Public Safety and Human Services Committee 4/25/23

25th, 2023 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

It is 9.31 a.m.

I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Present.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Chair Herbold.

Here.

Vice Chair Lewis is excused for present.

Thank you so much on today's agenda, we will hear 2 items.

The 1st is a bill council bill 120549 regarding obstruction of firefighters, including a potential amendment.

And then, secondly, we will be hearing a briefing on a draft resolution on pay equity for.

human services contractors.

This is a draft bill, it has not been introduced, and we're just working to daylight the concepts in the bill and have a discussion.

With that, we will now approve our agenda for today's committee meeting.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

I see I see some hand is up son is there a technical problem.

Yes, we have an issue with the public comments forum we're updating that now we'll be sending updates out to the public commenters there's nobody online yet, but it looks like we there's some sort of error, so we will be addressing that shortly.

Okay, thank you.

I will what I'll do is I will continue to read through the public comment instructions and I will pause and you can let me know the status of your efforts.

We do have a in-person public speaker.

We could take that person to buy you some more time if necessary.

Thank you.

Thank you.

At this time, we will transition into public comment.

I will moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

Each speaker will be given 1 minute to speak.

I will alternate between virtual and in person public commenters.

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order, which they registered on the council's website and the sign in form.

If you have not yet registered to speak, but you would like to do so, you can sign up before the end of the public comment session.

Once I call a speaker's name, if you are using the virtual option, you'll hear a prompt.

And once you hear that prompt, you will need to press star six in order to unmute yourself.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item which you are addressing.

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

Once the speaker hears the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comments.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's mic will be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to hear from the next speaker.

Once you've completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line, but encourage you to continue following the meeting and you can do so via the Seattle channel or the listening options included on today's agenda.

We have got, let's see, it says 201 people signed up for public comment but I know that's a mistake.

19 people signed up virtually and 1 person signed up in person and I'm just going to pause here for a moment.

And check with son, how are we doing?

It's like, they're coming in, so this might take a few minutes.

Still take a few minutes.

Okay.

I have a question.

And would it help, is it okay if I move forward and take the in-person public commenter that we have, or should we wait?

Give us one or two minutes, but you would give us a chance to catch up.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm not sure I heard him.

Did you hear him?

I'm not sure I heard him.

The commenters are displaying on my, I can see them, the people who sent in virtually.

But I think it's OK to do that one person at a time.

All right, we're going to take the one person that we have signed up for in-person public comment, and then we'll check back in with our folks who are working hard on the tech side to get us ready.

So our one person signed up for public comment in person is Bailey Mateo.

And Bailey, if you could join us, thank you.

Can I be heard?

Can you hear me?

Awesome.

Good morning, Chair Herbold and members of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

Today, my name is Bailey Modillo.

I'm a resident of Southeast Seattle, and I come to this chamber in opposition of CB 120549, which seeks to establish policies that allow SPD to enforce an obstruction zone around SPD responders, specifically by way of charging individuals in that zone with obstructing a public officer.

The premise of this legislation is to extend enforcement of obstructing a public officer to SPD and SFD responders.

However, we already have repercussions on the legal, on the statewide level against interfering with that response.

For example, RCW 46-6105 does precisely what this bill is trying to do.

And there's a clear pathway where this legislation serves as a tool of counter protest specifically against counter protesters of color.

From the bill's own fiscal note, a sole charge of obstruction of a public officer and similar statutes have historically been used to suppress and penalize people of color.

I ask this committee provide leadership in rejecting this council bill.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Just checking in whether or not we can start taking names off of the public comment.

Go ahead.

Looks like we're catching up okay.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Our first speaker is Janice DiGucci and Janice will be followed by Alice Lockhart.

Good morning Chair Herbold and Council Members.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

Good morning Chair Herbold and Council Members.

My name is Janice DiGucci and I'm Executive Director of Neighborhood Health And I'm here to speak in favor of the resolution being presented regarding wage equity for human service workers.

And I want to thank Council Member Herbold for introducing this resolution and encourage the full council to support the resolution language and recommendations.

Neighborhood Health employs over 350 individuals that speak 40 different languages.

Our staff are immigrants, refugees, formerly unhealthy individuals with education and training both here and in their home countries.

They bring their lived experience and unique cultural responsiveness to this work.

Safiya, a home visitor in our Parent Child Plus program, was able to help a newly arrived mom from East Africa help her child succeed.

Both mom and Safiya noticed the child wasn't participating in activities, and because Safiya understood the stigma in the community around disability, she was able to help them understand the benefits of getting help.

Parent Child Plus is partially funded by the Family and Education Levy, and Sophia left Neighborhood House to start her own business due to inadequate wages.

I urge you to support this first step in wage equity for human service providers.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Alice Lockhart and Alice will be followed by Marsha Wright-Soyka.

Good morning committee.

I'm Alice Lockhart here this morning asking you to reject Council Bill 120549. This bill increases the scope in which police officers can remove the public from public space using the threat of obstruction charges.

Please reject this bill if you agree that obstruction charges are used disproportionately against people of color and people of limited economic means because they are.

Please reject this bill if you believe that police have used and will continue to use threats of obstruction charges to clear protests and inhibit free speech and to punish protesters.

because they have and they will.

Please reject this bill if you have concerns that police may be more able to roughly handle people in crisis as police co-respond with fire because they can clear the area and stop citizens like me from observing and filming.

Please reject this bill.

Also, I strongly support equitable pay for human service workers.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Marsha Wright-Soyka, and Marsha will be followed by Jen Muzia.

Good morning, council members.

I'm Marsha Wright-Soyka, and I'm the executive director of Family Works, which focuses on alleviating food insecurity and providing family services in North Seattle.

I'm here today to speak in strong favor of the wage equity resolution being presented for human service workers.

I'd like to thank Council Member Herbold for introducing the resolution and encourage the full council to approve the resolution language and the recommendations.

FamilyWorks has seen more families at our food bank and resource centers than ever before, but persistently low wages are a barrier in having the staff power to keep pace and to do more.

We have particularly high demand for our mobile food pantry, which reaches 300 low-income households per month through preschools, home-based childcare providers, and affordable housing communities with fresh food.

Most of the families who receive food have children under five.

However, we have a long waiting list of families and organizations who are in need of our services, and we cannot respond because the staff we do have is underpaid and at capacity, and we have no pathway to add more for the program.

Beyond the resolution, I urge council to act urgently to be a leader in resolving pay issues for human service workers in Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jen Musea, and Jen will be followed by Edwin Bergato.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Jen Musea, and I am the executive director at Ballard Food Bank, and I'm the co-chair of the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

I am here today to speak in favor of the resolution being presented regarding wage equity for human service workers.

Thank you Council Member Herbold for introducing this resolution.

And I encourage the full council to approve the resolution language and its recommendation.

Our city is in a state of crisis with rates of homelessness at an all time high.

As I speak to you right now, there's a line of people outside our building waiting to shop for food, access rental assistance, and connect with our team and partner agencies to connect with other critical services.

We are just one agency, but this is an example of what is happening across our city.

With inflation, cuts to SNAP benefits, lack of housing, and the long recovery from the pandemic, our community needs more services, not less.

To address the challenges in front of us, we urgently need the skills of dedicated and experienced human service providers.

Many organizations are struggling to hire and retain staff when wages are far below what it costs to live in the city.

Low wages for human service workers are impacting everyone who calls Seattle home.

This wage gap needs to be closed for the city of Seattle to be a safe, welcoming place for everyone.

This resolution creates a path forward in building a safe, sustainable community where everyone has an opportunity to survive and thrive.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Edwin Bergato, and Edwin will be followed by Michelle McDaniel.

Hello, my name is Evan Borgado.

I'd like to make a comment on agenda number one, as it pertains to amending the crime of obstructing public officer can include obstructing firefighters and fire department personnel.

Let me start by thanking the council for considering this ordinance and for listening to our concerns.

I've been a member of the Seattle fire department for nearly 25 years, and I currently serve as a lieutenant for engine six in the central district.

I can tell you there've been many occasions in the city where the ability to provide services to the citizens and visitors of Seattle has been hindered or delayed due to interference by bystanders.

Let me just give you two brief examples.

While attempting to care for a young man who'd been shot by walking down the street, the crowd nearby became extremely loud towards us and the police who made it nearly impossible for us to communicate with one another regarding our duties.

At one point, I turned to realize the person who was in no way affiliated with the scene was standing right beside me.

He leaned over, began yelling at the patient.

And I was actually wondering if this person could potentially be our shooter.

So at this point in time, the shooter had not been found.

While this was going on, a crowd of about 20 people began berating us and demanding we do something for the patient.

understand that their actions were distracting and made it more difficult for us to do our job.

Obviously, there's some time constraints so that I'm not going to be able to get to the rest of the example.

But essentially, I'd like you to please keep in mind that I'm one of nearly 1,000 firefighters in this city that respond to thousands of calls for help every year.

And these stories are just a small sample of incidents that have occurred to me personally, an extremely small sample of what occurs citywide.

Again, I thank you for considering this new ordinance that would only serve for us to care for the citizens and visitors of Seattle in a safe manner.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Michelle McDaniel and Michelle will be followed by Liam Roney.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Michelle McDaniel.

I'm the CEO of Crisis Connections, the 24-hour crisis helpline provider for Seattle and King County since 1964. I'm speaking in favor of the resolution being presented regarding pay equity for human service workers.

I also want to thank council member Lisa Herbold for introducing this resolution and encourage the full council to approve the resolution language and its recommendations.

Having the data and recommendations from the University of Washington City is a game changer toward understanding the true impact of the wage penalty human services workers experience by choosing to work in this sector.

Low wages are preventing crisis connections from being able to attract and retain talented, diverse, and experienced staff, which impacts not only the efficient operations of crisis helplines, but also impacts the thousands of people who reach out to us daily on what is often the worst days of their lives.

My organization averages a 50% turnover rate, with many staff telling us that they love the mission and feel valued as an employee, but just cannot make a living in the human services sector.

Thank you for your opportunity to speak on this critical issue.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Liam Roney, and Liam will be followed by Taylor Riley.

Good morning, everybody.

Councilor Herbold and the committee, I thank you for considering this bill.

My name is Liam Roney.

I'm one of the vice presidents of Seattle Firefighters Local 27. And I rise in support of speaking in support of the considered bill regarding obstruction zones.

Lieutenant Bergato described the scene very effectively.

Now, he's an officer.

He's in charge of looking around and keeping situational awareness of the scene.

I'm the one holding onto somebody's spine and keeping it from being damaged and breathing for them.

all you when you show up on scene, you can see, you know, there may be a hostile crowd and somebody unconscious on the ground.

And you can't leave, or they're getting your breathing for them.

And you can't leave regardless of what the crowd is doing.

And it we get hurt.

We get we need we need these exclusion zones.

It's women are Women are five times, female firefighters are five times more likely to be assaulted.

It's an equity issue as well.

We need this bill.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Taylor Riley and Taylor will be followed by Amarynthia Torres.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Taylor and I'm a district three resident.

I'm calling in today to implore you to vote no to CB 120549, the ordinance of obstructing a public officer to include obstructing fire department personnel.

There are mountains of social science evidence showing that obstruction charges are one of the most racially disproportionate filed charges because it is based on officer's discretion.

In a city with a police department that has continually documented racially biased policing, this bill could have disastrous impacts.

This will also no doubt increase the number of people in jail when our local jails are already overcrowded and deadly.

As a city council that purports to be for racial justice, how can you consider a bill that by the legislation's own summary has historically been used to suppress and penalize people of color?

Please reject this legislation.

And I also support pay equity for human services providers.

These are the folks who make our city safer, not the police, and they need to be paid equitably for the vital work they do for our city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Amarithia Torres, followed by Cody Zalewski.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Amarithia Torres.

I'm speaking on behalf of the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence.

We work with over 35 community-based organizations towards gender equity.

I'm here to speak in favor of the resolution being presented regarding wage equity for human service workers.

I'd like to thank Council Member Sobel for introducing this resolution, and I encourage the full council to approve the resolution language and its recommendations.

Chronically low wages in our field means we have a hard time hiring qualified staff and a hard time retaining the staff we have.

I want staff in our field not to be forced to take on a second job to make ends meet.

I want staff to see a future in our field that allows them to raise kids, buy a house, live in Seattle, and build up enough savings to retire.

Additionally, I want survivors to have the courage to reach out for support.

to have a robust network of experienced advocates to call upon and steady and consistent care throughout their process of healing from abuse.

Currently, all these things are very difficult to attain.

And I think it's important to note our field was created by women and women of color and lesbians and queer people, and many more who found themselves drawn to the larger project of ending violence rooted in rigid gender roles.

And it's no surprise the data shows these same systemic barriers, sexism, racism, at play that are also part of gender-based violence.

So just really support this effort and the wage gap, this effort to address the wage gap.

And this creates an important path forward to that goal.

Please approve the resolution language and its recommendations.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you today.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Cody Zalewski and Cody will be followed by BJ Last.

Good morning, Chairwoman Herbold and the Seattle City Council.

My name is Cody Zaleski from District 4 and a member of the Psychedelic Medicine Alliance of Washington.

Firstly, thank you, Andrew Lewis, for the resolution passed over a year ago deprioritizing entheogenic psychedelic substances in Seattle.

Many people find entheogenic psychedelic substances vastly improve their mental health, and we appreciate your support on the issue.

Seattle has an opportunity to demonstrate support for recent state-level legislation and provide more substance to the existing resolution by strengthening it as an ordinance.

My coalition will be grateful if Seattle would pass an ordinance to support the prior resolution.

Thank you and I feed my time.

Our next speaker is B.J.

Last and B.J.

will be followed by Darren Schulberg.

B.J. If you haven't hit star 6 that will unmute you.

There you go.

Apologies for that.

Good morning.

My name is DJ.

I'm calling in opposition to CD.

1, 2, 0, 5, 4, 9. I'm not sure what this bill is even trying to accomplish since things is already covered by existing state legislature.

We have a failure to obey an officer, which includes a firefighter already there in RCW 4661015. We have disorderly conduct in 9A84030 and failure to disperse in 9A84020.

These seem to all cover the issues that this is examples that were raised by firefighters previously.

So not for what this bill would be covering that isn't already covered.

This is duplicate Additionally, salt is also already covered.

And we know the racial disparities will be massive on this.

This was pointed out in the summary note and SPD also unequivocally support pay equity.

The human services providers are the ones who provide real public safety to Seattle, feeding our neighbors, giving them shelter, giving them education, access to all resources.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Darren Schulberg.

Darren is showing as not present, but I will definitely come back to Darren if that status changes.

The person signed up following Darren is Amanda Daniels, and Amanda Daniels is also showing up as not present.

I will return to Amanda Daniels if that changes.

The next person signed up and showing present is Howard Gale, and Howard will be followed by Peter Condit.

Good morning.

Howard Gale with Seattle Stop that or in a few weeks it will be six full years.

CPC has failed to fulfill the legislative requirements mandated by the council in Resolution 3 1 7 5 3. Most notably the CPC has failed to propose mechanisms external to the SPD for investigation of serious and deadly use of force and has failed to propose the complainant appeals process.

Worse yet, CPC commissioners just last week noted they were abandoning any concrete proposals for a complaint and appeals process using the SPA contract as an excuse for their failures.

Given the reality of the CPC's abdication of important responsibilities, it is now critical that council members give their full support to the newly created but functionally crippled affected persons program and allow this program to take up the task of creating a complaint and appeals process.

Last fall, Chair Herbold, you, along with other council members, proclaimed your support for this program.

It is time to act to ensure that there can be one tiny part of a failed police accountability system that can actually allow the victims of police violence to advocate for themselves.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker showing is present.

I'm going to go back to Darren Schulberg.

Darren.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Darren Schoberg.

I'm speaking on the SFD obstruction ordinance.

I've been a Seattle firefighter over 32 years.

And during my career, I've noticed an increased boldness for certain individuals to insert themselves into our ongoing emergency operations.

Sometimes it's fire, sometimes it's medical.

that often inhibits our ability to carry out critical functions in a timely manner when sometimes seconds count.

A good example of that is last year when the Ballard Blossom caught on fire down the street here, upon our arrival, we had an individual that was starting to pull hoses and hampering our efforts to put the fire out.

When I tried to stop the guy, he took a broomstick and snapped it in half and he aimed a pointy end at me.

And so I'm just asking our council to support this ordinance to help protect our citizens and our emergency workers.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker showing present is Peter Condon and Peter will be followed by Darcy.

Good, good morning.

This is Peter Condit in district six.

I'm calling to speak against council bill 12 0 5 4 9. This legislation is anti protester and therefore anti-democratic October 8th of last year at an abortion rights rally at Victor Steinbreck park, Seattle fire personnel showed up ostensibly as medical response for someone sleeping in the park.

SFD used sirens and multiple vehicles to disrupt the protest speakers and those listening.

Seattle police were also there encouraging people to leave, but they could not force us to do so.

If the proposed legislation were to be adopted, any protest could be shut down simply by staging Seattle Fire nearby and using the arbitrarily determined, quote unquote, obstruction zone to threaten everyone in an area with arrest.

We know from history that SBD not only targets folks whose politics they disagree with, but also gender non-conforming, Black, and Indigenous people.

The legislation's own summary and fiscal note states that, quote, a sole charge of obstruction of a police officer have historically been used to suppress and penalize people of color, end quote.

Do not pass this racist, anti-democratic legislation.

I also support pay equity for human service workers who actually produce safety in our community.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you.

I'm going to go back up to Amanda Daniels, who signed up earlier and is now showing present.

Amanda Daniels, who will be followed by Darcy Buendia.

Amanda.

Hello.

Hello, my name is Amanda Daniels.

I live in West Seattle, and I want to thank you for taking the recommendations from the UW Weight Equity Study seriously.

I worked in human services for over 14 years.

And when I graduated in 2008, the year the housing market crashed, I paid more in student loans each month than I did in rent with a nonprofit salary of $11 an hour.

And I took a job in food services to make ends meet, which is not uncommon.

Today, we're in another difficult time.

Cost of living, homelessness, mental health disorders are on the rise.

And we need a strong and healthy human service workforce to address these challenges.

Often nonprofit human services workers are treated as dispensable, paid on fairly low wages and leaving the sector, which is resulting in workforce shortages.

This work is hard as it requires caring for people in the most difficult situations in our community.

We human service workers are compassionate, skillful individuals who can do this work and we want to do this work and we deserve to be valued.

Seattle has the opportunity to be a leader in wage equity for this vital workforce by adopting the recommendations from the study and ensuring workers have robust benefits, wages, and funded administration costs.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is now Darcy Buendia and Darcy will be followed by Aiden Carroll.

Good morning.

My name is Darcy Buendia, and I am the co-executive director at Hunger Intervention Program.

I'm here today to speak in favor of the resolution being presented regarding wage equity for human service workers.

Low wages are preventing Hunger Intervention Program and many of its North Seattle partners from achieving their missions.

At Hunger Intervention Program, or HIC, we have long struggled to retain staff.

I'll use our meal program coordinator position, aka the folks who cook and run our meal programs as an example.

At this point, it's actually one of our highest paid positions that comes with full benefits, and yet we still struggle to retain staff for more than a year, which is just not a sustainable turnover rate and absolutely affects the product that we're able to offer to those who need it most.

Even though we began to raise wages at HIP, we've not been able to keep up with inflation and pay a living wage in Seattle.

The issue is clearly goes beyond our walls as well.

The Lake City Community Center, which recently burned down, had extremely limited hours due to lack of staffing.

God's Little Acre, a homeless drop-in center, struggles to stay at full staffing, and Coyote North, due to staffing issues, has gone on complete hiatus and will not be offering services to children in North Seattle for the next year or more.

I'm proud of the increases in pay that my organization has initiated, but it's not enough, and we need support from our legislators.

This resolution is a brave first step, and I thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Aiden Carroll, and Aiden will be followed by Coco Weber.

Thank you.

The human service workers deserve to be paid more than police officers.

To the firefighters, when the police tell you they cannot help with these situations under existing law, they are lying to you.

It would not be the first time.

BJ read the RCWs, but specifically failure to disperse.

If they can't already do what they want to do, that's because the police want an excuse to exclude a larger area.

And this is really applicable only to situations with protests, encampments, when people's homes suddenly end up in an obstruction zone, and other areas of political conflict with police.

This bill is not necessary.

want to say even more urgently that we must halt sleeps until the hotel crisis is resolved.

There is quite literally no shelter for many people who are being swept.

Last Thursday, yesterday at the enormous camp in Jackson Park, people are being referred to the Nav Center and then showing up and finding out that those spaces have already been given to people displaced from the hotel.

This is already wasteful.

This is already effectively no shelter because many of them don't fit people.

But here we have shelter options that are being matched and referred, and there is, even more than ever, nowhere to go.

We know, we have new scientific evidence that people are dying because of these sweeps.

It causes a rise in deaths of violence, a lack of healthcare, of exposure.

It causes a rise in overdoses, and that's gonna be used as an excuse to do even more of this.

It's not working, it's not safe, It's not helping anyone.

And the hotel crisis is not over.

It is continually displacing more people.

And until this is resolved, there is no moral way, more than ever, to do these sweeps.

It is possible to address, it always has been, all of the public safety and hygiene issues related to encampments without moving people.

individuals who are given better.

No, it's been more than 10 seconds after the chime.

Can you please?

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate your comment.

If you can, please follow up with your written comments.

We'll certainly review them.

Much appreciated.

Moving on to the next public speaker.

We have Coco Weber and Coco will be followed by Tree Willard.

Hello, this is Coco.

I currently live in District 3 and I am a former human services worker who could not make it a living in the city.

And I am now an educator who is one paycheck away from being displaced and on the streets myself in a city that has not had any protections for renters or for people who are living on the edges.

And I'm calling today to ask you to not pass 120-549 but I'm also calling just like like help you make the connection that everyone is calling today the human services workers and the people who are asking you not to expand policing in the city are asking for the same thing which is to stop investing in carceral punishment and to start investing in care for our city.

This is the Human Services and Public Safety Committee.

As mentioned, the RCWs already cover what is happening.

I used to be a reentry case manager, and I would pick people up from county jails in Seattle.

And there were a lot of obstruction charges, but it wasn't until I received an obstruction charge and went to jail for filming the police officers piling on top of a black screaming woman that I understood why all these people are ending up in jail on obstruction charges.

We already have this.

Um, this charge is used to, um, in disproportionately incarcerate our BIPOC community.

And it's only, only going to be used more as an anti-democratic process to be able to obstruct protests.

This is racism in action and it is the crime of disrespect.

And who do the police.

use the crime of disrespect on people that they don't like people that are we need to move on to the next speaker much appreciate if please do send in your comments uh we need to move on to the next speaker thank you our next speaker is tree willard and tree will be followed by uh genie romich oh good morning sarah herbold good morning council members um boy i'm so touched by the last two speakers

I'm calling to thank you for your resolution to continue to support wage equity for human service providers.

I'm the executive director of the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

And I spent 20 years in direct service myself.

These are my people.

This is my community that's calling in to you this morning.

My heart just continues to break every day that poverty is institutionalized by racism and misogyny.

That's why I do what I do.

And I just really implore you all to continue to uplift this struggle for us to correct the way that these inequities are baked into how we do what we do.

You've already heard all my colleagues tell you how much they need it.

So let me speak in from my heart.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jeannie Romich and Jeannie will be followed by Rachel Hogan.

Hi, uh, good morning, chair, Herbold and council members.

My name is Jenny Romick.

I'm a professor at the university of Washington and I'm speaking regarding the wage equity resolution.

I led the study funded by city council that examined the pay levels for the workers who deliver our city funded human services.

Our study included an international team of experts and we use methodology from peer reviewed research.

I've reviewed the materials prepared by council staff for today's briefing, as well as the resolution itself.

And I believe they accurately represent the findings of our study.

My colleagues and I are available for any follow-up questions that council may have, and I thank you for your attention to this issue.

I'll cede the rest of my time.

Thank you so much.

And our last speaker signed up for public comment is Rachel Hogan.

Rachel.

Hello.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Rachel Hogan.

I'm calling about City Bill 120549. It is an alarming proposition, which I feel gives Seattle police more power to criminalize people for peaceful witness of the scene.

There's every reason to believe this tool would be used to silence conscious bearing citizens at a time when we have so much need to be more watchful and present and have witness for police behavior.

The extremism in this country has gotten to a level where we can no longer assume that people in power will do the right thing.

And we must have people who are peaceful and able to witness how we treat others in the in the streets in our communities.

And I agree with others who reject this city bill.

So thank you.

This is a very ominous effort.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you so much.

That will conclude public comment and we can move on to the items on the agenda.

Thank you everybody for joining us this morning to testify on items on today's agenda.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item number one.

Agenda item one is council bill 120549, an ordinance relating to the city's criminal code, amending the crime of obstructing a police officer to include obstructing firefighters and fire department personnel and amending section 12A.16.010 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you so much, Mr. Clerk.

Just a few introductory remarks before I hand it over to the folks who are leading the presentation.

Council Member Lewis and I have been working in collaboration with the Seattle Fire Department to fill what is a gap in Seattle's legal code.

As background, in 2022, the Fire Department implemented a new, more comprehensive method of tracking interference and threatening behavior targeting Fire Department employees as they attempt to provide fire and medical aid.

In regular meetings with Chief Scoggins, he's shared with me many personal stories of firefighters being assaulted and the need to update the Seattle Municipal Code to include firefighters and S.

fire department personnel in the definition of public officer in the crime of obstructing a public officer.

Again, this particular update in the, there are two updates of the existing public, the existing code before us today.

One simply adds firefighter or employee of the fire department to a long list of public officers.

public officers, including those who enforce the fire code, like the fire marshal, enforces the building code, like building inspectors, the zoning code, life and safety codes, and those individuals empowered to make arrests for offenses under the Seattle Municipal Code.

or those responsible for enforcement of the federal and state criminal codes.

So as you see, there is a long line of public officers that for whom obstruction expectations can be enforced and firefighters are excluded from that long list.

So that one particular change to the to the law as proposed is I consider it really a technical change because it is adding one public officer that is excluded from a long list of others.

The other more substantive change allows the fire department to actually mitigate the use of obstruction charges by allowing them to create safety perimeters around their work.

So that is, you can find that up in section six.

So just wanting to lay that out.

My goal in sponsoring this legislation is not to generate new arrests, but to reduce the number of arrests for the felony charge of assaulting a firefighter by giving the fire department and the police department the ability to make lawful orders to give the adequate space and access that firefighters need to provide life-saving aid at the scene of a medical or fire emergency before interference escalates further.

Before we begin discussion, we have some guests joining us to speak to the bill.

We'll have Greg Doss from council central staff to provide additional context via the published staff memo.

And then we'll also have representatives from the fire department and local 27 to share their perspectives.

At this point, I think I'm going to hand it off to Greg Doss to go over again, go over the specifics of the proposed changes in the ordinance, and then we'll, we'll hand it off to our guests to speak to the need.

Greg.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Greg Doss, Council Central staff here today to talk about Council Bill 120549, which, as you note, would amend the crime of obstructing a public officer to include obstruction of Seattle Fire Department firefighters and other SFD Department personnel.

There is a staff memo for this bill that is available via link on the published agenda.

I apologize, my comments may take a little time this morning.

There's a lot to address as you know, as you heard in the public testimony.

I'll try to be concise and quick, but I wanna make sure that I cover every point.

By way of background, as you mentioned, Madam Chair, the Seattle Municipal Code 12A16010 creates a crime of obstructing a public officer, which is a gross misdemeanor.

It includes two parts.

One is the intentional and physical interference with a public officer.

And the second is the intentional refusal to leave the scene of an investigation of a crime when an investigation is in process after being requested to leave by a public officer.

A public officer is defined as someone who is empowered to make arrests for offense under the Seattle Municipal Code or those individuals who are responsible for enforcement of federal or state criminal laws.

Public officers are also individuals who can, as you mentioned, Madam Chair, enforce provisions of building, zoning, and life and safety codes.

Under these definitions, strangely enough, fire marshals would qualify as public officials or public officers, but firefighters and other fire personnel do not.

SFD staff have provided central staff with incident records that have shown that aggressive persons have at times engaged in behavior that has interfered with SFD personnel who are attempting to perform their duties.

Examples include patients who have become combative while regaining consciousness during overdose reversal treatments, unhoused persons who have attempted to prevent SFD personnel from extinguishing illegal burns, or persons in mental or behavioral health crisis, or other persons who have threatened or physically assaulted SFD personnel.

However, I should note that not all of this kind of behavior would be a basis for the charge of obstruction.

I'll get into a little more detail on that now.

The council bill 120549 would change the SMC in the following ways.

As the chair noted, it would expand the SMC definition of public officer to explicitly include SFD firefighters and other SFD personnel while they are engaged in the performance of their duties.

And that last part is important.

only while they're engaged in the performance of their duties.

It would also add explicit reference to the scene of a fire department emergency response.

And by doing so, it would help create a statutory framework for the Seattle Fire Department and the Seattle Police Department to create policies that could allow the city to establish obstruction zones around fire department responses.

In creating that statutory framework, the bill uses language from Ordinance 125-313, which recognizes the right of members of the public to observe and record police department activity as part of their constitutionally protected right.

The use of parallel language in this bill observes the same observe and record rights when it comes to potential SFD obstruction zones.

So in summary, the bill would allow the definition of a public officer to extend to SFD personnel.

It would allow SFD and SPD to work together to create safety zones and enforce safety zones.

And it would ensure that persons who are outside of those safety zones are constitutionally protected with their rights to observe and record.

Next I'm going to talk a little bit about enforcement of that obstruction, the city's attorney's office has indicated that the charge of obstruction.

would not be made in every single instance that a person threatens or becomes physically aggressive with fire department personnel.

As I said before, a person displaying threatening behavior towards SFD personnel must also be interfering with the employee's, firefighter's ability to perform their duties.

They must be getting in the way of the firefighter's ability to perform their duties.

So someone yelling or displaying threatening behavior from across the street is not enough for a charge of obstruction.

They have to actually be stopping or preventing the duties from being performed.

Additionally, obstruction, a charge of obstruction could not occur against any SFD patients receiving treatment.

And so in this instance, if a patient was recovering from an overdose and became physically aggressive, they couldn't be charged with obstructing their own resuscitation or their own rescue.

So in that way, Council Bill 120549 may allow for the better enforcement or first-time enforcement of safety zones, but it may not necessarily address all of the problematic behaviors that the fire department has noted in their prior testimony and in their data that they provided to council.

If obstruction does occur and an individual is found guilty of a crime, they would be found guilty of a gross misdemeanor and that's punishable by up to 364 days in jail and a fine of $5,000.

And then finally, I want to address some racial equity issues that are mentioned in the staff report to the extent that individuals violate obstruction zones or otherwise obstruct SFD personnel from performing their duties.

There may be an increase in the number of misdemeanor arrests for the charge of obstructing a public officer.

If that is the case, it is likely that those arrests will occur with disproportionate impact of vulnerable communities and communities of color, as this is a well-established reality for the criminal legal system that creates harm and perpetuates systems of poverty.

In doing some research, staff discovered that the Seattle Police Department has arrested for obstruction 242 individuals in 2022 and 60 individuals through March 31st of this year.

A demographic analysis of individuals arrested for obstruction shows that the arrests are occurring with disproportionate impact to communities of colors.

This was true for Black and First Nation individuals who were over representative relative to a population of Seattle.

The staff memo includes a table showing this over representation.

SFD or SPD staff performed an analysis of these arrests and dug a little deeper, found that 85% of the arrests for obstruction also included other charge types, usually an average of 5.2 charges per event.

So when somebody was being charged with obstruction, they were being charged for other things as well.

85% of the time, the most often associated charge with obstructions was a weapons possession, primarily a firearm, followed by a three way tie for assault burglary resisting arrest alluding or refusing to stop.

SPD staff then did a separate analysis of those obstruction charges that were made where it was just for obstruction.

There was no other charge made.

And in those cases, they found that it was most likely that it was during the investigation of a potential criminal offense and the arrestee was uncooperative or fled the scene after being asked to stay put.

This limited review suggests that obstruction may be more likely in a law enforcement context than it would be when firefighters are responding to a structure fire or providing basic life support.

It's also worth noting that firefighters every day support vulnerable communities by providing timely emergency response to 911 calls that may include incidents like overdose referrals and encampment fires.

In a very best case scenario, the establishment of an instruction zone would ensure that care is not delayed and disproportionate impact on vulnerable communities is not created by individuals who could directly access firefighters and delay or stop them from performing their duties or potentially worsen a situation through the assault of a firefighter.

Central staff has been advised that the CAO is currently examining cases where firefighters have been assaulted by persons in the line of duty and central staff has not received yet any feedback from the CAO on those cases or whether or not a safety zone might prevent cases like that in the future.

That concludes my report on Council Bill 120549. I'm available for a question.

I will also note that there is an amendment on the bill and I'm available to discuss the amendment now or at a later time.

And then finally, we'll just say that there's a technical correction that needs to be made to the amendment.

And thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much.

We'll take a pause here for questions before we hand it over to our guests.

Hopefully just clarifying questions about the material, if there are any.

And let's see, not seeing any, so we're gonna, I'm gonna hand it over and there'll be time for questions after we hear from everybody, of course.

Thank you so much, Greg, and we'll turn it over to Seattle Fire Department Assistant Chief Lombard to speak to the bill.

We worked with the fire department on the development of the legislation.

Chief Scoggins was hoping to join us as well.

I understand he can't get away, but I do appreciate your very able representation of him in the department, Assistant Chief Lovebird.

Thank you, Madam Chair and other council members of the committee for the opportunity to speak to this important legislation on behalf of the Seattle Fire Department.

As you said, I'm Assistant Chief Chris Lombard.

I'm responsible for overseeing the safety, the training and 911 dispatch for Seattle Fire Department.

So this issue is very near and dear to me as I'm concerned with the safety of our members.

As you mentioned, this legislation clarifies the protection for firefighters and EMTs versus the already referenced fire marshals and inspectors in the existing legislation.

So it's critical for improving the safety of the EMTs who are often restricted for safety reasons or sometimes even physically from helping those most in need.

We concur that this bill is not about the expansion of authority for Seattle Police Department, but more about helping Seattle Fire better help our community.

Again, I want to emphasize this.

We are having increased trouble getting where we are being requested.

This is not about self-dispatch, we're being called in and where we're needed.

Listening to some of the very passionate public safety comments, I'm very sympathetic to it.

But to those that say this bill will negatively impact our BIPOC and similar communities, most regrettably, that's already happening.

This bill serves as a tool to help us, Seattle Fire, improve those situations.

by being able to get in and help those disenfranchised.

Multiple times a day, Seattle Fire's EMTs struggle to gain safe access, again, to the disenfranchised, those struggling with mental health issues, those struggling with substance abuse issues, and more.

These incidents and incident scenes are often very chaotic, and when EMTs must focus on the surroundings, they struggle to focus on the patients and provide the best of patient care.

always having to look over their shoulders.

As a case in point, this year already, SFD has responded to over 500 overdose-type calls, hundreds of calls for those in mental crisis, and much more.

Assaults and threatening behavior towards our unarmed members who are simply trying to help others have become a regular and unacceptable part of these responses.

Our members are experiencing this with such regularity that we're starting to have trouble getting them to even continue to report them.

They're feeling almost helpless or hopeless in some of these regards.

SFD members have been hospitalized from assaults.

Some have required surgical intervention.

They've been punched.

They've been threatened with death and much more.

Again, this is not about restricting the public's ability to protest.

We are supportive of those First Amendment rights.

This is simply about creating a safe bubble and a temporary bubble for firing EMS to safely help those most in need.

This is not about clearing or blocking entire streets.

Again, these bubbles are temporary, lasting only while SFD is actively providing patient care.

Simply put, our EMTs don't dwell on the scene any longer than necessary.

We've got that next call to go to.

Again, thank you so much for the opportunity to address how this important legislation can help us, Seattle Fire Department, better serve those in our community requesting our emergency help.

Thank you, Assistant Chief Lombard.

Very much appreciate it.

And we'll hand it over to Local 27 President Kenny Stewart for his remarks.

Good morning Chairwoman Herbold and honorable committee members.

My name is Kenny Stewart.

I'm a 27 year veteran of the Seattle Fire Department.

I work as a lieutenant on ladder eight in Ballard, and I also serve as the president of Seattle Firefighters Local 27. And I first want to thank Chairwoman Herbold for introducing and bringing this bill forward today.

We've been struggling for many years trying to resolve this issue and deal with it.

So the help that is coming is very much appreciated.

This is something that is extremely important to my members and I have personal experience with it.

Amending this ordinance provides much needed support to Seattle firefighters so we can perform our job safely and effectively to preserve life and property.

That's our mission.

We need help with these incident scenes so we can do our job.

And we need to reduce this threat of violence and other incidences that keep us from performing our duties.

And it's actually increased significantly over the last few years.

In response to some of the issues raised, this is predominantly in public areas.

This is not an issue that we see very often with people that have housing.

But in public and for people that don't have housing, they are exposed to crowds and other folks.

And they deserve safe and effective care just like anyone else.

Local 27 began tracking these incidents and we worked with the department to create and implement a formal tracking system to effectively evaluate this issue.

It is interesting to note that for many years, this was considered part of the job.

And until we started tracking it, we really didn't realize the large scope of the issue.

We need to be able to control and protect an incident scene so we can do our jobs and be as safe as possible while doing so.

As we've always experienced violence and behavior in incident scenes, it was really an epiphany for firefighters that these incidents are not part of our job and should not be accepted as okay or routine.

They're actually acts of workplace violence.

The City of Seattle has a workplace violence policy.

Personnel Rule 8.1 states the City of Seattle shall not tolerate workplace violence by or against its employees.

And also states that employees are encouraged to promptly report any threat or active workplace, whether or not violence, whether or not any physical injury has occurred.

And such reports shall be taken seriously and dealt with appropriately.

I mentioned this because everybody knows what it feels like to be threatened with violence.

It changes your focus of attention.

And what we're looking for here is the ability for our firefighters to focus 100% of their attention and efforts on the job at hand.

SFD personnel have experienced more than 50 instances of this workplace violence in the last six months.

Today, it's not only occurring at incident scenes, but elsewhere in the community as we perform other aspects of our job, such as during fire inspections or other routine duties.

We do need help with this issue.

The job of a firefighter is inherently dangerous, and we can't eliminate all hazards and risks.

And as I heard Greg Das say and others, we are going to have a variety of interactions with the public that are not productive or positive, and we accept that.

But where we can make our job easier, where we can make sure that we can effectively respond to a house fire, a car accident, an assault, or any other medical emergency, It's incumbent on us and our employer in the city to help us identify those hazards and mitigate them.

Our firefighters deserve that, and as employees, they deserve that.

This amended ordinance would be a much needed step forward to support firefighters and paramedics so we can safely and effectively respond to these emergencies.

Seconds and minutes count in our profession, and distracting, aggressive, and violent acts delays our actions and our care.

Under this ordinance, a person would have to be interfering with our ability to perform our duties, not just yelling at us, not being distractive at a distance, but in our way and hampering our ability to take care of people.

That's our mission.

And these patients who have overdosed and become conscious and combative, or even members who, people who've been experiencing diabetic emergencies or other issues that cause them not to meditate appropriately, They're not going to be charged and not can be affected, but they deserve and they need our full attention and we don't need the distraction.

I want to just give you a couple of other instances before I finish some of the things that we've been collecting this for a while that we've been experiencing.

over the years.

Aggressive groups of individuals surrounding firefighters as we treat a patient.

And when I say surrounding, I mean a circle of people so you can't see a way out.

Individuals attempting to attack the patient while the patient's under our care.

Individuals stealing the patient's belongings out of their pockets or from their person while we're trying to care for them and breathe for them.

Aggressive threats to shoot us, aggressive bystanders throwing items at SFD and AMR personnel.

Bystanders swinging rebar and wood sticks, patients spitting on firefighters, residents threatening firefighters with hammers, shards of glass, and other tools.

And in incident scenes, individuals screaming, cursing, and threatening us in a variety of other ways.

These are just a few of the issues that we deal with.

We are very proud to serve the people of Seattle.

We're ready for any hazards that we encounter, but we also spend a lot of time and we appreciate the department's efforts and attention towards helping us identify and mitigate these hazards so we can continue to do our job.

Again, thanks for allowing me to speak and be here today.

Thank you so much, President Stewart, for your remarks and this really important context for our discussions today.

You know, I just I really appreciate in particular your comparison of this issue to the prohibitions that we have against other types of workplace violence.

And I think it's really important to visualize the conditions under which firefighters are doing their life-saving work.

They're often in a position where they're hunched over somebody trying to help them.

They don't have the visibility around them to guarantee scene security.

I think it's also really important to consider when we're when we're talking about disparate impacts on vulnerable people that doing nothing and allowing these conditions to continue will also have disparate acts on vulnerable people needing help, receiving help from Seattle Fire Departments.

These are folks who are are vulnerable to encampment fires.

There are people who are being brought back to life in overdose.

And these are the people that the firefighters are working to help.

And they need to have scene security in doing so.

So with that, just want to open up the conversation for questions or comments.

Council Member Nelson.

Sure, I'm glad you addressed the the people that are needing the the first responders aid, because we know that there are disparate there are disparities in the access to health care.

And Kenny did mention diabetes.

But when you think about people who who are suffering from addiction and unhoused on our streets.

We know from the King County reports of fentanyl overdoses, that's that's disproportionately impacting black and Alaskan Native American people on our streets.

And so we have to think about the fact that If we cannot do everything we possibly can to enable the firefighters to perform their life-saving duties, then we are also perpetuating disproportionality in who is dying on our streets.

Thank you.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Humboldt.

Thank you for the work you and Council Member Lewis have done.

I appreciate your comments as well.

I agree with them and those of Council Member Nelson, and I support this legislation to protect our firefighters who are trying to do their job in the field.

I've been hearing a lot of anecdotes from firefighters about their safety in the field, and they're just trying to do their jobs and help people, and so we need to protect them.

Thank you.

you.

Let's see.

I'm not seeing any other hands.

I do have a, I'm going to just fill in here with a couple of questions of my own while my colleagues might have some additional that they're working to get into the queue.

But just turning to, first a comment turning to some of the testimony that we've received, both the verbal testimony today and the written testimony.

I want to first thank Central Staff Greg Doss, who referred to the language in the bill addressing the concern in public testimony that this bill could be used to threaten First Amendment rights by ordering dispersal of a protest.

Again, the bill language states that a person is guilty of obstructing a public officer if they refuse to leave the scene or a response after being requested, and only when the presence hinders, delays, or compromises legitimate fire department actions.

It also, as mentioned by central staffer Greg Doss, that this language itself mirrors language that exists to actually, in a parallel bill referred to as the Observer's Bill of Rights, that was intended to protect people's First Amendment rights while the police department in that case is doing their work.

And so that's why this specific language is included in there, just to be very clear that there are very finite conditions when the charge of obstruction can be used.

I also want to just address a couple of the issues that folks have raised about other RCWs.

Folks have pointed to RCW 4661051. This is about flagging and directing traffic, so it is not applicable in this situation.

RCW 9884030. It appears that, again, this particular state law, much like the city law that we're amending, does not concern firefighters or any public officers, in fact, and does not give the ability to make a lawful order to move away from a response.

And then lastly, the RCW that's been raised, 9884020, that is a failure to disperse, but only when there's a group of three or more.

So sometimes obstruction happens By just an individual and so this particular law in the state RCW also would not would not be applicable.

Turning to the question I have.

I'm wondering, Chief Lombard, does the Seattle Fire Department track demographics data about individuals that firefighters provide aid to?

I ask because I understand the position that additions to the criminal code has the potential to strengthen racial disparities.

But I'm very persuaded by what we've heard from Chief Scoggins, Assistant Chief Lombard, and President Petty Stewart that by not acting any legislation to prevent obstructions of firefighter services were actually delaying critical services to homeless residents, people with demographics of people who have disparate health impacts.

Communities with less access to adequate preventative health resources.

I imagine these populations would likely fall along other inequities as well.

And I'm just wondering whether or not you have any demographics that would help us get to that issue.

Council Member, we do collect some demographics, but not as much as maybe some other departments in the city.

Our demographics, particularly in this area, really are more focused on the medical care of the patient.

And so, you know, a lot of the, for example, economic indicators, we're not, you know, Seattle Fire doesn't make any determination or even collect information about you know, income brackets or anything of that nature.

It really is about the types of patients knowing that there are some characteristics that are inherent to certain populations.

So, you know, we're collecting information about the sex of the patients that we're responding to.

But again, that's for the hospitals to be able to gauge and adjust their care appropriately.

So again, a very limited set of demographics in that regard.

More information as far as based on my comments and whatnot would be just the scenarios that we're going into.

So we will capture kind of what we are seeing in the areas that we're going into an unhoused area or a possible encampment area or something like that.

So just rough numbers in those regards.

Thank you.

President Stewart, I see your hand is up.

Yes, thank you.

I wanted to add one other point that wasn't really touched on and maybe paint a little bit of a picture of what we're experiencing, because our requests are typically for space around us so we can work.

And there's a variety of reasons.

We've focused on the ones that are the most inherently hazardous and dangerous to firefighters and the most extreme.

But there's also a variety of issues that are really important to the patients or to the people in the car or the house that's having a problem.

For example, there's privacy concerns.

Oftentimes, we're asking very intimate questions about a person's personal life, their medical history, whether it's a teenager, we're asking about the possibility of being pregnant, asking them what medications they take, what medical history they have, And when we have people leaning over, they're basically violating this person's medical confidentiality because they happen to be having this problem in a public place.

And so oftentimes those, and these requests are, they're not, we don't start with the police.

We say, can you please step back?

We need to ask some private medical questions, for example.

And those can escalate into somebody deciding that they don't want to provide that person with space for their medical concerns or in a car accident or some other issue.

And then that goes down a road where we feel strongly that our and it is our responsibility to protect that patient, to protect that patient's interests.

We're responsible for them and their privacy is part of that responsibility.

So I just wanted to add that in that issue and make that clear as well.

Thank you so much.

Again, looking to see if there are any comments or questions, and if not, perhaps, oh, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and good to see you, President Stewart, and thank you again.

Deputy Assistant Chair?

I don't have the right name.

Thank you very much, Mr. Lombard.

Good to see you again.

You know, I think one of the things that comes to mind for me over the years that we've been working together, both with the department and with IFF 27, is that more and more people are experiencing behavioral health crises, substance abuse crises.

We talk a lot about the shadow pandemic and this committee and in my committee, and people just experiencing increased trauma.

And so I appreciate so much that Firefighters, Local 27 has been on the front line calling for more services for people to be able to get into care.

I'm hopeful that that will happen.

Obviously, there's the chance for voters to decide which way they want to decide on the levy that's in front of voters today.

But having more places for people to go has been something that fire has constantly brought up.

There is no landing zone to bring people.

They show up and they recognize people, they know their name.

And so the increased trauma and health needs in the community is really being served by fire on the front lines.

These are public health responders who are not only responding to the pandemic that's happening right now, but also the shadow pandemic.

And I appreciate that with additional services, potentially, there may be the opportunity for some folks who might be experiencing a mental health crisis or acting out due to substance abuse issues and interfering.

Hopefully there will be a place for people to continue to get increased treatment, especially with the levy that's on the ballot.

That's my daughter.

Um, and and I just wanted to offer that in context, because I think that, you know, this is a specific piece of legislation that's looking at 1 way to address interference of a firefighter and the health services that are trying to be delivered on site.

But I think the broader context is something that local 27. President Stewart has raised with me, I know it's an issue for SFD collectively.

We've been talking about how there needs to be additional services for people who may be interfering and it's related to a mental health or substance abuse issue.

So, on the macro level, I'm optimistic that additional services can potentially be provided.

and know that firefighters themselves are really there for that public health need.

And often because of changes in uniform from SPD in recent history, people conflate firefighter with Seattle Police Department.

And that's not good for our health responders, our first responders who are firefighters to be trying to deliver services and helping someone and have people maybe be concerned or fearful that it's an officer who's on the site versus a firefighter.

So I'm wondering if there's anything that you might be able to shed light on.

And perhaps this is for our team from the panel or for central staff.

But is there any explanation here for how this could help reduce Seattle Police Department from having to declare a scene safe or to declare a zone so that fewer Seattle police officers have to show up at the beginning.

And then I have a follow-up question, if I might, Madam Chair.

Absolutely.

Happy for...

Sounds like that's a question that would be best answered by a representative of our fire department.

Just to allow for a little bit of a runway for that answer.

It's my understanding that this will be different than what we've been talking about for the 9-1-1 alternative response, where the police department has a role in declaring scene safety.

In this case, which is very different than what we've been talking about in a new alternative response model, in this case, it is the fire department who decides whether or not to call the police for help.

That's my understanding how something like this would be operationalized.

Assistant Chief Lombard?

Sure, I'll elaborate just a little bit on that, too.

Thank you.

As President Stewart kind of mentioned, too, sometimes it's not the law enforcement aspect, but sometimes these are competing groups, whether it's gang violence or some of the mental health aspect or some different factions.

within some of the encampments.

Sometimes it's not that they're after the fire, it's the protection is for the patient from others that are trying to attack the patient, depending on how they got into these situations.

When we approach the scenes, we're carrying a lot of the aid kits, the suitcase type stuff and whatnot.

So I think most of the community definitely, at least in our experience, does see us as being different from law enforcement.

but we are completely unequipped to protect them from others, patients from others at the incident scene or around themselves.

Relating to a little bit on the mental health aspects, sometimes even knowing that we're the EMTs or the fire EMS, they will still turn on us or yell at us as well, just given the challenges that they're experiencing.

Hopefully, that clarifies a little bit.

Assistant Chief Lombard, but could you respond to the issue of this ordinance is not intended to turn on its end and empower the police department to, in every instance, do a scene security screen of a location.

It is instead, as it will be operationalized, as the fire department will be in the decision making role of whether or not to call the police for help.

Yes, yes, thank you so much for the clarification on that.

Uh, you know, 1 of the 1st things that fire is trained to do is and approaching any of these scenes is what we call our scene security.

Uh, and and trying to create the bubble as we keep mentioning.

So, yes, council member herbal, you're, you're spot on that.

This is when we, when we determine that we don't have that bubble.

This is a mechanism or a tool to help us get and create that bubble just for the short temporary time that we're in there with the understanding that when we leave that the problem or the challenges that need for that bubble goes with us.

Thank you.

President Stewart, before I allow Councilmember Muska to her follow up.

Yeah, I just wanted to add to that, that there's really an opportunity here for some education and training, both for us, the police department and people on incident scenes.

I don't think most people think they're interfering with what we're doing by leaning over and screaming at us.

There's a variety of reasons why people do that.

It does emanate from us were the ones that decide that we need more room to care for this patient or we need this distraction or this individual to be moved away and I think it's an opportunity to instead of treating that person as.

or treating the situation as a confrontation, is to move it away from confrontation and explain that we're trying to help this person, that we're trying to make the situation better, and what we need is room, and this person needs privacy, and those things.

And actually reduce the confrontation, explain what's going on, because at the end of the day, what we're doing is we're arms and hands of the city providing service to people who call and say, I need help.

And when we explain that and say we're trying to help, this is a city service and we need your cooperation, we need you to help us help this person.

I really think it's an opportunity for the police or anyone else to really interact with the people who are either upset, frustrated, and obviously I'm not talking about any criminal activity.

But oftentimes, once people get that explained to them, we actually go to a better place than if we turn around with no tools and we're leaning, you know, turning around saying, you know, get back, get back.

We don't have time to explain anything to anyone.

So we're really just looking for help.

It's not a perfect solution, but we want every every help we can to make sure that we can help people and support our mission.

Thanks.

Thank you, Councilman Mosqueda.

Thanks for that.

Um, one of the things that I know has been concerning, um, or I would assume it's been concerning is, um, having, um, you know, the health responders, the Seattle fire department and fire personnel trying to provide health services, whether it's, um, responding to somebody who is having a mental health crisis or, um, experiencing an overdose, having, Seattle Police Department show up maybe without the request of fire initially.

So does the way that I was understanding this is that 1 of the benefits to kind of really making sure that people know that the scene might might need just firefighters there to be able to give firefighters the chance to address the.

the crisis at hand is to not invite SPD to the scene unless requested by Seattle Fire.

Is that part of the outcome here?

So, you know, somebody's having a, if they're, if they're responding to a overdose situation or a call at a house, could this help ensure that Seattle Fire is really the one who's requesting any additional backup before SPD arrives at the scene?

Is that part of the goal here?

I don't know that it's so much part of the goal.

I mean, we don't usually request SPD unless we need it.

So I had mentioned earlier in my testimony about 500 ODs overdoses so far this year.

SPD is not going with us on all of those.

It really is about that size up on the scene.

How chaotic is the environment that we're going into?

And when we recognize that, then making the request, as you said, making the request for SPD.

It's a very small subset of calls where we are requesting SPD first.

Usually those are based on maybe addresses where we have a known history of where we just frequently experience the challenges and the idea being to kind of get them at least rolling or trying to come to the scene so that we aren't waiting and delaying patient care for them.

President Stewart's actually been working on one of the HealthONE units lately and so maybe have some a little more insight onto that as well.

Well, the only thing that I would add is that whether it's on HealthONE or a fire engine, a fire truck, or an aid car, our first response is to, if we're responding to a scene, is to evaluate the scene safety and then care for the patient.

And again, we want to avoid confrontation.

And I think that in response to your question, Council Member Mosqueda, it's not necessarily not having SPD show up, but having the expectations.

Um, clear, because right now, we haven't had this discussion.

We haven't had this idea of having some space to work.

And as I said, I think there's an opportunity here for communication.

Education to say, we're not asking for necessarily enforcement of a law.

What we need is some help in creating space for this incident.

And then we can talk about how we do that.

But sometimes we do need the teeth of an ordinance or a law for a very small subset of individuals.

I think this will really provide an opportunity, again, for some clarity about why we need room.

It is not to push people away or to have some impact on protests or anybody's freedom of speech.

it's really freedom of, you know, getting the care from the city that's trying to provide it.

Thank you so much.

Oops, sorry.

Sorry.

Sorry.

I just thank you so much for that context.

I think, you know, my question probably could have been asked more clearly, but I think that one of the things that I would love to continue to do is to make sure that we provide support to fire and the frontline 27 firefighters to make sure that you really are only seeing SPD when requested, right?

Because I think if both units are showing up, the things that I've heard is that it can actually complicate things on site.

If somebody's waking up from an overdose and they see an officer versus a firefighter, then they might have a different response to if it was just a firefighter on scene.

So that's one of the things that I'd love to continue to work with you on.

I have talked to Chief Scoggins and Chief Diaz about this issue, obviously with the staffing issues within both SPD and SFD.

And I want to underscore that there is staffing needs and recruitment needs within the fire as well that don't get as much attention, unfortunately.

But with the staffing issues across both departments, I think it's really important that officers are only showing up if absolutely needed so that they don't change the dynamic for the folks that you're trying to serve as a firefighter, first responder who is providing a public health service.

Because I can assume that the response is very different from people who.

see an officer versus when somebody sees a firefighter.

And I don't want to add anything to the conflation between our firefighters and police officers, even though the uniforms are very similar.

So that's something that I'd love to continue to work with you all on, President Stewart, and also to members of the firefighter department.

And I've talked to Chief Diaz about that as well, because I think that that could help alleviate some of the stress that might be occurring if police is showing up unrequested from fire.

And I see President Stewart has unmuted.

Yes, I was just going to say, you know, Seattle firefighters and paramedics provide EMS for the people of Seattle.

And our police officers do a good job of protecting people from Seattle and providing things such as scene security and dealing with crime.

And we don't want to encumber Seattle police to unnecessarily come to a scene.

They have a lot of important work to do.

And so we are not looking to increase that burden.

When we do need support and help, whether it's a Seattle police officer, a social worker, or any other related service or partner that we work with, we're going to certainly call them.

But as we provide the EMS services to the people of Seattle, we really look to our police to provide law enforcement and we want to leave them to that unless absolutely necessary.

Thank you so much.

I believe Councilman Mosqueda that you might have an amendment that you were thinking of offering.

And I want to just mention for those of us here in person, the clerk.

Distributed hard copies of that amendment.

Yeah, I was just going to can I just speak to that last part of the oh, sure.

I'm sorry.

I didn't see your hand up.

I was just going to say that people have to know what the rules are.

And so this, this would add clarity that it is not okay to just obstruct vehicles when they're trying to get to someone who is suffering an emergency within a protest situation or otherwise.

And so I, to your point, Council Member Mosqueda and also President Stewart, this is, hopefully going to reduce the incidence of needing to call SPD for reinforcement, because people will it'll be clear that that the that the that the scene is safe for you to do your jobs and police and fire work together all the time as part of the same public safety network.

So it's sometimes they're already at the same place and otherwise not.

But I think this is Um, this will, uh, help to streamline the life saving work that you do.

Thank you.

So am I, um, correct Councilman Muscatia that you are still intending to bring forward an amendment?

And I believe there might be a tweak for a voice amendment to the amendment.

Yes, Madam Chair.

Thanks.

I can speak to the moment after we get in front of us if you prefer.

Um, shall I go ahead and move it?

Um, no, I, uh, thank you for your very graceful reminder.

Thank you.

Um, just wanted to first make sure that that, that, that is the game plan here.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Um, and, uh, to get us ready to discuss the amendment, I'll move, um, council bill 120549. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

That's my mosquito.

Would you like to move the amendment?

Thank you, Madam President.

Excuse me, Madam Chair.

I'd like to amend Council 120549 by moving Amendment one as circulated via email yesterday and as presented in paper on the dais.

Thank you so much.

I will second that amendment.

And I believe that central staff might be able to present it for folks of the viewing public who haven't had the chance to see, and I'm happy to chat about it after central staff, if that works for you, Madam Chair.

Absolutely.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair and Councilor Rescata.

The amendment would require that for one year, the Seattle Police Department provide quarterly reporting of demographic information that is collected for individuals who are arrested under SMC-12A-16010.

That is the SMC for obstructing a public official.

And specifically when they are obstructing fire department personnel in the performance of their official duties or when obstruction occurs at the scene of a fire department emergency response pursuant to those conditions that we have been discussing around a safety zone.

One thing that I would note is that there is a technical error in the amendment.

In the three different places, it talks about citations and that the demographic information shall be collected for citations.

As a gross misdemeanor, this is a arrestable offense.

So citations wouldn't be given, rather an arrest would be made.

So that's a staff error and I apologize for that.

It should, instead of saying receive citations, should say arrests.

And that is a technical correction that I can make with the sponsor's direction.

And that's all I would have.

Thank you.

Madam chair, yeah, thank you so much.

I might ask if it's okay with you madam chair that central staff present the amendment, including the technical language on the screen if possible.

So that members of the public and our committing partners can see that as well.

This is.

This is an amendment that we had worked on with Councilmember Herbold, Madam Chair.

We had worked on an amendment to an ordinance a few years ago in 2019 when we added some language to the statute of the Seattle Municipal Code to ensure that when folks were Violating noise ordinances that we tracked the racial disparities or race and ethnicity of folks who were receiving citations and arrests.

And so this is a.

amendment to address some of the transparency and tracking data that I think will be very helpful.

As we have heard, there was concerns about racial disproportionality related to this legislation.

I appreciate that there was a caveat in the central staff memo, noting the difference between what's being proposed here and other statutes specifically under SPD.

But this amendment will serve as an opportunity for us to monitor any interactions with members of the public related to this ordinance and make sure that we're monitoring closely any racial equity impacts so that we can take further action if necessary.

And Madam Chair, thanks for the suggestion on this as we were talking about this legislation and appreciate that there might be some additional clarification that you might want to add as well.

Thank you so much.

Is there any additional discussion on Amendment 1?

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

Thank you, Council Member Esqueda, for bringing this forward.

Adding the reporting requirements seems to always be a useful tool when there are concerns raised about something new we might be trying to do.

Is it possible to expand the information so that we're getting the demographic information of who the fire department is assisting as well in these incidents?

The information that we talked about earlier, so that if we see disproportionality in the enforcement on the obstruction side, how we could weigh that against who the fire department is serving.

Because again, the slowing down of life saving services to a population of people in the instances where obstruction charges are enforced, that's an important consideration, especially if without a tool like this, those BIPOC communities are not receiving the lifesaving services or that those services are delayed.

So that's a really, really good question to know whether or not we can have that reporting along with the citation piece.

And we might be asking to do too much in a committee session at this point.

What do you think, Greg?

Council Member, two thoughts.

The first is I would want to check to see if it's possible to do that.

I know that it may be possible, but I would want to check to make sure that police and fire, the data systems could could make sure that they could track the information of both the patient who's being responded to and the person who's being arrested.

And then, yeah, I think that the, I would agree with you that the scope of the change is a bit further than just this amendment.

So that one might be better offered at the council level.

Council Member Peterson.

I also think that we have a fire department that would be very willing to provide that information without it being included in the amendment as well.

But defer to your preference.

Yeah, thank you, Chair.

And thanks for adding, you know, lifting up and saying better what I was trying to say, really.

Yeah, I agree that I don't want to delay the bill.

So I think Those who are providing the report could could provide more information than what were the minimum that we're requesting here so if that's an important element of information for context, who is being served.

As well as who's receiving the citations or.

or coming into contact with law enforcement, just knowing both of those things I think would be helpful.

I don't know if we could change language, including but not limited to this information here, perhaps, just to give the public safety officers flexibility to report more information than what's here.

I don't know if Greg Doss can add including but not limited to this information, but I don't want to delay the bill.

I think the problem, Council Member Peterson, is that the information is coming from potentially two different sources.

The arrest information would come from SPD, but the patient information on the fire side would be coming from the fire department.

And so that's, that's the problem would be SPD getting access to the fire department information, and then marrying it up with the arrest information and providing all of that in the same report.

And so that's what I was saying earlier where I was saying I'd want to make sure that SPD could do that.

Either that or potentially having a different amendment that would request.

some sort of dual reporting process through both SFD and SPD.

I'd have to think about that a little bit.

But I'm not sure that, I guess what I'm saying is I'm not sure that requesting it of SPD right now, I don't know that they could necessarily do that technologically.

Thank you, chair.

I'm, I'm fine as is.

I just, um, wanted to, you know, since we've discussed it publicly, of course, they can provide additional information if they feel that that would be helpful.

Um, and we could also even think of an amendment, um, at full council, if that.

With others felt that was helpful after we confer with the fire department, police department, some more between now and full council, but not wanting to delay, um, passage.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

Are there any other questions or comments on the amendment?

Councilmember Mosqueda.

Thanks so much, Madam Chair.

Thanks again, colleagues, for considering this amendment.

I think that the intent here is just to make sure that we have additional data to help us be informed about any unintended consequences here.

I, too, am hopeful that this will actually reduce the chance that an officer will have to show up on the site to begin with, wanting to make sure that We have safe spaces for people who are first responders from fire to administer the public health responses that they have been called to do is really critical.

And also, if there are unintended consequences, we want to know about those, just like we have inserted in other legislation in the past.

I also want to make sure that we are trying to get away from any kind of conflation or confusion between the role and the work of fire and the role in the work of SPD.

So I appreciate that there's different departments that we might have additional data being requested from both.

And Council Member Peterson, I look forward to hearing more about it.

what you might be interested in learning as well.

I think the concerns that we're hoping to address is just to make sure that if there is any interaction with law enforcement, if there's citations that lead to arrest, that we're tracking those.

And before final passage, would love to learn more from Office of Civil Rights or public defenders about any of the language that we talked about today related to the compounding, what's the word that you used?

I'm sorry, the stacking of charges, Greg, I believe you mentioned that, and how if there's additional laws that also address this, if stacking of charges could result in more folks being arrested or resulting in them being in jail, that would be helpful to know.

But I don't want that to get conflated with the overall goal here of trying to create safer spaces for firefighters to be able to administer the important health services.

And hopefully this also gets at that issue of police officers showing up when they have not yet been requested by Seattle Fire.

So if there's more work to do on that, to make sure that we are adequately using our resources, making sure that first responders as firefighters have the jurisdiction to administer services first and foremost before and only until SPD is requested.

That is something I'd love to continue to explore as well to support our firefighters to administer the health services that have been requested.

you councilmember Mosqueda and I see Greg has on the screen made the alterations as directed to the amendment to remove the words received citations and add the word arrested in the two places in section 2 and in the effects the effect statement and with that I'd like to ask that the clerk please call the roll on the amendment

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Four in support.

Thank you.

The amendment passes.

The main bill is before the committee as amended.

I'd like to share some thoughts from the co-chair of the bill that would be Councilmember Lewis, he did write to say, I quote, I regret that I have conflict this morning and cannot appear in person to support this important legislation.

Firefighters are on the front lines every day, serving as the first responder for neighborhoods in a crisis.

On a daily basis, the first aid measures performed by firefighters are the difference between life and death.

Seconds can matter.

No one should have the right to delay a firefighter for administering these critical services.

But in Seattle, that is functionally the state of our current law.

This common sense proposal extends to firefighters the same protections already enjoyed by police officers and other city employees.

I'm proud to co-sponsor this legislation and look forward to considering it when I return.

With that, just opening up the floor for final comments if there are some.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Oh, should we hear from central staff first?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just wanted to get back.

I heard back in real time from SPD that the data coordination problem that I was speaking to earlier with fire is a real problem, Council Member Peterson.

So that's something I can work on, see if there's a way we can get to your issue and get back to you before the final council vote.

Thanks so much.

One of the things that maybe we can follow up with central staff on is having a better sense and perhaps this is part of your conversation with SPD about the language in the central staff memo that says that there was assurances from the city attorney that these charges that charges won't be filed.

Obviously, assurances are not policy and I'm wondering if there's any additional information that we could glean from the discussions over the next week or so before final passage about codifying that commitment in this as well.

I think that would help alleviate some of the concern around this.

yielding more people being in the criminal justice system.

And if that is the commitment from the city attorney, that would be great to know.

Overall, I also wanted to just thank Seattle Fire, specifically IAFF 27 members who have been on the front line, as we mentioned during the pandemic, but also really over the last decade plus doing more with less, being asked to show up to more and more scenes where people have been experiencing multiple compounding crises, whether it's behavioral health, substance abuse, just the trauma and stress of being in the elements or having economic insecurity.

We know that you have been on the front line to respond to that shadow pandemic before COVID.

And then we're quite literally putting your lives and your family's lives at risk for being in the midst of the pandemic and responding to testing and then vaccinations, you're still out there doing much of that work that has not left the workload and you've just added it to your plate.

So again, as the budget chair, I want to continue to work with our colleagues to make sure that Seattle Fire and specifically our frontline first responders continue to get the type of investments that we know are so desperately needed.

And um, and often when you're doing work, especially in public health and you're doing it well, It doesn't get the attention and it doesn't get the resources that it needs because you're doing more and more with less and people assume that you're able to absorb that I'm really proud that we've been able to add the with Councilmember hurdles leadership and district one, been able to add the ladder track and the medic unit, and have been able to see the impact that that's had.

for firefighters in West Seattle and South Park was really impressive.

But we overall know that you need additional support to do your work and to address the increased need and demand from community giving to compounding stressors out there.

So I just wanted to make sure that we thanked you for that work and also continue to work to decouple this conversation from the ongoing conversation about concerns around the criminal justice system.

I am hopeful, again, that we can put in some clear measures and with additional answers related to the city attorney's office, create a bright line for how folks who have interacted with the first responders in an inappropriate way get access to the folks who need access to firefighters get that care without being interrupted and that we also ensure that the safety of firefighters is considered and paramount as we address these other issues that might have unintended consequences.

I look forward to working with the city attorney's office, hearing more from SPB and also continuing to support the members of SFD.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.

And with that, I think we are ready for the clerk to call the roll on Council Bill 120549 as amended.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Three in support.

Thank you.

The bill now moves to the full council meeting on May 2, and look forward to further conversation.

Yes.

Sorry, I think that was for and support.

Just know Councilmember Nelson, I had to step away.

She did send me a note in her.

She did not vote, just now.

Oh, OK.

Well, sorry about that.

I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss it either.

I also just wanted to mention with the chair and our friends from FIRE here, I will look forward to working with the chair, central staff and FIRE to make sure that some of those questions get addressed before the final passage.

I think those are going to be really important to lift up for the community.

And we'll also make sure that we're staying in close communication on some of those follow up questions.

Absolutely.

We do have Council Member Nelson back.

We haven't moved on to the next item.

I'd love to record her vote.

Aye.

Thank you very much.

Four in support.

And Clerk, can you please relay the final vote?

Four in support.

Thank you so much.

And yes, Council Member Mosqueda, work to do between now and the full council vote.

Hopefully we can get that done by May 2nd.

And if not, we can talk about whether or not there is a need for more time.

Just want to check with the other council members who are still here with us.

We have Council Member Skada and Council Member Peterson with us.

We do have one item left on the agenda, and that's the draft resolution on pay equity for human services contractors.

Want to just do a time check with folks, if we could wrap that brief presentation up by, say, 11.45.

Will you both be able to stay with us?

Council Member Peterson.

Until noon or so.

Okay, great.

I'm aiming for 1145. All right, perfect.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.

And if the presenters can join us at the table and can the clerk please read in agenda item number two.

Agenda item two, draft resolution on pay equity for human services contractors.

Uh, fantastic while folks are getting seated at the table and the presentation up a couple introductory comments.

Uh, this item is part of the committee's continuing inquiry into pay for nonprofit human services contractors.

long a concern of this Council and previous Councils.

At the March 14th Committee meeting, we hosted a briefing from the University of Washington-led team of national and international scholars, presenting the results and recommendations of their in-depth research into the pay penalty expressed by anyone working in human services.

They found that human services workers are paid 37% less than comparable workers in other sectors.

The study was funded by a council budget action that the full council supported in 2021. And the research puts hard data behind the alarms that our mission critical nonprofit partners have been sounding since the pandemic began and even before that.

I'm gonna, I do have some other introductory remarks, but in the interest of time, I'm gonna hold them and I bet our central staff presentation will cover most of what I was intending to say anyhow.

And so with that, I'll hand it over to central staff.

You can start with introductions and get us kicked off.

Thank you.

Hi, thank you.

I'm Jennifer Labreck with central staff.

And I'm Karina Bull with council central staff.

Give me one moment here to share our screen.

All right.

Thank you for having us here today.

So this presentation will provide some background and context on the draft wage equity resolution, walk through the components of the resolution, and provide a financial analysis of the potential cost impacts in 2024 and 2025. Give me one moment to see if we can, oh, there we go.

Okay.

As Chair Herbold just mentioned, the University of Washington's School of Social Work was before this committee recently to present on their completed wage equity study, which was specifically focused on the nonprofit human services industry.

Council Member Herbold just discussed these findings, so I won't repeat them here.

Well, I do want to go back and mention that one of the findings from the University of study is that while there is a 37% wage gap, it would take a 59% wage increase to close percentages can get complicated.

This math here shows how a 30%, how it would take a 59% wage increase to close a 37% gap.

Not going to spend too much time on it, but happy to answer any questions as needed.

Women comprise a large percentage of the human services workforce.

They make up almost 80% of the workforce.

And Black workers are almost three times as likely to work in human services as they are to work in non-care industries.

This information is, again, from the UW study.

It's not a coincidence that low wages, it's not a coincidence that women and workers of color are overrepresented in the human services industry and that wages are low.

Human service worker wages are low in part because of both a gender and racial penalty.

These wages are a reflection of historic gender and racial discrimination that has been carried forward to today.

As we think about the impacts of the wage equity gap, it's important to remember that human services is the work of one human being helping another human being.

We learned as part of our research that an HSD, Human Service Department, administered contracts, 80 to 100% of the contracts is used for wages.

So when we have examples of when we have trouble filling vacancies or high turnover rates that can impact organizations to deliver on services and to help some of Seattle's most vulnerable people.

I've listed some of those types of examples here, and I'm sure you've all probably heard very similar stories.

Low wages are leading to high levels of vacancies and high staff turnover.

This is increasing costs.

It's disrupting those human-to-human relationships that are essential for successful outcomes, and it's impacting the ability for nonprofits to deliver services.

Wage equity is an issue that is being both acknowledged and addressed at a county and a local level.

King County is currently funding a demonstration project for low wage childcare workers as part of the Best Starts for Kids levy and has integrated wage equity into the proposed Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services levy and the Crisis Care Centers levy.

At the City of Seattle, wage equity efforts are currently focused on workers and permanent supportive housing, which is a type of affordable housing designed for people who are exiting homelessness and have a high level of needs.

So I'm now going to begin discussing the components, the five various components of the wage equity resolution, the draft wage equity resolution before you.

The first component recognizes both the near-term and long-term recommendations from the University of Washington's Pay Equity Study.

I won't talk through all of these, but I did want to highlight that one of the key short-term recommendations is to increase wages by 7% by 2025 in order to stem the flow of workers into other industries.

And I also want to note that 7% would be in addition to any other inflationary adjustments.

The study also contained long term recommendations, one of which is to continue to make progress on advancing wage equity and to make significant progress on advancing wage equity through 2030. The second component of the resolution calls for collaboration with private and public funders.

This component recognizes that the city alone cannot address the wage equity gap.

Fully addressing the gap will take a collaborative effort among all funders, both public and private.

And this is in part because there are likely multiple fund sources in a single full-time position or different lines of business in a single organization will have different fund sources.

A comprehensive effort will take a commitment from everyone.

The third component of the wage equity resolution is focused on consideration of increasing human service department administered contracts.

So this portion of the resolution focuses on contracts that are administered by the human services department.

These would be the same contracts that are required, that are covered by the required inflationary adjustment.

This section states Council's intent to consider four things, increasing funding for contracts by 7% by 2025, additional increases in 2026 and beyond, wage equity increases that are in addition to inflationary adjustments, and using lower than projected inflationary adjustments to help reduce the wage gap.

Item number four in the resolution requests that the executive work with counsel.

I'm sorry, let me take a pause here and say, as you might recall, the ordinance reflecting or requiring inflationary adjustments for human service department administered contracts strongly encouraged, but did not require contract increases to be used for wages.

The goal here is, and the goal as well with the inflationary adjustment is that contract increases would be used to increase the wages of human services staff.

So this part of the resolution requests that the Human Services Department provide a plan for how wage equity and inflationary increases would be used to increase wages and for recommendations and how legislation can ensure that that happens.

Finally, the final component of the resolution recognizes that the city has other human service contracts outside of those administered by the Human Services Department.

For example, contracts at the Department of Early Learning with childcare organizations.

This part of the resolution requests that the executive provide information on such contracts and consider extending inflationary adjustments in wage equity increases to them as well.

And I will say that the code reference cited here is suggested in the resolution as a starting place for determining what criteria could be used to decide if a contract was a human services contract or not.

Now I'm going to move into the financial analysis.

So central staff looked at what would the cost be to implement a wage equity proposal in 2024 and 2025. The next few slides will walk through the process for determining the cost under current law, the process for determining cost under the wage equity proposal, and the total additional funding needed for 2024 and 2025 for the wage equity proposal.

Under current law, so this slide here walks you through the process of determining the cost under current law.

Under current law, you would start with the total contract amount from the prior year and apply an inflationary rate.

So for 2024, that inflationary rate would be 6.7%.

You then add the total increase due to inflation to get a new base contract amount.

This next slide walks you through the process for how you would calculate the total cost for the wage equity proposal.

Like the prior slide, you would start with the same base contract amount from the prior year.

However, you would first apply the wage equity rate, which would then lead to a higher base contract amount.

You would then apply the inflationary rate to that higher base contract in order to get the total contract costs for that year.

I know some folks might be wondering about why this particular order of operations.

The decision to apply the wage equity rate first was intentional.

If you don't apply the inflationary weight to the wage equity increase, then you are providing a wage equity increase, but immediately diminishing the impact of that increase.

And this slide here summarizes the additional costs for the wage equity proposal, assuming a 3.5% wage equity increase in 2024 and 2025. The total cost in 2024 would be 7.3 million, and the total cost in 2025 would be 15.5 million.

I do want to note that if this proposal was achieved, then the city would have been successful in meeting the University of Washington study, the recommendation in the University of Washington study to provide a 7% wage equity increase by 2025. And in summary, just wanted to provide a few points for consideration.

Low wages do undervalue human services work and can disrupt, oops, there we go, and can disrupt the city's ability to effectively provide human services for the city's most vulnerable communities.

While the city alone cannot solve the wage equity gap, it can demonstrate leadership and make progress in contributing its fair share.

This is an issue with significant race and social justice implications, both women and black workers are over represented in the human services workforce and we know that low pay is a result of both gendered and racial discrimination that has been carried forward to today.

And finally, given the current revenue forecast, wage equity progress may require a conversation about policy tradeoffs.

And perhaps to put that in a clearer way, identifying funding to support wage equity may require reduction of funding in other areas.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

This is fantastic work really appreciate you pulling this together.

Again, this bill has this resolution has not been introduced.

Want to lift up that since our last committee conversation about the recommendations, we had talked about.

the need to link up this work with the work of the Revenue Stabilization Work Group, particularly for costs out in 2025. Really appreciate that Council Member Mosqueda took that on and made an offer to the researchers creating an opportunity to provide information about the pay penalty to members of the Revenue Stabilization Work Group.

And want to also lift up that I have been having conversations with the mayor's office, and the budget office, specifically budget director Dingley on the resolution the draft, we are discussing includes some of their ideas.

We have received some additional feedback from Director Dingley, and so it's very likely that the next version folks will see will include some additional changes before introduction.

Again, the focus here is really on addressing The pay penalty, we recognize that some of our conversations prior to the development of this legislation really wanted to lift up the fact that the city of Seattle is one of many funders and we really need to make sure that our efforts to raise wages are blended and just want to say that our partners at King County, the Regional Homelessness Authority, the mayor's office as it relates to the housing levy, folks are getting serious about increasing wages for human services workers for affordable housing and behavioral health.

But if we don't do the same for workers who are being left out of these efforts, what will happen is Our human services providers will increasingly be competing for workers, while offering lower wages, and the other areas where wages have increased because of these efforts will.

be drawing workers away from the jobs funded by the Human Services Department.

I really want to also uplift the fact that the Human Services Coalition has been regularly convening a wage equity funding roundtable This is public and private funders, public funders across jurisdictions.

And they are working hard to bring everybody together to find our path forward.

And that work is recognized in the resolution.

And we're also formally through that resolution asking for a report back and their guidance.

So just wanna, Want to pause here to see whether or not there are any other thoughts or questions.

I had several slide by slide points that I wanted to lift up, but we'll save that for another meeting again in the interest of time.

And just looking, it looks like Council Member Peterson has his hand raised.

Go ahead, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

I'll look forward to the specific changes or comments we might be hearing from our city budget office.

When I was seeing this concept of a resolution, my first thought went to what the revenue forecast that we had just received showing that while there is a surplus in the general fund, there is There is less money than expected coming from other funds and when we take out the grant revenue that I think we're left with a negative $7 million.

Looking at 2023 and 2024 combined a net negative 7 million so I just.

I'm a little bit concerned about signaling trade-offs for good things we want to do, because I don't know what other good things we might be giving up.

And so I just wanted to signal my reservations to stating something so emphatically this early in the budget cycle when I don't see the whole picture of the rest of the budget and what we might want to be investing.

the dollars on.

Thanks.

Absolutely.

And that's, you may have seen an earlier version of the resolution.

The one before us really does not make, as you say, any emphatic commitments.

It uses language like we're recognizing the recommendations that we shall consider.

I totally appreciate and share Um, your, uh, desire and, uh, feeling of responsibility that we need to see the full revenue picture before making any, any commitment.

So that is a, that's a principle that, that I definitely share.

That was, uh, among, that was one of the items that the, um, mayor's office and the budget office, uh, weighed in on.

They also, um, asked for the specific changes regarding, um, convening the, um, the partner jurisdictions.

There are several things that we included in the version before you today.

We've just received some additional suggestions from CBO midday yesterday.

Again, I wanna be open and flexible and acknowledge the difficulty of our economic environment.

So really, really appreciate your continued collaboration.

And this is an opportunity for us This is my stating that council members, please do, before we're working on introducing the legislation, if you have language tweaks, I really am eager to consider them.

Council Member Mosqueda, did you have anything?

I thought I saw your hand up, but now I don't.

So maybe we've got it covered.

All right.

No, nothing for me, thank you.

Fantastic.

All right, well, thank you again, Council Central staff.

Thank you to the Seattle Human Services Coalition for their work.

Thank you for the University of Washington-led research team for your helping us put data to the anecdotal stories that we've been hearing for a long time.

And again, thank you to my committee colleagues and the mayor's office and the budget office for engaging in discussion on this important issue.

Uh, the next public safety and human services committee is scheduled for Tuesday, May 9th, 2023 at 930 am.

Uh, if any committee committee members anticipate being absent from that meeting, you can let me know now, or let me know later before we adjourn.

Are there any other comments from my colleagues?

Seeing none, the time is 1146 a.m.

and we are adjourned.

Thank you.