Public Safety Committee 6/9/2026

The Public Safety Committee meeting will come to order.

It's 9.32 a.m.

June 9, 2026. I'm Robert Kettle, Chair of the Public Safety Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Wires?

Here.

Council Member Lynn is running late.

Council Member Rivera?

Present.

Council Member Sacco?

Here.

Chair Kettle?

Here.

Chair, there are four members present.

Great, thank you.

And Councilmember Lin is excused until he arrives.

Learn that lesson.

Okay, for today's chair comments, just wanted to briefly say and pass a word of thanks to my colleague, Councilmember Rivera, for putting on a great gun violence intervention symposium yesterday, where she brought in different pieces of government, county, local, federal.

We had a great mix of, you know, people who were in the work of gun violence prevention, but also from the community.

We had different community organizations represented.

And, you know, FIRE, we had the whole host.

It's hard to get everybody in there, and I'm sure we could get more, but we had a great representation across the board.

And so I wanted to thank her, also thank Deputy Mayor Surratt, but also people like King County Prosecutor Lisa Mannion, City Attorney Evans, Chief Barnes, for spending the entire day there, because it shows how important it is by their participation.

And I just wanted to say that we will look to build on this work that was done yesterday in Symposium.

I've already talked to Chief Barnes about having Dr. Hunt's presentation.

version of it presented to committee at some point over the course of this committee season, so I think it's that important.

And, you know, in going through the present, you know, the day at the end, I noted a few things, and I just wanted to, like, relay these again.

One is, in order to move forward, you need leadership.

And, you know, I've mentioned this before recently in chair comment, leadership with follow-through and follow-up.

We have to do that.

And it must be dedicated, and it cannot be ad hoc.

We really need to be focused in terms of what we're doing.

We also need to, in terms of the committee and the council, do our piece, too.

We have a strategic framework plan where we added, you know, a pillar of this being gun violence reduction prevention and community safety.

Community safety is important.

That's part of what we're doing here.

That's kind of alternative response, in a way, at the community level, as opposed to the more formal level with care and the organization service providers, but working together with community because at the end of the day, community is the key for this, for us.

I mentioned that we have to have a regional approach.

It's interesting, you know, we talk about Seattle public safety issues, but they're not Seattle public safety issues.

These individuals, like with gun violence, and by the way, there's different types of gun violence.

There's Rainier Beach, but that's different from the CID, and both of them are different from North Aurora.

So our gun violence, by the way, is not uniform.

But what's uniform is the regional aspect of it with individuals and organizations, groups that come in and out.

And that's something that we have to be mindful of and also underscores the fact that we have to work with the county and the state.

I've mentioned recently how the state needs to pass laws that they could have done in the last session that could help us.

But we also need to work directly with other jurisdictions, you know, the cities of Kent, Renton.

Burien, whatever, Tukwila, and not just with the county, because I think that partnership is key.

And then the two last things that I noted yesterday is acts of hurt, as somebody mentioned, comes from hurt people.

And this really goes to You know, this idea of, you know, addressing the scene between public safety, public health, housing, and human services.

You know, the human services piece, the housing and the public health piece, the behavioral health, mental health, that's where hurt people are.

And we need to be working the connection between that area and public safety.

Otherwise, we'll continue to run the standstill.

And just to I said this yesterday because it was striking to me.

We had individuals from Philadelphia, people coming in from South Bend and Baltimore, so it was really a great thing.

And as a veteran, it caught my attention that they said about young people that they have more exposure to violence and trauma than active duty U.S. military personnel.

We should think about that and reflect upon it and say, hey, As I said to the group, as I said in North Seattle over the weekend, it's not right and it's not acceptable.

So, we need to move on.

So, I just want to take two minutes to say thank you to Councilmember Rivera for her work with the symposium.

So, thank you.

Yes.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

I appreciate the chair bringing this up and allowing me a few minutes or a few seconds to address it.

Yeah, I was corrected myself seconds, but Just so people are aware what this was Excuse me.

It was to talk about an approach that we're not doing in Seattle, but one that that cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore and South Bend, Indiana, who participated in the symposium yesterday, are doing, which is this focused deterrence approach.

and what it is is really identifying in a city the folks that are causing the most harm in terms of gun violence and then telling those folks, what do you need to stop doing what you're doing?

And providing resources if they need that.

And then if they refuse to accept resources, then they get a consequence.

I mean, in a nutshell, that's what the approach is. and we're not really doing that in Seattle right now.

We do do a lot on the prevention and intervention side, so I want to appreciate the community-based organizations that were here yesterday.

But we don't do this focused deterrence approach, and it was one that was developed by David Kennedy out of the John Jay College in New York, and I thought it was important for us in Seattle to Learn about this approach and then hear from other cities and the reason why those other cities were here is because I felt really strongly that We should he actually hear from the folks that have implemented this approach and also so that we could have a dialogue between all the partners our partners to the city who are working as councilmember Kettle said on with these issues on the ground, like the prosecuting attorney, our city attorney, Erica Evans, was there as well, and the U.S., the assistant U.S. attorney was there, and many other folks who are actually working in this space, and making sure that they were hearing their approach, but also that we were hearing from these cities who've had these gun violence issues for even longer than we had.

And this approach has led to 40 50-60% decrease in gun violence in those cities and to me that was worth learning about and having a conversation about and I do very much appreciate everyone who is there from the parties I mentioned to the community-based organizations and everybody stuck around for the entire day because we all care so deeply about this and they all do too.

So, thank you, Councilmember Kettle, for joining.

Wanted to explain a little bit about what the approach is and why we were meeting and what we were learning about.

I really appreciate the folks from John Jay College who came to speak with us and talk to us about this approach that we can.

And I think we should consider in Seattle.

So, thank you, Chair.

More to come on that.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

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

Hearing seeing none, the agenda is adopted.

Okay, we'll move on to our hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda or within the purview of the committee.

Clerk, how many speakers do we have today?

Currently, we have five in person and eight remote speakers.

Okay, under council rules, each speaker will have two minutes.

We will start with in-person speakers.

Clerk, can you please first read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 60 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they registered.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not, and their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

The first speaker on the list is Becca, to be followed by Tammy.

Good morning.

Should I begin?

My daughter made the sign.

It says 100th Matters 2, 100th Street.

We've lived on 100th Street between Aurora and Linden since 2013. and all of our immediate neighbors are feeling really disenfranchised right now.

And so I'm here to speak on their behalf.

So all of my immediate neighbors are either low income, disabled, black or brown, or in other ways, sort of excluded from the discussion that is happening right now.

When 98th Street and 102nd Street were blocked off, all of that traffic was rerouted to 100th.

And so I am here to ask for an equitable solution that takes into account every street west of Aurora.

not just the ones that have been the most vocal.

We have dozens of children along 100th and last month they found shell casings at their bus stop.

In recent months the shootings and the trafficking have escalated and we talk about this all the time.

My neighbor Angel, she's the strongest person I know.

She has heart disease and the youngest of her four children was born with a congenital heart defect.

Every time we have a drive-by, I wonder, are they going to make it?

So we try to support each other as best we can.

We need intervention from the city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

As a reminder, when you hear that chime, that means you have 10 seconds left.

Next.

You can use either mic is fine, and they bend to you as well.

Hello, my name is Tamara Shadle.

I was born and raised in Skagit Valley, and I have lived in Seattle for the last two years.

Although I live in Central District, I feel that this issue is much larger than just Aurora Avenue.

It could be any one of our neighborhoods that this is happening in.

And I've heard everybody come up with a lot of talk regarding gun violence, but The gun violence is a byproduct of what's actually going on up there.

They are selling children in sex slavery.

There are children being bought and sold in those hotels right now as we sit here.

And I don't understand how as a community we've allowed this to get so far out of control that I don't see how you guys are going to be able to fix it.

I think that this is so much bigger than what the Seattle Police Department is capable of handling.

They're already in danger.

They should not be put in danger at trying to go after pimps that are not going to go away quietly.

Bellevue handled theirs like that.

That guy was arrested within hours and is now facing a $5 million bail.

Why are the pimps on Aurora not being subjected to the same thing?

This is, I'm so frustrated and this is the first time I've ever been able to speak about something like this publicly.

I am a community social worker and it is absolutely unacceptable that we have made this commonplace, that those people are not in those hotels by choice.

If they were in there by choice, they would not be jumping out of windows and running into the street butt naked.

Like that just happened last year and that guy, it took forever to catch him.

So, thank you for letting me speak.

Please stay focused on what this is really about, and this is about child sex trafficking.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

Jeff Silverman.

Next up is Rick Fordyce.

My name is Jeff Silverman.

I live three blocks east of Aurora Avenue North.

I want to make a suggestion concerning sex and drugs and violence on Aurora.

I do not believe we can solve this problem.

I think what we can do instead is to move this problem someplace where nobody's going to care about it, and I propose using 6th Avenue South between Holgate and Spokane Street.

Am I happy with this proposal?

No, of course not.

It's callous and inhumane and it's unjust because there are businesses there already that have a right to be left alone.

I do not like to think of myself as a callous and inhumane person.

I like to think of myself as an engineer and I can see why people would be confused.

So the advantage of having a red light district on 6th Avenue South between Holgate and Spokane is it's only 5,231 feet long whereas Aurora Avenue North from 85th to 145th is 15,101 feet long so having it in that compressed area makes it easier to provide services for the people that are there things like warm drinks, clean socks, condoms, Narcan, first aid kit, maintained trash bag, cell phone charging cable, and maybe a portable toilet.

I don't think we can win this fight.

Winning, in my mind, means nobody goes to bed hungry, everybody has health care, everybody knows that somebody really cares about them, and deciding that ending gun violence is more important than the Second Amendment.

I don't think we're here in Seattle in 2026. Certainly King County isn't, the state isn't, and God help the United States country where we have a convicted felon and a sex offender as president.

It sets a bad example.

Thank you.

Rick Fordyce to be followed by Peter Orr.

Hi, I'm Rick.

I was born up here in Swedish Hospital.

I've lived on 102nd for 20 years, and I've walked it go from nothing to what it is now.

Two years ago I was here.

They had recently released a video of a shootout on 101st, and in that video are four people shooting behind a car, other people coming out and shooting at them.

Now there's a new video plus many in between of shooting across Aurora.

Where do you see this?

You see this on TV in war films.

You see it in Ukraine and you see it in Gaza.

You have a war zone on Aurora.

When that happens and the city does not aid it, people put up barriers because they are forced to do that.

The other point, I've talked to many Seattle police officers Most recently, last summer, at the Fremont Festival, they walk around, I was there working, and I've asked many of them, See, here's 103rd.

I have a photo of seven prostitutes standing in broad daylight right down there, or 102nd, excuse me.

And I asked them, why don't you just drive by?

You don't have to arrest anybody.

You don't have to say anything.

Just drive by and let them know that you exist.

And this is what he said.

He was a 10-year veteran of the North Precinct.

He said, no, because I don't want to get arrested for harassment.

That is the enormity that you are up against.

And the last thing I want to say is, I lived and taught school in Gonoff for two years, and I went to every slave castle on the coast.

I know my slavery.

And what you have up there is slavery.

Thank you.

I'm Peter Orr, a resident of North Aurora since 2010. On behalf of neighbors along North Aurora, I'll begin my remarks with gratitude to Councilmember Juarez for pursuing SPD authorization to close streets to pimp gunfire, to Councilmember Hollingsworth for urging the mayor to close our streets this week and saying the quiet part, girls on Aurora are regularly raped out loud, and the Councilmember Kettle, for all of the above and your dedicated in-person support for the safety of North Aurora at our march last Saturday.

When elected officials apply the precious commodity of their presence, it communicates their concern and affirmation.

The mayor's absence continues to speak volumes to my neighbors, but I showed up in your presence today to return your favor and to show you that I see the effort you're putting in.

Thank you.

Now, while blocking residential access to pimps is one component of protecting our neighborhood, it also raises concerns for streets like 100th that are designated arterial access points, where I've personally picked up 13 bullet casings in one day last month.

More must be done.

This brings me back to the theme of the significance of presence.

Neighbors have proposed expanding police presence by opening a satellite precinct at the corner of 97th and Aurora.

The building owner has offered flexible lease terms.

I would like assurance of funding for this and movement to secure it.

I'm also aware that today's presentation will include SPD staffing budget challenges.

Considering Aurora is a state highway, I would urge the council to encourage the mayor to call on the governor for support to ensure our police can be dedicated to this area, which is the second in the nation for sex trafficking crimes, during the World Cup especially.

I also advocate funding a prosecutor dedicated to Aurora Avenue for Erica Evans' office.

Thank you for continuing this nuanced and important conversation.

The presence of this bullet casing found by my 11-year-old in our alleyway on the way to school this morning suggests to me that we need to get moving.

The first remote speaker is Anders McConaughey.

Sorry, I don't quite know how to pronounce that.

Please press star six when you hear the prompt, you have been unmuted.

Hello, hopefully everybody can hear me.

Yeah, go ahead.

Great.

I'm a homeowner in Greenwood, just off of Aurora, and despite hearing messages that the city has removed all of the neighborhood plant barriers, my street is still blocked by them.

And because of these barriers, sanitation workers are now no longer able to service our street.

I've reached out about 10 times for our streets' garbage to be picked up over a week late, and so far there's been no recycling service.

There has been this narrative that we're all scared and demanding that the streets be blocked, more police, more surveillance, soap zones to be enforced, and now that there is this ridiculous call for the National Guard to be called in, this is not accurate.

I feel very safe in my neighborhood.

I've never found needles anywhere.

I regularly walk my dog around after midnight without incident.

Blocking public roadways 24-7 for an occasional issue that's only for an hour or two a night is not the answer.

I have no desire to live in a gated community and despite living in my neighborhood for about six years, the news that the city had planned to block streets a few years ago was new information for me.

The city needs to decriminalize sex work and expand resources and exit options because diversion only works if there is somewhere to go.

Meet people where they are, fund low barrier emergency housing that allows people along with their children and pets to leave should they choose, fund trauma informed exit and reentry services, healthcare and peer led street outreach.

Sex work is important for consenting adults, but those that are being trafficked need real meaningful support from the city and from the community, and they are our neighbors and they are a part of our community.

With regards to surveillance and cameras, the City of Seattle does not have the power to stop the federal government from obtaining this data once it exists.

The only true safeguard is not having that infrastructure.

Cameras do not stop crime.

People have the right to exist in public without being surveilled or having data and profiles without them being built or in full.

Please dismantle this Axon-back surveillance grid and use the funds to actually help people.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Kate Baldwin.

Hi, I also live in Greenwood and I'm sorry, but I couldn't disagree more with the last statement.

I want to start out, though, by thanking the City Council for putting your attention on public safety.

It is so important.

As you know, Greenwood and the neighborhood bordering North Aurora are forced to enter blatant sex trafficking, which is itself a crime, but also the horrifically violent crimes that come along with it.

And the police estimate that 62% of violent crime in the neighborhood is directly related to this prostitution and sex trafficking.

This billion dollar industry has been allowed to flourish almost unchecked along Aurora and women and girls many of who are underage are forced to endure rape by strangers because their pimps beat them if they don't and we've watched it John circle our neighborhoods they pick up these girls and sometimes boys and bring them into our neighborhood and have sex in front of our homes and afterwards the pimps take their money and It's estimated that pimps are earning $6,000 to $7,000 per prostitute per night, and this business is lucrative.

The pimps are protecting their territories with the gun battles that then spill into the surrounding communities.

Neighbors find bullet casings in the streets next to their children's bus stops, as Peter said.

Bullets are hitting cars, fences, and homes, and as you've heard, narrowly missed a six-week-old instance.

These trafficked individuals are also being forced to live a violent existence, forced by their pimps to battle one another, and even attacked nearby residents who are walking their dogs or just walking home from the bus stop.

One resident in the city was attacked by a group of trafficked girls and beaten by her own stolen cane.

And just this last Saturday night, a couple with their disabled daughter in a wheelchair were attacked by a trafficked individual as they walked home from our march for safety.

The neighborhoods along Aurora Avenue are in crisis.

The police must be at full capacity.

Please make this a priority in our city budget or the crime will continue to build.

Public safety at this moment is more important than other items in the budget.

We need the cameras on.

We need public safety as FIFA comes to this area.

We need a mobile police precinct.

and we must create and enforce the laws that allow police to do their job, in addition to the emergency services and infrastructure that allow the trafficked individuals to exit the horrors of prostitution.

Next up, we have Melissa Howard.

Sorry.

My name is Melissa Howard and I'm a resident of District 6. I want to express my opposition to the city's expanding surveillance cameras and the real-time crime center.

Members of this committee have suggested that those of us who oppose these cameras are concerned about hypothetical threats that bad actors can access the data.

Let me be clear.

These threats are not hypothetical.

The City of Seattle does not have the power to stop ICE, the federal government, or anyone else from getting this data once it exists.

Furthermore, we have all witnessed the criminal activity of our federal government under the control of Donald Trump.

We need our city leaders to take this very real threat seriously and to stop downplaying it.

Members of this committee say that the cameras are necessary for neighborhoods experiencing high levels of crime.

I would love it if the cameras and the AI operating system for police that Axon is selling us for millions of dollars meant that the crime went away.

But study after study shows that surveillance does not create safety.

Like my neighbors have said, we have some real problems in the city.

Cameras and AI sound like a convenient solution to a difficult problem to solve, one that requires real leadership in order to actually solve it.

So it's not surprising that council members would pretend that cameras and AI are the path forward here.

Seattle and the country are facing real threats and crises, most of which are a result of massive wealth inequality and a corporate oligarchy.

It is long past time that our city leaders acknowledge these very real threats.

Those of us organizing against the for-profit surveillance state in Seattle want to see real investment in communities, not in cameras and expensive performative tech that only creates more vulnerabilities.

I call on you to end the real-time crime center and put the money into community-driven public safety programs that are proven to actually work.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Erin Gardner.

Gardner.

Hi, everyone.

My name is Erin, and I am among the neighbors who live near Aurora.

And I just wanted to thank you, Councilman Kettle and the other city officials who came out on Saturday to the protests.

But I also want to thank the more than 300 other people who turned out, the vast majority of which were people who live in the neighborhoods.

I talked to dozens of them, and we are all, you know, mostly in alignment about what we want to happen.

But first, I do want to echo everything today that's been said, especially by Peter, Rick, and Becca, especially Peter and the proposed options that he had.

And also, I want to echo with the woman, and I'm sorry I missed her name, but who just talked extensively about the trafficking along Elora.

I just want to remember, for people out there who may not know, you know, the average age for women getting into trafficking is 14. These aren't independent women keeping their money.

These are children.

A lot of them have touched the foster care system.

A lot of them have been sexually abused before they got pulled into trafficking.

So I know that there are a lot of systematic issues at play along Aurora, but our immediate concern is stopping the bullets, blocking two other neighborhood streets two years ago after the big shooting at 101st.

That has shown that it works.

It's a temporary measure, we hope, but we need to stop the bullets before we can really focus on trying to fix some of these larger issues.

And I guess I also just want to reiterate that we neighbors are eager to work with you.

Councilman Kettle, President Hollingsworth, thank you for pressuring the mayor to close these streets.

We are your eyes on the ground.

We see what's happening every day.

We pick up bullet cases.

We pick up used condoms.

this is what grassroots organizing is so please reach out to us keep us involved we want to help we want to give voice to the girls and young women thank you who are being so abused thank you thank you Aaron next up we have Howard Gale good morning today you will discuss the changes to the city ordinance concerning the operations of the care department

the ordinance claims the city quote reaffirms its belief in the importance of providing a diversified public safety response to effectively meet the needs of persons in crisis and others requiring assistance a vital part of the city's public safety response unquote yet while you debate the theoretical language around care through the union contract you approved and the police themselves are rendering current staff 72 percent underutilized This is part of a consistent pattern of Seattle mayors and councils signifying one thing while delivering something completely different when it comes to public safety.

Signifying protection for our immigrant neighbors while refusing to have our police actively protect theirs and everyone's Fourth Amendment rights.

signifying police accountability with an ordinance that, over nine years later, has partially failed to be implemented in law and fully failed to be implemented in intent and spirit.

We see this with the very recent failures of accountability for police abuse at Cal Anderson last year and the refusal of this counsel to hear directly from those severely injured by police.

We see this with next week's ninth anniversary of the SBD murder of Charlena Lyles a black pregnant woman in mental health crisis shot seven times by the SPD killing her unborn child and leaving her four children motherless.

The legislation passed just days after her murder ostensibly to prevent such murders has left us with a horrifying and shameful legacy of the SPD killing at least 14 folks experiencing a mental health crisis while they are holding a knife or nothing in their hands.

If there is one lesson we have learned from Donald Trump and the continuing genocide in the Middle East, it is this.

Next up, we have Hannah Fishman.

Hi.

Hi.

My name is Hannah and I live at Linden and 98. And I'm coming just to express that there is not broad support among our neighbors for the kinds of additional police presence, even extreme measures like National Guard troops that some have proposed and spoken to today.

I just want to express that while trafficking and gun violence is a major problem that impacts all of us, it is not the case that increased surveillance, the enforcement of the soap zones, or additional police presence would be demonstrated or would help resolve any of those issues.

We actually need more investment in public goods, public infrastructure, healthcare, and support for the most vulnerable people in our area.

So I would just want to be clear that we don't support additional police presence here in the area.

Traffic calming measures rather than barricades would be welcome.

One of the most dangerous trends that we see in our neighborhood is actually just beating.

And no surveillance and no increased police presence for soap zones that target the most vulnerable people rather than provide the kinds of healthcare, housing, and income supports that people actually need in our community.

Thanks.

Next up, we have Michael McDaniel.

Hi.

It's hard to go last or close to last.

There are so many people.

I think I'm going to be really short and just say that I'm very much in support of the Nordic model or something like it.

I would like to be able to continue funding services like Dress, Ops, Aurora Commons, et cetera, and also make sure that we are holding them accountable and make sure they're using those dollars well.

I think there's more support than we need for the COP-based solutions.

I just want to divert people into services Separate from that, I also want to make it clear that for those people who are just learning about this now, there was a big push for things a couple years ago.

This is certainly not a new problem, but also it's not this administration versus the previous administration ongoing issue.

Thank you.

I think that's all I have to say.

Thank you.

and last up we have David Haynes.

We need a new police chief.

We don't need a racist, woke misinterpretation that Bruce Harrell created when he shifted the paradigm away from improving the war on drugs and allowed certain council members to create spending priorities that essentially legalize sex crimes.

We have the leftover bad policies of the pedophile Ed Murray, Bruce Harrell, and Jenny Durkin.

And we got people showing up at the trough of money with different council meetings that have the exact same effort to run interference for evil, repeat offending criminals, like black and brown people of criminality and customs violations that you all have allowed lead, co-lead, just care, purpose, dignity and action that used to be called Public Defenders Association.

First they showed up with the police chief acting like they're a legitimate entity and now they're showing up with the business community.

Every time I hear Mike Stewart and other business people talk about how great LEAD is because they clear out their front entrance and sweep the tourist business district and further push it into our neighborhoods.

I think about boycotting those businesses because they don't support throwing people in jail and making them break their addiction.

They just want them out of their front doorstep.

Like you want to improve Ballard Avenue, tear down all those slums and stop allowing people to eat in the middle of the gutter of the road on a park bench next to the delivery truck that's dropping a metal gate.

But we have an entrapment that goes on to catch the Johns in the Aurora corridor because it's the way the police chief helps run interference for black and brown drug-pushing pimps.

It's like the police chief is purposely pulling his crime-fighting tools, showing up for shindigs and political events to possibly assure the people.

But when it comes to shutting down the real pimps, he sets up an entrapment to give a heads-up to the real pimps and the diseased prostitutes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I wanted to acknowledge Councilmember Lynn has joined us, and Councilmember Rivera has briefly excused herself in order to escort a group of kindergarteners from Ryan Elementary, so you'll see soon a bunch of kindergarteners coming in.

And before they come in, I do want to say And I've said this before, it's not right, it's not acceptable.

And I want to add, having a father find a bullet casing from his daughter this morning is not right and it's not acceptable.

And people ask, why are we here?

Washington Bill 1265. Look at what happened to that bill and why it happened, then you have your answer.

We need Olympia to do its job, we need the county to do its job, and we need to do ours as well.

Okay.

The 60-minute, no, the 60-minute period, the comment period is expired.

We will now proceed to our items of business.

Members of the public are encouraged to either submit written public comment on the sign-up cards available on the podium or email the council at council at seattle.gov.

The public comment period is ended.

Okay.

Please check in with my clerk.

After the meeting, please check in with my clerk, Mr. Lowell here.

All right.

Okay, we'll now move on to our first item of business.

Will the clerk please read item agenda one into the record.

Overview of the draft care department update ordinance.

Thank you.

And we have Mr. Johnson from Central Staff.

And I was going to say, please join us at the table if you've already done so.

But for the record, please introduce yourself and let's start the briefing.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Kettle, members of the committee.

For the record, I am Tommaso Johnson from Council Central Staff.

I'm here to provide a summary of the draft ordinance outlining care department crisis responder duties.

Because we are discussing this as a draft, there is not a bill number, so I won't be referring to it by the bill number, but rather the ordinance.

So in summary, this ordinance is designed to update the section of the Seattle Municipal Code that describes the function of the Community Assisted Response and Engagement or Care Department.

By way of background, CARE under that name was created by ordinance in 2023. That department had previously been known as the CSCC and that was created in 2021 when the 911 communication center, which is the city's public safety answering point for emergency calls, was moved out of the Seattle Police Department in 2021. That civilian team from the 911 call center As I said before, CARE was formally established in 2023. The ordinance that established CARE at that time is now reflected in the Seattle Municipal Code.

The municipal code generally describes the function and purpose of various city departments at a level of detail that is sufficient to convey the duties and the overall function of the department, but generally speaking, those code sections don't get into granular operational details, which are handled through either further administrative rules or policies issued by the department itself.

The Care Department, as it's currently constituted, supplements the Seattle Public Safety Response in two ways.

As I already described, it operates the 911 Communications Center, and second, the Care Department fields the Community Crisis Responder Team, or CCR Team.

In the intervening years since the establishment of the Care Department in 2023, the role scope and deployment of that Community Crisis Responder or CCR team has expanded quite significantly, primarily through both executive actions as well as the adoptions of successive budgets by the Council, including last year.

As an example of that growth, the community crisis responder team grew from 24 members, 24 staff CCR responders in 2025 to 48, so it doubled between last year and the current year budget.

The current SMC sections describing the work of the care department do not name the community crisis responder team.

set out from the 2023 ordinance, some sort of kernels and seeds of the description of the work to authorize that work to go forward and to be expanded.

But as it stands now, the Municipal Code does not accurately or completely describe the work that CARA is doing on the ground today and that has been authorized through various budget actions.

So that's the background summary of this legislation.

with that background is relatively straightforward.

It would amend those sections, the Seattle Municipal Code that describe the work of the care department to firstly acknowledge that the CCR team exists as a core function of the care department.

Second, to define at a high level the role and purpose of the CCR team, including the qualifications of CCR responders, methods through which they may be deployed, and to delineate the work that they do and don't do.

For example, to describe in code that they are not members of the public safety response of the city that are enforcing crimes or issuing citations, for example, to just clearly differentiate the work that they are doing from the Seattle Police Department, for example.

And finally, the ordinance would clarify some of the administrative functions of the department, notably the council during the 2026 budget process in the fall formalized the transfer of contract administration of contracts related to LEAD, COLEAD and WDC that had been carried out previously by the Human Services Department.

As of January 1 this year, those contracts are being facilitated and administered by the care department and this update to the code would acknowledge that.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson.

And before going to my vice-chair, I just wanted to extend a warm welcome to, I think, Ryan Elementary?

Bryant Elementary.

Bryant Elementary.

In District 4, welcome to all the kids and teachers and parents that may be escorting.

And welcome to City Hall more broadly.

As you can tell, this City Hall is designed to be open.

It's basically one building to the north, and this cylinder chamber here and everything else is open with lots of glass, and that's on purpose for transparency pieces.

So, even with the fifth graders and, I mean, the five-year-olds, sorry, I have a fifth grader, but for the five-year-olds, six-year-olds that we have.

And I'll give a special shout-out to a five-year-old at heart, Councilmember Juarez as Chief of Staff, Wendy, who's helping out in this process, so thank you for that.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Johnson, for this overview of the draft legislation.

Vice Chair.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson, for this presentation, this overview.

I, too, want to start off by welcoming our kindergarten class and their educators from Bryant Elementary.

I was delighted to see Councilmember Rivera leading everyone into council chambers today.

Kids, welcome.

Remember, this is your body, your institution, your City Hall building.

We work for you.

Whenever I go into schools, that's the first thing that I remind students is, like, you're one of my 120,000 bosses.

So it's an important job.

We're all honored to serve you.

And that young kiddo right there with the black and the stripe, you are an incredibly photogenic young man.

I appreciate when this gentleman was taking pictures.

He had the biggest smile and looking great, looking great.

In any event, well, welcome again.

My question about the The ordinance, the proposed ordinance, so I note that on section, the newly modified or newly added section 1.4 of the bill kind of speaks to the interrelation between various King County programs and initiatives.

but does the proposed ordinance address the role of the care department vis-a-vis other alternative response capabilities within the City of Seattle itself, including how they collaborate, for example, with Health 1, Health 99 of FIRE?

Thank you for the question, Councilmember.

I would defer to the chair if you would like to hear more about the section describing the relationship with community King County clinical crisis and behavioral health challenges.

I understand that is intended to refer to the intended relationship between the care department and liaising with the county on the work related to the Crisis Connections Center and other such work.

But once again, I'll defer to the chair on the intent there.

To your other question, no, this doesn't go into the work that the other pieces of the non-police response that the city fields vis-a-vis the fire department.

As I stated earlier, I think the intent of this ordinance is merely to enshrine and code the current state of what care department does and not to attempt to dictate or describe the linkages between care and fire or care and SPD, for example.

So this is strictly just describing, codifying the CCR team and what its role within the ecosystem is.

Yes, Vice Chair, this is really to to codify what actually is and broaden, because most people think the narrative is always SPOG and care, and we have to move beyond that.

And the ordinances need to reflect that.

And so it's about King County Public Health, the 988 system, the crisis care centers, and so forth, and having a point that is key with this.

And to the point about the Seattle Fire Department, Obviously, they had the medical-medical piece, but there's times when they can't work these issues.

Behavioral health, for example.

And so that's an example where we should have, potentially, an MOU between care and FHIR, so that FHIR doesn't send these individuals back to the 911 call center, but instead refers or engages with the care department.

So this is a function of really identifying the mental and behavioral health pieces that we have.

If I could just say one more thing in response to that, I would, on that point of acknowledging the collaborations that can and do exist with other parts of the public safety ecosystem, I would point your attention to The new section 2 where there's the new section of municipal code 3.15.064 is created.

Sub B of that section does describe in general the methods through which the care CCR team can be dispatched to include 911 call center, as well as requests initiated directly by SPD, FIRE, or other mechanisms authorized by the chief of the care department.

So that acknowledges the current state, which is that there are many ways which CARE CCR responders can be activated, sometimes through the 911 call center, but sometimes through direct lateral, if you will, requests from other departments, including the various work that FIRE is doing.

Thank you.

No further questions or comments.

Thank you, Chair.

Okay.

Councilmember Lin, any questions?

Yeah, thank you, Chair.

By the way, before you say, thank you to the Bryan Elementary Kindergarteners for coming.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

I'm just curious as to the care department and, you know, even looking back at some of the existing language, so not new new language that would be proposed.

It talks about create a new initiative to integrate the city's violence intervention programs using research and evidence-based strategies to reduce violence, including identifying specific and measurable outcomes.

This initiative will focus initially on a number of things, including gun violence prevention programs, youth focus programs.

So I guess part of my big picture question is the role of the care department.

And as a new department, you know, they are you know busy standing up sort of the you know taking over the the 911 call center having you know a greatly expanded team out in the community the the care responders and You know, my question is, is part of this, are we trying to get some more contracts underneath care shifted from, so for example, HSD, I believe currently contracts for some of our gun violence prevention programs and also, I think contracts with LEAD and so as part of the idea to shift some of that body of work from HSD to the care department and just I'm just a little bit concerned about you know again as a new department already sort of have a lot significant body of work to grow into and just the administrative difficulties of shifting personnel or contracts to a different department.

Yeah, thank you for that question, Councilmember.

I'll speak first to the last part of your statement.

So the contracts with PDA, the contracts for LEAD, Co-LEAD, and the We Deliver Care contracts, are being administered by the care department currently.

That was a change that was made during the budget process in the fall and effective January of this year.

Those are contracts that are being administered by care, and there was a staffing move, FTE move, that was accompanied the financial transaction to move those dollars out of HST and into care.

So that is current state.

That current state is described in the language on the top of page four that reads, this alignment shall include the provision of oversight monitoring and accountability for city contracts related to the diversion and re-entry services for those involved or at risk of involvement with the criminal justice system.

So that language is describing the oversight responsibility for the lead, co-lead, and WDC contracts that currently rests with CARE.

In terms of, I guess, what I would call the legacy language, the existing language, which is current SMC 315-060-A6 in current code.

I don't know what the intentions are going forward to move or not move any other contracts aside from the LEED contracts that I've mentioned.

I think there have This is an idea that has been raised in various forms over the past many years.

The best way I suppose to characterize that current code language would be that it is it was language that was added which has never been fully implemented or carried out so potentially aspirational when it was added but it hasn't been realized in the same way that other language in the in the city code describing what the care department does has been realized.

So as you stated, I mean, the two primary functions that the care department currently carries out are the operation of the 911 call center first, and secondly, the fielding and maintenance of the community crisis responder teams.

A not insignificant additional body of work that relates to that work was added in the fall budget, which is the oversight of the contracts that I mentioned for lead, co-lead, and we deliver care.

But beyond that, there is some existing code language now that this bill would not change, which anticipates a potential future state around an increased level of coordination, gun violence, community-based interventions, as you mentioned, that are in code.

But that has largely not been implemented.

Thank you Councilmember Lin for that question because it's an important one and it should be noted that you know with the PDA contract moving from HSD to CARE that was quite simple and it was done and this is an example of an area that I mean we just had a symposium yesterday we're not getting the job done and there is a dedicated lead who's not been dedicated to lead that program.

And it's our job to ensure that they do the job, and I think they can.

I know they're relatively new, but, you know, if we don't demand better, if we don't demand the result, then we don't get it.

And I think, so thank you for bringing it up, because it's really important to do this.

And as we saw yesterday, this mission area belongs within public safety.

And to be frank, it will get more attention and more oversight here than it would otherwise.

And this is the natural home for it.

So we just have to demand that CARE and the executive take it on and carry it out.

Because just to wish it away, the next thing you know, three years from now, we'll have a similar conversation about gun violence prevention.

So thank you very much for bringing the issue.

Any other questions?

Just if I could respond to that point.

I mean, I do think, you know, on our gun violence intervention work, it lives in many different departments currently, and I do think that we need a more coordinated approach.

It lives with HSD, there's Department of Neighborhoods, you know, there's a touch point with the Department of Education, Early Learning, with the deal funding.

and obviously with the police department, CARE now.

And so having a comprehensive strategy absolutely needed.

I don't have strong opinions about where it should live.

I do think there's a little bit of a difference between sort of the emergency responder part of this work that CARE does and versus sort of the more deeply engaged long-term kind of community safety work that some of our CVI folks do.

So I just want to distinguish that I think that there could be a difference between sort of the longer-term strategies versus the more 911 type of emergency responder work.

So thank you.

Thank you.

And community safety in a lot of ways is alternative response, but at the community level.

And so it does need to be nested with the more formal government alternative response, and then with the leadership of the executive to help carry it out.

So thank you, Councilmember Lin.

Councilmember Juarez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

So, I was looking at the legislation, and thank you, Mr. Johnson, for going through it, and maybe you can't answer some of this.

We're going to have to actually go to the care folks.

So, two things.

On the 3.15060, which is page 2 and page 4, in the section about accountability as well.

We have, I see that they struck compassionate and put in effective accountable.

And then on page four, we talk about this alignment shall include the provision of oversight monitoring and accountability for our city contracts related to diversion and reentry services for those involved at risk, et cetera.

So I think there's two things, and I have a second question if I can, Mr.

Chair.

What does accountability look like?

I mean, that seems like a big lift in light of what we're dealing with the King County Regional Homeless.

authority in contracts.

So if we're talking about accountability and we're talking about care, and care is going to absorb lead, co-lead, and a bunch of the other organization contracts, if that's where they're going to be settled, housed in accountability, I'm concerned, and I don't know, Mr. Chair, you may have an answer for me as well, what if we have what does that accountability look like in the sense of what like I shared now that we're in the shadow of what we're dealing with with the accountability issues with the King County Regional Housing Authority I mean that's a loaded word accountability and these are a lot of contracts and this is a lot of money and we doubled CARES employees We have a lot of moving contracts here and a lot of people, a lot of employees, a lot of actors.

How are we going to monitor that?

How is that going to work?

I know we're codifying this.

If this is all we're doing right now, is there any more thought to what that means?

Councilmember Juarez, first, it's already in the law.

This is about the violence prevention, violence interrupters piece, not the broader This is not a housing-focused paragraph.

It is related to violence intervention programs solely.

And by the way, can I add, there was a mistake earlier.

The word compassionate was not supposed to be removed.

It was supposed to be moved over.

So the compassionate will be added back in.

So I just wanted to make that quick point since you referenced it.

Okay.

Well, I must have an old copy then.

Apologies.

No, no, no.

It still hasn't been fixed.

It will be fixed before the next meeting.

Oh.

Okay.

So it was struck by accident.

Okay.

So please enlighten me, Mr. Chair, then, in the accountability piece.

Well, this is what you were saying.

Yeah, this is the focus on violence intervention programs, and this has already been in law, and there's been no action on it.

And in and as we're seeing in yesterday's symposium, we're not getting results either.

So continuing as is also is not an issue.

And I have no issue with the word accountability.

In fact, that's what we need more of in these bills and in our work in terms of overseeing and then within the executive.

So we need more accountability than anything else.

And to help also to avoid what we've been seeing at the county level.

I don't either but okay that's I don't have a problem with more accountability either but okay all right so the other issue I want to raise is on page three so again on section four one when we say maintain a community crisis responder team as first responders supporting the city's response to persons experiencing clinical crisis and or behavioral health challenges And this just may be more of a wonky lawyer question, but is this the first time that we have labeled the CCRT as and when I say legitimate, I'm not saying that they're illegitimate, but actual first responders like the Seattle Fire Department and SPD, because as you know, Chair, SPD and SFD, Seattle Fire Department, as codified as first responders in law are held to a higher standard for liability purposes.

So are we, is this just a, are we actually anointing them as first responders like we treat and keep Seattle Fire Department and Seattle Police Department employees who are first responders to a higher standard and higher protections, by the way, if you assault them.

So is this is this what we're saying here?

Yes, they're first responders.

We have Chief Barden.

We don't have Director Barden.

We have Chief Barden.

And I know I named her Chief Barden.

I was there.

So, yeah.

But I'm guessing what I'm getting at...

That standard needs to be met, too.

That goes back to the accountability piece.

If I could add, in a sense, this is, because this is the first time in municipal code that we will be describing the work of the community crisis responder team, you know, as you all will be aware, this is work that has been under way and being executed by the department for several years up to this point, but it is not work that has been reflected accurately or descriptively in the code under the auspices of the function of the care department.

So in that sense, yes, this is both the first time that the community crisis response team will be described in municipal code, period, and it will be the first time that they're described as first responders.

The first responder language, and in fact, All of the descriptive language for the most part in this ordinance is taken from the language that the city already uses and has used to describe the work of the Community Crisis Response Team in public statements and press releases on the care department website, for example.

So in that sense, it's consistent or a continuation of the terminology that's being used.

I'm not aware that this language will create any new legal liability or legal duty in that sense.

As with every ordinance, even though this is a draft, this has been reviewed by our colleagues in the Law Department and Like I said, I don't want to make a definitive statement, but there were no flags, and I'm not aware that this would make any changes to liability in the way that you described.

But to reiterate, yes, this would be the first time they're described in municipal code, as far as I'm aware, as first responders, but that is also by virtue of the fact that the code currently doesn't describe the CCR team at all.

So I guess my point is this.

A first responder is a term of art in law and we provide protections to hold them to a higher standard because they are in the public and they are first responders and they can be I'm not arguing about that so I guess my point is maybe down the road we start looking at because it's just been recently in the last I think two or three years where we gave the Seattle Fire Department people the same protections that we give SPD if somebody assaults a police officer that's the higher crime because they're a first responder.

And we extended that same courtesy to the Seattle Fire Department folks that were first responders who were also being assaulted.

So if we are going to now you know, talk about, and I'm not talking that the work isn't first responding, maybe that's something down the road that they have those protections as well.

Because if they are indeed first responding to people experiencing crisis and or behavioral health, that doesn't mean that it doesn't, it can start off that way, but that doesn't mean that that situation maintain that fact pattern stays that way, that it's just clinical crisis, that it could actually, the behavior could actually expand to endangering the now first responder CCRT employee.

That's my point.

I'm not trying to argue with you.

I'm just saying if that's indeed, it is a term of art.

It is a legal term.

and if you do attach or, you know, I want to say the word, anoint a group as now first responders and they should probably, we should probably be exploring those protections for them as well.

That was the point I was making.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Juarez.

And I agree.

First, we should set the standard and we should set the expectations for that standard.

That's the first point.

And two, as to your point, we shouldn't wait five years to give the same protections that the firefighters we gave, I think, two years ago.

So that's definitely a question worth following up and maybe adding that piece into this ordinance now instead of waiting a number of years and having some incident happened and then respond to the incident.

That's a very good observation and point related to and using the firefighters as the example to raise here.

And I think my team will work with your team and central staff and law to work through that point.

I think it's really important that you raised it and that we address it.

So thank you, Council Member Warren.

Mr. Chair, the reason why is and that's why I kind of led with to kind of lay the groundwork.

If indeed we are anointing to CCRT as first responders, then let's give them the protections that we give our other first responders.

That was the point I was leading into.

I was kind of laying the groundwork to do the follow-up questions.

So thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, I understand.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

I see Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, I just I agree with my colleague councilmember Horace on this point.

I also an apologies I was greeting the first greeters from my district But in terms of the the CCRs do we name in the Seattle municipal code other?

positions with what they do specifically and So we're trying to codify this set of employees in the SMC with including What they do like almost like their job description and I'm wondering if we do that for other Employees at the city.

I'm trying to get to I'm trying to understand why we're we're trying to codify this set of employees in the SMC with this level of specificity?

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

That's a good question.

As we were drafting this, we were looking to other sections, administrative sections of the Municipal Code.

There's a variety of ways that departments are described.

I think the element of this that attempts to make the code more consistent with other departments is that there are not currently other departments whose one of their core functions is completely absent from the municipal code.

So as a practical matter on the ground, as I said before, the two primary things that the care department is doing for the city and is known for and that are highly visible are the 911 call center and the community crisis responder teams.

I think it's fair to say that when you invoke the name of the care department out in the city, in the community, the first thing that people actually think of is the CCR teams and not necessarily the 911 call center function.

So in that way, care department has become sort of synonymous with the CCR folks that are walking around that are co-dispatched with SPD, etc.

So the intent of this ordinance is to capture the work that that function of the department does at a level of detail that is both sufficient to be descriptive of what the work is and also high enough that it doesn't create challenges with the pieces of the work of departments that are typically and ordinarily, you know, operationally contained in directives, department policy and more regulatory forms outside of code.

So the attempt of this ordinance is to sort of thread that needle and not not to get into operational or personnel job description level, but to describe what the work is at a high level and capture that current state right now and the investments that have been made over the last several years.

Thank you, although I do think that this is a certain level of specificity more than just generally this is what the care department does as a department.

And I say that because The department is newer in nature, and I know they're still trying to figure out, I mean, they do a whole, their main, one of their biggest bodies of work, I'm trying to find the right word so I'm not misrepresenting, is the 911 call center.

We're not describing what the 911 call takers, you know, all the functions that they have.

but yet we're singling out some of the employees to talk about more specifically what they do.

If the department should And then, of course, there are other functions of the department, because some functions have been moved over, like the diversion, the lead.

So if we're codifying this in the SMC, we're saying these folks are going to function in this way forevermore.

But if the department should make changes into how it sets itself up, We now are codifying this, which is why we don't normally do the level of specificity in the SMC unless we're intending to do so.

So, I guess I'm just trying to understand, again, we don't do this for other city departments that I'm aware of where we put the level of specificity of their employees in this way, because usually departments have the flexibility to if the needs should arise, rearrange how they do things in the department to meet the services and the needs that they address.

So, again, I'm just trying to better understand why for this set of employees we're codifying this in the SMC in this specific way, in a way that we don't do for other city departments.

And I guess I understand what you're saying, Tomaso, about, well, Most people, when they think of CARE, they think of CCRs.

Yes and no.

Some people don't even know what, you know, that there are CCRs in the CARE department.

But I do think there is a level of specificity here contained that we're saying we're going to put into the SMC that we don't have for other employees at this city.

MR. Yeah, if I might, I mean, I think one way in which the CCR function of the care department is different is because it is a relatively newer body of work.

It is part of the first response public safety ecosystem that the city has made over multiple years commitments and investments in.

And so in order to adequately describe that work and to differentiate it from the more established parts of that response that are contained in fire and SPD, for example.

There's a way in which I think just intellectually, practically, there needs to be a little bit higher level of description since it is not as established of a function of the city historically as, say, fire or SPD.

So that's all I would say on that level.

Also, we have had conversations with the department and the executive at various stages of the process of crafting this legislation.

This is something that is counsel generated.

executive-generated legislation, of course, but the executive has had the opportunity to look at this language and we haven't received specific feedback or objections along the lines that you're describing to this point.

Let me ask it a different way, Tommaso.

Why do we need this in the SMC to this level of specificity?

I can say a couple more things.

I think if I continue to talk, I'm going to probably sound a little bit repetitive about it, but I'll say a few more things and then I'll defer to the Chair whose bill it is to describe his intent here.

I think one way to think about it is that it's a significant body of work that the City has invested in, The mayor, several mayors now, and the council over the years have, you know, affirmed additional investments.

We've stood up the care team citywide.

We've doubled the number of staff from 24 to 48. From, I guess you could say, from a governance perspective, there's an argument that it makes sense to enshrine and describe that.

And it's hard to It's hard to do that in a way that's accurate without getting into some level of detail about the specific function and role of that team.

So that's my understanding of the intent here.

And I would add, and we can say departments, but departments don't mean anything.

There's only two departments that matter here, and that's police and fire.

And it's quite clear, sworn officers and firefighters are quite clear in terms of who they are and what their duties are.

And it's really and necessary to do the same for the CCRs in order to be clear about what their role is in within the system, as Mr. Johnson was noting, and to show that we're serious about alternative response.

We've been kind of treading water.

We've been kind of not making much progress.

We have to demand better, and we have to show that we're all in on alternative response.

And one way to do that is to really work this point, as you noticed.

Thank you for bringing it up, because it's important.

We either have alternative response or we don't.

And we have community crisis responders or we don't.

And they do a very different job than police.

For those who work in the Labor Relations Committee world, Delineating these pieces, specifically related to mental and behavioral health, is really important.

And it also applies to fire, too.

You know, I've had a discussion with Chief Scoggins, you know, talking about, you know, sometimes there's a health call that comes through fire dispatch, fire alarm dispatch, fire alarm center.

It is a health piece, but they go back to 9-1-1 when they could just easily, you know, connect with care.

And so codifying this and being, you know, serious about moving forward with alternative response means we have to kind of do these pieces given the circumstances from which it is born and something that we've been dealing with over the last few years.

And this is another way to kind of solidify these pieces and solidify that Seattle is all in on alternative response.

Chair, can I?

Any additional questions?

Well, I just want to say for the record, I mean, it's already care and the function of this response, first responder, it already is in the SMC, so it looks like this is just adding a certain level of detail that wasn't there before.

And I think in as far as, I mean, we do often with the SMC provide things at a high enough level where our city departments have the flexibility to make changes to the services or to the functions in order to meet that service.

I'm not sure I I'm and we can talk off-record But I'm not sure I'm understanding the need to change the SMC for care to add the level of Specificity that's contained in this amendment well And so I just really wanted to state that for the record because we are making choices about with this amendment putting that level of detail for this Classification of employees and to councilmember Juarez's part It does, I think, then set up expectations for, you know, how are we going to protect this set of employees?

What kind of protections are we going to afford them if we take this action?

Thank you.

If we don't do this, then we have to have an other ordinance where we take firefighters and police officers out of the SMC.

Firefighters and police officers are in the SMC.

And again, if we're going to be serious about alternative response, if we're going to be truly serious about it, we have to set the standards.

We have to set the expectations.

This is part of the problem that we've had thus far in terms of not being where we should be with alternative response.

And so this bill, ordinance, not amendment, is functioning in that respect.

So just to reiterate, firefighters and police officers are in the Municipal Code.

Okay, any other questions?

All right, we're going to continue to work this, and we'll work it with various stakeholders, and it obviously will come back to committee.

So thank you, everyone, for the different pieces and to highlight it, to include the violence intervention piece, also the piece regarding, like, with what we did for the firefighters in terms of protection for first responders.

and the like.

And so we will work these pieces and work them into the bill as we move forward.

So thank you so much.

And now we'll move into our second item of business.

Will the clerk please read agenda item two into the record?

Seattle Neighborhood Impact Framework.

Thank you for joining us today.

Will you please have a seat and Mr. Wolf, if you can start with you and then we'll just work down the table in terms of introducing yourself by name and then also by organization.

And then Jump right into the briefing, and we'll go straight through the briefing.

We'll hold any questions until the end.

So, starting with you.

Perfect.

Hi, all.

Thanks for having us.

My name's Sam Wolf, he, him.

I work for Purpose Dignity Action.

My role is the Seattle King County Policy Director.

Pass it to my right.

Hi, I'm Alina Arakaki, she, her.

I'm the Policy and Planning Manager with Friends of Little Saigon.

My name is Marcus Johnson.

I'm the Director of Clean and Safe Operations at the Yudish Partnership.

Karen Salinas, she, they pronouns.

I'm the Director of Outreach with the Evergreen Treatment Services REACH Division.

Hi, my name is Paige Killinger, and I am the Lead Program Manager with REACH.

And my name is Mike Stewart, Executive Director at the Ballard Alliance.

Okay, we'll jump right into it.

So we're here to talk today about the Seattle Neighborhood Impact Framework, or as we have been affectionately calling it, SNF.

Before getting into the mechanics of it, I just wanted to say, so basically the idea of SNF is that this is a framework and a set of partnerships designed to maximize the level of felt impact we're able to provide for Seattle's neighborhoods.

There's a couple of key features of this framework that enable this.

First, neighborhood leaders, some of whom are at our table today, ongoingly gather information from neighborhood stakeholders in order to identify and prioritize people and places of community concern.

SNF partners work together to create solutions and plans for those community concerns, which allows neighborhood leaders to then communicate progress back to the community, which creates a feedback loop conducive to ongoing information gathering, prioritization and problem solving.

for the pandemic.

Second, on working together to address those community concerns.

SNF partners are a diverse group of teams, each with different strengths, whether de-escalation, community and business response, outreach, intensive case management.

But the key here is that all of these teams do different things well.

And within this neighborhood impact framework, these teams work in a structured collaboration, each working to their strengths, and having a place to make plans together in order to be more than the sum of their parts.

And I want to be clear that SNF is a framework distinct from long-term care strategies, so things like shelter, housing, long-term behavioral health supports, but it is something that's very mutually beneficial with those long-term care strategies.

Because of SNF's ability to prioritize among the many community concerns and collaborate around creating plans for them, we're able to utilize those resources like shelter or housing or behavioral health strategies to their greatest community-felt impact.

And through that communication loop, we are able to make those impacts as intelligible as possible to the community members experiencing those concerns.

In a way, this is a good front door to those long-term care strategies.

And coming together around how to use these limited resources in the most impactful way has been a key part of us doing the most with what we can for Seattle's neighborhoods.

Great.

So, as Sam said, SNF is not a program, but it is a system.

It's a coordination of different services, right?

It's a platform in which multiple partners and entities can meet and provide care and accountability.

This timeline is a non-comprehensive graphic which highlights a number of individual efforts and programs that have come together to form a framework, whether that be through outreach, through case management, through community liaison, and roles of ambassadors.

So you'll see it started in 2017 and has continued now and has really kind of like morphed into something very beautiful that is working all around the city.

So over the years, these different programs have developed and grown in ways that complement each other.

It formalizes these mutually beneficial relationships by providing spaces to be innovative to community care while providing clarity and connection.

And I would add to that, too, that this model did come out of the neighborhoods that do currently have business improvement areas, or BIAs, and was built around formalized coordination roles that tend to sit within organizations like ours.

So in Ballard, for example, our clean and safe director, leads the effort, and as executive director, I participate in many of the meetings, not all, but am aware and participate regularly.

But I think the important thing to mention here is that we think that the model is achievable in neighborhoods that don't have BIAs.

So we all did a lot of the groundbreaking work of trying to get this process and this program working correctly and properly so that it can be, in a way, handed off to other organizations.

So many neighborhoods without BIAs, just as long as they've got a good assembled leadership structure and a management structure that can support the work, the key here really is to leverage neighborhood knowledge that really aligns with the knowledge of the group that's working on this effort.

would you like to introduce yourself before we proceed?

Sure, thanks.

I'm going to pull Mark Solomon today and sit at the committee table.

It's been an honor to get to work with everyone at this table and even more people to help set up the Neighborhood Impact Framework over the course of, well, as you see, since even before I took office.

This has been a way that we've piloted in the University District.

We then piloted in the Ballard Neighborhood.

We used those pilots to create the framework the policies and the mechanisms, and from their expanding throughout the city, Chinatown International District has been off and running, and I think it's also probably time that we increase that team to have the case manager.

Just in last year's budget conversation, by way of example, we were having the conversation of How quickly do we grow this program?

Because if we grow it too quickly, then it's not successful.

If we grow it too slowly, then it's not successful.

And so, this last year, we were having the conversation of, is Chinatown International District in the expansion point that it should have its own reach outreach worker or not?

We said, let's take the next couple months to figure it out.

and my assessment is that it's ready to expand.

And in fact, all of these different parts create the unity that this whole model is able and ready to be replicated throughout the city.

And that's a great transition into sort of the nuts and bolts of the program, which we won't belabor.

As Paige said, this is an amalgamation of several different programs, so we could talk all day about how all of the individual parts work, but we wanted to make sure you had an overview of some critical key components that make this framework happen in neighborhoods.

So I'll hand it to you, Marcus.

So our public safety model really has two connected parts, coordination and direct neighborhood response.

So the public safety coordinator like myself serves as a central point of contact for businesses, residents, service providers, law enforcement, and other city partners.

That role involves listening to what people are experiencing, identifying reoccurring patterns, and determining which issues require the most immediate attention.

It also means following up with individual reports, gathering information from across the neighborhood, and organizing that input so we can identify broader patterns rather than viewing every incident in isolation.

Our ambassador team provides the day-to-day, on-the-ground component of that work.

The ambassadors respond directly to call from businesses and residents.

They help de-escalate situations, they provide referrals and assistance, and they maintain a consistent, visible presence throughout the neighborhood.

A lot of their work is what we call milieu management, addressing smaller issues early, checking in with people, monitoring reoccurring locations and helping prevent situations from escalating.

These two functions continually inform one another, the ambassadors address immediate needs, while also providing the public safety coordinator with a real-time understanding of what the community is experiencing.

The coordinator can then use that information to identify priorities, coordinate long-term responses, and advocate for resources from the appropriate partners.

And then I'll talk a little bit more about the Neighborhood Outreach Coordinator, which is a street-based position.

So this position supports community efforts to reduce tensions due to unmet behavioral health needs for people living unhoused in a neighborhood.

This position supports this by having a deep understanding of the myriad of needs of the unhoused neighbors and collaborating with service partners to deliver coordinated short and long-term interventions to support health care and social access, social service access, which can then mitigate those behavioral health needs and resulting consequences.

The neighborhood outreach coordinator can assess the need for individual place-based or population-based public health interventions.

These interventions may be able to be provided through coordinated human services or the coordinator may identify the need for additional support from other system partners such as housing and shelter partners or public safety response.

By being based in a neighborhood and paired with the communication and information sharing structure of SNF, the neighborhood outreach coordinator is able to identify individual and group dynamics in the neighborhood to assess engagement and readiness for behavior change, conduct client needs assessment to develop comprehensive care plans, triage resource connections to determine best fit or gaps in services, and support reconnection back to identified programming, supporting successful delivery and over time effective long-term behavior change.

Awesome.

So I'm going to speak a little bit about the intensive case management aspect.

So the role of case management in the SNF model is a vital aspect and almost serves as kind of like a quarterback for the framework.

So the intensive case manager is working with the coordinators, with the ambassadors, with neighborhood outreach, and they're bringing kind of all of those resources together to really meet the needs of the clients on a more complex level.

So, some of the stuff that's going on with the case managers, they're working on mental health, they're working on housing, they're working on health, they're working with the neighbors, they're working with the businesses to really understand how not just the individual we are working with is being affected, but the neighbors, whether they be housed, whether they be businesses, whether they be students, any of those things are being affected so that we can immediately come in and work on behavior change with the individual.

So again, it's the boots on the ground kind of coming together, working together, speaking very frequently about this individual and coming up with a plan that's going to best serve the individual and the community at large.

I wanted to share a story about an individual that we've been working with in the UW area.

So this individual was unhoused up until very recently.

We will call this person Zane.

Zane was stood out very much in the corridor.

He was doing martial arts very publicly.

He had a lot of untreated mental health needs.

and there just was not a combination that was working for this individual to get them the assistance they needed.

The neighbors were growing weary.

They felt like this was a dangerous situation.

They didn't know how to approach this neighbor in a way that felt safe.

Businesses were being affected.

People were not wanting to go in when they were seeing this individual.

And it was kind of just at a standstill with this person.

So through the SNF model, what we were able to do is we were able to coordinate through outreach and through the ambassador to kind of build a relationship.

We were able to screen this person into an intensive case management program that was able to help them meet their needs around mental health, physical health, all of these different things.

And then working with the businesses and the house neighbors to address these issues This went from an individual that people would avoid the corridor completely because they didn't want to interact with him, to being a person that people were asking how he was doing.

They were checking in with him.

They were asking how they could help him.

And we saw that it wasn't just this one person's life that was being affected, but it was the whole community that was coming around and they were seeing an individual that was struggling greatly and asking how we can come together and find the right combination to work for everyone.

I would like to update everyone that he has been recently housed.

He's still in the community.

And now his relationship with his neighbors is different.

a housed person and he can have different conversations with the businesses, with the people that live there, with the students.

And he is still practicing martial arts, but he now gets to do that inside of his own home.

And I think through this framework, it really highlights that it's not a one-size-fits-all for people that are living unhoused.

Everyone has to be taken into account when you're talking about this framework.

And this really allows for that to happen.

And for this individual, their suffering from living outdoors has changed.

And we have a community that's stronger and closer together because of it.

As described, the model allows for communication so that everybody is in on the plan and can work in coordination together, whether it's to do a short, quick term response, whether in a crisis or just whatever happens that day, or the longer term care planning to make sure that that person doesn't get shut off from housing opportunities, from social service access, from these other things that we know in the long term will benefit them.

And then, as you've heard, different versions of these rules are present in the different neighborhoods.

Some neighborhoods, like Lake City and Capitol Hill, are working to build core components and positions.

Others, like the CID, have some of each and are working on building on more and some like the U District and Ballard have all components but require increased access to long-term care resources like shelter and specialized behavioral health supports to fully realize what the model is intending to do.

Alright, so now I'm going to take us very quickly through this slide because I know we're taking a fair amount of time here.

So neighborhood impact framework, that is the NIF in SNF, if you will.

So level one is really the on-the-ground coordination.

So all the teams that have designated points of contact with each other for different individuals or situations.

This way the teams can communicate fluidly as issues and opportunities arise.

And so this really happens on a day-to-day basis.

In our office in Ballard, it's Jamie working with our ambassador team and working with Adam, our reach outreach workers.

a lot of on-the-ground communication.

And then at level two, when an individual's situation or needs exceed the coordination possible to do solely on level one, we bring them into a neighborhood case conference.

So teams that deal directly with priority individuals, they adhere to specific information sharing agreements, come together to share notes about the individual, and collaborate to make plans which inform that level one coordination.

So it's a lot of Level 1, feeding to 2, and then back down into Level 1 to make sure that coordination gets transferred.

Level 3, neighborhood issues are not solely related to specific individuals, so Level 3 is available for discussions related to place or larger neighborhood efforts.

This, of course, is very geographic-based and within even a small geographic boundary like the downtown core of Ballard, there are smaller sub-pockets that are in tents at times.

It could be the Ballard Library, it could be and other areas in the neighborhood.

So this is at level three, an opportunity to discuss places of need that the outreach and ambassadors can coordinate around with, with the neighborhood care coordinators.

And then we also discuss upcoming events or other on the ground dynamics that might be happening around the city that will have an impact on the ability for us to do this work.

And then finally at level four, I think we've done a few of these levels and I'll point back to earlier this year at the Bertha Knight Landis Room, we did a SNF Summit where we had folks from all across the city that were there to hear a briefing and a readout on the work and progress we had made at that point.

All SNF neighborhoods, they do meet periodically to share best practices, identify system gaps, and then discuss the lessons that we've learned collectively.

Thanks, Mike.

Yeah, as you can kind of tell from our overview of the different teams and the types of coordination involved, this whole framework is sort of based on a series of levels of where each one kind of acts as a pressure valve for the one below it, If we get a team in front of the situation or the person and they can't address the needs of the situation or person, they'll call in the next team.

And we do it until we figure out what the right level of acuity of response needed.

This type of prioritization is really important in neighborhoods like the CID, where public safety and disorder concerns.

are associated with very large quantities of people.

Ambassador teams in the CID neighborhood in the last year have encountered over 1100 unique individuals, which is a huge number, more than the number of shelter units our city is hoping to bring online this year.

However, data from WDC, one of the ambassador teams in the CID neighborhood, is showing that not all individuals have equal presence in the neighborhood.

About 5% of that total population comprises about 40% of the encounters, which means that there is a group of people that are there very frequently and a much larger group of people to varying degrees there less frequently.

In the summer of 2025, we had sort of a special project with CoLead, a high support shelter housed within PDA.

The assignment was to use CoLead's high support shelter capacity for the CID neighborhood.

So in order to do that to the greatest effect, CoLead collaborated with SNF partners not only working off of this ambassador encounter data to see who's there the most often, but also working with business outreach in collaboration with Friends of Little Saigon, working with other SNF partners to see who are we seeing and who, if we worked with, and we could make a difference in their life, could make the biggest difference for the neighborhood.

So that summer, 41 individuals were connected to CoLead.

All individuals identified as high priority individuals for this Chinatown International District.

Since placement last summer, we've seen really good outcomes.

95% of that 41 person cohort has been connected to recovery resources.

Over 90% have achieved housing related outcomes.

And back in the CID, ambassadors are still on the ground every day collecting data on who they're seeing and how often.

And the group that went into CoLead has had a 50% decrease in encounters in this Chinatown International District.

Now, obviously, the goal is not just to have people not go to neighborhoods.

Like Paige said in our case study for intensive case management, the goal is that we're addressing folks' unmet needs, and that's something that can undergird behavior change.

So the other important piece here is what ambassadors are seeing when folks are in the neighborhood, and a lot of qualitative accounts of people appearing much healthier, engaged in different types of behavior, and generally having less of a negative impact on the neighborhood.

Of course, this is sort of a, you know, a drop in the bucket.

41 people is not a lot of folks, given the hundreds and thousands of folks in need of support throughout SNF neighborhoods and other Seattle neighborhoods.

But I think we wanted to lift this up because this is a good case study showing, you know, within this 41-person scope that we can make a difference for both individuals and neighborhoods at the same time.

What we're trying to do is build this prioritization framework so that what resources we have make the most impact and then figure out what resources we can put through that prioritization framework to accelerate the work.

This is an all hands on deck effort.

So I want to pass it to Elena to talk a little bit about how we're doing so in collaboration with neighborhood leaders.

Yeah, thanks, Sam.

So I'm gonna talk a bit about how the SNF model plays at the local level.

I represent Little Saigon.

We're about a 10 square block neighborhood, very place-based.

And as you know, the CID, and particularly Little Saigon recently, has taken on a disproportionate number of high-impact individuals over the recent years.

Over the short time from my bus stop walk to the office I pass many people who are struggling people often relying on Resorting to illegal illegal things to just make it through the day and just walking through the neighborhood shows that Everyone is impacted by the lack of city investment in humane services and housing We are still in the early stages of implementing SNF at the CID level, but we've already seen some really promising results.

The co-lead housing example is just one, where people get housing and then have fewer negative encounters in the CID.

But also the impact on small businesses has been significant.

We work with a lot of small businesses and they've spoken really highly of WDC and the ambassadors.

They can call them and get really timely responses from these outreach workers who are already in the neighborhood.

Some of the businesses have also asked for more coverage in certain areas, and the ambassadors and WDC have been really receptive and incorporated those requests into their daily routes.

So while we wait for more city-funded housing and resources, WDC and the ambassadors help mitigate negative impacts on the neighborhood.

And this SNF model also ties in really well with our FODEP work, which is an initiative that Friends of Little Saigon has started in 2024. It means beautiful neighborhood in Vietnamese, and it is working to address some of the neighborhood's biggest public safety challenges.

Back in the summer of 2024, we met with community stakeholders to learn about challenges and brainstorm some solutions for what the community is facing.

And one of the main things that came out of those meetings was a request for better coordination among all the groups working in Little Saigon, which had been pretty disjointed previously.

So since then, the service providers have been working hard to better organize themselves among the four coordination levels of SNF, and we've also been working with the mayor's office, DON, SPD to better coordinate across city departments.

But even as we improve coordination, the felt impact on the ground is very slow, and many people in Little Saigon will say they haven't noticed significant differences yet.

And we won't be able to make long-lasting change without more resources dedicated to long-term care.

So as you saw in the timeline earlier, we've all had different pathways of getting here.

And this diagram shows how we're thinking about where different neighborhoods are at with implementing SNF.

So this first level building the front door is building the basic components for SNF functions.

Lake City and Capitol Hill are interested in getting started in SNF implementation.

So they're identifying priorities, building partnerships with service providers, and coordinating among community stakeholders.

And as Mike mentioned earlier, our three neighborhoods here have BIAs, but it's not necessary to have a BIA to start implementing SNF.

The second level, filling in the gaps.

This is where the CID currently is.

We're operating SNF, but we don't have the full set of components necessary to reach the framework's potential.

So one thing we're still waiting on is the dedicated neighborhood outreach coordinator to provide holistic support to individuals, businesses, and the community as a whole.

And I'll pass it to Mike for the last section.

Yeah, for the last section, for neighborhoods functioning at full fidelity, we're really thinking about the University District in Ballard at this point.

We have now had and University District really led the way with getting ambassadors on board and with Marcus's position and then we were just a couple of years behind them.

But now we have a staff member dedicated to clean and safe services.

We have an ambassador program that's working and viable.

And then thanks to council support last year, a shout out to Councilmember Rivera and also Councilmember Strauss for helping to fund neighborhood care coordinators.

We've just partnered with REACH to add that position.

So now in the University District and in Ballard, as of May 1st we have a dedicated person doing that so that what is what we believe kind of the final piece to bring to full fidelity the program and we're pretty excited about it and we're pretty actively working to just with the tools and the team and the people that we have to try and continue to make this program even more effective and I think I just want to go back to to the initial premise to of It is just so common that there might be a handful of individuals in any one neighborhood that are absolutely having an outsized impact.

And for whatever reasons, these people have fallen through the gaps, whether it's through the social services gap or it's through a criminal justice gap, we've all seen it.

but what we know and believe is that if we can work together on a small number of individuals and be able to provide a solution that removes them from being directly on the streets, it lowers the tension in the neighborhood and increases the vibes.

The good vibes.

Thanks, Mike.

So I'll wrap it up here.

You've probably heard a couple of themes throughout our presentation.

SNF is a framework in progress, ranging from neighborhoods like Lake City, who are asking for some of these key components, to the CID, where some of these components are in place.

There are a few more that we need to fund and build.

and then neighborhoods like U District and Ballard that have the components, but we're still working on this other critical piece of porting things like long-term care strategies.

You know, so many of the situations that we're case conferencing are places where people are unsheltered.

And like what we saw with the co-lead example, we do see when people are paired with appropriate long-term care resources, their care plans move faster.

So what we're hoping to do is continue to build this framework across neighborhoods and figure out how to align it with those long term care strategies, especially things like high support shelter as the city brings it online.

And the last thing I'll say, too, is that this is a framework that is not but this works hand in hand with other strategies.

Not a replacement for other city departments works, rather it's Department of Neighborhoods, SPD, CAREN, and in fact, our level three SNF meetings are a place where our goal is to extend this level of collaboration of what are all the different, you know, right and left hands doing in the same neighborhood and have a coordinated response.

Again, the goal being to do more with what we have to benefit Seattle neighborhoods.

Could you actually go back to the spectrum slide, the last one?

I just want to call this out.

I didn't do a proper introduction of why I'm sitting down here.

It's because I have been working alongside this team for six years.

It took, and this is a great spectrum slide, it took the Ballard Alliance and the Ballard neighborhood three years to build the front door.

And it's taken about two years of filling the gap to just now getting to full fidelity.

and because we took such a methodical approach it is now for Lake City and Capitol Hill for CID I think it took you a year and a half a year just to build the front door so we took a three plus year process shortened it to a year the filling the gaps was another two years for Ballard but we might be able to do it in a year for CID maybe a year and a half so I just I share that, that's why I'm sitting down here.

If you want to go back to the case study real quick, the question asked is how, next one, which is how can you have such high results without having full fidelity?

And it's because we've been operating and working quietly for many years to develop this framework to be very effective.

And if you want to click back to the NIF slide, the framework, I'll just say The reason that there is success here is because coordination is free.

Well, not quite free, and that's part of the statement of legislative intent that we'll receive later this year.

But coordination on a real-time, every-week basis is how issues can be managed with collaboration.

This is a services-based approach at this table.

That means that criminal interventions are separate from what's going on with this group of people.

What I have found is that one of the biggest assets of this team is actually creating the warm handoffs out of jail for the clients who need the support the most because they are having the highest impact.

So jail without a warm handoff can mean death for people coming out of jail in the worst case scenarios.

And with this, there's a really important warm handoff.

that actually can make somebody better.

I see people looking at the clock.

So I will just say this allows for the community to care for the community and, as Karen said, create effective long-term behavior changes and is separate but can help with the criminal justice system.

Thank you.

All right, Mr. Wolfe, thank you, as points, with some assistance from a council member, although, you know, maybe at least the tie should have come off, you know, so you can be in sync with your colleagues at the rest of the table.

By the way, colleagues, we're not doing item number three on the agenda, so.

Vice Chair, any questions?

Yeah, thank you, Chair.

First off, thank you to the panelists.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss, for your leadership and, you know, helping to maybe not found, but grow and expand and scale this model over across the city with the heavy focus looks like on the north end and would love to, I'm glad the CID is now represented in this, but there are certainly growing needs across the city, including in my own council district.

but the CID case study shows, I think, encouraging initial outcomes.

So what do you all see as the sort of biggest factors behind that success and how might that inform potential expansion to other neighborhoods, including other parts of South Seattle, south of the Ship Canal?

I can speak in terms of the results that that 41 person cohort saw from the CID case study.

It looks different for every person, of course, but when people are paired with appropriate resources like a high support shelter that meets their needs, it's a little bit different than what we're able to do when we're doing street-based case management.

It's a situation where if somebody has a safe place to live, that is just a platform from which they can work on the care plan that they've made with their case manager.

It also means their case manager has a very reliable place to find them.

And, you know, it's still a non-linear and a unique trajectory for every person.

But we do see, of course, when people's needs are met, we can build that pyramid more quickly.

The questions about, like, what do we see as the next steps for this?

I think one being 41, you know, spots in a high support shelter is, of course, a very small number compared to the number of people out there.

But, you know, it's work that I think we can replicate, especially as more shelter comes online, as more neighborhoods build SNF frameworks.

Pioneer Square, as an example, you may have read the recent Seattle Times piece about the sheltering effort that just occurred there.

We're at a stage with that effort where what we're trying to do right now is work with DSA ambassadors, Alliance for Pioneer Square to try to identify, you know, now who are like the sort of high priority individuals and do that sort of like customized planning around them.

I think this is a framework that can be adaptable to the place in each neighborhood's trajectory of building these components.

But across the board, it's building these prioritization components in order to be more efficient with how we deploy these resources.

And then, of course, having more resources to deploy through this framework.

Thank you for that.

And yeah, definitely familiar with the Pioneer Square effort and piece.

that would be a good candidate neighborhood if Pioneer Square Alliance and the Residence Council agreed for potential expansion.

So too would Georgetown in my district, or South Park, the Duwamish Valley neighborhoods, or I know there was some initial work done based off the timeline in 2018 in Soto.

It sounds like BIAs are preferred though not required.

So doubling down on that investment in Soto to the extent BIAs are preferred and expanding to non-BIA areas including the Duwamish Valley.

It's no secret District 1 has the highest number of lived-in vehicles by far, not by a little, by a lot.

Generally, roughly three times more depending on the reporting period.

So, the need is great.

And thank you for addressing sort of the elephant in the room there about the 4 percent, you know, rate, I guess, for in the CID ambassadors, 1,100 unique individuals encountered, 41 were connected with co-lead, so appreciate your, you know, kind of putting some additional color around that data point, because you're right, it is still very low overall.

Help me better understand the What constitutes an encounter?

So, in the CID example, there were 1,100 unique individuals encountered.

What is like a typical encounter or engagement look like?

Well, just to clarify, so encounters will look different between the different teams in SNF, right?

Like the work of outreach and the work of ambassadors looks different.

That data is from the WDC ambassador team in the CID.

And so what they do is they'll go out and basically provide like an ongoing presence for their hours of operation, which in the CID I believe is eight hours a day, seven days a week.

and what they'll do in that time is, you know, they're very well trained in de-escalation and that de-escalation relies on having relationships with people.

So they'll come out with, you know, outreach supplies, things that sort of like undergird like having a conversation with somebody and whether it's responding to businesses calling to like help with a situation, provide a de-escalation, or just generally being out there.

They'll talk to folks, get to know them, and so that when they need to do the de-escalation, it's, John Smith, let's go get a cigarette because we have that relationship.

We know what types of things you'll be receptive to.

But basically, when they talk to somebody in the neighborhood, they'll log that encounter and they'll have notes about what happened during the encounter.

Sometimes it is just provided outreach supplies, talked about what was happening that day and other times it is like a de-escalation.

So it's an amalgamation of a lot of different types of activities in an encounter.

and what we're using it as here is really just like a very like broad, you know, data point about who's there most often.

And again, intensive case management and outreach encounters look a little different because they have different goals as programs.

Yeah, I can just speak really quickly to that.

So, for us, we'll just differentiate between a contact and an encounter.

A contact is we saw you in this space, we saw you today, maybe it was just a really quick like, hey, how are you going?

And an encounter is a more substantial like case management, kind of working on your case, your individualized service plan is what we call them, so your care plan, and having a more in-depth behavioral health kind of human services discussion.

But the data that was shown in the slides, that's specifically ambassador data, not the case management data.

And I think a value of having the different data sets is to understand, because frequency is a good measure of impact, it's a measure of presence, For us on our side, we know this person is deeply system-involved and very vulnerable and could also impact the community.

So it's different ways of weighing that impact to really understand where we're going to prioritize very limited resources.

And I'll just add one more thing, too.

I think that's a great point, and that's the reason why that encounter data needs to be balanced with the other parts of the SNF framework.

Business outreach, doing that hand-in-hand with BIAs, or working with, like, Marcus, who directly talks to businesses and works with ambassadors who businesses are calling, because it's that qualitative piece mixed in that really helps us understand what's the community experiencing.

How do we prioritize?

MR. Thank you.

No further questions, Chair.

MR. All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the panel and thank you for Councilmember Strauss for all your work on this over the many, many years.

I'm excited to see the efforts making progress in CID.

And one thing I just want to sort of comment on and would love to hear any response is, you know, I think what makes SNF successful is really that deep collaboration.

And I think we also need collaboration amongst our city departments and our public safety providers, including SPD, I know LEAD and Co-LEAD work closely with the police department, Chair Kettle, I've heard you speak quite extensively about sort of the two mindsets, right?

And I do think we continue It's not just casework.

I think obviously casework is incredibly important, but casework alone, there is still a role for law enforcement.

And similarly, we know that law enforcement alone can't solve this crisis.

and I think we see the best results when we are all rowing in the same direction, when we are collaborating together.

Earlier we were talking about gun violence and I do think we were seeing better success about a decade ago when we had really strong partnerships and I do believe that the targeted Enforcement is or targeted referrals are also important.

And it's similarly on gun violence, it's a small number of folks who are really causing the most impact and that we really need to focus our resources on them.

But similarly, I think with LEED, I think there was a strong partnership about a decade ago and that fell apart a little bit or just sort of after the COVID, after some of the George Floyd protests and a lot of turnover in SPD.

We weren't funding LEED at the levels that I think we needed to.

and I do think we need, there's always a need for greater resources for our case work, for our housing, for our social services.

That doesn't mean that we should not be collaborating with law enforcement and that brings, I think, its own benefits.

To Council Member Stroud, It's sort of free, but it's sort of not free.

It requires time, right?

That collaboration, it requires effort.

But I do think we get better results when we collaborate and, again, are working in the same direction.

So any comments just on that aspect of this work?

I'll just say, I mean, totally agree.

And we've been having a lot of conversations recently, especially with the CID, because of SPD's Downtown Activation Team focus in the area.

went to West Precinct, what was it, like a week or two ago with Captain Garth Green and Sergeant Beck to talk through what's SPD doing.

And I think the idea of the SNF framework with the folks at this table is that we can do more preemptively, you know, whether it's like our BIA partners flagging somebody who is starting to generate 911 calls and we can try to do something before we reach the point of crisis.

But also, of course, SPD can refer to LEAD if there is a point of arrest that's necessary.

I know that the neighborhood outreach team has a long history of working hand in hand to have better outcomes.

So the collaboration is built into this at every level.

And what you see here is certainly not a comprehensive notion of what we think is good for the neighborhoods.

Yeah, I'll just add that I think that that's really one of the protective factors of the levels is that information sharing agreement and dynamic.

As the former outreach worker on Aurora, that's how I started in this city working my outreach work.

My clients wanted justice.

They wanted care just as much as anybody else, but they have to also be careful about how they share information and how that goes.

That was the original intent of the design, is to allow people to information share, but also offer them protection.

The neighborhood coordinators, it's not a secret that they're going to be working with the police, but to what way?

and what does that relationship look like?

So that was really the intent behind the levels of care, because us as human service providers have to protect people's privacy, their confidentiality, and their rights to healthcare, while also managing the violence that they live through every single day.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

I just really want to acknowledge and lift up the BIAs because I know that a lot of this work actually comes from, and the reason, Councilmember Saka, we were talking about the BIAs is because the Ambassador Program was born of BIAs.

DSA has had the Ambassador Program, everyone knows, downtown for a long time.

and then, of course, I've been partnering since I got to the council with the U District, Dom Blakeney in the U District partnership, which is our BIA and D4.

And then, Mike Stewart, I know you've been, we worked together when I was in the mayor's office way back when, but so the BIAs have been so instrumental in all the neighborhoods because, you know, They're not just there.

Yes, they're there to help small businesses, but they are also have turned into helpers of the whole neighborhoods where they are located.

And in that way, I'm so appreciative of all the BIAs.

And I know a lot of this work and this collaboration and partnership was led by the BIA's interest in making sure that the needs of the folks that wound up in those neighborhoods were being met.

And I know that the BIAs have had a hands-on approach to the collaborative effort, bringing in LEAD and co-lead and the other partners, and as well as asking for resources like outreach positions, which I know last year I was supportive for the U District to put in that outreach position, which was really critical.

And I'll say that, you know, a lot of the neighborhoods where the BIAs are located are experiencing a lot of the impacts of folks with high needs that aren't getting needs met.

And I very much appreciate all your collaboration.

I always say when we work together we get better outcomes and this is an example and one that we're seeing very much in my district, in the U District because a lot of folks with the opening of the light rail station there, there's been also a lot more folks that have wound up there that have a lot of needs and I really appreciate everyone.

This framework I think is born of that a need that arose and then all of you working together with the BIAs, of course, to address that need.

And so I really appreciate that.

We need this in other neighborhoods as well, Councilmember Saka.

And I don't think that the only reason it was BIA-led was because they took the initiative, and there are great partners there.

But yes, it doesn't have to be limited to the BIAs.

but this idea that within the neighborhoods there's a team of folks working together to meet the needs of the folks that wind up in those neighborhoods that are many times unhoused and that have need treatment of some kind, whether it's mental health services or drug addiction or other.

It's really important and it's really powerful and I am very supportive and it has grown over time as folks have gotten together to meet the need.

And so I'll say last year, I also put into the budget this ORCA pod, which was medication services for these folks that wind up in these neighborhoods similar to the ORCA pod that the medication band that ORCA has downtown.

similar service for folks in the U District in Ballard and up on Capitol Hill because we're just seeing more of that need in those neighborhoods.

So all that to say I've been partnering with the U District on this for a long time as well.

I'm very supportive Last year in the budget I added some resources and I'd love to see more happening in the other neighborhoods to Councilmember Saka That needed because it really is is a great model Everyone working together and really meeting the needs of folks and I do think Councilmember Lynn You're right the lead there were some challenges post the pandemic and I would love to see Lee doing more of this and also working with SPD because there should be warm handoffs when folks wind up having a police contact.

I know the idea was to make sure that Lee do the diversion piece and I think that can be much improved because I don't think the warm warm handoffs are happening like they should, and I want to continue the conversation about that as well, which is a little bit separate from here, but not too separate, because those folks wind up in the neighborhood rather than directly to lead.

And I know, Sam, you and I have talked about the importance of that, and I think we are aligned, and so how do we help make that happen?

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

I just want to thank the entire team.

to include your late add-on Councilmember Strauss for coming here it's really important I always say you know a challenge we have in the city that yes we tend to look out for our neighbors in crisis and you're doing that but we don't necessarily look out for our neighborhoods in crisis and and that's key and so bringing these neighborhoods into the program the way you are is really important and so so thank you for this and and it hits the different pieces in terms of what we're trying to do because this is obviously in the scene, as I like to say, but it's also in some of these other areas in terms of bringing on these capabilities.

I'm really interested in public safety coordinator and safety ambassador from my own experience working in the Queen Anne, Magnolia, Inner Bay, Uptown, Westlake kind of neighborhood.

I won't belabor that because or past our time.

So I really do appreciate your coming today.

And so I will conclude by saying we have reached the end of today's meeting agenda.

If there's any further business, come before the committee before we adjourn.

I see a lot of stuff going on legal lately.

Hearing no further business to come before the committee, we are adjourned.