contract with Public Health Seattle-King County to oversee the evaluation because they had a lot of experience and expertise in doing these kinds of evaluations.

Now, the reason why we're here today, as you mentioned, Chair Bagshaw, is that we're going to talk about two topics that were specified in the ordinance that needed to be covered by the evaluations.

And they're first, identification and assessment of food deserts in Seattle, and secondly, an assessment of Seattle's food bank network.

So, given that brief introduction, I'd like to turn it over to Dr. Chan from Public Health Seattle-King County to kick off the presentation.

Thank you.

It's good to be here again.

Thank you for having us.

So last month in January, when we were here with the committee, we shared a report on the impact of the tax on the prices of beverages.

And in the fall, we plan to come back and present on the impact of the tax on sugary beverage consumption.

So today's focus is a report on access to healthy foods.

We'll start with the idea of food deserts and how it fits within the broader issue of access to healthy food, and then we'll present some maps that talk about where are some areas we could prioritize.

Secondly, then we will then move to a study of our Seattle stores.

Because we know it's not just about being able to get to a market, it also is about how much does the food cost, and also whether healthy food is available.

And then finally, we'll talk about who in Seattle is experiencing food insecurity, and then talk about how our food bank network is responding to and meeting that need.

So on the third slide, we started with this concept of the food desert.

And the original concept of the food desert is about physical distance to a supermarket.

And when we had proposed our methods to being able to identify food deserts, by going to the U.S.

Department of Agriculture online tool, and there is something called a food desert locator.

It's no longer called that.

But if you Google search using that, you would still find this tool, and you popped in the word Seattle.

It would show a map, and it would tell you where the quote-unquote food deserts are.

But the feedback that we kept getting is, you know, we can't just only look at distance to a supermarket.

There are other things that matter in terms of access to healthy food in your area, like how much does the food cost if you can get there?

So we turned back to the literature and looked at over the past 10 years of studies that are published about access to healthy food, and we also relied on reports such as the one that was published in 2018 in Baltimore that looked at healthy food access.

And what we learned is that there has been a movement away from looking at just that singular measure of access by distance to supermarkets to expand to five dimensions of access to healthy food.

And so that includes things like availability, what food is available.

Is there an adequate supply of places that are selling produce in your neighborhood?

Or is your neighborhood inundated by places that are selling less healthy food, which happens to be a better predictor of obesity in neighborhoods?

We also know that another dimension is not just physical distance, but travel times.

How long does it take to get to food?

Accommodation, so are store hours open when people need to be able to get there?

What types of payments do stores accept?

Are they offering culturally relevant foods?

Affordability is another domain.

How much does it cost?

Can people afford it?

And finally, acceptability.

So is the food environment offering items or is the food environment set up in a way that is acceptable?

Do people get choices?

And so what I present here are two maps.

And the map on the far left is a map that if you were to pop in Seattle into the U.S.

Department of Agriculture's Food Desert Locator, it's now called the Food Atlas, Food Environment Atlas, you would see this map.

And what this map shows is areas where there are at least 20% of people who are living at poverty in that area, and on top of that, their distance that it takes for them to get to the nearest supermarket.

So, you see one area in green, and that's the Delridge area.

And in the Delridge area, you have at least 20 percent of people living in that area who are living at poverty level, and it takes at least a mile before you can get to the nearest supermarket.

The blue area...

I can ask you a quick question.

I've got the percentage.

What's the actual number?

Do we know in that little box how many people are living there?

We do not know how many people are living there.

We can go to the census and pull out that data and get back to you on that.

That's a number we can certainly report.

And so the areas in blue are the areas where there are at least 20% of people living at the poverty level, and it takes them at least half a mile before they can get to the nearest supermarket.

So you can see there are areas in North Seattle, University District, and South.

Now, the map on the right is a map that our team produced.

And what we wanted to do is see if we could find data that addressed many of these other domains of access that we learned about.

And so this map on the right considers three factors.

For poverty, we moved the poverty criteria up to looking at 200% federal poverty level.

And the reason why we chose to look at that instead of looking at poverty, 100% poverty, is because we know that in Washington State, folks who are living at or up to 200% federal poverty level are eligible for this Supplemental Nutrition Access Program.

We know that there are people who are experiencing food insecurity at that level as well.

So that's our poverty criteria that we looked at.

The second item that we looked at was how long it takes to get to the nearest food retailer.

And unlike the U.S.

Department of Agriculture map, which only looked at distance to the nearest one supermarket, we know people go to many places to be able to get the food that they need.

So we looked at time it took to get to the nearest four retailers.

And we looked not only at supermarkets as the only option for being able to access healthy food, we also looked at produce markets, we looked at ethnic grocery stores who also carry produce as well.

And then the third factor that we looked at is not only did you have a supermarket in your neighborhood, but is your area inundated by places that don't sell produce?

So, for example, fast food restaurants, other stores that don't sell produce.

And when I looked at all three factors, you see that there is an orange cluster that is near the Georgetown, South Park, Delridge, High Point area that shows up.

So this orange area is a place where all three factors intersect.

Then you'll also see yellow areas throughout the map, and those are pockets throughout Seattle where there are at least two factors that overlap.

So it would be people, at least 25% of households living there at 200% poverty level, and one other factor, whether it takes more than 10 minutes to get to the nearest healthy food option, or there's a high percentage of food retailers that don't offer produce in that area.

What you notice is that when you compare both maps, the U.S.

Department of Agriculture food desert locator map as well as the map that we generated, there is some overlap in areas that have been identified in the north part of Seattle, the south part of Seattle, and overlap in the university district.

What we also realize is that the other areas that are in Seattle that are showing up on the right-hand map that are yellow indicate that people who are lower income there may also experience challenges in terms of access to healthy food, even if the rest of the neighbors in their area are wealthy.

So we know that beyond looking at maps, we also needed to systematically look at what is available in Seattle stores, what healthy food is available, and how much does it cost.

And so for that, I'm going to turn that over to Dr. Jesse Jones-Smith.

Okay, great.

So in this section, we were able to not only use the pre-existing data about the presence of food stores and the type of food stores that are in areas throughout Seattle that we used to create those maps, But we were able to leverage the work that we're doing in the evaluation of the sweetened beverage tax where we're already visiting a large sample of stores in the city of Seattle to sort of cost efficiently look inside of stores and see what is the price and the availability of healthy food in a sample of stores in Seattle.

Specifically, the goal of this component of our study was to assess whether price and availability of healthy food varies by neighborhood characteristics.

So, in particular, we were interested in whether the price and availability varies by neighborhood income and by neighborhood racial composition.

In addition, I'll show you a few slides about the results by council district.

So in terms of our basic methodology, we conducted in-person surveys of a sample of food stores throughout Seattle, and we looked at whether a set of healthy foods were available, and then if available, what was the price of these healthy foods.

We went to five different types of stores that you can see here.

So warehouses and super stores, supermarkets, grocery stores, drug stores, and then small stores.

Small stores are typically what we think of as convenience stores.

Next slide.

In total, we visited 134 food stores in the city of Seattle.

This represents 27% of all food stores in the city of Seattle.

And inside these food stores, we collected information about the availability of a set of healthy foods that you see listed here.

So this list of healthy foods came from a number of places.

First, there is an existing survey called the Nutrition Environment Measures Survey.

that is the gold standard for measuring in-store healthy food availability.

That tool is actually quite long and cumbersome, so we started from that, but then we attempted to develop a shorter tool, again, with the goal of being able to measure relevant information, but in a cost-effective way.

We also consulted with the City of Seattle Office of Sustainability and Environment, as well as the Community Advisory Board, And from those three sources, we came up with this list of 21 different foods for which we collected the availability and the price.

We, oh, sorry.

Yes, that slide still.

After developing the list, we then developed a scoring system.

So each store that we visited has a healthy food availability score.

Basically, most of the foods on the list give one point towards the score and a few of the foods give two points.

Yes, I have to ask.

Yes.

So how does frosted flake cereal end up under grains that are considered healthy?

Well, it is on the NEMS, so going from that gold standard tool, we kept it, plus we were already measuring it in the Seattle Sweetened Beverage Survey.

And you get, I believe the way it works is you get one point for frosted flakes and then two points for the Cheerios, so the healthier version of those breakfast cereals.

It is better than some alternatives for breakfast such as a honey bun or something like that.

So, okay.

That's okay.

In the end, so these, any of these tools I think are not perfect and sort of a lot of decisions need to go into the end set of tools, how much we want to keep it like the gold standard and how much we want to veer from it.

We recognize that it's not a perfect tool, but Frosted Flakes is on there.

I believe they get the whole grain mark as well on that cereal, but I would have to double check that.

They absolutely do.

Okay.

And they're one of the cereals that qualify under WIC.

There we go.

Okay.

Thank you.

So, in the end, we sum the points for each of the stores, and the theoretical range for our healthy food availability score is 0 to 25. Next slide.

You can see here, as you would expect, the large stores score higher on our healthy food availability.

So, warehouses and supermarkets score near the high end.

Grocery stores, which are sort of mid-sized food stores, score in the middle.

And then drugstores and small stores get fairly low scores for healthy food availability.

We've jumped over to slide 17. We're on 10.

Okay, we're on 17 on my page.

Sorry.

Okay, yes.

So now we're on slide 11.

I did, because I wanted to, my notes.

Okay.

Everybody caught up to slide 11?

Yes.

All right.

So here we have the results by neighborhood income.

So what we did to determine neighborhood income was we found the median income level for each of the census tracts in the city of Seattle, and then we divided the census tracts in two-thirds so that we have the lowest third of neighborhood median income the middle third and the highest third of income.

And what you are looking at here is the average healthy food availability score by neighborhood income.

And what you can see is that neighborhoods with the highest income have a healthy food availability score of 12.8 points.

And this is roughly four points higher than stores in neighborhoods with the lowest So the stores in neighborhoods with the lowest income have an average score of 5.8 points.

To translate this into something meaningful, this is approximately four more healthy foods on average in a store in a high income neighborhood as compared to a store in a low income neighborhood.

Next slide, please.

The next slide shows the same set of results, but by neighborhood racial composition.

So what we've done here with neighborhood racial composition is we've looked at, for each census tract in the city of Seattle, the percentage of the population that is either black or Hispanic.

We're looking only at black or Hispanic.

here because we know there are documented disparities in food access according to race when comparing black or Hispanic populations to non-black and Hispanic populations.

So that was the rationale behind this choice.

Here you can see a similar result.

Well, first let me back up and say that again, we divided the city into three groups.

So neighborhoods with the lowest percentage of the population who are black or Hispanic neighborhoods in the middle third of the population that is black or Hispanic and the neighborhoods in the highest third of population being black or Hispanic.

And again, we see a disparity here where neighborhoods that have the highest percentage of residents who are black and Hispanic have a lower healthy food availability score compared to neighborhoods with the lowest percentage of the population who are black or Hispanic.

The difference here is slightly less than what we saw for income.

So here we're looking at approximately three more healthy foods in an average store in neighborhoods with a lower percentage of black and Hispanic population compared to neighborhoods with a higher percentage of black and Hispanic population.

Here are the results by council district.

We're on slide 13. What stands out here is that council district number two and district five have a lower healthy food availability compared to the other council districts.

Council district number one is in the middle and then the four remaining districts are on the higher end of average scores in healthy food availability.

This slide summarizes the main results when we look at price.

So we're moving into the price results.

And what we found for price was not what we expected.

We found that except for fruit, where for fruit we find that fruit is more expensive in low-income neighborhoods compared to high-income neighborhoods.

With that exception, the average price of healthy foods when it was available tended to be lower or similar.

for neighborhoods with lower income and higher percentage of residents who are black or Hispanic compared to the higher income neighborhoods or neighborhoods with lower percentage of the population who are black or Hispanic.

Most of these differences are not likely to reach statistical significance, although at the mean level, they are lower for lower income and residents with higher proportion of black and Hispanic residents.

Jessie, I know we talked about this.

This slide really surprised me.

I didn't realize that that was going to be the result that you found.

Like you mentioned, with fruit being a little bit higher in cost, but to have most of the foods being close to the same as in higher income neighborhoods.

Yeah, it was not what we expected either.

I think there are a few considerations.

One, we measured just the presence and the price of food, so we did not measure the quality of foods in different neighborhoods.

Also, this is, if the food is available, we're finding it at a lower price.

We have to sort of take that in combination with the fact that it's going to be available less often in lower income neighborhoods if we think back to the availability scores.

May I ask a question?

So in terms of that particular slide around the pricing, so you're making a distinction between quantity and quality, is that what I heard you say?

Between price and quality, well, we can't quite make the distinction, but just the limitation is that we measured the price of a food if it was there.

So say for apples, we collected the price of Red Delicious apples, and we are not having any measure of quality, whether the apple looks as though it will last for a week or whether it looks as though, you know, it might be about to expire.

So yes, it's just a limitation that we don't have quality.

But there's a lot of other healthy foods listed on your slide nine that would also fall into this category.

So it could be protein, milk, grains, veggies, or fruit.

But fruit is the only one where you notice that the price, there was a price differential based on the neighborhood.

Fruit is the only one where it was more expensive for low-income neighborhoods on average.

Right.

So in terms of the quality piece, I guess I'm struggling to understand the distinction that you are making there.

So is the distinction that, for example, in Soto there's a grocery outlet?

They might have a lot of availability of these foods, but there's no way for you to determine what the quality of those food products are.

Is that what you're saying?

Yes.

Okay.

I mean, there is a way, but we did not, well, we don't know if there's a way.

We didn't measure it, and I haven't seen quality actually.

measured in the literature yet, so.

Thank you.

Please proceed.

So this is the last slide on this section.

This is just a summary of the points that I've presented.

So we did find that in lower income neighborhoods and neighborhoods with a higher percentage of the population who are black or Hispanic, these neighborhoods had fewer supermarkets and super stores and more small stores.

There was a lower healthy food availability in neighborhoods with lower incomes and neighborhoods with more black and Hispanic residents.

The healthy food availability scores were lowest for Districts 5 and 2. And then the price of healthy foods tended to be lower or similar in low-income neighborhoods and neighborhoods with more residents who are black or Hispanic, although these differences are not necessarily statistically significant.

Any questions on that, on our key takeaways?

Okay, please proceed.

So I'm going to be walking us through some of our findings from our Food Bank Network assessment.

If you turn to our next slide, slide number 17, you'll see the goals that we were aiming to achieve through this assessment.

So the first was to estimate the need to really look at who in Seattle is experiencing food insecurity.

Our second goal was to assess the capacity of the food bank network itself to understand what extent this network is able to serve that population.

And then the third was to identify opportunities to see in what ways the network can improve equitable access to food.

So first things first, we know that health and hunger are closely connected.

We know that food insecurity impacts many aspects of health, including chronic disease risk and childhood development.

So it's really important to us to, when we're estimating this need, not only to know the number of people who are experiencing food insecurity, but also to understand which groups are really rising to the top and experiencing the higher burden of food insecurity.

To do this, we looked at five different data sources that were already in existence.

And across these data sources, we saw some consistent patterns that started to emerge.

Even though the estimates varied depending on the source, some groups were coming back to us as commonly reporting food insecurity.

And those six groups...

I think we've got a question here.

Yeah.

I'm sorry I wasn't here when you introduced yourself, so I'm not sure who you are.

I'm Kaylin Bolt.

I work at Public Health Seattle King County.

I apologize for being late.

I was watching the hearings, so I couldn't tear away at that last minute.

So on this slide, page 18, So you have the people of color, low income, less educated, LGBT families with young children and older adults.

This isn't in the order of the people in need.

This is just for illustrative purposes.

Right.

OK.

Are you going to show us?

I went through your PowerPoint, but is there a way to, are we going to list?

I didn't want to read your whole 100-page report, but thank you.

Right, right.

But is there a way, just so if we can cut to the chase, if you were to number these, would you be able to do that?

I would say that with our LGB, we consistently saw that they were twice as likely to report experiencing food insecurity than folks who are non-LGB, for example.

And I think that the families with children about 50% and it was, you know, plus or minus 10% depending on which data source you were looking at.

Also experienced food insecurity quite high.

And with the communities of color and people of color, it also depends on which race ethnicity you're looking at.

So, for example, we saw smaller rates of food insecurity for Asian, and as we all know, Asian is a very heterogeneous group, and our data sources don't allow us to disaggregate it, but what we were able to do when Kaylin talks more about the food bank network, she was able to do focus groups with specific non-English language clients, and she can talk about findings there.

The report I can send you the specific pages that show what the figures and data are so that you don't have to hunt through the report to be able to see what those estimates of food security look like.

I just wanted to have that discussion so because I know what I know in District 5 anecdotally.

and working with, let's say, Dr. Kelly Brown, Skinner mixed up with Dr. Warren Brown, because they keep statistics in order to compete for RFP and for money, and they just opened the second food bank at Bitter Lake.

So, I just wanted to know just if you, when you worked with these, because I know they keep statistics.

So, what I think, and if I'm wrong, I'm sure someone from North Helpline will tell me, that we have seen an increase in older adults and families with young children.

That's the biggest uptick.

Yeah, Kaylin will be able to share with you the groups that we're seeing that food banks are reporting.

They're seeing the rise in visits from which groups, from which demographic, different demographic groups.

Are we able, Madam Chairman, to ask you this, are we able to correlate when we pass the sugar tax in June of 2017 how or whether or not that has put a dent in some of these stats in addressing food insecurity?

I can turn the question back to you.

Yeah, that's a good question.

So as part of how the tax revenues are being used, I understand that there is some funding set aside to evaluate the program and the effects of programs that are being funded by the tax.

I have not yet heard what that process or how that, who will be doing that.

Okay, so I'm just going to make one plug and then I'll stop.

And we've had this talk, Madam Chair.

I don't believe that she's going to stop.

I don't believe that for one minute.

But she can do one plug now.

And I don't want to say I told you so about budget, but I'm gonna let that go.

This is my concern, and I'll continue to do this when we drafted and did the sugar tax, is I think the bulk of the money should go to food insecurity.

Nothing against people wanting to do studies on obesity, but I think we got it.

That's why we passed the tax.

That my number one goal is to continue to fight that food banks are a line item in the tax and they have a revenue stream to provide food to our elders and to our children.

and to our immigrant communities and people who are, English is a second language and all the other issues.

That is gonna be my number one issue.

Nothing against the advisory committee, but I think, and the voters I think agree, that we pass this tax so we can address those issues.

So children don't go to school hungry so they can learn, so our elders have food that we can provide.

And we have, I think we have 39 food banks and 30 of them are funded by this city.

And of those 39, there are 30, but 30 of them are enhanced centers.

So, as we know, you'll get that in your slide, do more than just hand out food.

And I'll wait until we get to that slide.

But I think that's real key, and that's something I'm not going to let up on.

So, thank you.

Thank you and that's a good segue.

Thank you.

So I just want to follow up on that line of thinking because while I believe in the concept of food banks and myself and you know my family had to rely on food banks in Central Washington when we were growing up.

I also am not sure that it is completely fair or accurate to say that food banks will always have and provide healthy foods.

And I don't know if this report evaluated the quality of healthy foods available at food banks.

Because while I agree that food banks provide access to food, it's not always necessarily the highest quality or the healthiest available food.

I mean, I'll speak for myself, but in the 80s, I definitely remember that yellow block of something that was passed off as cheese, right?

And so that's not a healthy food.

Yes, it's food, but it isn't healthy.

And so I think for me, the underlying component of the sugary beverage tax was not only to address food insecurity, it was also to address the chronic diseases related to eating unhealthy and sort of that generational poverty of not being able to break those cycles that resulted in ongoing food insecurity, but also in diabetes and heart disease, et cetera, because of the types of food that we had access to.

And I don't want to absolve food banks of their responsibility of also making sure that they are staying committed to providing the healthiest foods available to the people that we're asking them to serve and that they're committed to serving.

Yeah, this is also a really good segue for Kaylin to be able to report.

And she did hear from food banks themselves that they were interested in being able to provide quality, healthy food and that there are some constraints based on how much they have to work with and the increase in people that they're seeing coming through the doors.

Yeah, I mean, I'll say on that note, too, that we definitely explored that at the very beginning as to whether or not we could measure the quality of food that food banks are providing.

We even spoke briefly with Jessie and some of her colleagues of what it would look like to do an audit going in and really identifying healthy versus non-healthy, and it was just outside the scope of this specific assessment.

But I will say that from the conversations we had with those staff members and people working at food banks, this is definitely a priority of theirs and something that they're really struggling to make thoughtful decisions on, especially when you are relying heavily on donations and trying to decide what donations to accept and which to refuse, essentially.

So before I move on to the next slide, I just want to highlight a few specific findings when we looked at income more specifically.

So you can't really talk about root causes to hunger without talking about income and poverty.

So this was, first of all, not surprising to us that we found income to be inversely related to food security, meaning that if you fall into a lower category of income, your rates of food insecurity are going to be higher.

So as I mentioned, this is not surprising to us, but we did look at it a little more specifically and tried to examine how those rates change as income changes.

And when we look at our lowest income level, so people who are below the 200% federal poverty level, those are people who qualify for basic food assistance programs like SNAP.

We still are finding that one out of three individuals in this category are experiencing food insecurity.

And when we go past this eligibility mark, we also see high rates of food insecurity.

So we are curious to find out at what point or at what income level do we see those rates actually drop to minimal levels.

And that doesn't seem to happen until the 300% of federal poverty level.

which, to put into context, for a family of four, that's approximately $75,000.

So at that point, we see the rates drop to fairly low levels.

But when we estimate how many people are still experiencing food insecurity but not qualifying for things like SNAP, we get to a total of approximately 13,000 people who fall into that food security gap.

Please.

So I'm looking at the actual report in this section that talks about who's experiencing food insecurity.

So that's page 58 of the report, as far as I can tell, unless you're talking about a different section.

But I think it's 58. So chart one.

which talks about food insecurity for adults and school-aged children by council district.

I don't know if you, do you have the chart in front of you?

I'm having a hard time.

I would appreciate it if you all can explain to me what the chart is communicating.

There's a, you know, access that has the Seattle council districts, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, on the other axis it's 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25% and then it breaks it down by bars and there's like a 15% and then there's like this weird line thing with a dot that goes further out beyond the bar graph and I don't know what we're trying to communicate there.

Okay, sure, yeah, let me explain.

And I apologize to people in the audience and those of you who are following along on Seattle Channel, because you don't have the benefit of seeing this up on the screen, and I've done a very poor job of describing the image.

For folks who are able to access the agenda materials that are online, you should be able to click on the report and go to page 58 of the report.

And you will see this chart that we're talking about.

And the chart title is Food Insecurity for Adults and School-Aged Children by Council District.

So let me help orient what this chart is describing.

So on the left-hand side, it shows data for the adults.

And this data comes from our behavior risk factor surveillance survey, and it shows percent of adults by council school council district who are reporting food insecurity so for example at the top we have council district one and it shows 9% and And it also shows a dot with a black line that extends past the 9%.

And what that dot with the black line indicates is the confidence interval.

So we think that the true value of people in Council District 1 who are saying that they've experienced food insecurity could be anywhere between 5% and about 15%.

But our point estimate is 9%.

Okay, so then this is the range and then when we look at the, I guess not food availability, this is because this is food insecurity as compared to food availability.

I just wanted to get a sense of, so this is really the range based on the survey data of people who we anticipate have experienced food insecurity based on districts.

There are people who reported when they were asked that question, and that's what this figure shows.

Correct.

So District 4, it's anywhere between 15 to 25 percent?

Right.

District 3 is anywhere between 12 percent and 20 percent?

Or does the fact that the dot is in the middle mean that it's 6 percent?

The dot would be about 6%, so anywhere between 6% and just over 25%, and the estimate is the 12% for Council District 3. Got it.

Okay.

Very helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for asking that question.

Thank you for reading the report.

Well, I think it's important for us as we're grappling with these issues around food insecurity.

I mean, it's important for us to root that understanding in who and who the folks are that are reporting experiences with food insecurity and where.

I think that is...

incredibly, that granular level of detail is really helpful to us as policymakers to be able to understand what potential policy steps might flow from this, either in the revenue source allocation appropriation conversation or in other types of programs.

So in my case, we're, you know, about to kick off a conversation in my committee around the implementation plan for the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy.

There are other wraparound services that could, again, help to stabilize families who are also experiencing food insecurity through that mechanism.

And so for me, it's just important to have a strong understanding of how this is playing out, particularly because some of the dollars that we're gonna be allocating in this space are designed to focus on students and their families who are experiencing homelessness, which are obviously going to fall into the category of school-aged children by council district that are also experiencing food insecurity.

So as I mentioned, there's approximately 13,000 people who fall into this food security gap, meaning that while our basic food programs like SNAP are great, they're not actually meeting all of our needs.

And that brings me to our food bank network, which I'm currently on slide 19. Assessing this network helps us to really look more in depth at a resource that's available for those people who don't have those SNAP benefits available to them.

For our inclusion criteria, we defined food banks based on these three points here that you'll see.

So they had to be actively operating.

They had to be distributing food from an on-site location at least once a month.

And they had to be located within Seattle limits or serving a large number of Seattle residents.

That brought us to 30 food banks, which you'll see on that map to the right.

They are also color-coded.

Those that are red are those that do not currently receive city funding.

And those that are in purple are those that are currently funded by the city.

Just for the sake of economic context in each area, they're overlaid onto a map that you'll see in blue as color is shaded in some areas more blue than others.

And that's just the percentage of residents in that census track that are living below 200% of the federal poverty level.

So for the purposes of this assessment, we focused on a mixed methods approach, meaning we collected quantitative and qualitative data.

The results that I'll present are a reflection of these three components.

So we conducted an electronic survey reaching 25 out of those 30 food banks.

We also did discussions with clients who are utilizing the food banks, and that brought us to seven groups altogether, four of which were facilitated in non-English languages, and three that were in English.

Each discussion group, there was one per council district, so we were able to get some good geographic distribution.

We also did interviews, one interview per food bank, so we reached 13 food banks and spoke with staff who are working there as well.

humans did you actually talk to?

So we spoke to 13 staff and then for our client discussion groups we reached a total of 47 individuals.

And then what were the responses to your survey?

Is it 25 responses?

Yeah, 25 food banks responded to the surveys out of 30.

Okay, so you didn't do 25 electronic surveys, you got 25 responses?

Yes, 25 responses.

So moving to our next slide, slide 21, this just highlights which topics we covered.

We focused on getting some more information on the resources that food banks offer, as well as the sufficiency of those resources.

To try to understand accessibility, we asked about schedules and transportation.

And then lastly, we looked at the impact that food banks are having in the community.

So I'm on slide 22, which is where we start with our results.

So the impact of food banks, it's difficult to overestimate the impact that we saw.

So the network provides a critical food safety net.

So each year, on average, food banks are providing food to approximately 15,000 individuals.

Those are unique individuals and not visits.

In total, we estimated 22 million pounds of food are being distributed out into the city and that's, again, likely an underestimate as we only received responses from 25 out of the 30 food banks.

But food banks also provide much more than just food.

They also provide many non-food resources and also provide a unique connection to services.

So whether it's providing a community connector who helps clients navigate social services and applications for things like healthcare, they also sometimes partner with other organizations to provide things like mobile medical clinics, for example.

I'm not going to say a whole lot because I said a whole lot before about but the critical services as you said and we've learned in the last certainly the last five years in the last three budget cycles that we have what we have the enhanced food services.

So the food banks of today are not the food banks of yesterday.

We know that food banks, the enhanced food or enhanced service centers provide housing, vouchers, eviction, health care.

They sign people up for Medicaid.

We have clinics that are connected, at least we do.

Transportation, ORCA cards.

And I'm going to get back to a sense of community in a minute and why that's really important.

The non-food items are so critical as well, because we provide diapers and feminine products, dog and cat food, baby formula.

And I don't think the public knows that.

I think they think we're just coming in for a bag of food.

And what I've learned just being on the ground and being there, and Council Member Gonzalez has joined me up in North Haven, that they do everything.

And so the other issue that I want to really and I want to commend all of our food banks out there doing this.

There is, it's priceless what these service centers or these community groups do when it comes to a sense of community.

We rely so much on the people that are in the brick and mortar of not just providing all these critical services and food and all these other things, but they actually provide a service of humanity.

They're the ones, the frontline people that I call when we have people on the street I can call Kelly Brown and say, and I won't say their names.

are camped out in front of grocery outlet, and she can say, I've known so-and-so for four years.

I think we can get him indoors or her indoors.

I've relied on that with them.

And I think people don't, they underestimate.

Kelly Brown, the director of North Helpline, should not be out on the street doing that and working with the NAV team.

But because we have, they have a lack of services, so that if we gave them more money, they would free up their staff so they actually have more, because we have a couple navigators there as well.

And I guess my point is they're more than just ambassadors.

They're like community health workers.

These people know them.

We feed them.

We see them.

It takes us two, three, four visits to connect with some of these people to get them into services.

And so there's a level of trust that I don't think you can put a price tag on.

And I don't think sometimes the community recognizes that, that we actually rely on them.

for just that touch of humanity that they know them to help them get them and meet them where they're at.

And if we can provide our food banks, all 30 of them, with more money and services so they can free up to continue to provide that service to the city of Seattle so we can work on sheltering the unsheltered.

feeding the hungry.

And my other concern is the children, knowing whose kids, whether or not they have food.

They also hand out Christmas gifts and turkeys.

I've been there handing out Christmas gifts and making sure these kids have a good Christmas.

And so I just wanted to just make that one plug because I know we all care about this, but I wanted people to know the sense of community that these brick and mortar and people do on the ground every day with not a lot of money.

So thank you.

So, no, I want to really come back to your point because this is the one that you made all throughout budget was the value and the importance of these food banks.

So, what I'd like to do is put a bookmark in that and come back to it at the end of this conversation.

I'd like you to continue with your statistics about this and then we'll see if we can develop a plan because I know, first of all, I know that this is a high priority to you.

I recognize the good work you've done in D5 on it.

So I'd like to suggest let's move forward here, but then come back and see what we can do for making sure that this community connection that you've highlighted is something we can properly fund going forward.

Please.

Yeah, and so for when we were looking at impact, there were a lot of things that were pretty easily measurable, as I already mentioned, the number of individuals that are being served or the pounds of food that are going out.

But there's a lot that we weren't necessarily looking for that we found and things that aren't necessarily measurable.

As was mentioned already, this sense of community was really important.

A lot of people really talked about food banks as providing a real sense of safety.

So to understand the context of that, it's important to acknowledge that food insecurity often means making a very difficult choice between purchasing the food that you need and purchasing other basic necessities to cover things like utilities or childcare.

What we heard from people through their personal stories about their experiences at the food bank is that having this option both frees up very limited income to cover those other needed expenses, but it also provides a sense of security when financial emergencies happen.

We heard about things like divorce, unexpected unemployment, housing loss, and medical emergencies, which required a sudden need for income.

And being able to rely on a food bank meant that people had assurance that they would have access to food.

So despite all this wonderful impact that food banks have, there is a huge demand on them.

And we found that the network is seeing a rise in need.

And this is particularly seen amongst specific groups.

So food banks saw a rise in the number of older adults, the number of homeless, and then the number of those who are traveling further north and further south of the city to reach their food bank.

When we asked food banks to report on how their visitation had changed over the last year, 60% of them reported seeing an increase in client visits.

And as you'll see in this quote, many of them attributed this to rising costs of healthcare and costs of rent in the city, aging population, and then also more people experiencing homelessness.

We also asked food banks to share how resource constraints had impacted them over the last year, and many of them spoke on reducing the quality or the variety of food that they offered, and then also 65% reported that they had reduced the quantity of food that they provided to clients due to resource constraints.

Did you want to talk about the gaps?

I think I had asked you about gaps as food banks are trying to make choices about how many hours they're open.

I think you mentioned that there was a lack of morning hours, and that could be very important for people that may be working either night or swing shifts.

Yeah, and I'll get to that.

We definitely saw that there's a lack of hours both over the weekend, which for people who are trying to make it from Friday until Monday, this can be a real struggle.

And then also kind of moving away from this assumption that it's only people who don't have jobs that are accessing food banks, it's actually a lot of working adults as well.

And so people who have the standard work schedule, a 9 to 5 Monday through Friday, found it very difficult to access food banks due to the hours that they're open.

So moving to the next slide, slide 24. When we looked at food banks' ability to meet this demand, we found that they are lacking a lot of necessary resources to keep up.

Specifically, those were staffing, vehicles, food, funding, and then also the space to operate.

84% of food banks reported some kind of funding difficulty over the previous year, most commonly finding predictable and long-term funding sources, and then also funding sources that would cover operational expenses and not just food.

On average, food banks operate with three full-time staff, and over a quarter of them reported not having any full-time staff at all, meaning that they are relying primarily on part-time staff and volunteers.

So we had the opportunity to sit down, as I mentioned, with 47 individuals who go to food banks and utilize their services.

And through that, we were able to get a sense of what their priorities are when they come to the food bank.

First and foremost, above all, and in every single group that we talked to, we heard a lot about wanting a dignified experience.

So for many, it was difficult to come to this decision seeking out assistance in such a public way.

And so the importance of feeling respected and having a dignified experience throughout that was really important.

Food safety also came up a lot.

And of course, all of us would probably agree that food safety is important to us as well.

But we probably don't think about it in the same way.

So for someone who doesn't have shelter and who doesn't have affordable health care, for example, the risk of food poisoning is a very, a higher stakes decision for them.

Quality of food also came up.

Clients want to see more proteins, more fresh fruits and vegetables.

And then for those who don't have access to a kitchen, for cooking, the importance of no-cook bags where they can easily access and utilize and consume the food was also critical.

And then lastly, convenient access, which was brought up earlier.

The importance of weekend and evening hours is something that food bank clients really emphasized.

And as this quote here says from a client in Council District 3, they said, it's useful if food banks are open on Friday, because then I know that at least from Friday to Tuesday or Wednesday, I will have food.

Most places aren't open on the weekend, so from Friday on, I am trying to ensure that I can make it at least through the weekend, if not a little longer.

So it's a great segue to our next slide, 26, which focuses on our results of a gap analysis.

And I just want to emphasize from the beginning that this is just one element of access, so we certainly weren't able to capture all aspects.

It's just one dimension.

But by looking at on-site distribution hours, we are able to see some gaps both by time of day and also day of the week.

So we found minimal hours available for clients to access food banks over the weekend and then also during the evenings from 5 to 8. There's a special lack of morning access in districts 4, 5, and 6, a lack of afternoon access in districts 1 and 5, and then minimal evening access in districts 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7. We also looked at these hours of distribution proportional to need, which I'll explain a little bit more on the next slide.

But from that analysis, we found districts five and four to have the fewest hours compared to the need.

I'd like to just point out something that I did mention to Councilmember Juarez, that District 5 shows up in every one of those.

Lack of morning access, lack of afternoon access, lack of evening access, and District 5 is included in having the fewest hours.

And I'm underscoring this because with great appreciation and love, you brought this up during budget, and she was able to get money into food banks in District 5. And I want to acknowledge that because up until the time that we've had districts and this particular district council member, District 5 would talk to us about, hey, we're forgotten here.

We're invisible.

Nobody talks.

about North Seattle.

And I just really want to acknowledge the fact that the statistics bore out what anecdotally you were presenting.

So, much thanks to you personally and to your staff members.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I take great delight in saying I told you so.

I will leave it at that.

I was right.

She was right.

So to explain this visual just a little bit more, this is essentially showing the number of hours that are available in each council district per 1,000 food insecure adults that live in that district.

So the lower the number, the least access that's available.

So that would be District 5. So District 5 and 4 definitely come up.

And if you compare District 5 to District 3, you see that there's three times as much access measured by hours available in District 3 compared to District 5. Again, I just want to mention that this isn't to say that these districts say six, one, and three have too much access.

For a lot of these areas, they may be dense areas, high trafficked areas with a lot of other services there.

So while people who are food insecure may not live there, they may be there for other resources.

And so the fact that there's a lot of hours there may not be a bad thing or an unnecessary thing.

Of course.

I know that you're comparing by distribution, availability, and level of adult food insecurity, but we yet don't have the factors about services, because you're just measuring food here, correct?

We're not saying, you know, we don't have a chart that says per district who's doing eviction prevention, who's signing people up for Medicaid, who's coming to the clinic, who's, we're not doing any of that.

We're just measuring straight across the board just adult food insecurity.

Yeah, and I would say that there is a lot more we would have loved to have done with this analysis.

Also looking at pounds of food that are distributed and the amount of people who are utilizing those food banks.

And as you mentioned, the services that are provided that are non-food services.

But because we missed five individual food banks who didn't participate in the survey, we weren't able to compare across council district.

I'm hoping that if there's another round of your study that we measure non-food services.

I think a human services department may have some of that, and if not, we will request them to provide it to us.

They've recently gone through requests for proposals.

I know that last year we asked over and over again for how many of these sources offer showers, public showers.

So I think what I'd like to ask you and your staff to do is make me a list of the kinds of things you're looking for.

And I think you've mentioned several of them.

Can they get ORCA cards?

Can they get help with the utility discount program?

and be able to have a list of services that are available across the city and where.

So I don't see that necessarily as part of the job you were asked to do, but I do believe that Human Services Department may have some of it, if not all of it.

We'll ask them to chart it for us.

Thanks.

Kaylin, thank you.

Did you have something you wanted to say?

Very good.

Thank you.

I should just add that during the budget I did hand this out, and it did list all 39 food banks, and I did have a column for food and clothing, food, clothing, child care, home delivery, mobile food bank.

So we actually did our research, and I actually have one of these, and it would be nice to.

You have it in front of you, too.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah, so you can go anywhere without D5 information.

We need to add to this.

I just want to add to this.

Yeah, get that enhanced services so that it divides.

Do you want to see my list?

Yeah, it's helpful.

You can keep it.

Thank you, Chair.

Please, go ahead.

Yeah, so our key takeaway for this slide was really that while this measure of access is not perfect, it does provide us with strong support for the conclusion that Districts 4 and 5 are more difficult for people who are food insecure to find an open food bank near them.

So this brings me to our key takeaways, and I just want to end with these opportunities that we identified as having potential to improve equitable access.

The first was to expand client choice through a grocery store model to create a more dignified experience.

What a grocery store model design really looks like is redesigning a food bank so that there's more open space, so that it replicates a grocery store experience, clients, shop essentially for their food and they're able to choose the food themselves.

The second opportunity we want to highlight is increasing purchasing power to improve cultural relevance of healthy food that's provided.

So essentially the more choice, the better food banks are able to respond to their community preferences and potentially also reduce waste.

So it's very hard when food banks, as I mentioned, are relying on donations to be able to actually select foods that they believe are appropriate for their clients and their community.

Third, increased mobility through coordinated systems of distribution can help target areas of most need.

You know, this is not an assessment that is focused on the root causes of hunger, but I want to emphasize that there are certain things happening in the city that impact access.

And so, as food bank staff highlighted, Accessible real estate is hard to hold on to and neighborhoods are quickly changing.

And so to be able to better respond to that and ensure that resources get to the areas of most need, it would be helpful to have more resources that are mobile, things like mobile food banks, pop-up parking lot food banks, satellite locations, delivery trucks, that sort of thing.

Lastly, by investing in operational costs, all of these other opportunities would be more of an option for food banks.

So staff highlighted the need for more staffing and salaries to also reduce high turnover.

Increased building space makes it possible to increase both food distribution and then also the hours that they're open and also supports this redesign effort of shifting to a grocery store model.

But in order to do that, they need the resources to do it.

Is there any city that has done a grocery store model?

Yeah, there are actually at least two in our city.

So there was some recent press that highlighted this for White Center Food Bank.

They've recently shifted to a food, a grocery store model and I believe University District Food Bank as well.

Correct, I've been to that one and People walk in and they're essentially given tickets, I believe, that they can choose what they want and then there's a certain number of protein items and a certain number of fruit and vegetables that they can take, but they get to choose from what's available.

Yeah, so I just want to end with some quotes.

I paired each of these findings with a quote to really provide an opportunity for you to hear directly from the clients and the staff that participated in this assessment, who also sort of bring to life why these were identified as priorities.

So in speaking about expanding client choice, this food bank client from Council District 4 says, the grocery store style gives more dignity.

You're not alienated.

So to pick out what you want and to not feel like you're just a number in a line is a lot more dignified than being handed a box.

When speaking about increasing purchasing power, a staff member said, it is less having enough food as it's having the right kind.

So when you rely on donations, that's hard, which is why we say prioritize purchasing budget, because that's what gives us the autonomy.

Third, to increase mobility, a staff member said, it doesn't have to be necessarily that we go the extra mile to get food exactly to their door.

Maybe it's just getting it someplace that's more convenient for them.

Maybe it's a mobile food bank.

in a parking lot or getting food to their place of worship or community center.

And then lastly, when we're talking about operational costs, this staff member said, we are open eight hours a week to serve 1,000 visitors, which makes it difficult to replenish food.

Expanding hours would improve access, but would require more staffing and potentially more food.

Our home delivery program has had a wait list for years, but we just don't have the capacity.

So with that, I just want to say thank you for your time.

And if there are any questions, we'd love to take them.

Our next step for these results is to share these with our community advisory board.

Thank you.

Well, as I mentioned to you last week, I'm really grateful for this thorough work, but the presentation style and the easy to read PowerPoint here will be very helpful for lots of folks.

A couple of the takeaways that I think it'll be useful for us to be thinking about is one, the point you raised earlier, Council Member Juarez, about with these food banks, what other services are available that people can access, and then increasing this mobility.

I know that there was interest particularly around Magnuson Park last year.

There's not a grocery store anywhere within walking distance for many of the low-income housing units that are there, but could we bring food to them?

see what we could do to help enhance the quality that's available.

So I hope that, and Jeff, since you've been tapped with this on central staff, between now and September, when we start thinking about budget, I'd really like us to have a plan and what we can do that'll make a big difference.

But again, thank you for that.

Any other questions?

We've lost Council President Harrell.

Council Member Gonzalez is about to go get on a plane.

So anything else, David, that you'd like to add?

Jessie, you've been amazingly quiet today.

Well, I think the more juicy and interesting part of the report went to Kaylin.

So we are super appreciative of all of Kaylin's hard work on the Food Bank Network.

I'm glad that she got the center stage today.

Good.

And I appreciate the intersection between public health and the University of Washington.

Your research has been great.

It's good to be able to have all of you at the table.

Anything else for the good of the order there, Mr. Sims?

Okay.

I have one comment.

Yeah, please.

First, I want to thank you so much for the work that you've done in the report.

And contrary to common folklore, I do care about other districts besides T5.

And so with that, but it's real critical.

We're in districts now, and we live in the district, and we represent the people who obviously live in that district.

So those of us who have lived in our neighborhoods for years just kind of know our districts and what the needs are.

So I want to thank you for breaking this down in districts, just so when we roll around the budget and we talk about policy, but we also talk about funding that policy, that we service the greatest need in dollars to those communities that need it the most.

So it isn't just D5 I care about.

I care about the food banks across the board, that they are all getting the revenue stream that I believe they deserve for this important service.

But I would love to, and I'll have, we'll work with you to go back and start measuring the other critical services.

And like I said, you saw my chart, what I anecdotally know, but I would love to bolster that.

And not just for budget purposes, but just so you can, and for the public to see that these, there's a lot of working people that go to food banks.

And you're right that the experience, it needs to be dignified.

It's difficult, particularly with certain communities that like don't eat meat or don't eat milk or milk products.

We try to meet those needs and you're right.

Our food banks rely on donations and, you know, we've gotten to where sometimes we hand out gift cards.

We work really closely and what really hurt our district is when Sam's Club closed down and Albertson's closed down.

I don't think people realize the impact that that does.

Getting back to Madison Park, my main concern there is I think, don't we have four low-income unit or buildings?

I think solid ground is there.

Yeah, has four.

And we're anticipating four.

And so their main store is the 7-Eleven on Sandpoint.

And so I'm beyond just, you know, having a truck show up with food.

Looking at that deed, I think that we should actually have a grocery store there, period.

We just should.

So I'm looking beyond just a revenue stream for food banks, and I know that the definition for food deserts is different.

I know just from Indian country that those are real food deserts when you have to travel 20 miles because there's no grocery store anywhere and there's no bus service to get you there.

So I'm familiar with rural communities.

and trying to get healthy food.

So I'm going to keep pushing that the sweetened beverage tax, that that revenue stream continues to come into food banks so they can do more than just provide food, but they have that service and all those other critical services that come with that.

And that's, I think, is the food bank of the 21st century.

It isn't like it used to be.

And I'm just hoping the public understands that and appreciates the hard work that these people do.

So thank you.

Thank you.

All right, well, thank you very much.

We've really peppered you with questions.

Appreciate you all coming.

And we're going to move on to our next item, number three.

Do you want to read that in?

Because there's possible vote on this one.

I would love to.

Resolution number 31866, resolution establishing a watch list of large, complex, discrete capital projects that will require enhanced quarterly monitoring reports for the 2019 calendar year.

And welcome to Council Member Herbold and to Dan Eder from Council Central staff.

May I just say a quick word?

Absolutely.

While our folks who did the food report are still in the room, I wasn't able to join you, but I do have a lot of follow-up questions around the implications for South Park and Delridge.

So Alex, my office will be in touch.

Thanks.

Good.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member, would you like me to introduce the topic?

Please, would you?

Okay, great.

For the record, Dan Eater, Deputy Director of Council Central Staff.

The action on today's agenda item flows from a prior resolution.

I thought it might be helpful to begin with a quick recap of that prior action, Resolution 31853, and then I'll touch on a quick summary of the resolution before you today.

You'll recall that the City Council adopted Resolution 31853 in November of 2018. Among other things, that November 2018 resolution established enhanced reporting requirements for the City's Capital Improvement Program.

It also established the format for quarterly reports that the executive will provide for a group of selected capital projects referred to as an annual watch list.

It also stated that all projects on the watch list are eligible for stage-based appropriations, and the last thing I will highlight for you is that The prior action articulated the council's intent to adopt by resolution the selected projects for a final watch list each year.

And that leads to the item on today's committee agenda.

As anticipated in the 2018 resolution, resolution 31866 on today's agenda does several things.

First and foremost, It establishes the 2019 watch list by identifying, in section one of the resolution, the projects for which the executive will provide enhanced quarterly reports for 2019. Secondly, it invites the mayor to add any other projects that she may wish to add throughout the year to this 2019 watch list.

That's in section two.

And finally, in section three, the resolution memorializes the council's ability to impose stage-based appropriations on any project or projects in the 2019 watch list in the event that the council decides to do so either because of information provided in the enhanced quarterly reports or for any other reason.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, do you want to?

I do.

Could you speak a little bit, Dan, to the guidance I think our earlier resolution provided for the type of projects that make for good watch list projects?

Yes.

I am having trouble finding the, oh, here we go.

The prior resolution indicated that the council intends to provide heightened oversight for selected capital projects that may have unclear scopes, shifting estimated costs, uncertain capital funding plans, ill-defined operating plan, sorry, ill-defined operating costs plans or funding plans, and other perceived significant questions about scope, schedule, and budget.

Thank you.

And so, as a result of the work that's been done over the last year or so, not only have we come to agreement on the watch list approach and what type of projects are ripe to be put on the watch list.

But there has been a lot of discussion back and forth on what those quarterly reports would look like.

A lot of work done on making sure that there is common terminology across all the departments and on the council.

And so there is a, I don't know if we have it with us, but there's sort of a format that reports will come to council.

But one of the things that I don't think we have discussed, and whereas I really appreciate all the work that central staff has done to come to agreement with the individual departments and CBO on reporting, is how this council is going to use that information to monitor it, whether or not the quarterly reports are going to be coming for projects that are on the watch list, are going to be coming to, for instance, the Finance Committee, or whether or not they will be coming to the committees that have the capital departments within them, or whether or not there's some other approach that we agreed to, Part of this effort is, well, a lot of this effort is really about our heightened oversight role.

And in order to engage in having a heightened oversight role, I think we have to have some agreement on how we're going to use the information moving forward.

So I'm just kind of, it's not something we have to answer now, but that's, I'm putting a pin in that for something that I would like us to talk about before receiving the first quarter report.

The other sort of unanswered question is, you know, in drafting the resolution, I tried to put the executive on the hook for making recommendations about stage gated projects.

And so those theoretically would be projects that are on the wait list, I mean, sorry, on the watch list, but that we want to take an extra level of accountability over.

and make sure that our appropriation authority is used only when certain thresholds are met as part of the watch process.

So we're currently doing that for one project, that's the Delridge Multimodal Corridor, and they have been coming and reporting to the Transportation Committee on meeting certain threshold requirements, and then the committee and the council acts to release the next stage of money.

And so the response from the executive, you know, understandably, was, well, no, this exercise is about how you want to have sort of oversight of our projects.

We're not going to make recommendations to you of what projects you should hold up.

While we're doing that review and so another piece of this I believe is going to be us council members talking amongst themselves to figure out What projects we also want to do stage gating on because I think it's a it's it's a best practice in capital project oversight, it's it's a practice that councilmember Johnson has mentioned numerous times that sound transit uses and And so that, again, is an item that I'm really excited to talk to my colleagues about how to use that authority that we have in a way that will have not just heightened oversight for the sake of oversight, but about improving public confidence in our role as well as getting real questions answered that need to be answered.

Well, I appreciate that very much.

We had just touched lightly on what the Finance Committee could do and working through Dan.

I would very much like to bring maybe a committee that we can have at Finance, bring Rob, because he has worked, Council Member Johnson, because of the work he's done around Sound Transit, but also with transportation, like to have you come and talk about what you know about best practices and what you're interested in accomplishing so we can get that really clarified.

I know that this came up in no small part because of your interest and concern around the central, the center city streetcar and the fact that even though there may be some capital pieces about that, there's some operational issues that we want some information on as well.

So how about if after this meeting, You and I sit down and talk about what we can do.

We'll invite Dan to that meeting so it's clear.

Like you, I don't want to just be going through reports for the sake of reports, but if we're real clear on the outcomes we're trying to accomplish, that would be great.

Fantastic.

And so the next report comes in...

Mid, late March, is that correct?

Yeah, so the executive is actually going to provide a fourth quarter report for 2018. So that's before we, there is a list of projects that they're already reporting on for 2018. That has, that's separate from the resolution that's before you today.

We expect the fourth quarter report to come on March 22nd after the books have closed on 2018 and the executive has been able to prepare those reports.

The first quarterly report in 2019, the quarter ends on March 31st and eight weeks later, approximately May 24th is when we'll expect to receive the first quarterly report for 2019.

And so does our resolution identify projects for sort of looking backwards for 2018?

It does not.

So what projects are the fourth quarter 2018, what projects are going to be covered by that report?

They are a very similar list of projects to the list that is in this resolution.

There are a couple of projects that we will continue to receive reports on in 2018, but they are effectively nearing the end of construction, and so they've fallen off the 2019 list.

I'm thinking of the Denny substation project, for instance.

But if the project was on in 2018 and it's not yet complete, it rolled into 2019 and then we added a few more.

And can you talk about, did the, we received a list from the executive and presumably the council added some as well?

Yes, that's correct.

The resolution 31853 from November of 2018, asked for the executive to essentially propose some projects for the council's consideration by January 15th, and the executive met that deadline and submitted a proposed list.

All of the mayor's proposals have been accepted and are included in the list before you.

Three additional projects were added.

And can you give us just a feel for what we can expect as it relates to reporting for projects on the watch list?

Yes.

As you mentioned, the November 2018 resolution referenced a format and expectations for the enhanced quarterly reports for this watch list of projects that will address budget and the, so the adopted CIP for a six year look, it'll look at how actual costs are marrying up against the adopted budget and what the trend line is, what is the, what is being reported, what is going to be reported on a quarterly basis Do they think that they, based on what they know, each progressive quarter, think that they will or won't be able to meet that lifetime project budget?

They'll do a similar analysis on schedule and they'll also address some of the general risks that the project is facing and some strategies for addressing the budget schedule and scope risks.

So I think Council President Harrell had a question.

Were you finished?

Because I actually was enjoying your questioning.

I agree with everything that you said.

And I had some time to think about the process by which we'll look at the reports.

Will it go to this committee or the substantive committee that has committee oversight?

And maybe I'll just sort of tell you what I'm thinking at this point, but certainly we could talk offline and figure it out.

that because one of the things I'd be interested in seeing pursuant to the resolution quite candidly is you know the percentage of potential overruns looking at the lifespan on the project and a constant threshold whether it's 5% or 25% or 30% amongst all of the different departments, whether it's SDOT or Seattle City Light, particularly with SPU and City Light where it could affect rates, just sort of a standard format.

And so I think I lean toward more of a centralized approach having it on this committee so we could develop common criteria, common formatting, but with the insistence that central staff, of course, make sure that the person with committee responsibilities at the table and informed all the way.

The other part of my concern to support that argument is that when sometimes a committee chair is close to the subject matter and they are a strong advocate perhaps the project is sometimes nice to have other opinions on that one because now you're putting on your fiscal prudence hat on as opposed to the advocacy of it.

And so I just think maybe having it centralized may make sense.

But that's just sort of my reaction to, I think, the sage points you made.

No, I think that's good.

And my follow up with that was one of the best presentations that we had had on a capital project included seawall and our waterfront project over the years and whether it was transportation would come in, or the seawall committee, or Marshall Foster, who was overseeing that, and they would come in with, you remember the risk chart, and there was a red, green, and yellow analysis, and on the scope, schedule, and budget, primarily, and if things were good, and they were on schedule, and on budget, it was green, if there was an issue there that they wanted to alert us to, it was yellow, and if it was over budget, or off schedule, or suddenly the scope had changed dramatically, then there was a red alert.

So I would like to have a continued analysis that way.

And I think it's also would be really good for a dashboard.

Yeah.

Council President Harrell, I've received a plea from parties that I will not name that we do not create another committee.

So the idea of doing it with the chair's permission, yeah, doing it quarterly here, and inviting the chairs of the other capital committees.

I think that would be great.

I think bolstering that conclusion that you all have just agreed on, I would just point out that the watch list is on the order of 20 projects or so.

There are the projects, as I described, that have you know, significant scope risk or there's some question about how they're going to get funded, et cetera.

But there are, I think, something on the order of 600 capital projects that are in the CIP.

And so for the, not the 20 projects, but the balance of the 600 projects, we will also be receiving a summary report that is on a handful of pages that tells you, I think, interesting information by department about all the CIP projects that are underway, including their lifetime budget, their life-to-date expenditure, their schedules, et cetera, and a field for some information in narrative form.

So what else would you like to add to that?

I think we've covered it.

Okay.

Yeah, very good.

So Dan, you and I will follow up on this.

Council Member Herbold, I'll swing back by your office.

We'll see if we can get some and then we'll ask Allison to help us get scheduled when you know what's coming in and then it'll be something in March or early April and then June or July and then we'll have one in September before budget gets started.

Exactly.

All right.

Very good.

Sounds good.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Anything good to the order?

Are we voting on it or no?

Shall we?

That was my question.

It's ripe to vote.

I'm prepared to.

Okay, I didn't know if you wanted more details after we talked, but I'm good with that.

So, did you properly read that in?

I did, but I could do it again.

No, that's good.

Well then, I'd like to move adoption of Resolution 31866. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

And there's none opposed and there's no abstentions.

Thanks for coming and thanks for bringing this up.

All right.

Anything else for the good of the order?

If not, meeting's adjourned.

And thank you so much, Alice, and thanks for organizing everything today.

Dan, many thanks.